WSD Board Meeting, Regular, April 28, 2025

001We are formally in session. Um, congratulations to all of our citizens who have chosen to serve the children of all Tulsa in the role of a school board member. It is a u unique role in American um society to serve on a local school board for sure. Um and as Mr. Morris, I was just as the kids say, I was ear hustling there a little bit. Uh as he was telling Mr. Bower, uh setting boundaries will be something that will emerge over time for sure. Uh but you should um know on behalf of the school district, we are really um pleased that you took the time to serve children uh in this way. And please notice how I'm using my language of there will be a lot of different needs presented to you um from

002various corners of the district, but I have always found that the boards that are the most efficient are the ones who center all their decisions on on children and what's going to be best not only for the children at this time um in the district but ultimately for generations ahead. that that is the the weight of the task in front of you. Dr. Lynn Worley is our current clerk. Um we are in a unique situation in that our board president and vice president transitioned off the board. Um so we are um Miss Himeran and Dr. Worley are our two remaining elected officials. But regardless, as the clerk, she would be the person that administers the the the oath to you. And so, at this time, I'm going to turn it over to her. After your

003oath is taken, uh there is an opportunity I want to move the flags closer. You want to and you should you want to capture this for memorial sake. Uh you uh we didn't take some pictures of you in front of the district logo and the flags. And then um please uh we want to thank family members who are in the audience for uh allowing us to work with your loved one. Um we promise not to keep them too long. Um right if you don't believe that uh but we'll try. Um and then uh once all those uh all the festivities are taken care of with photos both taken, Jeremy is in the back uh who will give you a crash course and uh handling your technology. Dr. Do we want to do it at the

004microphone or I I think the micro Cy the microphones are on now, aren't they? Yes. So I think they're amplified at their current mics. So, so you you have um a copy of your oath and we'll go in order that is by seat number from smallest to largest. And um I assume I should I'm supposed to read it and then you're supposed to repeat it. So I will take it in chunks, but you do have it in front of you. So um Sarah Brazinski, you're up first. Okay. So I Sarah Brazinski I Sarah Brazinski having been elected or appointed to the office of Wawaossa school board member seat number one having been elected or appointed to the office of Wawaossa school board member seat one but have not yet entered upon the duties thereof but

005have not yet entered upon the duties thereof swear or affirm that I will support the Constitution of the United States swear or affirm that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Wisconsin and the Constitution of the State of Wisconsin and will faithfully discharge the duties of said office to the best of my ability. And will faithfully discharge the duties of said office to the best of my ability. Congratulations and welcome. Thank you. We'll take care of the signing at the Is that do you after all is supposed to watch you sign Oh, okay. What is that? You don't need a notary. You're able to Right. Right. Right now I sign. Yeah. If you want to sign yours and fill it in. Um and then I will

006continue on and I will sign all four of them at the end. I think that's the most effective way. Okay. We move on to Christopher Bower. Yes ma'am. I Christopher Bower I Christopher Bower having been elected or appointed to the office of Having been elected or appointed to the office of Wawaossa school board member seat number two waossa school board member seat two but have not yet entered upon the duties thereof by yet not yet having entered into the duties thereof swear or affirm that I will support the Constitution of the United States swear or affirm that I will support the Constitution of the United states and the Constitution of the State of Wisconsin and and the Constitution of the State of Wisconsin and will faithfully discharge the duties of said office to the best

007of my ability and and will faithfully discharge the duties of said office to the best of my ability. Congratulations. Thank you. We'll clap for all of them at the end. Okay. So, you can fill out yours and then I'll sign in at the end. We'll move on to Heidi Bot. Seat three. I just want to see who's next to me. So I Heidi Bach I Heidi Bach having been elected or appointed to the office of the Watossa school board member seat number three having been elected or appointed to the office of Wawaossa school board member seat number three but have not yet entered upon the duties thereof but have not yet entered upon the duties thereof swear or affirm that I will support the Constitution of the United States swear or affirm that I will

008support the Constitution ution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Wisconsin and the Constitution of the State of Wisconsin and will faithfully discharge the duties of said office to the best of my ability. And will faithfully discharge the duties of said office to the best of my ability. Welcome and congratulations. I'm going to fill that out then I will sign it for you. And we turn to Jason Wadier. I Jason Wadier I Jason Wadier having been elected or appointed to the office of Wawaossa school board member seat number seven having been elected or appointed to the office of Wawaossa school board member seat number seven but have not but have not yet entered upon the duties thereof but have not yet entered upon the duties thereof. swear or affirm that I

009will support the Constitution of the United States. swear or affirm that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Wisconsin and the Constitution of the State of Wisconsin and will faithfully discharge the duties of set office to the best of my ability and will faithfully discharge the duties of set office to the best of my ability. Welcome back. Thank you. Okay. So, let's Many congratulations to you. Um, as you go forward in this journey, don't hesitate to ask the existing uh, schoolboard members um, questions you have. We may or may not have answers or solutions or ideas. Um, but we do welcome you and we know it's a big um, first couple of meetings or a big changeover, so don't hesitate to slow things down as needed.

010um to make sure we all know where we need to be and what we're doing. I call the April 28th, 2025 school board meeting to order. It is 6 p.m. We are in conference room seat of the Fiser Administration building at 12121 West North Avenue. Miss Summers, please call the role. Miss Bzinski here. Mr. Bower here. Miss Bach here. Mr. Morris here. Miss Hammer Rolland here. Dr. Worley here. Mr. Wiger here. Uh before we begin, I would just like to welcome our new school board members. They took the oath of office at 5:00 pm today. So, welcome. It's exciting to We'll move into public comments. Members of the Wawaossa 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 concerns

011to be expressed publicly. The board values all comments and will respectfully consider this input in decision-m. The board requests that individuals limit their comment on each item to three minutes. Following any comments, an individual board member may respond on the issue raised. However, it is not the intent of public comment portion of the agenda for the board to enter into a debate with a member of the community because non-aggenda items are not publicly posted in advance. No action will be taken on public comment regarding non-aggenda items this evening. Uh we will have Mr. Morris uh will hold up a yellow sign when you have one minute left and a red when your time is up and Mr. for Guadier will be uh keeping traffic at 30 minutes tonight. So, do we have anyone in the

012room who would like to give public comment? Good evening, Dr. Means and members of the TOSA school board. My name is Katie Hoin, Mike Hoin's daughter. I'm currently a freshman at WMadison. My dad is the principal of Wilson Elementary in W Sten. Tonight, I want to talk about the power of impact. The way we touch the lives of others, whether intentional or not, can shape their futures, inspire their dreams, and offer them strength when they need it most. When I think of someone who has truly inspired me, I think of my dad. My dad isn't just a principal. He is a leader, a mentor, and a source of unwavering support. In his role, he impacts students, teachers, parents, and entire families in ways that go far beyond the walls of his school. For 33 years,

013he has shown up for the Watossa community. His loyalty to bettering not only himself, but also the community around him is unmatched. From his days as a player on the Tosis basketball team to coaching them to a state championship in 2008 as an assistant coach and most recently cutting the ribbon on the new school building. His achievements mirror the community's progress and success. Throughout his 13 years at Wilson and W STEM, he has become a role model. When he gets home from work, he's excited to share students successes with me. He recognizes potential and finds a way to push them to be better. Not just academically, but as people. He continues to show up for his students, not just Monday through Friday, not just 7 to 5, but on weekends, too. He attends basketball games

014and musical performances, not because he has to, but because he wants to. Through these actions, he reminds students that they are seen and valued. To his teachers, he is a pillar of support. He understands the challenges they face and works tirelessly to make their jobs more manageable. He listens, he encourages, and he leads with empathy. To me, a school a strong school isn't just built on lesson plans and test scores, but on passion, dedication, and a shared mission. With that foundation, the high test scores will come. He fosters a culture of respect and collaboration, reminding his staff that their work is important. As one of his three children, I've seen firsthand what true dedication looks like. I've watched him work long hours because he cares so deeply. I've seen him come home exhausted, but still

015ready to present for us, to listen, to offer advice, or to share a laugh. He has taught me the value of hard work. He has shown me what it means to lead by example, and to always leave things better than you found them. And most importantly, I have watched day after day as he puts others before himself. The impact my dad has had on the Wosu community is immeasurable. It extends far beyond report cards and school meetings. It is woven into the lives of every student who has walked through his doors, every teacher who has worked under his leadership, and every family who has placed their trust in him. Perhaps most importantly, it is felt in the love and strength he gives to his own family every single day. Over the past few years, I've

016watched the Sorry. Over the past few years, we have watched the leadership change in Wawaossa and with it a noticeable impact on my dad. Despite my dad's continued dedication to his students, his teachers, and his school, the recognition and support he deserved were absent. Instead, the burden of stress and unrelenting negativity consumed him. His successes went unnoticed, and instead of being celebrated, he was met with unwarranted challenges. My dad planned to continue his administrative journey in this district, but I'm thrilled that he is able to bring his expertise, talents, and dedication to a district that aligns with his high values and morals in one that is already recognizing the gifts he brings into an educational setting he walks into. This past year has been very difficult, but through it all, my dad never let it

017show. He continued to show up with a smile, determined not to affect those who relied on him. That is the kind of person he is, the kind of leader he is. I refuse to let his impact go unrecognized. Tonight, I use my voice and my sisters to advocate for the man who has spent his entire life advocating for others. So, I ask all of you to remember the impact we can have, not just on those who look up to us, but on those who give so much of themselves every single day. Let us recognize, support, and uplift the people who make our schools, our communities, and our lives better. Dad, your impact is undeniable. Your dedication is inspiring, and no matter what challenges come your way, you will always have a family and a community

018who see you, who value you, and stand beside you. Thank you for your time. Evening Dr. Means, board members, administration. My name is Chris Murker. I'm a McKinley and long fellow parent, former school board candidate and representative of at least 50 McKinley families and individuals. deeply concerned about the leadership crisis at McKinley Elementary. I think we have 30 in the room alone tonight. So quite a showing. Since fall 2024, families and staff have raised urgent concerns. Academic decline, staff morale collapse, behavioral incidents escalating, leadership refusing to take accountability, breakdown in communication and transparency. Despite months of outreach, private, public, and direct, the situation has only worsened. Trust is broken. A rail is broken. Our school community is broken. What truly set this crisis in motion was when Principal Martin in a public forum accused our

019teachers, the very people who show up every day for our children, of being racist and of opposing students with special needs. You cannot unsee that and you cannot unhear it. It was a devastating breach of trust, professionalism, and leadership. one that fractured the very foundation of our school community. Once that line was crossed, it became clear healing under this leadership was no longer possible and no amount of investigation or restorative efforts will change that. We are calling for three things tonight. Immediate leadership transition at McKinley, stronger governance oversight by the district and board. stabilization efforts focused on restoring trust, safety, and academic excellence. You will hear from other McKinley parents tonight, each speaking to specific failures in accountability, advocacy, and leadership itself. Each voice represents a broader community standing together, demanding action. McKinley students, teachers,

020and families deserve better. and the time for leadership changes now. Thank you. Good evening. I'm Libby Woodard and I serve as the secretary of the WS STEM Governance Council. My husband Troy ran for this school board because he believed in the responsibility responsible use of district resources and advancing initiatives like STEM for all. To the newly elected board members that were just sworn in, congratulations. I truly hope you helped lead this um the school board along with um with some integrity. I'm here tonight because what happened last week was not just disappointing, it was devastating. Almost a year ago, WTEM was asked to renegotiate our contract off schedule early. We engaged fully, working with experts, following every direction from the district, and showing up in good faith. Six months ago, this board voted to explore

021a future for WS STEM. And we continued to invest countless hours, energy, and hope into a process we believed would be collaborative. Instead, without a single meeting with us, without a single town hall like other schools who recently faced closure were afforded. With no explanation, after two hours behind closed doors, you voted to shut us down. We worked countless hours over holidays, weekends, and nights. It feels like all that time, energy, and money was wasted with no remorse. Just last month, Dr. Mean sat in our governance council meeting and assured us there was no plan to close WSEM before 2030. He told us if we rescended our letter, we would reenter negotiations. We complied. We met as requested with our attorneys present and still received no real answers, only silence, followed by a sudden decision

022to end our school's future. This was not collaboration. We were treated differently. Experts at the Wisconsin Resource Center for Charter Schools have told us they have never seen a district treat their own charter school in this way. This abrupt, chaotic decision violates our agreement and forces needless disruption onto families, teachers, and children. As our authorizer, this school board, the previous school board had a responsibility to work with us and did not. It's a breach of contract, a breach of trust, and a stain on the promise this district claims to make for every child. This is not what's best for kids. This is not equitable. Throughout this process, it's been heartbreaking to hear some of our community loudly cheer for our closure in the name of equity. When other schools recently faced closure, Yes to Tossa

023Kids was born and W Stem family stood with you. We showed up for you. I asked you tonight to reflect honestly. If this were your school, would this feel right? Would this feel fair? To those who did reach out with kindness, you reminded us what real community looks like. And we are grateful. But make no mistake, this is a loss. A loss for kids, teachers, and the future of Tossa schools. We are your neighbors, your volunteers, and your supporters. W Stem families are not outsiders. We attend Longfellow Whitman West and East and we deserve as we are as much of a part of the Tossa school district as anyone else and we deserved better. My name is Jessica Haywood. I am a parent of a second grader at WS Stem. And I'm sure many of

024you are sick of hearing us, but welcome to the new board. you now get to hear us this time. I would like to express my deep concern at what is happening within the district as a whole. The level of false hope and complete lack of honest communication from this district is truly astounding. Over the last year, the WSM community has been treated with disrespect, halftruths, and backroom deals that should terrify every single parent and taxpayer in Wawaossa. What has happened to WTEM is not just a WSEM issue. It is a district-wide problem. If the district is willing to close the top performing school in Wawaossa, they are willing to do anything. The future of our entire district is at risk and people need to wake up. On March 19th, Dr. Means attended a special meeting

025with the WSTEM community. He shared the following statement with us which we feel should be submitted into record and I quote, "As an initial matter, the district continues to desire a collaborative relationship with the WSEM community. Please know that I am in attendance as a symbolic attempt to demonstrate respect for the WSTEM community. On October 28th, the school board took action to authorize offering a new and final 5-year charter agreement. It's just so frustrating. If the Governance Council has a desire to resume negotiations regarding such a contract, a prerequisite to any potential discussions would be a full retraction of the Governance Council's January 5th correspondence forwarded to my attention immediately. Without a formal retraction of this January 5th correspondence, the parties will operate under the current agreement until the expiration at the end of the

0262526 school year. To be clear, the district has never desired to end WT STEM prior to June 30th, 2030. As superintendent, my role is to make recommendations to the board. My position has not wavered. A final five-year contract for W STEM should be offered. End quote. At that meeting, he told us plainly, "If January 5th letter was rescended, he would immediately recommend to the school board that they offer us a new contract. We did what was asked. We were tracked. What happened next? Nothing more than secret meetings, political mover maneuvering, and more silence. Not once was our community giving an honest update. Not once was promised action taken. This isn't about WS Stem anymore. This is about the way the entire district is being run through secrecy, manipulation, and backroom politics. If this is how

027leadership is allowed to operate, there is no school, no program, and no family that is safe in this district. Tonight, the newly elected board has a chance to start re repairing the broken trust. You have a chance to make this right, to honor the promises made to W Stem, and show the entire district that you will no longer allow dysfunction and deception to rule. You can choose to stop this downward spiral before it's too late. Because if you don't, if you allow WS STEM to be dismantled, the damage to this district will be deep, lasting, and undeniable. The decline of Wawaossa schools will not be an accident. It will be a direct result of your inaction. We are asking, no demanding, that you lead with courage and integrity. Restore W STEM, restore the community's trust,

028and restore pride and excellence to the WASA schools. Thanks. Based on how much time is up for public comment? A little over 15 minutes. Kaylor, district parent. Um, it seems to be a lot of disappointment and dismay with the district. Um, regarding the McKinley situation, as someone in a leadership role within my own organization, I recognize the responsibilities and challenges facing Mr. Martin as principal McKinley. A while back, I too joined a team of tenured people with established relationships and ways of doing things. So, I empathize with Mr. Martin and understand the types of pitfalls that he's navigated. What I don't understand is how we've gotten to the level of acrimony that we're hearing about at McKinley where a teacher left midyear because the environment had gotten so toxic. My son was in her class

029and saw two classmates leave the district mid year as well. their parents apprehensive about the direction McKinley was headed. And I appreciate the efforts that have finally been made to start to address the situation, although I fear it's too little too late for McKinley to escape further blows to its teaching ranks, its culture, and its performance. And what concerns me even more about the endeavor is I don't hear any accountability from Mr. Martin. When I asked him directly during a recent community meeting about his role in the issues that have arisen, he said he of course own some part of what's transpired, but then went on to suggest that the true reasons for the unrest lay elsewhere, including unpopular directors from the district, that he was instructed to make appear from him, and teacher infighting,

030which I've heard from teachers, is not true. I didn't get a sense that he really felt he bore any responsibility. That's a problem because to hear teachers tell it, Mr. Mr. Martin has lied about things that has been said and done, used performance plans as weapon, and destroyed any semblance of trust in the teacher and staff. At this point, unfortunately, situation seems to have evolved to a point of no return, and I fear the only option left is a leadership change. I ask that you take a teacher centered approach, work closely with them to determine the best way forward, and ensure that our most valued assets, those teachers, feel appreciated and valued at McKinley. Thank you. Amy, I see two hands online. Can we take uh those two comments, please? Absolutely. Um Kayla's iPhone, you

031have the microphone. Hey, Liz. iPhone, you have the microphone. I think they're on mute. Yeah, I'm here. Hi. Okay, there you go. You can hear me. Okay. Sorry about that. Um, so I am Kayla Murker. I live at 9326 Ridge Boulevard. I am here today representing not just myself, but many concerned parents and community members who have contacted you repeatedly about serious leadership concerns at McKinley Elementary. Despite months of outreach, all we have received is lip services. Lip service promises to look into and will investigate or there are parents who are satisfied with Mr. Martin's leadership. The issues surrounding Mr. Martin's leadership cannot be ignored. He has created a hostile work environment for our teachers marked by unprofessional behavior, intimidation, and disrespect. Teachers are now too afraid to advocate for themselves because they fear retaliation.

032Mr. Martin has openly deflected blame for poor test scores and in front of parents called all the teachers racist. That is completely unacceptable. Right then and there, he should have been walked out the door. Dr. Means heard these comments and did nothing. Earlier that same day, Dr. Means also witnessed teachers leaving a staff meeting in tears after Mr. Martin screamed at them, blaming them for the low test scores. Teachers left crying because of how they were treated. And again, nothing was done. These are just two examples and of many more. How many more incidents must happen before action is taken? It is clear that Mr. Martin is systematically pushing out experienced staff and replacing them with inexperienced hires who are less likely to challenge him. As an active volunteer, I have seen firsthand how the

033school environment has declined rapidly under his leadership, both in staff morale and physical upkeep of the building. His lack of professionalism even extends to his own appearance, setting a poor example for students and staff. No professional organization would tolerate a leader who calls staff racist without cause, screams at them, and makes them cry in meetings, or regularly belittles them. Yet here, despite overwhelming evidence and ongoing complaints, nothing has been done. To the newly elected board members who ran on platforms of supporting teachers and students, now is the time to put your money where your mouth is. McKinley once thrived under strong leadership. It can again um it can again in swift action is taken. The trust has been broken between leadership, teachers, and families. It is time for action. No more empty wards. Thank you.

034Um, the next one, Annie iPhone, you have the microphone. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Great. Thank you. My name is Annie Marino and I'm the parent of a McKinley Elementary student speaking in support of a principal change. The board has three commitments in your northstar. The second being to ensure TOSA has excellent educators who have the support and resources to thrive in educating our kids. When my son walks into McKinley, the quality of his teachers, including their experience, enthusiasm, and expertise is the most important factor to his success. From my observations, a principal change at McKinley is necessary to honor that commitment. To understand the McKinley staff community issue, we have to acknowledge and accept that seemingly contradictory things can all be true. First, I've had positive interactions with Principal Martin and I support

035a principal change. I'm not here to invalidate the opinions of those who have also had positive interactions with him. Second, I believe change management is hard. I've led it myself and I believe Principal Martin has executed it poorly at McKinley. He has shared that staff's complaints derive from policy and procedure change as required by the district. It's true that with change at any workplace, staff can resist and become fatigued. It's also true that McKinley staff surveys and the need for the district to bring in outside facilitators to redo root cause analysis, the school growth plan, and to try to repair relationships reflect a failure to properly effectuate change. This includes failure to provide support, clear objectives and communication, reasoning, and staff engagement in decision-making. Third, it's true that relationships can be repaired. And it's also

036true that we cannot overspend on time and money to repair this principal staff relationship. Time and money are finite resources and McKidley kids deserve our teachers time and the district's money to be spent in direct support of them. We know that in the fall 2024 survey, 40% of staff reported that they sometimes or never felt supported by Principal Martin. And we know that the district has brought in outside facilitators to redo root cause analysis, the school growth plan, and to try to repair relationships. The McKinley community needs to understand the state of staff morale, but at a midApril meeting, Principal Martin had no substantive outcomes or updates to share. McKinley is beyond hypothetical whatif consequences from staff dissatisfaction. Staff and families have left or intend to leave. New families are choosing to enroll elsewhere. There's

037tension in the school community and families feel left out in the dark. We must retain excellent educators to provide optimal outcomes for all kids and we need to act to ensure we achieve that fundamental goal. McKinley needs a principal who can implement change by inspiring, motivating, and supporting the staff who trust the principal wholeheartedly. We can appreciate and respect Principal Martin's contributions and want the best for him. And we can be at a pivotal point to need a new leader to inspire McKinley to be the absolute best it can be. Thank you for your time. I emailed the board as well, and I welcome any comments or questions in response. There are no more hands raised. Hello everybody. My name is Joey. I'm a WM parent and a district parent and a taxpayer. I'm extremely

038disappointed what happened last week with W Stem. But it also seems like we got our hands full McKinley as well. So I will keep my comments very fast. After two hours behind closed doors last week, there was no explanation, no ownership. You were here. No explanation and no ownership of what happened. We get the district's attorney was here. I don't know if he's here tonight, but the last I checked, he is not a board member. I mean, we watched you folks go back and forth for more than a half an hour on $1,600 when we all got two seconds to close our school. But that's not even the most shocking part about this or the most unnerving part about this. Many over the last months, many of us have been having conversations with each and

039every one of you on this current board, including you, Dr. Means. We had board members emailing us from their vacations pushing us forward to resin this letter, pushing us forward to take action at our school and we did that. What's beyond unusual is that none of you talk to our co governing council. None of you are allowed to talk to our governing council, especially when it's under duress. Doesn't that seem kind of unusual? Why did you make us resend the letter? Why did you schedule a special meeting with us? Why does WUT STEM get five more years? There's so many wise and we can't even tell the teachers or our kids why. Why' they close your school? You know what? I don't know why. All we're subject to now is Facebook posts and Facebook posts

040of all these parents going crazy. And quite honestly, it's embarrassing. If I hear that WM skis one more time, it is outrageous. Of course they ski. That's great. It's parentf funded. There's a planetarium at at Wosasa West and a brand new pool at Wossa East. There's imbalances everywhere in the district. You have an opportunity to be transparent. You owe it to us. The community deserves better and the students are watching. Do it for them. Do it for these guys right here that are with you all the time here as volunteers. Words are easy. Actions matter. You voted to close a school, an entire school that's outperforming others. The community has the right to know what happened. And most parents are thinking if performance is number one, what is going to happen to the next top

041performing school? New board members, congratulations. We are very happy you are here. But now is your time. Each of you came here with a different story, but you share the same opportunity to leave your mark by making this district stronger, better, and worthy of it the students it serves. Maybe you may remember it as the board that saved a school, the top performing school. It's been done before. They saved Wilson 20 years ago. But we deserve better. And to top it all off, and I'm not I'm going to go off script here for a second. I'm a McKin excom McKinley parent. And now I got to decide to go back to McKinley with all these folks behind me. What are we doing here everybody? So new board, thank you all for your time and new

042board members welcome. Congratulations to all of you. Thank you very much. We have time for one more public comment. Hi, my name is Jed Turk. Closer stuck down. What? Hello. My name is Jurk. I am the father third grader at W Stem and a JK student at Wilson. I say good evening to my fellow TOSSA residents and let me be clear. I am not here to discuss the closing of W Stem. I am here to talk about the deceitful and manipulative words and actions of the superintendent and the school board. I understand that uh a school board is tasked with making tough decisions, but a school board and superintendent can and always should operate with openness, honesty, and integrity. and the school board and superintendent have failed to do so every step of the way.

043I'm speaking out today in hopes this inspires change so that no other families will go through what we went through and be treated like we were. This is not just this is not just a WSTEM issue. This is a whole community issue. The school district unnecessarily and wastefully spent $35,000 want to come up and use one of these links. [Music] Uh, the Wawaossa School District unnecessarily and wastefully spent $35,000 in legal fees in just 2024 in relation to W STEM with at least that much probably coming in 2025. A lot of the fees were from when the WM parent volunteers still thought they had a collaborative partner in the district because they took the superintendent at his word when he directly stated that he had no intention of closing WS Stem. The failures of the

044superintendent and the district started even before this when they breached our current contract and failed to perform the charter review in year three and make the notice of non-renewal avoiding all this chaos. Since then, the district has provided an everchanging variety of directives and hoops to jump through, wasting the time of our parent volunteers and teachers. False and misleading statements were made about the supposed extra resources given to W STEM by board members Worley and Himer Rand and then repeated by the superintendent. W Stem does not receive any extra resources. All special program at W Stem is achieved through fundraising. So I ask, why would you need to make such false statements if your reasons for closing the school are good and true? More recently, I've had some very troubling interactions with the recently reelected

045Jason Watier. In March, I asked if he would support a new 5-year contract with the school lottery for the full 5 years or even just for the first three years of the contract. He responded with, and I would quote in full. The short and simple answer is yes. I would support and vote in favor of either of those options. I've had discussions with several parents as well as Dr. Means in an effort to bring this back to a positive place. You have my support and thank you for reaching out. So, you can imagine the absolute shock I had when at at this level of deceit and manipulation when Jason voted to close the school. After receiving one non-answer, I asked Jason again why he voted this way and he still would not answer, stating, "I

046cannot give specific reasoning why, hiding behind the closed door meeting policies. If you are acting in an ethical manner, why the secrecy? What is there that needs to be hidden?" Again, I am here because I fear for the future of the school district and our community. If this superintendent and school board continued to operate in this way, it might just be WS stem for now, but what could be next? So, I asked the new school board members time. Thank you. Is that my full time or because I added extra? Yeah, composter. I'd like to make a motion to add 10 minutes. We have a motion to add 10 minutes. There's one hand online and there's two public comment. Can I have a second? That motion passes. We'll add two more minutes or Jason minutes. Oh,

047yeah. Sorry. That's right. Um, Julia, can you Miss Bzinski? Yes. Mr. Bower? Yes. Miss Bach? Yes. Mr. Morris? Yes. Miss Hammer Rand? Yes. Dr. Worley? Yes. Mr. Wiger? Yes. Okay. Go ahead. Uh, good evening everyone. I uh my name is Will Patton and I'm a father of two kids at McKinley. I would like to express my disappointment in principal Ted Martin's lack of advocacy for his teachers and his failure to do what is best for the school and the students. We have heard time and time again how teachers go to Mr. Martin for support. Rather than creating a supportive environment for the teachers or reaching out to the district administration to advocate for additional support and resources, Mr. Martin has done the opposite. He has created division between support staff and his teachers and has

048blamed them for needing additional support. Teachers are villainized and often punished for requesting additional help and Mr. Martin has failed to meet the needs of his teachers despite repeated efforts. When the district informed Mr. Martin that he had to reduce building staff next year by two FTEEs, Mr. Martin chose to keep an addition an educational assistant in lie of a teacher. He has chosen to reduce the upcoming fourth and fifth grade classes to two sections, which will result in the largest class sizes at these grade levels across the entire district. Research shows that smaller classroom sizes are integral to the improved academic outcomes, a more positive learning environment, and enhanced social emotional development, all of which are a focus of this district. Mr. Martin failed to communicate his decision to the families that would be

049impacted. and we only found out by scouring the recent schoolboard meeting notes. Mr. Martin is keenly aware of the unusually high level of disruptive behavior in these classrooms. And when asked what sort of environment will be created next year with these larger class sizes, he predicted the year to be, and I quote, interesting. This does not provide much faith or confidence during our children's formative years of education. When the parents met with Mr. Martin pleading he reconsider his decision or advocate to the board. He stated that there was nothing we could do and there was quote no point in talking to the school board. That response was not satisfactory and we knew we had to advocate for our teachers and our students on our own. My wife reached out directly to the school board and

050worked with Dr. Means Liz and the rest of the school board and to advocate for the reallocation of addition of an educational assistant from another school to McKinley. something that was done within one week. We greatly appreciate Dr. Means and the board taking action so quickly, but it is also extremely frustrating to wonder what could have happened and could we have retained a teacher if Mr. Martin had done his job in the first place two months ago. Why are the parents advocating for the teachers and students far more than their own principal? Based on the current state of McKinley, we suspect Mr. Martin is using the FTE reduction to eliminate teachers that don't fall in line with his ineffective leadership, further reducing number the number of beloved veteran teachers at McKinley and deepening the divide

051between him and his teachers. Mr. Martin has been given every opportunity to advocate for his teachers, but he simply does not feel the need to do so. For that reason and the other reasons that you've heard here tonight, Mr. Martin has failed as the leader at McKinley and has failed so many of our teachers, students, and families at McKinley. Thank you. Amy, can we go to the online comment, please? Sure. Uh, Jordan Aker Anderson, you have the microphone. Thank you. Mike, can you hear me? Yes. Yes. Yes, we can. So, my comment will be brief. I am a McKinley parent representing multiple families with deep concern about fourth and fifth grade classrooms that are going to reach the size of 27 and 28 students. This is not what I would like to see for teachers

052or students and I'm very concerned about that class size and multiple parents are worried about their own kids in those classes. Thank you. There are no more hands raised online. Good evening. My name is Katie Azmus. My children attend McKinley and women's schools. My husband and I have been parents at McKinley for eight years and Woosa Citizens for 15 years. I would like to address three key points tonight. My children, our teachers, and the lack of clear trusting leadership. We chose this community to help raise our three children. We've had many positive experiences in this community and at McKinley. However, the growing concerns that teachers will leave, coupled with increased stressors and sizes of the classes, has made me question our future at McKinley. Over the past eight years, what we know matters most at

053school is our teachers. They are the backbone of our school. Their professional expertise, patience, and advocacy for our children is like no other. They are the spirit, the light, and the love of our school. They taught my daughter the meaning of empathy in kindergarten. And they taught my son that he can strive even higher with his math that he loves. But they cannot be asked to do more with less. This cannot happen. As you know, last week, leadership at McKinley made an autonomous decision to move the fourth and fifth grade classes to 26.5 students. That's 27 or 28. There has now been approval for one EA to be shared amongst four classes. I ask you, how many students will this EA be working with? Will my child get extra care and support? Will it continue

054to grow his academic excellence? I am doubtful of this. I do not have trust or confidence that this will be achieved as this decision to raise class volumes was done without careful consideration of parent stakeholders. Not only are we asking teachers to do more with less, but we are asking our children to do the same. So I ask, how is my high achieving son going to grow? And how are my do tax dollars really being used? I am incredibly concerned that this additional strain of higher student volumes in this crucial learning years will have two outcomes. One, less student growth and two, teacher burnout and teachers leaving. We need a leader to make expert decisions that will bring the greatest good for all of our children. We need a leader who will invest all they

055have into the most tenured and expert teachers. Our children have one chance to do this. One chance. Elementary school should be fun and exciting and joyous. It should not be strained by lack of personal attention, disruptive classes, or inexperienced teachers and larger class volumes. I ask that you take serious investigation in the matter and look at all these parents that are here and online. This is a serious matter and we ask that leadership be changed at our current elementary school. Thank you. Hello. Thank you for the extra time to for comments. My name is Faith Nichols and I've been fortunate to be able to send my kids to McKinley, our neighborhood school, for three years now. I have one child in second grade and one in JK. We are dedicated to public education where everyone

056has access to learn, grow, and have their needs met. I care deeply about this on many levels and I think you do too or you would not be here. I also know that there are two sides to every story and I hope tonight's comments help you hear more than one side Mr. Martin's story. Unfortunately, things are not going well at McKinley that leadership is poor. Our principal, Mr. Martin, has showed again and again in the last two years how he chooses to lead. He leads with authority, not collaboration with staff or parents, leading to great mistrust. He leads to be right, not taking any accountability for missteps in data gathering, analysis, or next steps, as evidenced by the root cause analysis performed last fall, which was deemed invalid. He leads by not adequately supporting those

057students that, as we say in my family, are good kids that are having a very hard time. behavior issues resulting in classroom dis disruption and even injury. These kids are showing they need help and Mr. Martin has not stepped in to help them or given teachers the resources to help them adequately. This shows his disconnect. I ask you, what does an effective principal leadership look like? Because that is what is needed. Thank you. Okay, that brings us to the end of public comments. Um, thank you for everybody who has come uh to share their concerns with the board today. Uh, this time around, can I say something real quick? Um, to the McKinley families, thank you um for showing up and giving me a heads up that you were. Uh, I appreciate that. It should

058be noted that the school board has one employee, Miss uh, Dr. means and our responsibility is to be sure that the decisions that he and his proxies make are those that are in the best interest of all. Our job is to assess how he handles issues to and to create the policies that then push forward the school district as a whole. That said, Dr. means would you be able and uh willing to work with uh your uh cabinet to generate a a report an executive summary of what is going on from the district's point of view uh so that we can be briefed on both uh McKinley's PAC and then also from the district side as well. Yes. Uh the district has, I believe, taken an extraordinary step. We um had a restorative facilitator work

059with the staff and Mr. Martin to try to repair relationships. That that's something in all my years as a superintendent I've never had to do. We also have an investigation in place right now uh where we're examining the professional climate of McKinley um being conducted by our our law firm BO Veter and a retired school administrator. That report should be given to the district no later than Friday, May 9th, which is next week, Friday. Based on all of that information, which is objective information, I will continue to try to determine what the next steps should be. Uh, but to answer your question directly, yes, I will make a decision on what needs to happen next with the employee that reports to me, which is Mr. Merlin. Um and and and I will make that determination

060based on objective information. Thank you. Uh we will now move towards the annual board reorganization. Dr. Means will be leading us through the nomination and voting uh process. Thank you. Um so there are four officer positions that the board needs to vote on. Uh the first is board president. Uh the role of board president is one in which um and I think you will have to decide how you want to proceed but at at at the very minimum this is the person who um chairs the the meetings um when we have board meetings on the second and fourth uh Mondays of the month. Uh the board president is also tasked with uh working in collaboration with um with me and others in developing the agenda for board meetings. What I meant earlier in terms of

061how you want to proceed, some school boards have the the board president serve as the official spokesperson for the entire board. And so what that means is if there's a email sent to the entire board. I've seen some boards task the board president with being the one uh person that speaks on behalf of the board. Sometimes boards feel the need to speak individually. Um, and so I think that's something as you continue to reorganize as a board how you want how you want to proceed. I I'm being cautious in describing the role of the board president because the board president isn't any more important than any other board member. Um, that person simply chairs the board meetings. I like to always say in many ways your voice should be muted uh during board meetings because

062your your primary role is to make sure that the board meeting is being chaired appropriately and that you're soliciting the opinions of the other six board members. Um so that's a highlevel description of what the board president uh does um on on a day-to-day basis. With that being said, we um we will take nominations um for the role of the board president. Um I guess the only other thing I would share with you is that typically in um in a community like ours, the board president is that one board member that the community will highlight um to to make sure that emails are sent to um for for solicitation of of opinions. So, you may get more emails than than other board members. Um, you're but you're viewed as the the ceremonial leader of the

063board if if nothing else. But I just want to emphasize for the board and for the community. It doesn't indicate that the board president is more important or has more authority than any than any other board member. With that being said, um I'll pass around the nomination papers. Um this is your opportunity as a board to discuss um if individuals would would like to pursue um the role of board president and would accept the nomination um if so bestow it upon you. So this is your chance to either talk about it uh publicly or you can just simply turn in your um your nominations. This is also an opportunity for you to nominate someone else without their knowledge. Any comments from board members? Is there a chance to talk about an extra one? There was

064an extra I'm sorry. Yeah, this one questions from the board members thoughts. If not, I'll just uh I'll read off u how the nominations play out. Myies first. Okay. Thank you, ma'am. One of Stain, one for Liz, two for Liz, one for Lynn, two for Lynn, three for Liz, four for Liz. Those are nominations. So, I guess the question would be, Liz, do you accept the nomination? Yes. Lynn, do you accept the nomination? Yes. Okay. So we have two candidates for the role of board. Okay. So now I will pass out the actual ballots. The color is red just to find a way to separate it out. I Dr. has been elected for president. You may have fought. So the next position uh for nomination is board vice president. The board vice president I believe

065in many ways is um very very um pivotal to the success of a board. When a board president uh is unable to fulfill their role um to chair a meeting um the board vice president steps in. But it's more than that. Um uh in some cases I've seen the model where a board president and vice president serves together in developing agendas. um it becomes you and you we're going to have a a workshop with our legal counsel um where you want to make sure you stay away from walking quorums um but when a board president is un available or not um accessible the board vice president can be that conduit to answer questions of board members um so you don't have to just rely on one person um so it it the strength of a

066board in my opinion is when you have a really strong team of a board president and vice president. Um it is more than just the person who steps in uh when the board of president is unable to chair a meeting. But let's pause here and see if there are any other questions on the role of the board vice president before we hand out ballots for nominations. I would just affirm as um incoming board president that I'm very much a collaborator and I would like to have that model if the board would like it um to have the vice president play um perhaps a more instrumental role than we've seen in the last few years. So with that in mind, if there's no other discussion, I'll pass around the nomination uh ballots. Again, this is your

067opportunity to either nominate yourself or someone uh without their knowledge, which is a nice gift. We have a nomination for Jason Wier. Nomination for Liz Hammer. It's crowded crow crowded field here. Nomination for Chris Bower. Nomination for Phil Morris. So we have four nominations. Um Mr. Bower, Mr. Wier, Summer Rollan, Mr. Morris. Mr. Morris, do you accept the nomination? I do not accept the nomination. There's a decline of the nomination. Mr. B, do you accept the nomination? Yes. M. Do you accept the nomination? Okay. What year do you accept the nomination? No. Okay. Yes. Okay. So, we have two nominees. We have Mr. Bower this time around. Okay. on a vote of uh on an affirmative vote. I'll just say it that way. Uh Miss Himemer Rollins has been elected for vice president. Okay. Uh,

068the next position up for nomination is board clerk. Um, and I would defer to Dr. Worley to weigh in on this as well. The role of the board clerk is to be the official signature and treasur. Oh, I'm sorry. Treasure is next. Yeah, that's good. Board treasure. Um the royal board treasurer is the official um uh signature of any financial documents that um are um presented on behalf of the school board. Uh that this person typically serves on our finance and operations um committee. Uh this individual works closely with Mr. Eer um to ensure that uh we're tracking um positively with all of our financial um records. I will have to uh state that Mr. Ducker has made this extremely easy for um the entire board and that the information that is provided to the

069the finance and operations committee is typically also given to the entire board. Um you do not have to have a strong financial acumen to be in this role. Mr. Ear does a very good job in working um with with whoever serves in the role of treasurer to make sure that the the information is uh consumable and understandable. Uh there's also a crossover and making sure that there is knowledge uh with what Miss uh Zelazoski does with our our our staffing because over approximately over n or 70% of our our budget is associated with personnel. Uh and there's also a lot of work associated with working with our our buildings and grounds team um because of the the high cost. So that is the role of the treasurer. Liz, you've served in that role. Is there

070anything that you would add? No, but this is I think this is a um a position that you learn a lot about the school district. Um so even if you um don't want to take the role as treasurer right now um being on the resource finance and resource committee is really informative and watching the meetings and and keeping track of those uh minutes and agendas is really important too as I think for all board members. We have two nominees. Um, and so you have to decide if you want to take the nominations or not. It's to the left of us here. Um, Jason and Sarah, you've been nominated um, as potential candidates to serve as treasur. You you have the right to decline the nomination. Sir, do you accept the nomination? Yes. Okay. Okay. Uh

071Jason, do you accept the nomination? Yes. Okay. We have two We have two candidates for the role of board treasurer. We're voting for two candidates, Sarah and Jason. We're voting for one candidate. I'm sorry. It's not Chicago. Yeah. One one one candidate. Now we're voting. There we go. My apologies to anyone from Chicago. Affirmative a vote. Uh, Jason Wadier has been elected board treasurer. Congratulations. And I'm sorry for the preemptive uh review of board clerk. Um but again the role of the board clerk is to ser to serve as the official signature of official documents um that the district um has. I've referenced Mr. Eer and uh Mr. uh Kevin Lef Fountain who is our director of buildings and grounds andoski our chief of talent. That's those are the three people that typically Mr. Wier

072formerly Mran worked with uh as treasurer. the the clerk gets the opportunity to work with Miss Summers closely. Um you would you will receive calls from Miss Summers um to validate and to sign off on a lot of official documents that either must go to the Department of Public Instruction or other official documents. Um and that's the extent to the role of the clerk. Is there anything else you would add Dr. Worley or on the summers? Um I would say that there's a significant um part of the board election that the board clerk would participate in which we have an upcoming election in a year. Um so they might help um locate board canvasers for us um sub office etc. I would just add that Miss Summers makes it incredibly straightforward um manageable and pleasurable

073to to be our board clerk. I know there are communities in Wisconsin that don't have the kind of support that we do. Um, and I just appreciate um, how that has gone this year. But yes, you do sign a lot of documents and you um, are part of reviewing things during elections. Uh, and that's really the extent of the of the day-to-day work. It's not a lot of hours or very demanding. trying to send this to her. She just says nominations are not going around. That are easy. We have four nominees. Uh Spock, you've been nominated. Sarah, you've been nominated. Phil, you've been nominated. Chris, you've been nominated. So, we'll go around starting um to my right. Do you accept the nomination? I'll decline. Do you accept the nomination? I Yes. And sir, um, no,

074I'll decline. So, we have two nominees. Um, we have Chris and Heidi. Now, for the ballots, No permanent vote. Um, Miss Heidi Bach has been elected our board clerk. Congrat Congratulations. Again, uh, I want to thank all of you uh, for this first portion of our reorganization meeting um, to ensure that we have our officers in place. Um again our board president will this year uh will be Lyn Worley board vice president Lizheimer Rollin treasurer Jason Wadier and clerk Id that brings a close to our voting portion of offer for officers that then transitions us into we have to yeah you have to make this official meeting we read the motion yes she's Thank you. I'm sorry, Mr. Morris. It is recommended that the following persons be elected officers below school board in accordance with

075policy 0152 for a term beginning tonight and ending in April 2026. And I so move President Dr. Lynn Worley, Vice President Liz Himerand, Treasurer Jason Watier, and clerk Heidi Buck. And it is recommended the superintendent be appointed to act as secretary to the board. And I so move. May I have a second? Second. Miss Summers, please call the RO. Miss Pzinski, yes. Mr. Bower, yes. Miss Bach, yes. Mr. Morris, yes. Miss Rolland, yes. Dr. Worley, yes. Mr. Wier, yes. And that motion passes. Congratulations. Okay. I don't really need to Do you want if you would like I think this is a good time to packet. I think we we printed the same packet for everyone. Okay. Um so typically just as we're debating here if people are watching typically the board president sits in um

076sits here um at the at this position of the the table. um doesn't necessarily have to be this position. Um but um it's really a preference call for we can change to another meeting. Okay. Very good. Uh but now we will officially um have Dr. Worley preside over the meeting. So Dr. Worley, the the microphone is yours. Thank you. So we now have a couple other um roles to be filled. Uh so we would um would like to go to action to appoint the CISA representative. Um I have not served in that role but um I believe Dr. means you might be able to describe it or somebody else who's Yeah, I think don't think anyone's here who served in it. No, ma'am. Important. It's very important because it connects us to other districts. CISA

077just for observers stands for cooperative educational service agency. We are in the C there's there's a number of different CIAs across the the state of Wisconsin. We are in CISA 1. um and that highlights um the Milwaukee metropolitan area. Um CISA has an annual convention every year where there's a representative expected from each school district to be present. Um it is CISA serves our school district and providing a number of different services. Um mainly through Mr. Pinion's people and family supports team. um they they host a lot of different uh alternative education uh opportunities for for uh our families and and students, but they also offer a number of different services. Um and so keeping up to date on what services are provided through the CISA is really critical. Um and u that's that's the

078monthly meeting if I remember correct it's a monthly meeting. So we have an opportunity to hear from um board members of who would like to do that. It can be someone who's sitting as an officer or someone who's not. Can share with you that in school districts typically don't have a member attending every monthly meeting of CISA. Um and and the attendance is sporadic at best. Uh but being being available to be the representative of the school board to the CISA is really important. You may have heard through my language there is an annual uh meeting where it if for nothing else it's critical that we have someone at that that annual gathering of all the CISA districts. Are we able to nominate someone? Yes, you are. Can I nominate Mr. Bower? I accept. I'll

079second. If there's if there's no other we have a nomination. So now what we'll do um is we will have um Sarah, you are actually listed to just read it. Um if you look new board members. Yeah, you can look on your screen or you can look at printouts and it so it is recommended that the school board appoints Chris Bower as CISA representative and I so move. May I have a second? Second. Um will you please read the RO? Miss Pinski? Yes. Mr. Bower? Yes. Miss Bach? Yes. Mr. Morris? Yes, Miss Himemer Rand. Yes, Dr. Worley. Yes, Mr. Wiger. Yes. And the motion carries. Congratulations. And thank you, nurse. Thank you. So, we move on to letter C. action to appoint policy committee members. Um I I guess I would uh ask at this

080point, would you all like to talk about all the committees at one time or would you like to go through because then when we could do the votes? I just remember when I came on, I found it kind of helpful to hear about all of the committees and then we kind of did a sharing of what we might be most interested in or second most interested in. motion that we hear about all the pennies. Aren't you taking action on anything? Second. Miss Binski? Yes. Mr. Bower? Yes. Miss Bach? Yes. Mr. Morris? Yes. Miss Hammer Roland? Yes. Dr. Worley? Yes. Miss uh Mr. Wier? Yes. Thank you. So, um Mr. Morris, could you say a little bit about policy? You've been on for two years. Yes, two years in. Have not run away screaming. I will

081say for the the new board members um and existence here. If you haven't been on policy, I was apprehensive going into it. Um but you don't what you don't know. I'd tell people this. The policy committee is where you learn probably more about what the school board is and and what it's not as well as understanding how school organizations work from the lens of what's from the state, what is specific to our district. I think that's very important. So I would say that for everything that we do, the policy committee really does become the foundation of a lot of things that that you learn and how you grow in these things. Um nothing against any of the other committees, you know, finance is finance, all the things we have to do and the other ones

082are specific to those, but policy wraps around all of them because we're going to talk about policy um exhaustively in some cases. Um, I'm sure everyone both in the room as well as here at this table, um, has heard a lot of the policy conversations we've had about many things over the last three years prior to me getting on here, but everything from curriculum to finance to referendums, all these things come into play and policies at the base of it. So, I would say that um, if you really want to understand what we do and how we make the biggest difference, it's a firm understanding of policy. Okay. Thank you. So, um, thank you for that description. Let's talk about the legislative advocacy committee, but we don't have people who've most recently served on it,

083but Dr. Means, you've been working with them the last few months. Would you be willing to say a little bit about what they've typically been doing? Legislative Advocacy uh committee uh is a group of board members who pay close attention to local, state, and federal policy that is going to impact the Waltosa School District. Um and we haven't had a chance to talk deeper at the local level. Um but that local level is significant since we are such a major um thoroughfare for the county of Milwaukee. Um and since there's so many county uh facilities in Wal Tulsa um so there are we haven't recently had to deal with local um issues either with the city of Wal Tulsa or with the county but that is something obviously we pay a lot of attention to

084state funding uh and and issues impacting the state legislature. coalitions across either our community here in Waltosa or across the region or state. So that's another major component of that committee. some examples. Um there have been the few resolutions that have come up to the board recently. There's also um typically at least once if not more times during the legisl the legislative um uh season that while legislative advocacy members don't have to go but they have sometimes gone to meetings um in Madison it's not a requirement um and it actually can be any board members but um driving that and there have been some really I think very helpful um educational events that legislative advocacy has also held over the last couple of years and going into now um looking at the next banial budget.

085Um giving uh the board um a connection to that, helping community members understand how they can be involved um in legislative advocacy. Uh it's also what I've seen the committee do in in past years and I think it's all extremely valuable. Okay. So the third um committee is the finance and resource um committee. Yeah, I spoke to this a little bit when we were talking about the role of treasure. Um timewise you meet um once a month for two hours. Um those are open to community members. Um rarely do we have a community community members join. Um and then it's working with Mr. for eard to just make sure um the agendas are set and you know making recommendations from maybe what you hear from staff or community members what you'd like to add on

086to the agenda but it's um pretty straightforward. You learn a lot um and I loved serving on that committee so only good things to say about it. Thank you Liz. [Music] Um I guess I could clarify too, we didn't really say this, but uh typically we have two board members um on each. The finance committee is one in addition to the treasurer. Um I that's the committee information. There is one other appointment, but I'm going to hold on that um because it's not a committee. I'd first like to see us distribute ourselves um through through the committees and um think about uh if there I open a a moment if there's one that you're particularly excited about that um you would like to um to serve on. I think that would be helpful. Um it's

087not just like with the CISA it's not a full board vote. It is, you know, I it is um, you know, usually the action of the president, but I would just say I want you to be serving where you feel you fit well. Um, and at the same time as a as a group, we have to cover all of those committees and make sure that um that we have board members on them so that they can take action and and do the work they need to do. Um, so I'm just I'm going to skip you Jason because yours is a given, but I'm just going to go around and just see in a first um round um Sarah is a one that you have a preference for. If not, that's okay as well. Uh the

088policy and the legislative ones really call to me more. Thank you, Heidi. Um I would say policy and legislative also. Um I would say finance and resource. Okay. Uh given my brothers, I would like to be on the legislative um and or finance. Okay. But I serve at your and Phil I'm going to say legislative advocacy advocacy committee. Okay. So I should have taken notes. Policy legislative policy legislative finance a legislative for finance and legislative I guess I will um suggest that Liz continue on the finance since you that was the one choice and like to see you know you be on a committee um if that's okay with you Mr. our then um we have four interested in legislative. So I'm just going to go around again and um except Phil said he's only

089interested in legislative. Um but just but we know you have a lot of experience with policy too that you would survive another two years of one year necessary. Um any other indications? Uh, a couple of you said, you know, you really would be either. I'm happy doing policy if if I trust that you'll make some decisions. Sarah, on policy, um, Heidi, are you willing to go with the policy? Yes. And then we'll do legislative for both of you. Fine. Thank you. Yeah. All right. All right. So then we need to then we need to go through each of these um actions. So Christopher, are you are you going to stop at E or you going to continue to go through? I wanted to do the committees and then we'll do the next one. That's okay.

090Just because I want to make sure we were all distributed on the committees. I mean we could wait and do the them all at the same time, but I just thought we'd go through these and mark them off. That makes a lot of sense. Um Chris, would you go ahead and still read the one to appoint um our policy, which would be Sarah and Heidi? It is recommended that the school board appoint Heidi Bach and Sarah Bazinski as policy committee members. And I so move. Do I have a second? Second. I'll call that for Mr. Morris. We have fun with this. So, you got to have you gota have fun once in a while. Miss Summers, would you call the role, please? Mr. Binski, yes. Mr. Bower, yes. Miss Bach, yes. Mr. Morris, yes. Miss

091Hammer Roland, yes. Dr. Worley, yes. Mr. Wadier, yes. And uh so the motion passes and we'll go on to legislative advocacy. Heidi, would you go ahead and read that one? Um it will be Mr. Morris, Mr. Ballard. It is recommended that the school board appoint Philip Morris and Chris Bower as legislative advocacy committee members and I so move. May I have a second? Second. He's getting the hang of it. Getting the hang of it. All right, M. Summers, will you please call the role? Miss Brzinski? Yes. Mr. Bower? Yes. Miss Bach? Yes. Mr. Morris? Yes. Miss Hammer Roland? Yes. Dr. Worley? Yes. Mr. Wier? Yes. And the motion passes. We'll move on to um the motion. Phil, if you could read this one as as listed to appoint our finance and resource committee members. It

092is recommended that the school board appoints finance and resource committee members. And I move just Liz Holland and then Jason is automatic. Let's go ahead and put in fact. Let's go back. It is recommended that the school board appoint Liz Hammer and Deacto Jason Wier as finance research committee members and I so move. I have a second go to Liz and Miss Summers. Could you call the role? Miss Bzinski? Yes. Mr. Bower? Yes. Miss Bach? Yes. Mr. Morris? Yes. Miss Roland? Yes. Dr. Wley? Yes. Mr. Wier? Yes. And the motion passes. So we have one um more action for roles. Um so the action to appoint the exeicio member to curriculum council and curriculum council has anyone served I well I mean I know what they do but the role of the board member in

093that is to come to the meetings and to have also communication um electronically or by phone with those council members. Yes. Um it's very similar to the to being on the finance and operations committee in that uh what Mr. Aker depends on those committee members to do is to to is to translate some of the information that he's presenting to your fellow board members at board meetings. Uh when Dr. Marble and the division of academic performance are presenting curricular changes or or the potential of changing things. The ex official member to the curriculum council is someone that we will look to um to give deeper insight on what is being presented by um district administration. Thank you. And there may be times I I think the best example may have been during our adoption of

094the human growth and development curriculum where um Leanne Fragley was the ex official member at that time and so she just kept the board members um aware um during the development of that curriculum so there wasn't a surprise and you were hearing it uh from a a fellow board member and so that that's the other advantage of having official ual member. Do you know is the consistent time of frame of meeting the council so that people can consider that? I don't have um I know they do meet on a routine basis and I believe it's typically on um a board meeting night um prior to our our actual meeting. Sometimes you'll notice that there there are a lot of people walking down the hallway. They're coming from curriculum curriculum counsel. I can get that date.

095That's fine. I just like to give people that information um to see if there's someone that is particularly interested or driven. Um I noted that we don't have the um subcommittee for sustainability um board leaison on this list tonight. Sure. Um so just uh note that that is also another appointment but we'll have to do that at a later it'll have to start at finance operation committee and then and then that committee will bring it I mean procedurally no right that's what I figured but yes you're right that we can't forget that one either no is there anyone who's interested in the curriculum committee would be interested if none of the other board members are interested opportunity. Okay. I'm still interested in staying on sustainability. That's fine. I was I think you could. Yes. Anyone

096else with Liz? Okay. Well, time and I were talking earlier. Ideally, we always want to have two members on committees. Ideally because the board president to your point the board president serves as an ex official to any that's true we probably should. Yeah, we should. So that's that's the other reason why you want to try to stay at two if you can. So you you're always the board president's office always always can step in if one of you can't make and again to go back to my statement earlier in terms of one position is not more important than any other when we post all these committee meetings if there's something interesting that you want to observe or you wanted to hear for yourself you can always attend these meetings that's why we post them so

097then it's it's legally meeting the the threshold of gathering Okay. Well, um, is there someone who' like to read this because Liz was assigned it, but I think Phil, thank you. It is recommended that the school board appoint Liz Hamlan as exopicio member to the curriculum council and I so move. May I have a second? Second. Miss Summers, would you lead the role, please? Miss Pzinski, yes. Mr. Bower, yes. Miss Bach, yes. Mr. Morris, yes. Miss Roland, yes. Dr. Worley, yes. Mr. Wadier. Yes. And the motion carries. So, if you would um move on to letter G. We're not done yet. So, um we also need this evening uh to to appoint an expulsion hearing panel an alternate board member for the first semester. So, this would be starting um in August. They'll usually end

098in July and start in August if I you know we didn't we say for the first semester of the 2526 school year it may be healthy to state as of July 1st that would be preferred. Yes because we were January to to yeah through June. So that would be a more even Yes. Um so we need to have [Music] um two right plus an alternate three three and an alternate. Thank you. So um and just for background sake if I may Dr. Worley um the board I think we're in our second year of utilizing a panel model. Um, in the past, the Waltosa School District would uh simply um do an all call to all seven board members to say who's available for an expulsion hearing. Uh, we moved to a panel. This is our

099second year of utilizing this model. This is a model where most districts have um identified board members who serve um in that role for a semester. And uh unfortunately there are times where students make poor decisions and then the the board through an expulsion hearing has to make a decision on what the future of their educational services look like. Um that's the purpose of an expulsion hearing itself. Um and uh the the goal is to have three individuals who understand the process who understand um some of the language that Mr. opinion and his team will utilize in a hearing to keep things fluid. And I I'll defer to Mr. Pinion if there is anything that I missed. No, I would just to summarize say this is um we have an annual resolution for the panel

100and it makes things smoother, more efficient in terms of timelines processing through all the paperwork. Um and it's a little bit more sensitive to the students and family when it's not a full board. Um know that though the case does then come back in front of the full board for final approval. not necessarily to go into all the nuances, but for that official um order. That's a great point. Thank you, Luke. Just because we have a hearing panel doesn't mean that the other four members don't have the ability to um really review and ask questions of what happened with the the the disposition of a case. Thank you for So I will um at this point ask if there are schoolboard members who would like to serve in the first term. Um we typically uh

101do flip that over um in January as best we can. Um and so are there is there anyone who would like Yes. Do you like to serve? For for anybody there, it's um the way that in I think this is my I don't even know how long I've been. You've been doing it a lot. Yeah. But it is it's it is very informative of when we have to have these Mr. opinion and his team seeing the the process from a disciplinary piece there is and then also learning the legal side of all the you're not there alone and it's it is very well put together and you come out having a greater understanding of the tough decisions that get made but the depth that we go so that it's one where none of this happens

102instantly it's like this quick thing there's a lot that goes into it and by the time it gets to the panel you are very well informed and there's the entire process for the evening and we luckily haven't had too many but uh it has been very informative but I think I think it rounds out the process. Question when um when they do happen are the hearings during the day evening like typically what what is the what will someone need to have for availability each time? They're typically scheduled in the evenings. So we we tend to work around the board's schedule for the panel members. Um but generally in the evenings and sometimes they come in clusters. Um again we've had a really great year. Not to jinx anything, but yeah, that's 31 days. So Jason,

103you're available. I would be willing. That's two. Three. Oh, and three. Do we we need an alternate? Alternate, sir. And sir, would you be willing to service the alternate? Absolutely. That's great. And I have some. It is recommended that the school board get some Heidi, will you read this one? I'll help you with the names if you want. Bill Morris, Jason Wier, Chris Bower, and alternate Sarah Bzinski. It is recommended that the school board appoint an expulsion hearing panel. Bill Morris Bill Morris, Jason, Jason Wier, Chris Chris Bower, and an alternate board member, Sarah Bzinski, for the first semester of the 2025 2026 school year. Thank you. May I have a second? It's okay to second your own nomination. Second. the summers. Will you please call the role? Just for we didn't add in motion

104July 1st, 20. Oh, sorry. Thank you. Catch. Oh. Oh, good catch. Thank you. Um, so Heidi's done for the first semester starting How about Can you amend Can you read that? For the first semester of the 202526 school year starting July 1st, 2025. We have a motion to add that language in. I'll make a motion to add the language. um at the end of the sentence beginning July 1st, 2025. I have a second. All right. So, this time we're voting just on the addition. Thank you. Yes. Miss Summers, please call the role. Miss Bzinski, yes. Mr. Bower, yes. Miss Bach, yes. Mr. Morris, yes. Miss Hammer Rolland, yes. Dr. Worley, yes. Mr. Wadier, yes. And the motion carries. So, now we're going to vote on the motion um with the names and the addition of

105the specific start date. Miss Summers, can you call the role? Miss Bzinski? Yes. Mr. Bower? Yes. Miss Bach? Yes. Mr. Morris? Yes. Miss Rolland? Yes. Dr. Worley? Yes. Mr. Wadier? Yes. And the motion carries. Okay. So, now we transition to a more typical board meeting. Um, Dr. Worley, may I before we transition, you all deserve a round of applause. what you've done every I I think I had a conversation with Miss Rollin last week where she said, "Are you sure we're going to do this all in one in the same meeting?" Typically, this would have been done in a meeting, a workshop type of meeting where you could have had a very um more casual conversation and you could have had the discussion that you had um and then you could have walked away and

106then you could have been come back to a meeting. You've done it all in one setting. As we said, the circumstances are unique um with uh how positions were set up with the last board moving into tonight where there were um no board president or vice president. So, thank you for starting the meeting. Lyn, thank you for jumping in. Um but you all deserve just your your willingness to be flexible um is commendable and I we thank you uh for for it and and I would be remiss if I didn't thank um Miss Summers for her organization of the ballots for the election. It was you tried to color code it for me, but in all seriousness, thank you. Uh this was this was as smooth as it could get and uh we we appreciate

107it and look forward to a good year. Thank you, Mr. Means, and thank you for um facilitating uh the election part of the meeting as well. And then of course sometimes people wonder what happens to those ballots. So could you let folks know what happens? It's a public. They're all public records. uh we we procedurally don't read the vote total for who wins because that's that's not really relevant. Um that's why you heard me use the the language in the affirmative. Um but all of it if if there was ever an open records request, all of the information is right here. Exactly. That's what I want people to know. Yes. Appreciate that. The ballots stay Yes. Um and are filed. Okay. So we'll move on to um number four um the consent agenda and I

108think um after the consent agenda maybe if folks would feel the need for a five minute stretch break we could do that. So, um, consent agenda. When we have these items on the consent agenda, just so that many people probably know this, but just so we're all on the same page, um, the first thing that I will be asking is if there's any items that are on the consent agenda that someone would like to remove. Um, there is no stigma to asking for something to be removed. Um, you're welcome to do that. Um, and it does it's it's a perfectly good process. Um, if not, that's fine, too. um but we'll use the um following uh you know uh votes based upon um that discussion. So we've had many times when they've been removed and

109sometimes when nothing is removed. So I'm going to ask are there any items on the consent agenda which board members would like to remove for separate discussion and action? Seeing none, may I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? Mr. Wers, it is recommended that the school board approve the consent agenda. And I so move. May I have a second? Second. Miss Summers, please call the role. Miss Bzinski? Yes. Mr. Bower? Yes. Miss Bach? Yes. Mr. Morris? Yes. Miss Rolland? Yes. Dr. Worley? Yes. Mr. Wadier? Yes. And the motion carries. I do want to note, as we often do, that we have a couple of gifts um that were on the consent agenda. And I just want to express um our thanks um to the gifts that have been given to Wawaossa West High

110School um twice, two gifts. Green bleeds hard. Thank Thank you to the That's right. class of uh the class of 1964 and class of 1969. they uh provided uh sizable gifts and we do appreciate it. So, and one of them has gone to a mural that um I have gotten a chance to see um a picture of that um done by a local artist. Um so again, we express our thanks for gifts um and appreciate the continued support of our alumni. Can I ask a question about that mural? Sure. Is there a place where other people can see what that mural is? just out of interest what it's going to be. It's exciting. I I think communication plans about it. I know there's been one post about it so far. There's been one post. I'm

111not quite sure what Wes plans to do when the mural is completed. Um we'll we'll definitely make you aware when it is completed. But I propose the journalism department put together a wonderful multimedia. I can talk I will talk to Mr. Gin and see how we will continue to communicate it out. Yeah. Yeah. It's um it's in a very it's in the commons. It's in a very um noticeable space. Um and I suspect our West students are very excited. I'm sure there's some plans to there's some plans for ribbon cutting and some ceremonial. We know how to throw a party. Yes. I sense a little bit of competition here, but I'm sure East will get some gifts soon as well, especially after tonight. So, thank you. Um, was there anything else uh general that anyone

112wanted to say about the consensia? Okay. So, just want to express that thanks on behalf of the district and the board. So, we will take um a how about eight minutes or so? I'm trying to I can't actually see the I have 7:43 right 43. So let's start again um at uh 750. So that's seven or eight minutes. Please take care of yourselves um for any needs for stretching or bio needs that you need. Uh so we will move to um agenda item number five strategic goal six operations. This is a report. Um it does not include an action. I will try and be both um efficient and deliberate. Uh given that we have some new board members and I don't want to skip past right anything. If you feel like I need to circle

113back anyone, please just let me know. I'm happy to go back to another SL or you know previous slide or spend more time on the current slide. So uh our fiscal year runs July to June. Um that means that we are um threequarters of the way through the school district uh through the um school. I think sorry I think Corey this is the wrong April April that's March. Yeah, I I understand. [Music] Sorry, I sent this when I was on vacation. So, take your time. You even said, "Well, I would well the break was going on. I should get prepared." I think the only slide that's different is the executive summary slide. Let me just Cy, I'm gonna re Can we take a pause for a second? I can actually board dots. I think it

114should be whatever one was posted to board docs. That's what you want. [Music] That's the same on it. Here we go. Okay, this looks a little better, I think. She So, we are uh threequarters of the way. We just finished the uh third fiscal quarter. Um we've cut off our school and department discretionary spending on April 1st. That's consistent with uh the norm in this district, pretty consistent statewide within a week or two. Um what that means that that doesn't mean no one can buy anything anymore. Uh what it means is we've cut off the discretionary funding. So if someone had planned, say for instance, I'll give you an old example from when I first started in the field. I I had a librarian um that was saving up money to buy like 50 VCRs

115at the end of the year. Those were the types of things that should have been purchased earlier in the year uh not at the very end of the year. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Remember those? Mhm. Imagine Netflix, but you had to plug something in. Um, so discretionary spending has been cut off, but essential spending continues on. Um, our revenues, uh, as they have all year are trending very well. The only thing I'm really watching is our local revenue. Um, most of most of our revenues, you know, are essentially guaranteed. um via state funding or local property tax. Within our local revenue though, uh things like student fees, gate receipts, interest income, those are the things that can be variable. Uh so those are the ones we're keeping our eye on. Um all of our expenses um

116have been the budget's been updated to reflect what the board approved in uh February. And I'm going to get to purchase services in a second, but that's the main area that we continue to keep our eye on um that which is kind of becoming a broken record at this point um as far as expenses go. So, what we're looking at here is we've got uh we always start out with our revenues and the these are sort of dashboards, right? So, the top half is a dashboard of revenue in February and the bottom uh is March. And the two key things we're looking at on each of these kind of speedometers is what was the what was the um actual so in February our actual revenues were 43.69% of our budget and we're comparing that to

117what would have been projected and the projection is based on an algorithm using the last five years of data. So we look at every month and what's happened each month typically. So we can see in February we were um slightly ahead, you know, roughly five points ahead on on overall revenues and that came about four points in local and seven points in state. Again, our revenues um almost always track exactly as they should. So if we're if we're ahead or behind, it's typically because um we coded something on March 1st instead of February 28th one year, something like that. So we can see in March we're still ahead uh both overall and then also in our our local and state. So that's the super high level view. Um this next view is essentially the same

118information just kind of presented in bar graph instead of a piraphph. So here we are breaking down um our general fund. So that's all of our operations compared to our sorry I don't know how to get rid of this. There we go. Uh compared to our special education funds. So those essentially are two main operating funds. Anything that isn't funded from special education, we have to fund from the general fund. So, uh that takes place via a transfer. So, of among all of our special education dollars, say roughly 30% are funded by either state or federal revenue and 70% are funded by our general fund. Overall, you can see again um right here the light blue line is the budget for revenues. The purple line is where we actually are and the green uh line

119is where we were projected. So again, we can see obviously we haven't collected all our revenues yet or we'd be way up here at the the top of the budget. But we are ahead of the projection. The purple being above the green means we're ahead of projection. And again on the left hand side is last month and the right hand side is the current month. This is just uh one more view then. So now we're breaking down going from uh fund level now to source level. So where the money is coming from. And again you can see our the our primary dollars uh come from local. So that's property taxes. Secondary is state and then you know federal a little bit and then almost nothing in in other. So uh again we're essentially tracking ahead

120in all of those uh right now. In this case the purple being above the red. Any questions on revenues before I pivot to expenses? Okay. So you have a question. Oh. Uh it sounds like and it seems this whole year that we're not in this in a worrisome territory, but what would seem to you to be a worrisome deviation from projections in either direction? Yeah. So, um that's that's the question that's often uh people will say um on these expenses I see that we're at 52% and we're projecting 50%. So, is that material or not material? Um, the answer is a little bit in the eye of the beholder. Uh, if if I'm more than 2% one way or the other, I'm really digging into things. Um, the reason I say it's in the eye

121of the beholder is it also depends on the month. So, if it's August and we're just two months into the school year and we're we're off by six, 7% because we made let's say we did a roofing project or something. As long as I can identify and then report to the board why it is that there's a variance, I think that's far more important than what the the percent variance is. So now we're moving on to expenses. The good news here is we read everything is read the same. So it's laid out the same whether it's revenues or expenses. So again, uh last month is on the top, current month is on the bottom. Um, one thing I want to point out is we have all year long we've been trending um, slightly ahead uh,

122on the expense side, but we are narrowing the gap. So, I'm to me that's the main takeaway this month. Um, you can see the gap in February was about 2%. And the gap now is was roughly 1 and a.5%. So, I'm happy to see we're narrowing that gap. Um, a lot of that is coming from both uh the board updating the budget as well as us cutting off spending to to um get a hand on those things we need to get a handle on. You can see um our salaries and benefits. So that's you know 70 75% of all of our expenses are tracking within.1% of uh where we would expect. So extremely happy about that. And I'm going to be talking briefly uh momentarily about p um personal services that falls into this bucket

123over here. Uh and that's that is why we're turning ahead there. Okay. Again, this is just another look. Um again, we've got prior month on the left, current month on the right. And really what you the key here is how close are the purple and blue lines? purple being where we currently are, blue bearing being where we expected to be or projected to be. Um, you know, I suppose ideally on the revenue side, you'd want your your current above your projection and on the expense side, ideally the current below the projection. Um, really we're looking for just how close are they? So, we can see it's a pretty tight um variance there. And now we're breaking this down by on the expense side we call it by objects. So on the revenue side is source

124meaning source of revenue. The expense is which are those what what what is it we're buying essentially. So we can see our salaries and benefits. Again we knew those are tracking almost exactly on and so we can see the the the blue and the red are like right on top of each other. And here's the area we've been watching all year long. and these purchase services that are um trending are actually slightly ahead of the projection or the trend. So the key then is I'll be talking in a second about digging into that to tell you what that is. Uh for those of of us that that like numbers uh with graphs um we provide those as well. So this first chart is showing us last year. So through uh March 31st of in on

125the lefth hand side 2024 is what we had either received on the top or spent here on the bottom versus where the year ended. Okay, which yields what percent was received or spent through the end of March. So for instance, we can see last year through the end of March, we had spent 65% of where the year ended and this year we've spent 64.98% of what's budgeted. So again, the other thing that I'm looking for is how close are these percentages together because that's going to tell us how how accurate our projection is. Again, the one that is that is u most off base right now or the one I'm watching most closely is our purchase services and we can see that is about four and a half percent uh variance there. Mr. Eard in

126your bottom therefore looking at both those and your other objects and transfers uh looking from the prior year to date to the prior year actual why such a a gap between or or can I give you a breakdown of the 400,000 versus the 12 million? Sure. This is the transfer to fund 27. So we don't um and um this is where it gets a little bit complicated. Fund 27 expenses are also buried in salaries, benefits, and purchase services. We don't make the transfer until the end of June when we know what our total expenses are because the state requires us to end that budget at a uh $0 fund balance. So, the special education fund always has a $0 fund balance. Great question. So, every year we're going to see almost no activity here until

127June. Okay, here's our now these are our expense projections. So, uh again, this is putting numbers to those graphs. that the top is February and these are our main uh expense categories and the bottom is March. So, quickly I'm always looking for red. What's going on in red? You can see in um February we were uh had a negative variance, slight negative variance in salaries, slight positive variance in benefits. Now, you can see in March we're actually overall when we add those two together, we're in a in a positive place. That's why I've got the little thumbs up there. Um the and then I've got a yield sign here. Uh buy our purchase services. Again, that's the thing that I've been, you know, looking at every month. Um and we've talked about it at the

128board at at quite length actually. So something I added to this report around I would say Decemberish is um this this is the first year this software has been used. So, uh, what I added in is what what would this report have looked like for the board last year had this software been available. So, what we're looking at on the top half is both of these are through March. The top half is last year if the software had been being used and reported to the board, you would have seen a projected negative variance of about $ 8.3 million. So again, this is meant to be an early indicator, right, for for um so there's no surprises. This year we're at about a negative 1.6 and again, most of that is purchase services. So going to

129talk about that briefly, I think on the last slide here. Yeah. So these are the areas I'm still concerned about. Um and and I'll start at the bottom and work up because the um our substitutes are now trending the right way. So, we have been able to really put our brakes on um not I won't say the usage of subs or the fill rate of subs. Those things we've been able to maintain. It's things like um things more under the district control like when we pull people out of classrooms. Um and so that has really helped us uh key in our sub budget. Um legal fees we've talked about all year um as something that's that frankly the top three things were underbudgeted and and um I have little control over them. Um special transportation

130we only transport kids who have an IEP that requires transportation. Um and we have emergency maintenance needs that go beyond our deferred maintenance or capital improvement plan. So, an example would be uh we had a uh essentially a flood into the theater at the East High School. Um that would be an emergency maintenance item that there we have a budget for emergency maintenance, but depending on how many emergencies they are, you you either have enough or you don't. Um, so the two areas right now that are that I believe are going to end over budget are the emergency maintenance and the uh special ed people transportation. I believe this is the last year that's going to happen. Um, I I have I've shared with the finance committee and maybe at the board level uh myself

131and Jess Hanker have now gone through every line item of the budget. We have about 13,000 line items. Um, I've got a much better handle on on what's actually there now since she and I are the ones putting the numbers there. These four areas, I I'm I'm going to say I'm right sizing for next year. So, when I look back at our history, I can see how much we typically spend, for instance, on specialized people transportation. That should be about what we budget. It It shouldn't be less. When I looked at the budget for this year, it was less than what we typically spend. Um, so I've I'm we're right sizing these things so we don't end up overbudget anymore. The effect that's going to have though is that's going to reduce the discretionary funding

132available, right, for for overall expenses. I mean, it would be easy for me to say, well, I'll just leave the special ed budget at $500,000 less and and tell the board, hey, good news. We can put 500,000 more in fund balance. But that wouldn't it would be artificial. Um I'd rather give you a true picture and budget at the true level. Um so that we know what what we can actually expect during the school year. And when we're looking at these variances, we should see them even tighter next year. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Eer. Um we'll entertain questions from board members. Mr. Wy. Um so Mr. tracker, the legal fees kind of we all we all know that we don't necessarily have full control over that. Um where where are we at this year in

133comparison to years prior even if you were to have done a regressive budget? So the LA last year and the year before we're we're tracking like we were the last two years. Um, so I in my mind that that creates a pattern. I I I feel comfortable budgeting to that level um more so than it would have been three or four years ago. It'd be great news if if we don't spend it all, right? And then that money can go to fund balance or some other initiative. Um I would add we the other um benefit of having to go through every line item has yielded some efficiencies too. Um and I'll give you an example today. it it's not much but but the reason I'm giving this example is because we really are looking at

134everything. Um we use Beimo as our as our bank. Um banking fees are pretty high for for businesses and school districts. Ours are about $5,000 a year. Now we get interest income that offsets much of that. But just by renegotiating those fees, we're going to save $5,000. So, you know, on a $100 million budget, that isn't much, but but sometimes people will say, "Well, what are you looking at ways that you can reduce expenses?" I mean, we're finding like even little needles in a hay stack to to try and give back. What um what how would you split up the legal fees as far as rough estimate? What what have we spent and what buckets are they spent on? So, we just asked Belove Veter in I believe it was December or January to start

135um codifying the expenses to um they're putting them in buckets of um open records requests, labor, special ed, and other. So, we hadn't asked them that before. So, I don't have that information yet. Uh but by the end of this year, we'll at least have six months of those uh buckets having been broken out. If you had to guess, what would be your top spend there? Mr. Waterman's indicated, Mr. Wier, that our use of legal fees to redact and to review open record requests submissions is some of the highest that they they have um in terms of their clients. Thank you. Any other board members have comments or questions? I do have a couple. Um, go ahead, Mr. It seems like, uh, you're starting to plan into 25 and 26 by talking about right sizing

136budgets and all of that. Uh, I wanted to make sure that this was already talked over with Miss Elazoski as they have developed the staffing plan so that all of that jives and we're not being bouncing back and forth after we approve the uh staffing plan. Um, she she and I uh are are kind of like this in in terms of um building the budget and the staffing plan. um about two weeks ago, we we were both able to um pinpoint the exact number of FTEs both on her spreadsheet and my spreadsheet. Um I think that's the first time in years that that that's the case. Um did you mind going into detail of describing what is Skyward? How does the spreadsheet that Miss Zelazowski is going to review later this evening tie into Skyward

137and why it's so important from a financial standpoint that it's connected? Yeah. So, um Skyward is is our enterprise um budgeting and payroll system. Um so, when someone gets hired, they get put into the system uh via via the HR side and also entered uh in payroll. So, um, one area that Sarah and I are finding efficiency is one a reason it was hard to, um, match the FTS in the past is we had dual data entry. So, one person entering at HR, another person entering in payroll. I I would find that um, Mr. Bower is in um, HR as Chris and in payroll as Christopher. And when I'm trying to match things, unless I unless I was looking at an ID, it was just causing issues. Um things like maiden names, for instance, would

138come up pretty frequently that had been changed one place, not another place. So, uh we're now able to we're we're in the process of um utilizing a feature in Skyward where we'll just have data entry one time that pushes through the whole system. Um, so really what what Sarah and I are working on this spring is kind of cleaning that I'll call dirty data so that we can push it forward. And um the nice thing about that is so each person has a unique ID, they have a job code. Uh it ties back to a salary schedule. So the system can look at the person essentially when they were hired, were they on the schedule, and it it matches what their pay is. So it gives us we have sort of like three sets of

139security for budgeting now. Um one coming frankly a spreadsheet from my office that matches a spreadsheet from Sarah's office that we then tie off to Skyward's data and all of that goes into um the budget that you have. The next step would be how much how many times is that data then uh audited like how your budget audited throughout the year. Yeah. So um from sta purely staffing the the this will be well this is me and Sarah's kind of first year together but my my norm would be now um when school year starts because we're going to have there'll be some people that leave and new people come um and it might be you know who knows there's a job someone's spouse has a job change they have to leave the district we had

140to hire someone else so I want to plug in the new person now or what their rate of pay is, but I don't I don't do that every day. So, I'm I'm I do that once in the summer so I can um have everything up to date with and agree with Sarah again. And then uh probably wouldn't do it again until I have the board approve um the uh we we'll like last year we did an updated budget in say Decemberish. So if there was material changes um we would update it then again. Awesome. And then your budget itself and then how we are tracking is also audited multiple times. So that's every month then that's like what you saw here. So that we're getting a picture of every month by both internal and external

141entities. Yeah. We'll let the board have to decide if they're going to continue with the external next year. Um we'll have that option but we we have this year. Thank you. Any other questions? Mr. Eard, how long have we been using Skyward? Skyward, I wouldn't know. Skyward um is so Skyward's actually Wisconsin company based out of Steven's Point. Um they have probably 98% of the Wisconsin market. Um but they are also prominent um in at least 20 other states. So they're they're from a financial software, they're one of probably two or three kind of leaders in that space. Yeah. I'm just curious on here because just from your statements and sounds like the progress we've made to get to here, we didn't have necessarily in the past of the way it's starting to match up

142and the not only the right sizing, but using data that gets us here versus what we've done prior to you or Mazoski and what the districts had. We wouldn't have known a lot of this if this were five or 10 years ago or 20 years ago. But we have a foundation now using data to keep us on track to see these things well advanced to give you really good uh you know actionable data that you can plan with. Yeah. The the other benefit is the tools we're using now are replicable. So um there was a time in probably most school districts where the the only person that maybe had the budget or knew what it was was a business official. um at best in a spreadsheet, you know, in in the olden days on a

143ledger um that that and when that person left it's like all that knowledge is gone. Um John Mack is a friend of mine and he he he is exceptional like he he could run circles around me and excel in some of the stuff he did. Um, but there was so much knowledge that he'd been here so long that we lost so much knowledge when he left and it's taken us so I'm sorry. And in systems. Yeah. Yeah. So, we've had to rebuild that knowledge in systems and putting it in a place now that it's more easily uh rep replicable by relying on the software a bit more. Mr. Mors, I always tell the story. I think everyone John Mack is the former CFO three CFOs ago now and was here for many many years. When

144I was in Miss Elazosk's role 20 some odd years ago we Mr. Mack and I would literally sit down with the staffing plan at the time it was a book and we would go through it line by line with a ruler and in pencil. So what we're describing now is that from a digital standpoint, Miss Elazoski and her team and Mr. Eker and his team have done this. Your your your question is absolutely 100% accurate in that the level of accuracy we have now will make the estimates that we have to make with the 2526 budget that much more u refined. Yeah. Okay. Take one more question then I'll start wrapping up. Um, so just to re reaffirm that then if if you were to become incapacitated for any length of time, your processes and

145systems would be easily assimilated by somebody else because you've now done the hard work. we are in a system that sounds like we should have no problem finding somebody to to at least be able to navigate interim or maybe we have someone in house that is able to do that. I just want to make sure we're not we're not talking about this new process and giving it you know giving it a lot of weight and and forgetting about it and then realizing we still I want to make sure we're decoupled from person. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you're great. So, I was like, "That's my job security." Um, uh, so the the great news about Skyward is because it's used in almost every Wisconsin school district, that part is easy for just about anybody to pick up.

146Uh, the new monthly tool we're using, um, Jess is also trained in. So, we we now we now have backup systems in the business office, too. Thank you. Thank you. Um, thank you very much for the report. We will move to strategic goals for high quality staff. Good evening all. I need to share this. Very grateful for Corey staying with us during all of these meetings and his and his colleagues. Um uh I'm happy to be back in front of you this evening uh going over for the second and final time um our staffing plans for the 202526 school year. As we've discussed previously, um these plans are really the culmination of developing a plan with Scott from a financial perspective on where we can be in the organization, working with our academic performance team

147and people and family supports teams and building the supports that we want to provide um for students um in our schools. and then working with our um with our principles and administrators on um on who we need to hire to make sure we have the right people in place when our students arrive in the fall. Uh since we met last time, um the um the staffing plan has a number of updates. Um on literally Friday afternoon, we finalized or at least preliminarily finalized teacher placements. Um you've heard uh much conversation um this evening uh related to uh transitions in numbers of sections um by school um by virtue of being first in the alphabet. The example I pulled up for you right now is um is Eisenhower Elementary School um where again we had some

148changes in sections based on projected class sizes. Um so we knew that uh with Mr. Stein we had to do some movement. Um there were two teachers that have um other positions in the district not at Eisenhower uh for next year based on what we projected to be um the the enrollment change uh again just because they our staff members don't have positions in one school. We've been very fortunate through attrition to go ahead and find uh positions for them in other places and we um we work through that as as carefully and um supportively as we can. Uh so the um the draft teacher staffing plan across all of our all of our schools uh shows FTE as well as teachers who are again preliminarily in those assignments. Uh we will continue to have

149some staffing changes and we'll continue to have some movement um as we move through um uh the end of the 2425 school year and through the summer. Uh we are still finalizing that level of detail with the educational operational staffing plan which are non-eing positions uh including um education assistants including administrative assistants, administrators, etc. Um I updated for you um class sizes uh primarily at the elementary level. Um, in addition to the um the lockep system that Scott and I, um, are um are finalizing, um, I'm also working with Luke's team and the people and family supports division as well as our academic performance data team to go ahead and have, uh, regular updates in terms of enrollment, uh, in district transfers, um, tuition waiverss, etc. Uh and so our the accuracy of our enrollment

150data um is is never seen before. Um and we have again solid systems in place so that if any of us get hit by a bus, which I hope certainly that doesn't happen, um the systems would be able to stay in place. Um and we would we would be able to successfully operate the organization and what our plans were moving forward. As you can see, um, over these last three years of comparative class sizes, uh, we are still maintaining very small class sizes. We know that when we look at comparisons in the Milwaukee metro area, Watossa boasts very small class sizes. Um, middle school and high school class sizes. Again, we see that uh, the the projected year ahead as well as the past two school years. Um, very sound class sizes. Um in the

151um in the staffing proposal, we've talked quite a bit about the FTE reduction that we proposed. Uh this is a summary of where those FTE um started. Uh the the primary reason for making these FTE reductions at the elementary and secondary schools was to go ahead and maintain the target class size that we established with the projected enrollment. At the district level, uh we again looked for um you know, one of the areas is speech and language. We're seeing a significant decrease over the past two years in the number of students who require speech and language services in the organization. Uh and so based on the recommendation from director Stacy Clem, we were able to make a reduction in that space. Um as well as then other reductions not only from a financial standpoint but

152organizationally, how can we continue to be more efficient? Uh updates. Um since uh we last spoke um I shared with you um some of the teacher assignment updates that included um the STEM for all elementary elective which we are uh which has been named discovery lab um teachers uh those teachers have been placed and are assigned um there's a lot of excitement around that work um as well as in the FTE shifts that I mentioned earlier um we also um have been continuing to monitor class sizes and So as we see if class sizes are above what we would see as a as a preferred class size range um but not yet at the minimum class size of 15, we have added within our staffing plan educational assistance. Um I mentioned previously that we have

153a contingency of staffing that we can add as we see changes because of the addition of some educational assistance where needed. The contingency is around 2.0 FTE right now. Um so uh that has shrunk a bit um but we still have a contingency um to address uh future needs as we see them. Uh finally from a next step standpoint um our target is to have contracts in teachers hands by May 15th. Um our uh goal is to have letters of reasonable assurance in the hands of our hourly um staff members um right around um Memorial Day. Uh and then we'll also be bringing forward a proposal for you related to compensation for the 2526 school year for our different employee groups. Um uh between now and the end of the school year, uh we had

154one negotiation session with our Wawaossa Education Association that represents our teachers continuing to talk about when we look at total compensation benefits and salary. um uh what what is the preferred way to go ahead and offer that to offer competitive benefits and competitive salary as well. So that is something that will be coming forth with are there any questions? Oops. We have a lot of questions. Great. Um so I thought I saw it I thought in a report from the last meeting but is the 1530 sort of guide used for our JK and SK students as well. So when so you need 30 students to create that second SE section in a school. Yep. So minimum class size is used for all grade levels up through 12th grade of 15 uh again is a minimum

155class size. In JK, we use a minimum class size of 12 in capstone classes. In capstone classes, thank you. So, if the minimum class size for JK is 12, then is the number that we need for another section uh 24 or is it still 30? Uh no, for JK and again uh capstone class sizes would be less than 15. So, um we would we would offer two sections when we reached 24. I would just um I guess I don't know like propose or just put out there that I would like to see the threshold for senior kindergarten lowered as well. I think a lot of times our kiddos in SK are firsttime students in a school setting. Um we know that our teachers have um a lot of extra work on their plates because of

156act 20 especially in you know those early grades. So um most of our schools have that small SK but um Underwood really stands out with that class of 28. um that is a lot of four a lot of five and six-year-olds in a in a in a room and adding um an educational assistant that's a lot of bodies that's a lot of little bodies um and it's loud and so I don't know um I would just ask that we consider um using the same threshold with SK that we do for JK preferably um for me it would be like the first and second graders too because of act 20 I know it's unfunded mandate from the state, but um there is just a lot of extra things on our early childhood teachers um plates because

157of it. Um so that 28 bill really stands out at Underwood. I know it said if there's additional enrollments that it would be split, but that to me would be a great place to use that contingency um as we get closer to um the beginning of next school year. Mr. Dr. Eimala also had the choice to trade in his 1.5 educational assistance to split that class. In in speaking with him, he um and we've been speaking regularly, he is confident that they will um have the 30 to go ahead and split that into 15. And and thank you, Miss Himemer Rand. I I certainly hear your hear your request. Um sticking that Oh. Um can you explain more of the thinking behind the August 15th um date of not adding any additional teachers even if

158an increase in enrollment um would numbers wise make that yeah there are a couple considerations um one uh and actually uh Dr. means and I were just in a conversation today with a couple of our principles who elevated u the first area that I would highlight and one is that um we've been very successful these past few years in hiring um very high quality teachers. Part of the reason that we've been so successful in that space um is that we have been very strategic in terms of when we've gone out to hire. Um so admittedly uh I have pushed our teams to go ahead and have student registrations um earlier than in the past um so that then we can look at um enrollment data and staffing plan so that we can hire earlier. We're

159at least four weeks earlier in our hiring for teachers than we were when I started in the organization. And that has directly resulted in uh the quality of staff members um and the the quality of the candidate pools when we've been able to hire. So that's that's one. So once we start to get past July 15th, past the end of July, those candidate pools start to dwindle fairly significantly and the the top talent that we really want to hire is not as available. Uh and I think that was elevated previously. The second um is something that has really um been highlighted over time as well, and that's that by hiring um uh no later than August 15th, we're able to go ahead and have new staff members participate in our um extensive onboarding process. And

160that's a really significant way of that we're supporting staff members in being up to speed and ready to go at the start of the school year. employees that are hired after August 15th have a much harder um uptick or upswing to the start of the school year because they've not been able to engage in all of those very strategic, very intentional activities to prepare them for the start of the school year. We certainly try to do our best uh for those late hires. Um and based on the feedback we've had and what we've observed, we know it's just not the same experience. So those are the the two primary reasons that we've set that August 15th date. And maybe Mr. Pinumos, do we have a lot of um registrations after August 15th? Typically, I don't

161have the data in front of me. Will we continue to get enrollments and registration later than we'd like? It has improved over the last two years though. Excuse me. Thank you. And then I just have two more questions if that's okay. Okay. Um can you give a little bit more um description on what the STEM discovery lab positions will look like in each building? Uh so um I am probably not the best person to go ahead and describe that. Um uh Miss Jessica Eert um our uh director of curriculum um has worked extensively not only with Sarah Blash who is the um science curriculum coordinator um but our principles to go ahead and really envision um what the discovery lab will provide um to our elementary students. She would be way more um articulate and

162um and give you a better picture of what that would be. When you say what it looks like, what do you mean? That's what I was I'm thinking from a staffing perspective. Is that going to be like a licensed teacher? Oh, sorry. I misunders So, thank you for the clarification. I'm uh I um I interpreted your question to be what are what what is it? What's the classroom side going to look like? Um from a staffing perspective, oh, way in my wheelhouse. Um from a staffing perspective, um that is an elementary licensed teacher. We have a lot of flexibility in terms of what the certification can be. um uh typically speaking um and um uh based on the amount of instruction that's provided to students um uh at the grade level that is a shared

163position across buildings. Um the only thing I think it would be great if um some of our teachers in the STEM schools if they like are they given priority for those positions or are they put into the pool with other um applicants for those positions and have you considered giving any sort of stipend like we do with like our DEI advocates in our schools for that position? So the the the new Discovery Lab teachers are all individuals who are currently employed by us, we had I think of the six people who we've hired, two are coming from Houston. Um so they they are coming from that experience. Um it would be difficult for us to give them a stipen for their dayto-day job um because they they have chosen to take on a new um

164a new course of study to teach. Um, I had the chance to to uh visit Roosevelt last week and met one of the teachers that we've hired for Discovery Lab that's a current classroom teacher who said, "I'm ecstatic that I'm going to be one of the new Discovery Lab teachers and she was going on sharing with me that she shared with her family who are all in the science um, in the STEM world that they couldn't they couldn't believe that our school district was actually teaching this as a special for all of our children. So I I think what we projected as what we were excited about in terms of candidates within applying for the job actually came true. We had more internal candidates than we had positions. Is that accurate, Miss? It is. And

165the reason part of the reason we looked internally for candidates um for that position uh was because we knew we have you know great talent um in our staff members. And two, based on the shifts in FTE, we also wanted to go ahead and use attrition to go ahead and reduce sections as much as possible and and we've been successful. Um uh there were there are only a very few uh reductions um that we're making. They're not at the elementary level. The last thing I will just um hope that we can find money in the budget eventually to have more than one academic and career planning coordinator um because I think that is um an area that I am talking about all the time with Dr. means um where I think that our district can

166um improve with our career and post SE you know post high school planning. Um so just I wanted to throw it out there that if we could you know find it in our budget to have two at least you know one at each high school I think that would be fantastic and thank you for all of your work on this plan it's wonderful. Thank you Miss Anyone else? Sure. Um, speaking on behalf of the strategic planning committee, I would totally echo what you're saying. One of our primary concerns right now has been really the um lack of meaningfulness, for lack of a better term, in the um ACP career portfolio. And I think we would all agree that a second coordinator would improve that. Anyone else? Yes, Jason. Um, so at the end here, we're

167we're talking brass tax. We're looking at 94.82 FTS. So 90.4 million roughly. I think that's probably a little high because there's about um uh just under 300 of the FTE are non-eing positions. Um so but I think if if you're uh if you're throwing a dart at the at the board, you're pretty close. FTE measurement is variable or uh if you're equating it to um dollars. So that the FTE is is is the flat number if if you're multiplying each FTE by $100,000 from budgetary standpoint. I don't know if that I haven't done the math to see if that's a um just out of curiosity, how many FTES would did we have last for this current year? And I know I'm putting you on the spot if you don't know what this uh about 15.5

168more. [Music] We cut we cut approximately 15.5 FTE. I did not write the number down. That it only stuck out to me because we've got the salaries and benefits budgeted for this year for roughly 84.3 million. And I see the I'm just doing the quick math the 94 and thinking oh 90 million worth the six you six per or 6 million added to it if we're just doing that. But you're saying no that's not um the 100 the 94 is not going to equate to 90 million. It's going to be underneath that. Our our you mind if I jump in? Please, I our our overall salaries and benefits budget I think will be slightly less next year uh if not maybe right around where the current year is um after the reductions in force due

169to open enrollment. Um what I think what Sarah was saying is the average number that we use for a teacher with benefits is about $100,000. Um that's about is it 627 is that? And so the remaining 620 well uh when it's all said and done like 620 hours correct. So okay so one of them I would multiply times 100,000 the other one probably some other number yeah less that's hourly people who who range from summer school year only for instance um and then there's obviously various ranges of pay too. It's a much it's a much uh wider group in terms of like salary ranges. But I appreciate I you know what Scott and I would say is that what you what what you threw out there was the equivalent of what we call napkin math.

170And you know when we always say the equivalent of a teacher position is $100,000. We understand how you've made that connection. It's just that's difficult to do with the entire staffing plan. Sure. But I think the the community at large, if we've been pushing that narrative, then anyone any layman out there like myself would see from 94 that's $90 million. That's that's a lot. So, um, just to be able to say on record, no, the the total overall FTEES do not you you do not multiply them times 100,000 and get get the budget. It's a little bit more complex than that. Um, but if you want to do some napkin math for smaller numbers or regular teacher positions, yes, a fine estimate. That's why if you notice what Scott and Sarah and I will always

171say are, we will say approximately 70 to 75% of our overall budget goes towards people and personnel. And that will continue to be the case. That's why this action item this evening is so important because once we have a staffing plan that locks in for Mr. Ecker's um development 70 to 75% of of that entire 25 26 school year budget I have a couple questions as well um if no one else does. Uh Mr. Eert already alluded to the reason why we are having staffing uh cuts and reduction is the link to open enrollment and not necessarily over budgeting or anything having to do with the referendum or state funding. Uh is that accurate? Yes. Um that is also linked to the question that uh Miss Himer Morland indicated is that we also locked in

172if we're moving away from open enrollment to forcibly split classes which has been the practice prior to this coming year. Um we're going to have to hold to the 15 to 30 classroom like class size, right? Um, and that is the fallout from that decision that was made by the board in January. And I'm not critiquing or trying to throw shade or anything. That's just the decision that was made. Okay. How is that being communicated to teachers? And you, it might be Miss Tunnel that should be answering this, but how is that being communicated to families, teachers, um, staff in general? Um so uh Miss Tuttle uh and our myself and our cabinet team um has uh worked on some ideas to go ahead and help illustrate um the staffing reduction and the reason behind

173it to staff members. So, we'll actually, you know, while I've I've been uh talking about it during all of my school visits, uh talking about it uh with um with our meet and confer groups, um we are sending um something uh a more formal communication to staff members uh relating the reduction in FTE um to the reduction in open enrollment and um including introduc or excuse me um tuition waiver students um so that there's more of a correlary as well. um crystal ball time like how does that look over the course of the next several years uh as we continue to wind down open enrollment? May I please my crystal ball is notoriously behind your crystal ball your crystal ball is cloudy. Um so I I we appreciate the question Mr. Ber, let me start

174by saying when we discussed the communication, there's a perception in the community that there would be a windfall with the successful passage of the operational referendum. That's technically not 100% true because of the the district's decision to invest in hiring more staff uh specifically with our social emotional learning specialists with the mental health specialists um with uh Mr. Eker and I were reviewing where we made a lot of additions. our special education uh teaching staff has grown by 20 to 24 staff over the last three years. Um and so that's had an impact on the the transfer of money coming from CH from fund 10 to 27. All those different pressure points in addition to historically we were not uh budgeting for special education transportation although we knew it was there. We were not budgeting

175for the overage that we would historically have in in legal fees, but we we were doing it anyway or substitute teachers. And then the other component that I want to just make sure the community knows is that the demand that we were receiving, the board were was receiving from staff was saying we need compensation increases now. We need to split classes now. The fact that we used fund balance now means that when we short-term borrow, there is approximately, and I'll defer to Mr. Decker if I don't get the number right, approximately a million dollar additional fee that we're paying because we use fund balance. But the message we were receiving internally and externally was we can't wait. Um you we're losing staff, our retention rates are really low. And so we tried to act and

176and we I think when we met with the union last week we indicated that on average in the last three years our the average salary increases 20 26% 26% the average salary increase is 26%. So while we understand there's angx and there's going to always be angx in an organization the the the the difficult part for us administratively is that we have hurt people we've we've given on average a 26% salary increase we have the lowest class sizes based on missansky's analysis of other class sizes in the metropolitan area we wanted positions to assist with school climate issues like deans of students and social emotional learning specialists. So, we believe that we've been responsive. We we know that the board uh the language that you've used is you've made an investment, but just keep in

177mind what Mr. Eer and I would tell you from a financial standpoint is just keep in mind that those that investment we we were in essence living as if we passed a referendum prior to the referendum passing. And so at some point you have to pay back what you've utilized. Um and I think we have we've shared with you after the referendum passed in November. Um we continue to to know that we have a plan to replenish the fund bal the fund um the fund balance. But we just need to all make sure that the community knows that we we have to at some point we can't continue to use the credit card. We can't continue to use the fund balance. I hope that answers the question. Absolutely. The last question I had um sorry

178and this might be more of a question for uh Mr. Pinion is the reduction of FTEES at Fiser level. Um a couple of them are combining responsibilities. Um, how do we make sure that those responsibilities aren't being dropped or lost as we increase responsibilities of the leadership at Fiser? Sorry, I got probably not starting to let Mr. I see he's pondering. So, I'll I'll I'll start and then let him uh begin. I I we know that we we made the tough decision and I I've talked about it at board meetings that we've made the tough decision of having conversations with two district administrators ahead of their contracts concluding. Um that is not usual. Um but we wanted to get out ahead of the the the very loud call of we need to reduce the district

179uh administrative team. Those two reductions allows us to get back to our district administrative investment of FTE where we were uh during the 2021 2022 school year. Um the one position that has been identified of not continuing is the director of diversity and inclusion. Um and we do believe that that's a responsibility for everyone. And it was a tough decision because it was either that either reducing that position or eliminating the newly created director of student success. It's really interesting that we just talked about adding a second academic and career planning coordinator because Dr. Daryl Hansen will um be assuming that role on a temporary basis next year. But Emily Okconor was a strong partner with Cindy Carter, who is our academic and career planning coordinator. That position we never had before. We never had

180someone who oversaw our counselors and our social workers and and so we do believe that by having that position, while we don't have a second uh academic and career planning coordinator, we do believe that when you have someone of Dr. Hansen's uh ability or Miss Okconor's ability that that does become uh what what Malik referenced which is everyone uh adults, staff members, students are saying that we need to do a better job in providing academic and career planning for students which is a mandate at the state level. We're supposed to have those plans in place for young people starting in the sixth grade. But Mr. Pinion, please take over. Um that's hard to follow. Um, I guess the the short answer to your question, Mr. Bowers, is you do it very thoughtfully, and you have

181to know the role. So, know the work that they're engaged in, what it looks like, where their time is spent, um, days, nights, um, who their stakeholders are. So, really understanding that, and as hard as these conversations are, um, doing them with care, compassion, and the utmost respect for what they've brought to the system and the change that they've made, and giving them some voice in that process, too. Thank you. I have no further questions. Thank you. I miss anyone. Okay. Sorry. Can I May I ask a Sure. Can I ask a question, please? So, thinking about some frustrations that were voiced earlier today, when administrators make decisions about trades that they're going to make, [Music] um, how how are those decisions made? Are they just made unilaterally by a building leader or how do

182what sort of consultation or collaboration goes into those? Um I would say that um so we had um we had several schools um who had considerations like that to make. I think each each one of the schools probably entered into that decision-m um a little bit differently. Um but the idea that there was um collaboration with staff members who you know who were involved you know in like you know do you want to teach a class of 28 do you want to teach a class of 26 whether it was I think the examples that we have are SK um and then there's a fourth grade class as well um but so uh discussion conversation you know looking at the needs of the whole building um and well ultimately the you know the the principle in

183working with Dr. Means and myself um you know like we're making the final decision um um that that principal is is engaging the school community um in that discussion. I think the the model Sarah that that we're really proud of which is something that we created this year is we wanted to give principles the option. You know, I think in the past Sarah and I have put these plans together in in multiple places and it becomes the district staff plan staffing plan and and that's not a healthy place to be for any organization. So what we what we wanted to to do is not to place principles in the middle, but we wanted to give them greater voice. And principles that are really skilled, they they would say, "Thank you for that opportunity." And then

184they would go back to either their school leadership team or their faculty or both. Um and then they would also work in conjunction with their PTA or PTO leaders um to keep them up to date. Um and and in some we we talked about Underwood earlier. Mr. Abdalah said I don't I'm not I'm not going to use that chip of an educational assistant. I'm he said in instead please give me a van. Give me a school district van. I'm going to drive around the neighborhood and I'm going to knock on doors and I'm going to find those two kids and then I'm going to force you school district to split the class. That was his perspective, right? Absolutely. Other principles said, "No, I don't want to take that risk. I'm going to split this right

185now so I can reassure my community that we're we're in a in a a good place." And so every principal is different and and I think candidly I'm really proud of the fact that we empowered our principles to have those those conversations and and how you know so Sarah to your point how they looked and how they were conducted looked a little different based on each person in terms of the diversity of the school community. Yeah. Great. Absolutely. Um the the the idea that we empower principles to be part of the decision-making to really look at the needs of their particular school and to hear um you know what their considerations are um has been very powerful and and again it it feels much better to go ahead and step back and say hey while

186we have to have from a financial standpoint and a consistency standpoint for the organization some some method to how all of these decisions are made you as principles have some autonomy and some empowerment to say and this is what my building needs even down to the August 15th deadline. It's there. It was there. I want to be very clear because I don't know I appreciate that question. I in fact I was uh I was at a Arbor Day event with the mayor earlier today and I was talking to a principal and I said I just want to make sure I'm going into a board meeting tonight. I want to make sure we're we're all on the same page on this August 15th deadline. And the principal said absolutely. He said, "In my experience, the only

187time, and we said it in unison, the only time you get a a star teacher post August 15th is when someone is moving new to the community and they don't know how to get into applicant pools and they just they happen to be an amazing teacher that wasn't either ready to teach yet or the timing wasn't right." It it's for all the reasons that Miss Elazoski shared, not only the the candidate pool shrinks, but also you reduce the ability to onboard someone really well with the August 15 um deadline. So, there are still options to make shifts with these like the um these trades up to that August 15th deadline. We've empowered principles to to make these these decisions and they they have the right to make those decisions. Um so yes. Okay. Yes. I

188I think I think what we're what we're hearing from principles is that they've made their decisions. They've engaged their their school communities, which then Sarah says this better than I I do. anytime you have a staffing plan, there will always be one school that has the highest class size. Um, and and we we wish we could we don't have an unlimited amount of funding to address it to we can bring it even if we brought it down to a certain level, there will always be someone who will be the highest. Um, and so that's tough. And and I would be remiss if I didn't say and partially what we've heard in the community is part of the factors that led us to utilizing fund balance. It was it was part of the factors that led

189us to there's a level of urgency of people wanting us to act maybe prior to the passage of a referendum because I think there is angst and an anxiety to a certain degree. And so what Mr. Edgar would say the language he would use is and this is where applying fiscal discipline. This is what it looks like and is uncomfortable at times and it the path of least resistance for us administratively and for you as a board would be to say yes that that that would be the path that we would all prefer. Um, but as a community, being heard doesn't mean that we have to agree. Being heard means we've heard you. Here's the logic of why we can't address your request. And it doesn't mean that we didn't hear you or that you

190the position that you're pro your pro you're you're you're sharing with us is not a valid one. It's just that administratively we can't we would love let me and let me say it very clearly and I'm the first to tell you um I would love to say yes to everything right and and I think the board would like to say yes to everything and and it's it's uncomfortable for us to say no but what we've learned is that we do have a really good handle on where we are now financially we do have a really good handle on our staffing plan now And what that's going to necessitate is us being tight. The last thing I'll say, I know Dr. Worley wants us to move on, but what I would say is this, and you

191may have heard it, but for new board members, there was a perception in the past and and it it had a name in the organization internally where staff members have told Mr. Earim and Zelazoski and I that in the past there was something called [Music] KOF and and what what would happen is people knew that if you just advocated just a little bit harder, if you just asked one more time that district leader, the people that were in our seats prior to us, there was something called poof to the point where our predecessors would put contingency to the side to then say yes to everything. When when we are now in this position where we can't that we don't have poof and we can't say yes to everything, that doesn't mean that we don't see

192the value in it. It just means that we're trying. It's is really ironic. This past summer when everyone was saying be fiscally more conservative and and and and focused, this is what it looks like. Um and so we're prepared to do it. We don't take pleasure in it. Um because we know we're disappointing some people. Um but we know that all the excitement that we had a few minutes ago when Mr. Eert made his presentation on where we are financially, if we want that to continue, we have to stay disciplined. Did I don't Did I capture it? Miss was asking and is it fair to say as we wrap this up um given some things that we've heard that beyond the staffing plan and without using there are ways that the district targets its resources

193throughout the school year to support schools that are facing particular struggles. Yes, ma'am. Yes. Yes. And we're and to Mr. Decker's point that he stated earlier and we're looking at every every dollar that we spend. So, while on a $und00 million budget, someone may say, "Well, okay, you save $5,000 in in in banking uh services, the way that I interpret that is, but with $5,000, maybe we can send two teachers to a conference now or or maybe now um an academic specialist can buy the resource books that so that $5,000 while it may not sound large, it is." And depending on the situation, if I if I had $5,000 more to give to APSY, um that could make the difference between a student or two going to the trip without having to pay or not.

194So, every dollar does count to to a to a a degree. Thank you. So, we're going to close um questions and discussion and move to our action item. Okay. It is recommended that the school board approve prelim preliminary staffing plan teacher and educational operational and ISO move. May I have a second? Second. Miss Summers, please call the role. Miss Bzinski? Yes. Mr. Bower? Yes. Miss Bach? Yes. Mr. Morris? Yes. Miss Rolland? Yes. Dr. Worley? Yes. Mr. Wadier? Yes. The motion passes. So on to B in this section. Action to approve the 202526 teacher contract changes including a preliminary financial non-renewals and salary changes. We have anything we need to discuss questions? Um I would so uh as part of the process to go ahead and reduce contracts in Wisconsin um a preliminary and final non-renewal

195notice are are part of that statutoily defined process. Uh following uh if you approve the preliminary notices this evening, I will follow up with these employees and notify of them them of the steps involved. Uh these are financial non-renewal notices for decisions that we've made based on enrollment and student registrations. Uh they are not performance-based. If we have other staffing changes between now and the end of the year that allow us to go ahead and place these individuals within the staffing plan that you just approved, uh that is a process we would engage in. Thank you. Any questions? All right. Seeing none, um we will move to um hearing the motion. It is recommended that the school board approve the 2526 teacher contract changes including preliminary financial non-renewals and salary changes. I so move. May

196I have a second? Second. Miss Silvers, 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 carries. I move to letter C. Action to approve the 202527 administrative contract for Patrick Creel as associate principal of Longfellow Middle School effective July 1, 2025 for 221 days per year and an annual annual salary of $95,446. Uh board members who continued from last year would um would recall that Mr. Creel was the interim associate principal at Longfellow. We were very fortunate uh in permanently filling the position to have very strong internal and external applicants. After a rigorous uh selection process, um uh Miss Porter recommended that we continue with Mr. Creel in that capacity. It has been um a

197great opportunity these past few months and she's really excited about the future for Longfellow as we are all. Thank you. He's a pro proud proud uh Walto East graduate. He is um longtime member of the Roosevelt faculty. So as a school counselor as a school counselor um and I think it just speaks to the the dean of students uh position creating a bench of for our talent for our talent. I mean, in the past, we would have lost these people and then we would hope that they would come back to us. I think we're developing a a deeper bench by by having the the dean position. So, we're we're excited for Patrick from board members. Any questions or comments? Seeing none, move to um the motion, please. It is recommended that the school board approve

198the 2025 to 2027 administrative contract for Patrick Creel as associate principal of Longfellow Middle School effective July 1st, 2025 for 221 days per year at an annual salary of $95,446 and I so moved. May I have a second? Second. I'm going to call that for Jason. It's a good call. Miss Summers, please call the RO. Miss Bzinski, yes. Mr. Bower, yes. Miss Bach, yes. Mr. Morris, yes. Miss Rand, yes. Dr. Worley, yes. Mr. Wattier, yes. And the motion carries. Moving to letter D. Action to approve the 202527 administrative contract for Matthew Trillo and associate principal of Whitman Middle School effective July 1, 2025 for 221 days per year at an annual salary of $96,446. Thank you. Um, similarly, uh, Mr. Troyo started, uh, in the Wawaossa School District around the winter of, uh, 2023 in

199one of the newly creative created dean of students positions at Whitman. Uh, he served in that position well. He stepped into the interim role as a, uh, interim associate principal this past winter. um and uh distinguished his work um as well as the support he could provide to Whitman uh very soundly and is coming to this recommendation now with um with a through a very rigorous process. Um the school as well as Miss Dionich are excited to have him continue in this capacity. Thank you. If I may just I think you're being modest. I think uh Matt has also been one of our best recruiters. um he he comes to us from the Milwaukee Academy of Science and the number of staff members that he has um shared with um his former colleagues of saying

200there's good things happening in Wulsa come over and work with us. I think Miss Dionich would say Whitman has profited and the district has profited. Sarah, I see that up for you. Yes, thank you. Uh Matt is one of our best recruiters. Uh we appreciate his contributions and the wide net that he casts. And I would also say that um individuals he is he has recruited have found a really nice home here in Wawaossa. Thank you board members. Any questions or comments? Okay. Seeing none, if you will read the motion, please. Mhm. It is recommended that the school board approve the 2025 to 27 administrative contract for Matthew Matthew Troy Lo as associate principal of Whitman Middle School effective July 1st, 2025 for 22 21 days per per year at an annual salary of 96,446.

201And I so move. May I have a second? Second. There you go. Summers, please call the vote. Miss Bzinski? Yes. Mr. Bower, yes. Miss Bach, yes. Mr. Morris. Yes. Miss Rolland. Yes. Dr. Worley. Yes. Mr. Wadier. Yes. The motion carries. And thank you for all of your work. So, we move to um our number seven, board governance. Uh we have one item under that to discuss tonight which is just to go over um schoolboard graduation participation and make sure that everyone has the information that they need. Yes, thank you Dr. Worley. High school graduation is one of the most important events we hold in a school district. Um it it is supposed to hold reverence in our community and and have all the pomp and circumstance um that it deserves. Um, we host our high

202school graduations at the Waltosa West Field because we do not have uh any indoor facility um to host that type of um event where we can gather that large of a crowd. And so we we hope uh that we will have pleasant weather the evening of Friday, June 13th and then again in the uh late morning early afternoon of Saturday um June 14th. You may be wondering why does Waltosa East have their graduation at Waltosa West? Um due to some of the fees that were being applied in the use of Hart Park, uh we shifted um we shifted things over to um Waltosa West and and in a cost savings matter me measure to to make sure that we could um control the environment ourselves. Um it's important for board members to be present for

203graduation because what I read um to the community is that you the board you are endorsing those individuals who are coming across the stage. You are saying that they have met the requirements uh to to uh claim that they are either a Waltosa East or Waltosa West graduate. Um and and so it is it's our hope that um many of you can be present u for one or both of the ceremonies on the 13th and 14th. Any questions from board members? And Dr. Worley, we have a present for you. Um we have the diplomas um for for you to sign. Um it's maybe in the future we we can um we can have the electric uh um signature have always taken the approach that uh the young people who have met the the requirements to

204graduate. They deserve absolutely an actual signature. Um so um we we we want to gift that to you um and and give that to you. We we do want to uh we'll we'll try to put it on the next um agenda so we can act on who will be at those um events because Miss Summers, she's getting anxious. We like to get the the cap and gown information for board members right away. So, if you are going to be there, then we would want to make sure that we get you sized up through just to to get um your cap and gown orders ready. Did right, Miss Summers? That's correct. And it's also nice to have a discussion to um we might not all of us go to both graduations, but it's nice to make

205sure we have a solid presence at both of them so we can have that as part of the discussion as well. We do post both of them and and some board members may not want to be on stage. You may want to just be in the audience and that's okay too. Um but so we do post both uh events. If a board member is on stage, what do they typically do? They they you actually uh hand the the young people the graduates their diplomas and you shake their hand. Can we request certain graduates like if we had our own children walking across the stage? We managed that last year. I we would be disappointed if you don't. I had a child and we divided the alphabet up in such a way that that was possible.

206We would be disappointed. So just make sure that we are aware. Excellent. think you have to run both ways though, right? I get one and then run over the other side. Yeah, I can I'll do it. Yeah, I did have to rely on other people to get those extra photos from, you know, a distance, but it worked out. Okay. Well, thank you very much. Um, we will move to our favorite agenda item of the evening. Um, no, I'm just kidding. Uh, number eight. Um, we are moving to adjourn. Um, the time is 9:15 p.m. May I have a motion to adjurnn, please? I move to adjurnn. May I have a second? Second. Would you please call the role? Miss Bzinski? Yes. Mr. Bower? Yes. Miss Bach? Yes. Mr. Morris? Yes. Miss Hmer Rand? Yes. Dr.

207Worley? Yes. Mr. Wadier? Yes. Motion passes.