001good evening everyone I call the March 10th 2025 Schoolboard meeting to order it is 6:01 p.m we are in conference room SE of the Fisher Administration Building at 12121 West North Avenue Miss Summers please cor Mr Morris here Dr Hoy here Mr Ward here Dr Worley here miss hmer Rolland here Mr Meyer here Dr Jessa Binger here we do have quum this evening thank you everyone for being here and online tonight um we will begin with an opportunity for public comment members of The W chosa School Board value the input of students parents staff members and community members the board's regularly scheduled meetings provide an opportunity for opinions and concerns to be expressed publicly the board values all comments and will respectfully consider this input in decision- making the board requests that individuals limit their
002comment on each item to 3 minutes following any comment an individual board member May respond on the issue raised however it is not the intent of the public comment portion of the agenda for the board to enter into debate with a member or members of the community because non-agenda items are not publicly posted in advance no item no action will be taken on public comment regarding non-agenda items this evening um Mr Morris if you can plan to uh do do a three minute timer uh and Dr Ho if you can note our 30 minutes is there any public comment this evening hi Sarah Sarah luran 2445 nor 91st Street um I'm coming to public comment for the time since 2023 to voice my opinion about how the W how wosa elects school board members in
003January of 2024 I presented a petition as per the state statute signed by over 500 wosa residents to have the question placed on the ballot should the current system of numbered wossa School Board seeds be changed to a purely atlarge system yes or no as you are aware the election of wossa school board officials is done at by an atlarge election with a numbered post system the atlarge seats are numbered and candidates compete for each numbered seat the seats are Citywide and not specific to an area of the district a yes vote to this referendum would eliminate the numbered vote system and change it to a strictly atlarge election an atlarge seat is one that represents the entire city and gets voted on by everyone of the over 400 Wisconsin school district districts there are
004fewer than five that do not elect their members strictly at large in 1994 while wosa voted to change from a purely atlarge election to the numbered post system if this referendum passes it would reverse that change I decided to bring this issue forward out of my concern in previous elections that some Schoolboard candidates ran uncontested for their seats while their seats were contested in fact in the last 10 School Board races only two have had all the seats contested four had some contested and some not contested and four had no seats contested at all in addition I've heard the numbered system often misin misinterpreted by community members as being representative of specific areas of town which it is not so I decided to bring this out of my concern that the current numbered system was
005confusing and as a member of the wossa community I am looking for Schoolboard members who align with your North Star and are interested in Universal goals and opportunities for all students in the district regardless of if they live on the east side or west side and as a constituent I want to hear from all the candidates if this system is adopted from the community I expect to have information from all candidates and hope it will also encourage diversity by attracting more people to run and serve on the board and it is my understanding dror means that today or by today the school district was going to put some information on the website yes we are a little delayed but by the end of this we we will definitely have uh information that community members can
006be better informed about the referendum that's on the the ballot great thank you yes ma'am may I ask a question yes um Dr means for that information that goes to the website a question came to me today someone asked well if this passes does that mean we won't have primary elections and my answer was well that kind of information would be helpful because somebody did ask me today so if we have we have four open seats this spring what if nine people filed papers would there be a primary and I don't answer if we're proving tell you that so I'm sure you can but I'm not promoting either way I'm just saying if we're going to put information up that is a question that was presented to me today right and so that is actually
007a state statute um and so if there is a tie this um it would be if we have more than two people like running for each seat like if it's three seats available and there were seven people running then there would be a primary and all the people would run primary and another question that I saw in the media for other school districts in the past is that three seats now are for three-year terms and one seat is for the final year of a three-year term how would it work in that situation that's also a state statute that's okay that's fine people with all those actual State and the with those rules because I'm not going to promote either way here I'm not GNA practice law and state statutes so and and quote statutes I'm
008going to say these are interesting questions I've seen for informational purposes but now we know people can read the statutes or they can read what Dr means puts on the website yeah okay there's also a statute if there's a tie oh okay then it would go to a draw but yeah but I was glad to find all those statutes um don't have to make it Dr Lauren yes sorry you thank you for your work on putting this uh anyone who's gather signatures knows that it's a lot of work to do this where you're just trying to put a question out for the community to consider and to get 500 uh signatures on on that is is a lot of work so thank you thank you for doing everything you've done to uh call this important
009question for our community and also happy birthday thank you and thank you and I I hope it inspires others if they see things that don't feel right to make a change you know to advocate for a change so and I hope the community does read what's on the website and gets the information and makes the decision that feels right for them so thank you thank you for your service anyone else in the room this evening have any public comment seeing none Jamie anything online there are no hands raised with that we will close our public comment for the evening uh we will next move into our consent agenda are there any items in the consent agenda which board members would like to remove for separate discussion and action I just had one question for clarification
010does need to be removed we've had sometimes um questions from community members about whether um when we make expenditures whether these um agreements have gone through uh competitive bidding process and it's my understanding from the materials that um that was the case but sometimes I think community members have missed that because we put it on the consent agenda um or don't ourselves talk about it and that so the example would be the it decisions and it says in there that that they were competitively selected I just wanted to clarify that um anytime we make those kinds of financial decisions um contracts it might just be good for us to clarify that there's been I mean it's clear but it's not clear unless you spend a lot of time reading thank you for lifting that is
011yes ma'am they we competitive any other board comments or questions simar question about the Ed staff contract so we use Ed staff to um hire our teachers and substitut is that our substitute teachers and it's a renewal of that contract and now what Miss I don't want to steal the Thunder that M was asking wants to share um so uh edist staff is one of a small number of staffing agencies um that are successful at securing helping school districts secure Subs um edust staff is the only um substitute staffing agency that allowed the district to maintain its own Cadre of substitutes which we've had for a very long time as well as being a partner in the future we're actually very excited to see the the three-year um agreement with no rate increase um because
012we've really been pleased with our substitute fill rates and the partnership that we have with Ed staff um I wanted to draw attention to the donation from the uh Roosevelt PTA um it is rare that we go through uh any consent agenda where we are not receiving um donation to The District or school on some item and so thank you to all those working really hard um to uh both give back to raise funds and to support education um as a preview uh efw will be doing its black and white Gala again I believe this may uh maybe Saturday of Mother's Day weekend uh great opportunity to uh attend and help raise funds for kids in our schools any final comments or questions from the board Miss Summers C may have a motion uh think
013I've been doing this long enough I wouldn't forgot have forgotten motion uh may I have a motion to approve the consent agenda it is recommended that the school board approve the consent agenda and ISO move may have a second second thank you please call RA Mr Morris yes Dr Hoy yes Mr wer yes Dr Worley yes Miss Hammer Rand yes Mr Meyer yes Dr Jessa Banger yes the consent agenda passes we will next move into strategic goal four operations referendum Bond sale so um we will be selling our bonds for a referendum the first portion of those a week from tomorrow the 18th um we got some really good news today we uh if anyone follows Moody's which I would be surprised if anybody did but there was a press release from Moody's today they
014affirmed our double A1 rating so what that means is we're among the top 5% of school districts in terms of credit rating um this is you know equivalent to like a a your home um credit rating Mr director before you continue and you just unpack how what the process is for achieving that rating and what were um factors that led to us retaining our double A1 yeah um so to before you go to sell bonds there's lots of what they call due diligence to do um one of those pieces is um generally an interview with Moody uh so we had a zoom interview with them about a week and a half ago um our scorecard so they actually they they put together what they call scorecard so it's you know some um data they collect
015and then they give an advisory sort of credit rating uh based on their scorecard before they take it to what they call committee so I I imagine that's a group of people that are evaluating things and decide what the uh municipality gets for a rating our scorecard had us rated as a a A2 so that would be a notch below aa1 um after the interview um in particular they highlighted our plan for the future um in that what was very important to them is that we had a 5-year plan and that we're going to be showing surpluses for the next 5 years to rebuild our fund balance that in large part retained our aa1 rating had we not been able to present that and in particular show that show you know something the board had
016affirmed uh via a board meeting we likely would have dropped a A2 in fact they they highlighted um we'll be taking out the second portion of our bonds likely next fall um again one thing they'll be looking at is are we hitting those marks um just a couple highlights in their press release uh again the double A1 issuer rating reflects what they call the district's affluent and growing tax base uh by being near Milwaukee and the full per capita value is $215,000 that's one of the metrics they use on a on a per capita basis um they also noted that while the district will post another operating deficit this year which has been approved in their understanding um it would still um that the voters having approved the operating referendum is highlighted as um eliminating
017the deficit going forward and adding to the fund balance so again that's just what's in their press release and affirming uh the sale so the sale will happen next Tuesday um there's actually a number of sales there's about five sales this week uh in including wanaki kakana Whitnel uh and a couple others I think we're the only one on the 18th that's there's some strategy in that um and that will'll be the only hopefully the only Wisconsin District available for someone to buy as an investment on Tuesday as a reminder our what we budgeted in terms of uh interest is 5 and a half% average over the 20 years in January there were two bonds that sold one to Lake Mills for about 4 $45 million and that was a 4.34% interest rate and more
018more recently Holman at the very end of January was a $25 million sale at a 4% interest rate later this week I'll know what some of these ones in um that are selling this week got but I am hopeful that we'll be below the 5 and a half perc and that would result in interest savings then for the district so board members as you know we have a special board meeting scheduled for March 18th to listen to school growth plans but we will have to place on that agenda action to approve can you just walk us through that there's sample language uh in the agenda or yeah in the agenda as an attachment today frankly it's lots of verbos legal e um required by Statute but but essentially um will the bonds will have sold
019that date and the board will be approving the sale of the bonds so essentially approving for all late people's purposes the the mortgage that we'll have on the referendum thank you Mr May Mr eer I am not moody and I am not qualified to think like Moody and I don't speak for Moody but for the province of my chair I say I believe that you had a lot to do with that not job from A2 to a A1 so I want to say thank you thank you um Barett also helped with that as well as Jess hinker our finance director was the three of us on that interview and um yeah we were we Jess and I had a conference call today and we were very happy to have the doublea one I think Mr
020director's being modest I agree with you Mr Meyer let me unpack this a little bit more I do want to give credit to Mr uh Ecker Miss hanker I also want to give credit to our finance resource committee they've been asking tough questions of our business team since the beginning of the school year and what Moody shared was that as a result of those tough questions being posed publicly um and eventually having a Five-Year Plan presented to this board publicly that that was a mitigating factor a significant factor um in in in retaining that dou1 rating the other thing that we need to just say publicly is a thank you to our community um because as Moody's indicated without a successful passage of the operating referendum we would be in a very different Financial State
021so I think everyone deserves a lot of credit I think uh clearly M deer and our business team deserves credit I think from a board governance standpoint I want to thank our our finance and resource team but I want to thank our community as well because without successful passage of that operating referendum our financial position would would be in a dire situation so thank you Mr for your leadership you're welcome other comments and questions from Bor we look forward to seeing you on the 18th next up is strategic goal one academic performance our first item is the K12 physical education and health B hello everybody and good evening Jessica Ebert director of curriculum um I'm joined here tonight by several individuals who I will introduce shortly we are here to discuss two critical um audits
022curriculum audits conducted in the fall of 2024 and one is K12 physical education and health and the other is our K12 m Mathematics Curriculum audits play a critical role in our ongoing efforts towards Improvement they align with our strategic plan goal number one and policy 2210 serving as a powerful Catalyst for driving continuous growth in our instructional programs step one of the review cycle is an external audit to conduct a comprehensive analysis of our curriculum instruction and assessment practices this process helps us evaluate the relevant quality and effectiveness of what we are delivering to students by engaging external Auditors in this work we gain an objective and honest perspective regarding our program this this process really serves as that mirror helping us reflect assess and take meaningful steps forward tonight our focus is on engaging
023in a thoughtful discussion around the steps of the audit process following the conversation tonight additional steps will be taken in response to the audit this is where action occurs at the local level with further input from local stakeholders including teachers and families for those seeking additional information just regarding those audits the full reports um are also available on our meeting agenda and we really just look forward to starting this productive dialogue around these two content areas considering the audit findings and exploring how they will sh shape really that next step of strengthening curriculum instruction in Wawa toam I'm going to start with our first audit which is our K12 physical education audit and I'm joined here by Dr Nicole marble and our auditor Dr Brock McMullen who is joining us virtually Dr McMullen serves um
024currently as an associate professor in the department of exercise and sports science at the University of Wisconsin lacrosse um really for more details on his biography that's all included in the executive summary I'm going to turn it over to Dr McMullen so you can hear a brief introduction from him and then we'll turn it over to you for questions and comments so Brock go ahead can take it away all right thank you all for uh your time tonight thank you to the school board for having me thank you to Jessica uh for your work uh and collaborating with me over the last several months so like Jessica said I am a professor here at w lacrosse where I direct our adapted our physical adapted and school health education program I've been in this role as
025a director for the past 2 years and I've been at w lacrosse for almost seven and before that I was a physical education teacher and adapted physical education teacher um so again like Jessica said you can read more about my bio within the report but within the report there are a few things that I want to highlight and that we can discuss tonight as you all see fit um and again it talks we we collected a lot of data from parents students teachers uh as well as administrators but the four areas that I particularly want to highlight as places or areas that I see uh that could be improved uh based on my recommend recommendations are ensuring that the school district uh all the schools K12 have a sequential and comprehensive curriculum it's something that
026flows from kindergarten all the way to 12th grade So within my recommendations you'll see that there there is a a general suggestion to remap and restructure the the the curriculum to align with Professional Standards uh the next recommendation that I had was particularly in regards to how students with disabilities were provided with their physical education services my biggest concern was at the secondary level where students with disabilities were not necessarily offered appropriate placement opportunities in regards to their physical education services um the high schools had what was called unified physical education where kids with disabilities were educated with their non-disabled peers uh but as you can see in my report that may not be the most appropriate setting for students uh the next suggestion that I had was having a more consistent implementation and Data
027Tracking procedures concerning the high school physical education opt out policy where students are able to opt out of a physical education class and substitute that maybe with a club or a sport where physical activity is their primary purpose U but you can see within the report uh towards the end that some the opt out data is is somewhat inconsistent in terms of how students used it but then also the purposes behind why students used that opt out policy is just again generally speaking the opop policy is a concern of mine uh it it it would be a concern of mine across all states and all school districts that would use it but just in terms of how it's being used I think there should be better uh Data Tracking for that and then lastly uh
028regards facilities in space and that was particularly an issue that I saw at the middle school levels um where multiple classes were being uh taught in one gymnasium where you maybe had uh the appropriate space for maybe 30 to 40 kids but instead we had 60 to 70 kids being educated by one sometimes two teachers which presented obvious behavioral challenges and then struggles for the teacher um but overall though there were many positives that I do want to mention and that was uh where uh all the classes that I visited okay all the classes I visited whether it be at the elementary middle or High School uh teachers had a great relationship with students and even though there wasn't consistency across the board at the schools all teachers in all the classes that I saw
029communicated to the students these are the day's objectives this is our learning focus and they based it off of either our national standards or our Wisconsin standards so there are definitely some positives that I wanted to highlight and some great things that I saw and the uh the effort and the collaboration amongst the teachers was was wonderful to see so I do want to make sure I highlight um some of those positives and again the suggestions that I have build off of what I saw uh as being positive within this within the practice uh of the teachers but then also again within teacher uh and student relationships that I saw in the classes so again whether it be from the Schoolboard or anybody else I'm happy to answer any specific questions that anybody may have
030questions and comments from the board Dr rley yeah could you thank you for your work on this and for um the report do you give us a little bit um you know with your concern about how the kinds of um less restrictive spaces for our students in special education how do other school districts navigate um feel students feeling included um in Gym classes like the goal of our unified um gym classes while still getting the kinds of supports that they need um in those spaces what what's the best place to fall there so one thing that I always share with my students uh my pre uh pre-service teachers is in regards to adapted or or specially designed physical education is that physical education or adapted PE is a service that we provide to students and
031it's not a placement and so I completely understand that this idea of inclusivity and collaboration and interaction of students with and without disabilities is should be a goal of of schools it's important to understand however that that may not be the most appropriate placement option for a student with a disability and that may be because of Behavioral issues it may be because of cognitive or physical limitations but I want to note that you know the the idea of unified physical education is you know it primarily started as a way for students without uh disabilities or non-disabled students to interact with their peers with disabilities and so one thing I I want to ensure that is still happening is that students with disabilities are provided instruction within the least restrictive environment so essentially meaning the environment
032the learning an environment that's most appropriate for them and again for some St again with the classes that I observed and saw that unified or inclusive setting it worked for some students and it was probably an appropriate setting for them however there were some students that it was clearly not the most appropriate setting and there was at least from my observation again I was there for uh one day but it didn't seem like they were getting much of an educational benefit out of that so to answer your question about how do other schools remedy that issue um I mean I guess the first thing I'll say is that they don't automatically include students with disabilities with their non-disabled peers I mean it's just dependent on their individual needs and so some schools may have adapted
033PE classes at the high school level or middle school or Elementary level that are only for kids with disabilities and it might be a small group instruction uh it might be medium group I mean 10 to 15 students depending on the size of the school and the number of students But ultimately what I'm trying to highlight here is that we schools should be providing multiple placement options for students with disabilities that fits their most uh their least restrictive environment in order for them to be able to meet and make progress towards their IEP goals okay so thank you that that makes sense and it's then rather it's not necessarily not having unified it's making sure there is an option that meets the needs of students who need a better environments that are in special education
034yes yes the concept of it I think is good and I think it promotes again inclusivity and cooperation and collaboration of kids with and without disabilities because 20 years ago when I was in high school I had little to no interaction with our students with disabilities whether that be in physical education class or even in the hallway or the lunchroom and so I think where many schools are going to in terms of integrating more and more uh should be commended but uh having that as the only setting option for students is not always the best option thank you thank you Dr Worley other questions and comments Mr what here um to kind of build on what Dr wle had asked about um so we've we've got both the um the adapted physical education listed it
035both a strength and and a concern or weakness and um I understand that we're saying it's a strength at our elementary level and a concern at the the secondary level um what what is what are some of the things like specifically that we can we could look to from one program to the other to say here's where you're giving a a good grade on the elementary version here's here's what we could do is maybe possible equivalent at the secondary level or there is no possible equivalent for that at the secondary level because it's not something that is typically is typically done so just and I'm I'm not looking for specific Solutions but yeah if there's anything that you had noticed or identified just an example to take back and as things to work on sure
036yeah I mean I would definitely say it's it's definitely possible at the secondary level I'm not going to say it's impossible at all but one thing again with my observations at the elementary level and talking to the teachers there as well um so I actually got to see it handson there was uh a student that I observed were the adapt with the it was a school physical education teacher that also had the adapted PE license so they're able to serve as as both but it was a 25ish 2530 minute session where a student with a visual impairment came down into the gym and it was a one-on-one setting with that student and the teacher and again the number of students at that elementary school it it was relatively low for students with disabilities but uh
037the teacher commented me that the the principal had been very great and accommodating with his schedule and was able to make make it work to where students with disabilities were able to be educated with their peers in their regular physical education class you know two to three times a week depending on the schedule but then also during uh other times during the week maybe during some of his prep times um he I shouldn't say prep times because he had had prep times but during some of his open time he was able to schedule more one-on-one and individual work uh with kids with disabilities and again that's more common that one-on one one-on-one work at elementary levels but to see that done at the middle school or High School level you typically see that done in
038more small group settings so groups of maybe three to six or seven uh kids will come down at once and along with some maybe par professional assistance that adapted PE teacher would deliver instruction uh individually tailored to those students and again maybe depending on their abilities they'd also be included within their peers uh within the general setting as well but again depending on the progress that they're able to make that would be up to the teachers's discretion to determine if they needed uh any extra assistance so it's a lot it's a it's a schoolwide thing to where teachers need to work together schedulers principles need to be working together on this as well uh so really it's it's about a whole school buy it overall thank you um I have two questions for you um
039I was really intrigued by the by the number of students we have opting out um and I know there are some specific um things that must be met criteria that need to be met in order to opt out I'm wondering though if you got a sense of what reasons for opt out typically are in our district based on the data that I was uh shared I was not able to see reasons for why I mean I can assume most reasons for why whether it be in the wosa district or any other school district it would be participation in extracurricular Athletics and that's the most common reason that I see Jessica I'm sure you can speak maybe a little bit more yeah I think that's part of the recommendation is not only to um create some
040consistency around that opt out policy but also to track it because it was really inconclusive the data that we were able to pull from um Miss White and her team felt like we really couldn't identify why there was such a large number in one year and why there was so such a minimal number in another year it was very hard to read between that line so part of that recommendation is just really WR let's create more consistency around that policy let's track that policy so we can make better decisions around that data yeah for example if you look at the table from 2014 to 18 there was one student identified that opted out which I guess could be true but based on other years seems off especially in 2010 when there was over, 1500 but
041then the previous year there was only six um so again just better reasons and understanding for Why students are opting out and then tracking of the data yeah okay that's great um my second question is around um our secondary schools especially our middle schools um I recognize that we have some shortcomings in our facilities um and I'm hoping this the audit will then be elevated to that committee that's going to be meeting soon to be talking about and thinking about our secondary schools um in the meantime did you do you have thoughts about how we can use our current footprint and schedule that might allow for a less chaotic experience for our students again from what I saw uh teachers did their best uh they really did uh but I guess in terms of trying
042to utilize space as much as possible I would again do your best to use the gymnasium space but then also if it's available and and weather cooperates that you're able to go outside um you know those are the two areas that I would suggest right now uh if possible you know incorporating any sort of physical fitness aspects if there's a fitness center that's able to be accessed you know I know one of the middle the the pool recently closed down so that was one lack of facility option that's now available uh to students and to teachers but yeah it was just you know from one of the classes I saw students were working on uh pickle ball and it was a slightly smaller pickle ball court than what you would typically see but you had
043uh sometimes six students on one Court trying to you know work on their skill that hit the ball back and forth it just was tight and crammed and again teachers I we say I'll give I'll tip my cap to them they did their best and students were active and they were relatively engaged um but it's tough to move and to learn when you don't have that full ab you questions I think that's it for questions from the board Dr Mullen thank you so much for your work on the the audit and being with us here tonight any no you're welcome thank you thank thank you for your time it was uh a very great uh in informative process from my end and again I just want to say thanks again to Jessica for all of
044her work and collaboration over the last probably close to 10 months now so again just thank you Jessica thank you Dr M thank you that's you can hop off we'll move on to oh we're gonna second um I'm a little fascinated that Dr McMullen looks way too much like eron Rogers early career um does he not I'm still here it's not the first time I've heard that I know I was mesmerized um uh Mr Meyer or others I would like to inter a motion to shift our math audit to our next item on the agenda so mov thank you may have a second second thank you Dr Bley any board discussion seeing none please call the r Mr Morris yes Dr Hoy yes Mr wer yes Dr Bley yes M Hammer Rolland yes Mr Meyer
045yes Dr Jessa anger yes and she be so all right at this time we're gonna move our conversation regarding K12 math to K12 mathematics and here with me this evening is our elementary curriculum coordinator Miss Liza Weber and secondary um math curriculum coordinator Miss Melissa Jakes additionally we have our two math auditors Mr Steve Lyon and Miss OST potham um who are present virtually Mr Lyon is a principal research analyst at air the American Institute for research in Arlington Virginia and has over 45 years of leadership positions in mathematics education and Miss vam has is a director of math at student achievement partners and has a 30-year career history and education again their full biographies can be found in the accompanying board executive summary before he hearing from our Auditors I'd like to make a
046statement publicly and correct some misconceptions that may have been communicated via social media the audit does call attention to a recommendation in which to eliminate tracks in sixth grade at this time we do not have any final decisions or actions in response to the audit and are exploring all potential responses regarding this recommendation and the many others provided by the Auditors it is important to note that we will not make any decisions around Middle School tracks in isolation which is why we have developed an external community math review team this external team is made up of families and community members in order to listen learn and engage multiple perspectives we will also communicate uh or sorry continue to engage in dialogue and conversation with members of our curriculum Council this is another body of community
047stakeholders finally we know that regardless of whether all sixth graders take the same course the design would still need to ensure that students have a clear pathway to reach the highest levels of math in high school the idea would be about shifting when acceleration happens now I'd like you to hear from our Auditors a brief introduction and then we'll take comments and questions thank you Jessica uh Dr Jessa Banger Dr means Schoolboard members student representatives and members of the community Steve and I are excited to join you this evening and share some of the highlevel findings from our K12 mathematics audit um I'm going to start by just quickly going over our process and then we'll um share some uh like I said high level findings and go into questions we began uh this process
048last summer reviewing student achievement data uh District resources and policies and common Assessments in the fall we um created and administered surveys they were um delivered to students in grades 3- 5 6- 8 9- 12 and then also caregivers families in the community additionally we had focus groups um that included parents high school and secondary teachers coaches at all levels Elementary and secondary principles and District staff um focus groups excuse me we also um and had a few par parents attend focus groups as well our classroom observations lasted over the course of 3 days in November um during that time we went to most of the schools all except for two elementaries we saw a variety of classrooms over 50 um we were in rooms kindergarten through fifth grade sixth through 8th grade and then
049in a variety of courses across the high school algebra geometry Algebra 2 as well as um some um AP courses and some courses that were support so all of those findings um we summarized in our final report that you were given before today's meeting and we included some recommendations to consider moving forward and none of those decision or recommendations have been acted on yet um I'm going to turn it over to Steve and he's going to share some of those findings and then we'll go into the questions so thank you astred let me just um acknowledge that we could not have done our work without the invaluable assistance of Jessica Liza and Melissa um they were um invaluable in so many of the um organizational aspects and the coordination aspects um so here's the good
050news the good news is in a sentence um you read through our report and it says that math K12 math and wosa can be accurately described as good it's serving a large number of students but there are a range of actions that we believe can be taken really need to be taken so that the program significant is significantly stronger and raises student achievement to much higher levels um it's important to recognize that the good news is that everything that we've recommended is based upon an incredibly strong Foundation um asard and I have been in dozens and dozens of schools schools and school systems over our careers and it is not unusual to find that the things that I'm about to list are not as common as you might think um class size in waat TOA
051is truly commendable with nearly all class sizes in K5 20 or smaller the average is 25 or smaller in 612 nearly every classroom in Wawatosa is impressively arranged with students in groups of three or four which facilitates collaboration and student discussion and all of the things that enhance the learning of mathematics there are no classrooms that we saw where students are locked into rows just regurgitating um mathematical procedures um the amount of time that's allocated to math is as high as 70 minutes at the elementary level per day that is essential and important it is hard to do any of these things when you have less than an hour a day Middle School um you know 70 minutes a day and High School slightly more problematic at 50 minutes a day but it's better than
05245 and to the degree that we can work the two high schools and find ways to bump it to 60 minutes a day without disrupting the schedule I think that that makes a big difference um there is a Cadre of 612 mathematics coaches who are effectively deployed and we believe play a key role in supporting the teaching and learning of mathematics coaching as we'll talk about in a second is still very new in our business there are are a lot of places that either don't have coaches or coaches are new and teachers are trying to figure out what a coach does coaches are trying to figure things out and so there's some fine tuning but we were incredibly impressed with the Cadre of coaches and what they are trying to do um there's a system
053of common assessments we're in lots of schools where teachers do their own assessments and that's it and there's no collabor there's no coordination um wossa has a very impre impressive system of common unit assessments um at all grades BAS basically beginning in second grade carrying right through high school um there is a commitment and um really impressive implementation in many many places of collaborative planning time but mathematics teachers consistently said that their um common planning time often conducted under the rubric of pace is one of the most important parts of why they believe they are as effective as they are and technology in this crazy day and age is widely in appropriate used appropriately used particularly in the form of interactive whiteboards teachers putting things so that putting on putting displaying information and and doing
054work so that kids can see it and hear it um this is done throughout the program as well as the um the emerging use of computers and software and and calculators and so you see what I mean by a very strong Foundation these are important and impactful program Investments that have been made by the board by the school district Itself by principles and and by teachers it represents a strong foundation for improvement that we believe is why currently mathematics is working for somewhere between 50 and 70% of the students when you carefully look at your data and why we believe that with some adjustments we can be talking about mathematics working for much closer to 70 to 90% of the students as a result of a systemwide intense focus on some of these areas of
055change and so we can talk about lots of things we put them all in the report but um here are five and then we will um open it up for questions um our overall overarching recommendation much more detailed than I'm about to say is that we attend to strengthening the day in day out quality and consistency of math instruction throughout the system that doesn't say that it's mediocre it doesn't say that it's poor it's to say that it is not as consistent as it needs to be and it is not as strong consistently as it needs to be two the role and the expectations for math coaches as I just said need to be clarified teachers need to understand what coaches should be doing coaches should be doing some consistent U behaviors coaches need to
056be co-teachers they need to be co-reflection we're we're talking about three um it should be clear to you if you are a parent and your kid brings home some of the materials in grade six through 12 that it's time for um a replacement for the instructional materials this CPM is just um a little outdated in some cases more than a little outdated the teachers believe that the principls believe that um many parents said we think there are problems with the materials that has to be done um in a district like like wossa the coordination is key we can't afford to have one set of expectations on one side of town and another on the other side of town and we were surprised by how little collaboration there is between Whitman and Longfellow between East and
057West um between West and Whitman between East and Longfellow and so we're pretty blunt about saying that um there ought to be agreement both vertically and horizontally amongst those four schools and and finally um the system of common assessments tied with daily exit tickets or formative assessments is key but it needs to be strengthened in terms of how that data is used and so it's great to have the test that's a step in the right direction but having um uses of data so that we know what to do when kids don't do well what to do with those few students um that need boost up or need additional kinds of things so that's a a quick overview of the strengths and some of the challenges that we think can be looked at I know that
058as and I are more than happy to answer any and all of your questions thank you thank you very much uh colleagues on the board questions let's start out with uh Mr boy um this is more of a comment but it's such a breath of fresh air as a student to see um I guess the criticism of the limitations of CPM it's so widely apparent to anyone who's taken math in our district that it really is outdated um and I thought what was especially interesting um is the integration of a nth and 10th grade math curriculum which would include algebra geometry and statistics which from a student perspective is especially valuable when the vast majority of students don't take statistics and yet we're tested on statistics and standardized testing um and it's also a difficult
059jump to go from algebra to Geometry back to algebra again and then um revisit those skills that you learned in Algebra 1 in pre-calculus so uh thank you Steve and thank you as so we would only say that there's nothing that warms an Auditor's heart more than when somebody tells us that we have validated their feelings and their perceptions so thank you for that but as a student you play a critical role in the next few months of advocating for fighting for um what you just described as the changes in nth and 10th grade over the next two or three years if not sooner and of the um move toward integration we feel very strongly about that we think that a lot of the teachers feel very strongly about that and it really is going
060to need um the central office administration and the boards okay so thanks very much before I go to Mr wer let me talk I want to pause a little bit on this because I grew up in an era where things we we did sit in rows we did not speak unless spoken to um there was no collaboration math instruction looks a lot different now uh when I read that I took a deep breath and I was like I don't even know what this means to kind of weave together um algebra algebra 2 geometry statistics can you talk a little bit about that because I think that's going to be a question that we have come up from our community quite a bit uh because it's different than how most community members likely learned within the
061classroom as uh as children themselves uh can you share a little bit about where that recommendation came from what you learned and any other context you can provide and how it will lead to better outcomes for kids in in our schools so let me start and then turn it over to asid because we've both been asked this question many times number one we need to recognize that K8 mathematics is an integrated program that in every year from kindergarten through 8th grade we are doing number algebra measurement geometry statistics it is integrated because the connections between and among those areas is absolutely critical for learning you can't do the statistics unless you have some of the number understanding you need the geometry to handle some of the ways in which we ask students to picture the
062the algebra um and so the United States is unique amongst all the countries in the world that has this I will call it Obsolete and untenable and underperforming algebra geometry Algebra 2 situation where three years of math and we Mo we demand Algebra 2 despite the um the fact that a whole lot of Algebra 2 has no real value for many of our students um we we we proposed that well if seventh and 8th grade work as an integrated program so nth grade we have an integrated program we know that we have focused far too much on pre-calculus in a world where about 35% of our students will need calculus but somewhere close a 50% if not more and all citizens need the statistical understanding I we can go back to the pandemic and we
063can do lots of other examples about how the lack of statistical understanding in this Society is problematic um so I'm I'm G I'm going to leave it at that and and suggest that that's where that comes from and why we think that it is incredibly important aard yeah I would add that um Steve and I are both working nationally on um AG recourse sequencing and more data integration in High School courses so moving now probably to an integrated path is actually going to put you all in a better place because I have a feeling that this is going to finally be the way things go it's taking a while I want to say one of the thing about you know so I took math 20 years ago or 30 years ago or 40 years ago
064Ma mathematics from about 1950 to 1990 95 no matter what we said was about sorting students out it was about some have it and get promoted some don't have it and they get delayed they get um hurt by the whole process since 1995 this this there's this understanding that the world of work the citizenry um and and all require a depth of understanding of mathematics that just much more um important and much deeper than ever before and and so a program that continues to sort students out as opposed to empower all students is is problematic um many of you are well aware that some of you loved algebra and hated geometry there was something about geometry it just didn't work that side of your brain didn't function well with it you couldn't wait to get
065back to algebra and and others of you hated algebra but thank God for geometry because it saved your life and you walk around now saying geometry changed my whole attitude about things well now add in statistics and give kids a chance to succeed in one or two of those three areas if not all three and it changes outcomes in important ways and we could talk about this for hours but but but hopefully that's that's a reasonable answer to a very important question of excited about your level of energy for M this ising my energy my energy is because I've been in Santa Fe since last Wednesday doing some talks but mainly playing we were out in tles yesterday you don't need to know all this detail but you know as soon as I'm done here
066we're going out for one last in before we head back to Washington DC it's easy to be energetic when you've been on vacation I did not see anything in the audit about doing math in uh the desert in the winter but I I like this I like possible and then to Jason um as a as a senior or as a student who um is currently taking statistics as a senior in high school this is really really exciting to hear because as someone who's just a couple months into statistics I have like sat down with my teacher and made connections that I could have used three years ago with everything else and so it' be super cool to see how as someone who took that fast track in sixth grade and I started um in that
067advanced class to see how a student who's now in ninth grade could be starting on like a different track but receiving and getting to the same level as I got would be really awesome to see to but at the same time probably receiving even more than I did because the track the track that I took did Skip some things I struggled through geometry and I when we got to pre-cal write the CPM stuff that didn't help me and then like when I'm in statistics now so much of it makes so much more sense with like I look back and some of those stuff that we talked about in pre-cal and calculus just hit so much better when you know the statistics behind some of it and it would be really cool to see a set
068of freshmen and sophomores walking into those classes knowing what they're doing because they got all of that in their classes beforehand so yeah there's nothing to be said other than thank you we couldn't agree more uh so two things uh first I I like the idea of the integrated uh and and just the holistic approach um I've said for a lot of My Life um I felt that even though I've taken a ton of math courses and through High School through college a lot of them were just uh it didn't didn't actually provide me with anything other than a means to go into some other course and um taking a holistic approach of teaching something like uh Finance the time value of money the um uh how to make a change for for younger you
069know younger kids um things like that I think are extremely important and can be brought into other parts of the curriculum ex very easily um and so I I I I really like that recommendation um so that given that I also want want to uh ask about one of the strengths that you listed at the end was that there was a strong parent and student satisfaction with the K12 mathematics program but we were kind of talking about a pretty big overhaul here so I'm just curious what um what was the source of of that of that data and how how was it collected because that if if everyone if if the overall feeling is that they're happy with with what they have then if we get what you're suggesting implemented boy is everyone going to
070be ecstatic um so I I just I want to know why uh parents expectations feel like they're getting met when you yourself have just said we in the US we we don't have a great overall mathematics program so that's another great question I mean we did not ask specific questions to the parents about what things you would like to change we did not ask questions about would you like to see this would you like to see that they were much more general questions they were how do you feel math is serving your son or daughter how do you feel your son and daughter is doing in mathematics and that's where you had I mean as you see in the charts and the data you had somewhere around half the parents fairly satisfied with what was
071happening I don't think that that is um saying that they don't want it change that they think that the way it's being done is right just because they believe it's serving their students I think that the arguments that we're making the things that the students on the board are saying all argue for an openness on the part of even parents who are satisfied for something different and there's no question but the parents who are unsatisfied say very similar things to what you heard tonight the CPM is crazy they don't know what to do with it they think the materials are problematic the the the parents also would like to see their kids more engaged there was parents that sit there and say my kid is bored it's easy to be bored when you are factoring
072trinomial Expressions that no one on the planet does and that everybody does with acknowledge you today um it's it's harder to be bored when we're going to talk about so how did this change did it change in a linear fashion in a quadratic fa factor is did did it get bigger and then slow down did it get small and then speed up I mean is it exponential those are the kinds of ways that you're focusing on a conceptual understanding of functions as a mathematical tool for change that we don't don't get to and it's not on most of the tests and so that's what we hope um gradually will emerge and it is in different materials that that that high schools and middle schools are using around the country right now thank you also I
073would also add um I don't know the number off the top of my head but I do feel like it was we had about 800 maybe parent responses or something um so this was you know administered in an email um through the wosa newsletter I believe as well at the end of the week um it in October so families had the option to click into the survey and take it that way so you would say statistically large sample enough to if someone were to take all the statistics and apply to it that's that's essentially you've you've taken and you've used it as the student suggested about wishing that she had some of her AP Stat at an earlier stage you know that in fact the sample is clearly large enough the question is was it
074random and that is an open question that we're not able to answer fair enough Dr I have two questions for you um my first is around the elementary win time it's interesting because we recently met with many of our elementary um School teachers or School principles and they talked about their school growth plans and a lot of them were touting wi time as a as a reason why they're um moving student growth student academic growth forward I get a different sense perhaps of how it's being used in what you reported I'm wondering if you can elaborate on that Master do you want to start with that sure um in the instances where we saw it I believe it was only twice um two or three times maybe and students and we didn't count this as
075part of the classroom data um students were working in individually independently on kind of like skill review and it didn't seem that it was like super high leverage um there were also students up at the chalkboard or whiteboard just um kind of doing a competition on answer getting um and it felt like if you've been given this gift and you know maybe we are making a generalization just in the few times that we saw it of an extra 20 minutes 30 minutes of real intensive time to work on foundational and supporting ideas that are going to help with core instruction um that students should be maybe in small group with teachers um rotating through that playing um games that are going to build conceptual that are conceptual understanding building into fluency and that the content
076at the time is connected to the Core Concepts that they're working on for students that are taking a little bit longer to become fluent and to um you know really build their numeracy and number skills it can be difficult to be in a a unit in your regular instruction that doesn't match your like second time doing math during the day if they can somehow be paired a little bit um so that they're working on kind of like the foundational ideas in the progression that lead into the content during the core instruction that would really um help bolster that time and I do believe that the principles are um you know they're looking at this uh win time is something that could be a high leverage strategy we've built it into our time and we're working
077to um kind of catch kids support kids and um build rigor for students that need a little bit more so I'd only add that if I was in your shoes right now I would say so um Steven asid didn't really have enough data to really make some conclusive um points about it we both believe that the allocation of time called win is absolutely wonderful we believe that extra time is invaluable um but like everything else it's how that time gets used um I would ask you to think about um asking Jessica and Liza to identify 20 win classes randomly visited over 3 days and and tell you what they saw tell you whether or not the kids were actually engaged where they were doing meaningful stuff whether they were growing whether they were talking about
078it or whether it was just absolutely mindless computer drill where in fact we saw one kid getting the answers on a calculator in order to enter them into the computer and you well know that that's an abuse of that kind of time um so that that it's the right question to ask about an important initiative and I think that there are mixed reactions but in our focus groups our notes both said Win needs some work and it needs to be um more intentional and it needs to be more consistent thank you that was a very very helpful response okay second question you make a very bold statement around sixth grade this the splitting of sixth grade math that that being the start that is going to be an already has been a controversial Topic in
079our community I would love to hear more about your thoughts on that and and why your statement is I mean it is it is a very bold and direct statement that it is um difficult and highly problematic that we do this in our district and and may I insert in the context of moving sixth grade to the elementary buildings yep that's a factor I I don't know and Steve one more and here's my context I feel like in my lifetime tracking saved me in many ways and then in college I studied underneath the preeminent National scholar on how bad tracking is in slowing down student growth across the board and so I hold those two things and I know parents feel like if my kids not track they're going to be bored and they're not
080going to meet their potential so how if we don't have if if we follow that guidance how do we increase the likelihood that every kid meets their potential so um this is the quintessential argument debate discussion in K12 mathematics tracking is so easy it feels so right it's like kids learning at different rates kids have different capabilities and therefore let's sort them out forgetting the fact that every teacher will tell you that the range in the top half and the range in the bottom half is gigantic and overlaps that we know is that we tend to track prematurely and ignore the fact that kids develop at different times and different rates when it comes to this controversy you notice we did not say detract Middle School we said that it is absurd without using that
081word to ask all those fifth grade teachers to make determinations that affect students lives for the rest of their lives did a fifth grade teacher who may know math may not know math is basically interested in speed and accuracy and not depth of understanding is making decisions about putting kids into an accelerated program with inadequate knowledge we believe that if you are going to move sixth grade to Middle School it is essential that you move away from self-contained classrooms for at least fifth and sixth grade and when you have people in fifth and sixth grade in those schools then it changes things a little bit you've got all the kids taking math in fifth grade and sixth grade with a math certified person or a math knowledgeable person and then you can start talking about
082how you could split it but why I split it in all these different schools with different standards when everyone is feeding into two middle schools and when you look at the curriculum when you look at how one more year of kids being able to interact in like you just heard from from um from PE kids interacting with a wide assortment of students sixth grade is a great place to be not pushed and accelerated but to be enriched I and ASD spend time all over the country helping teachers use enrichment to avoid some of the so-called boredom some of the boredom is because fifth and sixth graders all these skills I mean the kids have had them and them doing them when we get to meaningful conceptual understanding and applications and enrichment we tend to have
083less of that problem I need to say one more thing it saves people because there is this notion that the pest stance of mathematics is calculus in high school I am an upper middle class human being I had a good education I went to University Wisconsin Madison I went to University Madison Milwaukee I want for my own children the things I got I believe that those kids need to have calculus as a leg up to be able to get into these institutions and the answer is we could not agree more except in 2025 we're doing algebra in sixth grade seventh grade and e8th grade that we never did until sort of e8th grade and mainly 9th grade we are doing geometry in seventh grade and eth grade that we didn't get because 20 years ago
084Middle School was so unbelievably repetitive when we have that much algebra now and we have an integrated program in ninth and 10th grade come with me to some amazing school districts where Algebra 2 and pre-calculus are combined in 11th grade for those students who are interested in a stem subject and other kinds of medical things where they care about the need for calculus and all of a sudden we get every kid to calculus who wants to take calculus because we are combining at the 11th grade as opposed to accelerating earlier than is necessary um now that doesn't say that we rule out the appropriateness of some kind of leveling but right now the proportion of students in Wawatosa that are doing the double acceleration who are doing Algebra 1 in n in in uh 7th
085grade algebra 2 in no um geometry in in 8th grade ask those students specifically have focus groups with those students and ask them what's happened how many of those double accelerated students are still taking math as seniors we are not adequately serving those students what we are doing is serving parents who had cocktail parties wer around saying I like you is double accelerated Mike it is brilliant when many of those students are not so brilliant now this is important and this is close to home I have a grandson who's doing pre-calculus appropriately in ninth grade in Vermont right now he is one of two students in a class of 400 a class not a school who have been given that opportunity because this school realizes that this kid is different he is severely gifted and
086needs to be accelerated I would never take that opportunity away I believe that there are students who are in 7th grade who should be taking Algebra 1 geometry but it's not as many as currently is is there so yes I get excited about this this is an argument that I lose far more than I make I know how controversial it is but I think it needs a whole lot of careful discussion we need to look carefully at the pros and cons we need to recognize that the tracking as currently exists privileges kids at the expense of other kids and there's no nice way to describe that go on your own and watch the two different levels ask yourself of course you want your kid in the better level because it's enjoyable it's engaging and and
087the the expectations are simply lower in too many cases for the weaker students very long answer it's getting late but I think it's an important thing to keep on the table and to understand that we are not being crazy radicals about this we're trying to move things ahead carefully Steve we appreciate the passion we appreciate the insight and all I would just say to continue to move us forward as well that this board on many different occasions on different topics it may not be math but this governing board has talked about the fact that we want to create a school District where there's rigor in every classroom where there's a certain standard of instruction in every classroom when we achieve that goal that you have in your North Star that we have in our strategic
088plan then the need for tracking diminishes but until we get to that place and you've started the process by you've heard Steve uh mention it earlier the investment and instructional coaches specifically around mathematics the fact that we've engaged and we've invested in developing common assessments I can't do justice to what these Auditors have laid out for you I just want to point out to the community and to the board that you've already made these arguments you you've said it in different ways um but you you have made this commitment to this district and the work that you want to do as a board in the pass ask a question yeah I'm gonna go to Mr I'll check with others and think okay um I have an OB obervation anecdotal but as far as anecdotes go
089reliable we have students who go to the library public library after school who can't make change everybody's so used to a payment card or a credit card I mean fundamental mathematics about making change with a cash transaction some some of our children can't do that th and that I hope this addresses that in some way what what we're doing here the second observation has to do with advanced placement classes anecdotally I've heard multiple times that the desire for as many courses as possible in high school to be advanced placement is sort of cannibalizing some of our our learning sequences things like statistics that I promoted long ago and we started and and maybe I'm Incorrect and my memory is bad but we lost enrollment in statistics for the sake of Statistics but we wanted AP
090advanced placement statistics I think our children are being robbed of something if they if if somehow the culture allows them to think they can't enjoy the ride where they are and explore and learn unless it's advanced placement and I know it's a competitive world I get that but I worry that somehow the the advanced placement Drive will somehow interfere with this Paradigm being put forward as effectively as it could is there any comment on that I don't mean the lecture but just to say yeah in a in a in two sentences I couldn't agree more I I think that we all agree that estimation and number sense are critical and it has been subordinated it was subordinated in the common core it is not on our tests because our tests are all multiple choice dribble
091and it's important that and it's hard to to assess estimation and so when kids can't make change and when they can't estimate it is a serious problem it is no different than the comment I wanted to sneak in before and that is that the fact that we send kids out in the world from a wossa set of high schools and they do not know why paying the minimum balance on their MasterCard every month is um is deadly it puts them further and further behind that's the kind of mathematical real world stuff along with making change and being able to estimate when they buy a car you know that by Design they set us up they are trying to cheat us because they know all the ways that they can pull the wool over our eyes
092and we need to know when we buy a car what to look for and what to estimate and catch them in all of those things and in terms of AP I'm sorry I said two sentences but in terms of AP um I share that concern I don't believe that AP is for everybody I believe that there ought to be nonap statistics and and regular statistics I believe that in high schools as big as we have here with with East and West that there's no question but that we ought to have um calculus kids can go to college if they want it and they can take calculus again but they could take calculus that is a reasonable nonap calculus I think if if I was teaching at w to's high schools um I would not teach
093the AP Calculus I would teach the calculus that's not AP because I can use technology and I can do things far more effectively because the AP test doesn't allow kids to use calculators on part of the test and the test is still asking kids to do things that no normal human being does so I'm totally in agreement with you about the fact of what's your goal and and how do we balance both sets of of of needs great great comment thank you all of my comments and and thoughts have already been thrown out there I would just ask um how long can we wait to make these changes along to the the kids that are currently entering the secondary schools the sixth or seventh grade level have before they're behind the eightball much like some
094of the even our outgoing seniors or Rising seniors uh maybe because they didn't have these things when they were in seventh eth or nth grade so great question as you well know we don't have the luxury of lots of time um we believe that this report it's now February it's time to think about this stuff to start planning this thing I think that Jess and her team recognize that there are some recommendations that they expect that they can begin to implement next September um I think that some of the harder ones that we're talking about mean that we have to plan all of next year but if it is if some of these things are not in place as early as the 26 27 school year then then we're beginning you know I think hurt
095kids so it it's the right question and I think it depends upon the the depth the breadth the complexity the push back on some of these recommendations and and it is likely that some of the recommendations um are just not going to at this time um secure a majority of the public or the parents or the teachers um and so we'll work on it because because there's a lot to be done um but it's also I keep saying um and asri keeps saying it's building on a pretty strong platform and we ought to be able to say these tweaks these adjustments not counting the detracking um are are really doable um Dr yeah I'll make M um hopefully brief but uh I wanted to touch on a couple other points you made that I thought
096were really valuable and ask you um as you got to these ideas um how much um from your estimation listening to staff how much you felt there was support um one would be the use of coaching um I really appreciate how you outlined that um and I would guess that coaches would be pretty much in favor of that but um how about the staff in general did you get a sense that um that they're eager for collegial collaboration um both with the coaches and among each other uh so that's question number one they're teachers they are eager they are eager and wary oh sorry Steve we walked into uh one of the buildings and where we were putting our back bags down we ended up walking into a pace meeting and had a little bit
097of time to talk to the teachers that were there with their coach going through the math unit and doing kind of like some backwards planning with the assessment in mind and planning the lessons moving forward and they all spoke to how critical that was for their own professional learning that they were having embedded professional learning right there during the day with their grade level um colleagues as well as I believe maybe a special ed teacher as well um and maybe one of them was a long long vet time veteran teacher and another one was very new and they were sharing ideas with one another that um they were all benefiting and it was they were raving about it it it was going really well when we asked when we asked the teachers Point Blank about
098whether they felt the coaches added value um we got depended upon the relationships that were being built um just as a new principal comes in and it takes a year and sometimes two years before the teachers feel come with the principal the principal feels comfortable with the with the staff I mean there is a coach that is pretty well respected who has been in three schools in each of the last three years now everyone acknowledges that that's a problem when we talk to administrations I understand why that is but it's really hard for a teacher who doesn't have the chance to build a relationship with a coach and has a new one every year to feel really good about them so so the teacher say give me some of the consistency my friend is in
099this other school and in that school they have the same coach for the last three years years that's what I want that's what I need great thank you for elaborating that um the other point I wanted to raise up in your report that um I found pretty exciting and interesting was the idea of um of working towards being more open to um to the students being able to find multiple ways to come up with answers um and I just wanted to kind of highlight that and maybe have um either one or both of you speak to why that is so important um in math education yeah I mean I think it's interesting we've kind of gone round this topic um during this conversation the ways we all learned math in the 70s and 80s served
100us to a variety of degrees of success right um when I think of a number between 1/2 and 2/3 and just throw that problem out I'm not looking for common denominator I want a kid to be able to tell me 5100s if they go to six they've got three six and four six so it's not really going to help them very much to find that least common multiple and you know greatest common factor and do that kind of traditional thinking um similarly when we think about uh multiplication there are kids that are going to use the standard algorithm the same way maybe many of us here do but there are also children that are going to add multiply tens and do partial products and multiply ones and then add them together and that's an equally
101if not sometimes more efficient way to do the work because they're working with an understanding place value and what tens and hundreds are and that multiplication is groups of groups um so kind of shifting this and with new programs you'll see it isn't like the old way and the new Common Core way it's more like these are the ways you can solve that even when you're walking around Costco and you're trying to figure out about how much something is or what the cost is going to be we kind of get an estimate first too and we want kids to think about the reasonableness of their answers um and having that conversation with them about that versus just like what did you get there's a right or wrong there's a lot of power and understanding for
102kids in the process of how to get there I'm not saying that we don't want the right answer because in the end we do but we want them to own the way that works for them as mathematicians and we want them to find their fastest way and their most efficient and accurate way what would you add Steve um I I'd only add that that if you were to ask your own children ask your neighbor's children who's the best math teacher you had and you find a way to wander in and videotape a half an hour of their instruction and and then share it or or look at it carefully what you would find is that the teachers that the kids recognized are most effective are not the ones that explain everything tell them how to
103do it and then let them practice the ones who the kids respond to most and this is cross-disciplinary are those that are forever asking important questions why how do you know um who did differently can you convince us how did you picture it and so when you say that you picked up on the on the differentiation on the alternative approaches and the different ways of seeing it um asard and I believe fundamentally that the reason why math does not work for more students in this country is because far too much instruction is the one right way to get the one right answer when you have got a class of kids who are processing the math in three or four different ways days when the pictures are picturing the math in three or four different ways
104I spend a lot of time with 5 plus 9 and we talk about oh I remember how I learned that I had to take the absolute value of those two numbers because they were sign numbers and then I subtracted the absolute values and I assigned the sign of the number with the largest absolute value I mean come on you should be laughing that's the way you were taught and very few of you use that approach you sit there and you think about um you know um the quarterback on the on the local football team we'll just leave it at that right gains five yards on the first uh first down and loses nine on the second and the kids go Oh that was easy loses five but say five more so there's four loses F
105loses five and there's four more to go another kid sees it on a number line a whole bunch of kids do not see it on horizontal number lines they don't learn it because only vertical number lines work for them so I mean this whole notion of different ways of seeing it is the missing link in helping make math work for all students and it's also why are so important because I never learned this when I taught when you know was was was was taught I don't have mechanisms to show me my materials don't do a good enough job of that and so that to us is part of the key the questions and the differentiation with alternative approaches and different representations of the math that are the key in terms of instructional Improvement yeah um
106a couple of questions and comments for me one overall I this is a great read um and I I learned I think so much um starting about three years ago we started to systematically AED everything um and so we have been going through every curriculum every age level um and a challenge to doctor means was look under the hood let's make everything the to be excellent how do we be a lighthouse District in all areas and so having these very raw very real we're good we don't want to be good we want to be excellent for every kid um a quick story and then a few comments on this uh I was on a college tour at a highly prestigious institution in the Northeast a student was there talking about that she got to for
107an internship sit in on the first ever audit of an Arts curriculum in New England I thought that was really interesting because we are scheduled to audit our Arts curricul next year I believe it's it started right now and so what we are systematically doing to get us to be the best District we can possibly be is literally incredibly unique in the country and so I I I applaud the The District staff for taking the steps to do this uh it is hard to put all of your stuff out on the table and to say our goal goal isn't to be great now our goal is to be great tomorrow and better the next day and better the next day let's not pretend we're great let's be the best we can be and strive to
108be excellent couple comments and things that I was intrigued by I will I I need I feel like I need to go and read more and more about integrated math that's on me to do um I two areas I really want to focus in on is visioning for math Support classes um and want to talk a little bit more about that because we haven't and then course path way um what does 11th and 12th grade look like uh I was lucky enough to sit down and have coffee um with a math expert who talk me through this a little bit but we have some excellent programs uh through launch through our trades areas through uh students who very much want to go on to high level stem work uh and what they're doing afterwards there's
109different Pathways for different kids can we talk about what what does this course course Pathways mean when to a parent in the district just share a little bit about that I there'll be lots of more time for that but I I think that that's a important component as we think about the future do you want me to speak to that Stephen as or do you want to chime in around your visioning your own course Pathways so I let let me let me just start this off by saying that um kudos to Jessica um you know I um I have never been subjected to a long and as rigorous a process to end up being told oh good we would like you to come and do this audit and we want you to do it with
110ASD and we had worked together in Milwaukee and so it was great she knew me I knew her um but Jessica has a sense of I need people who can interact with teachers and quickly earn their respect I need people who have breath of experience across districts who can talk to the board like a meeting like this I need people who can write and who elaborate and and so I think that when you get a strong report it's because or or don't it's because you ought to talk to Jessica about how she envisions it and how she selects the people um the issue of Pathways is really very simple um for years and years and years it meant that we needed um every kid to go through sixth grade basically sixth grade math and then
111you were fine you could go work on the farm you could go work in the grocery store you had everything you needed they weren't calculators it wer in computers and it was fine it is obvious to everyone that we now have a common curriculum through 8ighth grade and it's work up until recently eighth grade is no longer enough I need two more years given the complexity of the workforce given the demands of the society given the fact that that if citizens as Jefferson put it don't have a foundation of of education then they're going to do some pretty crazy things when they end up voting or not voting um it is clear that today's world needs us to have a common system through 10th grade because everybody goes from elementary school to Middle School everyone
112goes from middle school to high school and then all hell breaks out breaks out because after high school we go to the military we go to to to to to the workforce we get part-time jobs we go to Community College and have nothing to do with mathematics or stem wait a second we go to Community College and use it as a stepping stone to a four-year College we've got four-year colleges at prestigious institutions where we're going to do um all kinds of social sciences no we're going to do chemistry and physics no the range is gigantic and the only way we're going to effectively prepare students for that is to have Pathways that say so look at this you are now 16 years old you're you know becoming a junior in high school you have
113two more years before you go off to the workforce or somewhere else so what are you looking at what are you thinking about and it's critical that we tailor it to those kids tailor it for so that for those kids for whom calculus makes sense they have that option for those kids for whom statistics and data make sense for what they're going to do they can always do calculus some other time then that becomes their thing and then there are some kids for whom applied math and quantitative literacy and all there is some amazing quantitative literacy curricul out there that are being used incredibly successfully so as a a an 11th grader instead of Algebra 1 this student takes quantitative reason lening and then as a senior takes um data science and that kid really
114is well prepared in all kinds of ways and it's not that as we said before this drive to AP or this drive for college readiness it's in fact drive for what works for these three different buckets and best of all in my lifetime it was always the universities that had been the hardest to change everything was well you can't do this because the colleges won't you can't do this because the colleges won't right now the colleges are changing faster than the high schools just leave that there it is a fact it is amazing I never thought I would see the day when there are Pathways and differentiation in colleges universities that do not exist in high schools and so that's the the best quick answer to this and and you know I mean as and
115I aren't going away I mean she lives there I'm a zoom call away at any time you have a board subcommittee or there's some discussion and somebody says well how about that crazy guy that that helped us with the audit you know could we spend a half an hour with them I I would do that in in a micr second because we're really racing through a whole lot of important things and you're pointing out some of those really important things that you can't do in three minutes I can just add on I think that Steve spoke to that very well but I in our system that is a goal and a vision across our high school experiences knowing that we want course Pathways that connect back to academic and career planning we're trying to do
116that in our science and our English classes show kids what kinds of experiences help them see their passions and their interests to make those post-secondary decisions um so this is very much in line with with what we're trying to accomplish across all of our our content areas so I really I mean this is the most horrible thing that any auditor can possibly say to a board of education that's paying him for this but um we have a 7 o'clock dinner reservation I've already changed it twice that is um mountain time um if there are only two more questions that's great but other I may have to change the reservation and my wife is sitting there saying tell me what to do we've all been there I know we respect that sure I I I think
117I think the board has exhausted its questions thank you so much for your work I look forward um just can you share for the community who might be watching the audit is not the beginning it's not the end it's in the middle of the process where we are right now can you share what steps come next yeah absolutely so yes um the audit process fits in line with our curriculum review cycle and as you named um really we have some pre- audit work that happen so both of these ladies myself we spend time our rest of our team really engaging in learning and being prepared for for this experience so then then comes the audit where we have this external view this this mirror that's held up for us and then as a response to
118that we're gain we're working alongside curriculum review teams that's our Educators team um teams on both Elementary and secondary um engaging them in the process of looking at new curricular resources talking about um improved instructional practices that we want to see building Capac um around our educator teams creating timelines I mean it's a lot of this work within this development phase but it's really in response to the audit um additionally with math we knew that there was going to be some areas of the the math audit that we wanted to be able to be transparent and open with our community and receive that feedback along the way so not all reviews have had this external um Review Committee but we have done that in the area of mathematics we have met twice so far um
119building their capacity looking for feedback and insight in that work as well so that will be ongoing with that team as well as well as our curriculum Council um and then we begin to think about our professional development plans and how we're going to prepare the system for the changes and we know we can't do all change at once and so we try to stream that change as what is the most vergent um needs before our our students and our community and how do we make sure we we build that out over time um so we head into that development phase that encompasses all those different areas um and then we continue to communicate we'll be back in October with some updates in regards to the response plan but happy to engage or communicate the
120work and proc on progress as we as it unfolds so does that help to yep it does thank you so much Mr Meer thank you for your patience with me I I'm going to make an observation so this past summer at my 50-year high school reunion I discussed tracking with many of my friends and to a person all of us now here's the par the the contradiction all of us agreed that we were glad we were tracked we had tracks one two and three we were in track one with the were Finance professors and Air Force pilots and all kind of people and and all of us on many days were bored so something was wrong so if you can somehow come up with a way that those those people because we can't forget our
121Stars we don't want to educate them as the expense of everybody else but we also need our Stars to go and be stars for us to invent stuff and you know save the world from stuff which is what those people do we need tracking isn't well they shouldn't have been bored at all ever and they were so but we none of us saw an alternative maybe you have an alternative you have some thoughts and ideas and we'll continue to to explore those and be back with our ideas and thoughts as we move forward so I'm I'm saying this is a hopeful statement that there is a better way and uh I also think that um we appreciated the day we got to shoot dice in the back of the class after the probability lesson so
122nobody don't let's not let anybody be scorned for just seeing how this stuff really works in real life so yeah I mean the dream of every parent is that your kid is never born right that they're they they come home more Curious than they left home that day right let's take we've been going and been pretty focused for an hour and 45 let's take a 10-minute break thank you to our our Auditors they did a great job um it was clearly you're you're both passionate and deeply knowledgeable so thank you for helping us move the district thank you it's been a it's been a pleasure listening to you the depth of your questions your insights and your commitment is just transparent and take my hat off to you I second that um it's really been
123a pleasure and working with Melissa and Liza and Jessica has been fantastic thank you U let's take a 10 minute we'll start up a little bit before um we are back um and we are going to be talking about our midyear academic update um this is at the core what we do um so for those of you who are watching online over my right shoulder left shoulder as you're looking at me um is our board Northstar and at the core of this is making sure that every kid can be educated um to the very best of our ability um so we'll be talking about where we are on our path towards that uh I think we've been making substantial and significant progress over the last several years and I look forward to getting our update
124today Dr marble thank you good evening um I'm Nicole marble Chief academic officer and I'm joined by my colleagues in the division of academic performance um Miss Jessica Eber director of curriculum who you have seen a number of times already this evening uh Miss Lindsay white our director of data quality and analytics uh Miss Jennifer fch our director of um strategy and continuous Improvement and Miss lean NY our director of instruction we are here this evening to engage in dialogue around the midyear student growth and achievement update an executive sum summary and a comprehensive data set can be found um attached in this evening's agenda on board dogs so last month you heard about celebrations and challenges from our Westside schools when they shared their school growth plans with you later um this month you
125will hear the same information from our Eastside schools also last month you heard from our colleagues in the division of people and family supports around our organization celebrations and challenges related to behavior and discipline this evening we have the opportunity to discuss the celebrations and challenges from a broad systems perspective related to student growth and achievement and before we open up our dialogue tonight we would like to take a moment to reev some of the celebrations observed in the greater organization due to the collective and purposeful work and dedication of our educators related to Milestone one early literacy 86% of students in junior kindergarten scored above the 25th percentile in on the winter literacy screener 80.3% of students in senior kindergarten scored above the 25th percentile on the winter literacy screener related to Milestone 2
126reading growth the percentage of students with disabilities that met their targeted reading growth from Fall 2024 to Winter 2025 was relatively proportionate to students without dis abilities as measured by star in regards to math Milestone 3 the percentage of female students in grades 1 through eight that met their targeted math growth from Fall 2024 to Winter 2025 was relatively proportionate to males in grades 1 through eight as measured by star the percentage of high school students that identify as black African-American two or more races and white had increased growth in math from Fall 2024 to Winter 2025 then from Fall 2023 to Winter 2024 from Milestone 4 we focus on academic proficiency the class of 2034 which is our current third graders saw the highest increase in Proficiency in Star reading from Fall 2024 to
127Winter of 25 the class of 2036 our current first graders saw a significant Improvement in the percent of students demonstrating math proficiency as measured by St are just want to name that our students in the class of 2036 improveed from having 59.6% proficiency to 71 or excuse me 76.1 so that's pretty incredible growth all student cohorts so all graduating classes saw an increase in reading and math proficiency with the exception of the class of 2030 which are our current seventh graders the class of 2034 and the class of 2031 saw the largest increase in Reading proficiency from Fall 24 to Winter of 25 our class of 2027 our current 10th graders through the class of 2034 saw an increase in the percentage of students meeting targeted reading proficiency and the winter star assessment all racial
128and ethnic groups saw an increase in Reading proficiency from Fall 24 to Winter of 25 since the fall of 2020 the the gender gap in Reading proficiency has shrunk from 7.6 to 2.6 from Fall of 24 to Winter of 25 the gender gap in math proficiency shrunk from 9.4 to 6% Milestone 7 speaks to additional Advanced cours workor the following historically marginalized student groups saw an increase in participation in advanced placement courses not including AP Human Geography from the 20 from the 2023 24 school year to this school year students who receive free or reduced lunch students who identify as black or African-American and students who identify as two or more races I also want to point out that since the fall of 2023 you our school board have graciously approved eight new Advanced courses
129that our Scholars can access at East and West that allow them Pathways to earning college credit without having to travel to a college campus so thank you for your commitment we are also projecting an increase in enrollment in dual increase enrollment in dual enrollment and advanced placement courses for next year at both high schools some other data points to celebrate include 34% of students who received intensive intervention in reading and or math in Fall of 24 exited their intervention this winter 38% redu we also saw a 38% reduction in the number of students in grades 1 through 8 who qualify for intensive intervention in Reading and/or math we attribute these improvements to a number of factors including but not limited updated curriculums in English language arts and science a structure for more purposeful collaborative planning
130which you heard our math Auditors talk about earlier targeted School growth plans at the building level and greater organizational coherence around expected instructional practices I invite viewers to read the executive summary posted to this evening's agenda to learn more about the impactful practices that we believe are contributing to these improvements while we have a lot to celebrate we are not without obstacles to further Improvement the challenges that we are relentlessly working to address include disproportionate student outcomes our instructional facilities especially at the secondary level that are not commensurate with industry standards time for deep student learning again you heard that with our math Auditors around the problematic amount of time for math at high school and a culture of uh overall learning and continuous Improvement the work in front of us is slow and iterative
131and we have to suggest that we are doing what we are doing as a collective organization is working it is important to remain steadfast in our curriculum review cycle and the objectives of the Strategic plan to continue to Foster improved outcomes and experiences for our students at this time we like to open up to discussion and any questions that you may have um first wow it's amazing I'm really really thrilled to see these results so congratulations to your team but also to all of our Educators and all of our schools who are who are leading this um growth that we're seeing I have a seventh grader what's happening seventh graders why are seventh graders not showing the same growth that we're seeing in our other grades that's a really good question that we're we have
132are really curious about and asking ourselves those same questions would love to hear the answer when you figure it out um I was really happy to see um that we're graduating so many kids from intensive intervention um you know one of the things that I've talked about over and over again is the um those tier two kids that we're serving and that we're only able to serve the kids who are functioning at the 15th percentile or below as we're graduating out more of these kids are we increasing bandwidth can we start to consider kids who are forming maybe between the 15th and the 25th percentile we are looking at a broader group of students um one of the things that has been or has been launched just this winter um in accordance with the early
133literacy Law act 20 um did actually um have a start the tier 2 groups within the classroom for early literacy so um a lot of work behind the scenes to make that happen um but we now have active progress monitoring of a group of students who may not have been served in intensive intervention in early literacy so that's that's the first step we have many more steps to go um but many thanks to the uh primary grade Educators and the coordinators who put and coaches who put a lot of effort to launch all of that wonderful can I just add on to that I I think that what act 20 has done for us has created um a vision for how we can replicate that system and so knowing of around like we have our
134Universal screener we have diagnostic assessments that help us identify and Target specific needs we have response plans in place we have a structure we have when we heard from our math Auditors we need to improve that structure right so we now have some elements in place that we feel like we can really replicate that system so it's really describable and replicable um and we we feel like we're studying that in the area of math we're learning what that might look like um but it did Propel us even though it was a little bit of a thorn at the time it did Propel us to make some kind of Swift changes to that system the scheduling study when can we um expect the results from that to be brought before the board and and how quickly
135could we pivot and make some changes so that we can have some of that deeper learning opportunity yeah uh and then I would invite anybody else to jump into our um building principles are working diligently with the staff at their schools who they have engaged in the study as well um so we're in a place of many different feedback loops and continued learning around that and our targeted goal is to have some sort of idea of the direction that we would like to go in by the end of this school year and then we would work to prep the system throughout all of next year in hopes that we could um Implement a new a new scheduling a new schedule system in 2627 and then my last question is around our um performance of our
136black students still really seeing those those huge disparities and really disappointed by how we're not seeing those numbers kind of shift or some of the obviously there we're still seeing some growth but maybe not at the degree or at the pace that I was hoping to see um so what do you think that we're doing well and what do we need to do maybe differently or more consistently because I know we just had all of the schools from the West Side come and and it's something that I think pretty much every school was talking about they're working on but we're still not necessarily seeing those outcomes we want to see um it's always been public for curriculum too so I do believe that having a robust um standards of line curriculum is a game Cher
137for our students and then helping our Educators understand that we cannot in Universal instruction dip below grade level expectations we have to build up and so not having had really strong curriculum um resources in the hands of our teachers um possibly with all positive intent dipping below grade level to try to close gaps for kids we were only um perpetuating the gaps for students and so unfortunately we need an urgent cry to be like now right we need to do something but the steadfast work around keeping um grade level expectations the grade level expectations um ensuring that our teachers are planning around misconceptions helping to think about scaffolds and supports into Universal is going to be the number one thing that helps to close those gaps um and then it's through those other structures that
138you know Jenny was talking about in our wind our wind structure where we can begin to think about um how do we respond and how do we close those gaps but we also know in our secondary schools we don't always have that structure so we have to explore what does that mean what does that look like um but keeping grade level expectations front and center for every single kid is in my mind one thing that is contributing to that success but isn't necessarily moving it um we we we need more time than that yeah I would um add to that and say something that can be done tomorrow and I've been pressing our building principles on this too is to help raise consciousness of our Educators on who in the classroom they are and are
139not interacting with and to what degree they are and are not interacting with um so I can give a prim example I was in a classroom um recently and the um the positive comments were made to one student population and the redirections were made to another student population and so how do we raise consciousness of our Educators that are making those decisions consciously um so that they can pay better attention to themselves as they're showing up to the kids and what how are we making those safe spaces for our students so they feel inclined to take risk and to engage in the productive struggle of learning um so that's something that I have been pressing our building principles on that's so important and you know I recognize my time on the board is coming to
140a close but you know I hope this board is in full support of that and so it's letting us know what do we need to do to make sure that that Fierce urgency of now is is being heard across our district and that our Educators know our principles know that that some of the things that are happening in classrooms conscious or unconscious are still not okay I guess one one observation I had looked through the larger data set and um one you know we talked earlier tonight about the AP courses and um how how everyone everyone used them as um being prestigious and important but if I look at um specifically like page 100 uh where we've got both what uh East and West combined together and I looked down at the list of grades
141I see quite I mean at least to me an alarming number of D's and probably an alarming number of FS um if these are AP courses and maybe I'm just different in the way I think about this but these are AP courses aren't those courses that are typically the ones that kids want to be in and by Nature wouldn't wouldn't they like why why are we seeing that many on the lower lower end of things I mean I can understand it for for a a a mandated course but if this is something where specifically it's it's being chosen um and and again I'm sure there's probably special circumstances but 151 B versus 65 last year that's that's a pretty significant bump um when we're seeing and the number of bees gone way down and then
142again it may just be that these courses are not are not right or I just want to make sure that the grading is and and the evaluation is there and that the eyes are on it because I don't really think anybody should be if they're if they're getting a d or an an AP class they probably maybe shouldn't have been in an at and how you know how can we prevent that from happening it's just going to discourage it'ss from from to perform at higher levels for other things I don't have answer but I think this is a new way of us looking at the data too from a dnf perspective our principles and our buildings have been reviewing it on a bi-weekly basis and so breaking it out to the same question of saying
143if these children are are in the right placement how are we making sure they're successful and what they're doing so being able to break down and look at each course but then also have those questions at the building level of what's happening within the grading system and or the class to identify how we can either disrupt it or figure out what what might be the discrepancy dashboard something that's available for the public to view or is this an internal tool for the this expert uh this the data you have and the the yeah I mean it's in a PDF which is highly unusable for in real time it's for our principles because it has more information on it um in the background that we didn't put in the PDF because of just different information that
144they can see and minut they played so yeah I I do think this I'm not saying this with um as a definitive answer right but if I had to draw some conclusions also um it makes me wonder I mean in AP courses right that's College Board driven curriculum but that doesn't mean we still can just deliver and the students will receive right strong Universal instruction still matters and we are encouraging students to pursue rigor so some students do come more ready to that work than others and it's still our job as Educators to create access points for students and I think that's an area of growth across our system regardless of it if it's English 9 where everyone is required to take it or an AP course questions I want to pick up some the
145i in reviewing kind of school level stuff reading feels like we're on a really nice trajectory want talk a little bit about math where I know we're implementing math curriculum at the elementary right now I believe we just audited the math can we talk a little bit through what we're seeing in with math growth uh in terms of there definitely seems to be uneven um kind of in different places across the district where are we seeing successes and I one of the things the Auditors articulated is Lighthouse classrooms uh of where we're seeing really good instruction uh that can be utilized so I'm both not um I'm not alarmed by anything I'm seeing and I'm seeing just variability um some bright spots in some areas where we're stable or struggling a little bit and if
146I'm inaccurate in my read let me know no we our our reading scores definitely are stronger than our math scores and hence the reason why we we are doing this math audit not only because it's part of our 7-year curriculum cycle but also we need to do some system overhaul of how we're addressing the math the we were able to address some of the reading uh needs by the implementation of our new curriculum this last year and clearly we are seeing some really strong improvements as a result um of that implementation and the instructional growth that we're seeing in in our Educators to be able to deliver that um that high quality instruction from that high quality resource um so oh yeah so I will point us back thank you Lindsay I point us back
147to um Milestone 4 um and the class of 20136 our current first graders saw a significant that significant Improvement that is where we've had some really targeted instructional coaching support is in our first grade and be as a result of that we have from a systems level we have seen some pretty significant improvements um I add to that y so I've been having um fun being able to joined some of the pace meetings recently um I've not got to go to first grade but what I've seen and what I've been elevating with Liza Weber who was here earlier is some of the data protocols that are coaches are using within first grade in particular to review common assessment data and be able to find the misconceptions and plan for instruction and so I think just
148being able to see that and kind of elevate what's happening within our Pace collaboration meetings and saying how are we using action dat to make inferences into what we need to do for kids the day after or the day after in addition to looking at some of these bigger data sources so how are we monitoring that on a more regular basis and then they're using that to say like hey this is they were looking at student work and saying you know what did this child do that the other child didn't and how do we have access for it and so with our coaches there um and both Pace meetings that I were at the coaches were there and facilitating some of those conversations around why do you think you saw that what was the expectation
149to Jessica's point about being at grade level and you know how are you making that you're not dipping below where the kids should be at they're coming in and so it's been really enlightening to be able to see some of that from data lens and be able to help those conversations around what are we looking at there in addition how are we getting to those bigger Milestones that are kind of keeping a pulse on the organization um from a broader lens uh I did want to call out uh both middle schools in math that they're bolting really nice trajectory in terms of number of students uh over the 50th percentile so that it's a of an ongoing uh rise in that so kudos to those who are working with that student student populations other comments
150questions from the board any Reflections I just make one comment um next year I don't know what what point time Point you're planning to the school growth um plans but it would be amazing to have this data before we meet with all of those schools so that we can kind of compare areas of strength areas of you know weakness and have that be part of the conversation as we're talking about their school growth plans I think what you heard this evening is uh a call to not only the current board but for the future board what you heard this evening is that there are still major issues that this District needs to confront and deal with number one in the physical education audit our facilities are a concern as we start we're getting closer and
151closer to launching the secondary school facility conversation that was just in the area of physical education we can go to every area of where we provide instruction at the middle school and high school level we we have an issue there the issue of schedule you heard it through our math auditor that 50 minutes of instruction around mathematics is not enough and so having uh what we call in the profession an Extended Learning time for our secondary students is really critical what Dr Marvel didn't say is that the the movement with a new schedule it must be something that comes from the teachers and from the principes if it is an issue where someone says Fisher has forced this upon us the district is forcing it upon us then it won't move forward so we're really
152waiting to see um where where our teachers are but we understand instructionally we will Empower our teachers more if we have an extended uh learning period so that's another issue that is on the horizon Dr Hoy I'm glad that you rais the issue of the achievement Gap um this this Ford received a letter from the president of the multiethnic parent Association or what what is called meepa um and the the leader of that organization asked this board to consider and to keep in mind the the challenges of children of color as they move through our system um and that that is in your Forefront as you're continuing to to deal with certain issues so facilities the revision of curriculum um and and schedules are all major issues I want to just thank every last person
153who's in front of you right now um there's a lot of talk about the Staffing that we have in our district um this is a good team we have a good team and uh they're doing good work and I'm pleased that you have recognized their work we haven't added that many people I know contrary to the belief and contrary to the the the accusations out there we've added not a lot of people um to our district team we've restructured our district team in the 2122 school year we had reading coaches here and we had math coaches there and we had we had two FTE dedicated to equity coaches and it was just it was not systemic this team came together and said no we need a a very strategic systemic approach and so what you
154heard the Auditors talk about tonight is that Jessica Ebert was able to give them a lot of data uh before the Auditors were able to jump in that's because of Miss White and her team um we didn't have that infrastructure in place before we have now dedicated and you hear you saw on February 18th you'll see it next week Tuesday that our principles they don't make moves without their instructional coaches um I I want to use this opportunity to say congratulations to the Stein family uh on the birth of their their second child um but Jordan Stein would tell you the principle at Eisenhower and you have been leaders in making sure that the turnaround at Eisenhower is on the Forefront of your governance work he wouldn't be able to make the move moves and
155the progress that they've made at Eisenhower if he didn't have instructional coaches you heard the Auditors talk this evening about Pace Pace stands for prepare align uh collaborate and engage our Pace time is really really critical and and it creates that collaboration time for teachers our instructional coaches help in that that process so while we haven't added a lot of new people it feels like it it is um there's a lot more going on in our district because it is a more strategic systemic approach to the work um but you've asked us to do that work based on your North Star and I'm really really pleased um and it starts with our teachers you know while we we our job at the district levels to is to create the conditions then it's our job to
156get out of the way and let teachers teach and I'm really proud of the fact that we've created those conditions and now we're we're getting out of way and we're letting teachers teach and you can see when you when you the board invest in low class sizes when you compensate people in a competitive wage and they feel supported we're seeing retention go up because we have these coaches in place um the system moves in a positive direction so we're excited about where we're going but we know that uh you you've charged all of us starting with us at the district level but all throughout the system um you've charged us to make sure that all kids are having a a productive um pathway in our schools and we're committed to fulfilling what you've asked us
157to do so thank you and thank you lots of good news it's great congratulations um I know we've named some other groups uh I wanted to look at the socioeconomic status it feels like there's some really big concerns um among that group and I hope that we can and which is a very Multicultural multi-racial um group in our district uh and just really stands out in this data about um not just being flat but seeing some drops and you know I didn't dig through it enough to see how much those are you know rare or common but I would just put that forward as another piece of our North Star um that our our district and I'm sure you've been thinking about some strategies about how to figure about um what what what's impacting that
158particular group in terms of their success rates um just put that out there a second so one of the um tricky things we've been working through is our students who qualify for free and reduced lunch are technical gives confidential information and so we can pull it from a data lens because behind the scenes you're not naming any students with it so we're working with our principles and some of them named at their last SGP meetings to share with you was their target groups and so there's different facets look how they're looking at data to figure out what are the themes or what are other commonalities that students have Beyond just the free and reduced status um so that they can make sure that they're addressing students in a way that is supportive and and strategic
159but also keeping the confidentiality of the information um hidden to so that makes a lot of sense but I I think about us being holistic 100% there facets of how do we start understanding the information so that we can strategically um support those kids without necessarily naming as exactly that makes a lot of sense and and you know given being a a suburb um we have a little extra work to do in really being willing to identify that we have this challenge that our students do face this challenge our resident students face this challenge this is not a nonresident resident Gap um but yeah that makes a lot of sense it is difficult to identify it sounds like a good holistic strategy to to try they working hard to figure it out this I wanted
160to no that makes a lot of sense it just it does definitely stand out in this sta so I'm glad they're looking at it and I guess that was my other point was just the um how to make time for staff to have the opportunity to reflect um you know once they get the data and how important that is in you know in their groups to be reflecting on what they see in this um and and figuring out what their strategies could be sure EX for questions thank you now my favorite part of the evening [Music] policy ready gonna us dri bus he's driving the bus this is an area of growth for us though because this is much less meanful and slow than it used to be much more efficient with the leading it
161so I throw the Julie a lot of prep easy for us definitely we need we need to honor who's doing a lot of that prep remember that you have a um a shared file that shows you uh comments that happened so far on each policy I got sucked in the I'm sorry I realiz there was it is recommended by the school wait is recommended that the School Board approv policy 3112 board staff Communications and ISO move may have a second second all right we have 3112 board staff Communications uh as we took this back to committee there we removed that section c the chain of command uh and the committee suggested adding the following language that you see in green down below when an employee has a concerns has a concern unrelated to their employment
162status that they should see policy 9130 public request suggestions or complaints for the appropriate process for such concerns questions comments Mr Morris yes yes Dr hoik yes Mr wer yes Dr Worley yes Miss hrand no Mr Meyer no Dr Jess Banger yes and that item passes next up our first readings of policies uh 3215 is first yes policy 3215 employee use of tobacco and nicotine by staff obviously update the title there employee use of nicotine uh and removing professional staff this is just a update to the currency policy making appliable to all staff forward to policy 3216 staff dress and appearance again this is an update of the current policy uh we'll see instead of grooming the changes there from grooming to appearance and then uh in E you'll see from being be groomed to
163how they present themselves board at 3217 weapons prohibited by staff again as an updating of the current policy so you'll see where they have removed the Hiser herb back to the staff members board the 17.01 possession of pepper spray and so we added language here um where it's May possess perer spray only when that employee and moving who for to policy 3220 staff evaluation and this is updating of the current policy you see the language in green the superintendent is authorized to implement a program of evaluation for support staff consistent with the district's mission and goals so long as such evaluation program is not arbitrary and precious adjust your eyes on that next page so moving forward to 3230 the E ethics and conflict of interest is there a new policy we previously had a
164policy related specifically to staff ethics this policy brings into consideration other areas of a potential um potential conflict of of Interest or the appearance of a conflict of interest um specifically I would highlight the guidance indicating that um that gifts to staff members uh must be of nominal value and nominal value is defined as $25 or less uh per student is the is the application of that monetary value per student per instance yes question there wouldn't we just want to put those words that extremely clear I think we' been align with the policy we looked at this last time which was around gifting specifically where we did spell that out so I think it would be good to be clear on that awes for to 3231 outside activities of staff so again this is updating
165the current poliy and so for this is again for for all staff not just professional staff correct right all staff and making that cross link to the 3230 as well was a like a public comment about this one um but I wasn't really sure which way the the comment was directed um but I think it was It was kind of aimed at item D and maybe it was that that it's not spelled out enough um when we're when we're talking about staff members shall not campaign on school property I mean that uh or on the behalf of any political issu cidate local State national office we're talking about their capacity is when they're on the clock right right yes it's not if they want to go um protest or go uh do some something else
166that happens to be posted on a district property they're not this is not preventing new not at all correct okay right because it's during their work hours it's very specific and on school property the clarification would be that um they're in the capacity representing the wosa school district so for instance if a staff member was attending a a public event um something a matter of public interest if they were just doing that on their own but they could not be wearing like a wossa employee sweatshirt or or anything that's a different yes y this is just in their capacity as as an employee during during work time okay moving forward to 3281 personal property of Staff members this isy had quite interesting conversation on the politic learned a lot people bring to work we want
167to prevent staff members from bringing in sofas and bringing in fish tanks if it's not related to their instruction or this is what this policy is trying to address uh refrigerators posters micro microwaves which all those things are provided to the staff as a whole right that's so a question about refrigerators building detension so this is an issue within H kind of a context of HED so if a staff member is breastfeeding and is pumping while at work and is navigating the complexity of that there's a challenge of storing in a singular fridge so I I think I would I would love to know what we can make sure is available for all Educators in our schools if they're navigating that I think the line that that last sentence administrators are authorized to exclude or
168remove the personal property of Staff members I think it it it gives them some latitude that if there was a staff member in that type of position then they can have they can have some some leeway get some language around that we can some sort of medicine that has to be that's that's I I can imagine what if there's a pathway to request in a way that is makes sense that that it seems like a way of making a challenging situation more tal understood I would also add that there there's new um uh protections and Law related to individuals who are lactating and so I I have I have not reviewed that material like in the last month or so um but I would not be surprised if there's protections about how you're taking care
169of you know those materials before and after I I would say generally speaking wosa uh is does not exclude very many things that staff can have but it but the policy would allow um a an administrator to exclude something or to remove something if it created a problem one of the things that is a has been for years a highest priority is we don't want sofas we don't want other fabric like furniture um that has the potential to create risk and we we have a policy for um people who are lactating I remember we reviewed that so it says that the principal has discretion so I'm I'm not sure what the words exclude and remove mean or imply I mean exclude and exclud inclusion of an item what does that you know what I'm saying
170I mean they prevented from being being brought into the school as opposed to removing it when that's already there right that's what we think but inter what yeah it's not the most Artful wording that I could imagine and then let's say something is removed can it is it what if the principal destroys it disposes of it um doesn't return it I I mean there's there's implic I'm not disagreeing with what the policy is trying to accomplish I'm trying to suggest is there something we could come up with that or Neola could as long as this is their policy that will tell us put some specifics to what those two words mean and what duties still rest with the um administrators if they remove something right I mean I'm trying to support what's trying to have
171be done here assume because it says the owner of the personal property Bears all responsibility and assumes all risk for loss right if they brought it and it was taken away and damag they've assumed the risk that that's how I read it yeah and is there something that the owner could have bued in that's not patently obviously something not to be carried in you know what I'm saying it's like I I just I mean we can't over legislate but so if you like it fine I'm not going to die on the hill for this I think we take look at yeah I mean if if there's a bur return it then obviously if it's a couch then you have to after you removed it you have to store it and that carries a burden as
172well that why should we have the storage bur and yada and Away you go and Away you go now we've created a problem while trying to solve a problem so maybe the language is fine the way it is for to 3310 employee employee expression in non-instructional settings this one here again is updating front policy basically just removing professional and including or leaving the staff members moving forward to 3340 re procedures uh upda for policy here are not changing oh the 3362 employee anti-harassment this is another updating the current policy e going moment to plans this updating of the current policy Poli this policy was also abbreviated as there are uh benefits policies by employee employee classification and so uh as well as our employee handbook and our benefits guide so trying to be as streamlined
173as possible the board uh does approve changes to employee benefits um as that is um what part of what is in our handbook in our board policy I will be bringing forward updates to those um employee uh benefits policies by classification with the employee handbook Updates this summer policy related to health plans is specific to the fact that we have a a self-funded Group Health Plan uh and designates both Mr eer and I with some some roles under the health plan because we are our own administrator in essence thank you y 3419 points are moving forward to 3.03 Patient protection and Affordable Care new policy yes yeah new to WWA TOA and it pre previously it just not made it into our policy guide to 3425 benefits which replaces current policy 3420 no the while
174the policy we are not recommending the language in the policy that um that would uh govern the UN employee benefits committee um we do have an active employee um health and wellness committee um uh since the past two years rep to 3426 which is re numbered from 3172.1 employee assistance program AP rep to 34301 family aditt leave of absence FMLA just updating of the current policy another very detailed lengthy policy e 3431 employee leaves this is a new policy to wosa looks like missas be adding this information to the employee handbook yes to 3440 drob related expenses this is again updating of the current policy these expenses have to be pre-approved I didn't see that it doesn't explicit not do that um so I believe uh if someone is traveling at a at a building
175there is a pre-approval process for like conference registration Etc princip have some okay yeah uh there is not um like an expense uh estimate that that goes along with just general conference um approval um but again there is um there is approval at the building yeah say the travel payment paragraph on the first page um if it's provided from federal funds that has to be reasonable there are more regulations on on um maximum amounts of reimbursement and things like that for um who travel that's reimbursed by grants forward to our final one here 3531 unauthorized work stopage front policy nomal like that Chang professional not because our staff AR professional because we want apply to all that was offici thank you our next item is item number eight board governance legislative committee advocacy committee update
176Dr Ho okay um I have a couple of updates to give everybody to follow up on some of the things that we've already talked about and then I handed out two new resolutions that I'm hoping we can take a look at um today and get some of your feedback on so the first thing I want to update on is the um special education funding resolution that we passed oh January yes um so just so everybody knows we did do something with that resolution we didn't just tuck it away in a drawer somewhere um so we sent it out to all of our Representatives that are here like sort of representing Us in the wosa area we also sent it out to school districts that recently went to referendum and are represented by a member of
177The Joint finance committee since they are the ones who make the first kind of pass and um they are more likely to listen to their own constituents instead of constituents from another part of the state so we went to their constituents and said please plea for something similar say you've also been to to referendum we sent it out also to neighboring school districts like Brookfield wershaw um New Berlin and we also sent it to um a couple of different Public School advocacy groups that already exist um including s swsa and wpen so um we didn't get a lot of feedback from people um but it did get sent out and and we hope that it starts other school districts thinking about advocating similarly any questions or comments on that um thank you to Julia who
178did a lot yes Julia did so much of that work sent out a lot of emails and made it look really pretty um the next update I want to give is around our legislative breakfast so um that was scheduled for next Wednesday March 19th um and we had set that date not only because it worked for the members of the Lac but also because it was corresponding with I think a finance finance committee that was already going to be here so we were like oh let's jump on that and maybe more members of the school board will be able to make it to the breakfast um we did hear though that that is um a period of time when they're in session and so that um there was a suggestion that perhaps we need to
179reschedule that in order to get better a better show rate from our um invitees so um do we want to think about another date I don't remember um what dates we had that were in session and out of session but we did have some that Friday the 21st was uh another option I think they're in session through the 20th then then we get into spring break and then get back from spring break now it's late yes and at some point it becomes I mean really part of the point of this conversation is to let our local legislators know what we're advocating for for the budget I mean other things as well but specifically the bium budget so I would be in favor of the 21st if that would sure we don't think it's too late
180to I mean I don't thinkes okay so tentatively if you're if you're hoping to come to that maybe tentatively set aside some time the morning of the 21st um I think we had scheduled it for about an hour and a half yes um because all the board members are invited and we're planning for it to be here at fiser okay uh just let us know what you hear on confirming that we get that out tomorrow perfect yes ma'am okay um let's move into the resolution local control of school districts um this was not linked on board docs I don't know if there's a way to actually it is is you go under the legislative advocacy committee meeting if you go to that meeting uh that was posted I think it was last week we did
181that these two policies or proposed draft resolutions are there yes that would have been March 5th so if anybody's watching online and they want to look that would be the yes they were dra they were attached to that Lac meeting March 5th um but the board has this in front of them so um this specific resolution specifies that the role of the school board is as the duly authorized agent of the state to ensure public education is effectively implemented so the reason we wanted to bring this forward is there are a number of bills that are coming forward at our state level that are essentially removing our local control as a school board and are making decisions that should be board decisions and they're happening Instead at the state level um there was a very
182interesting quote um by um boss um and this is in the paper so anybody could see it but he says I'm a huge supporter of local control there are some districts that are so broken and expect us to have to pay for it as taxpayers either on the front end through funding the school district or on the back end with bad decisions that are made when people make bad choices so it's clear that they're kind of trying to determine what is good and what is bad not at the community level but rather at the state level um a couple of really popular bills that have come forward are um that school boards must require districts to adopt a cell phone ban now that may be good or bad I don't know that but ultimately I
183think that should be a decision that's made in each individual Community by the local community um there's another one around how districts have to budget money and where certain dollars can be spent and where they can't be spent um so it's getting quite granular about what can and can't be done so hence this particular resolution which essentially says it is our role as a school district to make these decisions and this overreach by our state legislators is not appropriate so I welcome your feedback on that basically we're saying um the tenant that once you give up control of something you almost never have the ability to give it back so therefore we don't want to give up our local control yeah and we are local I mean we are the locally elected officials by our
184community um and that is how School boards are defined in our state law um so they're essentially it's trying to bypass what school board should do or should be doing so that they can make decisions for all of us at the state level is this something that has already gone through legal and or yeah yes okay yes is if you notice it's aligned to certain statutes that outlines the fact that the school board is an agent of the of the state legislature the way that the constitution of Wisconsin is written you are empowered as the elected officials of the community of wosa to carry out and to create policy and to to govern the school district that's your job um at the very core is not the job of the state legislature is not the
185job of a a state legislator from Green Lake to tell you and wosa what materials you can buy to teach that's what's happening in Wisconsin right now you know there's someone heaven forbid someone from Rylander Wisconsin that is telling us that you can either have a cell phone or you can't have a have a cell phone potentially in our in our um in our school and that is just I think it's it's encroaching on on the purpose of even having a school board if the legislature and there are certain States in in the United States that the the state legislature is so overpowering that the purpose of being on the Schoolboard is really moot um that's not the that's not the Wisconsin way that's not what fighting Bob lafallet this the social studies teacher of
186me coming out that that's not what the Wisconsin Ford and the Wisconsin way is embodied it's we have 425 school districts in Wisconsin on purpose we we do have a lot of school districts but that's because this state believes in local control they have very quietly continue to encroach on your Authority as school board members and so that the purpose of this resolution is just to to is just to reiterate that that issue a few weeks ago um uh state representative Robin Vining called me and it was reached out to um Dr Jess of anger at board present and also some leaders in the elbrook school district to get our opinion on on this bill that was uh that's in front of the legislature around cell phones and what I Shar with representative Ving is
187that I don't want to lose the forest for the trees I don't want to get into this debate on should or should not support this bill the bigger issue is something's happening in Wisconsin in regards to the authority of school boards and if if we don't start having a bigger conversation around the fact that this is not good um we're we're going to have some problems if you recall maybe 24 months ago we were paralyzed because the state legislature passed an act at 20 and said well now here's the here's the materials you can and cannot buy well if if if if if we were legitimately waiting on the legislature on endorsing materials Dr Marvel I think we would still be waiting yes we would still be waiting on the legislature if if if that's
188what we were going to do I think we're just in a very dangerous State uh of affairs with with u the legislature approaching on your Authority so that's the purpose of this resolution and I guess the last thing I would say I'm sorry the last thing I would share and you see it in the resolution as well and beyond your Authority there is a a a Statewide elected State superintendent of schools there is a Department of Public construction for a reason we're we're one of the few States in in the United States where there is a Statewide election on who you want to lead the Department of Public construction they're they're also encroaching on the authority of the state superintendent whoever that is and I think the the the good thing about democracy is that
189every four years the the electors in the state has the right to decide who do you want to lead um uh the Department of Public Instruction and making really big policy decisions that's going to come up in a few weeks um with the state superintendent race but that's that's that's a power that the voters have in Wisconsin if the legislature continues to encroach on dpi's Authority it is also weakening the voter's voice okay well you will see that again um when 14th of April we will work on finalizing it at that point and getting signatures so we can distribute it um okay the final thing I want to share is the safe schools resolution um a lot of this wording is going to look really familiar because we talked about this um as a board
190I'm I'm not good with dates February January when we had some discussion around executive orders feary 10 thank you um and so this this resolution is really in alignment with that conversation as well as as our current policy and practice as a district um this one has not been reviewed fully by our legal team and and um we want to make sure that that were to happen before we make any kind of movement forward um but we did want to bring this to your attention that this is something we're also considering just to formalize our process as a school district um yeah all we would point out and I out let Mr pinion say anything he he's so inclined but much of this language is in alignment with our practices it just it it reaffirms
191it it also ground we believe it should be grounded in policies 5540 and 8407 uh which are already on the books um and so I am I'll go on record I'm thankful for the the collaborative relationship we have with the Walla Police Department I am confident that if there is any engagement um with any any agency as we talked about on February 14 or February 10th that there will be collaboration and communication with the wosa police department and our administrative team um you'll note in this uh draft resolution that it also references that we that you should direct Mr pinan and I to take a look at our bullying uh policy we're finding across the country that there are children who are um children of color um children who may come from different uh countries
192they're being bullied um in in our schools and so we just want to we want to lift that up and make sure that we're paying attention to it it's also embedded in this draft resolution that uh there's just some practices that we should adhere to that we we we don't um we don't give data out that shouldn't be given out to people um that we we want to maintain privacy of people um in their their information um that um again we work with our our local law enforcement when there is an agency if you remember on February 10th I made the example of working with the D the Wisconsin DNR um it doesn't matter what the agency is we're we're we believe that we have such a good working relationship with our local authorities that
1935540 and 8407 would insde with the enforcement of this draft resolution but again we're working on getting some final legal council but Mr pinion sure just two other points well covered um one our director of school safety Miss Laura Geer has been uh collaborating in in discussions with the w Police Department around this concept just so we are aligned and two we already have a working draft of just um kind of caseby casee process should we have to enact the policies that are referenced here and um really important to mention this could come in many forms it could look different for each type of request it is so important to make sure the right eyes are looking at the request um vetting it making sure the identity is confirmed all the things so that is
194um we are well positioned to meet the obligations outline here uh if and when it's approved down the road we have I I justess I would just conclude by saying we have a very informed Community our parents our students in our families and they they just we continued to share with them that we will adhere to our our policies and our practices this this uh resolution I don't believe is a stretch of what we're already doing it's just it's an affirmation um for people who need it um and again I just I would conclude by saying that um I'm really thankful to Mr pinion and his team for being so proactive in addressing many of these items that's already in the resolution it's just the opportunity for the board to affirm it for the community
195Mr Mark so the last paragraph of page one stating that all these law enforcement agencies are to follow wos School District policies we were told by our own Police Department that they answer to their legal requirements and they don't answer to our 5540 so how do we I mean any law enforcement agency shows up my my my my concern about any one coming to our door to say we are this person from this agency I am entitled to entry that we have a process to authenticate their credentials and in that case my own lay person belief was that our own SRO would be the best people to know whether somebody coming to our door say we're a federal or state law enforcement agency or a law enforcement officer from another municipality um how do we
196authenticate those credentials that that I think we we need guidance because we we we wouldn't want somebody who's impersonating law enforcement to get in but we also wouldn't want to have our employees lay in their Pathway to try to obstruct them if they have a legal duty to come in so that that I think we need some help on but I don't think we can tell them you know our our internal policies don't override their their Court authorization to do something for example so I I think that's a problem here that if it implies that somehow our district policies overrun their authority to do what they have the authority to do if acting lawfully and if there if someone isn't acting lawfully ultimately that is an issue for the courts um perhaps so that would
197that would be my disagreement here with that that do we need a lot of this and and it also doesn't do what I think we do need is to to provide clear guidance on how to authenticate somebody's representations to us about who they are so and now I see Mr opinion has his hands up although go first I was just going to Echo I can understand the concern especially after all the time and hours spent working with theou and with the police department uh I will look forward to legals kind of review and recommendation around that item specifically at a minimum the policy 5540 does exactly what what we discussed on February 10th which is if for example an ice agent an immigrations Enforcement office agent wanted to engage one of our students the process
198starts within 5540 um and so actually is the the reference of 5540 is not meant to be uh an impediment to an ice agent or to any other law enforcement it's just to Simply say that is the process um the process is to engage our SRO to then see if you're going to access or if you need to access um a student so that that's all that's all this is referencing it is not it is not laid out to be an impediment this board has spent um a significant amount of time discussing the language around 5540 I think full disclosure there's some school board members who are uncomfortable with the current language of 5540 that's that's also stated but as the language currently reads uh I believe it allows for Miss gisler and uh in
199the W til Police Department to have the the appropriate collaboration to determine if and when uh that access is provided but I'm not sure my point is being taken if if any law enforcement agency that's Superior in our governmental scheme to us if their own internal rules say follow local practices follow local practices um administratively to um gain entry well those are their rules and they have to follow them but how I heard it was if law law enforcement has a duty to come in they're going to come in and they're not going to have to read 5541 they as a courtesy to us they they I suppose they could I you know we're out of my league here about knowing what's okay and what's not um um I I I think we're believing we
200have some kind of authority here we don't have I maybe Mr Meer I'm not expressing myself clearly if the wall my understanding of how 5540 currently works if the wallt toosa police department determines that an law enforcement agency will have access to a student then they still have to communicate that through 5540 so we're not suggesting that 5540 is an impediment is just simply through that process they have to say we've made the determination as the local law enforcement agency that they're going to have access that that's all it does um so I I don't think I think we're saying the same thing sir no no they've our local police department has agreed to that memorandum of understanding as a working relationship with us they did not have to agree to that they had to
201agree to that in order to provide some kind of arrangement with us for SRO services but if we had no um memorandum of understanding their their legal authority to come in is what it is I don't know what that is um but that our 5540 doesn't bind federal or state law enforcement agencies I think we're saying I I agree with you however what 5540 States is that if the wall TSA Police Department determines that an agency is going to have access they simply have to notify us through that policy that they're going to give them access it's just a simp it's a courtesy so 5540 indicates that there will be a courtesy notification to the district that they're going to provide access to a student regardless if we believe that that should happen or not
202but I'm not sure that our local police department has authority to give a federal law enforcement officer access or not there's so many things here we just don't know I don't think this changes anything we're calling out specifically immigration because it is a our undocumented families are scared our children are scared there are issues around absences this doesn't really change anything that already in our policy and we've gone around and around around 5540 and we've had it looked at and reviewed by our local police we've had it looked at by our our team our legal team I don't think this changes anything except we're saying it in a different way or calling out of subpopulation but that policy I I feel like we've exhausted that that policy with conversation so oh no we didn't we
203did not have federal law enforcement officers in front of us but it wouldn't really matter whether it's a federal law enforcement or it's the Greenfield Police Department well we'll find out I guess yes I guess I'd like to State I do believe there's probably a better landing spot for the language and I think we will find it that meets the intention I also agree we cannot force or control other agencies they have laws and things they're following I can guarantee that a process will be enacted and we will have the time because any agency isn't going to know where to go buildings to find said students so it will give us time to consider it thoughtfully and execute a process and I also want to just emphasize that what I heard when we had our
204local police here is that they are going to follow the law and they're going to make their determination on what they what they believe um whatever agency or officer needs to have access they're going they're going to follow the law they're not going to uh be impeded by our policy that's what I've heard them State and I I respect that in honoring and that's all this policy states all we're suggesting as Mr pingan and Dr H stated there's a there's a process in which we're going to be informed that the W TOA Police Department is going to make that determination that's all 5540 does at this time and really the The Hope in this if we were to pass this resolution the hope is to reassure our students that when you're in school you're here
205to be educated yes and we we want our students to be here and to feel safe and to feel like they're going to get a really solid education and whatever is happening out in the world we hope it's not going to ultimately negatively impact our school environment thank you Dr H I'll just have one thing it's very short in the policy it says school officials shall assist and cooporate inves ation as requested by law enforcement and consistent with District responsibility to maintain the confidentiality of Student Records under state and federal law so it's in our policy yes pretty clearly I think but well that you'll look at it again but I yeah if if it's a draft I I mean given that ice is the only agency that's called out here perhaps we should contact
206them and ask to meet with them and come to some um understanding or communication purposes about how this would be done if they decide it has to be done so that we've already established communication links with them so they know who call here to say I don't know that they would do that but I don't know how they're going to do their jobs I don't know what their jobs are and what their constraints and Duties are so but I wouldn't think that we could contact ice if I mean we're talking about ice here so let's I want to be very clear to our community that might be listening we are not going to be contacting ice that is not something we're going to be doing that would terrify our families Mike please don't make suggestions
207like that without being thoughtful to the people who are listening who are going to be absolutely terrified that a board member just sat in here and said let's call ICE well I we're trying to dictate to them how they should do their we're trying to dictate to our own community and our own District what we should be doing we're not sending this we're not mailing this to ice if you're so worried about them then have a communication I'm worried about our students I'm not worried about ice I'm worried about our students we're worried about the the unintended consequences Mr Meer of Education educational goals not being met for a group of students right now um we didn't ask for this to be something that we had to um call out but we aren't making new
208policy here if you look at at um 5540 it's all in there it's not new policy no but it is there is a level of concern that is hurting education which is our first priority as a school board is to figure out how to make sure all of our students are welcomed um and coming to school so my understanding from this point uh this will be back at the legislative advocacy committee meeting uh legal will be reviewing this well in advance of it returning back to the board um folks are certainly welcome to join the next legislative advocacy committee meeting um and we keep making sure this is as tight as possible thank you everyone for your comments um my understand we not have an executive committee session tonight okay uh it is 9:26 p.m.
209may I ask do we need a motion to table the the item for the close session I don't know no uh it is 926m may I have a motion to adjourn a move to adjourn second M Mr Morris yes Dr Hoy yes Mr wer yes Dr Worley yes missimer Rolland yes Mr Meyer yes Dr Jess Banger yep we areed have a great