WSD Board Meeting, Regular, October 24, 2022

001thank you Jamie good evening everyone watching online and here in the room um we have several new folks and new faces in the audience tonight thank you all for being here uh I call the October 24 2022 school board meeting to order it is 7 P.M we're in a room conference room C of the Fisher Administration Building at one two one two one West North Avenue Miss Summers please call the roll me yourself here miss Fraley here Mr Meyer here Dr Jessa Banger here Dr Hoyt here Mr Phillips here Miss Willis here members of the Wauwatosa 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

002input in decision making the board requests that individuals limit their comment on each item to three minutes following any comment an individual board member May respond on the issue raised however it is not the intent of public comment portion of the agenda for the board to be entered 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 um for those of you who have not been here for public comment in the past um how this rolls is there's an opportunity to come up uh you would introduce yourself share your name share your address and you would have three minutes uh for any non-agendant public comment uh at this time is there any

003public comment in the room this evening hi board members my name is sunny iowoski I'm a dress I'm a 2500 block of in East tosa um I think most of you know me so I'm a whatwatosa resident and I wanted to start by thanking you uh staff who's here on a Monday evening board members Dr means pertaining the time to do this um I think it's really important that we're moving forward with the business of the district I think that it's important that we acknowledge that a lot of work has been done by a lot of community members by a lot of Faculty by a lot of staff and by a lot of Administrators to get us here I think it's really important to acknowledge that we have listened to the voice of the people

004of Wauwatosa and that we are serving the children of Wauwatosa I come from a background in the sciences and business I started my freshman year of college and there were people who had not been educated on basic biology who were intending to be biology Majors I had a friend who in her freshman year biology class passed out because she heard about an ectopic pregnancy for the very first time there are people in our schools who need to understand the biology of their bodies and they need to receive a comprehensive human growth and development curriculum so thank you for passing that I'd also like to add from the perspective of my business education that in the absence of information people make information up and children students they're not children right young adults Young please be quiet

005these students have the right to learn about information that they should not have to go onto the internet to learn if they do not receive that information they will find it in other ways am I right all right so let's teach our children what it is to be an inclusive knowledge-based fact-based community and let's listen to the voice of the people of Wauwatosa and thank you for the work you're doing I know this is hard this is obviously hard you can hear it in my voice I'm frustrated and I'm ready for us to move forward as a district thank you thank you may I may I comment as a point of procedure please I think it might be helpful I the the the chair is running the meeting so if anyone is out of order

006it is in the province and authority of the chair speak to it so if you're at the microphone and something happens you don't like appeal to the chair to rule on what's going on please don't get into it amongst yourselves here because Dr Jessica banger is overseeing and running this meeting please give that to him respectfully thank you let's go okay I am here tonight as the founder excuse me could you actually share your name your address I am not comfortable with sharing my address can you share what town that you currently live in uh I live in I live here where's here I live in Milwaukee are you a resident of Wauwatosa I'm not a resident of Wauwatosa but I am a Community member and I have many friends who have children here so

007I just want to be I'm speaking to understand that you are not a resident of what hotels and you do not have children in the district I do not have children in the district but I have many friends who do that are concerned and I'm speaking on behalf of them as well understood is that okay sure okay I appreciate that my name is Jamie Michelle I'm here tonight as the founder and president of gays against groomers a coalition of hundreds of thousands of gay people and allies who oppose the sexualization indoctrination sterilization and mutilation of children being done in our name and I'd like to help clear a few things up for people tonight drag queen shows and story hours are not kid-friendly they are child abuse indoctrinating students with radical gender ideology is not

008inclusive as some say it is child abuse encouraging young children to explore their genitalia and their gender identity is not Progressive it is child abuse medically transitioning children and turning them into sterilized mutilated rice-bomb big Pharma patients with an endless list of complications is not care it is child abuse all of you here do not represent the LGBT community we do you do not speak for the LGBT community we do you know what you're doing is wrong and depraved but you continue to do it anyways with the material being shown and provided to children in your District A Day of Reckoning is on its way and when it arrives and it will arrive soon you should be ready to defend why you allowed and ushered in this Mass scale child abuse the likes of which

009have never been seen in this country before do you even allow this or abusers and enablers you are the enemy of parents and their children and if you are okay with within 30 seconds if you are okay with the material being taught in your schools to your students you should never be alive within 500 yards of a child ever again please remember our name gaze against groomers you're going to be seeing a lot more of us and our work is just getting started thank you I'm apologetic I went to a parent I live on horses thank you um is there I there's not a community comment uh line for the Strategic goal number uh for today the human resources will there be opportunity for Community comments on that I believe that's just a report we

010don't have Community comment on reports okay there will be an opportunity at the end of the meeting for Community comment on anything on or off the agenda okay perfect I'll make comments then thank you thank you hey good evening my name is Marissa darling I live in East home I am a Community member and I'm also a former school counselor I am here tonight to Echo some points of what my friend Jamie said and also share my relative expertise around the topic of uh childhood sexuality childhood uh knowledge and development around the topics of sexuality and gender identity and to urge you to reconsider what's happening in the school district with the adoption of the new sex ed curriculum in Wauwatosa So Jamie put it pretty perfectly when she said that this is really ultimately

011about the sexualization of minors to their detriment to the detriment of their minds of their bodies of their souls and other Spirits there is no room in the school day to talk about they them pronouns when kids can't read on grade level there's no room in the school day to teach a kindergartener about gender expression and drag queens when they are still having accidents at school there's no room in the school day to talk to high schoolers about anal sex when they are busy applying to college the demented the short-sighted the absolutely just not evidence-based nature of the curriculum that has been adopted and that is going to be used across the district in Wauwatosa we don't even know what the effects are going to be of this yet we don't even know what the

012data is going to look like we don't even know what is going to happen to the children that are being exposed to these ideas that have no basis in science that have no basis in biological reality that have no long-term data to back them up and yet this is something that you want to do district-wide starting in kindergarten all the way up through 12th grade is to teach children that they can be born in the wrong body and use that as a basis for some form of social emotional well-being learning I don't even know what it's supposed to accomplish all I know is that kids are born the way they're born and they should be accepted for the way they're born gender non-conform means students should be accepted for who they are instead of pigeon

013hold into a supposed gender identity because their girls who like sports or they're girls who want to have short hair or they're girls who are gay thank you there my name is Kristen Bach I am a Wauwatosa resident and parent I have four children in Wauwatosa schools or recent graduates of Wauwatosa schools including my son Theo who is here tonight as a student representative for the school board so thank you for that super cool opportunity that you give to local kids um I am speaking extemporaneously please excuse dammering uh my eldest child is a gay man he has graduated from Washington Elementary and Longfellow Middle School and East High School and he is a college student at UWM having the time of his life he was a gay ten-year-old and then he was a gay

01412 year old and then he was a gay 16 year old before he grew into a gay 20 year old and despite the very best efforts of every educator who ever invested anything into my child and there were countless Educators who invested countless resources into my child there are zero times he ever saw himself represented as a gay man at any time in the curriculum of any of his human classes human development classes his sexuality was not present his freedom of his gender expression was not present his physical health was not present his emotional health was not present and that was not because no one cared about him that was because they were using an outdated curriculum wherein gay people are absent or a rumor and I would like to thank the school board I

015would like to thank everyone who has invested dozens of hours of research and meetings and Community spirited volunteering to make it so that my Charlie gets to be the last kid who is a secret to his classmates who is absent who is a ghost in his own classrooms I would also like to thank the school board for prioritizing the safety of children and using medically appropriate terminology and the curriculum because as we all know there is an enormous body of research in the social sciences regarding how knowing appropriate medical terminology for their body 30 seconds is protective against sexual assault in children starting at the preschool age and extending through adulthood you aren't teaching kids what their body parts are I'm not teaching kids what their body parts are we're teaching them what they're called

016correctly so the Predators recognize that they're an educated child and so that they can represent themselves and have agency in their own choices and I thank you for that we'll go um we'll see where we're at for the next two comments and then we'll I think move into this meeting relatively my name is Paul Bruno um I live in Ravenswood uh I've got two children in the school district uh something the NHS in the UK just told doctors not to encourage young people to change their names and pronouns because most uh children who think they're transgender are just going through a pace it seems to be really important to the people on the board we were giving no uh warning basically as parents or vacation we had two weeks to figure it out and up

017to 13 000 people that you send surveys to 184 were counted we don't know how many actually responded um but I I think you know we're going a little fast here uh countries in Europe are already turning back the clock on where we're going and having to take my kids out of some of these things they're going to be ostracized and that is the last thing I want my child to think that their dad's a homophobe or their dad hates transgender people um because like I don't care who you sleep with I don't care what you want to call yourself teaching kids this young I think it's inappropriate and you know look at test grades they're falling fast and we're putting in a brand new science like I want reading grades and math grades to

018come up before we start entering all this and that's all I have to say and I really hope like look at what the NHS said um they're turning back the clock because they see the what's coming um thank you for your time thanks Nicole Etter I live in East Town Wauwatosa and honestly I think all the attention that's been devoted to this topic is ludicrous and the younger grades this curriculum takes up 0.2 or 0.2.3 percent of instructional time I remember those actual stats from the school district it's a drop in the bucket of our kids education I have no worries about the math and Ela time and Science and everything else that my kids are getting during school day however I think there are certain people from outside our community a lot of them

019here tonight and a few from within our community who are using this opportunity to fuel divisions and scapegoat our public schools and vulnerable kids for their own political purposes it needs to stop thank you for all you do foreign thanks I think we're going to shift into we'll have public comment again at the end of the evening so folks are welcome to stay but we've got a lot of business to get to we're going to roll through all that business uh and we'll have public comment at the end of our evening um as well okay a fun evening um we have three of our four students School Board Representatives with us this evening uh we'll be taking the oath the fourth is my understanding coming back from a college visit so we'll we'll catch him

020up at our next meeting but thank you all for your applications to everyone else who applied uh for using your voice to advocate for student perspectives on the board um and I'm delighted that you're all joining us here this evening um our school board clerk Dr Jenny hoyig will administer the oath of office to student Representatives at this time I went to them all three together and can probably do it either from your a lot of times we'll have them stand and do it at the microphone thank you both okay together okay repeat after me I can say your name having been appointed to the office of student representative on the wall Joseph School Board presentation but have not yet entered upon the duties thereof I have not yet altered up swear or affirm that

021I will support the Constitution of the United States and the constitution of the state of Wisconsin and the Constitution will Faithfully discharge the duties of State office to the best of my ability thank you all and welcome um the student School Board representative position is something that the board uh began to include five years ago four or five years ago uh and have really played I think an important role in being able to bring student voice doctor means and I will be setting up a time for onboarding when all six of us can get together and we'll talk a little bit about your roles and some of the goals that you might have for this year that you would like to bring before the board so again congratulations and thank you uh our next item

022is the consent agenda uh are there any items in the consent agenda which board members would like to remove oh okay um the next is a report from the Education Foundation of Wauwatosa Dr means Casa from the efw will be making a presentation to the board and Community regarding buying work of the foundation show my okay we may hold on this item we can table it can I have a motion to table this item second we'll come back when she's able to join us later in the meeting uh it's called the room Miss Fraley yes uh Dr Joseph Binger yes Mr Meyer yes yes Mr Phillips yes Dr Hoyt yes Miss Willis yes next item I'll please the consent agenda are there any items in the consent agenda which board members would like to remove

023for separate discussion and action seeing none may have a motion to approve move to approve thank you may have a second second thank you um any more discussion on this item it's really um I just want to say that it is great to see that we are offering this to students um this is the first time I've you know learned about it from a personal standpoint and have been very very impressed by both the or WTC folks and the UWM folks and um I just think it's fantastic that we offer kids this opportunity um and though it costs us money I'd like to make sure that we are making it uh making all of our students aware of it um you know I I wasn't aware of it with my first kid um and so

024you know by the time you get to your third child you know a little bit more um so I in in terms of equity and we're thinking about our strategic plan I'd love to make sure that this is knowledge that we make available to All Families um so that everyone benefits equally and for those watching on TV or in the room what Miss Fraley is referring to is one of the things in the consent agenda is uh all the different opportunities where uh students that chose the East and Tulsa West are taking courses uh for college credit uh at a variety of different post-secondary institutions um and all the different courses that are being taken and the budget approvals for that as part of our consent agenda tonight so good thing to know is one

025of the things that we do provide is an opportunity uh as appropriate to attend post-secondary institutions uh and these could be uh anywhere from WCTC I think MATC is on the list Mount Mary UW Milwaukee Marquette several others so a really great opportunity for students still in high school uh certainly lots of opportunities to get post-secondary credit uh and this is another one of those thank you that's really any other comments from the board seeing none any Community comment on the consent agenda seeing none please call the room this mealfilk yes Miss Fraley yes Mr Meyer yes Dr Joseph anger yes Dr Hoyt yes Mr Phillips yes Miss Willis Dr Jessica see two hands raised but I'm not sure if it's for a public comment on this item I just want to bring attention to

026them yeah those hands I'm just lowering now they've been um they've been raised since the initial public comment section so if any guests now want to comment on the consent agenda could you please raise your hand online I've seen my hands raised yes thank you and that item passes our next item up on the agenda is strategic goal number four high quality staff uh and this is a report a human resources report thank you for joining us this evening good evening uh in this evening's report you'll see you'll see a number of updates questions that we have added in the organization based on our student needs as we've understood them since the beginning of the year um as well as some challenges that that we're experiencing um I would first like to point out um

027that uh since um the report was prepared um we've hired approximately 7.0 teachers um uh to the positions that we've had and we've hired about 6.0 support staff members we are planning to host a career fair focusing specifically on support staff positions in the month of November and we're also excited that the urban learning collaborative and alternative teacher certification program in the area that partners with Mount Mary will be available for during the career fair to talk with individuals who are interested in teacher certification but also just interested in going into educational positions starting to build those teacher pipeline tools for our organization later this week uh Dr means and Mr Brightman and I will be meeting with our um our Wauwatosa Education Association members in our second meet and confirm meeting of the year

028um we also have our first support staff meeting with meet and confer um uh meeting scheduled for the middle of November and so far there's been fairly good interest um in attending those meetings um and finally we have our first health and wellness committee meeting scheduled for later in the month of November and we've invited all of our staff members um especially those with diverse perspectives diverse needs to come and learn about not only our benefit systems um as well as how our health insurance program is running and to help us release uh map out a strategic path for the future uh one of the other um uh components I'd like to call your attention to this evening is that last month um our colleague Matthew vanderkamp was recognized uh for his work with an

029agency uh entitled um the Ability Center to offer open gym activities through Recreation Department uh he was the first in our rec department was the first to come and get involved with that organization which offers opportunities for participants to engage in indoor and outdoor activities like wheelchair basketball sitting volleyball goal ball and tennis and that program is growing in the area with some new sponsorships so uh keep up the good work Matthew and the team in the recreation department as we're looking at activities for the coming month I'm excited to share with you that we talked I believe uh at the last or maybe two meetings ago about some dean of students positions that we would be adding to our secondary schools um our first Dean was hired last week and she'll be starting at

030Whitman Middle School next Tuesday we have some additional interviews tomorrow um for our other Middle School position and next week we'll be interviewing for our high school dean of students position under leadership of our colleague and friend um opinion we're looking forward to those opportunities coming up and that's my report for the evening um before I asked the board for any questions or comments I just want to make a comment on the Ability Center uh Damian Bachman is a is plays a major role with that organization is a parent in the district and he is um so much positive energy uh it's just a jewel for our community is doing a lot of really phenomenal things in counting Parks uh in the city in the Milwaukee region so uh kudos to Matthew and the team

031for finding ways to engage and connect with them and that's a really exciting news thank you absolutely uh questions and comments from the board it's really so for the educational assistant come when that will be a figured out and will there be the possibility for us to have a different comp model and time for second semester hiring uh so I appreciate the question um in talking with Dr means and with Mr Brightman we felt that the adjustment to those salaries was best held within the planning for our budget for next year which would not have it in time for the second semester and has there been any conversation about what we might be willing or able to do in the short term to to get folks in I know we're competing with other districts and

032and you know Charter appropriate schools for those specific positions and just don't know there's gonna be Flex there for what we could offer that might be a little bit of a bump or a one-time you know signing bonus or something because it's you know you've heard me say this before yeah knock knock for our current folks much love to get new folks then yeah um we have offered signing bonuses um when we held our summer career fair that's certainly something we can look at um one of the things that we're looking at as well are again just the comparisons to other local school districts and what that means um I think as you saw in the report um the way we structure compensation for our educational assistance is based on their training and specifically educational

033qualifications I think that is very Savvy in comparison to the market but we still need to boost the bottom up so I think there are some things that we can maintain as well that will help us along the way but we want to make sure that we're ready to go ahead and make that investment just in new hires but we can offer the same um uh compensation and the same um gratitude for the work that's happening for our current staff members and so that makes it a much larger budget figure yeah I'm wondering though if perhaps instead of like assigning bonus to be doing a retention incentive votes so they come on and they get an incentive bonus if they stay into next year um we have I've started working with that a little bit

034and with the employment offer um adding the fact that we will be able to give you an increase of at least this much at the end of the year to come back yeah knowing kind of what we're thinking about in terms of adjustments to those hourly rates okay and then final question have we thought at all about um at least for the elementary roles I think would be hard to at the high school level or middle school level looking specifically at targeting recent College grads right um I was a 21 year old teacher and it was very hard to teach 19 year olds who were two years younger but obviously you know I'm thinking about my oldest who was a teacher's assistant during summer school and was with in the elementary school and you know

035had a ton to offer so I just I keep hearing about folks that are you know doing the waitressing thing or whatnot because they're trying to figure out you know what to do in real life and and these could we go back to kids that we've had as summer school assistants or you know because that's basically the salary they were making at summer schooling systems I don't know I just keep figuring like the kids are out there but they might they literally might be like 22 23 24 year olds yeah uh we are um my team met today um and they have been really thoughtful and um and very uh creative in terms of thinking about how to go ahead and get at recent graduates um in uh Luke's division um people and family supports

036um we have colleagues who have made connections with universities to help find students who are maybe not an elevation Pathways for returning over every Rock because I know of teachers who are saying they're desperate to have them every Rock and leaf yeah and Lee yes great thank you of course appreciate all the work any other board commentary questions in the Senate so for our new students school board members um what we have is about once a month uh Michelle zasky who oversees our human human resources um comes and shares a report on a variety of different topics of kind of we're hiring what we're hiring for um staff Rao ways that we can do to make sure that our staff are taken care of and supported to the greatest degree possible so you'll see this

037on the agenda about once a month throughout the year so that's it's kind of a normal report that we have thank you so much um Mr Meyer I'm going to ask you to help me out with this one so we have tabled the Education Foundation of Wauwatosa item I'm going to bring that back on to the agenda on the table motion to pull from the table for consideration thank you may have a second second please call the room yes Miss Fraley yes Mr Meyer yes Dr Joseph anger yes Dr Hoyt yes Mr Phillips Miss Willis yes we are back uh to an item for the Education Foundation of Wauwatosa yes because our new president of the Education Foundation of all Tulsa makes her way to um the table thank you Mr Brightman for your flexibility

038is Jack Jackie that's been on the foundation board since 2016 has recently assumed the role of President um the Education Foundation of volatile so the efw has a rich history of supporting the school district and enhancing the opportunities available to students and teachers and so Mr Casa thank you so much for being here this evening we really appreciate it and looking forward to your presentation thanks for having me do you know if the presentation's already downloaded it is foreign [Music] how many folks in the office they're in the rooms might have been to either the any of the efw events a couple of them if you haven't been uh it is just the black and white ball is I think in May this year uh is its new permanent uh time a fantastic time to

039connect with neighbors and folks in the community uh raising funds for a great uh resource and then a really wonderful event that happened a couple weeks ago at the zoo um that is another big fundraiser but the efw is a really great opportunity and place to engage uh if you're interested in being a community volunteer certainly ptas and pgos and efw does some phenomenal stuff and we're going to get to hear about a lot of that really good stuff tonight so if you haven't been there do some soul searching make sure that you thought why you haven't been there and see if you can get yourself to buy a table and take some friends and make sure that you're engaging in raising funds for kids in Wauwatosa how many people are committed to going to

040an efw event I want to see all your hand everybody in the room should be if you care about kids raise your hand and say I commit to donating money to the efw this year in Wauwatosa because everybody as everybody let's see your hands I'm not seeing them know that this influences whether what I'm hearing okay so the great part about this presentation is that um we're using it as a PDF instead of a PowerPoint so we don't get to see all the fun stuff but um so um uh can I just uh jump in if you could share your screen Corey could you maybe assist in sharing the screen so that we can see it online as well thank you has anybody rethought and recommitted to donating money to the efw I'm just not

041I'm confused why everyone's not raising their hand s that that decision's been made we'll be coming back to that in three years though we're good to go we can say it online thank you Jamie all right well thanks again for having me um my name is Jackie Costa like doctor means um noted and I've been on the Education Foundation for a while now um our purpose is to promote Excellence Innovation and opportunities in the district by raising awareness and awarding money for uh teacher grants and um these grants are usually the main purpose is to enhance and enrich The Learning Experience for all students [Music] um space bar oh yeah okay there you go so uh for 32 years now we've been raising money and we have awarded more than a million dollars and in

0422020 we actually gifted the district 30 000. for Chromebooks to help um you know during the hybrid needs last year in 2021 we funded our largest grid cover which was fifty thousand dollars for this amazing technology um it says Community table it's one of the only high schools in the state to have this kind of technology that allows students to dissect all kinds of things um right at their fingertips are the past seven years you can see that this just as a little snapshot of um how our grants have touched every student in the district at every school um some of those some of those um grants here are um just a little picture of some of the things that we've that we've been funding um some of the names that you might recognize from

043last year's round of Grants where we awarded 72 000 um or eight grams we funded a music Lab at tosa East we've funded eight thousand dollars worth of graphing calculators for high school students at Tulsa West and like I said some of the names that you might recognize Elizabeth Updike Sarah Minsky Heidi Hedgewood Adam Stefan all at Tulsa West um Lauren rosnowski Hayden and Jay Reiki from Longfellow also got France last year and then from Chelsea East we had some awards to the amazing Ken Craig Griffey who you might know he's kind of famous now around town uh Jennifer latto Michael Hayden and Jeff krugsack also got some grants last year our grant um window is now open so any Educators can apply um so these like um like the board president just said these

044are some of the events that we run um the efw Stampede was rebranded this year kind of as a comeback after covid after covet Hiatus and the black and white Gala uh that's coming up in May and um tickets will be going on sale for that probably second quarter uh we couldn't really do it without the help of our sponsors so we have some of these terrific Partners around the around town who contributed to helping us um as well as some of the ptas from um ptas ptos ptsas reaction District um let's see of course I have to give a little shout out to our website we just redid that and um this was going to be a little one minute video but um I don't think it's gonna play because it's PDF but it's

045available on our YouTube channel so thank you for your time and I can ask answer any questions that you that you have thank you thank you very much for being here um the efw is a wonderful organization and like you said it really supports the schools and the teachers um and if we didn't have you we couldn't do all the wonderful things we're doing um and and some you know of course Very Innovative things um my question for you is the um the drop in is it nominations for programs in the schools from last year to this year or funding or maybe both so you mean like because we gave eights last year and 12 the year before well I was just looking at the dot chart that you presented and I was wondering if

046it was just the the number of submissions from the different schools or yeah it does have to do with the number of the questions that we get and we have a pretty um intensive rubric situate um in place and so there's two tiers of um criteria and it has to pass through those two tiers but it really has to do with the applications that we receive and then um we have a funding formula based on the amount that we raise okay yeah so I think you know for this really driving then you know the applications would be but there's probably been I don't know how to explain that um but there's probably been a lot of change too maybe in some of the buildings so just the process well you know we award grants to

047um everything from 500 up to well that 50 000 was our highest um so the more requests that we get um the better and I mean we we want to give away the money that's why we raise it you know that's what we're all about so uh yeah so I just want to make sure that it's not too cumbersome of a process I mean it doesn't seem like it is from past experience but it seems it's gotten easier okay yeah all right yeah maybe and maybe we can just publicize it more in the different school buildings so you know that this is available again if there's a lot of uh change in the teams there maybe they're not aware um so thank you that's really um two things one I would call out so the

048student school board members if there are things that you think that the school needs like to approach a teacher and you know there could be a collaboration between a student club and a teacher in terms of like what the needs are so this is something that I would encourage you to think about how you take back this information to your own teachers to say hey wouldn't it be great if we could do this in physics or we could do this in in something else because I think hearing from students about what they want to see in the classroom is is really important um and the second thing is I just want to call uvfw and say thank you for the rebranding of the walk run roles um we've been talking a lot about um diversity

049Equity inclusion and accessibility um and I think that um it might seem like a little thing but I think it says a lot and even the visual itself um is a great way to the community great way to communicate to the community about what we're prioritizing so thank you for doing that been playing something I would just like to call it out again the website tosa efw.org it is such a happy helpful sharing communicative kind of website it's just that you can go there and see what you're all doing and please it's visit that website tosaefw.org thanks thanks I can you share a little bit about I've been following along there's been great social media posts of members of the efw going into schools um sharing information with teachers who've gotten grants uh and kind

050of doing little surprise pop in visits can you share a little bit about about what that what that's doing kind of some of the response you've been getting it's but it looks fun online yeah well um you know we have some shout outs to some of the gallery here who who actually did some of those visits um so every year we make our grants announcement in March and last year we delivered Donuts to the schools where teachers got some grants then in front of the students this this year just last week we surprised the teachers in front of their kids with little goodie bags and um they didn't know they don't know we're coming of course we organized it with the principal but um I guess that the fun thing is that then the students

051can realize you know what their teachers are pretty awesome people too and that they have done this for them and uh I think we have maybe one more surprise visit to go I can't tell you when that's gonna be um but yeah we um we get our board members to go out to the school to do that usually every fall awesome thank you for that work any other comments or questions on the board now just a quick thank you for everything you do it's such an important partnership in our community thank you thank you for having me again I'll send the link to that video it's just one minute kind of summarizes everything I said awesome thank you for being here tonight thanks next up is strategic goal number six operations uh action to approve

052the 2022-23 original budget and tax levy that's me it is recommended that the school board approve the 2022-23 original budget and tax lady Levy certification as presented in both the attached on pages four through six and will be presented by Mr Brightman and ISO move second Miss Fraley yes no we'll talk about it not yet oh I'm sorry that's okay I've saved here okay thank you I mean a Little Help from Corey to share it on the screen so I've talked a little bit to the board about the counter-intuitive side of Wisconsin school finance and we're more than a quarter of the way through our fiscal year and this is the statutory budget adoption requirements as well as certifying the tax levy or resources we need to fund this current school year so that's just

053something that's odd about Wisconsin I don't know of another state where it happens like this in kind of arrears so in a long-term legislative discussion not for this next biennium but it might be something interesting to talk about something that's more proactively thinking to where you're setting a budget financially now for some things would happen next year from now or six months from now so that's just something that kind of placehold kind of where we're at um I did prepare a budget summary and a little bit different format than you've seen in the past so I'll link some feedback on this as we go forward too um there's a budget booklet that was attached in board docs and it's about 20 pages long the front section is a summary of where we are with the

054current budget process um I'm going to focus on the front end of the document really Pages through three through um eight in in the document uh we'll start with the budget calendar we've talked about the long term or next year's budget planning calendar this is the final snippet of the current year planning um since I joined the district back in June um and just again to remind you the yellow highlighted items are when the board takes action on a specific item within the budget and you can see we're at the October 24th the last step in this current planning process and we'll be requesting the budget adoption by the board as well as the tax levy certification tonight um statutorily we need to have that passed by November 1st of each year and then forwarded

055to the the clerks by November 10th so that's really the next steps we do behind the scenes um after tonight uh Pages four through six are where we present the budget in the minimum or it's not the minimum but the required format that the DPI has as far as a board adopting a budget so it's in that format but it's not the most friendly document to look at so we provide this and this is what we ask the board to adopt but we provide some supplementary information some other formats to the same information to make it a little bit clearer for the community and and for the board to kind of process through one of the key things we're doing tonight is obviously the tax levy so this would be on page eight of the

056attachment it reflects what we call section one and it's a tax levy summary and I'll get back to this after make a few other comments um you recall the board passed a budget back at the end of June and that we call that the preliminary budget and it gives us really spending Authority through this time until the board adopts this original budget uh on the expense side of the budget there's really no changes from what the board approved back in June um there's a minor adjustment upward adjustment the expenses for the voucher program but there's an equal offset on the revenue side and the revenue limit for the voucher costs as the um are part of our budget as we adopted for this year um there was another key difference on the revenue side um

057I'll look at the revenue side to State Equalization Aid last year the aid was certified as 17.8 million dollars and we estimated back in June that the district would get about 20.8 million dollars in Equalization Aid the actual number there was down to about 19 million dollars so you'll see the increase to the tax levy to offset that reduction is stated and that's just the way that it plays it's not truly a reduction we as well as every District in the state had a tough time predicting where stating will come in this year and that's because of the way the sharing costs are factored in Statewide the impact of the large inflow of Esther funds and howler spent different timing wise and different levels in different districts across the state especially the MPS and the

058large urban districts they really sway how that that impacts the ease formula so we did get a little bit less speed than we thought which means the tax Levy's up a little bit from what we thought but it's still down from what you saw at this time last year so we're at 58.9 million dollars this year and 57 million dollars on the Levee side as you can see on the screen the tax rate is what most people care about is what does this mean to my individual property taxes and even though the tax levies up slightly um the tax rate is down significantly and that's because of a 19.32 increase to overall property valuations we predicted about a two percent very conservatively and two percent back in June and so that's much higher so the

059tax rate impact is much greater than we anticipated back um that that five six months ago if you're a person owning that average 300 000 home uh two years ago your school property taxes were just over 2 500 and this year they're just over two thousand dollars they've gone down and yes the home values have also gone up so there's an equalizing Factor there but the home values fixed that will be the impact on that average home and then we put a couple charts in to kind of show the interplay of those taxes on that home as well as the actual taxes and then the tax rate so the one on the right you can see that inverse relationship where you have the high increase to the property valuations so all the other funds so

060the specialization fund gift funds Food Service community service they're all unchanged with the board saw and approved back in June so I won't spend any more time going through those and so tonight we are asking the board to approve the 2000 2223 original budget as presented on pages four through six of this attachment and then certify the 2022-23 tax levy at the 58 million 955 626 which is shown on on the attachments also sort of make it easier you can say as presented if you like or you can actually reference those pages in the document hey Phillips I'm going to give you as board treasure kind of the first um any questions or comments that you have about the bunch of your Levy um I think but the good news is I mean the new

061information for us is the levy so um I think that's a really good story for us to be able to to tell um that there's some relief for uh taxpayers this year so as we you know the rest of the budget remains pretty much unchanged so um as you're talking to your you know to your neighbors and things like that that would be a high point to share with them other board comments or questions in your phone I support the budget so thank you there's a lot of work that goes into this Mr Brightman and I have been asked about it multiple times over the last several weeks um and you know we can point to we can point to this information and really share it with the community and how it will impact our

062learning and student you know on our programming and students I suppose and just to give you feedback I appreciate so much the calendar I mean even looking at the bottom of the page that the projected calendar that's under development it's so helpful for me to visualize you know what things are coming up on our calendar what we'll be voting on just so that you know I know what's coming up and I can do my own research and have a better understanding so thank you for that my only comment would be I think Mr Brightman you started off talking about how complicated uh School Finance in Wisconsin is um when I first started on the board about six years ago five six years ago I remember there was a blue ribbon panel uh that was right

063around that time bipartisan real estate legislators a lot of ideas that folks agreed this would be good stuff to do for the state for for schools um and if I recall none of that moved forward um so I I say this to share uh Ms Fraley and I are co-chairs of our legislative advocacy committee uh we will we have begun and we will continue to make sure that we're advocating for resources for schools while wachosa Statewide particularly for our kids and our families in our in our community um so um I think the budget uh you all did a one really wonderful job we had two very uh long conversations about this when the budget was first uh shared with the board over the summer uh thank you for bringing this back and for approval

064uh and we've got work to do as a state around funding issues I know we've we're seeing some some long-term drops um in in terms of where we are putting money and resources and uh good news 5.5 billion dollar rainy day I believe on top of the rainy day fund um that hopefully we can Advocate um for kids in schools I know polling shows that there's a lot of support for uh money more money going to public education so uh hopefully we'll get there thank you thanks really um Mr Brightman I'm wondering if for our students award members you can sort of articulate just in a couple sentences what you were talking about in the beginning about we're a quarter of the way through our business year and just in late people's terms because I

065think one of the things the legislative advocacy committee has been talking about is how do we actually educate the public as to how this very complicated process works and so I think for them just super high level if you can explain timeline might be helpful yeah so I did put the last page in the attachment in more docs um and we'll maybe have to get them Chromebooks so they can kind of follow along with the board we're looking at but it shows our full budget calendars we plan into next year's budget so the 23 24 budget plan and they're um there are really two key formulas we look at the first one being the state aid formula and you hear a lot about that one and that provides an equalization of the property tax impact

066across the states of funding schools by applying a bunch of state aid to some districts and little State other districts we've been in the little state aid side of things it's based on an index of spending and then property Wells per student and so it just depends on who fit in that formula as to the amount of state aid that you get the second one is the revenue limits itself in that sets really a revenue limit as it's called the combination of state aid and local tax Libby that any one District can can have in a given fiscal year and it's not equal across the state it's wherever you entered the system in 1993 that's another odd piece to the funding model you're kind of stuck there as you move forward unless you go through

067an operating referendum to to change your position within that um and then that formula gets adopted or updated on October 15th with our actual allocations of state aid that we just received that allocation and then we update our tax levy and approve the tax Lobby tonight based on that allocation so that's kind of the gist of those two key formulas and how they fit and as you said on the board a student represents reps you'll see the full budget cycle produce itself over this next year and how everything kind of fits together at the end to get to this point is kind of the final step yeah the key takeaway being that I want to make sure you understand is that we create our first budget without having any idea how much money it's going

068to be coming to us and especially this year next June or July 1 is a state bind yield budget so every two years the state passes a biennial budget that includes school funding and we don't know what that means so we're gonna have to do our best estimates as we progress through that we'll have a high medium low of kind of what we're predicting funding might be at and plan accordingly with that and we won't know until close to July 1 when we start our Episcopal year what the actual allocations are likely given the past history of how the legislative process works thank you um I just want to say thank you for the work you do I really appreciate having the budgeting ability to be able to keep the schools running and first and

069foremost yeah thank you I appreciate it also your explanation was very nice any Community comment on this item hi my name is Alicia Bartz I live at 1421 North 69th Street in tosa I don't know if this is appropriate but I'll just mention that I'm curious where donations are accounted for in the budget so you know what the actual cost of things are some of our booster clubs and sports teams are very very good at fundraising and so as a parent I find myself handing money to many of these clubs and I think if certain parents retire or certain booster clubs go away you'll have a lot more dollars hitting the budget so I just don't know if there's a place where you keep track of in-kind gifts or donations so you have a sense

070of those real dollars that maybe aren't coming out of the budget and you may do that somewhere else but I just want to mention it because I I do sometimes wonder if we're accounting for the full picture of what it costs to run our fantastic theater programs our band programs or Sports when there's money coming in from these different ways thank you it's a great question and I can provide a pretty quick answer to it if you're okay with that that'd be great um we do have general fund which are General operations funding for those programs that were mentioned um but any gifts that come in whether it's through the foundation or the booster clubs is put in a separate fund and so it's isolated for the purpose it was gifted to the district four

071so we received the funds we buy what was intended for and it washes to zero so there is no net impact on the District budget with those items but it is kept and held separately and accounted for separately within the budget process and I think what what Ms Parts was talking about was if we didn't have those generous donations how much more would we need to fund those areas in order to provide just what we're providing now is that I think that would be and I don't even know if I've never never seen anything on that and so I think that's something that we can talk about I think it's a good question because it basically comes to the what is the full cost of doing and providing to kids what we're doing it's good

072seeing no other community comment anything online Jamie no there are no hands raised okay yes yes Mr Meyer no Dr Jessica banger yes Dr Hoyt yes Mr Phillips yes Miss Willis yes and that passes our next item is an action item to approve Compass care for Medicaid foreign school board approved recommendation of compass care to oversee the administration of Medicare reimbursement claims for the district and I so move you have a second second thank you okay thank you for a quick summary of this items um administration of both people services and finance or business office are recommending Compass Care LLC is our District's Federal Medicaid service agency and it will be effective January 1st 2023 but they'd have some Gear Up and some ramp up time prior to that if they are approved this recommendation

073comes down to past practice and experience with the new staff coming into the district and looking at our Medicaid reimbursements received and thinking they're very low compared to what we would expect in a district or size so we dug in a little bit and we found the prior provider wasn't as aggressive with the reporting and coordinating internally with the staff that we things we have to do to get that reimbursement and again we've had very good success with this with compass care and getting those reimbursements um so we had a discussion with them and we're looking at the magnitude of several hundred thousand dollars a year of additional reimbursements for things that we already are entitled to be reimbursed for so this isn't doing anything new as far as the system this is what we're

074claiming in we're claiming that to increase Revenue back to the system with that you'll start to see those increased revenues on our budget planning moving forward it'll reduce any budget deficits we'll be talking about based on state budget parameters for the future so we'll put a number around that as we bring back future budget discussion items so you'll see that real time the current provider has been notified of a 60-day contractual termination with them we've been with them for a number of years well over a decade it'd be a couple decades but we would like this new agreement to go into place as soon as possible again to allow for that transition and the way this works is we submit quarterly staff pool lists that get generated and then validated and followed up on by

075this provider and we want to do that for the January one quarter so January march to get this moving and then get those additional reimbursements moving um so with that we are recommending the work of the compass care agreement has presented I'd just like to add as well the compass care services is a higher level of service and a different level of service as well for providers that are actually doing the billing and Counting tracking their minutes so they provide a really great customer service as well as well as tracking and it's it's above and beyond I would say what our staff are typically used to in terms of the support around Medicaid billing thank you any board comments or questions on this item seeing down any Community comment on this item uh Dr Bishop

076anger we do have an online comment oh thank you Jamie uh Deb folkpalek um hold on one second sorry default Panic you and now I have the microphone please state your name and address uh thank you hi Deb Falk palik Wawa Tulsa resident um I am just curious if this billing for Medicaid will still require the district to be sending notification to parents um because the District staff don't always know I don't think which students may have Medicaid coverage as a primary or a secondary coverage and I can tell you it has been several years since District staff have sent something so I don't know if this is primarily the fault of the provider or what was happening internally with our District staff to reach out to families to let them know that the district

077would like to Bill Medicaid for those services and then also I would just really highly encourage that there's a strong look at confidentiality with sharing of information with this new provider with family names Etc and lastly Miss Willis I think when you made the motion you had said Medicare instead of Medicaid so there's obviously a big difference on that but just a technicality there which could you know be huge so thank you there are no more hands raised the color wrong oh Myer yes Dr Joseph anger yes Dr Hoyt yes Mr Phillips yes Miss Willis yes next up on this I next up is action to approve a construction manager for the Washington playground project it is recommended that the school board approve recommendation of VJs to serve as the construction manager for the Washington

078playground project and ISO move we have a second second thank you Miss Springfield okay and give a quick summary in this item uh the district has bid out the construction manager work for the Washington playground we're again planned for this spring and summer on the board did approved the actual project this last March and so that's all good to go uh we've done everything with the planning design permitting all that with ready and set um the next steps were to identify the construction manager and then that firm will take everything out to bid and get get everything in place for the project to actually happen there are some questions to whether the school for this project still fit under the referendum definition It's So referendum funded project but it kind of went beyond the duration

079of the scope of that work so we thought to be safe we would rebid that out we had four firms been on it we sent it to I think it was eight and received four bids BJs did give the winning bid and they were the referendum construction manager provider also um and you can see a vid summary attached on board docs um they had a summary in their total fees and general conditions of 110 000 compared to about 200 000 with the rest of the providers um but then there was an offset on some of the self-performed work the total bid came in at 410 000 the next highest was 438 000 and then the two bids from C and D did not get on the cell performed work so we identified the lowest of

080the two costs there to add to their totals to get ideal what the total cost would be with their bids involved also so again it's a pretty straightforward project in scope compared to the other things that bgs managed for the referendum projects but wanted to go through and did this one just to be safe again with the uh the purchasing companion requirements of this of the district so we are recommending pgs for approval four members that would just uh say two things one I would like to thank Mr Brightman and Mr chowinski Mr chowinski for their due diligence with this work we promised the Washington School community this past summer that we would make this a priority on this project a priority and so I'm glad and pleased that we're continuing to demonstrate that work

081I think your approval this evening will allow the construction manager to to stay on a timeline and make this this project this play around ready for the start of the school year um I also want to thank the parents of the Washington School Community for their patients because they they have been very patient with us but I think we're as Mr Brightman cited we we wanted to follow through our due diligence do it appropriately uh and then finally I wanted to say that we're excited about this because vgs was also the same company that oversaw the the creation and the building out of the Roosevelt playground and that's received rave reviews so I think they understand the expectation of our community overall and we'll make sure that there there's some nuances that are unique to

082to the Washington Community but nonetheless we've been pleased with their work so just a couple other footnotes to add to this conversation thank you I have a question what was the um Construction Company able to submit a timeline just so parents have an idea of when things are going to be completed they will be doing that next once they're hired on after being approved that's one of the first things they'll do is give us a very um detailed timeline of when things will be finalized as far as design which is pretty much there and what they plan to do as far as big timelines and procurements and all those things great it would that be made public I know you know just the Washington families are very anxious to see when some of this work

083is going to get started yeah we're doing weekly updates to the Washington Community and so we'll continue to have that type of information front and center with program planning this is breaking news however right uh pending your vote this evening this would be a really to your point as well as this is really a pivotal moment in the project so pending your vote thank you as a Washington alumnus myself I would just like to have a clarification a point of clarification so the Washington Elementary layout has a north and south playground one is green and yellow themed and the other is purple and blue are both of them being reconstructed is it just one I would like some clarification with that it is it is both sides okay it's north and south go ahead in

084the middle kind of yeah and like the field area there yeah well it's a Gasol field kind of behind the school that wraps into the South area yeah and then the North Area with the basketball it's like the weird parking lot yeah yeah okay guys thank you yeah two questions yes for those of you not familiar with Washington it is nestled in a really interesting spot between two streets and a kind of a roundabout in the midst of it um so I'm really fascinated to see and and I know that the the student like my my assumptions the students and families will be involved in giving feedback on on and so on but it is they're going to have to get creative because it is a unique layout it is not simply Roosevelt's a little

085bit more straightforward with a part of a half a block uh and so there's a lot of interesting creative opportunities there but your questions well taken like there's a lot of opportunities to just little hiding spots back there foreign thank you I was going to follow up on your question too because um you know sometimes when we bring these documents forward having a drawing really does help put it in perspective and and then also to ask about the Greater Community feedback so you know they're obviously some Neighbors in the area that will be interested in seeing this and other members of the community who have expertise to look at the the type of equipment being designed and the and the access for the design so I'm not sure how we will go forward with extending

086listening sessions or um you know review sessions to the Greater Community oh even you know outside of the Washington families like actual School families I can see what we can do about the outside communication but to the Washington Community has been very tight over the last six months or so but um and the project was approved by the board back last March which included really the scope and I believe the drawings and things were part of that discussion and approval it was just getting to this point to be able to have instruction manager in place to send the project forward in the proper way right so that's what I would ask is just in the future can we link that information and if there are any changes to that um it just it's just so

087much time passes and then people engage at different times so we want to do our best to keep everyone informed and this is an exciting thing I mean playgrounds used to be very hard to come by in our district like and so we're actually replacing them on a more frequent basis which is wonderful because you know that's what we need to be doing um so that's my request if you would consider it thanks just reminded yeah any Community comment on this item uh we have two hands raised online now Julie Alexander you have the microphone please state your name and address okay my name is Julie Alexander I'm at 7224 West State Street Unit 1A in Wauwatosa uh I just want to say that um I know that we talked about this all last March

088um but I'm a little concerned about seeing the final plans and accessibility issues here so um I would it would be nice to take a look at that a little bit um and I know that the school district uh said that they'd be working with our committee and I haven't seen that yet so I that that was just my comment thank you so much thank you okay next is uh bjermans you have the microphone please state your name and address thank you this is bjerman's address 2749 North 75th Street and a member of the commission for persons with disabilities and I thank uh board member muellfeld for mentioning the fact that there should be some Community involvement but especially for our commission so I'm also agreeing with the chair Julie uh that we have an

089opportunity to look at the plans uh and offer input and suggestions um it's something we are also studying for the parks area uh and it would be great to have consistency throughout the city of Wauwatosa and all the school grounds that we are learning from each other and working together to make sure that all facilities for children and children of all ages are consistent and accommodate everyone thank you very much thank you both I think really important comments those are things that have really been a priority for the district and all of our Renovations uh reminded me of our earlier comment too about the Ability Center uh the work of Damian Buckman in that group are doing some really phenomenal forward-thinking stuff and would be a great resource to engage with as well I think

090we're ready to call the roll Miss milfield yes Miss Fraley yes Mr Meyer yes Dr Joseph anger yes Dr Hoyt yes Mr Phillips yes Mrs Miss Willis yes and that item passes next up is a presentation action to report approve the creation of finance and resource standing board committee Liam it is recommended that the school board approved the creation of a standing finance and resource committee and ISO move second thank you that was quick um Mr Brightman Mr Phillips sure I'm sharing from overview yeah [Music] Mike's showing off because awesome so uh thanks uh thanks for allowing uh us to come back a second time uh your comments and suggestions a couple weeks ago were really impactful and I did my best to incorporate those into the slide but if you see an opportunity of

091something that I may have missed please uh please let me know but when I go back through and do the what why and how of a finance and resource committee um and and then for the folks that were not able to attend a couple weeks ago and then uh turn it over to you all for for any feedback so on the on the so on the why right so when you look at the five uh core functions of school boards you'll see that a finance and resource committee really touches a couple of them um profoundly and I've circled those under relationships whether that's relationships with our vendors um relationships with um you know contractors that we use relationships with uh different parts of the school district whether that's um you know Tech or whether that's

092Recreation Department things like that and then the other part of the core functions that it touches is accountability so provides a structure and a framework a reporting structure the ability for a smaller group a more Nimble group to be able to take a look at things before they come to the board to be able to send things back that need work before they come to the board and really you'll see in the appendix or the last slide a schedule of uh via for this committee to review key key things as we work on them and and our resources on this on the next slide here you talk look at um these uh core these these um legal powers and duties of the school board there are eight of them here and this this committee will

093really be focused on a couple of things one is provide that oversight for administration uh by establishing that framework of accountability so that reporting structure and then we spend so much time building a strategic plan and item number six is is around operations and financing so it's it's for us to be able to allocate resources that support the Strategic plan if we're haphazard about that then we're not going to really bring to fruition um the goals and priorities that we set out in that strategic plan so this is really aligned to um you know really align our our priorities our goals and our resources into one into one straightforward ahead initiative so what what it is it's a standing committee uh some of the feedback that we had from a couple weeks ago was that

094the board Treasurer would be a person assigned to the committee and one or more voting School members along with the Chief Financial Officer as an ex-officio member so members of the finance and resource committee will be appointed by the board president for a term of one year on the on the committee of course uh superintendent and staff and and uh will be encouraged to attend when those uh areas that come up for discussion are bringing someone we'll make sure and being as inclusive as possible when uh when we're talking about areas inside of the inside of the district that we make sure and have the directors key staff stakeholders as well being in attendance um being more productive about that another thing that was brought up last time which is a really good cause the

095involvement of city government City committee members community members like is very much encouraged like how can we like with the you know the Damian thing the the Ability Center a perfect example of how we can reach out um to our community at large to create synergies between us and city government around uh around how we deploy our resources because we share a lot of resources so um I think that was a really good catch and a really good recommendation that was brought up last time you know the goal is to meet monthly review resources budget buildings grounds and Technology you know some of our major spending categories uh will be uh will be covered in this in this committee and with every um you know uh we'll try to be as transparent as possible we'll

096keep minutes I'll be published all meetings will be made public um they'll be a part of the district website so that anybody that's interested can easily find out when these meetings are um and and can participate we encourage that participation so the more diversity of thought the more diversity of attendance the better product we're going to have so how so and so how we're going to uh go about this is there's only three pillars with which uh the financial resource committee will operate those three pillars are the budget in finance the numbers on the paper so um which also include our external relationships our internal procedures making sure we're being efficient we're being safe in our internal procedures our budget alignment and budget planning which uh Mr Brightman talked about a little bit earlier tonight

097we're being proactive about that buildings and grounds so another resource another major resource that we have as a district is our buildings and grounds are they accessible um are there are Community uh you know members using them for for different things are we are we making it easy for folks to use our buildings and grounds you know where do we have opportunities to uh you know to increase accessibility for for all you know how do we get into a better Rhythm around our facility planning and our long-range planning around you know some of those hard resources that we have at the district and and then the third pillars around our technology you know how are we investing in technology what's what's upcoming for technology how we be proactive about that again accessibility right does everyone

098have the technology that they need to do their best work you know how about our own real online resources our district website um things like that and our technology resource planning again trying to be transparent and proactive um about that third pillar of the finance and resource committee and then lastly it's pretty small but you'll see if you want to zoom in you'll see uh the monthly uh proposal of monthly items that will be coming to uh before um this committee be reviewed you can see like there's a finance committee F and then board where board we'll get that same information but you'll see that the committee will have an opportunity to to weigh in you know to apply on that stuff to you know to to take a look at it before it comes

099to the board and also I'll I'll be if I'm put in there I'll be uh bringing that that committee work back to the board on a regular basis so that's kind of where where we where we are and hopefully where we're going so thank you any questions or comments Mr Martin thank you so this is an ask it's not something I need to see tonight for the vote um we had discussions a dollar amount of spending requiring board and the policy yeah and I look at that and I say well not all six figure dollar amounts are the same right that we could have something that's a purchase a first time purchase where the board has never reviewed the vendors where the board has never seen got you know something like that or a one-time

100purchase and I would think not necessarily it with it come to well everything comes to the full board eventually but the idea that that there be this dollar threshold for board approval I think misses some Nuance about can we have dollar thresholds that reflects the type of purchase it is you know if we're if we buy Chromebooks so many a year well we know we buy Chromebooks and here's the it's a big dollar amount well if the finance committee looked at it I don't know that you know it could be on the consent agenda for the board and where in the past some board members appropriately so would say well anything of a particular dollar amount shouldn't be on the consent agenda I think rather than come to the board with a one dollar amount

101fits all if if if somehow the dollar amounts reflect the nature of the purchase and the and the work done by the finance committee for review am I making sense with what I'm saying here that it's just not a one dollar a month that's all and versus renew yeah yeah right right um yeah you know Capital versus exp you know there's I think you could do a lot in that area too um help our oversight like sort of uh targeting surgically what the board brings up for discussion without having like one broad Fell Swoop boom this dollar amount yes this other dollar amount no so I'd ask that's an ask that that'd be one of the things you you consider as as a as a committee it'll be a that'll be a joint exercise with

102Fosse committee um so because right since it's governed by policy will act as a subject matter expert again it comes time to to go at that policy then I think that will be where the two committees may come together to help resolve that um what you're talking about Mr right that's another conversation I'm a little a lot actually uncomfortable with sort of the policy committee becoming the everything committee and it becomes the surrogate school board so um I understand what you're saying but by the same token you know yes it would ultimately be policy and the policy committee a sophistication would say well is this something that the finance committee recommends right therefore we don't have to go deep into it as a policy committee along the same lines is the spending limits that context

103matters as far as the depth and the Forum where we consider things okay thank you Mr thank you thank you Mr Phillips because I was a zoom board member last meeting so I oh that's right yeah um and I like I like the structure I have a couple of questions organizationally how will the committee work how will the committee Define the work and publish agendas on a regular basis early enough dates and agenda items early enough so that people know to come when they're interested and they they can prepare if needed and and that would be another question of preparedness for committee members um you know the responsibilities of the administration basically the how to work together that will be defined at one of your first couple meetings with that yeah I think that's fair

104to that's a fair assumption well the idea at least the way I've been thinking about it was it would be a standing monthly committee understanding date right so there won't be anything that'll be in flux from from month to month um if that's if that works with the workload that we have and then that uh I think if you if you go to the last page you'll see the actual work that's mapped out for each month a year in advance so anybody that wants so anybody that wants to be involved in that month's work um can see far in advance and then we'll also be publishing on board docs um as detailed as we can be um as far in advance as we can well I I agree with that I think that's great it's

105just when the you know that sometimes the meetings might generate items action items or other investigative items or something like that so a tracking of maybe those items that come up that may not be on the monthly schedule we'll have minutes um that we'll be keeping and that will be public um as well that we can send out to the board or I can even report back to the board on but that's where those items you'll be able to see those items in Flight as we as they come up yeah I mean I can see this high visibility and it really um is a nice it really is a nice layout with um you know everything that we're doing for resources and how we're funding them um I also agree with Mr Meyer's comment on

106the thresholds of spending and categories of of spending and the why behind you are bringing forward something and how um and then a question for the board uh president will this come uh the nominations uh come before the board for approval as is our custom after um the board President appoints will it come to the school board agenda so we can vote on it yeah um and I think think about starting a new thing too we'll also give everyone a high five who agrees to do the extra work for being on a committee okay so or board consent uh as well yeah just because we want to make sure that we're all in agreement on who's on the committee last time if you think if you recall from the policy committee uh when I made

107appointments this year um that occurred as well uh it is not within our bylaws that it needs to uh but I'm gonna I certainly during my time as president I will continue to do that I appreciate it I think it really shows transparency and honestly you know the administration could say well really you're going to put that board member on there yeah just kidding the kidding totally kidding and what what I what I would say and I'll jump on this because I think you're of the question timing of your question uh we if this is approved tonight we will have three standing board committees um and what I would like to do is kind of make sure that we've got board representation on each of them ideally if the board president wasn't sitting on one

108of them us as the board president has come up with other administrative responsibilities that would be beneficial I would say uh for anyone who's sat in the seat um I'd appreciate that so and it would also allow me to kind of attend a variety of different meetings to kind of pop in observe um and be involved be aware of what what's happening across all three of them so what I'm going to do is uh I've got a email that'll be coming out later this week um of kind of a variety of different governance topics and areas and um kind of the next couple months of areas for professional development for the board aboard self-eval and another one is kind of who would like to do who would like to be sitting on what committees and

109so we might have a mid-year Shuffle um in the in one case and I'll be looking for folks who would be interested in serving on this committee as well um thank you for those in the community uh if this community if this committee and we haven't voted yet is approved we would have a legislative advocacy committee a policy committee and then a finance and operations committee so those would be the three standing board committees here in mullitos Mr Meyer well I want to build on Mrs buenfeld's comment and I hope I'm not misunderstanding your comment and to complement the chair the the idea of the appointment of committee members just so the community understands this board has had statements from two law firms saying that it is legal for the president to make a secret

110appointment to a committee now you can't do anything with that because you have to have a public meeting but that's why it's so important to me what Dr Jessica Banker said that he's gonna how he plans to operate that and Mrs mufaul's request that it come to the board I think it's a a bridge building and collaboration thing to you know just because you can doesn't mean it's a good idea I mean you know that's kind of one of those adages in life um and then I want to thank Mr Phillips that um and coming in here I was a no vote tonight and but of course I I listened to what's presented and this articular concerns I had with a finance committee right now with this school board were directly answered try Mr Phillips

111presentation and I understand there were slides but it said the same thing but to hear somebody commit to things matters so I thank Mr Phillips and I I will support this motion um I think this is a good idea that we have this committee thank you Dr hoyke Mr Meyer I wanted to ask you a question um when you spoke previously you you said you and some reservations or concerns I'm not sure exactly what wording you used about the policy committee becoming kind of like a de facto School Board I just want to understand what you mean by that for the sake of kind of open communication oh I didn't mean anything negative about the people on the committee or how they're operating but it seemed like so many things it comes up well the

112policy committee will do it well the policy committee will do it it's like how are they going to do all that stuff and so I just thought not to make it a reflection on anybody but as a matter of our Paradigm for operating it's like are we really going to expect these two people to do everything and and I know we don't expect that but I I don't know how I I maybe I'm hearing it in a way that it's not actually being said you know I'm not picking it up the way people are laying it down but it just seems like so many things well the policy committee will do it like well okay um it seems to be too much just sent to a couple people I don't care who they are and

113shouldn't the board take up some of those things so I'm liking the notion that you established the policy committee established some paradigms for okay sure you're going to send this stuff to us and everything ultimately becomes policy you know like it becomes a Ways and Means Committee or something so you you touch everything but there's no way anybody can be expert on everything like that and and it wouldn't be fair if you could be expert to expect that you would be expert on everything and everybody else could just come in and vote Yes and you all did all the work you know so that's that's what I'm saying I wasn't meeting it to be anything negative I just thought it's like this just is just too much from the way it sounds and and the

114way I'm hearing to my ears which why I talk here is so that we you know well this is I'm here how I'm hearing it are you meeting it that way and I'm hearing you don't really mean it that way um so you know just because you know we have to pay for everything when we write a check that doesn't mean that people who write the checks the people who print the checks aren't going to decide everything but that you you know what is it that you're really supposed to do or is there something that in the province of the policy committee that is uniquely for the policy committee you know like um oh election of board officers or I mean that was a long discussion a few years ago about how we operate with

115the ballots and things like that so yeah that was so I appreciate that clarification um do you know Mr President when we are going to when the policy committee will be reporting kind of our our initial plan so we can certainly agenda that for our next meeting in November uh what we will need to be adding in is kind of ongoing updates from each of the three different committees on a monthly basis okay uh and it could be monthly it could be quarterly and I'll ask each of the committee chairs to sure about what they think is most appropriate okay because I think that would be helpful Mr Meyer if we could kind of help explain to the rest of the board sort of the the way we're planning to sort of tackle policy because

116it is it's too much right to do all in the next six months I mean you know I think tonight brought forward a good example well is the policy committee really going to go as deeply into the financial processes as the finance committee well how right why would you double up the work even why have a finance committee then so there would be things where you'd say Okay finance committee just like with the purchasing levels with a dollar a month well that's their role to really dig into that it comes to the policy committee it's like okay did finance committee like it is there anything compelling here why we should not like it versus yeah we have to draft you two on the policy committee you have to draft these these work this word Smith

117here you have to draft the words yourself yeah absolutely that's that's kind of an example you know and I think we'll be tapping into lots of administrative assistants as well for you know budgeting-ish budgeting policy human resources policy so yeah definitely We'll be asking for lots of help along the way yeah by the same token you've heard me say my belief things where the two of you board member Willis and board member Quake have particular expertise that the rest of the board does not have I would think that would be something the board would be grateful to have you all dig in and you actually write the words yourself about the various things and that might be a situational thing we happen to have the expertise there now so we wouldn't bring it necessarily at

118an authoring level to the full board because our two board experts are on the committee so just what makes sense yeah I'm gonna uh see if I can bring it back to a finance committee uh in in a quick clarification so Ian uh the the board president by current policy has the purview to be able to appoint anybody on the board um what generally I I uh have done thus far during my term is I've asked several people would you be willing to serve maybe they did maybe they didn't um and then those who are willing to serve I then appointed and brought back to the board I can't speak to what's happened over the 20 plus years um 20 30 years back but kind of that's the norm I presume that the policy committee

119will as they look at the bylaws kind of take a look at that and kind of codify uh something that's maybe more clarifying um so a big takeaway for the board is you should be thinking about which committee you would like to serve on because I will be asking soon um any other board comment on the finance committee this freely this is going out to the student school board members as well you should be thinking about which committees sound interesting to you um and not that as a formal part of your you know responsibility but I think it's uh an interesting window into something in more depth um that you know depending on what your interest is you may have more interested in joining the finance committee where that's not where I would want to

120spend my time per se but everybody has their things so think about you know if you're interested in advocacy you might want to come sit in on the next Lac meeting or if you're interested in policy go sit down on the next meeting with them so that's an opportunity for you cool anything else yeah okay last comment so a term from the political Pub Science World is lame duck a lame duck legislator and a lame duck legislator will be for example after this November congressional election um Congress meeting after the election before the end of the term of office is a lame duck and they do things and and they won't be accountable later because they might not have been elected I've always been like really uncomfortable with the outgoing board president making appointments as

121as lame duck president just before you know the new board is seated in May and sometimes statutorily we have to you know there's a couple of things that it expires like in April and the board president has to do that and I don't know whether the policy committee wants to look at this or the finance committee about when I mean I know you're going to populate this committee now with these appointments but ongoing does this board want appointments made by the outgoing president in the last month of the presidency or try to hold them for the incoming president and you know there's arguments both ways but I just ask that we ask the question and answer it explicitly eventually down the road that's something I probably asked the treasury Treasurer to take a look at

122still one threat to the policy committee um any Community comment on this item I'll be honest I kind of thought this was the one everybody was here for tonight no okay um any Jamie anything online no there are no hands raised okay it's called the wrong Miss milfield yes Fraley yes Mr Meyer yes Dr Joseph anger yes Dr Hoyt yes Mr Phillips yes Miss Willis yes and that item passes congratulations uh and thank you to Mr Phillips and Mr Brightman um I know you've been conceptually thinking about this for a while uh I'm excited um Mr Phillips I'll be asking for you to serve on this committee and I'll be appointing you so thanks in advance and I'll be looking for others to join him as well um next item up is our monthly financial

123report [Music] lost track of where we are our monthly financial report yes on board docs we have the September uh financial report out for you to review there were no material variances to reports nothing unusual this is the first month with a school year payroll on it is clear expenditures so see that represented as part of the reports um the last page shows all of our expenditures over that twenty thousand dollar Mark that you get on every report to improve you again nothing atypical there the two projects at the bottom one for two hundred thousand one for just under a million are referendum projects that were but the board is part of the process so again fairly routine month again early in the school year so a lot more reporters will move through here any

124more commentary question I prefer my financial reports boring um thank you glad to hear everything is looking as it should any Community comment on this item Jamie anything online no hands raised thank you um we are at the end of our agenda for the evening uh the last item is public comment and a non-agenda items for this evening um any I was just gonna say I think it was Miss jellic and spoken in the beginning if you like to thank you again it's Kelly industry I have three students in the district um at Roosevelt Elementary uh one of them is a special news child um so my comment is in in reference to the HR report that was presented earlier I might have read the reports um I I am concerned about the sections stating

125that wages would not be raised for the special ed teachers and assistants until next school year um especially given the 26th open ftes for special ed assistance for assistance excuse me um and the challenge the challenges that were stated earlier in filling those positions um my son's IEP states that he needs one-on-one assistance throughout the school day um he gets one on two assistants because of the short-handed Staffing at their present time this does put strain on the assistant um and it also means that there's less Focus time for both my son and his peer um we also learned just recently that his special ed teacher is resigning and moving to another school district putting further strain on the staff that's already strained and meaning you know less less services that are provided to my

126son and to um to his peers and there's holding the wage and and um you know mounting The Challenge and filling these open positions does mean that disadvantaged students remain at an even further disadvantage um and that those strange employees remain even more strained um I would I kindly like to ask that the board would rethink um and reevaluate raising the wages sooner than next school year um or at least something in the short term which I think was asked to vote earlier to make sure that these positions are filled we think the world of the assistant that is working with my son and the staff that work with him throughout the day and really want to make sure that these people are given you know everything that they need to to be successful and

127to help um again the most disadvantaged students in our district um so that's all I have thank you so much for hearing my comment hey good evening my name is Bill Brewer I live in the Slinger School District um I want to first of all say thank you for allowing members outside of your school district to make public comment it's really appreciated so um earlier this is Neil Feld is that I said that right you made a comment about how a picture really provides additional or and you know needed perspective we were talking about the playgrounds and that sort of thing I couldn't agree more um I came tonight because I'm really troubled and I'm troubled primarily at least at the start by an illustration an illustration from your human growth and development curriculum for

128five-year-olds to see explicit female genitalia and even with an X at the most critical place a local news reporter tonight said I can't even show that to the public when I see an illustration like that that provides me with perspective I'm gonna ask each of you and the parents in this community and the students to really search yourself for this what's the purpose of that illustration is it to teach accurate biology to five and six-year-olds or is it something else I don't think you need that kind of an illustration to teach accurate biology it's not going to be used for that any more than teaching White Privilege in that myth helps you to teach accurate history about our nation that's a folly the purpose behind that illustration is to desensitize kids to what should be

129taught at later ages at a more appropriate time and as we continue to build on that for a five and six year old I have to ask myself what's next do I need to see what else is next to know what the goals are by the time that child becomes a graduate of that same school district and all that time some of the most formative years we've desensitized these kids to accept as now normal what is not normal and that is exposure to this stuff it also points me to the abdication unfortunately that so many parents in our nation have had giving up their god-given rights and authorities as parents to teach these kinds of things to their kids in the privacy of their own homes it's not an advocate in 30 seconds thank you

130very much it's not an advocation to hide it at all it's a parent's responsibility to teach those things it's the school district's responsibility if you're given that privilege to conduct technical education for these kids and not social education not desensitive sexualization desensitizing and those sorts of things so I'm asking you to search your souls don't worry about policies search your hearts ask yourself am I doing the right time thank you thank you very much I appreciate it hello school board members my name is Amy white and I live at 68th and Blanchard Street near the village thank you for allowing additional comments at the end of the meeting tonight I was tired as we all are but you do this all the time so I thought that I could hop off a zoom and drive

131here and provide some public comment as I've shared before I was on the external committee to reevaluate the htd curriculum thank you for approving it the process was long and all parents were emailed the opportunity to participate last November almost a full year ago now a reminder for some fan for some that families can opt out of any individual lesson or all lessons this has always been the case for any parents who have been in this district for at least a year they know that a handout for parents to review and sign regarding the opt-out option and information is sent by email weeks prior to the start of hcd with multiple email reminders this has happened every year for my two kids who are now in 8th and 10th grade um the curriculum update was

132sorely needed it was outdated and I think that the outcome is a good one this is a public school district that bases its decisions on hard-working committees and experts and parents and teachers and doctors and social workers and Disability Rights activists and a pastor and that's not a comprehensive list I know the content of this curriculum and I support it I'd rather have one of our amazing Wauwatosa teachers who choose to teach this curriculum present this fact based scientifically sound information then leave it up to chance that the information they're exposed to online through social media or Discord servers which we all know middle schoolers are on that that might be okay I trust the teachers more I am most upset frustrated and sad however that extremist groups or even people external to Wauwatosa School

133District are targeting our school board meetings and I support you as a board if you decide to put more stringent guidelines for public attendance and conversation in place such as requiring a what we chose the address via driver's license or an electric bill or tax bill just like we do as parents when we need to re-enroll our kids every year in the district to be able to enter this room and speak and that's extra work someone at the door who has to check this but um that some of the extremist group tonight heckled and hassled the local crowd members prior to the meeting it was not good and made an older elementary school kid cry it was awful and scary and I urge you to consider ways to limit the involvement of these harassing extremist

134groups that are external to our district and our city thank you thank you Andrew is that outside I wasn't there to speak about excuse me can you share your address oh going on I think did you say more camera no on Milwaukee no let's see oh somebody thank you for giving me the time I was gonna speak but I wanted to counter what was I just said uh at the leftover option is not available for everything in the external internal a curriculum development committees they take various topics pink and uh yellow which were available for inter or they call them a universal which make it them topics that can be brought up mainly and I think this papers say social studies in English so there aren't outdoor features on that um uh there's also I

135want to bring up and this will be a more to Mr Meyer uh the definition that the curriculum I used was or for equity I don't know if you've heard before because I didn't ask your name on the uh slideshows the constant Act of everyone engaging in purposeful educational social justice leadership to disrupt acts of Injustice that the dismantle systems of Oppression marginalization and produce disparities and now from watching it other videos I can tell your politics agree with that part but as a lawyer I want to point you that to uh too many things the constant of everyone so this is the a totalizing a critique or it's a totalizing mission into alignment on a political view in the entire School District well the state PPI well the state a DPI I talked about

136a diverse a Viewpoint a base in schools and if you've ever heard the terminology social justice leadership before so it's just leadership is the practice of keeping social justice as a main focus discrimination based on a number of identity groups and therefore the search a mission is to cue social justice at the center of everything just a moment I want to make sure I would ask that you not address any specific School Board member that you address the board or myself as chair okay I'm sorry thank you okay so social justice leadership means that a centering social justice for everything on everything and your District mission is to eliminate inequity that means bringing everyone on board politically thank you seeing no other public comment in the room Jamie anything online we have three hands raised

137BJ elements you have the microphone please state your name and address thank you very much I am BJ or amounts2749 North 75th Street and member of the commission for persons with disabilities I'm very glad to hear how inclusive the school board is being regarding asking for a community input especially in mentioning the abilities group for things such as the new playgrounds I would ask that uh in addition or possibly even before considering outside groups that you uh make it a point to reach out to the internal groups who focus on some of these areas such as the commission for persons with disabilities um I highly respect the work that the abilities group is doing one point I would like people to remember is that they focus on Mobility issues only and that is admirable that

138is a huge area and they're accomplishing wonderful things however they are not considering other disabilities which our commission does keep in mind things such as uh people with vision disabilities even to the point of full blindness there are surfaces for example that make it difficult for them to transverse with their canes and this includes playgrounds so I would ask that you please keep us in mind when these things are coming up and especially with the newly approved finance and resources committee especially since they are not only dealing with facilities and to that end I would make a point of saying that some of the facilities are also used as polling places and we need to keep some of those needs in mind when we're talking um about it for people with disabilities as well as

139technology and technology has come a long way but in some cases people out on the internet are not doing as well as they might for helping with screen readers that are required by people with vision loss just as one example so please keep our commission in mind going forward and thank you very much for all that you do and the careful thought that you put into everything that that you that you do do and decide thank you okay next is Scott shelner you have the microphone please state your name and address hi there uh Scott Charlotte 815 Glenview Avenue Apartment 4 um so first off the board members I don't know how you guys do it dealing with all this BS from all these people that aren't even from Wauwatosa some of them were respectful

140tonight others were batshit crazy excuse me sorry um but this is ridiculous for me to sit here and and watch these online and I should have drove over there like some of the other people but um I want to applaud you for the you know good choices that you've been making and moving the curriculum curriculum forward uh some of the stuff talks about tonight I mean there's infinite I mean the whole grooming narrative and I don't know how you know some of these people show up and just create so much tension and so much there's so much hate there's so much hate that was there tonight um and I just don't understand the attacks and why people keep targeting Wauwatosa um and I guess don't let the the loud few you know uh upsets you

141guys because again uh you do this all the time I don't know how you do it I guess I'll have to run for school board to to see what it's all about apparently there's uh some excitement to it but um I would say to anyone that is there tonight or listening or to do some of their own research online especially for some of these people that spoke tonight that are just so far out there um I really encourage people to actually look at the human growth development I'm looking at it right now and I can't find any of these uh horrific things that people keep talking about because I believe they're just hearing it secondhand and not doing research for themselves and that's unfortunate that again our school board has to listen to this month

142after month after months of people who share something on social media they read a headline and magically they're an expert I mean all these people are experts um so again thank you for all that you do and I'm sorry again for the few hateful people that spoke tonight thank you okay next next is uh did folk palik you have the microphone oops sorry um Deb just disappeared oh she's raised the hand again Dev folk palock you have the microphone please state your name and address all right thanks Jamie I pulled my hand down too quick um hi again Deb Paul palek um first of all I really liked what Mr Phillips laid out about the finance and resource committee and how to notify the um community and just if if we could have some idea

143of how we can see minutes from legislative advocacy and the policy committee thanks Miss Fraley I know you said you were going to work on getting those and um I know one of my fellow PTA Council officers is on and we'd love to be able to share that at our council meeting next week what's happening to see how we can support some of these things too and same with policy committee if you have minutes if those can somehow be figured out how to share out with the community I liked what Mr Phillips outlined with how you know his committee he would um start to share those things and I wanted to talk about I'm really happy to see that we're on this review cycle now or getting on a review cycle of curriculum and I

144saw Sciences up uh first and I I really really want to make sure that when we're looking at any curriculum whether it's science social studies math what have you that we are looking at the materials the district has for children who take the alternate alternate curriculum um my only issue that I've brought up with the human growth and development was the fact that there was no evidence that this was looked at that the materials from 1988 seem to have been okay and we did not look at other curriculum that is more current and out there so when things come forward to the board or Administration is looking at you know don't even wait until that point where several members of the community have to bring forward what about us um let's make sure that us

145includes all of us not 98 of kids not 99 of kids but all of children when we look at the curriculum and lastly um this month is National disability employment awareness month if you've been on the board or in an Administration you've heard me talk about this um um and this year's theme the national theme is disability part of the equity equation and I would love to encourage our administrators to look at the website there's a lot of good information for schools how schools can celebrate persons with disabilities and see people with disabilities as future members of the employment sector so um or even getting down to inhuman resources who are we are are we looking to diversify our applicant pool by reaching out and working with organizations to find Qualified applicants with disabilities do

146we know who those organizations are to reach out to um if not you know once again this committee you have of disability gets going yeah thank you foreign Julie Alexander you have the microphone please state your name address I okay I don't have the microphone uh do you hear me yeah okay okay uh uh first off I just really want to say that um I have really been enjoying lately the discussions that all of the board has been uh going through I really appreciate uh everyone being a participant and being on the board here um and uh I just really appreciate each of you so I just want you to know that um I on the other hand I also want to let you know that I'm really happy that you're looking at the finance

147committee as as well as approving the other committee because I think that that will help improve uh the board in terms of uh helping them really be able to uh provide the services that they need to and keep on track with finance and benefits for the district uh I know that uh basically um I'm also thinking about the mother uh that talked talked about the need for um for increased pay for special ed special ed assistance Etc here and I really uh would like you to possibly think about that because I know this year we're we're having more and more people with special needs that are in the district uh and it's it's a daunting it's a daunting issue and I know that the budget is tight but just to think about that and sort

148of see if there's a way of doing something this year would be helpful uh and uh also um I this is disability awareness empowerment month um and uh really looking at people with disabilities as being part of the equity equation here uh for the administration on on on down would be great uh 76 of people with disabilities aren't not employed so it's a big issue and we've as as the commission that I work for for autosa you know we're really looking at that as a that is an issue as well but it's just I mean the school has a part in this too so I'm just trying to see if there's a way of seeing if we can make a little bit of a dent of some sort so uh thank you so much for

149listening to my comments and I hope every one of you have a nice evening thank you Jamie I see you've got one more person online then I'll come back and see if there's anybody I'm gonna request if anybody's got something awesome that they want to share with the community of things going on uh lots of cool things happening uh at East and West in the middle schools lots of music and theater and Athletics so if anybody wants to we'll swing back anybody in the room if you've gonna brag about anything cool happening uh that's what we'll end up for the evening so Jamie our last online person uh and if you want to share whoever your last online person is something you want to start out by sharing something great about postal schools you can

150start out that way too okay you have the microphone please state your name and address all right hello my name is Megan Fox and I'll tell you why I'm not going to give you my address for one I just adjusted your Wisconsin rules of open meetings act it's a law and the law in Wisconsin is uh that the public has a right to participate in your meetings and nowhere in it does it say that anyone has to dox themselves online in order to participate in a public meeting I want you to know that school boards like yourselves have been sued successfully before in the past for doing this it's considered an intimidation technique now you can sigh and put your face in your hands but you need to listen to me when I tell you

151that you can be sued for what you're doing you are violating people's rights and you're do in what you did today by cutting off public comment in the beginning of the meeting when you had a full house of people who wanted to speak to you and you made them wait two hours and most of them had to go home because they had to work jobs tomorrow or because they had to get kids somewhere or because they had to go home and get dinner what you did is violating the Public's First Amendment rights to address their public bodies for grievances it is a violation of the Constitution and you should each be ashamed Sharon you should be ashamed of yourself Leanne you should be ashamed of yourself Michael you should be ashamed of yourself and you

152too Jenny and you too Jessica and let me tell you something else when people use and they come in and they say I want to talk to you about I want to talk to you about a specific person on the board you are not allowed to tell them that their First Amendment right to speak is curtailed in some way because they want to use a name that is illegal what you are doing is against the the Wisconsin open meetings act now listen I have three minutes and I know that my time is not up you are not to interrupt me while I am speaking this is public comment time and I'm a member of the public you can sit there and be as uncomfortable as you want but I have this three minutes so listen

153to me Michael when you are talking to people when they come here to see you you are put into this position by the way by the people of this town they are your first priorities where are you they are your first priority they are the people you're with you yes thank you why would you why okay sorry I couldn't hear you over the over there at the point where we started attacking individual board members um we devolved uh if you've already spoken um your time is up on that topic anyone I'm smart um well two times two things first the chair has the right to cut off comment if the comment is not aligned with the Dignity of the body so um just to put that out there so we if if there's something inappropriate

154being said no that's a judgment call that's true but the chair does have authority to do that the chair does not have authority under our rules to cut off a board member we have no time limits so I can just keep talking here once you recognize me but to say whether you support me or not in the community we have an orderly process and the chair is running the meetings and the insurance certain Discretions and that's okay that's probably a good idea um second thing about minutes we learned years ago to keep the full board minutes to legal legally required items because it became unwieldy to recap the conversation in the minutes I think though with respect to the Committees where you're looking for active Community participation to work with you if in your notices

155of the meeting and in your minutes you provide some narrative that uh not to discuss the topic in the minutes but to raise interest in the community when they go what are these what are these committees doing like oh well they talked about this today or they talked about that and and wow I think I'd like to go and watch that meeting or you know there's I think from a committee perspective your objectives in the minutes not legally different but just Paradigm different about what you and with your notices as well to generate you know those people who have a contribution to make to know oh they're going to talk about this particular thing that the legislature is addressing now I know something about that so I'm at that meeting I'm going to come to

156so I think we could generate more Community participants a theory right who knows what actually happens but okay that's all I have to say thank you um one comment I want to make there has been quite a few public comments about the human growth and development many not from Wauwatosa um at this point that decision has been made um agree or not the decisions made were moving forward uh we won't take this up again for another three years um that's per policy we're not reconsidering it we're not it's off the table we're moving forward it's being implemented um at this point if you're a tosa parent and you've got concerns and anxieties I understand um I would say this is a great opportunity to reach out to principals to reach out to the administrative team

157Dr marble uh we want to hear those thoughts and concerns it is really hard as a board member to parse out the real anxieties parents have about any change in the curriculum and they are valid if you have and you should reach out and talk to the school staff and talk through those things um with some of the other comments that we've gotten so feel free to comment away you will have that opportunity at least until a policy may be changed by any three of the policy I don't know if it'll be the policy committee or I'll throw it to Mr Phillips and his colleagues but this is this is over um so the community had a lot of opportunities for feedback there were multiple opportunities uh beginning a year ago this month is when

158I first saw the information shared uh seeking Community participation and those continued through January and it went through that that body it went through an eternal body it went through the curriculum Community which also had several parents and community members on it so if you would like to call and talk with me about it if you would like to leave screaming voicemails about me being a pedophile about it you're welcome to do that you probably won't have much of an impact on my thinking uh if you want to sit down and have coffee and really discuss it I'd be happy to do that I think most of the board members would as colleagues but I would say I'm really interested in what parents and community members in Wawa Tulsa have to say um I respect

159other school districts being able to do whatever you would like and Advocate at your school district please do that democracy is important at this point we're moving forward okay um anybody want to Australia I have two quick things one in response to what Miss Fox palek and Miss uh Alexander shared about disability um awareness months and our Partnerships Mr Phillips raised um a couple weeks ago about how we might write into policy uh preferencing vendors perhaps that build a relationship with the district and so I'm just curious if it's possible for us to maybe consider as a board writing a thank you note to the employers within Wauwatosa who work with our transitions programs or any Employment Program and I'm happy to like take that on I just think it's an opportunity for the board

160to show the Employers in the community who work with art students with special needs that we appreciate that they are um taking that opportunity and the second thing was you asked for something positive and I wanted to call out the custodial staff at toasty East Mr Chuan am I saying his name right chewinsky and Nick Hughes for dealing with a medical situation this week that um process was followed what could have been really bad ended up in a really positive way so I was very grateful for how well they collaborated in a very short period of time so calling out the good news anything else from the board of the community that you want to celebrate any good news students all right um so uh our fall Sports at East are in their postseason now

161and the boys soccer team and the girls volleyball team are both Regional Champions um the girls volleyball team has a game tomorrow and the boys soccer team has a game on Thursday so it'll be awesome to see some people there get a you know a very a lot of support for the guys and the girls and I think we can get deep into this uh run this year across countries going to State too girls there you go yeah someone's daughter perhaps maybe proud parent moment there um if you have oh um at West we just got new MacBooks I I like Mac computers in the art room and so those just got installed today so we've been able to use them fabulous um Tulsa is a place with phenomenal music uh phenomenal Arts um and

162this Saturday as I was Meandering my way past East I saw what I think is the first time was like a kids orchestra music introduction uh from one to three so big thank you to the staff who did that uh if you have not experienced band blastoff um which is a summer school program for kids going I believe in the fifth grade uh who are beginning band uh it is a hoot I have a tuba player in my family and wow that is a loud instrument um so that is really cool and then we are entering theater season um so each of the middle schools are going to do some great Productions uh the secondary schools and then parent-teacher conferences if they have not started already at the elementary I believe Elementary School are in

163the midst of them and then middle school high school are about to start out so uh this is a great opportunity for parents to engage in the schools and make sure that you're doing stuff so a big thank you to all the teachers working so late nights getting all those things in I know we're also doing a lot of extra additional great engagement so a lot of stuff about kind of what's in it where things are at and that was really nice to see so a lot of things moving forward so a big thank you um thanks for everybody who came out tonight and participated in democracy um and doctor means anything closing us out I want to thank and welcome Miss Julia Summers I'm the new executive assistant to the superintendent's office so miss

164Summers has been calling roll it's been nice to not call it me I'm so excited to be here welcome to Wisconsin um we have a motion Twitter so moved may have a second second thank you please call the room Miss milfeld yes Miss Fraley yes Mr Meyer yes Dr Jessica Binger yes Dr Hoyt yes Mr Phillips yes Miss Willis yes have a great night everybody