WSD Board Meeting, Regular, May 12, 2025

001Good evening everyone. My name is Lyn Worley. I'm schoolboard president. I call the May 12th, 2025 schoolboard meeting to order. It is 6 p.m. We are in conference room C of the Fischer Administrative Building at 12121 West North Avenue. And I'd like to welcome everyone to the meeting this evening. Miss Summers, please call the role. Miss Bzinski here. Mr. Bower here. Miss Faul here. Mr. Morris here. Miss Rolland here. Dr. Worley here. Mr. Wadier here. Thank you. We will move to public comment. Good evening. Uh can you just wait a second? I have to read a couple of things. You're fine. No worries. We have a little routine here. Um, just so everyone in the room knows, u Mr. Morris will be letting you know the three minute timing and Mr. Bower will be keeping

002track of the 30 minute um time period. Uh, and I just need to read um this statement before we start. Members of the Watusa School 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 requests that individuals limit their comment on each item to three minutes. Following any comment, an individual board member may respond on the issue raised. However, it is not the intent of the public comment portion of the agenda for the board to enter into a debate with the members of the community. Because non-aggenda items are not publicly posted in advance, no action will be taken on public comment regarding

003the non-aggenda items that are mentioned this evening. Thank you. Now, will you come up to the mic and thank you for being here? Thank you, uh, Troy Woodard. On May 7th, I was honored to be nominated to serve on the secondary schools ad hoc committee. As a facilities planner and a capital strategist, I saw this as an opportunity to contribute meaningfully to our future of our district. The nomination felt like recognition not just of my professional background, but of the importance of parent voices in shaping our schools. That feeling was short-lived. Within hours, a social media call to action from my neighborhood elementary PTSA questioned my appointment based on the assumption that I couldn't res represent my community school Washington if my children currently attended WSTEM. That evening during my family's bedtime routine, I received

004a phone call from Superintendent Dean Means. During that call, I felt pressured to misrepresent truthful information about our family's school intentions for the 2526 school year in order to retain my position. I informed him that that was not how I operate. We discussed how WSEM wasn't even listed as an option on the application even though it remains as an operating school for one more year. We brainstormed options for a WSTEM representative to be included in the committee, but Deman said he would he was going to think about it. Rather than acknowledge the flaw in the application and process, I was just removed from the committee. No further dialogue, just a website update. Another decision made behind closed doors without transparency. This felt like an engineered attempt to silence a parent voice, one connected to a

005school community that has long been treated as unwelcome. WSTEM families have repeatedly been left out of district conversations. Now, even my own neighborhood school has said I cannot represent them despite this committee's purpose being to shape secondary school outcomes, not elementary. I was selected to this committee based on my qualifications and dedication to collaboration. But this incident exposed something deeper. Politicization, exclusion, and a lack of trust. I was selected uh most troubling. I believe Superintendent Means's actions were unethical. Asking a parent to revise truthful information to fit a political narrative is a serious breach of public trust. I believe this calls his professional integrity into question and I respectfully call for his resignation. And now with the May 9th McKinley memo from BUO and Veter confirming that the Fiser building was fully aware of McKinley

006happenings, the pattern of administrative failure grows even more evident. This is more This is about more than one committee seat. It is about trust, leadership, and accountability. And our students deserve all three. We do have a rule that we cannot attack members of the in the room. [Music] Um I'm just going to pause for a couple of minutes. We'll hold the clock on the 30. Okay, we're going to resume. I'm going to ask future speakers to not get into the personal in a negative sort of way. I understand there are other ways to um make these kinds of requests. Uh, and the board of course is here to to receive requests and comments. Um, but let's try to keep this on, you know, uh, collaborative and stay away from personal communications. Okay. I think it's

007too late for someone to attack my character publicly and to lie is unacceptable. The deterioration of this community continues to manifest itself in this board. But I will not be lied on. That is dishonest. And you want to talk about politicization that happened right here this evening. I'm sorry, Dr. not entire career had someone actually misuse the truth the way that this just happened. It's unbelievable. Dr. Means is very heavy. You work very hard for this district and I'm sorry that this was brought into a public space in this way. It's very unfortunate. Um and it's not why we come together. Although there are always opportunities to express concerns. Um I don't think that uh putting that out there in the way that you did um is Mr. Woodard is really respectful of the space

008that we have here as a school board. We'll have to think as a board a little bit about process um what happens next. Yeah. I'd also encourage the other adults in the room to realize how they're treating the board as a whole during public comment in this administration. It's one thing to have disagreements um and we can have those in a healthy way, but uh the cheering and the clapping when somebody stands in front of this board um is embarrassing. So, I would just encourage the adults in the room to really think about if our students were sitting in here, and we do have students watching us all the time, think about what we would expect from our students at school. Thank you, Miss Har Moral, for raising that up. Um, we do expect comportment

009and fair treatment of people. Please, if you agree with the speaker, um, just speak with the speaker afterwards. Okay? Let's not have it doesn't change the board's minds if 20 people clap their hands. We listen to all of these pieces. We listen to what we've been emailed as well. Are you okay? I'm not. I'm not. I've never in my No, I'm not. I've never That this is unbelievable. No, I don't need to step out. But I'm going to look people who lie about me, my character, straight in their eyes, and they have to live what they've done. Dr. Means, I'd like you to invite you to have some space to um particularly address if you don't you know what what raises concerns in the comment that you just heard and the accusations that were made.

010We're going to pause public comment for this in terms of timing and then we'll come back to it. Um, and I'm going to ask folks to think about um in public comment how to share that in a way that is um gets your ideas and emotions across but does not target a particular person in the room. I was made aware by members of the Washington school community that Mr. Woodward was excuse me was not a member of the Washington school community. I received several emails from that community. Our committee that I facilitated did uh select him as a member of the committee because of his qualifications as he stated. But after receiving those emails, I felt inclined to call him to ask if his intention was to be a Washington parent or not. I shared

011with him that we did not disqualify him because he does live in the Washington attendance zone area and that he was the only Wstone family that made an appointment with our division of pupil and family support to look at other options after the closure of the school had been made public. I shared with him that he didn't have to make a decision right then and now. That if they his family needed time over the summer to continue to consider their their placement, that would be justification for him to represent Washington because there's a possibility that he could be a member of the Washington community. So to allege that there was something nefarious or unethical about my behavior based on that statement, I think that just shows you the character of the individual who spoke. Mr.

012Woodard shared with me that he was made aware that there was a campaign from the Washington school community to have him off the committee and not represent Washington. I don't know if there was a campaign or not, but I was responsive to the families of Washington. So, I called them. I felt it was the right thing to do, not to operate by email, but to actually reach out and call them personally. To know that any conversation can be twisted that way to serve the the narrative that someone wants to fill in this community. It's disgusting. There was no decision made behind closed doors. Is pretty clear. The application stated that we're we were looking for people to represent buildings, not schools. The gentleman referenced that W. Stim was not listed as a school, so he

013wasn't sure what to do. That's fair. But he could have listed Wilson. He He chose not to. He chose to list Will Washington. I understand that the closure of WS stem has been emotional for people, but that does not call for us to twist words and to create narratives that fits something that works for a certain side in this community. So, Dr. Wley, I appreciate you giving me the chance to explain what happened. That's my perspective on what occurred. I have no reason to not tell the truth. That's exactly how the conversation went. And I want to confirm that you've been very transparent with our board about this as well. Um, so this is shocking. We had not we we were a we've been made aware of the process and the concerns that were raised

014um and the handling of it and your approach in trying to open up a conversation to help the parents be aware of what it would be as a process if they still wanted to participate. Um, but that does not mean I would I just want to add I don't see that as meaning that you were asking for that change. You were just trying to lay out the guidelines of how the committee was put together and trying to keep the integrity that everyone had agreed on in the district about how that committee would be formed. That's all. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Okay, we will resume public comment. Next. My name is Ann Carlin. We are here tonight in the wake of a formal investigation that confirmed what many of us have known for many months. McKinley

015is in crisis and the legitimate voices of staff and parents have been stifled. I stand before you to share my story because I think it substantiates the documented governance failure. My husband and I have lived most of our lives in Wawaossa. We attended elementary school through high school, both graduating from Wawaossa East. We moved to Green Bay after our wedding where we lived for eight years. We moved back to the Milwaukee area so that my husband could pursue a degree. It was only natural to settle in Wawaossa. After all, this was our home. Both our children attended elementary school through high school in Wawaossa, graduating from Wawaossa West. Created a little bit of a family rift. The school district continued to be highly ranked and we wanted our family to enjoy the benefits we had

016received. We love this community. In the spring of 2021, I retired following a productive and rewarding career in healthcare. During my career, I had opportunities to teach at the university level. The transition into a second act as a substitute teacher seemed like the perfect opportunity to continue to be productive in retirement and to give back to the community that had given me and my family so much. I landed a part-time position as a building substitute in the district. I served two days per week at McKinley Elementary and transition to a rotating role between Roosevelt and McKinley in the fall of 2024. Something changed this past fall. Usually assignments for the spring semester were available in Red Rover in the fall. This year, no assignments. I sent several email messages to human resources at the central

017office. No response. I communicated with my representative at EDG staff who confirmed that the district was experiencing delays in updating the assignments in Red Rover. On January 2nd, I showed up to McKinley as I would have normally been scheduled. To my shock and surprise, the principles at McKinley and Roosevelt informed me the building substitute positions had been cut from a total of nine down to four throughout the district. If I wanted to continue as a building substitute, I would be on call on my scheduled days to any elementary school in the district. The principles received this news from the central office the day prior to their communication with me. They We're given no explanation for the decision or communicated. The time has been called. You'll need to finish. The three minutes is done. Suffice it

018to say, I resigned from my um so I have to step away or I can finish. You need to go to your last sentence. Whatever your wrap-up is, please. Chris Murker this top of the page. The environment is 99% of any job. I was not comfortable with a constant shifting environment. I built positive relationships with the staff and students at McKinley and Roosevelt. I have resigned as a building substitute and as a substitute in the district. I have shifted to a volunteer role at McKinley. I continue to mentor students in reading and math. I know firsthand about the McKinley controversy. It is not my place to tell personal stories. What I can corroborate is an atmosphere where fear and discouragement predominate. Erded trust between the district and educators is a reality. The community is watching.

019The board must act in the best interests of all the stakeholders. Healthy public schools are an essential component to strong communities. We have a crisis. Per student spending far exceeds that of other successful surrounding school districts and outcomes are unacceptable. Accountability is no longer optional. Now is the time for transparency. fiscal accountability and a genuine commitment to our children. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. We have another speaker. I just want people to be clear why we ask you to stop at three minutes. It's fine to do what just happened and that's because we have a limited amount of time, a very packed agenda and we want all the voices online and here in the room to go ahead. You may you may come. We still have time. Hi there, Zach Deillard. Um, I'm

020actually here because I have a wife at home with a sick kid. Um, so I would like to share what my lovely wife does. She is a avid volunteer for McKinley school. Um, and I'm going to read what she had prepared to talk about. Good evening. I'm a McKinley parent. I was volunteering at the school on Friday, this past Friday, uh the same day that uh the district released its investigative report on McKinley. As I was leaving, I turned to Mr. Martin and simply said, "Have a nice weekend." Uh his response without hesitation was, "I'm not going anywhere. I'm never going anywhere." I was taken aback. It wasn't what I expected, and it made me feel uncomfortable. It felt less like a reply and more like a message, a moment of defiance on the very

021day a report came out confirming the climate of fear and harm that so many staff have described. I'm not here to speculate about what he meant. I'm here to say I didn't feel like accountability. It felt like confidence, unshaken, undeterred. So, I'll leave the board with this. Why would Mr. Martin say that? And more importantly, why would he be so confident? That's not a question for him, it's a question for you. Thank you, my lovely wife. Now, for mine, I moved here in 2019. I was where I wanted uh this was where I wanted my business to be. I'm a business owner in Wawaossa. Uh this is where I wanted to bring up my family. Uh I also for credibility have two teachers that are parents and retired from Ashwaban Middle School. I am disappointed

022in the leadership at McKinley since Dr. Hoffman left. The lack of accountability for managing the district's money and how we plan to become a top-notch educational institute for our next generation. It's all I got. Again, I'm going to ask people not to clap after comments. If you have something you want to say related, you may get in line for the three minute time period while we still have time left. We have about 10 minutes left. If there's anyone else who had a comment this evening, um Jamie, I don't see any hands on. Are there people online? Could you Yeah, there are three people with their hands raised online. One, please. Uh you want to proceed with them? Yeah. Yes, we'll start. We'll move to online right now. Okay. The first one is Annie iPhone. Uh,

023you have the microphone. Hi. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Okay, great. Hi, my name is Annie Marino and I'm the parent of a McKinley student, an active volunteer at the school, and a regular attendee of school meetings. I respectfully and urgently request a new principal at McKinley. The Wawaossa School District must hold its leaders to higher standards. Responsibility for low staff morale and a psychologically unsafe school culture does not sit equally between a principal and staff regardless of who did what. A principal is a leader, a role model who must rise above. They must act maturely, professionally, and with integrity, earn and maintain the trust of staff in the school community and be held accountable for their actions. When a leader fails to meet these standards, the result is the McKinley situation. Staff

024lose trust and respect for the leader. Morale plummets. the organization's reputation suffers and resources are over spent on repair efforts. If the notion that change is hard is used to keep principal Martin at McKinley, I believe this perpetuates a false narrative that a resistance to change rather than leadership failures in implementing change are the main cause of the McKinley problem. I believe the true issue lies in Principal Martin's failure to properly collaborate, motivate, and inspire staff, adapt, build trust, and then through that foundation effectively implement change. The May 9th investigation report reveals that 75% of staff expressed concern about Principal Martin's poor communication and 63% of staff reported both fear of retaliation for expressing contrary opinions and being unfairly blamed by Principal Martin. These statistics are deeply troubling. It is no surprise that McKinley staff

025report barriers to collaboration, a toxic work environment, lack of trust in leadership, and low morale. The most devastating part of the McKinley situation is the notion that anyone believes parties involved are okay with some students excelling and others being left behind, which is a suggestion Principal Martin has repeated regarding McKinley staff. This is gut-wrenching. When I am in the building, I have only observed the care for all kids from every staff member. The investigation report concludes that until McKinley's educators can confront issues head-on and in good faith, McKinley's culture will not benefit all members of the community. I don't know how that happens. I don't know how staff can repair and confront issues head-on and in good faith when it's been suggested that McKinley staff don't want all kids to succeed. In some I believe

026the root of the McKinley problem lies in the school leaders failure to properly collaborate, motivate and inspire staff, adapt to build trust, and then through that foundation effectively implement change. It is my respectful request that within this issue, we show our kids and our school community that our district holds its leaders to the highest standards and therein replaces Principal Martin. Thank you for your time. You um Jamie, can we move to the second online comment? Yep. Um, Kayla's iPhone, you have the microphone. Hi, this is Kayla Murker. Um, when my husband was interviewed by an attorney for the McKinley Investigative Report early last week, he asked directly how the list of the nine parents um to be interviewed was determined. The attorney responded to him that the list was provided by Dr. Means. So, Dr.

027Dr. Means, you've said repeatedly that you won't be influenced by outside pressures and that you will rely solely on the data in the report, but I have to ask, how does gathering input from only nine parents qualify as valid data or meaningful discovery? How can that be discuss? I will cut you off if you don't listen to me for a second. The rule of public comment is that you are to address the officer in the room. That would be me. So, you're welcome to ask your questions, but please direct them to me. Thank you so much. Okay. So, um Dr. Worly um you've um we have heard that um Dr. Means, can I state that? um cuz in order to get my point across, I have to use this um that he um won't be

028influenced um by outside pressures and that he'll only um solely rely on data in the report. But I do have to ask a question. How does gathering input from only nine parents qualify as valid data or meaningful discovery? How can that be considered a representative sample when many more parents have spoken publicly at this evening's board meetings, at previous board meetings, even community members spoke out in February? And I know several emails, multiple emails have been sent dated dating back to November. And it's not just directly to the superintendent, but it was to the entire board. So I'm trying to understand the process. Who is responsible for identifying these nine individuals? Was it Dr. Means? Was it Mr. Martin? Or was it someone from his team? Because if the goal was to collect broad and

029representative feedback, why weren't the 17 families who signed an original email that was sent over two weeks ago that raised concerns in the recent McKinley letter um along with the broader group of families with a wide range of perspectives. There's a concern in the community that the selection process may have favored voices with particularly positive experiences potentially limiting the diversity of parent input. Well, every family's story matters. A process that doesn't reflect the full spectrum of a community experiences risk undermining public trust and producing an incomplete picture. Thank you. Thank you. We're not agendaized to discuss McKinley tonight. Um, but we have all listened to this comment and we will um continue to look into what you've requested. Thanks for rephrasing it. I appreciate that. We have one more online comment that we'll take now.

030Seth and Katherine, uh, forgive the pronunciation, Peter Hood. You have Hi. Um, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Okay. Um, Katherine Hudson, Washington Elementary. Um, I just am calling in on behalf of the parents of Washington to say thank you to the district and to the board for ensuring that the secondary ad hoc committee um, adheres to what it was intended to do, which is to give voice to parents and guardians of currently enrolled students at every school in the district. Um, we are a very inclusive community. However, we were very concerned when we saw that the parent representing our school community and who was going to give voice to us was not a parent at the school. Um the district responded to our concerns and we are incredibly um thankful that we are

031now going to have representation on the secondary ad hoc committee. Um, I just want to say that I feel like it reflects something that I hear parents asking a lot of the district, which is to acknowledge when mistakes are made, um, and to, uh, to rectify those mistakes. And so, I am just I'm going to speak on behalf of dozens and dozens of parents at Washington who, um, just want to say that thank you for that. Um, and that we are just grateful that we will have our voice heard on that committee. So, thank you. Thank you for your comment. Are there any other hands online? Yeah, there is one more. Oh, two more now. No, sorry, one more now. Okay, just hold one second. Are there any other folks in the room who are

032planning on speaking? I just wanted to buy the time fairly. Okay, seeing no others in the room, we'll go with the two who are online. It's just one now. Jessica Haywood, you have the microphone. Hello. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Awesome. My name is Jessica Haywood. I have a son at W Stem. I spoke at last uh board meeting. I just want to say I find it a little concerning that we could as a group as we speak to the school board be able to excuse me direct our comments to you. but we are unable to make a direct comment about a member of the board or about a member of the administration. It hurts our souls that WTEM was specifically left off of the secondary committee. Troy, Mr. Woodard, could not have

033put Wilson as a representation because that probably would have been more of an outcry than just using his actual homeschool. I am not one to discuss logistics about how he was taken off a committee or added to a committee. That is a mistake that was made. I do not think Mr. Woodard by any means would have tried to trick the Washington community into thinking that he wanted to represent them. He was representing his own voice. And I understand Washington wanted a representation from their school, but so did WT STEM. and that was not an option. I do find it extremely disheartening that a rebuttal was then allowed to take place for 10 minutes of this time where Mr. Woodard's character then got attacked. And that is absolutely what it looked like from an outsider that

034Dr. Means got to sit there and say that he was upset by how he was treated when and spoke to the character of Mr. Woodard, which was in fact doing the exact same thing that he said he would not stand for. I would just like some accountability on if one person isn't allowed to do it, then perhaps the leader of our district also should not be allowed to do it. Thank you. Again, I'm going to ask for no clapping in the room. If you would like to speak, you may come to the microphone. We actually saved all the time 30 minutes for the public. We will return to public comment if there's anyone else who would like to speak. I do want to say that I did not say you could not speak about issues.

035What I said was we have a law, a bylaw um for public comment and it says that you must direct your comment to the officer in the room. And I think the rest of it is just general human dignity expectations about how we speak with each other. We want to be productive here. We want to hear voices. Um we appreciate those who can't come and reach out us by email um or phone calls. We really welcome that. As a board member, our goal is to really sort through all the different perspectives and information that's different than the role of a staff member. Um, so we do look to all of you to reach out and to talk with us, but we just really want it to be conversation. You can have a different opinions without

036being unkind to others and you can bring your concerns. I brought them before I was on the board. I was often at this microphone and I think it's really great that our community does this. Not every school board gives us much time over and we will continue. Um last week we even added more time so that parents could be heard. So I just want to note that um we're just asking for a way of conversing with each other so we can really hear each other. I will promise you that I feel that when people deliver their comments in that kind of collaborative way, it actually has a stronger impact in the long run on people being able to hear you. So, um, not seeing other public comment in the room. Last call. Okay. Well, if

037you have to speak to a different issue, that's another rule, right? So, you only speak once for three minutes to a single issue. So, you would have to change what issue you're talking about, but you may step to the microphone, but please, please, please, let's not get personal. Thank you. Understood. I I Troy Woodard. Um, I believe the one sole employee that reports to this board is the superintendent. Is that correct? Um, so I I guess I I don't have uh to to speak on the public comment at board meetings. I believe uh the the board would be beneficial to take a look at what the reporting structure for uh community feedback on their one employee might be. Thank you. Okay, we will close the public comment. We are going to move to the consent

038agenda. Are there any items on the consent agenda which board members would like to remove for separate discussion and action? Uh, board president, I do have one. Okay. Uh if we could pull uh policy 3310, the one on employee expression on non-instrumental settings, I would appreciate that, please. And Mr. I had a question about the uh RR uh approved changes to the master maintenance mechanic wage. Would you like to pull it for that question? Okay. I just had a slight change for policy 3231. Mr. Wier, can you repeat the policy number that you'd like to pull? Can you repeat the policy number you would like to pull from consent? Um, it's not policy. It's uh it's item number RR. Okay, Dr. Willie. Yes. I believe we need a motion and a second and a vote

039to move these off of consent. make the motion. I don't policy. Did you? Yeah. Yeah. So motion. So it's 3310. Mhm. The um contract master maintenance mechanic wage schedule contract and policy 3231. I think it could just be right here. It says I can just read it. Isn't that what are you asking for me? Just I'm just going to proceed with what it says next to. Yes, that language can be read and then we'll That's what I was going to do. Yeah. Okay. Thank you, Phyllis. Um and you want me to do those one at a time? All three can be on the same make sure. Okay. So, um Mr. Bower has requested I that policy 3310 um be removed for further discussion for separate um discussion and action. And Mr. Wadier has requested that

040the changes to the master maintenance mechanic wage schedule um item be removed for further discussion and action. And Miss Heimer Roland has requested that policy 3231 be removed for separate discussion and action. Are there any objections? So, um, now I would move to Liz if you want to or I can just read it. Is recommended be it's recommended the the school board approve the remainder of the consent agenda. Second. Liz seconds. Miss Summers, please call the role. Miss Bzinski, yes. Mr. Bower, yes. Miss Box, yes. Mr. Morris, yes. Miss Rolland, yes. Dr. Worley, yes. Mr. Wier, yes. And the remainder of the consent agenda passes. Okay. So, we want to put then um these items. We go to those next. Okay. in the order. Okay, we are going to move then I just want everyone

041who's in the room to be able to follow. We're going to then go to policy 3310. Absolutely. Uh looking at 3310, uh the spirit of that is to provide guidelines on um what employees should and um should engage in and what they should avoid. uh particularly as it addresses the school district. Um there is one phrase that I think and I agree in general with everything that is on there. There is one phrase in there that is in B that I would suggest be stricken and I can make a motion to that uh to that extent. Uh it currently reads refrain from extra expressions that would disrupt harmony among co-workers or interfere with the maintenance of discipline by school officials. Uh I would then motion to eliminate the words disrupt harmony from among co-workers or

042making be now read refrain from expressions that would interfere with the maintenance of discipline by school officials. Um, should we should I have you read that one more time? Yes. Uh, we should eliminate the phrase disrupt harmony among co-workers or which would make be now state refrain from expressions that would interfere with the maintenance of discipline by school officials. Um, and I can provide my thoughts behind that. Yeah, please do. And then we'll ask Miss Elazoski who's brought these proposed these to the policy committee if she has things she wants to add. Absolutely. And anyone else? Um the concern is is that disrupt harmony among co-workers is far too broad and not well defined in uh any sort of as at least as far as I can find um any sort of actual uh it

043doesn't have a true definition which makes it very wishy-washy and not suitable in my opinion for a policy. Uh I think it'll get us in more trouble than it is worth. Okay. is asking would you like to Yes. Can you hear me? Uh so that particular policy language uh is not new to the policy. Uh it has been uh part of that policy um since prior to my arrival. Um I believe that the intent of the language um is to use a positive way to describe um avoiding conflict among employees. [Music] Um and um I think that is an important um um message to uphold um within the policy as the maintenance of discipline by school officials. Um, I would say that uh as we're addressing employee matters, discipline is not always something that rises

044to um a level of potential conflict. Um, but if I would be happy to go ahead and take this back to committee to go ahead and recommend something that is not so uh broad um and um and has uh has more context to it. That would be much appreciated. Yeah. Yes. Thank you. Um just for those who are newer to the process, this is a second read, but we do not have to take action on a second read. And in a situation where there is some language like this um raised up, uh typically what will happen is it will go back to the policy committee um to come back to us then uh the next time that it fits on the agenda to um with language that merges the what's been raised by the schoolboard

045members along with um what the administration recommends from the perspective of in this case human resources. Um, are there any other comments on this policy that people wanted to make just so we would do all of those questions at the same time? Hearing none, then um I would ask that the policy um committee find a time to put this on an agenda, an upcoming meeting um and work with Michelle Zoski. Thank you, Mr. Bower, for raising up your concern. Do you need a motion at all to or is it just go back to committee? No. No. Okay. No, we would only need if we were going to take action. So, yeah, but it's a good question. Thank you. Okay. Um, let's move to uh RR on the agenda, which is the um expression uh there's

046a contract on the maintenance. Mr. Wier, could you go ahead and explain what your questions are so we see what kind of discussion we need to have? Sure. Uh I'm just looking for a clarification as the way it it read. It was a little confusing to me. Sure. Um are we I I have no issue with the escalation of of the wage scale I have anticipated. Um, is this a full-time hire that that we are talking about uh indefinitely or is this something that is uh specifically for the referendum work andor how I just it it's not like immediately clear to me in looking at this. This is a position where we're we're currently contracting just to get the minimum and we're looking to hire someone full-time or like what what the end goal is.

047in this sort of thank you for the question. Um, so this position is vacant due to a retirement um, uh, almost a year ago and we've had this position posted since July of 2024 and had been unable to fill it. The contract was to go ahead and provide us some support um, during this school year. Um but it it has been a longtime permanent position the organization has maintained which is not uh not reliant on referendum work to to keep this person busy and to to keep working moving forward in the organization in this position. Um I would assume then has been and would continue to be part of the budget is the FTE is included in our budget. Yes. Okay. So um I think that gives me the clarifications I need. I don't I

048don't have any problems with it. I just wanted to know. So, it's coming back because we need to upgrade the the wage. Our our wage was not competitive. Yep. Any other Would you like to offer a motion? I'd like to offer a motion to vote on item pass. I re I recommend that we pass the recommend that we pass master maintenance master maintenance agreement goes to Chris is asking could you call the role sorry I'll get through this yet this evening everyone this is my first school board meeting so I feel a little bit like It's an exciting one to be part of too this summer. Sorry about that. Please call the role. Miss Bzinski, yes. Mr. Bower, yes. Miss Bach, yes. Mr. Morris, yes. Miss Himemer Rwand, yes. Dr. Worley, yes. Mr. Wier, yes.

049And the motion passes and thank you for the questions. Um, we will now move um to policy 3231. Um, Miss Heimer Rowling, could you um brief us on what you'd like to talk about? something really simple. Um, in 3213. Did I say that backwards? Oh, there it is. Outside activities. Yes. So, I know we're moving to just consistency with language in the policies. Um, under research and publishing a it says professional staff members are encouraged. We've just been removing professional in front of the word staff and all our policies. I would just make a motion to um remove the word professional in the research and publishing um item A. Misski, do you concur? Thank you. Okay. Thank you for that close reading and noticing what's gone before many people's eyes. Um, any other board members

050have comments or questions about this one? Then I would suggest that we go ahead and take action on this one as amended if that's okay. Um, so I need a motion. Uh, Liz, I don't know if you would like to do that. I move to remove the word professional under research and publications item A in policy number 3231. So we'll pass first. We have to do the amendment and then we can do the motion on the passing it. So we have a second on that proposed amendment. Thank you. Miss Summers, could you call the role? Miss Bzinski? Yes. Mr. Bower? Yes. Miss Boach? Yes. Mr. Morris. Yes. Miss Rland. Yes. Dr. Worley. Yes. Mr. Wier. Yes. And the motion carries. Now I need a motion um to um propose to pass uh this policy as

051it's been amended. I move to pass policy 3231 as amended. Could I have a second? Thank you. Um Miss Summers, could you call the role? Presinski. Yes, Mr. Bower. Yes, Miss Bach. Yes, Mr. Morris. Yes, Miss Hammer Rollins. Yes, Dr. Worley. Yes, Mr. Wier. Yes. And the motion carries. Thank you. We'll move on. Long list. We move on to number four, strategic goal six, operations. Everyone, I'll be up here for two reports tonight and then I'll invite um Kevin up for uh roofing and I'll talk briefly about food service. But the primary two reports are the April financials. Thanks, Cy. Um and uh preliminary budget. So the first topic is our April financials. Um this is probably like getting to be like a broken record uh for many of us. Um not much change from

052uh really any of the last say 8 to 10 months uh we're trending about the same way on revenues and expenses as we have um really since about November or December. Um the the I guess uh the really good news about that is this we can tell the software is working. We shouldn't see big variances monthtomonth. Um that would be more alarming in terms of are we making good predictions uh than um seeing a steady trend. So we're fairly confident where we're going to end the year. I've talked at length about our revenues being uh basically on target. Um but our expenses in particular in the area to services uh being the areas of concern and that's due to really three areas. legal fees, uh emergency maintenance to buildings, and um sub costs, which among

053I'm sorry, sub costs have gotten in line, especially transportation is the uh the third all things that we rightsize for next year's budget, but I'll talk about that in the the next presentation. One thing that stood out this month that I wanted to uh highlight for the board is um let me find the right slide. Uh on this slide we can see the the variance change in benefits. So that would be the see do I have a if you can see my mouse here. Um the projection for benefits last month was that we would finish the year about 160,000 to the good. Um this this month's projection is 1.1 million. I I don't want anyone thinking we're actually going to have that positive variance. We've changed how we're um paying for our health insurance. So,

054uh we used to double up our payments in April and May uh because of our cycle with uh how teachers are paid. We've now made those even payments over all 12 months. So, we're going to see a positive variance the next two months and then it will settle back. Uh I think we're going to end up with that small variance, but I didn't want anyone getting overly excited about uh a million dollar positive variance. That concludes the report uh for April. Thank you. This is an opportunity for board members um who might have questions on this report. Um please just raise your hand and then Yes. M can you just explain that one more time about why that number is so big? But the health insurance. Yeah. So um our our practice uh for who

055knows maybe decades for all I know has been to um because of how we acrew payroll for teachers. So teachers get paid uh for 12 months of work but uh state law requires that at that their work for this school year um all be paid by June 30th. So, their pay and their benefits. Um, yet back in, so my dad was a teacher and, uh, say back in the olden days, um, they would get one one check on their last payroll that was that paid for like three months of summer and then the teachers would put that in their bank account and kind of make sure they didn't overspend it. um at least a couple decades ago that practice generally changed to uh probably when ACHs came out that we we could pay an AC

056to teachers on a regularly scheduled payroll date. So they weren't receiving a big check. We weren't sending a big check. U but that has then part of that was also acrewing for benefits. So, for some reason, our practice had been to double up benefit payments the last two months of the year and not take any benefit payments two months later in the year. So, now we've just evened that out. I just want to point out for the public, uh, everything you've shown us, Mr. has been great, but especially in that top, if we hadn't had the software last year, we'd be seeing what looked like a much larger uh in the red there with the benefits as compared to what we're seeing this year. So, it gives us a lot of clarity, a lot of

057uh transparency and actually knowing what we're seeing whether we had going from the the two payments over a 12-month period, that still paints a much better picture. Correct. Thanks. I also want to highlight that for everyone to understand and those who may be here for the first time or seeing us for the first time that we are working in a budget that was formed before you were here, but you've been helping us this year to really um be aware with the software, be aware of where we are um where we need to budget better going forward. So, thank you for pointing that out um as you gave the presentation because I think it helps all of us to better understand the later presentation that's coming um about the budget. My my anticipation next year would

058be that we would not see these some of these large variances because what that would indicate is we're budgeting correctly. Um the the only time we should see a large variance like that would would be if I come to the board and I say, "Hey, we have this emergency." Uh I want to make you aware that this I don't know this roof fell in it and couldn't be budgeted for. So now ex we want the board to approve a project and expect a variance. Thank you. Thanks for that example. Any other board members questions about this? Um thanks for all the effort you put into um preparing the reports and videos ahead of time as well. We can move on to your next item. Hey, the that that is a segue into the 2526 preliminary

059budget. So, just in uh quickly to kind of ground us just in timing, um the board has had a couple like super highlevel looks at budget projections. So, I guess going back a few months, you you could say the very first look you had at a 2526 budget was when we first presented a 5-year projection. So, as time goes by, we we narrow down um those uh those those kind of dependent variables to be able to present at now our first real look at a budget. Then the step after this will be our budget hearing uh at the end of July and the board will then adopt a a we call original or preliminary budget uh for the 2526 school year uh immediately following the budget hearing. Then in October once we have our our

060student count happens in September, our state certifies our state aid in October and the board certifies the tax levy after we get our state aid. The board will then approve a final budget uh in October. Then if there's any budget amendments needed during the year, we we did that for instance this year. There's the potential that the board would um approve a budget amendment. That's only if needed. So those would be the next big milestones. So really, you probably won't hear a whole lot more about the 2526 budget between now and the budget hearing unless the state budget um unless something happens in Madison um unless the board were to approve uh new positions, you know, unless something material happened with the assumptions that we're uh that we're working through. So, I really want to

061ground us in some of the the great things we've been able to do with this budget and and um I remember uh at my interview one of the things I said is we we can do anything we want. We just can't do everything. And so I think sometimes we need to it's helpful to look back on what are some of the things we can do because we often um all of us in school districts maybe at any job uh certainly at home to hear about all the things that aren't happening and sometimes it's good to think about the things that are happening. So, our resident's approval of our November referendum uh affirms and has has allowed us to keep our low class sizes, neighborhood elementary schools, uh competitive compensation, certainly more so than it was

062several years ago. Uh our student support services, so people for student supports, mental health services, um those FTEEs have gone up dramatically. We've been able to keep all of them. our teacher professional development uh both people that provide that and the services that go along with it has been a major investment for the district and next year we'll have a balance budget with a surplus designated for fund balance that's the first time in three years that we'll have that so it's a lot to celebrate um it hasn't been easy getting here I'll I'll say that um and it doesn't provide for everything that everybody would want u but I think these are these six bullet points are are some pretty um uh good celebr celebrations for us. So our largest So here's our our major

063budget assumptions. First is that our enrollment and FTE uh so enrollment and staff FTE um come September uh will match the approved staffing plan. Um I mean that that is the major driver the number of people that we have. So if that changes significantly, that is going to change the budget and I'd be coming back to the board saying, "Hey, we have this many more people or this many fewer people and here's how it impacts the budget." Uh the current state law for revenue cap, this is much less of a speculation than it was for most of my career. Um because of the governor's line item veto authority, uh the roughly $350 increase uh per student each year has been written into law for the next I don't know 400 years or something. So uh

064absent um maybe a Supreme Court ruling or something at the state, we're more certain of that dollar amount than we ever have been. Uh we're current we're under this budget, we are assuming current state law for special education. So generally what I like to do with with budgets is assume current state law, not speculate on what could go better or worse. Um I've got my fingers crossed that things get a little better with special education, but for the time being we're budgeting the the normal special education reimbursement. Um that is about 29% for us. If you hear that it's 33% or something like that, which is kind of common across the state, is what people talk about, that's because it's it's um it's what the DPI calls a some certain amount. So, it's a dollar

065amount written into the budget of the state budget that they think will cover one-third of costs, but once they hit that some certain dollar amount, it doesn't increase. So, it it never ends up being about 33%. It's always around 29%. Uh it also assumes and and and as much as uh we have more certainty about uh current state law for revenue cap. Um this is probably the the most uncertain I've been about federal grants. So we have more certainty on one side and I think a little less certainty uh on on another side. Now the I guess if there is good news about federal grants um because of our demographics and population we we do not get much federal funding. uh generally um you know districts with more poverty get the most federal funding. So

066we we don't have as as much risk there as uh many districts in the state that are receiving you know a greater portion of their income uh federal grants. By and large our largest new investment every year is teacher compensation. Um uh and what we've budgeted for is a 3.6% 6% pay increase, which equates to about 2.6 uh million new dollars over last year's cost. Without the referendum, what would that number be? If the referendum didn't pass, we would have about 150 fewer people, and I'd be recommending a salary freeze. Um here's real high level overview of our operating funds. Um our revenues, expenses, and you can see the bottom line there. Uh and this is budgeted right now as a surplus. Um and you can see the change year-over-year. Uh again, our revenues are

067up about $17 million. 16.1 million of that is the referendum. Um so then roughly 900,000 uh in combined uh money from from the state and and uh uh revenue cap money. Uh and then expenditures only going up uh 4.7 million. Uh again 2.6 of that is um teacher compensation. Uh leaving roughly 2.7 million for other employee compensation. and frankly to rightsize a lot of things in the budget that um that we know uh needed to be okay. I also needed just to kind of ground myself. I wanted to go back and look at the most sign significant investments that the district has made since uh 2021. Um, and I think this is just something that's good to do every few years to see um, a are we aligned with our strategic plan? Are we putting

068our money where we said we were going to? Um, you know, uh, eventually we should start looking at what outcomes are we getting. I know that when we've had um the department of um, student supports or department of academic performance, uh, they have uh, talked at length about some some of the celebrations they've had and a lot of those things are due to the investment put into these areas. So, um I'm just going to kind of read through these. I know everyone can read it, but but for sake of the presentation, um our largest investments are in student supports. So, that is staff directly focused on uh social emotional health, social work, it includes our psychologist and deans. Um that annual budget increased from $77,000 in 2021 to $1.1 million currently. So significant investment uh

069staff development that includes staff development for teachers. So programming for teachers as well as the staff dedicated to improving student instruction. So we added quite a few staff that their sole focus is within the department of academic performance and improving instruction in the classroom. That budget has gone from 3 and a.5 million to 10.1 million. So, another significant investment. Special education staff uh has gone up about 22 FTE. Um now that's a combination of teachers and educational assistance uh but significantly more support for special education. Uh our teacher salaries, this will be the fourth year in a row that our teachers raise uh receive raises uh above neighboring districts. I'm anticipating ours will be above neighboring districts because most districts are offering um the CPI uh or less. So, uh and what we've budgeted is

070more than that. Uh prep time for elementary teachers. Sometimes this this gets forgotten. Uh and I had to kind of dig into the budget to find out what what this was. when I I was looking at staffing changes since 2021 and I saw that we had jumped in number of art teachers and so the uh Dr. means and Sarah were able to kind of fill in on the background of that is the the reason for that was we had added art teachers or specials teachers I would call them to provide um right so the kids have have somewhere to go which would give our elementary teachers more prep time so that's you know an investment in time for teachers and good for students and the other big area is our retirey health insurance so uh

071I know a few years ago when the new um sorry schedule plan was presented to the board. Um that is the the the one thing I found in uh there was an appendix with recommendations that the board considered going forward. Uh one of those items was uh health insurance premium for employees for instance. So the board executed on that. One item that hasn't been executed on is um reviewing what our opportunities are with with retiree health insurance. And you can see that that is uh the the budget there is about a million well $1.1 million more than it was four years ago. And that continues to increase. So again, that's for people that um have have worked here long enough that they qualify for uh uh health insurance paid upon their retirement. Again, our largest

072uh new investment this year and and every year is pay increases for teachers. And here's our other investments. Uh I mentioned compensation increases for other staff. So that's our support staff, select staff, and administration. Um right sizing budgets, the the the main areas are special transportation. So we've talked about how that's a variance this year. I don't want that to always I mean I guess we I could tell you hey we're not going to increase that budget and then throughout the year say hey bad news we over spent but we know what we're going to spend so let's budget that way. Uh emergency facility repairs we are well over budget there this year. Um honestly I don't know if I can get that one right sized. Uh our we have so much deferred maintenance. If

073we look back at our most significant investments since 2021, there is nothing on here about facilities. So, uh when when we talk about what choices have we made um that or or non-choices, uh we've been able to do a lot of things, but we haven't corrected our facility um concerns. So, we have increased that budget, but we we don't know what emergencies there's going to be. And in our in a district of our size with our age buildings, there's more than other districts with the same number of students with with newer buildings, frankly. Um, title one, we've right sized that for for some reason, um, revenue had been overbudgeted for several years, so we fixed that. Um, we've now budgeted for, um, so we've talked about substitute teachers and the fill rate. So, uh, from

074a budget standpoint, um, several years ago when we couldn't fill subs, we saved money. Uh, now we have subs in the classroom, so that's good for students. It it seems like that trend is now going to continue. We're kind of over that co can't find substitutes uh, challenge we had. So, we are now uh budgeting next year as if we're going to keep our fill rate where it is. Legal expenses, short-term borrowing is a significant cost. And it's um it's significant in two ways. One, we don't have the fund balance sitting in the bank that we used to have, right? So, the revenue that we would have earned on money sitting in the bank is gone. And on top of that, we have to now borrow money. So, we're losing revenue and we're gaining an

075expense. That's about a million dollars net uh that we just have to come up with. Um our our school leadership teams, we've we've uh got that budgeted correctly. Now, there was some um confusion about who's going to be paying for that. So, now we know who's paying for it to support that. The school leadership team, you might be able to explain it better than I. The school leadership teams are teams that we've created at each of the school buildings to allow teacher voice to be part of the development of the school growth plans for schools. I would not have I would have uh I knew kind of what it was, but I would have not been able to explain it that well. And then uh finally, our external communications is another area that um purposefully

076we've been trying to be more transparent and communicate more. Um but we've continued to overspend that budget uh given where we want to be with communication and transparency. Um working with Miss Tuttle to to align that budget with what her priorities are. And we have so that's all things we were already doing and just had to rightsize. So nothing new. Uh we just have two new initiatives for next year. Uh that's our senior tax relief program. So that is an opportunity again for uh senior citizens in the community to uh spend time I'll call it volunteering uh in our schools in return for that volunteering. We we give them pay that they can then use to offset their increased taxes. So that's something we talked more at length about during the referendum. Uh but we

077have budgeted for that and we've budgeted for uh the expenses that are going to go with our secondary school committee. So things like the facilitator, uh things like a bus to take the committee to look at other facilities. Um I'm always in favor of if we know we're doing something, let's budget for it so we're not wondering later how are we going to pay for it. And then this hasn't been without our challenges, right? So and there's a few remaining unknowns. So, uh, a challenge has been, um, open enrollment and tuition waiver draw down, right? And, um, we have fewer students. Um, and then the associated staffing reductions it, right, when when you lose students, the staffing reductions don't necessarily come onetoone with where we're losing students and and then rejuggling staff. So that that

078was I know a really significant challenge for Sarah, our principles um to to get our students the best uh support. Um the the one big remaining unknown on the revenue side is um you might for board members that were on the board um you might remember we we received about a $1.4 4 million um kind of unexpected revenue as part of a property tax payment from the state that it's in current state law. Um so I have budgeted going forward, but I also have my fingers crossed that that is not going to change. Um but I want to make you aware of that. the the real uh on the expense side, the biggest challenge that we have is I mentioned I can't get our repairs and emergency maintenance right sized. Um I'm not even sure

079what dollar amount that would be. So that that is a concern and um something I'm going to talk to the um finance uh committee about a little bit. h how do how do we kind of reconcile that and hopefully that committee will have some ideas to bring to the board as a whole. Um I just want to remind us that the um this budget as well as the referendum doesn't really provide any what I would call upgrades to classrooms. Right? So it's not there's not a budget to increase classroom size or uh tear down some walls. Um I'm facing an issue right now with uh a classroom at East High. Um we've got floor tiles coming up. Um uh issues with air quality and um nothing that is a health concern. Um it it certainly

080is probably uncomfortable, but kind of battling with that. Do do we throw good money after bad? um do we repair the tiles one at a time? Do do we do Kevin and I come to the board and say, "Hey, there's no budget for this, but what do you want us to do?" So there there's a lot of examples out there like that. Um, and then the other challenge we have that I I hopefully I've talked about, um, well, I know I've talked about, but hopefully it's made sense with the number of elementary buildings we have and the small school size and small number of sections per school. Um, from a pure efficiency standpoint, that is an inefficient way to run a school district. I I I know we're not about widgets and efficiency, but it

081does limit our flexibility in u being able to shift staff for instance. So that it's just a constraint we have that we um have to live within. Uh so this is this is going to look a lot like the report you get every month. You can see the the column on the far right is our budget and then all the columns to the left of that are historical actuals and just at a high level you can see our total revenues, total expenses broken down in a couple areas and then the surplus or deficit and beginning in fund balance uh each of those years. So you can see I'm just going to go right down to the ending fund balance. Um, we're projected to finish the year this year, 2425, with about a $10 million fund

082balance. And then you can see we're budgeted to put about 1.3 million back into fund balance. So, we'd be increasing that uh to say roughly 11.5 million. Uh, for those of us that like uh pictures of where the where where we get our money and where it goes, this is just a pie chart of where the money is coming from. Uh in our district, the largest piece is uh local property taxes. Uh that's going to be the blue. And then uh state aid or state sources is the orange. And here's a um this is just a longitudinal picture uh again of revenues. You can see um the proportions don't change very much uh except if you look at the federal revenue that's sort of a maroon purple color. You can see the years where there

083was significant dollars here. That's esser money. Um and that is the money that's dried up. One one of the reasons that um that we're so thankful for the referendum is some of the positions that we added we we used er money for. So as that money went away, uh had the referendum not passed, there would have not been dollars available to fund those positions. Uh here's again a pie chart of our uh uh expenses. Uh salaries and benefits are the blue and orange. So by far the vast uh majority of our expenses, roughly 11% of everything else or is everything else. And here's a longitudinal look at those. And we can see um really you can to me the thing that stands out is the the blue bar on the bottom is our salaries. And

084uh the significant I mean we our total salary budget in 2022 $46 million. So significant significant investment in uh both people and salary increases. And then here's our picture of our fund balance uh history and budget. I should have had a slide that said questions, I guess. Yes. Now we turn to Thank you, Mr. Eker, for both a informative and visually captivating presentation, too. I really appreciate the colors. Um, they do help Oh, good. make sense of the different bars and what they stand for and thanks for the feedback. Yeah. Um, I would turn to some time for our board members. Miss B, go ahead. Um, I am just wondering about the 1.4 4 million property tax payment and what why we're not sure if we're going to get that. So, it was written last

085year was the first year we got it and um my peers and I were not budgeting for it because we weren't convinced we were going to get it. the the governor um I don't know if it was the line item veto or if it was part of the approved budget um shifted money outside of the revenue cap which is good for school districts like us because in the past that money had just been included in the revenue cap so it would have been pure property tax relief and it moved outside the revenue cap to make it um essentially extra money it's not property taxes to our citizens. Um um in large part uh businesses receive kind of property tax rebates for some of the equipment they have, some of the land that they have, and

086it's some kind of calculation the state uses uh on on business uh and flows the money to us. Um, we're businessheavy. So, we're one of the larger for a a district with our square mileage. It It's um a fairly large amount. Um, you know, like Madison or or Milwaukee or something much bigger, but given our our constraints geographically, um, it's it's a healthy amount. there's just um maybe myself and my peers are just uh uh conservative by nature. So u when I when I survey my peers in other districts about half of them are budgeting for it next year and half aren't. Again, my policy has been to budget for state law. um those that are even more conservative than me are holding in their back pocket as if it may not come. Other questions,

087comments? Go ahead, Miss Hammerald. Um to clarify, um with that 1.4 million that would require So the only way we would not get that is if there was a change in state law through the budgeting assuming that would happen through the budgeting process for the state. Correct. Um, can I I wasn't on the board when the retire retiree health insurance benefit um was voted on. Can you tell us a little bit more about how much that is and what that is? Um I I doubt anyone was here when it was voted on. Uh because that's been probably decades. In in fact, in Wisconsin, um, one of the one of the main, um, attractions for teachers for decades was postretirement health insurance. Um, when Act 10 went away, um, um, that caused a lot of districts

088to change uh, health insurance benefits. Um, many moved from a defined uh, uh, benefit to a defined contribution. What I was getting at is when when the board approved the new salary schedule or knew it was the there was no salary schedule before. So I guess it was new and a salary schedule. Um that would have been um Mr. Dixon that worked with Sarah and I think Dr. means on developing that. And there was a a list of recommendations that said to to make this sustainable over time, the board will need to consider these other things as well. And one of those things was employee contribution to health insurance for instance. And so the board acted on that. When I reviewed that list, the one thing that um hasn't been acted on, but there hasn't

089been any recommendation either, so nothing has been brought forward. It's just kind of dangling out there is reviewing whether this is still appropriate or not for our district. We currently provide our retirees with a health benefit or what is the benefit we we offer them? Do you have it memorized, Sarah? Well, not quite memorized. Um but um uh based on hire date um at the age of either 55 or 57 with um between 15 and 25 years of service. Uh employees can get um a certain number of months of health insurance paid for either fully or um or at a percentage of premium rate defined uh in the policy. in essence. Um so we we are um it is a it is a very valuable benefit that um that our um employees would say that

090many of them stuck it out through the years of um of low salaries to go ahead and earn. Um and so we heard very strongly when I came into the district in 20 2022 um that we should not change that benefit for existing employees. and I continue to go ahead and let employees know that we will need to go ahead and make a change for employees going forward. Um, and that should that should become an increasing priority for us. Um, and we also know that new employees coming into the field aren't going to want the same type of benefit that our, you know, our veteran employees um, have wanted in the past. Um, new um, new employees into the workforce um, will have probably multiple careers and and be looking for different things. Generally speaking,

091that's not to say all um so that the message that we have shared is that it will not the benefit will not change for existing staff members and we have to change it um for the future. And this I think maybe Dr. Means or um Sarah can answer um the significant increase in staff development. So that was 2 point or sorry 3.5 million and up to 10.1 million. Um who who is that group of staff primarily? So that that's um the department of academic performance and that would be a combination of people instructional materials um uh curriculum included in that not not new ones not not referendum approval. uh ones that we've approved in the last two years that is included in that dollar amount. So like the English language arts and all the training

092that comes along with the creation of curriculum coordinators, the expansion of the academic specialist that we now have in our schools. I please note I did not mention instructional coaches because that FTE was always within the district. Okay. Thank you very much. Any other questions? Will there be any changes to the I guess I'm looking at the prep time for elementary teachers there? Um doesn't seem significant as related to other items that approximately 400,000 per year investment in there. Obviously, we're trying to give teachers, educators that time back there to whether it's additional arts, teachers. Um are there other ways we're looking at that? Um I don't and I don't know what those ways are, but is it only art? Are there since we're going with discovery lab and these other things will be other

093opportunities in addition to art for those types of specials. So the discovery lab is offset by what we offer Spanish. So that's just an offsetting. So that FTE we had 6.0 FTE dedicated to Spanish elementary Spanish is now dedicated to cover. Um I appreciate Mr. Eer highlighting the fact that we did make the cut of $400,000. We made an internal cut to in other areas of the budget to increase um preparation time for teachers at the elementary school level which we call PACE. PACE stands for prepare, align, collaborate and engage. uh we created that time so our teachers can either work with themselves as a teacher team or work with instructional coaches um to ensure that the instruction that they're planning is is responsive to the needs of students. So that that's that was an

094investment um that our principles felt that we needed to provide. Um when we looked at the preparation time that elementary school teachers had in comparison to school high school, it was not compliment. Any others? I do have one. Um excuse me. Um we are in this budget. We are uh assuming what 1.1 million going back into the fund balance on an annual basis or 1.3 million. Um that goal is to prevent or have enough in the fund balance in order to not have to short-term borrow. Correct. There's not a board policy about that, but the board has stated that's the goal. Uh when are we scheduled if we continue this on year after year? When are we going to get out of the uh need to have to short-term borrow? If we do a million

095dollars a year, um 16 or 17 years. Um and then thank you for that. That's um the next question that I would have would be um this budget that you're putting together is huge. It's over $und00 million. How complicated is it? And how did you come up with right sizing all of these things? What was that process behind the scenes? May I start? There's 13,000 line items in our budget. Mr. Ecker and his director of finance went through each one of the 13,000 line items twice to get a sense of what we had in our budget and what we did not have in our budget. Um, so that was the start of it. He then could had conversations with each of the leaders of a budget uh be it a district level administrator or a

096school council. That's the only way you can get a handle on a budget the size and the scope of our budget. That is what I did. Uh um the the the first budget you build anywhere is always going to be the hardest. um it it's always easier looking at your own work backwards than it is someone else's. Um it it is a line of line items. Now I will say the things that need a right sizing do stand out like a sore thumb. So um I I wouldn't have wanted to do it uh like probably was done 40 years ago on ledger paper. Uh but with my team and frankly Excel and some other tools, we can identify pretty quickly where we need to fix things and and what things we don't have to worry

097about. And the board should just recognize that for every while this is a balanced budget. Again, assuming a 29% reimbursement rate for special education, there are still pressures being applied to us around our budget. So there will be individuals who will say compensation's not enough. Well, if it's not enough, then that $1.3 million that have been identified for fund balance re replenishment, maybe you don't put it back in while the board made that commitment. What Mr. Ecker said is the only way that this budget remains balanced is if we continue to demonstrate discipline around. So if we succumb to some of the pressures that are coming at us in regards to this budget, just know that that one line item that you have there. I guess there's really two pathways of more revenue. one is

098hoping that the state provides greater reimbursement for special education or two you have identified that line item for replenishing your phone. I think it, correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to remember that it wasn't just the short-term borrowing, but we also heard from um our finance advisor or was it our auditor that our rating, an important part of our rating um was this commitment to replenishing um the fund balance. I just wanted newer board members to know that piece. Yeah, we had a um a lengthy call with uh Moody's in February. Um we are the second highest rated uh category in Moody's. Um the a lot of that call focused on what has happened to our fund balance and what's the plan going forward. I was pleasantly surprised that they affirmed our rating.

099I really thought that we would um be knocked down a notch. And in large part, um, their their response was, "We like it that you have a plan and we like it that the board is, um, has affirmed they want to rebuild the fund balance. We still have 45 million more to borrow, right? We borrowed about 15 million. Well, we borrowed exactly 15 million of the 60 million referendum. We've got another 45 million to borrow for that. There'll be another Moody's call. and provided that we're hitting our targets, uh, I assume they'll affirm again, but if our direction changes, I would anticipate that we would we would lose that rating. That sense, Mr. is there any scenario circumstance uh of following all these things, doing the right things that our our rating would improve to

100that highest level? I um I don't think so because in large part that that There's only there's only like maybe five districts or seven districts in the state at the absolute highest level and it's because their property wealth is just so so high. Um our our financials with our fund balance were about as good as they could be and I don't think that I I don't think that we would ever have the development here to get us to that next phase. So it much easier to go down for us. I would also add um to the question about how you decide on the right size that many of the items on the list we've been watching all year and you've been coming to us and telling us that it was under budgeted and expecting that

101we were going to need to watch that line very carefully. So, this is an attempt to um more carefully budget and be more transparent about what the what the needs are. Um and you there's also been some um some sacrifices and cuts built into this. I don't know Dr. Means if you would want to say anything about your strategic leadership on that part. We've made quite a few reductions. uh Miss Elazoski in ensure that we offset the reduction in open enrollment uh revenue because again the board has implemented the strategic vision that you voted on on October 28th that was affirmed through a community survey um that we would start to strategically apply open enrollment in the district. But that also meant that we had a reduction in revenue um and we reduced our staff

102accordingly to to match it. So that that is that has been Thank you. And not only was it a a communitydriven request, we also were looking financially at some of the risks that open enrollment posed for us should um the cost of educating students continue to rise faster than um the state uh reimbursement for taking open enrollment students. I don't want that to be lost either. Um once you take an open enrollment student, we we keep them. And so it's a long journey to um changing those numbers and that percentage in the district. And so this was a conversation for almost this time around two years I think um in finance uh about how to approach and when to approach open enrollment because we could see that there were some potential challenges down the road.

103Um, so it's not it was community driven, but it was also um financial decision to plan um as as well as we could for our future. Any other comments or questions? All right, hearing none. Thank you, Mr. Eker, for all this work. We will look forward to seeing what updates you have on this after we get a little bit more news um at the state level. I think the next topic is I'm here for as well. So yes, so please proceed to um looking at the food service contract. So in summary, um the board approved a new 4-year food service contract last year uh with Sedexo. uh for USDA guidelines, essentially the board just has to affirm um that every year and the dollar or the um increase that Sedexo can pass along to us

104is limited by um federal law. So the proposal before you is is we're just telling you, hey, this is the limit they have. Um we already have the contract. Uh we have a really good service director. Um his name is Robert. uh he's he's got some good things going uh in particular at our secondary schools with some of the things he's added for choices for kids and um he's worked really um closely with I I imagine it's the principles or or maybe an associate principal. Uh but I've been pretty pleased with um his imagination and some of the things that he's done. Now, I'll say I've worked with a lot of food service companies. Um, some external, some internal, and there's always going to be some kind of complaint about um, some menu item is

105on too often or not often enough. Uh, or um, my kids personally would complain about the wheat crust on the pizza. Why wasn't it white crust? Um there's always going to be some kind of complaints about food service, but overall I think ours is performing very well. Um it it is it's self-funded, so it it pays for itself via federal money and uh lunch costs. Um and I I also need to mention that we supply breakfast for, you know, hundreds of students every day as well. And when will this come up for a vote? This is uh this is just discussion or information tonight action uh at the next board meeting. Okay. I just want people to be clear. So any questions or comments at this time. Have we got any feedback from the the

106students about the quality of the food since we've had the change here in this little bit of time? Students did say that he meets with the students when he he presented to the finance committee probably six months ago. Um and he does actually work pretty closely. He worked really closely with the students at Tossa East to build up their radar room. Um, and I had asked him if he could um work with the principal over at West to see what they can create over there. So, I do think he's getting uh lots of feedback from students. Mr. Morris, were you trying to tee up our students that are here? I just think about that was the very first thing that uh when I was coming onto the board that was brought to me in many

107emails in uh community conversations from students and uh parents that had multiple kids the quality of the food was like priority number one. So I was like I'll continue to ask about those things. So the reviews at my house are really positive and I just want to say that on the record. Um, and I know that they work hard to also um, like build relationships with the kids, the company, the people working there. So, we appreciate that. Sometimes they run out of the best options though before the later lunches. And that's the big complaint. Anything else? Okay. Well, please um, review that as needed and plan for that um, conversation vote at the next action item at the next meeting. One one quick question on there. You said that the increase is limited by federal

108as a federal limit that 3%. Is there any way there? Like if we said, "Yeah, 3%'s good, but what about and a quarter?" Um, there any push back there? Oh, uh, we we Yeah, we can negotiate with them um to to the law limits the amount they can increase to us. We still negotiate with them on on what the final price will be. Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much, Mr. Ecker. We will move on to um the next item, which is D. Action to award the 2025 roofing remodels at Eisenhower and Roosevelt elementary schools to the recommended low bidder. And I'm going to invite Kevin up here, too. Thank you. Um, and but I'm I'm going to uh kind of set this up um because I don't anticipate that we'll be doing this with

109every project of the referendum. Uh I want to I'm going to put on our finance committee uh a discussion about how do we right now there's board policy on h how the board approves major expenditures. There's going to be a lot of major expenditures with the referendum and so I want to have a conversation with the committee about how how do we streamline that so we're getting the projects done in the right time frame um and still get that board approval we need. We haven't had that conversation yet. So I asked Kevin to put this on the agenda so that the board could actually so we could follow policy with this particular item. That makes sense. Thank you. It is recommended that the school board award the 2025 roofing remodels at Eisenhower and Roosevelt Elementary

110Schools to recommend to the recommended low litter and ISO move. May I have a second? Mr. Bower, thank you for the second. Um, did you comment or conversation? Could you tell us Kevin? Oh, I think we're getting the presentation up. You know which where it is. Uh, good evening everybody. Um, let me pull up. Oh, thank you. I see. And I also have an aerial photo kind of best describes what we're we're bidding out. Okay. So, um the recommendation letter from ECS Midwest, ECS is a building envelope consultant the district has worked with for several years. Um, and as as Scott mentioned, the work in this bid tabulation, um, as shown in the second page is for, um, work identified in the 2024 referendum, particularly for Eisenhower Elementary and Roosevelt. All the elementary schools has

111some extent of building envelope repairs. Uh but for the summer of 25, we're looking at accomplishing the work at Eisenhower and Roosevelt. So the bid went out to four um uh qualified biders as the recommendation letter states and uh Nate from Nate Appleton is our uh the consultant we partner with. Um he's recommending and I recommend that we go with uh Shr the the qualified low bidder. Um as I said the work is identified in the referendum and as you look at the budget um laid out in the bottom of the spreadsheet we're showing the cost for trans their bid. We also have some costs for Holton Brothers for some masonry repairs at Roosevelt that are uh aligned to this roofing ECS. Their fee is uh listed and then we're going to hold the contingency

112of 10% for this budget um for a total of just over 1.6 million. Now, in the referendum, uh, in the budget identified line item for these particular projects, we the budget held just over $1.7 million. So, the good news is we're under budget with a healthy contingency. The goal is that we don't have to use the contingency and then that money can be returned back to the overall budget uh for all the schools involved in the referendum plan. Um the photo I attached uh Eisenhower as many of you can uh notice it's the uh areas of roofing on the left side here uh that kind of make this uh this configuration. Um, and then for Roosevelt, a majority of the roof section on the top elevation here, and then there's a section in the foreground

113uh on a lower elevation right there. Uh you can even see some of the original um uh original to the construction of that building. The ventilation woods that are up there that back in the day in the 20s when they made these a lot of it there was a lot of gravity uh force ventilation that way that would the hot air would rise through the building and escape out the roof. Those are no longer in use, but this roofing project will uh abandon those in place and make for a better uh better finished product. Um the recommendation or the urgency to uh have full action tonight as EC as uh Strands has listed in their in their uh bid submitt they're ready to begin work on June 16th. Um and given their schedule uh procurement

114of materials and everything else and the opport the window we have in the summer to get the work done. Uh that's why we're uh we're asking for the approval uh in this first presentation. Thank you. Um just for everyone but public and board members um especially newer ones, can you just uh go over what an organ a business like ECS does and why the school district um turns to um the or them to help us get the best. Thank you for mentioning I I I did forget to mention earlier uh this project I I will manage in the partnership with ECS. So we pulled this out of the referendum work that P and BGS would have typically run. That saves the district some fees, I think. And the relationship we have with ECS is they

115have they've developed our building envelope plan, the long range plan, which is that information. That's what we use the information from to build the referendum uh scope of work as it relates to roofing. Um the ECS has worked with the district um I think as far back as 2019 or 2020 at least. And um Nate Appleton in particular worked for a different building envelope consultant firm prior to that, but they were working for the district. So Nate knows the district very well. Um and it's very common uh for districts to partner with an engineering firm that has this specialty in building envelope in nature. Um and that's where this relationship has uh really worked out well. Thank you. And we'll just emphasize that it was a competitive bid process um that they ran. Correct. No,

116I know that, but I just want I sw from from sources about that and let make sure that that you are have more clarity. Yes. We're aware. the the the benefit to having a a partner like ECS is they can help design design the bid documents, help us lead the bid process, qualify the bids as they come in. And uh what that does is when we look at the lowest bid, we know that they've got everything covered because we have a partner like uh ECS working with us um to know that we're going to get the best uh best result for the best price and there were four competitive bids. Yeah, thanks for explaining that. It's a building envelope expertise is definitely sounds like it's really important to have in making this project not only

117come in um under budget but also be the quality that we want for the future. Yeah. And I stress the word Thank you. That's very important. I stress the word building envelope because it's more than roofs. It's windows. It's masonry. It's doors. That all is what helps uh everybody do what they do in each building. Thank you. Board members comments or questions further. Go ahead, Mr. Morris. How many projects does ECS work for us over the course of a year or couple years? Is is this like one? So, I'm just thinking about their their their consulting fee on there for this service for this project. Are there three or four more of those and then three or four more fees associated with each of those? This is the second project I've worked on with them

118with. So about this time last year, I presented this same scenario to the board for roofing projects that were in the capital improvement plan, the fund 41 plan. So for me, it's my second project with them. Go ahead, Mr. Wier. Uh does this uh also the the bid also include uh warranty as far as right anything that would happen? We we've had that happen in the past and just want to make sure that that's stated that how how long is our period on Yeah, the warranty is written into the bid document and then uh upon the AIA contract that we develop with Shr. Uh I believe I know we have a 20-year manufacturer warranty and I believe we had written in a 5-year labor warranty that would go to the installer. idea there is that

119the installer warrants their work on the installation for a period of five years. Beyond that five years, it's a manufacturer's warranty and then you just need to have someone who's qualified to work on that product to come out and then the manufacturer backs it up. Any other comments or questions? Again, I would also just um say that part of this timing, I would assume, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that we've we know we have the funding and we want to jump on um the project as soon as possible after that funding becomes available to us because you have a lot of projects coming in in your direction. Plus, these roads are in a great deal of need. Correct. Uh ideally, this would have been brought to you a month ago for more review.

120Uh but there are a lot of other projects going on with the referendum work. Uh we're actually planning planning out the schematic design work for the entire 60 million uh that will would take uh place over three years. Um and that's just more planning, schematic design, schematic budgeting and so on. But there's a lot of effort going on in addition to this work. Okay. Okay. So, um, hearing no other questions, uh, we have the, um, motion on the floor. We have the second. Um, so, Miss Summers, please call the role. Miss Bzinski, yes. Mr. Bower, yes. Miss Bach, yes. Mr. Morris, yes. Miss Rwand, yes. Dr. Worley, yes. Mr. Wadier, yes. And the motion passes. Board members, I just want to consult. We've a fair amount of agenda left and if it's been two hours,

121if you need a short stretch break right now or would you like to get one more item done and then one more? One more item done. Okay. Thank you. So, we move to strategic goal number one, academic performance, presentation of the potential AP African-American studies textbook. Hello everyone, Jessica Eert, director of curriculum, and I'm here with Laura Fowl, social studies curriculum coordinator. And all of you received an executive summary that outlined um the textbook um the possible textbook adoption for the AP African-American studies course that was approved by the board in October of 2024. And we're here just to hear any questions that you might have about um that executive summary and know that this is just the opportunity to ask those questions and then in two weeks we will return well actually in June

122because that's the next board meeting um return for approval of that text. So, we'll open the floor for questions. And just to tee it up too, this is a new course for next year. That's correct. And um that the I read that the textbook itself is currently as of the 13th in um you can come and hold it in your hand and look at it or you can look at it through the online. That's correct. We will have a copy of the text um in the front area of Fisher and anyone can step in and I just want to make sure people know that as well. Thank you for identifying that questions or comments apparently very effective executive summary. I want to just um highlight also um I was really struck by um the decision-making

123choice. So for those um community members who've not had a chance to read all of it, the decision-making choice um this textbook really stood out um with its support that it would give to um the teachers um particularly in alignment with uh the requirements that are in place for this course. um compared to the other options which also look good. I thought that really stood out as the one of the key deciding factors. So um hopefully board members will uh take a look at that um and feel free to also send questions in the interim um until we come to the time to take action. Sounds great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Yeah. It's a long wait for a very short presentation. That's all right. Shall we take an

1248 minute stretch break? Okay. Please um note that we will come back at um 8:06 and resume our business. Um we have a number of items still to do. Thank you. Miss cell is asking you may proceed um with action to um approve the final financial 2025 2026 final financial contract non-renewals. My apologies. Uh is recommended that the school board approve the 202526 final financial contract non rules and I so move. May I have a second? Second, Mr. Morris. Thank you. This is the second step uh in um our um uh non-renewal process uh for um for teachers um whose FTE is being reduced based on student registrations. It's a two-step process. Following our last meeting, uh employees were provided with the required preliminary non-renewal notice. Uh and then after this meeting, um there's the

125final non-renewal notice. Um if you were to compare the two lists, you would note that there are differences. A couple of employees tended resignations uh since the preliminary non-renewal notices. And so these are these are the remaining final non-renewal notices. And also just to um to confirm, there have been uh all employees by per the handbook have a process to work with you once you make this decision. uh it's actually defined in statute um and and then there is um a process as well for employees to question uh reductions, transfers, etc. Thank you. Um are there questions or comments before we vote? Okay, seeing none, Miss Summers, please call the role. Miss Bzinski, yes. Mr. Bower, yes. Miss Bach, yes. Mr. Morris, yes. Miss Rolland, yes. Dr. Bley. Yes. Mr. Wadier. Yes. And the motion

126passes. Okay. This time I'll get it in the right order. We're going to go to the motion. Um, Miss Brzinski, would you be willing to read that? It is recommended that the school board approve the 202526 administrative contract for Daryl Hansen as director of student success effective July 1st, 2025 for 229 days per year at an annual salary of $120,000. And I so move. May I have a second? Miss time rolling. Thank you. Go ahead. I'm very pleased uh with tonight's recommendation uh that Dr. Hansen um uh be appointed to the director of student success position for next year. Um she has done outstanding work in the Maos school district inuring including her time as an MLSS coordinator multi-level systems of support uh and we are thrilled that uh she'll have this opportunity to continue

127um to continue work in this capacity. Dr. Hansen is with us this evening as well. Excellent. Thank you. you like you step to the microphone though so our online people can hear as well. Thank you to be very my first time in front of the board. Thank you. Um first thank you for trusting me with this responsibility. Um students at the center of all of our work and my work for the last 27 plus years and I um I'm fully committed to this charge. Um, second, I look forward to continuing to hear your thoughts, your ideas, and your feedback. Um, the exchange of ideas that flow from one person to another and the diversity of those perspectives just provides, um, such positive impact to the work that we're doing. So, um, and ultimately to benefit

128our students. So, I look forward to hearing more from you and learning more from you and having that exchange of ideas. And I appreciate again this opportunity. Thanks. Thank you for being here and for sharing your thoughts. Um, so is there anything else you want to say? I think I think Dr. Hansen said it all. Okay. Thank you so much. So, we have the motion. We have the second. Miss Summers, please call the RO. Miss Bzinski? Yes. Mr. Bower? Yes. Miss Bach? Yes. Mr. Morris? Yes. Miss Hammer Rand? Yes. Dr. Worley? Yes. Mr. Wier? Yes. And the motion passes. Thank you. Okay, we will turn to a couple of policies that are second readings. Um, we are in the process of shifting who is on the policy committee. So, I've talked to Mr. Morris about

129um helping us um talk through these um for this evening. Um I also am just leaving the policy committee. I'll be happy to offer some clarification as well because our current policy members were not at the discussions um when we made these changes. Okay. So, um we will um move uh to Mr. Bower. It is recommended that the school board approved policy 3131 reduction in staff and I so move. Thank you. May I have a second? Second. Thank you, Mr. your um policy committee and your staff that brought this forward. Anything that we want to say about this? Yes. So, from the most recent from the 428 policy committee, the notes we had that we sent this back over to um be reviewed here. Miss Elazasi stated that there was printing approval of this policy

130that she'd recommend updating the administrative guidelines with the similar language that was approved. And then from our as we say our inside policy, Dr. Zimman changed that language to that the superintendent shall determine the appropriate employees to quote unquote designate added that the superintendent shall not use any factors deemed arbitrary or capriccious the reduction in staff process shall follow ag or administrative guidelines 3131 reduction in staff and also notes to see policy 3140 regarding non-renewal resignation and termination of policy 3340 grievance procedure. Thank you Mr. Nris. So, in summary, this was to try to address the questions that were raised before. Um, open it for any further comments or questions. I was the one that asked that this went back to policy. So, I appreciate the work um that you put in. I think that

131this is a lot more clear. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. All right. Then I would um we have a motion on the floor. We have a second. Um Miss Summers, please call the role. Miss Bzinski, yes. Mr. Bower, yes. Miss Bach, yes. Mr. Morris, yes. Miss Heimer Rand, yes. Dr. Wley, yes. Mr. Wier, yes. The motion passes. Okay. So, we move to the second reading and or action to approve policy 5136, personal communication devices. Our very fun one here, 5136. Lots of action around this one. But yes, the u we had some notes here when it be kicked back in your Mr. opinion. Um wanted to obviously refer to any additional information there from the ad hoc committee that we held on uh May to discuss the policy to include any discussions.

132Uh we included some of those things there regarding even some of my feedback and questions on would there be any additional sponsoring regarding lockers and what the details like needed to look like u to be spelled out in the handbook. Uh Dr. Worley, you had access asked about access during lunch hours. Um Mr. opinion. Any added comments or thoughts? Sure. Um and I believe our students might have some thoughts too, Malik. Perfect time. Perfect timing for your return. Um we did have our first of three scheduled ad hoc committee meetings. However, the charge of that committee is really to start envisioning what operationalization or implementation of this potential revision looks like. So we spent our time really talking um in sort of a structured way. Really good voices around the table of parents, staff, teachers,

133really students I thought had amazing voice at that u evening's event as well. But really, it's starting to answer the question of where do the phones go and what happens when they're out. Um, a lot of different ideas that got us started. So, we'll be reconvening again next week, uh, followed by a third session the week after that to really start giving this more teeth. Also, in tandem with that, we've been completing a potential problem analysis, um, protocol with this secondary teams around anticipating should this policy move forward, what problems are likely to occur. Um this is a good activity to do when any kind of major shift happens in terms of anticipating those problems and then not only proactively planning around those anticipated problems in terms of how we might get ahead of them

134avoid them but then also planning for contingencies should and when they happen so you're h having that planning on the front end and on the back end I say all of that to say again that polic that committee is really focused on the how and what that looks like. um you have a lot of the data in front of you from the previous discussion of this item in terms of where the community, staff, family, students, and some of the book study participants um landed when it came to surveying them. And then the narratives that they completed in those surveys are also being used as part of that potential problem analysis. Thank you. And I wanted to say I didn't have this put on the floor yet because I do recognize some board members have not

135been present for all these discussions. So I thought in a sense we while this is a second read just keep in mind we have the choice of whether to take an action tonight but we do also have a timeline um in that we need to have the handbook by the end of June. So there's one remaining board meeting after this one, but I thought it fairest given the um intense community interest um in this topic in multiple directions that we give people this conversation opportunity and then we'll see if there is um a decision that we want to bring this motion forward. So then it will be another opportunity for conversation as well. But um so we don't get the whole string of amendments, um I thought it would be a good idea to have

136a little bit of a discussion first. Um, board members. Yes. Spock. Um, I guess I would appreciate sending it this back to the policy committee just because of what you said. I have not had an opportunity to have any discussion around this and um I just have a lot of questions. I think that I'm not certain that having a policy that is the same at every level is the right way to do this. Um I I agree that elementary students definitely do not need access to cell phones during the school day, but I also think that our high school students, we want them to learn how to use technology safely and responsibly. And I'm not sure that there should be no access. I guess I I still have a lot of questions and I would

137like to I'd like to hear from teachers as well. Um and how I know that this is part of the discussion. How how do we implement this and how do we enforce it, but before we go and make a policy, I want to make sure that we have a good plan for that. So, um that's why I'd like to send it back to to the policy committee. Thank you. And I think this is also a good forum to ask some of those questions as well because not everybody's sitting on policy who um hasn't had a chance to discuss it yet. So thank you for putting that forward and um that is another possible action that we could take. Um let's see should we get a couple more questions out then and then maybe Mrs. and

138Dr. Means can talk to there are several points that you just asked that have been under discussion and there is some data on it. So it'd be good to share um I think to the whole group and also to the community. Um other questions that you want to queue up Mr. Wadier and then Miss Himemer Roland. Not so much a question. Like I said is um so there's a committee that's working on the if we said yes tonight for next board meeting. There's a committee that's working through the process of okay, what do we do with this policy now? Um, I'm I'm good with the policy. I I like it. Uh, but I do have reservations about voting on something that I don't know if we can implement it and andor what are we trying

139to do to implement it? Uh, if we can implement it, then then that's fantastic. But what I guess my question really is if we vote if we vote something like this in and we're not able to implement it. Um a I I want to make sure that the burden is not something that really just ends up disrupting the learning more than the initial problem. And um I don't want our teachers to be vilified or how whatever you will for enforcing policy. So whatever it is needs to be think universal and well understood and simplistic. Uh and I just it's it's a really hard thing to enforce. Um, we've all we've all gotten tons of emails about about this topic and uh all over the place now, but um I I just I'll end with just

140saying I I like where we're going with it, but I I would have reservations right now about making a vote on something where we don't have a little bit more definition on the how how do we put it in place? Okay. And Miss Himer and then we'll see students what you would like to add. I just I don't um can you Mr. Pinion just tell us a little bit more about the committee that's looking at like who is on the committee who's like represent? We have parents uh five students were invited. Um I think four parents were invited, two showed up, several staff as well serve the role a dual role of parent and staff. Many teachers, school administration and district administrator. So it's multi-disiplinary. um will the board um receive a summary of what

141the committee what I will do and this is where it kind of gets tricky right I think in the last read several weeks ago I said how much energy do you want in time and resources because this is a very large lift um so I I'm moving because I think it has to and there's lots of questions that want to be answered our next meeting we're putting together sort of the flowchart of what happens on the first defense compliant student non-compliant what happens on second what happens on third and multiple that's all drafted up I'm a little hesitant to share all of it because the committee hasn't stamped anything and they there was a lot of ideas that we're trying to bring together, you know, collectively and some different ideas. I will say we would

142never recommend something that can't be implemented and thousands of places have done this already ahead of us. New York just did it themselves or the public district in New York. I mean, we're not alone in this this ask. Will it be easy? Absolutely not. You are extinguishing an addiction for thousands of students and that's not easy. Um, you will see districts that have done this report the extinction burst and it got a little rough at first. Until it's enforced consistently. So certainly I understand where everybody is at this. We are trying to be responsive to the the increasingly loud and rapid drum beat around this that our community has been reaching out to for years that got us to this point. And just to frame this too, um the board's role um is to ask

143these questions but to implement policy and policy then informs administrative guidelines. So these are these are really good questions. Um we don't necess we don't necessarily um have all the knowledge ourselves into how to put this forward. Um before we go to students, Mr. Pinion, there were a couple other questions about the question about levels. you wanted to speak to that or Miss Dr. Means um and the idea of um uh screen time or cell phone learning at those levels and then what you've been hearing from teachers and I think I would add administrators because they're part of the implementation. Sure. I can start with the learning. So we absolutely know that regardless of if the policy changes or not, we need to do a better job teaching students responsible use. So, we've engaged library

144media specialists and the coordinator of all of our library media specialists to take a look at our digital citizenship lessons and really dive deeper into what can we improve upon in terms of responsible use of cell phones, social media, um, all things in the device that we have in our hand. Um, that might be a blind spot in terms of how well we do that right now. So, we know that has to come with this regardless of any change. I'm trying to think what other questions you asked in Dr. the levels and different. So we surveyed that too in the responses. Um on the whole more people wanted consistency across the board for students um for easy transitions during difficult years elementary, middle, middle to high school. So that was a consistent learning experience. In

145the elementary schools, we are seeing some more phones, not quite nearly as many as you would imagine at the secondary levels. Often we get reports about smartwatches in fifth grades, but um this year I've heard a couple more instances of fifth graders and cell phones. Um but on the whole again there were some people that had desired different differenting policies. We looked at different districts that had that or didn't. There were more that were just consistent across the board. But the concept of transitions and and um readiness for those transitions came up quite a bit as well as the research on developing brains which is you know into 20s. So all of that kind of informed what's in front of you now. Okay. students. Malik, do you want to go ahead? This is actually This

146will be the hardest question we get all night. So, no. I timed my return pretty well. Um so I guess two parts of um coming from like a student perspective and someone who consistently I mean obviously I attend school and I engage with staff members and then also having um talked to staff members in the and parents in the committee. Um Mr. Wadier and uh Miss Bach raised some really important points. um primarily the problem with at least the general feeling among staff members that I've talked to and also students is the problem with the current um policy is not the policy itself but the lack of enforcement and that especially because the major burden at least and in the the way that teachers feel is that it's placed on them and that they don't

147receive enough administrative support in handling that. Um, one teacher gave me the example of for her to write up three students for cell phone violations that takes her entire prep period and a significant portion of her lunch too. Um, and she feels unsupported in that aspect. So, I guess that touches more on Mr. Wadier's point. And then when talking in the committee, the biggest roadblock that was reached to consistent enforcement of the policy and pragmatic enforcement of the policy is that not only we we've already we already understand that it's incredibly difficult in the current state to enforce it within the classroom. And then you extend that domain into the cafeteria and the hallways. um it becomes significantly more difficult to appropriately enforce. Like the whole theory with the the cell phone lockers or with

148caddies is that it can be checked in between periods and then significant it becomes significantly more challenging to just place that in one place for the whole day. You raise concerns with who's monitoring that? What happens if staff members leave? Um, how do we have all of the phones in one place at one time? Um, so I I guess long story short, how do you I I don't understand the jump from the current policy is not being enforced. So, let's f let's create a more difficult policy to enforce. um coming from a student perspective and from what staff members have told me. So um Mr. P, one of the things you shared at a previous meeting was the idea that the cell phone lockers would be changed their location in the school as part of

149the vision. Yep. that came up in the committee is an option for, you know, when you're giving students choices of where to store a phone all day if they're not comfortable for a personal locker, which might be shared with another student to repurpose and relocate central hubs so that the cell phone lockers would be sort of strategically placed in hallways in different hubs so you're not bottlenecking students before and after school and in sight of our security cameras, which they are not right now. implementation of this policy, if approved, will be the burden of administration. We understand that we're not going to place teachers in the m middle of trying to implement this policy. That hasn't worked. Administrators are bracing themselves. I met with our two high school principles today. They they are prepared to

150be villainized and to prepare. They're preparing for all the push back that will come, but in the name of preserving academic culture, they're prepared to move forward. So that that's to answer your question. Um just plainly and directly, we understand that the current policy has not been implemented to its fullest degree and that if we're going to do this well, that it will it will be a heavier burden on administrators. They're not looking forward to it. Not in any way, shape, or form. However, when you consider preserving the academic culture of the buildings, and that's where we are, they they they understand that this is where we potentially will have to move forward. Um, they also understand that allowing cell phones to be utilized during lunch or hallways is going to make it actually even

151more difficult to implement. And so it an all away all day policy is just more practical for them to have. Mr. opinion. I'd like to add, you know, I was really trying to do a lot of research about where we had been prior to me even being here for three years. And I did find a very significant effort, I believe it was 2019 by Willie Garrison, Frank Largo, Seth Larson, Mark Carter, where they were really trying to crack down with the current policy back then. They did a board presentation in a really large effort to get everyone to implement it consistently and on board. And then circle back to this two years ago when we tried the same effort and I agree with Malik. It's not being enforced. So you could look at this two

152ways. In one way you say we're making it harsher. It's it's going to be harder to enforce. Or you could look at it how some have brought up in different emails and in different conversations that in some ways a ban when it's not even allowed to be on you is easier over time to actually enforce because we're not in the gray area of the wiggle room anymore of I can have it but maybe it's out, maybe it's out here. It can't be out there. So in some ways the the more stringent policy again these are theoretical but could be over time easier to uphold. So we've had one board member propose to take a little more time on this but before we discuss that Mr. Well, I just I think this is still true. Uh,

153but there's been several states that have already written this into their budget legislation and Wisconsin is one that's considering it. So, we can we can also sit here and discuss this and at the end of the day u we we could decide on one policy and then statute could come in and say away all day anyway. So, just to throw that out there for consideration. Miss Finski, I I'd rather be ahead of that and be doing some of our work on it ourselves before we are being told by somebody else what we have to do. And um I think we'll feel a little bit more in control of the decisions that we make that way and can maybe work together better to make to make it make the follow through possible. Um what's best for

154our kids is what's what's best for our kids. And it's not going to be easy, but we're we're here to do the hard work. I have confidence in that. I hope that we can also think about um how we support all of the adults if if this is a poss a policy that goes through. How we support the all the adults in being good models uh and being mindful of what what students are going through and how we can keep our own use of what do we call PCDs to a minimum. Mr. Ben, can I ask you a question? Is this a overall consensus issue in all classrooms or because I'm trying to get a gauge on both sides of the the scale? Are there teachers that are having success with the current policy and

155having those things go right in their classroom without doing anything or is it Yes. And so I think the students could probably answer this better than I. But I will say what I've heard anecdotally from teachers is those and if this came up at our committee right last week is teachers who have done a a really good job enforcing it using catties or lockers and they make that the standard express the teachers who do not have made it very hard for them. Gotcha. Feel free those students. You you're in these classes every day. I mean I do think it really depends with the current policy. It really does come down to kind of how a teacher runs their classroom. Um, and it does put a lot of strain on our teachers. I do agree with

156that. Um, but I know that when a teacher makes it very clear what their phone policy is and when students follow it, it is a environment in which everybody has the ability to use utilize the devices that we have been given and that we have in a way that is powerful and usable. Like I know um at least in the Spanish classrooms, we consistently use recording. I mean, we use voice memos on phones all the time to be able to record like conversations that we do in Spanish so we can listen back and continually find ways to improve our Spanish on our own. Um and that's really useful in a classroom. And there are plenty of other ways to do that without using like a personal device, but it is much easier to do it

157on a personal device than on a computer where you have to have a different application and whatnot. But there are classrooms in which that doesn't work. And I do admit to that. And there are there are spaces in which there are students who are disrupting a classroom by being on a phone or taking a call in the middle of a class or having the ringer on and their phone's just going off. Like there are instances of that, but at least in my experience, it has been very little and it um usually comes down to the teacher and the student, which is hard for our teachers. But yeah, um in my experience, most of my teachers are able to appropriately enforce the policy. However, um I would imagine that the teachers who struggle with their classes,

158um specifically like an English teacher I spoke to at the um PCD policy meeting, um or committee meeting, it seems that because she isn't being provided with the administrative support that she desperately needs and requests, um that problem spills over into other classes. Whereas if you I would imagine this is just my prediction that if you had appropriately appropriate administrative support, it would be less support than one would imagine because by simply supporting those teachers in those instances, then that sets the bar for the rest of the classrooms and the classrooms that are already enforcing it won't require that support. and administration Malik would tell you that the policy before the board this evening is actually easier for them to implement. The current policy is too gray is too great. There's too many whatifs or

159what happened here or how will this one classroom implement it versus another one. The policy that's before the board this evening that says away all day is actually easier for that support administratively to be put in place. May I share? And I think we had a survey that we surveyed staff and what was the results of the survey, Mr. P? The staff um of the 217 staff, 84% wanted a version of away all day. Um I would also add when we ran the numbers, I think it was roughly 3 weeks ago. I haven't done it since. There was about eight over 850 cell phone violations this school year. Yeah. And it is hard to track and log. There's probably more that were not on the record to be full fully transparent. That was the data

160from this year as of a few weeks back. Would it be fair to say that administrators have been trying to implement this policy and we've now had a couple of years West has been a champion in trying to enforce it. We used their infographic as a model um at the committee meeting in terms of how they've outlined, communicated, provided administrative support for first, second, third, fourth offenses. They have it very clearly outlined. It's been communicated to all stakeholders and um they're part of that 850. In fact, the faculty at West upon Mr. Gala's entry into the role indicated that that was a major issue for them and they rallied and they prior to the cell phone lockers they created their own type of they had caddies before we had before the district even made the

161investment. So this is we've been trying to respond to teachers indicating that this is a problem uh of some sort for them for years. But the problem is that our current policy does live in the gray. This is to move us in a direction where there's no ambiguity. Okay. Given the time, um I'm just going to uh ask our board members, um would you like to do uh go around and suggest whether we set it aside or do we want to take a vote on whether to send it back to committee? Um because we have an action or we can have we have an eitheror, right? But we may not all agree on whether it should go back to committee. Um, it has been proposed that it could go back to committee. Well, the committee,

162not the policy committee, the cell phone committee, what be the policy committee would go back to? No, I mean, when are they done meeting that like ad hoc committee? We have our second session Thursday the 22nd and the third and final Thursday the 29th. May. Yes. Sorry. And the next policy committee would be the first. Okay. When is it still? No. When do you have your policy committees? Uh May 19th. A week from today. May 19th. I I would just point out from a procedural standpoint that committee is the equivalent they're bu they're developing the equivalent of administrative guidelines and the committee that the committee that Mr. Pinion is referencing. So typically the way that policy works is that once the board develops or approves a policy then we then we we put in the

163administrative guidelines to make it work. Um I it would be reversed if you were waiting on potentially the administrative guidelines to direct your approval of a policy. I guess I'm just trying to think of the new members. I think the proposal is has there been enough time and enough resources provided to new members for what information can we give the new members before they vote. But that would that would be odd. That would be kind of a weird spot voting on like a really big change. So, but I hear you. Well, my recommendation would be maybe you you delay the vote until June 9th to allow new board members to ask Mr. Pinion questions. I I don't know if our recommendation would not be to change the language at this time, but we haven't given

164new board members the runway to do the type of inquiry that existing board members have had. Okay, fair enough. So rather than the proposal to send it back to policy, the idea would be to um allow the time for not to vote on it but not take action tonight um but to grow from this conversation, give um board members uh opportunity to investigate further um and get some of the data. I don't know how much you've shared, Mr. Penny. I know that this is taking a lot of your time, but if you could, you know, resubmit or if there's a way to make sure everybody has all those um surveys and documents that we've had before, the actual action is to vote on taking no action tonight. No, we didn't put anything on the on

165the We did not move it on to a motion. I intentionally did not put on as a motion. We always have the choice to act or not. Um, the proposal is to reput it onto the June 9th agenda, not to send it back to policy at this time, but to allow us more time as board members to Does that realistically give Mr. Pinion can everyone? It's tight. It's tight. I mean, we're we're moving forward with this committee. Either way, at this point, they're in terms of the handbook. So there's two different ways we can work on the handbooks and I don't want to bring the board into too much of the weeds of all of that but we can link directly to an external document certainly link to the policy of whichever that means but

166it is probably healthier in this specific case to be able to spell it out exactly in the handbook. So that would be ideal state is to actually take the guidelines spell them out in the handbooks versus linking to an external doc that is very unlikely to even be opened. Um so I'd rather live in the ideal state. It's tight, but we can do it. And I want people to feel comfortable. This is a big deal. Is there action or alteration that would then be able to happen before the next vote or would it come to the next vote exactly how it is right now? The suggestion from the district is they wouldn't have further the policy committee members may um have further amendments. We have no recommendations to change the policy as it stands right

167now. So if you do want to give another space for board members, I mean there can also be um amendments made when it comes for action. If you want to give another uh opportunity for the policy committee to discuss it, we can't do that. We've done that just recently with another policy or we can decide just not to take action tonight in which case it would come on to the next board agenda. What do you what do um what do you guys like suggest you're both on policy and new committee members? What would you like to do? I'd like the opportunity to go through the data more closely and just to feel more confident in the way I vote. Mhm. Um I I just think it affects it affects everyone and it's it's um and

168it affects everyone differently depending on, you know, their age and and their role in the district. And I think I just would like more time to go through the data. I mean, I I'm I'm pretty sure I know how I will vote, but I don't want to come back and and think, oh, I you know, that was I wish I could have that vote back. And both options that we're considering right now would give you time. It's just a question whether that time involves a conversation of the policy committee or not. It's a fair request. Yeah. in between now and June 9th gives us plenty of time where you can work with Mr. Ming and myself and ask any questions and do more research before a vote makes a lot of sense. And the previous

169policy committee anticipated this might be where we would need to go. So that's why I didn't move it onto the table. I I would prefer just to have more time to do a little bit of my reading of that that background information that was used to get to this point. Okay. I would be comfortable voting today, but I understand the concerns. Okay. So, we will Yeah, I'm malleable and after hearing what I've heard, I would be able to cast my vote tonight if we went that way. I'm also able to cast, but I feel like given the transition that it's makes more sense to and that given that we can make it work and the um administrative guideline committee can work in parallel with us and there's been good communication. Um I think it's more

170inclusive to to put it on to the next board meeting. I don't think we have to take an action to do that. And this is one of those regular policies that if you want to see what the administrative guidelines will look like, that makes a lot of sense. So, well, yeah. May I? Um, so if we come back for June 9th, what I can do is assemble. I mean, at that point, we'll have quite a bit of content from the committee meeting uh collapsed and and queued up, maybe not completely stamped from a standpoint of getting it to all stakeholders, right? with a typical guideline. We already have the policy in place and there's sort of a process when something this large um you know a change that's being affected um in terms of how

171we move through the different layers of getting different stakeholder groups like like this committee um and then in front of administration to work out other nuances etc. But I would likely be able to have then not only some level of a draft without hopefully getting people too wound up, right? Because the more you make the work transparent, which we always want to do, but when you do that in progress, you run some risks as well, right? Because you're sort of, you know, in the mix of cooking it, if you will. Um, we're also in the midst of an FAQ of all the questions we've been kind of assembling. So I could be able to make some of that visible or at least share the thinking of that committee as well as some of the potential

172problem analysis output and the FAQ that might really help which had some of the research linked on all sides. Right? We tried to get an unbiased sampling of the research um and and provide that as extra content before the night. I think that's a very healthy way forward and it's very much within the norms of collaboration that we're trying to to work on. So, thank you for um raising up that need and that request um so that we could u move in um a more collaborative way um as we go forward with new board members having a chance to look at the information all of us having a chance to review again. Thanks. I I I don't want to take things lightly that mean a lot to people. Okay. So, um our what we're doing

173then is opting for the option to not take action um on the cell phone policy this evening. Um and we will return um to look at this on the next board agenda. Thank you. So, um given the the timing and um what we have left to do um including a closed meeting, um I want to I want to just run this by I wanted to propose I we do need to cover um uh first reading and policies letter A. Um and I we can explain why that is, but we need to cover that. Um, and then we, uh, we're pretty sure, um, and staff, correct me if I'm wrong, that, um, 5411, the third grade promotion, and the grading and the class rank, um, could be, um, considered at a future meeting as a first

174read. Yes. That okay with everyone. Okay. Do those have to go into the student handbook? There's we Yeah, I mean they could. There's the policy committee has no recommended changes on either of those policies. Um AP is probably the most right because it's significant on June 9th will still be open. Okay. Yeah. Thanks for asking it. Okay, everyone's good with that. Um then we want to um do our first review or first reading of the non-discrimination on the basis of sex and education programs or activities. This is a resend. Um basically because of a change in um the federal uh law and rulings, we have to take this out. We only recently put it in. Um we have to take it out and we have to return to our 2020 um policy. Mr. opinion that

175I present that perfectly um as recommended by legal counsel as well. So the first read is an opportunity um before it goes back to policy committee for um board members to raise any questions um or thoughts on that so the policy committee can consider that. It's been recommended that um that it be rescended by our um legal council and by because of the federal regulations. Um but we aren't voting on it yet tonight. Comments or questions? Yes. I just think it's important for the community to know um and maybe new board members that our other policies do protect a large percentage of our student and staff population. So, um resending this doesn't say that we're not right. We go to 20 what we what we had is terms of wording for 2020. Yeah. And concern

176about that. So, right. Um, and yeah, anyone else? Yeah. Like, so with her sending this, like what does it change like materially? Like I imagine there's a small impact in student lives in general, but like what is and also what is the um I guess more specific like you referred to it covers a vast majority. What what are the parts that aren't being covered anymore? I can weigh a little bit. So you'll see the student groups are still named in here. That was my question as well. It's legal counsel. It's a lot more on the operational side of how it plays out um as a compliance officer, as an investigator, what needs to be disclosed, what doesn't. A lot of those operations have shifted rapidly from one administration to the next. Um so essentially, I

177think when we talk through this with legal counsel, this does not compromise our values of how we protect students and and who we protect. And we know as um Miss HR Rollins said, we have other policies that also are in place that even spell that out um to different degrees. Um so for me, this doesn't really have a huge um student direct impact as much as much as it does in the procedural um process, if you will. Other questions or comments? One of the things that um we can make sure that people have um is a um link or an information to the policy that will be going forward. Um because that I think reading that you'll see um we've looked at it within the policy committee but when we resend we don't necessarily error

178them. Um but we could we could provide that link. Yeah. Okay. So, um that goes back to the policy committee um to put on an agenda and um I would encourage that to be soon because we need to be um make our decision about being in compliance and whether we resend this [Music] um sooner rather than later. So, if you could get that on that would be great. And um we'll also make sure that board members um have the information about um what the remaining pol the policy that continues forward what that would look like. Okay. So then we're going to um move forward uh the number nine board governance a action to approve graduation candidates board members have received uh oh I'm sorry do we need to have a motion to table we don't

179want to table them not table to move them to later I don't think so Oh, okay. Yeah, we've run out of time before. If the policy committee is okay with that, generally um we do move that forward as long as the administration doesn't put in difficult straits in terms of timing. So, they they will need to come up particularly um B, but I think B, C, and D all need to come up um at the next board meeting for their first read. Okay, we received a list um of the this is a fun part of being on the board of the graduating um class of 2025 um from Wawaossa West and Wawaossa East. Um Phil, yes. It is recommended that the school board approve the attached list of graduates from East and West High Schools

180with the understanding that the students will complete all high school graduation requirements. And I so move. May I have a second? Miss Bach, thank you. Um, any comments or questions? Seeing none, Miss Summers, please call the RO. Miss Pzinski, yes. Mr. Bower, yes. Miss Bach, yes. Mr. Morris, yes. Miss Hammer Rolland, yes. Dr. Worley, yes. Mr. Wadier, yes. And the motion passes. [Laughter] They were sitting there with their fingers crossed. Um, make sure you know the understanding state, the understanding part. Don't stop yet. It's just a few more weeks. You can do this. And we're very proud of all of our our graduates. Um, moving to letter B. Um, action to approve schoolboard graduation participation. and Watsa West June 13th at 7:00 p.m. and WSA East June 14th at 11 a.m. This time rolling is

181coming. Oh, we have to, you know, we have to actually figure out who it is people wise and then reading forward. Yeah. So, we'll read as soon as we know who it is. um who's attending because it looks like the names have to be in there. So again, this is this is um hoped for, but we also recognize that board members um have significant other responsibilities in their lives. And as we talked about last time, we try to get um some to come and to spread ourselves among the um two graduations. So, I'll just You look like you're ready to speak, Sarah. So, let's start on your side. I'm excited. I'm going to vote. Yes. All right. Can you speak up, please? Mr. Morris said he'll be out of town for both. Thank you. I

182can go to both. I am both. Please. Were we supposed to let Julia know ahead of time though to get No, we already decided. No. Go ahead. Tomorrow morning. Um I can go to the toy graduation. I'm out of town for both. unavailable. Okay, that's fine. So, um just to review, Liz, we have um at west, Miss Perzinski, Mr. Bower, Dr. Worley, um and at East, the same list plus you. Perfect. It is recommended that the school board approve the following board members. Sarah Berzinski, um Chris Bower, Lyn Worley to attend the Wawaossa West graduation on June 13th at 700 p.m. and Sarah Berzinski, Chris Bower, Lynn Burley, and Liz Himerand to attend the Wawaossa East graduation on June 14th at 11 a.m. M. And I so move. Thank you. May I have a second?

183Second. Thank you, Mr. Morris. Okay. Um, Miss Summers, could you please call the role? Miss Bzinski? Yes. Mr. Bower? Yes. Miss Bach? Yes. Mr. Morris? Yes. Miss Hammer Rolland? Yes. Dr. Wley? Yes. Mr. Wadier? Yes. Motion passes. Those of you who are attending will have more information forthcoming on all of the pieces of that regalia and parking and um time to arrive etc. Okay. And we'll talk a little bit more about how how we'll do that as well. Um we are now to item number 10 which is to adjourn into executive close What about nines? Oh, 9C. I'm sorry. Thank you. Um 9C, jumping ahead there. Too excited. Um discuss the potential for the recording of all committee meetings. Um so I will tee this up. Um this is a discussion and then we'll in

184the soon have an action item on it. Um there have been there's a variety of different ways that we handle committee meetings when it comes to um recording um of those meetings and even recording itself has a number of aspects to that. Um do you record do you record and have them live like we have this meeting? Um and we've had discussions for a while about this and one of the aspects of this has been um the uh requirement of district resources balanced with the um providing of opportunity. Um both uh typically what we're asking here is recording so that people who can't attend would be able to look at it later but we can also entertain the broader idea. the more um immediate the participation like a meeting like tonight takes more resources um

185to manage. Um we do have a couple of committees right now that are recording finances recording um sub the subcommittee of um finance has been recording mostly because we have um in that case we have the need to record in order for the person putting the minutes together to be able to go back and watch it given the timing at which it happens. And we also have a number of community members who on that subcommittee who are not board members and so trying to provide um electronic access to them. Are there any other committees that No, the other two committees policy and legislative have not um been recording but there have been requests from the community for that to happen. So we wanted to um start a conversation about that to get a sense of

186where board members are at so that then we can um come up with a recommendation of of which way to move. So open the floor just share what we've been doing in finance. So since August we have um like the owl camera and Corey helped set that up. We do Corey is in with us. So when we're thinking about resources, he does stay with us the whole meeting. Um so just thinking about capacity for our staff um because we've had technical difficulties and super helpful to have somebody there who can help right away. And we don't um we take public comment at our meetings but at the end of the meeting and Dr. Means there has been some discussion about though it would be a cost. The potential for better um equipment that would make

187it less staff reliant to make the equipment more intuitive for recording. We there will be a an investment um if we wanted to do so. Otherwise, as Miss Himeran described, you have to make a commitment to having a staff member from the information technology team there to record the meetings and to just help with screen sharing gets a little bit tricky when it's not live like this. So, there's just, you know, a lot. We also just saying we'll record them. We also p school districts in the metro area. Half of them are reporting their committee meetings and half are not. Um it's really it's it's a decision that the seven of you have to make um in regards to what culture you want with your committee meetings. Mr. I so defer to Liz, but I

188I think having it for the finance and resource is still still key with building trust back up. And um and even though it's not a live recording like like this would be where some watch and be able to comment um remotely, it does it gives people uh the ability to look back and there's been that call for transparency since the day after I was appointed um and uh and this is a great way to provide it because it's it it's all related to money in the in that being where the money is going and decisions being made. Um I could see it being helpful for policy as well, but again I don't think a live necessarily serve any purpose. Um I I I guess I don't know what how many people out there want to

189go rew rewatch that. I think there's maybe only like a hundred views on finance one at any given time. Yes, Malik. Um, how frequently do people like engage in public comment at I think we've had two people since August like two people two people like the whole total. Okay. We probably every other month the policy um have had public comment. I wouldn't say it's a broad number of people. Um it tends to be a fairly consistent um group that is making public comment. I mean I will say under state law somebody as we know somebody can record the meeting but I think the thought of recording would be to then not require that someone show up in order to provide a recording. So um I I you know policy committee is probably the other place.

190It's a good point Mr. Wier that we don't have to do the same thing with every committee. If we think that there's better application of this to one or two um or all that would be something to think through as well. Dr. Wley, if if you would like um some input on the burden on the technology operations department, I'm here and very happy to give it. I think we would like that. I appreciate you. Okay. Um, so what the what we enjoy right now in conference room C uh was purchased and installed pre- pandemic. We didn't do any live streaming. The purpose of that was just to record. Um, as we've evolved as a district, uh, you know, the pandemic introduced streaming, but then recording was requested in other locations and and from an equipment

191standpoint, we've bandaided stuff together. We've we've, you know, used some cams that we had in inventory. Uh uh we've never in like 10 years we have not upgraded or purchased any equipment and the reason for technology operations staffing at those meetings is directly because of that that you need that technology support during those meetings. So when those meetings are conducted during the day, um I'm very much the first one to say that we are staffed uh sparsely and and to have Corey or Tim or or somebody during the day at a committee meeting takes that resource away from being able to assist teachers in the classroom and provide face-to-face technology support as they do as a regular regular job. Um, when they're attending those meetings after hours as Cory is tonight and when Tim is,

192uh, they're then taking flex time to do that, right? So, they're leaving early on Fridays, generally on Fridays, which again leaves my department a body short. So there is a significant burden based on the way we do it right now and and that we have not invested in equipment that is turnkey and reliable. Now, some other districts do do this, but they have invested in that equipment where they can just push a button and start recording and streaming straight away, and it's completely hands-off, and they don't even need technology support in the room. Um, uh, and additionally, some of those districts also have dedicated personnel that are, um, assigned to that task, right? and other districts outsource that resource as well. So just purely from a selfish perspective in trying to optimize and maximize what

193comes from my department to the district to support the classrooms and the teachers. If we were to start recording every single meeting, it will impact that. There will be a negative impact on that unless we were to invest in you more refined, optimized, turnkey type solution to make it happen that didn't suck up department resources as much. If we do it as is right now, technology support for teachers and and administrators and students and even families, you know, will suffer as a result. Now, it might not be dramatic, but there will be, you know, there's a cost. There's a cost to it if we do it as we are right now. Thank you, Jamie. Um, board members, any very brief questions? on the what was just said. One question I would have is in that

194space, Jamie, um is there an additional burden from a technological perspective of housing or storing these meetings? Um I'm assuming like these Zooms are stored digitally in the cloud someplace. Are we paying added for storage or posterity? Is there a period of time statute of limitations that we have to hold on to these since they do become part of essentially the public record and have to sit out there for I don't know what Wisconsin has seven nine years years a stands today no um the actual conversion and compiling and uploading of the video that actually consumes a minimal amount of time. It takes time because of the processing back end, but clicking a few buttons to compile it and upload it, you know, we all m we all multitask. So that that happens sort of

195like in the background. Uh we store all the videos on on our YouTube channel, there's no cost for that and there is no expiration for that. I mean, if you look at our YouTube channel right now, we have I think our earliest meeting is 2010. We've got like 15 years worth of board meetings up there. Uh now does that mean that YouTube will always allow us to store all those videos free of charge? I don't know. That's you know that's up in the air. But at the moment at the moment the production of the video once it's recorded and uh uploading it to YouTube has a minimal cost and the storage has zero cost. Thank you. So, I would propose that um we think this through on what we've heard um identify any questions or

196further information without creating a large burden um on our district staff and maybe bring this back at the if there's room on the next agenda so the community can get clarity um on this bring it back as an action item. Does that sound good? Okay, thank you and thank you Jamie for all that information. It's very helpful. Okay, now we will move to adjourn number 10, adjourn into executive close session. Um, and it looks like uh Jason has won the opportunity to read the the motion. Oh yes, sorry. The time is 9:11 p.m. May I have a motion to adjourn into executive close session? It is recommended that the school board adjourn into close session pursuant to Wisconsin statute 19.85 85 PN1 close PN PNG close PN conferring with legal counsel for the governmental body

197who's rendering oral or written advice concerning strategy to be adopted by the body with respect to litigation in which it is or is likely to become involved in Wisconsin statute 19.85 85 PN one closed PN PN PN B closed PN considering dismissal to motion licensing or discipline of any public employee specifically discussion with legal counsel regarding uh personnel matter and ISO move. May I have a second? Thank you Mr. Morris. Miss Summers, please call the role. Miss Bzinski, yes. Mr. Bower, yes. Miss Bach, yes. Mr. Morris, yes. Miss Hammer Rand, yes. Dr. Worley, yes. Mr. Wadier, yes. The motion passes. And I will also mention that because there's no action related to this, um, we don't anticipate coming back into open session, but moving to adjournment at the end of the close session. So, we

198do move now into close session. Thank you.