001good evening everyone I call the January 88th 2024 school board meeting to order it is 6:01 pm. and we are in conference room C of the Fisher Administration Building at 12121 West North Avenue Miss Summers please callor roll Mr Marius here Dr Hoy here Miss Willis here Dr Worley here miss hmer Rolland here Mr Meyer here Dr Jessa Banger here uh we begin this evening with several uh recognitions of some really outstanding work by students and our faculty and staff uh the first one we are actually not going to be doing this evening but I they are on the agenda but they were not everyone was not able to join us tonight so we'll be uh recognizing them later and that's our 2023 fieldwork educator of outstanding um thank you uh we will be honoring
002our 2023 fieldwork educator of the Year award um Kelly Norton uh was honored by the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee Department of Health Sciences as its 2023 fieldwork educator of the year uh Dr means uh any kind of overview of what this means um congratulations uh this is a big deal would invite you to come up if you'd like to share a little bit about your work um and anything that you'd like to um kind of share about the ongoing efforts that that you and your colleagues are undertaking here yes okay hello thank you very much for the recognition my name is Kelly Norton I'm an occupational therapist in the wood TSA schools this is my 15th year here and I have partnered with wwm for um a number of years now um what I do
003is I supervise um our equivalent an OT of student teachers and so I've had the honor and privilege of working with a number of fantastic uh future School OTS and OTS that are also in the healthc care field um through my role and I have found it to be very fulfilling I learn a lot for my students and I think it's a really great partnership that wosa has had and I really appreciate the ability to continue to do that in my role well thank you congratulations on both your nomination and the recog thank you I always love as as somebody who studies um the education of college students and adults and graduate students uh when we have an opportunity to bring in outstanding uh emerging professionals uh both to learn from them and to educate
004them it's always inspiring so thank you for all that you do uh next up we will be recognizing our national board certified teachers uh Dr me can you share a little bit about the national board certification program process the national board certification process is a very extensive rigorous um process in which teachers have to record themselves uh delivering instruction to students U but more importantly than stepping back and reflecting on their practice and uh really giving an analysis of how they can be the very best professionals they can be for their students for their colleagues and for their profession overall uh it it is the the gold standard of certification um for a teacher I missel isasi I believe we have a total of 18 um national board certified teachers in our district uh 18
00519 yes and so that's a really um I think that's a a very honorable number to have but I also uh would like to see more of national board certified teachers and um I know the board received an email from one of our fine national board certified teachers that said uh right now our new salary system allows us to give a one-time stien I would love for us to be in a financial position where we can recognize these teachers on an annual basis with a stapen we're not we're not in a position right now financially to do so but I know the board believes that um our administrative team believes it it's just a matter of having the revenue to to to provide that that U recognition outstanding um my mother-in-law was a national board
006certified teacher as a Middle School M teacher and so I I felt like I I lived up up close in personal issues going through the process and got a really good sense of the rigor uh that goes into this uh I want to read each of the the individuals uh if you'd like to stand and be recognized um if you are in the audience with us tonight uh John Eder Katherine petett Cameron Nelson we'll give her an Applause I think Katherine tyal Eliza Ross Keta Lauren rosowski Hayden Alison seslar Jessica belic aryn Curley Michael Hayden Jeffrey Luda whsy Jennifer Berthold Jessica Michael Angelique burn Aon Mt Amy snowy and Shannon is Kyo congratul ation to all of you and thank you for those of us who were able to join us this evening uh next
007up is recognition of a universal Park donation by Jefferson teachers uh Jefferson staff raised more than $600 for the ability Center's Moss Universal Park uh congratulations this is over 20 years now that the Jefferson staff has been uh donating to various worthy causes uh so thank you very much uh for your team effort um one of the areas that I have zero responsibility on whatsoever is calling a snow day I get a lot of pressure from middle schoolers to call a snow day I have asked Dr memes repeatedly and he's not shared whether or not we will have a snow day I even asked if we could have the Frozen cast sing us out into a snow day so cool and I've had no effect whatsoever on Dr means as far as I can tell
008um but the Frozen cast and crew is here with us this evening uh I know many people saw this many people wanted to see it and couldn't get tickets because you sold out the entire run um it was absolutely stunning uh as as a as an enjoyer of theater to watch what you do each semester and each year in this this performance was just breathtaking um so thank you for joining us this evening um Dr means um any any kind of overview or comments Mr Stefan you're up next so prepare yourself um I called you the microphone but any comments or words I I would just say that in a Kate 12 education space but candidly you I know we have a couple of highered Educators on our board as well even in the highered
009space our society pays too much attention to Athletics and um I was so proud to be the superintendent of wall of the wosa school district when the performance of Frozen occurred a few months ago what Mr Stefan has built in terms of a culture is second to none it is inclusive it includes all of our students and includes um students of all ranges and abilities and he creates a family um but beyond creating that family the performance is Broadway caliber and I think a lot of times districts say that about their their theater Productions that is definitely the case and uh we we recently did a video of one of my superintendent updates and I think it is symbolic of what's happening in all of our performing and visual arts across the district um JK
010through 12th grade it is we have amazing art teachers um music teachers and perform in ours teachers so I I just want to say thank you to the students who are here uh Mr Stan if you have any words to close us out I just wanted to say thank you for your contribution to our community and a fine performance uh thank you for those kind words you know when I think about our Frozen experience right to be the first one of the first high schools in the entire nation to do it and to be the only High School chosen for Wisconsin it's just incredible and I feel like I've been talking about this for for months and months and months so it's it's hard to sometimes find the words to really um capture what our
011experience was like and some of these students here were were part of our production from start to finish it was remarkable and I'm really proud of our production the work that we continue to do at TOA West um thank you for your support it means a lot I know a lot of you saw our production that featured a cast a crew a pit of over 100 students that's over 10% of our student body which is really really incredible so um thank you for your continued support and um certainly I'd like to mention Mr Gala as well and our Administration who continue to be supportive of our efforts and um Bravo to all of you and to our students who are here tonight um it was an incredible experience so thank you congratulations I would also
012like to if there's one two or three students who want to come up and kind of share anything that you would like to I you know usually you have to twist arms for students to come up but if if if if a handful of you want to come up and kind of share anything you are welcome toic oh hi um so I think that Frozen was very fun as like my first High School show as a freshman I think it was really cool um I kind of did theater all throughout middle school so when I saw the opportunity that we're GNA be the first like High School in all of Wisconsin to actually do this awesome musical I was like sure let's go for it and I didn't even expect to make it but I
013did and I had such a I had such a blast it was just awesome and I never actually thought that it would have like such an impact on me but like when Batts were called on the final show I was I was full of tears it was such a it was such just a breathtaking musical it was fun and it just makes me want to pursue theater throughout high school and throughout my entire life and it's just it's really cool and presenting like a lot of cool opportunities for all of us so yeah hi I'm Ashley Nash I'm a senior at West um who played bould he played wlon he didn't care to share that um um was the worst but you did it really well he also went to uh Good Morning America and
014was on live live um that was amazing thanks to Mr Stefan as well um to share something about myself um I think that what Evan said is so true um in very little words theater has done so much for me over the years um I was too shy to get out and really be myself on stage my freshman year and so I finally went for my sophomore year and got in the show um um I was onsemble but it still really means something to you and I don't think that people understand what theater can do for somebody um especially our theater produ um team everything honestly um it's such a family and I'm really glad that uh he pointed that out because I think that that is the biggest thing that I enjoy about our
015theater um everything about our theater honestly um is that we're such a family and um although we might not get along with each other sometimes like we fall out we get frustrated I mean it all it happens um everybody's human and so we find ways to bring that out through our characters in so many different ways and I think that's so fun about theater um and I just want to say thank you to Mr Stefan I'm pretty sure all of us can say this uh he does so much for all of us and I don't think he understand understands himself how much of an impact he is on us students that are in theater so thank [Music] you um hi I'm Bailey um I would just like to everything that they said was literally perfect
016I couldn't say it any better but um I was Ensemble and I just couldn't say like the theater has had such an impact in my life since I was younger a lot of my family was in theater so I've been in theater since I was young and just walking into this experience was just amazing and I also didn't expect to get in but when I did I made so many new friends and so many like people that I really care about now and it's just a really big family so thank you Mr Sten to everyone at West thank you all for being here congratulations uh it was a joy to watch you uh there is a show this spring uh anyone want care to kind of share what we can expect and what any dates
017March what March 8 it's March 8th it opens on March 8th it's 9 to5 so it's the Dolly Parton Musical and we actually just had auditions today so that was really fun to come here afterwards and reconnect to our other musical but but yeah we're starting our journey for 9 to5 and it's really exciting very different very different than Pro but in a very good good way it's really fun it'll be good so yeah standing congratulations again thank you for being here with us you're welcome to stay we've got a lot on the agenda that some of wish you may be very interested in we understand that finals are coming up and you've got other competing priorities and you're busy students who are engaged so if you need to step away we understand that as
018well but thank you for being here uh and drive home safe tonight if you can do some sort of snow thing to get the students of the W cha School District would be excited for him parents maybe less theat I think it's the way of learning good seeing you begging begging I understand message delivered uh next up on our agenda is uh we have a time for public comment members of the Wawa toast School Board value the input of students parents staff members and community members the board's regularly scheduled meetings provide an opportunity for opinions and concerns to be expressed publicly the board values all comments and will respectfully consider this input in decision-making the board requests that individuals limit their comment on each item to three minutes the F following any comment an individual
019board member May respond on the issue raised however it is not the intent of the public comment portion of the agenda for the board to enter into a debate with a member or members of the community because non-agenda items are not publicly posted in advance no action will be taken on public comment regarding non-agenda items this evening uh we have 30 minutes set aside uh we'll have an opportunity for some public comment in the room this evening I'll then turn to a couple commenters uh uh online probably two or three come back to the room to see if there's anybody and then uh go back on online uh for any final comment if time allows um Dr hoy's got us set for the 30 minute Mark and I will time for up to three minutes
020I will try to give uh about a 30 second heads up as you near time and you don't have to go the whole three minutes but uh if you go less time it'll give an opportunity for more comments but three minutes are yours and at the three minute Mark I'll ask you to um wrap up and sit down thank you um first is ready to come on up as I watched those wonderful kids that were in Frozen I wonder how many of those were open enrollment kids that went through the system from K through 12th grade my name is Lucia bar BME I'm a former educator and my granddaughter is an O student at Jefferson I must congratulate some of you at your success in marginalizing and demonizing the O students as disrupted lowering scores
021and costing the district money your own executive summary dated 1624 states that always students generate a net revenue of $1.25 million I'm not a math Wiz but the district which has seven or eight seven or N9 million deficit whichever one you want is prepared to give up this Revenue what am I missing I know money is a concern may suggest to cut in all administrative salaries frees a hiring of expensive Consultants when there are District employees paid to do the same job and can we dispense with the services of the Dei director and Physicians since their services will no longer be required as you will be eliminating the very need for their existence you well know that there is a dip in the Resident schol population in TOA for several years so if you greatly
022greatly restrict oeas planned Jefferson will not have the enrollment to sustain itself so this would be the last nail in the coffin for Jefferson staying open as a viable School our crossing guard is gone and sent to Wilson we don't know at the last discussion of OE you all indicated that OE families are our family and the feeling was that the mid-level plan was the most sensible well apparently we're not as wanted as indicated by focusing exclusively on OE as the source of all that ails tosa you're demonstrating a remarkable shortsighted shortsightedness and frankly it borders a bit on the racist and suddenly has become a very rushed affair we have to decide it right away I say this with regret but we need to change the way we look at things and replace certain
023individuals with people that have Creative Solutions that don't sacrifice diversity equity and inclusion I was an educator at pasus the 11th high school and PAs 11th high school was a choice school I taught there for 30 years and Liz was in my tag I didn't know who the choice students were teachers were not didn't know that I tell you we had very bad choice students and we had very very very good choice students 30 seconds we had very good paying students and very bad paying students and what we had to do when they broke the rules they withdrew so why can we do that for OE why are we punishing OE for all that Al tosa the siblings of the current OE students what's going to happen to them it is not fair it is
024not just it is not Equity please reconsider it thank you thank you my name is Cheryl hogenson I've written to all of this the people on this board there was a time when there was an incentive to move to a community such as wosa to utilize the school system this seems to not be a thing anymore in most districts when you move out of the district it is a given that your kids will go to the new school in your new District but not here this is especially a problem when the kids from outside the district don't bring with them the dollars that it costs to educate them in my world being fiscal fiscally responsible means not spending more than you have if we don't have enough uh enough to educate our own students living
025in this District why would be we be bringing in students that utilize that ultimately cost us more I think this Board needs to get real and end open enrollment and close Old Money draining half-filled schools we all want to be do Goods but at a certain point there's a responsibility to those footing some of the Bill thank you hi my name is Emily belot I am the president of the Jefferson PTA but I'm speaking today simply as the parent of a second grader I'm talking today in response specifically to comments made at last week's special SE a special session uh in that meeting Dr Jessup anger you spoke repeatedly about the need to minimize disruption to the most elementary students you indicated that closing only one or two schools would minimize this disruption talks of
026redrawing School boundaries were squashed at the behest of prioritizing minimizing disruption I would like to stress that while many students would not have their own schools shut down the impact on every wossa student is significant I would direct you to the evidence-based research that's been done on school closings across the country and how students adapt emotionally and academically in at least one study it's noted that the time to recover academically takes longer for the students who do not move schools than it is for the students whose school is actually closed when we talk of potential school closings as a concession for Budget constraints when we are willing to accept a smaller brick and mortar footprint for lower numbers of open enrollment students we must then acknowledge that there are real measurable effects to all students
027that take years to rebound from we must acknowledge that we are sacrificing the academic Excellence of our elementary students and Beyond in exchange for saving money if these discussions are to move forward we cannot simply say that we needed to save money we must also admit that we are saving money at at the expense of student learning notably at the expense of some of our most vulnerable students my second grader entered JK during a year of covid induced hybrid model learning she was in the classroom only two half days a week for four months in senior kindergarten her principles her school's principal felt unsupported by the district and abruptly resigned only two weeks into the school year the same week two more teachers resigned indicating they didn't receive the support they needed from this District
028now this year only two weeks into her only weeks into her second grade year news broke of her school potentially closing the weeks that have followed have included District talking points of her building is crumbling community members talking about her school being undesirable and the assumption is that her educational experience is unequal to other students in her District simply because her building isn't brand new 30 seconds thankfully she's an exceptional teacher supporting her learning learning along the way truly some of the best we could have hoped for but when I reflect on her short time in this wosa School District I have a hard time identifying it as anything but an Institutional failure I would implore you as a school board to remember the real life families and students that are impacted by your decisions
029research what it does to overall academic success consider the legacy of a public school education on a generation of students navigating year after year of these traumas we are not simply a group to be sacrificed as minimally disrupted in the Greater Community we too our families that have invested in and made wossa our home and we too have placed our trust and our children's future in the hands of this wossa school district thank you for your time hi my name is Natalie wigman my daughter Iris Wegman is um attends Jefferson through the Open Enrollment program and she has a little sister that I'm intending on doing open enrollment through in February of this year um I've been trying to plan what I should do for opal and for Iris because it seems just heartbreaking to
030me to have one child that's in the school district and then the other child somewhere else I've been really confused um looking at the talking points and I printed them out um at the December 11th meeting the seat calculations were for Mid were or for men were were zero mid was 34 Max was a 129 at the January 2nd meeting it changed to at the district level it changed to min0 Mid 192 and then Max 316 today's meeting it says for the district level zero mid is 117 and Max is 233 all these discrepancies like it makes hard for me to understand what's going on um and I'm nervous that the board is having the same difficulty uh to come up I need you guys to come up with an educated decision and like if
031all these things these talking points are changing it's it's hard for me to like know if you guys are on the same page too um Jefferson as you know has a lot of open enrollment students and I fear that if we make a decision and go with the Min minimum plan of zero and phase out open enrollment this would seal the fate of of Jefferson um you haven't heard from the taxk force and like I haven't heard everything from the taxk force maybe you guys have uh but we need to hear from the task force first we need to hear the input from the community surveys we need to hear if the community wants this referendum so I don't know if it's in good conscious to make a decision while open a moment before we
032know that information I want to say again please consider like grandfathering in siblings of open enrollment students or just at the very least pause making this drastic change to cause making this drastic change to the open enrollment until we know the facts thank you thank you hi um my name's Brandon HCK I am uh a father five kids four of them are uh attend and wosa public schools um I volunteer in the classroom I'm an activity volunteer and also a task force 2075 member um I'm not speaking for the task force speaking on my own but uh it's been it's it's been a very good experience to be part of that uh and consider the data um I'm I'm hopeful for the schools my kids have had a great uh learning experience and I'm hopeful
033for where WUSA Public Schools can go um it's a little discouraging to see some of the DPI scores uh and some of the trends that I know that Dr me and the the board has been working hard to reverse some of those Trends um I've heard multiple times last week though that you know you the the board has the impression that the community just wants to maintain the status quo and refill the schools or keep the schools full um I want to say that I disagree from the data that I've seen we really need to make changes to pursue Excellence we have the North Star on the wall over there that talks about a Rel Relentless commitment to academic achievement if we want to do that we need to we need financial stability and we're
034you know 9 million in the whole every year um so we need to make some tough choices uh the data that we saw in the task force you know showed that o students were twice as likely to be involved in disciplinary actions twice as likely to be in the bottom 25% of star test scores which require academic tutoring uh that we don't have enough of right now we need to help those students and we need to help all students and if we need to if we're going to do that we need schools that can sustain themselves going forward and that means making the tough choices that we have to make as a board and as a school district if we want to ensure that Educators have the support and resources they need to S to
035to thrive as again is on the North Star on the wall here we need to focus on what's needed for the district to provide education and Excellence for the next seven to 10 years the only way to do this is to pursue a fiscally responsible approach which I believe is Theory B which on on the what was discussed at the meeting last week um then we can can consider for the first time is Mr Meer mentioned since 2005 the full choices of what we need to make in terms of right sizing and redrawing lines or considering some of the other things that were mentioned here to make sure that we optimize this District going forward uh to do the best for our students so I just encourage the board to continue to consider all options
036uh and to be open to this uh minimum approach but also uh taking some next steps in terms of how we rightsize everything in the school district to truly deliver that uh Relentless commitment to academic Excellence thanks for making the tough choices Jeremy I see that there's nobody with their hand up online so I'm going to continue with in in in the in room um comments hi uh cine Hudson my kids go to Washington and I am the PTA president there um I actually have some points that kind of speak to what the person in front of me just said but maybe have a different perspective on it um the three things I think about in terms of why I'm encouraging the board to pause making any drastic decisions to this policy right now um
037number one I don't believe that information that the district leadership team has presented is complete I think that there's a lot that's been missing in the board meetings um when we as a PTA leadership team were were presented with a Q&A packet one of the th things that stood out to me in there was there was a question about how would ending open enrollment or minimizing open enrollment a programs and services and in there our district told us there will be an effect on student facing positions there will be um staff that is has positions eliminated there will be an overall negative impact on the on the student learning experience so as I think about the Relentless commitment to academic achievement and I think about our mission vision and values as a district I'm not
038sure we can achieve an excellent educational experience for all of our students if we are eliminating student facing positions and programming and services for our students as a result of eliminating or reducing significantly open enrollment the next thing is when we talk about what the community wants and feels there's been very little community outreach and engagement there has been some Outreach to families in the district but this is but not a lot of Outreach to the entire Community I'm thinking about engagement sessions listening sessions the district really taking making an effort to engage and educate our entire community so it seems um not very prudent to me to make a major policy shift without taking time to do that we were promised a survey Community survey in October that it would be coming out January
039or February I've heard none of that yet um and so until we get that Community feedback I just feel that it is um not really the best decision to make some drastic policy shifts um and the last thing is we were told that there would be a process that the tosa 75 task force would work through a process C and would come to the board in the spring with a recommendation that included a recommendation on open enrollment so I encourage you to push this back onto the task force and give them time to really work through the process instead of rushing through it um so those are the three reasons that I think that and really hope that you consider putting a pause on any drastic changes although I know that there are some things
040that need to be tightened up and shored up for next year um the policy as it's written right now is just a huge shift without taking into full consideration the big picture thank you Todd Kaylor uh District parent and Task Force member um I know you guys have probably been inundated by emails recently I just want to point out that some of that might be driven by some misinformation um going around online um obviously on the task force we've spent hours and hours and hours on this and there is some stuff that that isn't quite right and hopefully it's just a misunderstanding um but I just want to put that out there so I mean really try and read into the comments and see if they fully understand what they're recommending and Todd I can
041guarantee for the last five years or so I've seen a lot of misinformation shared about a lot of issues online um also I just just because it was been brought up I just want to reiterate that while do is a diverse Community there still seems to be that impression that all of our diversity comes from open enrollment through number that's not true there is a slight uptic in the diversity numbers with open enrollment but it's fairly small um bottom line is the status quo is not sustainable uh we just can't financially continue doing what we're doing um it's just a math problem we just simply can't um which leaves us a couple of options we either have to increase revenue or start to reduce expenses um I I think with open en Roman students being
042almost twice uh of uh well I mean we're losing we're a negative on on Resident students we're almost twice as negative when it comes to Dollars and cents as we are with open enrollment students so it kind of exacerbates our financial problem uh uh and so some lwh hanging fruit is kind of to adjust our formula for open enrollment hopefully reduce some of the negative impact to our bottom line uh in that regard um the other side of the things is revenues there's again limited options for us to increase Revenue um we can cross our fingers and hope that the legislature decides to fund us more significantly wouldn't hold my breath unless something significantly changes um then of course the other option is more referenda um this my feeling is it seems like a lot
043of people just kind of accept that any referendum we put out there is going to be passed um I don't know that that's true um speaking to other people at the engagement um session that you guys had a few weeks back there was kind of some surprise that the last referendum didn't cover our our Capital expenses um they they seem surprised that there's a part two 30 seconds to that process so at at a operating referendum on top of that I'm not sure it's as easy a sell as as some people might think it is um so I would encourage you to kind of take action now and not kick it down the road because if we don't do it make an adjustment now we're looking at potentially of students at a $5,000 plus loss
044for at least 12 years so um this isn't a silver bullet there is no Silver Bullet so if that's what you're looking for it's not going to happen that I've heard that argument um we need to start taking action and moving in the right direction now um I think a districtwide model is an absolute must and I would encage the minimum so um thank you for your time thank you um Dr H what are we at for time we have 10 minutes left okay uh I do have three hands that have gone gone off online uh so I'm going to take those and then um you will you sir will be our unless everybody goes suddenly quick uh you'll be our final comment um let Jeremy can we go with Holly Anderson who's who's up
045top on my screen H Holly you're allowed to talk please state your name and address hi I'm Holly Anderson and then 6425 West Clark Street good evening everyone my name is Holly and I'm a graduate of tosa public schools Roosevelt in 2013 Long Fellow in 2015 and East in 2019 this past may I graduated with a degree in applied economics from the Wharton School of Business and I owe much of My Success to tosa Public Schools I felt compelled to join this meeting tonight upon hearing about the Open Enrollment proposal from my mother who's a teacher in the district to be frank I was appalled I then read your recommendation deck which only confirmed my dismay it is my understanding that when on evaluating maximum mid-level and minimum open enrollment allotment the analyst determined that
046the minimum or zero open enrollment seats provided the most benefit to the district the calculations in the study are computationally correct however the analysts failed to recognize one crucial detail public schools are not a business students are not liabilities and I want to emphasize this loow hanging fruit either an open enrollment budget is not merely a source of Revenue any ation of open enrollment funds to the espouse components of Education including deans of students professional learning curriculum review and Development Special Education support and social emotional support strips open enrollment students of both the funding that they were allocated by the government and the opportunity for these students to receive a quality education in tosa what does it say about the district to deliberately use money that is intended for open enrollment students in an effort
047to box them out to me it indicates a belief that only certain students should receive the benefits of attending tosa schools eliminating open enrollment seats is antithetical to your strategic plan which includes diversity Equity inclusion accessibility culture and Community to eliminate open enrollment yet advertise these values is not only deceptive but also hypocritical it is a shame that children may be deprived of endless opportunities because of the district's poor management of their budget in the past I implore District to make the decision to educate children rather to profit from them thank you thank you uh can we go with Janet Janet you're allowed to talk please teach your name and address hi my name is Janet Bolton and my address is 8221 West mural place Janet the floor is yours I called in because I
048am not only a mother of an open enrolled student I am also a stepmother to three District enrolled students within wossa we chose to open enroll our daughter into TOA because she had other siblings who went to the school they all said that the district was topnotch and we decided Beyond three other schools we wanted to keep the siblings together we also have one other child who we attempted to get into 4K this year was weight listed in the first seat but was not able to be enrolled so I currently am traveling between multiple districts in order to get my children to and from school every day this makes my commute every day for just School 4 hours by choosing to reduce therefore eliminates open enrollment seats you're making it that multiple families have to
049make hard decisions we need to pull the students who already have been in a district and move them into another District because it's not possible to every day travel hours to get our students to and from school I'm also appalled by the fact that many seem to think that just because I live in Milwaukee and my daughter is open world that means that I shouldn't even been talking here today when in fact I have been involved in the district since 2016 because my district enrolled step students go to this school one who graduated last year and is going to college for nursing none of my kids are problems none of my kids drain the system and it's very disturbing to me how people seem to want to push this instead of waiting to get all
050of the details that's what we're asking don't rush a vote let's see what's all on the table and then have everyone who matters get an input thank you thank you our last online commenter will be Kelly and then we will come to a final comment in the room and then we'll close out public comment for this evening Kelly you're allowed to talk please state your name and your address hi my name is Kelly Goldman my address is 1846 North 71st Street um I'm a parent of students at Lincoln in Longfellow and I am also a member of the 275 task force um I didn't plan to call in but I felt compelled to represent a different perspective Ive of the task force than what you have been hearing from those in the room tonight um
051my perspective and the perspective of the folks that I've been collaborating with is that it would be prudent to hold off on making a major change to the open enrollment seats for next year because of all of the reasons that people have um brought up tonight and more we just don't know how this change is going to affect a lot of different things in our district and as painful as it might be it might be the right decision in the end but we just don't know what will all fall out if we set in motion this path of majorly scaling back our open enrollment primarily I mean just to start with we will lose $1.25 million in Revenue every single year if we don't have open enrollment to the scale we have it right now
052that's net revenue so that gets added to an operational deficit that the task force is already grappling with in terms of how do we cover this do we have to make programming Cuts do we have to close schools do we have to go to referendum it's not a financially smart strategy to add over a million dollars to that deficit right off the bat for my peers on the task force who are recommending that this change be made now and that open enrollment be scaled back I have not heard and we haven't had a chance to discuss in task force meetings how those folks would suggest that $1.25 million be covered there has not been the thorough analysis of okay if we make this decision about Open Enrollment now then what happens with XYZ and that's
053that's just my my ask tonight is that the board would just hold off on making this change because of all of the impacts that need to be sorted out in order for them to make an informed decision in order for our community to be able to advocate for ourselves if if we close open enrollment or if we scale back open enrollment It seems impossible that we would be able to keep all of our schools open so closing schools means redistricting every elementary school there are neighborhoods of every Elementary School who would be bumped to a different Elementary School the Ripple effects of this are just so widespread all I ask is that the school board would just give the task force give themselves give Administration give the community time to Grapple with what all of
054that would look like and come up with a comprehensive plan so that we're not just making hasty decisions and then kind of dealing with the Fallout as one-offs it doesn't feel good to me as a task force member it doesn't feel good to me as a parent I could tell it doesn't feel good to a lot of people in the room to make such a big decision not knowing all the consequences so you're at time that's my okay thanks our last comment on this item um for this evening will be in our room uh sir you've got three minutes sure thank you hello I'm Eric Fanning um I'm a TOA West parent and um I'd like to say happy birthday to David Bowie and just so everyone's clear that all these referendums all the communities
055across Wisconsin are dealing with are Walker taxes so I'll start after that okay um I don't know I'm here to ask that you um vote against open enrollment in wosa public schools um admittedly I don't know you know all of the public school fincial details besides the public information you know recently made available most of which is is a dire Financial picture with uh ending open enrollment being an old wossa friendly as I say saving throw to saave off some of these concerns um I'd like to focus on the educational and social impacts as I believe money can always be found where there is a will um so the pros to this idea at least you know seemingly is immediately immediate financial relief projected by those in favor of ending open enrollment um there's consolidation
056of uh resident students in the surviving schools bringing money and or repurposing opportunities to retired locations parents of non-public school kids and Resident non-parents who we've heard from tonight will no longer have to pay taxes to educate open enrollment Outsiders uh there will be less tension and increased Comfort among the remaining students faculty and staff um who look like me I should clarify um who may feel uncomfortable around NW with to of students um open enrollment students can return to their neighborhood schools and again there's a long-term Financial boost projected by those in favor of ending open enrollment um the cons would be in my mind decreased diversity among students faculty and staff through wa toosa Public Schools as I believe there will be an immediate Exodus and issues recruiting in the future um ever
057increasing isolation for the next 10 to 12 years among the remaining open enrollment students as well as wossa resident students from marginalized communities um because again this isn't only impacting those who are in open enrollment as was talked about earlier sign significant and Myriad impacts of the families of open enrollment students who have children not yet in school um there it will it will cause an indication of wossa public schools weakening Financial picture ripening things for the false Choice supporters and benefactors we worked off to Stave we worked to Stave off last year uh there'll be an increase in quote unquote racial incidents discrimination and conflict involving black and brown and other margin other marginalized kids 30 seconds as well as non-white staff um as the isolation will make them more vulnerable to attacks um
058i' just like to say despite being in favor of full open enrollment plus more money for improved outcomes I am in favor of the Middle Road in a sense to help um deal with some of these devastating mistakes made by The Walker Administration and the leftover legislature um but not ending the program and let's remember 25% of open enrollment students identify as white so despite the noise this isn't a a race issue as they say Sir you're a Time thank you and um I'd like to ask are we moving closer to 2075 or 1975 thank you thank you all very much for your comments this evening um we will be moving forward now uh with our consent agenda item are there any items in the consent agenda which board members would like to remove for
059separate discussion and action seeing none uhle it is recommended that the school board approve the consent agenda and I so move thank you may have a second you any board discussion or questions Miss Summers please call the Mr Morris yes Dr hoik yes Miss Willis yes Dr Worley yes M Hammer Rolland yes Mr Meyer yes Dr Jess Banger yes yes and the consent agenda passes as packaged uh our next item up is strategic goal five culture and Community First reading of 4 E4 education for employment academic and career planning uh because we have quite a uh quite a number of agenda items this evening that we expect to be lengthy we've asked for about a 10-minute uh focused uh time for this uh folks saw a flip presentation that was available to the board uh
060had an executive summary in the slide deck um so the goal for us this evening will be to keep this pretty tight thank you all for being here um and present tonight for those you don't know me I'm Cindy Carter I'm the academic and career planning coordinator for the district um you did receive the slide presentation and the executive summary all ahead of time and I'm here to answer any questions that any of you have any questions or comments from the board this might be on President um one of the comments that I would make is I I have been very excited to see particularly as my children have gotten older um the opportunities through a variety of different programs uh and the alignment of the work that's being done with the Strategic plan of
061getting students out through uh everything from uh the work that is happening in um Apprentice programs to pre-ol to college level programs the curriculum that was updated we got a random email that I about are we eliminating Advanced and regular classes and I was like o good opportunity to say well we're kind of adding a ton of more college level courses uh into the curriculum so things may have different names but the rigor that is being infused in the opportunities for different learning styles and different career paths is opening up substantially so I I I really kind of um impressed by the work continue uh please continue forward and I hope you don't take that the board seems to be in a good place though Dr Will's got a question um so probably open the
062floodgates uh and then I'll make it so um I had a Community member approach me just to ask for um Clarity on uh the reviews of this and related to special education and how that has gone and um making sure that all of our students are being um incorporated into this so the whole purpose of having academic career planning in our district is so it is just part of our culture and it's what we do every day in all of our classes the majority of the work that is revolving around this is happening within course courses and an advisory and all students are assigned to those advisories so a lot of those lessons are coming through there um our career week for example happened in all the students courses um so every day they were
063getting a different um thing that was happening in their classrooms and it was all students in all classes and that's how we're ensuring that that's happening I think she just was struck by things that have been reviewed in the past and wanted to make sure that um that was really one of the Central goals um when all students mentioned that that means all students yes um I think the reason maybe we don't have a lot of questions is because you're um the things that we receiv received before the meeting were really clear and thorough so thank you for that and um thank you for thinking about students who might not necessarily be academically driven in terms of um Traditional School so it's exciting to see these additional opportunities for our non-traditional learning students I would
064just um ask it's great that the students are getting that information but I have a high school student and I didn't know anything about the creater week and she usually tells me a lot about her dat um so if we could work on reaching out to families so that they're in the loop with what's going on with us too absolutely that is one of the goals of um this year is to improving that family communication outstanding thank you all very much thank you than you uh we ni well before I switched into strategic goal six operations um any update on snow day we're not agenda for topic um okay uh strategic goal six operations the 2024 2025 school year open enrollment seat allocation discussion um couple things I wanted to kind of set the table
065on this item uh since I joined the board in 2017 this has been an annual conversation so the timing of this happening in January is our part of our normal pace and Cadence of board governance so um this the the timing of this um a lot of other conversations are happening around an update of the policy which is not on our agenda tonight but will be uh discussed as a second read in our next meeting uh but this is the month where we have to set her statute uh our open enrollment seat allocation so that is a is is a normal practice um in over the years we have uh utilized policy and practice and sometimes we have accepted open enrollment students there has been at least one year in memory that we did not
066accept any enrollment students in the last couple of years so we we've had variable Norms certainly in my time on the board um things we've talked about is that we need to this needed to be brought back by the policy committee uh that we talked about last week is because uh from the time the policy committee last year updated this there's been some changes to State Statute some things that we recognize and we need to align make sure that that we are aligned with state state statute and state law uh there was a few updates to the policy that we needed to clarify and we needed to make sure practice was matching what our policy and the board needed to weigh in on on some of those key items um and so this is our
067first we're not voting this evening um there'll be an opportunity uh for for board input and discussion um and last week we had a special board meeting that really kind of set out a long conversation around more the policy focus of this and what the outcomes of that policy might be um so key things that that the policy is talking about is whether or not it's districtwide are preferred guaranteed spaces for for students versus preferred both for tuition waiver as well as for um siblings uh and what that might look like um and kind of the policy articulates of referring to the formula um and kind of what that might mean um and then the other kind of key piece is uh do we is it a districtwide allocation or a school based allocation so
068some really robust discussion uh last week on this uh the recommendation of being delivered uh and that the analysis of the administration that they'll BR forward po us today I wanted to rearticulate that the reason for this um recommendation was based off of the board's discussion last week uh that was I I would observe I don't know if we fully set up our Administration to be fully successful because we struggled with a bit of that conversation was around setting forth uh the decision Matrix and the decision criteria of what were priorities and then they basically applied those things to an analysis uh that led to the recommendation that you're bring forward and so that was that's laid out in the presentation that we've received um I'll I'll hold my comments kind of from there but
069want to start with a couple comments after the presentation um by missel zaski and Mr pinion Dr mean you might be chiming in as well um some thoughts I have um as I've reviewed and and kind of sat and reflected with this so um the floor is yours and then I've got a couple things I'd like to to bring forward and then time for board discussion thank you good evening um my role as a chief of talent uh in the organization uh part of that role is to go ahead and anticipate um staffing needs in our organization so as we start getting ready to plan for an upcoming school year a very foundational step along the way is to go ahead and plan for um what our enrollment is going to look like and therefore
070what staff are going to need to support the success of the students in the organization um so even though I start rather far away in my job role from um open enrollment it becomes an integral part of of what I need to accomplish um in my capacity and so the first place we look when we're starting to plan for the upcoming school year what our enrollment assumptions are and so I've linked um in the executive summary um the development of showing our work when it comes to looking at enrollment assumptions not just for our um JK through 12 um overall population but as well as for our um special education program in the district um and uh the program that serves students uh through virtual learning in the organization and and Staffing for each of
071those areas is very different so you can see um when we look at the assumptions for our overall JK through 12 Staffing in the organization um we have a range of class sizes that then dictates when we're looking at rolling enrollment forward uh what class sizes we want to see at each grade level uh and that ultimately comes through we've talked uh at Great length about the Open Enrollment um calculations and the formula that we use ultim ultimately that process of identifying what our class sizes are tells us how many sections we need at each grade level um you'll also note um on the slide I reference policy 5113 which as we know is our open enrollment policy some of the information that um that uh I'm referencing this evening doesn't just come from the
072actual policy itself but from the administrative guideline uh which is how we um Implement open enrollment so I would just note that there are are two sources there uh you've all seen uh we've all looked at uh the Open Enrollment formula many times um and really when we talk about projecting open enrollment seats um the the key component that we're looking at is on the top line the calculation or the numerical value we're using for class size whether that's the minimum the mid um or the maximum value as we look specifically at um special education services um again uh really understanding uh from a Le a legal standpoint uh what we need to be reviewing and basing our formulas on uh related to Special Education Services is looking at the population of student who receives
073um Services through an individualized education plan and then looking at what um our colleague uh Stacy Clen the director of special education has developed as far as a matrix that looks at the needs of every student to receive special education services in the organization and provides um a weighted value in terms of how significant um their services are and that then relates to multiple areas that you see um on the summary of our uh Staffing assembly ions related to whether or not a student reive services um uh for cross categorical support or whether they receive a specific therapy service again the formula uh is based on what our service capacity is based on grade level and that weighted service Matrix um and again you see some similar things in the formulas in terms of um
074District or service capacity in the district overall as well as an open enrollment capacity oh one distinction the law does require us regardless of what seats or space is made available for open enrollment for students with disabilities we are still required to review every I of a student that applied for open enrollment so director Clem and I still sit down when the open enrollment period ends and review all of those as well thank you Luke uh and then the third set of Staffing assumptions is based on the services we provide through wosa Virtual Academy um not only do we provide direct instruction through our um contracted provider for this program but we all also provide some additional uh FTE um teacher time to support wossa students in particular and you see again based on based
075on our class size ranges how we go ahead and look at what um that extra support provided to those students looks like um the FTE in this area is fairly minimal but it's very important to note that the that the legal rules for calculating open enrollment in Virtual programs is very different for other areas so the fact that this exists is very important uh again these are slides that you've seen before um or at least versions of them um please note that in terms of running the formulas themselves to go ahead and look at the number of sections what our class sizes come out to be as well as then the inclusion of virtual students and monor students uh there are multiple moving factors with those formulas um so what I'm presenting to you this
076evening are verified um enrollment projections based on the assumptions that we've just reviewed and using the minimum class size in that open enrollment calculation formula uh the recommendation would be for zero open enrollment seats across grades JK through 12 as we apply the formula using the maximum class size uh the number of open enrollment seats you can see is determined at each grade level the total we'd be looking at is 233 seats uh then uh the mid formula U mid being somewhere in between minimum and maximum uh you see based on the grade level that we'd be looking at 117 seats um based on our current enrollment assumptions again I just reiterate that these are uh using the three different enrollment assumptions that we previously reviewed open enrollment uh seat uh uh are expected to
077be based on the formulas that we looked at for special education and wossa Virtual Academy would be zero in those two areas this is speaking to our overall uh class size and grade level um uh thank you Dr Des anger for referring to the analysis that was included in the administrative recommendation for these open enrollment seats Following last week's Board of Education meeting our executive leadership team which consists of the division chief as well as directors in each of our areas um completed a a keer tro decision analysis the decision analysis framework itself um identifies a question that needs to be answered or a decision um uh the next step is identifying the objectives that should be considered when making that decision or answering that question and then provides the opportunity to go ahead and
078wait or determine which of those objectives is most important when you see an m on the decision analysis uh uh framework m means mandatory or must in order to be considered any of the options uh must meet um those particular objectives or they do not move forward you can then see based on the executive leadership team's analysis which objectives were most highly rated uh you can see the 10 uh as we often refer to it is the maximum long-term fiscal sustainability and then you can see how the objectives are weighted relatively after that um we use then in order to go ahead and look at and consider the options for the class sized used in the open enrollment seat formula um minimum class size mid class size and maximum class size we used a 1051
079application of the scores um which is um it's part of the uh keer tro tool in running the decision analysis uh the 10 becomes the option that best meets that particular object objective uh the five becomes the the next best objective and the one becomes the objective that least accomplishes excuse me becomes the option that least accomplishes that particular objective so in going ahead and running through this decision analysis with myself answering questions related to uh the way the formulas are applied and then U Mr Keith Brightman our Director of Finance and operations responding to questions uh related to the financial applic of the formula um the um executive leaders ship team uh uh scored out the options with the minimum districtwide score being the option that most closely U met our decision with these
080um uh objectives in the waiting further uh the conversation and discussion uh at our executive leadership team meeting which is coming forth to you as a recommendation is the establishment of a waiting list now the waiting list that's described here is different than how a waiting list has been used in wossa school district in the past the waiting list that's been used in the past in wossa is such that we've identified a number of seats by grade level and with Mr pinion and his team's process in the division of people and family supports if a student who is being offered an opportunity to take an open enrollment seat at a specific grade level if a student declines that seat then based on the waiting list that seed is then offered to the next student on
081the waiting list what we are proposing to do is to go ahead and take a waiting list um that is not just the next person on the list but rather that we would recalculate uh open enrollment seats as we get closer and have fewer assumptions and more actual information for our enrollment for the upcoming school year and so we would rerun uh the Open Enrollment seat formulas um at a later time uh this summer to then see if based on the Staffing decisions and actual enrollment that we have uh open enrollment seats then become available and so the waiting list is not just to uh sub out or to go ahead and go to the next person on the list but instead it is to see whether or not open enrollment seats become available through
082the reapplication of the formulas that has not been done in the past to my knowledge in my 10e year agreed I believe that was done up until three years ago fair enough is that yes that that that is that was the process until about three maybe not exactly that process but something that Echo it Mr Mark Clearly the process you are articulating is formal yes and I can't say that the process prior to three years ago was formal least stated but it was a process that we would have the waight list and reassess in August when there was more surgy it I appreciate that background um the the last slide that I would um share with you this evening is just another way of looking at um part of the part of the conversation that
083we had our executive leadership team meeting is that when you look at the two different um uh ways of um implementing the Open Enrollment formula with just looking at minimum and maximum class sizes in that formula application when you look at minimum class size and what that actually looks like from a resident um compared to non-resident enrollment in the district your foundation a resident enrollment looking at um looking at the minimum class size um gives you um 86% of the enrollment is resident enrollment when you look at then how that enrollment breakdown uh changes if you look at the maximum class size you are changing the like the foundation of enrollment in the organization it it adjust by about 10% so the um the majority of the enrollment in both calculations um is resident it
084shifts from again around 86% with the minimum formula to just under 76% using the maximum formula again just another way to go ahead and think about what the enrollment in wosa looks like with the two different applications of um of the Open Enrollment formula and class sizes the next slides um should also look very similar to all of you um and they really go back to um part from part of our policy conversation uh the theory of action and the financial um considerations uh with those two theories of action for our open enrollment decisions Dr means I'm not sure if you wanted to cover any of these in Mr brightman's absence unless there's questions yeah we're not allowed questions we are open to your questions now just a second I'm not sure but does that
085have anything invol in school closes Let It Go that was a time CL for our presentation I I think we met the standard you were right there um are we questions are on the financial side the presentation complet yeah um the board has certainly gotten a lot of information on this over the course of the last month uh I've gotten certainly more Community questions and feedback than it you in a 24-hour period Then I think any any point maybe during my time on the board um there are several things that I I just don't have answers yet and I don't think anyone can provide them right now because there's things that we don't know as we move forward um it would be great to have hindsight on this one um as we think about it
086um things that continue to come up in my mind are kind of changing this and Dr means what I'm wondering about is could we apply a districtwide mid framework for this year as we transition forward uh I am not clear where the board will ultimately land on transitioning I am not opposed to the idea of uh shifting open enrollment strategy but I want to understand how that interacts with some of the other priorities as stated going forward um and so particularly as we think about existing tuition waiver students um I'm very comfortable with the policy changes recommended but also want to be I I'm I would like to grandfather in students who uh kind of are in that and then the the Open Enrollment open enrollment siblings uh to not have any space for them
087now and I know second grade is a fascinating in all models second grade we don't have any seats um but is that a is that a possibility as we transition forward and we kind of uh it probably will make no one happy which is probably a great place to to land but uh gives us a little bit of flexibility in this transition Year yes um if if you're asking can we utilize districtwide mid um as your action moving forward your action on January 22nd yes absolutely I I think the one request we would make administratively would be but we need to know what is the strategy moving forward and I think we said it in some of our our language prior can we make this work yes we can make it work but we have
088all inherited a a process that needs to be reviewed um and I think if you're trying to minimize impact on the 41 young people who started the school year as residents and they have transitioned into t uh tuition waiver um I think this past year we had 94 um siblings of young people um pursue a mission into the district district y mid is a status quo I like the language that you're using of transition as long as you're now allowing Administration to model out what does I think Miss himer Rollin asked a really good question last week so what does the boundary lines look like if you redraw it um what does you've asked a question Dr Jessa anger of what does the draw down look like and I think on on slide 24 Mr
089Brightman has modeled out what that looks like but in terms of what the actual sections and an actual Building look like we have those numbers Miss zosi knows which if you reduced open arment we know where the the the sections will be reduced we can model all of that out for you over the time period um and then the last thing I would say is I appreciate you setting the stage that from a statutory standpoint we must as a district have our seats identified by the end of the month um we we have to I'm going to turn I want to te that up for Mr opinion I wanted to kind of go off of what you were saying there and we also must have have a policy that when an appeal comes through to
090the Department of Public Instruction can be defensible and there were a piece a couple pieces of the current policy that exists around dictating class sizes and calling out class sizes that aren't practiced in in reality that would have been in more of an arbitrary look as far as the DPI is concerned and it referenced case loads from DPI that don't exist for special education so there are some pieces in there that needed to be updated just from a a legal and defensibility standpoint yeah and and I I know I've I've asked a few times for this draw down implementation plan um and to understand what it is from the financials uh I don't think in my time on the board there's never been more Community confusion um and it's because school Finance is deeply perplexing
091um and it is what I would hope is that as a community we all give each other a little bit of race to understand kind of what issues are to ask questions and to approach with curiosity um there was some comments made earlier tonight about misinformation it's it's it's being tossed out like when folks are saying there's misinformation more often than not I'm seeing them tackle misinformation or maybe not act fully accurate stuff with more not fully accurate stuff so I would all ask everyone to kind of take a beat um be curious um and assume that you probably understand parts of it but not all of it because it is just really complicated stuff I just want to be clear our recommendation is our recommendation however if there's a request of the board for
092a transition year we can make the transition as long as I I think what we're looking for is a definitive pathway and candidly it's just not us I mean we're the least of the concerns I think families need to know um the community needs to know what is the strategy um and and and I I agree um and for me I think as a board member to be able to land on what that definitive strategy is the draw down modeling is a really important next step and uh to have the financials of that the class classroom teacher adjustments and changes um the interaction between uh the adjustments to open enrollment um and footprint uh program changes support system changes and kind of what this will look like so that um we're able to to to
093make some some thoughtful reasoned decisions going forward um and if it would be helpful certainly so my recommend my my my we're not taking vote tonight so we're not making motions per se but for this recommendation what I would suggest is that we take on a districtwide mid formula in this transition year um M arm um I would just say that I agree with that strategy I talked to Dr means about it today I think that makes the most sense if we go with the minimum our district is at $11.25 million next year I don't think where we stand as a district that not make sense to lose money anywhere in our budget um I think this gives the families who we committed to this year with they have the Assumption because of our practice
094not policy that siblings were going to be sort of guaranteed into our district I think it's a huge disservice to our open enrollment families to now kind of pull the rug up from underneath them now and in January say nope we're have zero which means zero siblings are going to be um uh zero sees for siblings are going to be available so I think thinking of this as a transition Poli or transition year makes a lot of sense as we wait for task force uh a complete task force recommendation on this and other big things that they're going to be tackling and then also the opportunity this summer to hear from community members through um different events throughout the district um I know people keep saying it's status quo but it really would be taking
095less open students because if we add how many seats we opened and tuition waiver last year it's about 150 where 117 is the mid so we are still I think eating in the middle of what we've been hearing from the district we're not going to keep it status quo we are lowering it because now the policy will match the practice I believe it'll be the sixth consecutive year a fewer opener R students so I just I think that's important too because right now the policy didn't match practice I think the biggest thing we're doing this year is getting a policy that Mr pinion can work with and we can um defend if needed um so I highly support the um the idea of doing districtwide as as a transition for this year and then we
096see where we land next you know January Dr rley it probably is no secret that I support that as well too because I've been asking for those numbers all the way through and the policy committee has been working really hard with really prioritizing that we align ourselves with um legal compliance um so I definitely would support that I I feel um sorry if the District staff feels like we did you know prepare them for this you mentioned that Dr Jessup anger I feel like we spent very little time as a group on the decision- making analysis nor was I anywhere close to aware of the way it was going to be used um and we needed a much longer deeper dive into those give messaging on what we cared about as a board um I'm
097all for very rational decision making but I also think that sometimes this is also and I've always thought about the the mid as a trans transition process um for me it's always been about that that people families people Everyone staff involved all need time um to plan we've all been through um plenty over the last few years of disruptions and changes and I think anywhere that we can um make sure that our practice is meeting our policy is stated but also make those spaces for the people who um have you know who would definitely feel like we were turning on them um you know to to not give those spaces is a wise decision that we have so many pieces of a system in fleux right now um that we really need to do I
098think we've you know been talking about I would say the advice from the community whatever side they're taking has been wise advice I think that that people really are giving us a sense that they're calling for long-term change um un open enrollment but also the need to really um take those changes the impact of those changes seriously um I see both of those messages and I think that that mid is probably the closest given we want to be we want to be systematic right so we don't get to just choose any old number but we W be systematic but mid feels to me like it lands in that place of not um compromising but rather collaborating that you know those Norms of collaboration and how do we get where we want to get as a
099board thank you um so I there have been a lot of misconceptions um as you mentioned Dr Jess Binger we've received a lot of emails from the community over the last week or so particularly today and there was a statement that was repeated over and over again um that I just I really feel compelled to address and that statement is open enrollment students are a drain on both financial and educational resources so I I I want to be I I understand why there are misconceptions and part of that is because there's been some shifting models because we've learned more we've figured out kind of how to have more Nuance to the plan and that has made for some shifting numbers and that's been confusing to people here's what we know today we net $1.25 million
100through the util utilization of open enrollment annually so that's not a drain that's a net profit we know at least the way that our district has been set up historically that open enrollment is a part of how we keep open our nine elementary schools and it's also part of how we offer lots of different programming in our secondary levels you need a number of students to have a number of classes to offer a number of different um options we also know that unlike our surrounding communities we've maintained our resident enrollment um which suggests that wos schools remain incredibly attractive to families who are trying to relocate or are are raising families here in our community we also know that our black students including our black open enrollment students are disproportionately underachieving um which we can't
101assume is because they're open enrollment because many of those students have been here for the duration of their education we also know that open enrollment does increase diversity in our schools um you can decide if you think that degree of increase is important or not um but it is certainly why some community members site why they chose wosa as opposed to another suburban community and we know I mean there's there's no question that there's a plethora of research that supports the benefits of increased diversity we have improved critical thinking improved um problem solving skills so there's lots of reasons why diversity is a beneficial thing there's also a lot we don't know um we don't know the long-term imp lications of significantly reducing open enrollment on what schools we have open what what changes in
102our quality number of Educators that we need changes in Resident enrollment for example if if boundaries are shifted and schools are farther away do we lose more students more resident enrolled students to private schools what's going to happen to those buildings if we decide not to keep certain buildings open are we going to sell them do we have to maintain them because we can't sell them do they become a neighborhood eyesore and reduce property values and then also what is our community tolerance for a referendum what's our community tolerance for open enrollment there's also a huge concern I have Dr Jess anger which you know to to highlight your concern which is this disruption on our current students and when I say current students I mean all of our students if we draw down open
103enrollment over a period of 12 Years in my mind unless I can see that planned out I'm envisioning 12 years of somewhat chaotic education and that terrifies me for our students there's also a bill that's being proposed in the legislature right now that is going to increase that is proposing to increase open enrollment funding from $8,600 per student to $10,000 per student if that passed what does that mean what do we think about that as a community and what might new maps mean on the representation we have at the state level and state funding for public schools so these are all for me a lot of questions that I have and I don't have any answers to these so as much as I would love to be able to tell you what direction we're going
104in I cannot I can tell you what I support today I cannot tell you what I will support next year because I need that information before I can make a decision so for today I am in support of the mid level what I would love to see though is that we have a wait list and that we use the weit list as you explained and that that weight list exists and that we look at it again come July or August because what I don't I really don't want to see it again if we're being fiscally thoughtful fiscally responsible I don't want to see classrooms of 10 and 11 students so I want to pull off of the waiting list students that we have so that we can fill those classrooms thank you sure Mr first
105and I've seen the numbers resident enrollment is the lowest it's been in 60 years it dropped from last year to this year but we don't know why and we don't know whether it's going to keep dropping it our enrollment for 20 years has been remarkably stable and it's gone down some couple hundred over the last two 3 four years but the wise old people say that we just can't predict president you know so I don't want to say it's falling and I don't want to say it's we it it is today what it is today um the big thing that has to be solved is the $9 million or whatever over take depending upon the EXA the $9 million deficit that is something that inev inevitably will be handled because running out of money is
106running out of money and that it means you have to stop doing some things because you don't have the money whether we soft land or crash is up to us but I don't know the path to either of those now tonight I see in my opinion that there's three outcomes we or some combination of three outcomes we need a large infusion of of additional tax dollars either from local property taxes or from the state or and or we need to do what we've done or what we did for in the last 20 years and year 1 through 15 increase open enrollment as needed to meet our Revenue needs or we need to decrease open enrollment to a place where we where we reach Financial equilibrium meaning our income is the same as our spending if
107you split the baby and don't increase open enrollment enough to meet current needs and reduce open enrollment sum you actually make the situation worse because you do lose the marginal revenue from the marginal decrease in open enrollment so to go down the path of decrease one better have the big strategy decided to know where that equilibrium point is so that we have a a bridging strategy to pay for the transition but I I haven't heard a bridging strategy yet so those are the considerations I'm putting into what my vote will be I I don't open resid enrollment has been stable it's unpredictable the bottom hasn't fallen out it's down but I don't know why it's down um ultimately we will have to reach Financial equilibrium and or we need more tax dollars and or the
108community needs to tell us okay to keep increasing open enrollment to keep paying the bills I mean I'm not putting a value assessment on either of those but out of money is out of money and we're headed there and so got to have a decision that's that's what put in my head thanks Mr Mark can I a follow question of you yes can you talk a little bit more about I'm having a hard time articulating when I mean a draw Down plan I I think it may be similar or not to your bridging strategy yes that is I think it's a different name for the same thing can you articulate and when when you say that what components because I think that that's what ultimately we're asking the staff for uh to kind of provide
109us uh one or more options for that um can you articulate what you see as components of that well just off the top of my head which which is not fair to anybody because we need to brainstorm understood so assuming you reduce the number of students in the district elementary bound boundaries likely change um Total Staffing likely reduces we would need to have some plan for when what children who are going to have boundary changes will go to what schools notify the families notify the teachers I mean there's all kind of stuff that just you know you talk about um Logistics it's a big logistical plan lot of details to supply chain kind of planning you you know and and so you almost have to go Year bye chart out how many students you're going
110to have where in what elementary school and say well we have these teachers in this building this year we're going to to need that many teachers in this building next on and on but there's risk involved in that uncertainty because you know we have cyclic cylic call C Cycles within our neighborhoods about generational departure if a if a neighborhood the one I live in was built mostly in a certain decade as you reach a decade you know 40 years later a lot of those people start to move or retire or die about the same time and then new families move in there's so there's all kinds of things going on there's all kind of variables and moving Parts all over the place and the the solution is a massive big spreadsheet where you put all
111of the inputs in and just watch watch it year by year to see how much money same way any complex business in in that sense we are like a business because you have to keep track of spending and receipts and making could match you know so a lot of those things yeah okay you know will Transportation become a factor um you know Building Maintenance as if a building closes will that be a factor and will all the I I think it's wi wildly underestimated the effort for human resources of a of a right sizing you know as as things get smaller for example yeah so I one of my combination of some of the things I've heard and then Mr Morris I want to see a few and um Miss Willis if you I know
112you're online um so I want to come to you as well um the board I think in the month of February is going to need to sit down for an extended period of a retreat to kind of talk through to make sure that they were really clear ultimately we have to provide the direction and really be really clear of what we need to make decisions uh to Dr W's point we have to be really clear on what our decision analysis is as we consider this uh and how do we make sure that the human beings who are affected um are are taken care of to the greatest extent possible um Mr Morris uh couple of questions Dr means in here when we talk about the the cost of instruction for Resident students uh versus our
113open enrollment students has the cost of instruction ever gone down or ever decreased it only increases so we know that's a fact so we look at the numbers we know that no matter what we do this year each year after that cost is going to increase and so for me I've already taken off my mind that the state there's not going to be a bill out there that's going to do anything for us that we're going to rely on because when you look around at our community at the county at the state level they've made a choice they've drawn a line the saying it's all document it's all out there we look at the representation that we have that are showing an affinity for other types of Education other than public education so what we
114do here here for me I don't really care what our other surrounding districts do and how they operate and what they're going to do with their finances when we look at what we have I look at those things that we do know I know and I I agree with you Jenny on a lot of those things there are a lot of questions that Loom that we don't have answers to but for me when I really make it really basic I'm going to hold the 8020 rule across anything that we do and think of because that's really where a lot of our our metrics and our results lie for our students that's where a lot of our metrics and results end up lying as a whole for I think our faculty and some of the things
115we're looking and we're trying to increase to get closer and closer to a 100% in that academic excellence and all these things but I think we have to be realistic and say okay we are where we are that $9 million isn't going anywhere that $9 million is going to be more than N9 mil it's gonna be 10 million it's to be 12 million as we look at it whether it's 2024 25 or each year after that and so when we look at those things I'm not looking at you know a just rip the bandaid off and let's go to it and draw it down to zero that's not what I'm saying by any stretch but I'm also not in favor of the max or the status quo we're doing I think we're making reasonable steps
116with the mid on how we look at it is that enough I don't think so because the mid to me just says and and as we talk about the bridge or it's a transition point when we transition there those numbers have already increase next year so by the time we have this conversation next year we're not talking about 9 million we're talking about 11 million or whatever that number might be and the unknown things that we have in there that we start to capitalize on with the cost of our instruction uh the types of Education Educators and what we're paying those Educators and those administrators all the things that we want to do and have whether we have all the schools open or we have schools that we have to make decisions about those things
117for me are not necessarily unknown those changes are going to come I look at and we if we do compare ourselves to our neighbors look at how much the Surplus School vacant schools and empty schools are in Milwaukee County I don't want to personally look at and see what does that look like and tosa it was until I got on the board where I saw the and I think I talked to Mr Meer about this the Hawthorne School uh over off over there I never even knew that existed until I started looking at the history of all the schools that existed I my first thoughts were man today that'd be prime location an amazing building and amazing everything for this District but things changed that school closed it's now a senior facility it's still in
118a beautiful area so what the future of the district looks like and I don't want have anybody to mistake and and think that I'm saying that it's okay to close a school but they had to make tough decisions then they had Financial woes and things to worry about then that caused them to make those decisions as we go into to look at the next school year the next four and you know five years we have to be really aware of that stretching things out and looking at things even further is that mid the accurate number we know that not our audience our community has said that the men you know a lot I've been saying majority have said that that's not okay that's not acceptable but neither is the max and I think making a
119educated assumption a guess a guesstimation on in that Matrix and as as the administrators are doing their job because we hired them to do a job and they're making recommendations based on what they believe is the most valuable most reasonable thing that we should be doing because they're the experts Dr me is one of those experts and so I think we have to rely on what the recommendations are have the information that we have now and into into the time that we have it and not make any assumptions based on too far on the future of what we think we could learn because I don't want be sit in the same position like we thought we could learn this but we didn't and now we're in the same boat we're going to stretch this further
120and further and further out creating more and more hostility and dissension and disruption in the community whether it's about the schools or just our community as a whole and want to make sure that we're really weighing out those things and saying we're financially stable we're looking at the things we have are we going to have changes that come yes you know whether it's Theory a or Theory B you know I I think that sustainability knowing that we're not here to be a business although we have to think of it as a business but the what we're considering to be Revenue positive or you know in the green we want to make sure that or in the black we want to make sure we're taking care of things properly what does that look like and we
121say that that you know every financially sound school you know are they all turning a profit or are they hey we're kind of like a nonprofit we're just right above that and we're happy with that because we got all the things we can provide to the school that we want and all of our you know our our students and our parents and our Comm members are all getting what their fair share and they're paid for and their taxes and all those things or is it we're striving to say hey we going to be so Revenue generating and have all these things that we're curing this incredible profit because we got a great sound School we're not a private school we don't have endowments we don't have some of those things that ability we have a
122great Community we have people that want to live here we've got people that want to come to these schools I made decisions myself we could have moved to the the district five years before we had kids but we made decisions financially to say you know what we loved our baby house and and our place there and as we grew and developed forward and we didn't have kids we moved to the heights that was our space and while we were there when we had our first child and we had the second we wanted to make sure we said okay what's the best possible School District in the decision that we have we wanted toasta more than anything else we didn't want to move to shwood we don't move out to further west we wanted toasta because
123it gave us the happy medium of everything and that gave us two options buy a new house move to the neighborhood do we rent do we come in but we found we would find a way to get into the community so we could participate in the school district and what that meant was we change our our Direction our path personally to do those things in the Years coming and if we didn't and we were not going to bet personally on a lottery and open enrollment because I'm not willing to take that gamble because I knew we had such limited seats in tosa especially when you looked at the grades that we would have needed coming in and we didn't want to be on any weit list our options were limited it was if we get
124in we get into the schools if we don't well five years ago six years ago COA Catholic was still there it's not there anymore but that was our backup I'm not Catholic didn't never plan on being Catholic and wasn't going to be very happy with that decision but I would have done it and I think our parents and our commune members have to start looking inside and also look at the options that may come based on the decisions that are made to say hey we have to look at some of these things and there's going to be alterntive decisions what is my plan B because our administrators are doing the best they can to give us the best possible outcomes for the majority of our students again that 8020 we're trying to do it for
125everybody we're not going to satisfy 100% we're not going to satisfy 95 5% but we're trying to satisfy the greater good for the community that we have thank you um Miss Willis hi I just have a few comments um I I think unlike many of my board members I do support a school-based formula um I know that the admin team has suggested that they used a district red formula but the the data that they gave us last year it it certainly ly um looked at the seat availability in each school I say that because I think that there's going to be a disproportionate impact on some of our elementary schools who can't sustain resident enrollment and I'm particularly talking about Jefferson and underword and even potentially Wilson um I know Dr means and his team
126had said that you know we can we can operate schools with just one section classes and I don't think that is neither a financ financially responsible approach nor a sustainable approach especially considering the amount of deferred maintenance that we have in buildings like Jefferson last year I was a part of the policy committee that um revised this policy and it was my understanding there that the district had the opportunity to use seats um weight list seats to fill to fill seats that were not filled using the formul and if I look I actually went back last year and one of the questions that was asked is what there's no JK uh seats at Jefferson next year will open enrollment seats be added the district said if there is seat availability across the district as we
127move closer to the start of the school year the district will seek to fill the Open Enrollment seats and I don't think that was ever done and I believe that DPI gives them the flexibility of filling those seats all the way up until September so while Dr Jessa anger and even Mr Meyer echoed that sentiment that we haven't used that it was certainly available to The District administration to use it last year um and that leaves schools like Jefferson with a JK that has one section with nine students and the other with 14 which isn't even in the optimal range of students for that grade level like Mr Meyer and Dr Jess Banger have um shared I also think that we need to have a more comprehensive conversation about what this means for our district
128do our community members value keeping open enrollment to keep schools open do we are we going to pay for a large referendum to to address the Deferred maintenance and operational costs that are associated with keeping staff um I just don't believe that those questions are being answered and it makes it really hard for me to even support Chang ing anything in the current policy that doesn't put us in legal compliance I understand from Mr pinion that there are things that we need to do to make sure that we're legally compliant especially around special education and even the constraints of having certain numbers uh defined in our policy I also understand that but last year we only accepted the board only approved 74 open enrollment seats there was never a discussion with the board about tuition
129waiver it was stated in policy that that tuition waiver students may have preference it was not a guarantee it was the district's practice to guarantee them spots last year we it was a 7% reduction in open enrollment I'm comfortable with moving towards a reduction in open enrollment I Me by no means trying to expand it but I think we need to hear back from our community and we need to have a comprehensive conversation about what the ramifications will be if we use a district right open enrollment method because there's no guarantee it's not in policy the district does not have to use the weight list at the end and and classes can continue to become smaller and smaller and I just don't I I think we are having this conversation without the pieces that run
130tandem to it the conversation is about changing boundary lines the conversations about closing schools and I think like other people have echoed there are creative and curious solutions that we can come up with that's it Eric thank you very much um So based on Jessica's um scenario with having JK seeds available at Jefferson when it was closer to school getting started wouldn't the districtwide formula help solve that right because then it would give the administration the ability to say oh okay we have these four applications for JK and four seats at Jeffers that that would I think help the situation and distribute students right yes okay um thank you and that's what actually convinced the policy committee to move in that direction was the flexibility that it would create for um spreading open enrollment as
131far across the district as possible as well as making sure all schools were attended to and I think it's important to note that whatever decision the board sends to the state like the number of seats we want to allocate we're legally bound to that number so if we said that last year we were going to open 74 seats we were legally required to fill those we just only it was more pigeon hold last year because it was the schools were specified in the policy correct I just want to make sure I'm correct 100% okay and if I could just clarify Liz so last year the the district admin team um had that same flexibility but they did not use that weight list to fill seats leaving and I only know Jefferson because that's where my
132kids attend and I can ask the teachers how many students are in their class but I fear that that left other schools in the district with low class sizes I mean nine is incredibly low I believe the optimal number is 15 um so neither one of those classes so what does that mean for kindergarten what does that mean for first grade but if we have it in policy that we a lot seats and it can be it can be a very conservative number it was during the 74 but if we have a number that we a lot seats at certain schools then I take I think it takes the the direness away that these schools are facing low classroom sizes which do not equate to sustainable buildings I think just bringing it full circle that's
133where I appreciate all your comments as a as an administrative team we however you want to gather your perspective and gather gather your direction at some point we need direction at some point you have to again we all acknowledge administratively and as a board you've inherited we've inherited a current model to use open enrollment to keep schools full that's Theory a the board and however you want to gather data and however you want to gather input in terms of what model you want to continue to utilize with whichever direction you go we're just respectfully asking we need you to make a decision we need you to say so we've gathered information from the task force from the community and this is the pathway we want you to now model things but it's difficult for us
134to try to model different options and we really don't know where the governance board wants to move as it pertains to this strategy do you want if you want us to and we we can unpack why we believe utilizing a open arment to maintain schools staying open I don't believe that we have to rely on open arrom to keep schools open that that's what I've been saying and I'll continue to say it I think we there are other ways you can keep all the schools all the neighborhood schools open without Reliance or dependence on open enrollment but as a governing board um I I look forward to you sharing with us how you're going to gather data and then eventually set a direction we can model we have models we we you we can tell
135you how many staff we can reduce now in order to offset cost we can share with you what boundary lines look like we can tell you which schools would have to have the B boundary lines we can do all those things we just need to have Direction in regards to which strategy you want to utilize and so I'll go back to my statement and conclude there if you're utilizing the 2024 2025 school year as a transition year so then when we come back in January of 2025 we're not create I think Mr Morris you made this statement so we're not creating the inks in the community I think that however Direction you go what I would just plead with you I don't think it is healthy for the community to go through this again next
136year I I think in the next few months we have to be deliberate and say this is our strategy so uh we look forward to that Gathering that direction and and we have models for you um we we know what direction we need to go if you're asking us can we modify because you you have our recommendation of districtwide minimum if you're asking us can we can we administratively pivot and use the district one mid I would say yes with the caveat of but please make this a transition year so then we know where we're moving forward in the future I am requesting that we move forward with the districtwide mid recommendation um I don't know if it's it's not per se your recommendation but that we move forward with that U modeled out uh
137and that that be presented to the board recognizing the board May make a motion to change that next week two weeks um but that that' be what we is is on our agenda so informally we we have received it you have the slide deck that shows you how many seats would be made available um I I want to thank Dr Worley she asked some really good data questions in regards to okay if there's 41 tuition waiver students how many are Elementary age students how many are are middle school students how many are I I think there was a total of nine of those students of the 41 will be seniors next year but what what we know is we can identify what grade levels uh are the tuition waiver requests um we can tell you
138how many of the nonresident siblings we can accommodate those requests we can do that with your your request for the districtwide mid we I I think that also meets your threshold or your criteria of minimizing disruption for families so 19 years ago we had a big election that decided a bunch of stuff and we had a deal with a deficit Dr means you were here I forget exactly the size of the deficit but it was over 1 million I think of low 1 million it wasn't okay that was hard to figure that I remember that meeting it was in um Eisenhower where the board kind of picked picked things to cut people to lay off um imagine that Bard picking who gets laid off um our deficit now is so large that we can't like
139noodle at the fringes there has to be a big decision and this mid does not make a big decision so that's your problem to my mind that that this is um you know we could wait to see what the legislature does some more we waited before and that didn't work out you know I mean at some point we have to you know educate kids with the resources we have and optimize that and I would proceed at a faster Pace towards whatever that is I I you know I I see the wisdom of the mid and I'm not with the magnitude of the deficits we have I'm not comfortable with waiting another year that's just my thinking I can see them I can see the wisdom in the mid thanks so I just want to recap
140this may be obvious but then the policy 5113 that we'll be looking at we um as a policy committee intentionally did not say minimum mid or Max we wrote it because but and knowing that the district would help us to understand that but I think the hesitation that I'm having and some my colleagues are having is that we have some more work to do to set that longer range set of goals that then should be identifying each year which way we're going and between the financial constraints that this would add to go to to zero and the impact it would have on families um for me it it just feels like we have you know we have to make this decision now legally we have to help people to plan but we haven't done the
141pre-work so if we're going to go the route of the mid we still can't let go of that pre-work we need to start right away to that thinking of what next year looks like so that our administrative team has that um that planning time to give us and we have that thinking time because we are changing we're going from having a policy telling us how we're going to do it to changing to a space where the policy outlines the parameters of the decisions to be made but it doesn't say it will be this kind of decision we hope that that would be more flexible um but we also are learning through these last week or two that also can create um additional consternation additional not understanding of where this is going so we will have
142to work as a board um to do that pre-work not leaving it until December or January as we go forward in the future Mr Mars with knowing again going back to the knowing that the the cost of instruction is not going to go down anytime soon um going back to looking at the men between the the mid and the men the certainty that we have that we're going to see if all all things stay the same we know those numbers notten to stay the same that does that really get us closer to Mr Myers's point there of closing that Gap phasing that out to the men make sense or are we all are we going to see a level of a deficit that's always going to hover and linger there are we shrinking that nine
143to if we were 19 years ago at somewhere between one and three million uh shortfall and now we've gone 19 years forward we're at 9 million is that number only going to be steadily increasing regardless of what we're doing yes sir I think that's what I mean by there's a growing dependent so when Mr Meyer and I were part of the decisionmaking process process to utilize open enrollment to maintain a school staying open 19 years ago I think when you go to Mr brightman's modeling he he has a point where he says well we use the terminology of fixed cost and variable cost and you always want to take open a Roman students within your fixed cost whatever you were going to already spend we've shifted and now we're using a lot of variable cost
144and I think we've talked about that those those Concepts and so now we are inherently discussing open enrollment with within the same breath of and it may mean we have to look at how many schools we have when a as a school district when your your financial model it's so tightly tied to a program like open enrollment just to determine how many schools you're G to have open that in itself demonstrates that it it would be prudent for us just to review the financial pathway we taking now there may be some who will say that's a we're okay with that strategy and if so then just just tell us but what we're sharing is that the the typical School Finance model is one in which you don't utilize 87% of your variable cost to accommodate
145the Staffing for the Open Enrollment students in wosa that's become okay and I think Mr Brightman has shared earlier of the 421 school districts in the state there are a handful and when I say a handful it may be on one hand that we can count that utilize open Ro open enrollment this way there's a school district to the east of us on the lake lake shore that uh the South Lake Shore that utilizes open arment in this way uh where they have more non-residents than residents in their District but they they use open Aroma in that way because if they didn't they wouldn't have a school district and so they they but they as a Community they've had a discussion as a community they've said this is our strategy and as a community everyone's
146okay with it and I think what I'm hearing from the board this evening is you want to have a similar conversation of deciding where does the community sit if if the community after you Gathering data after you Gathering feedback says no we're okay with utilizing open AR rollment and we don't view it as dependence we view it as a strategy to keep our schools open uh because language is important right so that that Nuance is important there if that's where you land that that's great what we're just saying administratively is and I think you said it so well so you said it better than I can say it I would just I would hope for our our our families for our district that we make that decision prior to December of 2024 um because I
147don't think the community can has the the the tolerance to continue this this this very painful conversation you know it's interesting someone said to me I can only see open r at one way and I think we've tried to point out in our data points you can see open enrollment in a lot of different ways it depends on your perspective um and it doesn't mean and you know I haven't seen all the emails that the board's received but I've seen a quite a few uh of the emails there are well-respected people on both sides who are making very datadriven arguments I I I think ultimately so there's no wrong I guess what I would say is there's no wrong answer I think it's just a matter of how do you land in a place where
148you feel comfortable in making a good policy decision I hope that answers the comment Miss Willis has Miss Willis Dr means um if you could just answer directly I mean I think it would be helpful you keep saying that we can maintain our schools without open enrollment do you think and and you know your experience it is financially responsible to keep buildings with as much deferred maintenance open with one section yes if that's the community's value if the community's value is to keep all neighborhood schools open then yes that that is a reasonable decision to make again you think it's a financially responsible decision to make I would say if the community's desire is to have neighborhood schools in all the neighborhoods then that's the decision you made is it financially responsible that that is
149that is ultimately for the community to decide but if the community's value is to keep all the schools open you can you can do it that that is that's achievable I I think I can I think I can shed some light on that question a little bit the question that we've had all these years a question If you close an elementary building in order to quote unquote right size will that trigger an exodus of residents from the neighborhood and if that Exodus is something that would happen is it better to keep the building open with one section or risk that Exodus you actually if because if that Exodus happens your end state is worse than what you thought it was going to be I think the other thing that I would just say for say
150so for my experience and knowledge of School site planning so let's go back to Mr Mo's statement I think the schools in W tilsa are nestled in the neighborhoods they're and I Ed the word nestled on purpose so they're nestled within the the neighborhoods when you look at other school districts in the state of Wisconsin they're not nestled in neighborhoods they they're on large Parcels of land where if you decided to close the school then there's a valuable Real Estate Value associated with it I don't I'm not confident that if you if there was a closure of a elementary school that's nestled in our neighbor and and candidly I think we have a case study with Milwaukee I think when you look at how our schools even the age of some of our schools are
151very similar to Milwaukee po schools some of those schools are nestled in neighborhoods and and they've had to create different ways of using license I I'll go to my old neighborhood of the Sherman Park area when they close I'm going to date myself here when they closed the old Jackie Robinson Middle School on Fonda like they had it was nestled in a community they had to make that school apartments and and so what what I'm sharing with you to answer the question is will it's really a question I do believe if the if the prevailing message I have received 19 years ago and now is that wosa the uniqueness of wosa is that we have neighborhood elementary schools okay if if that's the prevailing thought then maintaining those schools is a priority that means it
152is a community investment to ensure that all the schools are safe and that they are modern learning environments and and so having that I would rather have that but see I think having that discussion to me feels more big picture than discussing open enrollment right so the real discussion then is so what do we value do we value keeping all of our schools open and if as the governance team you said yes we want to keep all of our schools open then the next step is to say so how do you do it do you use do you use open en Roman as the the main strategy do you use an increase in taxation do you have a lower do you have a smaller School footprint for some schools do you redraw boundary lines but
153all of that starts with where do you plant your flag where do you philosophically want to be and and and so that's why we're really again I I'll I'll conclude by saying if this is a transition year makes all the sense in the world but then we need I think every this just not us we're the least of the concern families students teachers principles they are all waiting on the governance team um to to make a decision and I will say in defense of the governance team you don't need me to defend you but I'll say in defense of the governance team and when I look at the task force they've had over 20 hours of time to dissect and go over and discuss these issues you haven't had that much time you you you've
154had to have these conversations in the midst of agendas with other items on it so I think Dr Jess anger you you I don't want to lose that concept that you floated out of having some type of retreat time where you can meet with our full administrative team you can ask questions and we can get to a closer place where where you can have a more but a discussion I I think would be valuable um ask a question Dr yes Dr Mike um as we think about the idea of maybe a retreat I would ask if we could whatever this community survey is going to be that's going to go out one can we take a look at what questions we're thinking we want to ask on that Community survey um and two can we
155time it out such that we have some results by the time we would sit down and meet because I personally would really like to hear from a wider net of our community to understand where people are kind of of generally at and it may be or Retreat do some work develop questions for Community survey come back get additional um Dr something that was an interesting reframing for me when we're talking District footprint I have been thinking about District footprint as school you were talking about District footprint a school layered on top of classrooms in that school and then there's an interesting component of if we believe that divesting from a school from a neighborhood that's nestled is of such detriment to the neighborhood or the community what are creative utilizations of those spaces I believe
156on the sheet I have sketched out such a creative idea that would reimagine half of our schools I will not share it than but it is it is what I think it is not the plan but there's lots of ways to think about this but I think if we if the challenging thing is when you plant the flag in we are not going to close any of our neighborhood schools which I have heard resoundingly from the community five to one that they do not want to close any neighborhood schools when I've heard of roll back open enrollment it has been rare that this that that that the person has said and I'm willing to pay more in taxes for a period of time to make the financials work and so I'm trying to kind of
157like in my own mind and that's where I think kind of like I'm I'm going to be guided a lot I I need to find Creative Solutions as a board member but my thinking about the end point is going to be guided by necessity because the end the community will ultimately determine the referendum number yeah yeah I the I'm going to be like cold and cynical here okay so please don't be offended but let's just put it out there I would like to the survey to examine the full range of oxes that could get gored and see what the response is because when you put out an email that says we're in the in the possibilities to close Washington and or Jefferson it's Washington and Jefferson parents predominantly who come here it's not the road
158not so much okay 20 years ago when the talk was close Wilson and I said in a public meeting well I suppose we could consider Lincoln as well we had Lincoln parents running for school board we had it it it mattered if it was going to directly hit you and I don't blame people for that so to your point Dr Jess of anger the idea I hope it's to your point that increase in taxes if that question is like tangible real at hand what do people really think about that when when it's real now your tax bill is going to go up X doll is that okay or not I don't know yeah you know I just don't know and my double secret plan here okay in includes schools all over the district and and
159they may like it or not but I I think in this is I want to be careful this isn't I I don't want to cause fear but I also want to infuse reality and creativity of what is our what are our Creative Solutions and I'm hoping this is my my Call of the 2075 task force to um to come together to think creatively uh into provide some some Creative Solutions I'm not looking for them to solve this problem uh and I think I've been maybe waiting a little bit too much for them and I and I think I'm ready to just go um but I'm hoping that they Infuse some thoughtful analysis and discussion um and so on but I I I think there's some creative interesting solutions that are available to us but part
160of this will be necessitated by giving you really firm direction of where we want to go modeling it so it's sustainable our team is in a position where we can set you up to be successful Mr mors I'm not going to be uh evil as Mike said there but I will say your your list of Creative Solutions I can't see them but I've had more than a dozen conversations with particular families uh young families uh in the Washington Community and one of the things that they brought up in that when you talk about creativity I immediately go to the laws of unintended consequences and one of the ones that struck me that I've held on to and it's not anything that's out there this it's not real so don't don't nobody put this out there
161but the conversation is out there with support from parts of the community and support from prominent people in the community of if you close Washington you're going to hurt our feelings a lot what we're going to do is we're going to go back and we're going to say what happens if we go and now buy that property and we create our own school that's not a public school and that creates another alternative here does that now hurt the district because it's pulling from the community there and our overall enrollment numbers again in a different way that we didn't see coming when Dr mean just talked about you know we got these schools that are nestled into our communities it's part of the fabric of when you buy a house in TOA I bought my house
162specifically where it is across the street from East and down the street from Lincoln for a reason I never wanted to have a school bus I'm not driving anybody anywhere but I still have to drive them someplace to an extent people will change where they want to live but if you have something that changes where a school closes does that become one of those Creative Solutions that happens in ently because you know what in TOA we don't like to build tall tall buildings we don't like to change what these historic buildings look like but somebody would happily gravitate and say but I know a developer that has a great idea that can come in and help help these families and change that and if they world class new school and old building that's got different
163funding it's got a different model than what we have is that a consequence that pops up in those Creative Solutions potentially just throwing it out there that now four five 10 years down the road who knows how long could be or how long it could take does it subtract from that nice enrollment number that we're trying to get to and then forc into other conversations like well hell to keep the rest of the schools open now we need some more of that open enrollment because we got to go back and look at those things back the Dr again that would be an exodus a different kind of accident but still a significant loss of Resident enrollment due to an elementary closing would that happen and is it better to keep a one-section school open than
164to suffer that risk right of the unintended and we get burned by risk we know that that's the yeah I I I spent some time this weekend talking to a member of the elbrook community who's been there for 30 years and uh she was talking about their elementary schools that are shuttered molding and figuring out what are they going to do with it because it's they got to get rid of it and it's not in a spot to sell so all communities have challenges right now um I would ask the board to do some to sit to do some reflecting about what are unique attributes that make us special that are likely to move us towards the achievement of our strategic plan uh our board norstar and what are the things that we can leverage
165to bring people into the continue to bring people into the community and to provide really excellent educational experiences uh I would ask ask one thing that I have not seen the task force do and a question I've often gotten or heard from task force members is is the board going to support this I am only going to support anything that comes forward from the task force if it's clearly aligned with our strategic plan and our board Northstar now there's lots of ways you can squint it a strategic plan and make it fit but if it has not been clearly articulated to help us move forward with what the community in the board has adopted as where we are going then no I am not going to support anything that the Task Force brings forward now
166there's lots of ways to approach it but for me that's why I would ask if the if the task force is thinking about how do we know if the board's going to support this or that what are the board is the board thinking I'm looking for collaborative work I'm looking for creativity I'm looking for alignment with what we have articulated as is our values our priorities our metrics that will help us move towards those things and I would layer on to that Financial Health is really really key as well I think a key Point what you're what you're talking about there Eric is a unified and collaborative task force not a taable two task force yeah because I because I want to make sure that this gets somehow reeled back in so it's not my
167side of task said this and their side of task says this and the recommendations felt like they' be coming from one side or the other or the overall outcome of whatever our decision to be in alignment with the task force or not is not where it's a division on the board or division of what looks like it could be on the board with following a side of the task force and I'm okay with multiple choose your own Adventures here's an opportunity here's the strengths and weaknesses here's another path here's strengths and weaknesses and to know what those are so I I agree I understand that not everything can land on a single place but I would like to see it together um with that I think we have provided you I want to be clear
168to summarize while administratively we've made a recommendation you've asked us if we can Implement a modification to our recommendation to a districtwide mid mid that's what you've asked we can implement it if it is being trans if it's being leveraged as a transition year you've said yes I think it's going to necessitate at least two board retreat dates one where you have the ability to look at um survey questions because we've been targeting mid-march to release this the community survey so that would mean some type of meeting of the board in February so you can look at the the questions we'll gather the data and then you can come back in April to see the results we've been working with the company by by the name of school perceptions School perceptions is the group that
169the board worked with in 2018 for the CommunityWide survey they have extensive experience in utilizing surveys across the state of Wisconsin for these types of community conversations um and so we would value the board's feedback on those questions so thank you for that suggestion uh and and and I think it will help you because I think what you're saying is that you need that type of feedback to to truly make good governance decisions so I I hope that helps with the summary as well yeah the last thing I would say is Mr Meyer you talked about your sense of urgency um I I certainly share that and I think my colleagues I'm hearing that is I Dr means you said we need to have a decision by December I would push us to have a
170decision by end of August um if we can get there I I I think that my sense of urgency is that so we make the decision instead of circumstances deciding it for us because out of money is out of money and then really silly decisions get made when you hit the wall yes and we make better decisions if we decide as we approach the wall that's by urgency that I I we will have better decisions I believe if we move not on a like silly fast but responsibly expeditious to get it done yeah agreed um thank you both uh for your work um and for the whole team who put everything together much appreciate it we appreciate the conversation I I would be remiss if I didn't say I appreciate all the feedback from the
171community I know it's varied in terms of perspectives I know it's varied in terms of emotion and passion and that's good I would just conclude by saying that means that people really care about our school system and so I appreciate the conversation that we've been civil that has been uh clear and thank you for the opportunity um colleagues on the board uh we have a variety of different things to get through an executive session uh for anything that we can move through quickly uh I would ask that we strive to do so um and [Music] then I will meet your dual goals of giving time for people to talk and getting us home before return home um next up right now is finance and resources committee report this H uh so the last committee meeting
172was right before the holidays on the 13th of December um I'll just go through like the key points then I won't go through what we discussed in the whole agenda um we're starting to look at the budget calendar um the draft and when we're going to start making decisions as a committee before bringing recommendations to the board um starting next month so in February I've asked Dr means and Mr Brightman to bring scenarios to the finance committee on how to either reduce cost or increase revenue for the district so I know we talked a lot in our last conversation about really specific models on how we deal with our budget um deficits so hopefully starting in February we're going to start talking about specific scenarios um some preliminary assumptions are that we're going to get
173an additional $325 more per people in the next budget and that we're going to increase salaries and benefits by 4% so that's kind of the starting point for the for next year's budget um Jamie gave a quarterly report for um the division of Technology they're really looking at an analys of analysis of current Tech Staffing and Equipment budgets so I think you'll have some more specifics for the committee at his next update that's pretty much it unless anybody has questions the umm the financial reports um are available on board docs the minutes will be available soon Mr bman is not feeling well so those will be up in board doc soon to no major variances to report for October or November Miss hmer Rolland I would like to find a way where we can balance
174the work of the committee in the scenario discussions coming primarily to the full board uh because I think I would like the board the board's going to need time to digest figure out and think through I don't want you to have to do work that has to then get redone here so I I don't have an answer right now but I thank you for being thoughtful and thinking forward to that and I wonder if that might be a conversation that you and um Dr Worley clead in this space as opposed to at the committee that into whatever works for the whole board maybe big picture stuff first starting in the budget or the sorry the finance committee about like what percentage do we want to cut and then bring in the specific scenarios to board
175or however makes sense just as long with we're starting now to start thinking about those so we're not stuck in May when we're doing the budget confer and all of a sudden we're making these major changes in one month or decisions in one month AG great thank you um thank you very much for that tight report any questions or comments from the board uh let's move on to board governance legislative advocacy committee update I believe Dr you have you um so I just passed out to everybody and if you're in the room you can see our calendar this is kind of where we've pivoted our efforts um as you know historically the legislative advocacy committee has really focused on advocacy at the state level um given kind of the the state of the our current
176state government um we didn't feel like that was the best use of our time we're g going to continue to watch for Relevant bills and if there are places where we can make positions statements we will certainly do that but in the meantime we're sort of Shifting to this idea of how do we engage our community in advocacy efforts so this is our attempt to do that when you see this calendar you can see that we included also our board engagement um uh listening sessions on here as well um but just to draw people's attention to what's coming up next so January 17th um we are hosting uh the Wisconsin public education Network um and they're going to be talking they're going to be at Underwood on the 17th at 6 and they're going to
177be talking about how communities can come together in the face of financial crisis um and then um we'll have one a month um through April so February is the southeastern Wisconsin school Alliance they're going to be giving a presentation on school Finance in March we'll have the Department of Public Instruction and in April um we'll be sitting down with our state legislators legislators to ask questions about um State funding so that's just an overview of kind of what we've got going on but um again I'm really hopeful that we can get our community involved and showing up to these um can you Dr means can you speak to where um if the community is looking for this and they this calendar and they're not in the room where's the best place for them to find
178that it is on the district website I believe it's I don't know what's page is under but um I know that we have placed it on the district website okay so look there and please come next week our goal is to try to get 100 people at the event on uh January 17th so the more people we can get there the better I I want to thank our PTA Council they've really been um publicizing this on social media so uh we're looking forward to the opportunity it had a postcard with these dates on it yesterday so that's kudos to Miss Ellis she's working hard on these things and reaches community members who don't necessarily check our website or get our emails absolutely um thank you Dr H um next up I've been told that it's
179under events you go to menu in events you'll see the calendar perfect thank you uh next item is action to approve the designation of Dr Joseph anger to serve as the district's delegate to the Wisconsin State education convention um Mr it is recommended that the school board approve the designation of Dr Jose Banger to serve as the district's delegate to Wisconsin state education convention at ISO may I have a second second thank you any board conversation on this item thank you for volunteering to do yes where's the convention at uh the be Center down hwae I will look forward to it I've been to the conference many times I thought like it was kind of my turn to take the stuff please call Mr Morris yes Dr Hoy yes Miss Willis yes Dr Worley yes
180Miss Hammer Rolland yes Mr Meyer yes Dr Jessa anger yes and I am approved as delegate um Dr means I believe you have the packet of information and we'll be getting feedback from the staff on recommendations of strengths and weaknesses of each of the proposals yes question there with that one is there a student representative of the convention there are no students that are planning to attend and honestly next week's finals week so it falls always seems like it falls on finals week it always seems to fall on finals week so I remember a couple years ago we talked about a student and it was just um but in Wednesday Thursday Friday is three of the four days for final exams um next up is a couple um first readings of policies so um Dr
181Joseph anger the first one 8451 I would like to turn it just into a comment um update rather than a policy reading if that's acceptable the policy committee met today um and it was not on our agenda but we have since recently had some additional feedback back um through Dr pin's office that that very appropriately the nurses in the district would like to craft some additional wording um around how we're making choices if you have had a chance to read it you know that one of the pival questions around um headlights is what do you do with the student who has it in and the nurses have really advised they' like us to follow the um American Pediatric Association right yeah the American Pediatric Association has has quite different recommendations for a nursing team so
182they feel quite passionate and we just appreciate a little bit more time to be able to recommend what current practices and what the APA recommends so we can align there so just coming back to the policy committee it' be more efficient for us to hear from the nurses first rather than from here first if that's all right with everyone to just move on for tonight um so we can go to the second reading um or action to approve policy um 8310 if you would like to do that please do uh Jenny can you read this one please did you all just see our it's come the official word has come sorry be a heex okay um so full time I've been asking what's gonna happen and he just slides yeah you have your secret thing
183he had his feel like this is more exciting and we could have had it like sung by the Frozen cast I know so cool okay um declaring sow day he would give it to you all us who are hoping to have our children cared for go all of us hoping to have our children cared for tomorrow must now radically change our PL you sound like you were happy to have over so I want to do real because we got a lot easier with older children than with younger nice timing to leave the room I got the did you know the text was coming right then I did did actually :3 Dr H again okay it is recommended that the school board approve the revisions to policy 8310 public records and ISO move may I have
184a second second thank you um any changes really quick yeah so we were left the last board meeting when we talked about this which seems on ago but um with the specific question about the charging of um costs for the copies that was the main thing that was raised up to us and so um we did a little bit of looking into that and really the um key um Point here is that we're very close as the district to having everything electronification but it would be so minimal um of a fee that the recommendation of the District administration correct me if I'm wrong Dr means is that we not charge um for that so it's really because we've become such an electronic um world and that people should have everyone feels like we should all
185have access to it no matter what our economic status is which is another important Point um and then um the staff time is very minimal um given how we've got things set up or we'll soon have them set up Dr does that also include if someone needs uh a special version of it accessibility wise say they needed it in braille say they needed it in some some other profession that's not digital I don't think the policy accounts for that type of accommodation that doesn't mean we couldn't accommodate it just means we wouldn't charge I am fearful of us charging for someone who needs that type of accommodation and then for able-bodied people not to do it so I I I I think there are we have ample we have enough funds that if someone decided
186that they needed it en larger Tex print or in Braille or something else that we we would accommodate them I think we would actually be setting ourselves up for a discrimination suit actually and larger text would be straightforward in that so would an audio version so it's really only the the rail so thank you for asking that but good question anticipate that just a reminder to all those things that are crossed out at the bottom I mentioned this the last time um they're all covered um in the paragraph below all the crossing out um see other questions M Morris please call the r Mr Morris yes Dr Hoy yes Mr M still yes sorry I couldn't get to my mute Dr rley yes m h Rolland yes Mr Meyer yes Dr Jess iner yes in
187that policy passes uh we also have second reading uh inor action to approve policy 8320 Personnel records do you want me to read this one yes it is recommended that the school board approve the revisions to policy 8320 Personnel records and ISO move may have a second second thank you Mr Morris uh any summary of this item I believe the same question was similar we held this one back because of the copy question so hopefully the last discussion covered this pleas call Mr Morris yes Dr hoik yes Miss Willis yes Dr rley yes Miss Hammer Rolland yes Mr Meyer yes Dr Jess anger yes policy 8320 personel records passes uh second reading enter action to approve policy 8395 student Mental Health Services Miss hmer roll or Dr before we do that I just can I
188make a comment first so we did look at this this evening just before the board meeting um yep I could talk about how it's evolved since the last time you read it as well as we added some feedback around virtual services so I guess yeah that's the question is do you want to do the second reading tonight given that we you haven't seen I think I would like to to hold off and right that's what I'm asking let's okay let's because we thought we were bringing it I think we talked tonight once we knew we had some changes of putting it on the January 16th special um we'll see committee board meeting I would I would look for my colleagues uh is it the best to move to move this to our next regular board
189meeting agenda I special do you wanted are we gonna could I have a motion to uh move this item to our next regularly scheduled board meeting agenda we're gonna or this is our first reading today and then this is supposed to be our second reading and since we've made changes just a few hours ago you have't had those so that's why I'm um asking that we set it not that we set it aside um so I will move to move to move this agenda item to our special January 16th meet board meeting may have a second whoe call roll Mr Morris yes Dr Hoy yes Miss Willis yes Dr whing yes m C Rolland yes Mr Myers yes Dr Jess Banger yes and that will be moved to our January 16 um meeting um Mr
190Morris uh could I ask for you to read our number eight a jurn to Clos executive executive close session yes it is recommended that the school board adjourn into close session pursu to with cons statute 1 1985 GR one Prince G conferring with legal counsel for the governmental body who is rendering oral or written advice concerning strategy to be adopted by the body with respect to litigation in which it is it is or likely to become involved and Wisconsin statute 1 1985 frs1 friends e deliberating or negotiating the purchasing of public properties the investing of public funds or conducting other specified public business whenever competitive or bargaining reasons require a closed session specifically to consider strategy related to a lawsuit against the district brought by a school board member including possible settlement and I so
191move may I have a second second thank you uh it is 8:43 p.m um Miss Summers please call the Mr Morris Dr Hoy yes Miss Willis yes Dr Bley yes m ham Rolland yes Mr Meyer no Dr Jess Banger yes uh let's take five minutes uh and then we will return in close session I