001good evening everyone i call the august 22nd 2022 school board meeting to order it is 7 p.m we are in conference room c of the fisher administration building at 12121 west north avenue dr means please [Music] mr phillips present is willis here dr joseph anger here we start this evening with public comment on any non-agenda items want to reiterate non-agenda items 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 input and decision making the board requests that individuals limit their comments on each item to three minutes following any comment an individual board member may respond on the issue raised however it
002is not the intent of the public comment portion of the agenda for the board to enter into a debate with a member or members of the community because non-agenda items are not publicly posted in advance no action will be taken on public comment regarding non-agenda items this evening so a quick summary for anyone this evening who may have public comment i'm not sure we'll have any of this tonight or not um that was a little levity for our evening um [Music] my wife said i often have to explain my jokes so i'll do that as best i can tonight um what i would ask is that folks uh come up to the microphone uh whether it's now or different public comment portions uh share your name share share address share your connection to wauwatosa public
003schools if you're a parent of the schools the students in the schools a member of the wauwatosa community um so we have a sense of kind of who is um who's here with us this evening um we do that at each of our um meetings sharing our address and so on and then um you'll have three minutes uh we had a quite a bit of public comments at our last meeting so if folks are giving of themselves and respectful of others if you'd be willing to give those who have not spoken on this topic first opportunity i do not know if we will exhaust public comments tonight i will check in on a couple different times with the board we'll go for 30 minutes on each topic check in with my colleagues to see if
004we want to continue uh we've got folks here we've got folks online we've got folks in the auxiliary space in the building and we'll check in in each of those spaces and provide some opportunity in each room um and then we will determine if we want to kind of continue with public comment if it's uh still fruitful as the board moves forward um at this time is there any kind of methods i'm sorry dr just finger i just wanted to understand where the auxiliary space is in the montessori gym in the monastery and will we have video connection a video feed to them and an audio feed for them there is an audio feed as my understanding yes okay but we don't have video feed to them right now oh okay okay i don't i
005don't see it here coming up on zoom so i understand you're i think they're able to see us but we're not able to see them okay it's so maybe we'll see them as an attendee yeah i mean and there's a lot of people in the hallway so i just wanted them to know that there's another space so i'm not sure if someone from the district can talk with them [Music] so do we have any public comment on any non-agenda items this evening hi everyone deb faulk palik i am a wauwatosa resident and a parent in the district i attended the family engagements seminars for the pupil and family supports that the district hosted i enjoyed it so much that i went twice and i understand that there's going to be a similar one for the
006division of academic performance and i look forward to that one suggestion that i'd like to make and i raise this in this in that meeting as well is that we have some kind of organizational chart for the community to understand what these two divisions are who's in it what the type you know some of these titles are new and many people don't understand what the title is and what they do it would be really helpful um i also the special education department is in the family and pupil services and i i really strongly feel it should be in the academic performance division because i think we miss things when it's not and i'll speak to that later especially in the strategic plan something i noticed that was missing and i feel if we had special
007education in with academic performance it sets a really strong message to families to students to the community that we expect all of our learners to perform and achieve and this isn't just my opinion but if you look back at the 2014 special education audits we were highly criticized about having silos special education you know academic things over here and problems in that and i would like to strongly suggest we look at ensuring that special education is in with academic performance because all of our kids even our children with disabilities need to see that their academics matter as well thank you hello uh joe mclook 772 north 116th street i am a resident i have students that come through the district and myself undergraduate about school district i want to address the issue with some ongoing
008problems related to public participation and clarity when it comes to obedience violations apparently this body held in in-service this past coming this past tuesday regarding the structured plan this meeting was recorded but unlike previous policy this was not posted to the website where other people could actually view what the discussion was ongoing the question is why why was that done why was that not broadcast could it be that the board had been instructed prior to that meeting to put questions and comments forth on an open google stock document for in order to deal participate in that opened in that meeting this itself is more likely than not a violation of wisconsin open meetings laws because it's essentially a walking quora or everyone is participating on one sheet knowing what comments and questions are to make
009the matter is worse apparently a member of this board was prevented from speaking because he was unwilling to participate in that open google's document why again it's unclear but this is simply inappropriate unacceptable most importantly of course though is the fact that members of the public have had not had a chance to understand clearly what took place in that in service as such i think that the strategic planning portion tonight's meeting should be tabled until some other date and a boat taken on at that time after which point in time that has been properly posted so the public can get a clear understanding of what is going on unless of course it is the intention of this body to continue to try and do things in secret so that the public is not clear as
010to what exactly is going on thank you do we have any public comment on non-agenda items in the auxiliary space or online uh there are no hands raised thank you [Music] we now move into the consent agenda are there any items in the consent agenda which board members would like to remove for separate discussion and action seeing none may have a motion to approve the consent agenda move to approve thank you ms mitfield now second second thank you miss willis any board discussion on this item mr meyer uh i wish to um thank miss mary newman for her service in the fisher building care and the superintendent's office and wish her all the best in her new role with the district tom and she will be missed by me especially with respect to helping me
011figure out how to run for office and so thank you ms newman thank you for those comments any community comment on the consent agenda any community comment online or in the auxiliary space there are no hands raised okay dr means please call the role ms willis yes mr phillips yes dr hoygi yes dr jessup anger yes mr meyer yes miss fraley yes ms muenfeld yes okay that motion passes we are now up to academic performance action item approval of the human growth and development curriculum renewal that's really it is recommended that the school board approve the human growth and development curriculum renewal and iso move may i have a second second thank you miss muthal um i believe we have um some additional information being provided yes uh dr marvel and steve are making their
012way to the podium i just i want to go on record if i may board members and community members regardless of your opinion of the curriculum and there's there's clearly opinions of the curriculum i want to thank our staff i this has been a difficult road for them and they've been very professional they've been very diligent and have worked to be very objective around this and they've they've worked hard to try to meet the needs of the school district and to be data-driven so i'm going to ask for a community if everyone in the community can either be there's an auxiliary space downstairs but if community members we've got some staff back here but if community members can be out in the gallery or downstairs in the auxiliary space but not behind the workplace i
013just wanted to thank the staff um i know you've put a lot of hard work into this and it's been difficult at times and regardless of again opinions and i think there's varying opinions around this i just i want to express my deep appreciation people worked around the clock to provide updated data for the board as we looked at the responses from surveys and again these are and i'll conclude with this and maybe i'm stretching for technology's sake these are these are well-meaning educators and and i think sensible people can agree to disagree i think sensible people can have different opinions and that's fine that's what makes our nation our democracy as strong as it is but i just my role as superintendent is to make sure that the staff feels appreciated and safe and
014i want to express my appreciation again for our staff who put their work into this so thank you so we will be having kind of a short presentation on some additional information um we won't be doing a full reset as i understand from what we had uh two weeks ago uh there'd be an opportunity for board uh questions and discussion and then we will go out for at least 30 minutes of public comment and then i'll check in with my board colleagues to see if we want to take any additional and thank you all i would really like to echo the words of dr means um this is you've been tasked with a really important job and you've handled it exceptionally professionally thank you well thank you very much for the opportunity to come back
015before all of you this evening with the proposal for a revised human growth and development curriculum i'm nicole marble chief academic officer i'm joined this evening by miss jessica ebert director of curriculum miss stacy clem our director of special education um we'll be speaking um miss tia mahasi and ms andrea powers who are educators in our district will be speaking and then also i have this evening dr caitlin barry dr michelle pickett and miss maura riordan who are members of the external committee that were part of this work as noted at the last meeting policy 2414 this particular curriculum is to be reviewed every three years in fall of 2021 the district uncovered that it had been 10 years since the last review and initiated the process immediately in october 2021. this is a combination
016of the work that began 10 months ago and at this time i'm going to turn it over to dr barry hello i'm caitlin berry i am a nurse practitioner i'm also the parent of a four-year-old who will be entering the district and of a six-month-old who will eventually enter the district once he can you know walk um i've lived in underwood parkway neighborhood since 2016. i am in short your neighbor and your neighbor as well hello uh i've also been privileged to be one of the many members on the external committee advising the development of the proposed human growth and development curriculum so as a committee we worked very hard to develop our position statement which is seen here um it is together with a community of educators and families students in the wauwatosa school
017district will be empowered to develop healthy relationships to engage in respectful communication and to practice responsible decision-making that is grounded in the importance of self-worth and the dignity of others prepared instructors will provide a grade level appropriate information on sexual health that is current factual consistent and inclusive the development of our statement was the work of several meetings as this statement guided our efforts and indicates to our students and community our priorities i will highlight that our primary concern was to create a curriculum that develops respectful responsible students through providing human growth and development information that is age-appropriate factual and consistent and that while we disagreed and debated many topics as i'm sure the debate has really reflected every committee member acknowledged that we all truly cared about and wanted the best possible education for
018tosa students following the board meeting on august 8th our external team reconvened to review the data and consider points heard from the community the voices both in favor and opposed to the curriculum we valued all perspectives and i want to especially thank the current tosa students were brave enough to share their thoughts at the meeting and via survey as a personal note i don't think i forgot either of the students that spoke um at the meeting on august 8th and i deeply deeply wanted to appreciate appreciate their bravery i don't think that was easy for any of them we recommended a frequently asked questions document be developed to address some of the topics raised by the community and to further illustrate the thought and depth of dialogue we all engaged in that contributed to the
019curriculum we hope this provides additional insight and clarity into our process considerations and decisions this should address questions about our information sources the use of medically accurate names for anatomy special education the opt-out process time spent by students and teachers on human growth and development and professional learning so some of our resources seen here the wisconsin department of public instruction provided state-specific guidance on curriculum development we extensively reviewed wisconsin's laws regarding human growth and development teaching using the law to guide adjustments made to the nationwide sex education standards wisconsin law for example requires discussion of safe haven laws so we ensured these were incorporated into student lessons the american psychological association and the american academy of pediatrics pediatrics also informed our development of the curriculum for example the american academy of pediatrics provided research and
020knowledge that is available to the public that informed our development of curriculum for medical middle and high school students regarding sex a 2020 report by the aap notes that the rates of teen pregnancy in the us are are higher than every developed country that half of all cases of reportable sexually transmitted infections in the us occur in adolescents and young adults rates of stis are increasing among teenagers while rates of condom use in the us are decreasing and one-fifth of all new cases of hiv are occurring in people ages 13 to 24. wisconsin state law as relevant here required that human growth and development programs provide medically accurate information regarding regarding hiv the aap further notes that adolescents who do not receive formal comprehensive sex education are half as likely to practice safe sex putting
021them at risk for these negative outcomes such as sexually transmitted infections comprehensive sexual education on the other hand is associated with higher rates of safe sex and older age at first sexual encounter comprehensive sex education does not hasten the initiation of sexual activity and does not increasing sexual activity or risky behaviors the american psychological association's 2020 statement on the topics of sexuality and gender in schools again available to the public online also informed our review of the national standards and recommended teaching regarding sex and gender the apa provided research demonstrating that children are capable of understanding and expressing their gender identity at a very young age the age of two as dr hoke has pointed out before that children who self-describe as gender diverse and or lgbtq are far more likely than their peers to
022experience a wide range of adverse outcomes including depression anxiety suicidality substance abuse and bullying and i will note that feedback we receive from students both in the survey and in person absolutely corroborates this children who are lgbtq or gender diverse are not for the american psychological association innately more prone to these problems rather they are a result of an unsupportive or discriminatory environment schools are able to implement programs that decrease these four outcomes and keep children safe at school education on these topics does not harm children who are not lgbtq or gender diverse so some of the information that informed our curriculum one of the foundational data sources that the external committee reviewed was the you risk behavior survey while it was mentioned at the first read i want to take some time to pull
023out some of the data findings from the youth risk behavior survey so as we review the results for sexual behaviors on this slide it can be noted that for all intents and purposes students in wauwatosa engaged in sexual behaviors less than the state average however the data show a spike in sexual behavior with more than four partners students in wauwatosa continue to trend above state average when it comes to not using condoms this slide communicates that acts of sexual violence for our students in wauwatosa are in line with the state average and this slide conveys that one-third of our students that identify as female reported experiencing sexual assault in their life before moving on to the next slide i just want to take a moment to outline what the universe behavior survey is as this
024particular slide says the uterus behavior survey is from the center of disease control and prevention the cdc which we've had a lot of interaction with over the last couple of years 2019 was the last time that we have reported data um from the uh have reported data that our students did take the youth behavior survey again in 2021 but we do not have um that data yet available for review so uh the students that took that uh survey in um it was 1588 students at the 9th through 12th grade level and we had a 70 response rate um to that survey so as we go through this data that is the um the body of students that voice is representing the data on this slide communicates information about students in wauwatosa who have reported suicide
025ideations and attempts of wauwatosa students that have reported that they have considered suicide those that have experienced sexual violence are three times more likely to have suicide ideations of wauwatosa students that have reported to have developed a suicide plan students that have experienced sexual violence are three and a half times more likely to have a plan of while we chose the students that have reported to have attempted suicide students that have experienced sexual violence are five and a half more times likely to have made attempts one student demographic group that only gets reported out through the youth risk behavior survey are our students that identify as lgbtqia plus in 2019 13.7 of participants identified as lgbt per the survey question in other words based on the 70 response rate that i mentioned earlier at minimum
02610 of our high school students in wauwatosa in 2019 identified themselves as lgbt at this same moment in time in 2019 at the high school level 10 of students were identified as in need of an individualized education plan or iep this means that our population of students that identify as lgbtqia is proportionate with that of our students in need of special education services as the data on this slide show the 10 of students shown in red but identified as lgbt are more likely to experience significant anxiety prolonged stress engage in self-harm and have higher overall mental health concerns than their straight cisgender peers as a district we talk at length about disproportionality in regards to race disability and socioeconomic status and how to address the opportunity gaps that exist for these marginalized students by reviewing
027this data the external committee recognized a call to action the proposed hdd curriculum is a result of that call to action research also supports that when students are feeling that they don't belong that they disengage and suffer academically as well we don't capture this data from our lgbtqia students but however data trends of other traditionally marginalized groups would support the assumption that here too lies disproportionality our students are sending us a message we as a district have worked tirelessly to support inclusive measures for our students with disabilities students that are black and brown and are students that receive free and reduced lunch the same level of empathy for inclusion for our students that identify as lgbtqia plus or come from families whose members identify as such must be exercise starting in the youngest of ages
028which is what is proposed by the hdd curriculum what what the proposed curriculum aims to do i will now turn it over to highlight some of the other frequently asked questions starting with dr barry the one common theme from sorry so one common theme that we noted in feedback was the concern about children um being taught medically accurate names for their body parts especially those in elementary school there's a belief that this is too young for that or they are too young for this information however research indicates that children are capable of learning this this knowledge not only does not destroy their innocence this knowledge is protective students that are taught including young children the accurate names for their body parts including their genitalia are less likely to be sexually abused are more likely to
029report sexual abuse if it happens have a positive body image and have higher self-esteem the goal of teaching body science is to destigmatize the narrative about bodies and create a space for open and honest conversations i'm going to now invite miss stacy clem our director of special education okay so one of the themes of the frequently asked questions for special education was particular to our students who are on the alternative standards so i just want to be clear the state is very clear about who can and cannot be on the alternative standards and that's students who are at the less than one percentile so that means they have to have a certain percentage rate when it comes to their academic status as well as their adaptive skills so it's less than one percent of our
030students who are receiving um the alternative standards and when we have students on those standards it is very important that we are working collaboratively with our families for all of those decisions um those those students we want to really optimize every moment of time that they are in school with us we have to make sure that we are being clear and concise with them and we are working with them to really identify what are we going to be working on with the students what are the standards that the family really wants to value and what do they want to what are we going to work together with that family to make sure we're instructing those students on so for students that are on the alternative standards it's a very it's a deeply thought out process
031not only between our skilled special education teachers who they know their students they work closely with their students they are working with them every day so you have these strong educators who are working with them you have the general education teachers who know their curriculum but then you also have the related service providers who who know how to make the students um access their education better than anybody i've ever seen now there are times that we have reached out to consultants as well let's say we're working with a student and we don't think that we're making progress in certain areas so i do appreciate the access to the consultant that we were shared with last week just giving additional feedback because we do want to know who are the consultants that we can reference and
032learn from to really make sure that we are reaching all of our students so if we as a family and we as a student aren't able to reach them we will make sure that we are connecting but they'll sell those consultants at that moment in time musical cheers okay all right so another um question that came up quite often was just questions regarding the opt-out option so as part of state statute 118.019 caregivers may opt a child out of human growth and development learning per the proposed hgd curriculum caregivers may add a child out of a selected lesson or the full hdd hgd unit so the visual up on the screen shows kind of what that form would look like and how parents would select those lessons caregivers will receive an email communication at least
033two weeks prior to the beginning of the lessons the message will include a link to the opt-out form teachers will then follow up with the caregiver to share information about what the student would be doing during the time others are having that instruction this might include abandoned orchestra lesson independent work time working in another classroom or release time for religious instruction per wisconsin state statute 118.155 the teacher may also provide the care giver with resources for instruction to take place at home the dialogue between caregiver and teacher will be pyramid paramount in the proposed process hi i'm tim o'han behind you guys i'm here to speak um so the dedication of time to the human growth and development curriculum was a concern from some respondents as well so this the timeline that's on the screen
034aims to show where the school year um where in the school year the lessons are being taught and at what grade level at the elementary level and in seventh and eighth grade human growth and development the lessons are typically covered in may after mandatory state testing for sixth graders all students are required to take adolescent studies as one of their middle school transition courses all high school students must take one semester of health as a graduation requirement and in both adolescent studies and health one of those units is human growth and development and it's noted on this the screen as well that in sixth grade uh human growth development is eight lessons um and in high school health it's 15 lessons so in terms of the amount of time dedicated to human growth and development
035this table aims to show how much overall instructional time in the school year would be dedicated to the hgd curriculum so in comparison students in senior kindergarten spend approximately 30 percent of their instructional time participating in learning related to ela which is reading language arts and writing questions also merged about a professional learning plan to ensure that educators are properly prepared to engage students in the learning in the events that the curriculum is approved it will trigger district administration to enact its plan to work with the curricular resource authors three hours to develop a customizable professional learning plan around our specific curriculum we aim to develop a train the trainer method which is commonly used in schools to execute training on the screen you see an outline of what that training and a professional learning
036plan would entail a few key elements to highlight in this model is that the training will have an annual certification or recertification similar to cpr training a centralized registrar will be developed and maintained of staff certified to teach the curriculum and district trainers will calibrate annually and engage in their own retraining as needed since the curriculum is required by policy to be revisited every three years the district trainers will be formally trained in the train the trainer model every three years unless required by a student's iep no accommodations or modifications will be made to the curriculum educators will be required and will sign off on acknowledging the need to stick to the lesson script additionally educators will be asked to refrain from answering any questions that do not pertain to the lesson at hand and
037refrain from personal stories these are the minimum requirements to be expected so next i will present the data for those that reviewed the agenda ahead of time you saw the full data that the district received as a result of the survey at the time of the posting of the agenda the district could not accurately confirm that all participants of the survey were members of the wauwatosa community in subsequent days the district worked to clean the data what that means is that the emails collected from survey participants were cross-referenced with the emails in the district community in the district's community communication directory called blackboard as well as the district's student information system which is called infinite campus as a result of cross-referencing emails from this from the survey and these two sources at this time we
038are able to present data that we were able to confirm reflect the thoughts of our community i will start by going over the overall results as well as show the data breakdown by caregivers of the current wauwatosa students current students and current staff that participated in the survey this gives a quick breakdown of the percentage of participants we had overall 530 participants that we were able to confirm um affiliation with the district and or the community and we our biggest group of participants were our current caregivers followed by students when we look at by grade level the orange in kindergarten is what represents strongly agree blue represents the strongly disagree green throughout will represent agree yellow throughout will represent neutral and uh red throw will represent disagree so i will um pause briefly at each
039slide so that individuals can take a look so this was a collective of all participants that we were able to confirm affiliation with the district and then just as a reminder to our viewers this evening at sixth seventh eighth and tenth grade that third question of separating students um dropped out because we have typically kept them together overall the participants in the survey that we were able to confirm had affiliation with the district this is how the the results stood this gives a brief overview of the average rating by participant group so on the far left you'll see community members their average rating was 2.6 caregivers of a current wauwatosa student uh their average rating was a 3.8 overall caregivers of a future wauwatosa student uh the average rating there was 2.2 so they currently
040do not have any students in the district caregivers although which was a student and a staff member so a staff member who also has um kids in the district that was an average score 4.6 caregiver of a current and future student in the district average score of 3.6 caregivers of former wauwatosa students it was an average score of 2.3 while which was a staff came in at an average of four and our students uh came in at an average of a 4.6 response i'll go through our current caregivers this is how our current caregivers in the district were disaggregated out overall our caregivers said that they strongly agreed with the proposed curriculum next i will highlight our students this is what our students current students said i'm going to ask folks i totally understand there's
041a desire to kind of show and share perspective but i would ask if folks can refrain uh going forward it'll help us move a little bit more quickly thank you overall our students said that they strongly agreed with what's being proposed [Music] current staff overall our current staff said that 50 said that they strongly agreed i know that's a lot of data to download in a very short amount of time so um thank you for bearing with that as a result of the external team's review of the feedback received both in meeting and then survey we charged the internal committee with these recommendations seen here for modifications to better support questions and provide clarity to the proposed curriculum we requested increased clarity of outcomes and wanted to make very clear the content of each lesson
042which has been and will continue to be available on the district website and the goals and learning targets of those lessons we requested revised illustrations that were more medically accurate we wanted the sequence of the high school lessons reviewed to ensure the lessons appropriately built upon and related to each other we also know this is a large amount of content in high school and we very much want to recognize that and we feel faq to address the themes of the feedback from the community should be developed so students parents and community members can further understand the process and outcomes selected by the human growth and development team as a result some stakeholders may have noticed these modifications to the documents in that two-week review window to reflect the external committee's recommendations for further clarity and
043a more comprehensive medically accurate accurate information of images within the two-week review period no changes were made in the proposed outcomes for any grade level and at this time i would like to have mrs riordan come up to the mic to read the final external external committee review recommendation thank you upon reviewing public comment received via survey results and considering the viewpoints of all committee members the external committee recommends by majority that the school board adopt the human growth and development curriculum with the modifications outlined if the curriculum were to be approved next steps in that process would be the professional learning plan that district administration would enact as well as curating resources and supports for caregivers regarding the topics within the proposed curriculum connecting with our external committee experts for their ongoing support and
044continued community partnership with the district again as discussed at the last meeting there's different success metrics that we would monitor um along the way to see whether or not we are seeing the impact that we desire to see as a result of the external committee's work [Music] again as iterated the first meeting the materials and professional learning we approximately be approximately 18 dollars and now i'll invite uh dr michelle pickett to end our uh presentation hi i'm michelle i'm dr michelle pickett um i was a member of the external committee um i apologize i didn't get to speak earlier than this i'm on call today and wasn't sure if i would make it um i'm an associate professor of pediatrics um at the medical college i'm a pediatric emergency medicine physician um for the for
045children's in the emergency department in addition to my clinical role i am also a chemical researcher i specialize in adolescent reproductive health care and suicide prevention among adolescents i'm also the department of pediatrics vice to the vice associate chair of diversity equity inclusion at the medical college too i'm a community member here i've lived in tulsa for 10 years now and i am a parent to two kids in the district and i just want to conclude that the external committee is recommending that the board of education approve the revised curriculum at this meeting today august 22 2002 and that concludes our presentation thank you all very much for your time uh particularly for the members of the community who served for several months on the external committee uh and it was a pretty unique place
046um and so the fact that we have this much talent because of our connection to the medical college in this case um is is incredible i want to go around and have questions or comments from the board and a couple of things i would say there's gonna be a bit of a discussion here um there will be an opportunity for folks to speak um a reminder there is an alternative spot i'm guessing more comfortable than maybe some of the spots in here uh downstairs um if you'd like to be there we'll work on that procedural question please yes sir after community comment will there be a final chance for board comment i'd be happy to move over to that okay i i prefer to explain my vote after i've heard the community comment because i
047just want to be sure that that's contemplated otherwise i'd say before community comment but just wanted to be respectful of your process if i if i forget okay thank you sir doctor may i pose a procedural question as well no sir uh we'll be taking completely i'm part of the external committee and my external committee uh teammates have had a chance to talk could i please speak on behalf of the external committee as well i'm a member of the extreme no no sir i i think i believe there was an opportunity but we'll be happy to have you speak um we're going to do board questions that comes but you're happy to you're welcome to speak uh and recognize and share that you were a member of the external committee i know i believe manali
048recognized you i think you spoke the last meeting as well so when we get to public comment you're welcome to speak at that time sir we're going to go with more questions and comments right now thank you ms um for this one uh we'll start with you and we'll kind of work our way around and i'll go last unless you'd like to punch miss willis i'll give you the right first refusal now thank you and uh and thank you team for um for clarifying um i do have a couple of follow-up questions um this is an incredibly important curriculum for us and it does support a lot of the work that we're doing in the strategic plan for inclusivity and for fostering um healthy relationships so with that i want to ask a couple follow-up
049questions on professional learning and i had those questions at the first session i see that some of that is in development and we're already in august i just don't know with the teachers being on summer break two how much of a heavy lift that is for the first you know sessions that are coming up quickly yeah i can speak to that so as you saw earlier uh we won't be teaching at the elementary level or seventh and eighth grade until may so we have a runway between now and uh february we want to have the probably march we want to have the learning in front of our educators by march so we have some time in order to develop all of that and have that in front of our front of our teachers our educators
050that teach adolescent studies and health previously we had on the on the slide that the i just want to make sure november is the first time in which human growth and development would be addressed at the middle school level and then similarly at the high school level would be december so we would have a number of months to be able to pull teachers to be able to uh engage in the professional learning that would be required prior to um instruction okay and the elementary level yep elementary would be in may um so again just like our seventh and eighth grade we want to have that professional learning in front of our educators by by march okay march of 2020 three three okay um thank you for that then um you know uh i have a
051question for the committee on especially the elementary comments and that there are there's a lot of the understanding of what is base information it and i'm wondering what kind of curriculum adjustments you may have made based on those comments and any other comments that were received you know along the base along the lines of the base information with resources um you know lesson changes i know you mentioned the illustrations um so if you could speak to that so um from a result of the as a result of the uh feedback the external committee reviewed the feedback and charged the internal team with providing some revisions to some of the images so that they were more medically accurate they were talking about a lot of comments came up about um floating uteruses so where exactly in
052a body does a uterus live so to provide that sort of context for example was a discussion that was held with the committee um when you look at the curricular guides prior to um at the onset of the release of the curriculum there's a middle column and in that middle column we only had listed where the standards and so the learning outcomes were within the lesson so we pulled those items out to make to draw attention to what the learning outcomes for that particular lesson would be so the standards are written in a lot of standard ease but what is it that actually students we want students to know and be able to do as a result of that lesson and so that's what those learning um that's those are the learning targets for those
053in particular lessons no none of those uh changed in any of the grade levels um during the review period so what was in there at the beginning is what is in there now as well we had one um link that was accidentally put on there that twice that was removed we didn't add any content in that particular grade level i believe it was seventh grade we didn't add any additional content um that just that was an honest mistake okay thank you for explaining that um and then just one final question before i ask my colleagues and have a discussion a more intense intense discussion possibly but obviously the success of any curriculum is so that when we start out of the gate we we want everyone to be at this base comfort level and do
054we have a plan b if in fact the educators come back parents come back students come back and say you know it's it we need to make some changes how will the administration respond to that and and you know will you how will you incorporate that feedback so we would uh if there's additional feedback um if it's it depends upon what the feedback is if it's our educators saying we receive this professional learning we need more than we respond and provide more um if it's if we find that we're having significant opt-out trends then we reconvene the external team we review what the opt-out trend is we provide some revisions to the curriculum and and move forward with that i don't know if policy would ask us to come back to the board with any
055of those revisions so that would be something that i would need i can't answer for you right at this point in time um what that's nothing sticks out to me in terms of policy for that um because we do continually continuously improve our um our curriculum with any curriculum um this is this is nuanced it's very nuanced um if ours we are going to be asking students uh though in a age-appropriate manner in a grade a level appropriate manner for feedback on their learning and if we're looking at that feedback and we're seeing some pretty telling trends again same sort of concept we would bring the external team committee back together and say what what do we do about this dr marvel yes sir to if i may um isn't the halfway point to this
056curriculum january of 2024 yeah yep right and so i think to mrs meunvolt's question if there's an urgent rising of questions i think we can address it earlier but in order to avoid the situation that we have right now where we haven't addressed it in a while um would it be prudent for the division of academic performance to at least reconvene uh a committee to just have a check-in point absolutely and i think that addresses the question from the board member absolutely okay thank you i would appreciate a check-in um you know especially given uh the time frame at the review of this curriculum which is august before the school year but i realize we're not implementing actually until much later so um i appreciate that what is up most important to me is the
057student experience the interaction and the ability for parents and guardians to have information uh should they and the seamless [Music] response and transition of that also for supporting you know supporting that interaction and of course the experiences that the educators themselves will have and trying to deliver a curriculum that is um more current and is in desperate need above tv so thank you [Music] really yes um so thank you to everybody on the committee um who participated agreed disagreed what not um and thank you to the community for all of the feedback you provided um especially the folks from wauwatosa we had over 100 pages of comments that we've been reading through in addition to all of the emails that have come to our personal email addresses please know that a lack of a response
058is not a reflection of a lack of reading it's due to a lack of time we all work full-time so um thank you for taking the time and being so passionate about wherever you stood and especially thank you for those of you who worked so hard to walk that very fine line between passion and respectfulness it's greatly appreciated um when you're reading you know one thing after the next um a couple things one i just want to say uh kudos to ms mutual and she raised the first thing that i am thinking about which is about professional learning for our teachers so that we're having a consistent experience and they don't feel comfortable or prepared we know about that early enough to make adequate arrangements um and so i think their preparedness their comfort um
059you know we have lots of amazing resources uh i would just want to make sure that they feel best positioned to be successful in this work um i also want to call out to everyone who's here i i'm going to assume most of you are here to talk about human growth and development but we have this great discussion coming up next on the strategic plan where we will be talking about the other 99 of what students will be doing the rest of the time so please stay for that um in terms of uh questions that i have or things that i hope will be considered is i think the opt-out is really going to be important and it needs to be very comprehensive so parents really feel like they're positioned to make the best choice
060for their kids and that they've got a really good understanding of what they will be doing if they are not in this curriculum should it pass um and that might mean depending on how many kids opt out there actually has to be an alternate lesson like we can't send everybody to music lessons so i want to make sure that that is really strong um and the other thing questions that came up specific to special education um students are students with special needs um i appreciate this is fun talking about how that will be handled i the antiquatedness of the curriculum that has been lifted up is very concerning to me that's one of the biggest problems we had with the curriculum being 10 years old for general ed students um so i i just want
061to make sure that there is a way for folks to um to lift up if they have concerns in terms of their students that's not being met and then my final question is do we know when the yrbs data will actually be available so i just spoke with the dvi last week of the yrbs data feedback they have released embargo versions of school specific data but they haven't released the district-wide reports yet so they're working on the statewide aggregate they said it could be a month or two before those level reports are released okay if we could just ask that um that when that information becomes available it comes to the board and um it's available to the external and internal teams along with the curriculum team curriculum council do we know if we got
062audio downstairs there is audio downstairs due to the acoustics in the montessori gym it's not as clear as it is here in room conference room c but there is audio in the gym and then it was just back to my attention that maybe there's a fire hazard with all of the folks in the hallway blocking the doorways i'm sure there may be shall we should we take a five minute recess to help people kind of no do we want more 10 or no i didn't police are here i just wanted to bring that to the attention thank you okay and it sounds like i want you we'll keep moving ahead okay the staff will work on safety issues okay um again thank you to all of you for all of your hard work this was
063amazing i really appreciated tonight's um data in particular i think it really kind of rounded out everything that was presented before but kind of added in um really to specific data so i really appreciate that um just a couple of questions that i had um so you mentioned it would be the teachers will be recertified um similar to kind of like first aid would be is that does that mean are you suggesting it would be an annual recertification then yes okay yeah we um hey folks i'm gonna ask everyone to grab a seat i realize that people are eager to get up um but it's ultimately the board will be discussing and making a decision based on community feedback if the board can't engage and discuss as a body of a governance body we community
064feedback may not be feasible tonight so why doesn't everyone grab us i guess what i'm asking is grab a seat and we're going to keep moving on thank you we'll come back and a reminder what i had what i had earlier asked that folks could have the respect for those who didn't get to speak at the last meeting to speak in this meeting first um no everybody can just grab a seat we'll we'll get we'll get to community feedback thank you okay um i'm sorry dr white what was your question no you answered the first question which was about the recertification you said that would be an annual yes certification for the teachers um the resources for instruction at home is that going to be sent out to all of the caregivers or will that
065just be for people who opt out of the program so part of the discussion with the external team was this commitment to transparency and consistency with the curriculum so the curriculum will live online and any community member caregiver can access the curriculum at any time they don't have to wait for it to be shared with um with them by the educator but when the letter goes out for notification that the uh curriculum are the units will begin on such and such a date there will be a link to the website that will bounce uh caregivers right to where that will live perfect i really appreciate that i know my son took uh his hdd curriculums this year and came home and was like i had nothing to say about it we need to talk about
066it so i would appreciate having some talking points of what was covered um this is a question for mr opinion so the yrbs data so we were talking a little bit about the lag and i know some of the lag has been covered related do you know when our students take the survey this year so in 2023 they take it correct okay and then when do you think that data will realistically be released so that we can identify you know if this curriculum is having an impact that would be very hard to predict at this time i do believe they delayed almost a year time because of covet and that's creating some of this backlog of data they also changed the system they used to collect it last year which was supposed to be more
067efficient but uh we're still waiting on it i would hope that it's going to be faster turnaround next time but there's no guarantee at this point knowing this has been 10 months almost since we administered it last time thank you mr phillips sure thanks thanks so much the committee internal external i mean 10 months working on this is um it's amazing and then also appreciate the deep data dive that you did i know that was a that was an ask um something i was really passionate about looking for and it really helped me really understand like did the did the committee do a great job was our process sound did we you know did we come in at the right level so i'm glad to hear that i'm glad to see that also uh ms
068milfield yes the question i was going to ask like how do we continue to monitor that and what are those things that are in place i know halfway through is probably good i'd love to see the first year of feedback and opt-out especially uh in survey data you know if there's another opportunity to get parents involved again we'd love to see that just just to make sure we're course correcting we're staying agile and and consistently improving the process so again thank you thank you all appreciate it ms wilson sure yes thank you to the committee and to the community for all of your feedback i'd especially like to highlight all of the feedback we received from students and the students that are here today i think your voices are so important in this work and
069we need to continue to center that um with that being said i do have a couple questions about some of the process um you talked about the opt-out form being sent as an email i think traditionally it's been sent out as a form right in the student's folders yep um most of our uh principals have worked with families to know what is their preferred mode of communication so email is what we're currently proposed but building principles if they know that there are certain families that require hard copies or prefer to be communicated with in a different way then we they absolutely have that latitude to adjust and meet the family where they're at and i think just to you know if families are used to that just honoring that especially as we introduce this new
070curriculum even if it's just a paper notification that check your email there's been information sent out about the human growth and development curriculum just so we're not missing families who traditionally look for that information you know in their in their students folder um so i love seeing these success metrics but one thing i think and some of my other colleagues head on was you know getting that feedback from educators so just really making sure that we are finding opportunities you know they're the ones in the classrooms uh presenting this information in these lessons and they're gonna have the opportunity to gauge what the student engagement is and i'd really and i think that feedback is going to be very valuable um you know if we move forward with this curriculum and then finally um you
071know with my special education background i went in and i reviewed some of those materials and there was one that was very outdated and did not align at all with some of these new proposed human growth and development standards i think it was still mentioned in some of the revisions but i just want to make sure that we're carefully looking at that i mean i looked at circles and i thought it was a phenomenal curriculum to use for our students who are alternately assessed but you know just making sure that it's comprehensive for those students i understand it's going to be individualized and it's going to be a team decision but just really making sure that we have the resources you know to provide those students with uh the information that we need to provide
072to them absolutely and miss clem has um is a remarkable leader and if there's anything that her team feels like there and i'm sorry if i'm speaking for you miss clem i apologize um but if there's anything that her team feels like they're missing they have total control to be able to um hear any additional consultation resources learning sure thank you and then i just have one final question for you dr means um i think it was after our august 8th meeting that i reached out to you just kind of trying to understand the policy that drives this i think it was mentioned in the communication that was sent out to us and the community that there would be a policy that kind of governed this work but then in talking to you um you
073know and me finding out that there was another uh policy so there's two policies around curriculum but one specifically around human growth and development so i reached out to you and you know you gave me an answer but then i was still not totally comfortable with your answer and asked you you know if you could consult legal counsel to make sure that we you know are operating under policy because you know as a board and as a new superintendent you've been emphasizing the importance to operate under policy so if you could just explain a little bit what came of that thank you sir it's good governance um to trust but verify um so uh in the frequently asked question uh list of questions i think it's question 20. um we actually had legal counsel review
074um if policy 2210 the development of human growth and development or does policy 2414 govern it and you see the answer um in question 20 that the language that is in that faq for question 20 was crafted by legal counsel okay now that being said i think there's an opportunity to endorse policy work legal has informed us that we should work to clarify what is governed under 2210 and what's governed under 24-14 that we need to be more explicit about human growth and development being out of 2210 and being under that umbrella but that being said i do want to affirm for the board in the community um that legal counsel has given us the direction uh from a policy standpoint that 2414 governs the development of the curriculum that's before you this evening okay
075thank you for that clarification i going last my colleagues have had on just about every comment i had so a few things i quickly underlined i really like the staff certification and recertification process i think that's a that's an area that is a focus of mine to make sure that staff are prepared have skills and tools and we have some really good feedback of making sure staff are aware of and trained in trauma trauma-informed practices and so on so this is a complex like as with all things in education right now making sure staff are comfortable i'm wondering um certainly the feedback loops the professional learning communities how they can be brought together on wednesdays and kind of discussing how are things going what are we learning how do we make sure we're delivering the
076the most um the best curriculum for our kids in a way that um it's having the positive outcomes that we're looking for i like this feedback and review loop uh and i think the idea mr phillips of getting feedback after year one uh maybe a broader team dive in january of 2024 uh is important i i think the opt-out piece is important and the yrbs stat is important i also was struck by and i don't know if this is the role the sole role of the the school district but tools for parents and families and caregivers and grandparents to be more comfortable having conversations at home if they so choose um that if a student may have to other curriculum some parents are saying i'd like to be able to deliver this on my own
077i value and respect that that families may make that choice and i think that that should be deeply respected by our community uh and some parents are really comfortable having that decision i saw online there was a comment that um 48 year old gentleman was still waiting for his parents to have the birds and the bees conversation some of us might be experiencing that as well but i think based on the comments i got i think that having the education the tools and the resources in the community to have these conversations as a community is important um i wondered how important it is for grandparents to talk to grandkids or maybe not um but certainly at a moment in time in our community and across the country that listening and respectful dialogue and learning together
078learning from each other caring about each other is really important essential so i think whatever tools that we can put in place as a community um also seems to be a place of small yards and short fences and um i think it's a place where we can learn from each other we can do this together so maybe that's a call to some things we can think about as a district some things that we can think about as leaders in the community and some things the whole community can think about um of how we listen and grow together so with that um the plan right now going forward board is that we'll do about 30 minutes and dr means if i'll do the three-minute timer for feedback can i can i before everybody jumps out of
079their chair can i ask a question i'm gonna well it's not too late um i would really love to center our student voices our students are the reason we're all here talking and i would really appreciate if they were given an opportunity to speak first if they so choose um and then followed by other members of our community who may have a comment they want to make the eye comment mr meyer [Music] just uh just a second for the community for discussion on next steps so there's this notion of parents and taxpayers and students aren't directly taxpayers and students aren't directly parents so wanting to respect the student voice as well i ask that the chair constructs some you know spontaneous paradigm here that we hear all voices and that consume just some kind of
080proportionality with the voices we hear that taxpayers and parents have time as well not that they wouldn't but just to express absolutely everybody with a chance no absolutely i'm not suggesting that i just would like i know some of our comments got a little bit heated there were some comments that frankly if our students don't feel like they want to stay for some of that i would understand so i would prefer to give them an option to speak first so that they can leave if they'd like [Music] the boardroom is a tough place unfortunately and the students well it's hard for adults to do this and i so respect that students are trying but um adults need to be able to speak their piece and in a respectful way of course so to the students
081yes i value your comments and please i'm sure you do know that there's some considerations in place when you're working a job trying to keep a house trying to pay the taxes that you you need to be heard and understood and there's a certain edge that comes to some of those discussions that just so the students are aware of that okay thank you are you looking forward to i'm gonna ask that we just not let's refrain from addressing specific board members please dr jess banker could we maybe gauge from the students if they even are interested in commenting and kind of go from there with were there any students in the room that were interested in commenting why don't we start out with can we do five student comments and then we'll move into the
082the full and a reminder that each student each person would have three minutes uh you can share your name and your address we'll start with five students and then we'll move to uh the rest of the community we'll do [Music] 25 so we'll do 30 minutes up here we'll spend an additional 15 minutes alternating between the two different spaces online and the other spot so it's 45 minutes for public comment i'll check in with the board to see at that point if we want if we feel like um we've reached the point where we feel that we've gotten pretty good input um i know we've gotten some an email or two about this as well that we reviewed um and then we will move from that space is that agreeable to i think that's reasonable
083to give 15 minutes of the students okay so we'll start with uh if i will let the students contemplate among themselves um we will start with student comment and again what i'll do is i'll time you at about 30 seconds i'll say you have 30 seconds um i don't remember who the gentleman was who won last week two weeks ago but it was like 28 seconds bonus you don't have to go three minutes um but we'll do that if you can share your name your address in your relationship with the wauwatosa school district um that will help us understand where you stand dr means if you can do [Music] a 30 minute overall keep an eye on the clock hello um i'm joe i'm 15. i'm a sophomore at toast east high school i lived
084near jefferson jefferson elementary school and i would just like to say that i am like any other student in the wauwatosa uh school district i like basketball i draw and i write i do everything like every other student but the only difference um from other students that i might have is that i'm a transgender uh boy and the first time that i stated that i was a boy i was five years old no i was six years old i was on the playground at jefferson and i told my best friend cyrus hey i'm a boy anyway you want to go play games um so i've always known but the thing is is that i couldn't say i couldn't say that i couldn't say i'm a boy i want to be called a boy i couldn't
085fully socially transition for 13 years of my life um i didn't even figure it out until i was 13 and that reason being is i didn't even know that there was a choice to be lgbtq because it was never ever taught in school that there was a choice for me and that i would not wish on any other child because that caused me pain not knowing that i could be anything but cisgender and straight um forced me into a box and put me in so much pain and i don't want that for anyone else and that's why it's important for the waukesha school district to have inclusive um sexual education and human growth and development um i think that it's important that um students learn so that way they can teach their parents what it
086means to be inclusive because that will create safe homes for everyone education is a way to make sure that kids are safe parents are safe and children have safe homes this is needed for our community to be safe and inclusive as a whole and teach children to be nice no matter who anyone is gay straight trans or not thank you hello my name is henry i live just down the street from lincoln elementary school and i am a rising senior this year at wauwatosa east i attended an online summer school course of health a semester of help over the summer in the summer of 2020. in this course i received no human growth and development unit there was no talk about any kind of relationship sexual health anything of that kind um and i know
087that is very very damaging to me and my peers if we understand that from the our educators that and from the district that they do not value our sexual health and our health as people and our emotional health as well um i remember the last human growth and development lessons that i received was when i was 11 years old in sixth grade um and very little talk about sexual abuse as well from um adults very little um input from our teachers about how to handle these situations that arise too often in our communities and i believe that this is something that needs to be addressed for myself and my peers it is unfortunately too late for me and my peers who are no longer going to be in health class to receive this new new
088curriculum but it only gives me potential hope that the younger students can potentially receive this education that gives them the opportunity to have the resources they need to be emotionally um and sexually healthy people which we all have the right to be thank you uh hello my name is benjamin nowaczec i'm an incoming freshman at uh walters west high school and my address is 984 west argonne drive that's not the way my god um so the first thing i'd like to do is i'd like to express my gratitude to everyone uh here on the committee the development of uh this new um human growth and development unit and just everyone who's contributed to this because this is something that is important to me as a member of my generation i think to many people here
089tonight um i'd like to focus my time here uh by talking about um the things that we've actually changed uh in our for the younger uh groups of students and what they will be learning about uh when it comes to gender or expression and stereotyping for the record i personally did not receive any sort of information about gender uh information and stereotype until eighth grade this new plan would uh consist of in the second grade uh having to be able to provide an example of gender role stereotype which would mean the teaching of that uh in grade three the ability to define gender gender identity and gender role stereotypes um i was never even taught even in eighth grade to this point i have never been taught by the human growth and development curriculum gender
090and sex um to great uh in fourth grade uh you need to be able to define transgender cisgender and non-binary uh also things that i did not hear about until eighth grade uh you also need to understand the use of pronouns and gender identity without which i have seen many of my peers have been embarrassed and dehumanized um and uh you need to understand that labels don't describe people perfectly all of these things are things that i believe that it is very important for all young people to know and without it um i have seen many members of my own grade people above that and even people below my grade be uneducated about what that means and that if we are looking at our education department and finding something that is uneducated about what are
091we doing thank you we'll have are you two tagging you'll have three minutes together and then we'll have one more are you going separate i completely support them okay hi my name is rory um i am a freshman at west high school and it is so important to me and other lgbtq plus youth that this new curriculum gets passed i personally didn't get any education in the human growth and development union unit on gender and sexuality because i was in a mental hospital but i'm sure that we got taught a little bit but it probably wasn't enough for kids to figure out who they are we should be learning what about gender gender identity and sexuality from the time we start elementary school to the time we end high school not getting this opportunity would
092be limiting ways for kids to explore themselves and figure out who they are it is also just important that we important that we create safe spaces and schools for kids who don't have safe spaces at home or just need a place to be themselves i truly believe that this will benefit so many people and will help many kids be comfortable being who they are thank you thank you hello i am uh leah ipock i also have been going by luxe which is a name i am much more comfortable in i am a genderqueer and i use any pro pronouns that aren't female because it is most comfortable for me i am a student freshman and i live on woodward avenue which is right by the parkway throughout my years of school i have not been
093explaining things like gender and as a young kid i have always been kind of i always have been uh kind of with the label of tomboy just being a girl that likes wearing men's clothes but i've never had been explained what gender was and that that never really suited me and that i'm much more comfortable being like on the non-binary or trans skill i'm not quite sure yet but without people explaining this to me i got into the kind of mindset that because i dress masculinely i'm wrong and i am not okay just being who i am but if this kind of thing was explained to kids that were my age at the time then it would have helped kids that were just like me that young and they wouldn't have felt so wrong for
094dressing with things that aren't quite stereotypical gender roles thank you thank you thank you to everybody who's been respectful and and listened to comments um we'll have one handed over we at this point we had it we had our five students we're gonna hand it you're welcome to get grab in line but we're going to hand it out to the folks who are in line right now we will go for 15 minutes of community comment now and then we will shift to an alternating between the other two spaces online and in the uh other location dr means has also noted to me um that conference room a is available uh there's not a space to comment on there but if you're looking for a spot to sit i believe chairs are available which insider audio
095as well better audio as well so again alt alternative overflow spaces um [Music] downstairs in the montessori gym not great audio probably can spread out a little bit more or conference room a won't be able to speak there but better audio um we'll do public comment again if you can share um name address relationship kind of within the community um and we'll go through and just so everybody knows we're gonna go through five folks up here there may be a few more depending on how long we go but it will be at least five if i could just have my piece i've been waiting patiently i've been on the external committee could i have my three minutes i need some i need to share some information to the board i understand sorry okay okay thank
096you sir my name is ted barthel i'm a toaster resident i have a student in the district um i was a member i am a member on the external committee with my colleagues there um i think we can all agree that we're here because we care deeply about our children so it's wonderful to see these all these beautiful children here each tulsa student should be needs to be affirmed and nurtured for the individuality each student holds it's great that you're all here i appreciate it as an external committee member i have two points of the board to be aware the manipulation of the data on the table the pie charts is disingenuous and misleading the numbers that um originally were sent out by the board by the district on friday show that if you take
097an average across the grade level 52 percent of respondents disagree and strong or strongly disagree of the hdd curriculum so for background the external committee just a week ago we met we got an early look at the at the survey numbers and the comments that were coming in uh a week ago just last monday there was no talk a week ago that survey numbers on themselves without being scoured were leaning towards agree okay so one week ago there was no talk of scouring the data and no talk of saying that the numbers were not represented of our community yet now when 52 people 52 strongly disagree or disagree the survey numbers suddenly have to be scoured i submit that's that's misleading and disingenuous in actuality the numbers for tulsa taxpayers are saying that the more
098the posted taxpayers become aware of this curriculum the more disagreeable the curriculum becomes on the second point the district stated that it would follow district policy 2210 which requires the htd curriculum to quote be available for community and parent review for a two-week period end quote a school parent had courage to come to me knowing that i was on the committee and informed me that the hd curriculum was being changed during the two-week review period this parent also noticed that new material was being added after the two-week review period ended this parent notified nicole marble and dr anger that the policy 2210 was not being followed this raises some very important questions what else is being changed to the curriculum that parents do not know about what does the full board know that rule 2210
099is not being followed does the full board know that material being added during the two-week review and that material has been added after closure of the review period if the district's gonna fast track a vote tonight while not providing proper notice to parents under twenty to ten to fifteen seconds and ignore the fact that over fifty percent of tulsa taxpayers disagree with this curriculum how is this inclusive how is this a partnership between parents and the school thank you hi my name my name is dr james lin i don't live here my practice is in milwaukee i have 11 close relatives here seven of them children and five of them grandchildren i hope you'll let me speak i've been invited here i care about uh my children i care about my grandchildren just as you
100do i'm sure you'll agree with the dictum first do no harm applied in the practice of medicine also applies to education of children the reason i'm here is i fear the proposed curriculum will harm children at the previous board meeting dr jeff nicholson spoke in opposition to this curriculum i reviewed his comments and references and they are credible and compelling i hope you'll look at them again here are four points that are scientifically based and true sex is biological trait that's number one number two there are two sexes male and female sex is determined at conception and is present in every cell in a human body and cannot be changed by affirmation hormones or surgery three and a long in long-term population studies social affirmation and medical and surgical treatment of sex discordant gender identity
101does not result in long-term resolution of psychological problems including depression and high suicide rates number four consistent data shows that 85 to 90 percent of transgender transgender children will spontaneously realign gender identity with their biologic sex with expectant management which is watch and weight approach on the other hand affirmation of a transgender child begins a process which is followed by risky medical treatments irreversible and risky surgeries without evidence of long-term improvement in depression and suicide rates so first do no harm by embarking on this road of gender affirmation which is the first step in transgendering without any proof of long-term benefit you are creating great harm through the 85 to 90 percent of gen transgender kids for whom this problem would resolve itself additionally you risk confusing the majority of children who are not transgender
102i do not believe the transgender movement is medically and scientifically based it is ideologically based the scientific and medical evidence is that you may harm children if you implement this curriculum please reconsider i'm a little height challenged we're all special um my name is dr cynthia jones solzhech i'm not a member of the wauwatosa community but i was asked to come here and testify and view my expertise i am a family physician who in active practice have cared for everyone from birth to hospice including members of the lgbtq community uh i one transgendered person even traveled 25 miles each way to see me i am also have a master's degree in medical bioethics from ohio state university i'm here to talk about the pros curriculum concerning gender the assumption is that the promotion of gender
103fluidity and gender reassignment in children improves mental health of those who suffer from gender dysphoria the science does not support it the standard of care is only what the experts call quote flexible guidelines unquote at a very low or low quality of evidence or expert opinion and they determined who the experts were most studies are short-term ending during the honeymoon period which lasts two to six years they have low rates of participation and high rates of dropout a rare long-term study done in sweden an lgbtq plus friendly country followed patients for over three decades and showed an increased risk of death from all causes tripled the risk of psychiatric hospitalization almost five times the risk increased risk of suicide attempts at a 19 times increased risk of death by suicide compared to cisgender controls in
104switzerland there was a decrease in general life satisfaction 15 years later medical treatment may lead to sterility this carries a psychological risk medical treatment can lead to decreased bone density cardiovascular disease and blood clots sexual dysfunction occurs when one realizes that reconstructed genitalia do not function like natural ones the diagnosis is based solely on what the person asserts it ignores the biological realities of our genes we do not affirm other body dysphorias like anorexia nerosa or body integrity dysphoria which is having an intense desire to be handicapped such as blind amputate a limb or be paralyzed science says the human brain does not have the cognitive and emotional maturity to understand consequences until we are in our mid-20s we all want is best for our children children with gender dysphoria have serious psychological problems risk
105factors include unresolved developmental challenges underlying depression and anxiety disorders autism strained family relationships and peer conflicts they need our support they need psychological treatment of underlying problems like all children they need to learn it's okay to be a gender non-conformist girls like me could be doctors boys like my husband can grow up to stay home and raise the children but the science is only meant women can be pregnant and then produce sperm what we are doing now is a mass unregulated experiment with children sometimes without parental consent ethically experiments on children should have minimal risk and consent we can only show some short-term benefits but with persistent long-term and significant not minimal risks i am including several articles from peer-reviewed journals that you can access thank you have any tosa residents who are speaking okay
106so we've got i think three more folks that we'll do and then we may come back to the room or we may uh we'll be going to our other two uh locations uh and then i'll check in with the board to see if we we continue forward uh so we've got three more folks up and then we'll we'll shift to where we're taking comment from uh good evening my name is kendra culver i am one of the gsa advisors at whitman middle school i have also taught the 8th grade human growth and curriculum for the last 10 years at whitman my first statement i will be sharing was created by the district's four secondary gender and sexuality alliance advisors these advisors include john etter of jose east chris bennis of tosa west gina foster of
107long fellow middle school and myself kendra cover dear members of the wauwatosa school board and superintendent means four years students who identify as lgbtqia plus community have complained that our existing human growth and development curriculum has not been meeting their needs and often does not even acknowledge the existence of their gender and sexual identities as advisors of the gsa chapters at our district's middle and high schools we believe that the proposed human growth and development curriculum would provide them and all students the knowledge that all need to be safe healthy happy energy to approve it as i stated earlier i'm a whitman middle school teacher i have over 30 years of teaching experience in middle school additionally my husband and i are the proud parents of three gay children and our home is also a
108safe space for several teens who are part of the lgbtq plus community i am asking that the board to support the human growth and development curriculum that supports all age levels the curriculum fosters healthy relationships accurate information and the accepting norms for all children regardless of gender and sexuality in my 30 years experience i have seen many students come to middle school with far more information on sexual activity reproduction and gender and sexual identity that you could imagine unfortunately much of the information is not accurate and the students perpetuate false information to one another therefore i am asking you to please move forward with this curriculum to ensure that our district's children are provided with accurate age appropriate information by trained staff to support the physical and mental well-being of all students [Applause] thank you
109hello um katie pettit 9310 jackson park boulevard i'm a toaster educator in the walmart school district for the last 15 years and i'm also just a parent of a student who spoke earlier and i couldn't be prouder i'd like to thank the board for listening to public comment tonight and at all other board meetings you guys keep coming back i'd also like to thank the district human growth and development team for all of your continued hard work presenting a more relevant inclusive curriculum it's been hard as both a toasted parent and an educator to witness the conversations happening among our community stakeholders my biggest concern right now is for the children who have been listening and who are listening to the negative hurtful comments about gender identity so before i continue i'd like to say
110that if you are an lb gtq plus kid there are people in tosa who believe you are important and valued or loved i have been teaching in the tosa district for 15 years most of that time in senior kindergarten we are using the same human growth and development lessons from when i started with very few modifications social media youtube and online gaming have changed the type of content kids of any age are exposed to expanding this curriculum will help even our youngest students identify situations that make them uncomfortable or scared and to know when to ask an adult for help discussions in class may help a child realize what is happening to them is abuse these topics are uncomfortable the safety and well-being of students needs to be our top priority i am aware of
111concerns that some of the content that will be taught to students at too early of an age but research has shown that one in five children one in five are exposed to unwanted sexual content online the start of puberty is starting in children as young as eight and gender identity education is a step toward preventing adolescent suicide this curriculum team has worked hard to put together a comprehensive curriculum that's based on research and science which will help students make sense of uncomfortable topics in a developmentally appropriate way there are community members who feel topics in this new curriculum do not align with their family values but we have by diverse student population and within families with diverse values parents and guardians can opt out of any lesson this has always been in place in tokyo
112and tosa educators know how to handle it with respect and discretion we always have i believe that the families involved in this conversation wants what's best for their kids but when it comes to public schools we need to do what's best for all kids thank you this will be our last public comment in the room and then we will go uh jamie are you there with us tonight jeremy um we'll go to uh the the gym right now online gym online gym and then i'll turn to the board sir thank you um my name is dr franklin smith i'm not in the toaster community i'm in milwaukee everyone i'm in the i was invited as a speaker no it's okay this is the this is we are we are at a place where we are
113hearing um i i will say as a i'm not gonna make any comment you're welcome to speak it may be more powerful if a tocin resident speaks your call sure um i think i'll speak thank you um so my name is dr franklin smith i'm a position of 35 years but i'm speaking as a president of the milwaukee guild of the catholic medical association we are catholic doctors who embrace both faith and science in the practice of medicine and i wish to speak in opposition to the human growth development program i i do want to commend you for releasing all the information in the community i think it's great that people are reading it and knowing what's being taught this subject is controversial and sensitive as it deals with one's personal identity but we need
114the ability to speak and listen to each other calmly first we must insist that no matter what state they find themselves every individual deserves dignity and respect as a human person we must always address and prevent bullying and discriminatory behavior no doubt the programming is well-meaning but it teaches children a new ideology that even though over 99 of humans are born with functioning sexual organs that perfectly match the genes that exist within every single cell of their body either male or female biology may have got it wrong therefore the child is asked a question which otherwise wouldn't occur to most children with what gender stereotype do you identify unfortunately when this gender identity doesn't correspond with the biological sex the approach now is to initiate lifelong medical treatment and surgery rather than psychological care alone
115and this is supposedly accepted by the entire medical community but actually doctors around the world are asking themselves is this good medical care that in this one and only medical condition we ask the child what is your diagnosis and then with chemicals and surgeries we eliminate reproductive ability we change their bodies and expose them to lifelong treatments and complications counselors teachers and doctors interpret studies and hang on paying so much weight on the hope that gender affirmative care might lower rates of suicide even though these studies have small numbers and are considered flawed by some parents experience tremendous pressure and have even been asked wouldn't you rather have a trans child than a dead child is this fair for parents who simply want to love their child and help them through a difficult time versus
116being pressured to use aggressive medical treatments and surgeries 30 seconds in europe the major transgender clinics are being closed or put under strict experimental restrictions but here in the u.s medical societies such as the american academy of pediatrics continue to push an ideology rather than look at things objectively there's no doubt in my mind that future generations will observe the damage that occurs when this teaching method is used which they will find harmful and incredible we should we recommend the wall because the school district should not engage in this instructional method thank you jeremy can we take our first comment from the gym go to the gym if i want to talk about it i suspect there's probably a line down there oh [Music] all right hello uh john etter uh 2733 north 73rd street
117in wauwatosa i'm an east high teacher and the parent of a long fellow student uh also a student at roosevelt um and proud 15-year resident of wauwatosa especially proud after seeing over 200 of my fellow wauwatosans lined up outside of this building before the meeting to show their support for this proposal and their love and concern for the health and well-being of the children of our community um i'm before i say anything else i'd uh i'd like to um i'd like to recognize the uh you know the poise uh the eloquence and the sheer bravery of the students that we heard speak uh earlier on and i hope we get a chance to hear many more of them tonight um i think we could all learn a lot from the example that they are setting
118um about bravery about persistence um and about respectful uh you know respectful uh discourse um and and it's for them that i'm speaking tonight um for seven or eight years i have been the gender and sexuality alliance advisor at east high and during that entire time students in the gsa have complained that our existing human growth and development program does not recognize them does not help them and uh it's and that it needs to change beyond that for the 15 years i've been teaching east high school i i have had students who are not part of the lgbtqi plus community also complain that our human growth and development plan was not providing them with what they need to be healthy and safe a number of students over the years have written argumentation essays arguing for
119for changes like what we're seeing here and in those 15 years not a single student has ever argued that what we have is good and effective um so i urge uh the the board to uh to vote and put this in place it's what our kids need and they need it as soon as possible and uh one as always uh to the school board i'm grateful for all of the hard and thankless work that you put in uh to serve our students and i'd also like to thank uh dr means for his leadership during these especially fraud times thank you thank you i don't know if that was online or if wherever that wasn't it was downstairs let's go online to our next comment uh hello um my name is brad lenawachek i am a
120recent graduate of wauwatosa west high school class of i currently live at 9884 west argonne drive and i still have two younger brothers in the wauwatosa school district at west uh both in the west um i want to make three points today first um i i graduated in 2019 um having been educated in the wauwatosa school district my entire life um also having been the benefit the beneficiary of good sex ed through my church and through my home um and even that did not completely prepare me for what i needed to know as a functioning college student and adult in the world uh the program that we have right now is nowhere near enough um from a sexual um knowledge standpoint from an inclusivity standpoint and it needs to be expanded secondly sex education and
121education about gender identity is simply not something that we can depend on individual um families for because a key part of that education is exposure to other perspectives and learning about other people's experiences there are discussions that you can have in classrooms with your friends and with your schoolmates that you simply cannot have at home simply because there is a much wider range of people available to talk in a classroom than uh in one's home um [Music] the third point i want to make is that we hear a lot of arguments about how it is political uh to teach uh gender affirming things in schools we've heard arguments tonight about how this is we are carrying out a mass experiment on our children and i simply want to point out that everything we teach in
122schools is always political to teach gender affirming uh standards is political and to not teach them is also political and at the end of the day i am much more comfortable choosing the the path that takes us down a road of inclusion political inclusion is much better than political erasure thank you very much thank you let's go back down to the auxiliary gym please state your name and your address hi this is margaret fritch i'm a wauwatosa resident i want to first address one of the teachers who spoke and said all she heard tonight were hurtful comments against the lgbtq community and i applaud those students for coming forward but i haven't heard anything hurtful what i've heard were medical doctors talking about the gender discussion and those are scientists as maybe when kobit was
123you relied on them as scientists but i am shocked because my email is not in your blackboard system so therefore my feedback as a taxpayer and a former parent is null and void yet you have no problem accepting my tax dollars and referendum tax dollars this is just unbelievable and what a well rehearsed plan you have to shut out taxpayers further i'd like to turn the attention to how did we get here in the first place who's being paid a pretty hefty salary and not doing their job the school district violated state law and missed three opportunities to review this curriculum we had we updated every three years as required we likely would not be in this position of a complete overhaul that has once again divided our community and pitted neighbor against neighbor and
124friend against friend and i will put blame on the school board members minus the two new ones for failing to do their job to oversee the superintendent who oversees all the directors for far too long they've allowed phil ertle and kristen bowers to do what was best for themselves not the students and not operate under policy the wauwatosa school district just hired seven new directors at an average starting salary of a hundred and forty seven thousand dollars in addition to this curriculum oversight someone failed to keep track of the number of instructional hours in the school day and west came up short now they have to add time on each day to or eliminate days off to correct this who is in charge here as a previous teacher just said tonight he hears students who
125feel like the human growth and development program is outdated with this feedback from students why are teachers not following through to get this curriculum updated do we as taxpayers and parents need to put a note on our calendars for 2025 to remind the administration to do its job and review the curriculum when the time comes as a taxpayer i'm appalled at how our money is being spent on administrators and directors who are not doing their jobs and a school board who looks the other way and does not represent the majority of stakeholders in our school district but rather they rely on their private social media group of influencers because not everyone is allowed in these exclusive social media groups that some of you board members or your spouses are part of and use to rally
126the troops as dr jessup anger said earlier the board will be making a vote on community feedback even though a motion to accept was made prior to comments jeremy can we we've had time for that can we uh go back i believe now we're back in the chat uh point of information i believe the board actually discussed that we wanted an update january of 2024. thank you [Music] um is everything okay out there are we at a place where hello um my name is jason my address is 2216 north 102nd street i have one student he is a son and he's going into third grade we moved into the wauwatosa district coming from milwaukee district so that it would be a better experience and i'd like to just also state that i have my eight-year-old
127easton i have a two-year-old daughter and i also have two older step kids that are um 15 who's a male and 12 who is a female they are in a jefferson in the jefferson district and we have them um every weekend and then throughout the whole summer um i'm i'm speaking out because i have older kids in different districts that i've seen this type of curriculum affect and affect extremely negatively and part of that is my stepdaughter she was you know 12 in all of this getting very confused her her friends were influencing her she she was going through all kinds of things she ended up coming to us because she's slicing her body apart because she didn't know if she was a male or female because she was allowed to just choose whatever and
128so she was more confused on top of also having her period and having all these different emotions that comes with that so rather than her being able to accept her body and say hey this is you accept yourself she's ultimately confused now we got her into therapy and throughout all that she says wow i i like it was just all this stuff that i i was literally being fed that and at a young age she shouldn't have even known any of that stuff and i understand that there are different um circumstances and situations to where kids do need to be pulled apart just like as in mental health with bipolar disorder or with anxiety and stuff like that um but i'm i'm extremely worried that this curriculum especially for third grade and what is outlined
129is way too young i mean even if it were to be pushed up two years i would even be okay with that but right now you know i looked over and i even asked my son kind of privately do you know what these things are and it was you know almost something that maybe i shouldn't even brought up and um and so it's like you know children will go in any direction that you influence them especially starting at third grade there's something about that age that the mind and how the mind works scientifically that you can change the the brain and and develop a person from that age um [Music] now the other thing that i worry about with the gender you know being told that you're not a boy or a girl but you
130know and when i'm having to talk to the older kids and say is does your friend have a sorry a p or a v in order to know if it's a male or female so that i don't offend anybody it makes parenting extremely difficult um but overall this is mostly i believe we're back one more comment from the auxiliary gym uh and then we'll come back to the board uh and we'll check in to see get some feedback because the gym is that jim so we have one more comment from online it's very confusing thank you mr phillips one more comment from online please sorry it's very confusing down here uh conway j please speak your name address and then hi thank you jessica conway can you hear me okay i'm at 6524 betsy ross
131place and i have three children in the district in middle school and high school i first just want to say that i 100 support the curriculum being updated it's been a long long time and overdue as you've heard from others i feel like we are mixing a lot of things together into one conversation and i i just want to say that it's about a point where is it the right age so should kindergarteners be learning about certain topics should third graders be learning you know about certain topics or should they maybe be pushed back by a year or two we need to be more inclusive we need to be more supportive of what every student is going through and our children should learn about that and should be very very open in a very you
132know safe and healthy environment for dialogue and i appreciate that our teachers work so hard to create that type of an environment that same inclusivity that needs to you know be present in the curriculum also needs to be present in the process and i feel like that's where things have gone a little you know wrong and could have been executed better um you know agile is is iterating it's sending a draft out it's getting feedback it's making changes sending it out again and working until you've got something that's even better and that's where i really think you know we just need a little more time to incorporate some of that parent feedback and that parent voice and doing what's best for all of our kids to feel that they can you know thrive in our
133environment and have all needs met and i appreciate the time to speak thank you i'm gonna turn my colleagues on the board we've had about maybe 45 minutes of public comment um are we ready to make a decision and move forward where we'd like to continue to hear public comment on i think i'm open for going through another round of of public comment with all the folks here i mean if everyone's agreeable to that but setting it as one more round we're gonna do five more people in each of those groups that we set before i may think establishing something now so everybody is aware but if i could say that they need to be a resident of wauwatosa [Music] procedural suggestion resident of wauwatosa or students in the world if you if you were
134a student or a a resident of wauwatosa a parent of a student a parent or caregiver of a wauwatosa student for example our open enrollment students right yes okay so you're a caregiver a parent of a wauwatosa student or or or a walwood hosa resident okay taxpayer would be residence yeah so here's what we're gonna do thank you for your commentary um it's making me wonder if we should just stop now um so what we'll do is we will give uh see if there's another group of students we'll do three i'm gonna recommend instead of five three um three students if there's up to three students who would like to speak three individuals here three individuals online three individuals in the um gym yes and we'll go in that order um we would request that
135you be a wauwatosa resident or a student caregiver family member of a wauwatosa student okay are there any students who have not spoken okay uh we'll have up to three students speaking now i think we have two students who like so now we have a third thank you very much uh again [Music] um thank you to everybody um who has listened hopefully learned and listened with an open heart um the mike is yours my name is sophia farwell uh i'm a junior at wauwatosa west high school this year and i live on 97 34 ridge boulevard just off the menominee river parkway uh because i am a junior i took health class last year's sophomore year and to complete be completely honest i was shocked at the lack of inclusive education i received during the
136human growth and development unit the vast majority of the unit focused on heterosexual behaviors and pregnancy i had expected that high school human growth and development but would have been more inclusive than the previous classes that i had had but it was simply more of the same yes we had one day where we discussed gender and sexual identity but the lesson to me felt rushed and we didn't really bring it up again the fact that the proposed plan includes many necessary changes to this outdated curriculum is an immense relief to me at a personal level as a bisexual person i know that i personally would have felt more included last year in my health class had there been the kind of inclusion that the new curriculum presents the critically important edition of gender inclusive language
137and identity education for kids as young as third graders ultimately will make kids more accepting of themselves or people that are different from them not indoctrinate them as seems to be the viewpoint of some people i know that a lot of the opposition to this change is based on the grounds parents decide what their kids learn the reality is that even with this change they still do parents still have the opportunity to opt out of these human growth and development lessons and therefore have the ability to censor what their children learn if they disagree with the proposed measures they can take their student out of the lesson in fact by trying to prevent this change they're actively stopping other parents from choosing to let their children have an inclusive education that's a member of the
138lgbtqia plus community and a student of this district i implore the school board to vote yes on this curriculum change to support and educate all students of wauwatosa no matter their gender identity or sexual orientation [Applause] [Music] hello my name is chris um i live near roosevelt i would not like to give my actual address um i'm a sophomore at wauwatosa east high school or i'm gonna be a sophomore um this whole thing just seems quite preposterous to me um with it if parents are able to opt out why we need to have this discussion at all now i understand why but like it feels a little annoying and as a trans and gay student who in who was taught by one of my friends about gay people which led me down a path of
139discovery through the internet and through media and like i didn't get any information at school until like seventh or eighth grade um through my gsa teacher i was like lucky enough to have miss mohassy in sixth grade to do my um human growth and development was great um that was all i really got in middle school besides a short lesson in seventh grade so it's overall not taught enough um what else do i have hold on sorry i'm a little uh you're doing great um a lot about i with including lgbt people in um education um uh it increases knowledge of why things like saying that's gay instead of that's bad it's wrong or calling people slurs wrong um like uh it it's like education is very important i've had people use slurs that they
140don't know what it means because they haven't been educated i think education is extremely important for people sorry this is all over the place but thank you hello good evening i'm zachary wachek i live at 984 west argonne drive i'm a rising senior at wauwatosa west um and uh i see him pronouns i am cisgendered but i wanted to come up today to speak um in support of the um new human growth and development plan um it has taken uh a lot of the things i've learned about communities that are um not necessarily sharing the same traits that i do have not come from school district they have come from friends they have come from other organizations that i am part of um but i wish that those things had come from that place because
141hearing things from teachers is a very important thing to receive your information from they are the people who you are taught to trust and learn from and so when you cannot hear that information um about people different than you from those trusted people it can be very hard to then um accept and understand those people as you continue um throughout your life in middle school we talked about um the relationship between boys and girls and what's hard about being each of them um but we did not even acknowledge the possibility that there was more than one of those two options and until high school i did not have any good friends who were outside of those two standards um and to not have any exposure to that regardless of whether i knew someone who was
142um made it um much different when you enter a place where um a lot of people were very accepting of that um i'll clarify that i went to the montessori school so it was a very limited number of people with whom i was in a classroom with so i would like to come here to support this because i think that especially for those people who might be in those more smaller communities especially like the montessori school that it is valuable to those people so that they have exposure to what they need to continue on to high school and further on thank you thank you and thank you for your patience i know you've been waiting a while oh it's fine it's friends um my name is colleen zeidler 2130 north 91st street i have a
143student in the district who was too young to participate in a survey so i should have voted on his behalf i suppose um i have been back and forth multiple times with dr marvel you were taller than me with dr marvel dr means and the board regarding the fact that the curriculum document that we were all asked to review was changing during the two-week review process i have three different versions of the grade seven lessons some have power points some don't some have brand new anatomical diagrams that were added three hours before the review period ended there are still omissions in the curriculum document i know of at least two videos that were listed in the lesson plan that were never posted for public review as of tonight they are still not available on the
144document before you the curriculum team will tell us that they were making changes according to community feedback but that is not how the process is supposed to be done dr marvel told me just today that in hindsight she should have removed the editing function of the document but since she did not the process was compromised in addition they are knowingly violating pi district policy 2210 by not having an external audit done prior to the prior to adopting a new curriculum they will tell us that 2210 does not apply here because human growth and development falls under policy 2414 for their legal counsel but their own summary document states quote the curriculum development process for h hgd was guided by policy 2210 as well as wisconsin statute 118.019 policy 2210 also states that program materials are
145to be made available for two weeks period for community review when you have anatomical diagrams being freshly added three hours before the designated community review time ends this was a clear violation of the policy and best practices in general bottom line it is a policy mess the school board doesn't care the board knows there are errors on this curriculum they know that the process was sent incorrectly they know that there was just cutting corners all around yet most of them sit here tonight ready to vote yes on this curriculum that is just not ready dr means and dr marvel know all of this too and are still willing to put their academic integrity on the line by going forth with this mess of a curriculum process they claim to be listening to us but the
146parents of wauwatosa are tired of our district being on the news for policy scandals and this is proving to be the beginning of yet another one hi my name is teresa tupel my address is 2125 north 91st street in wauwatosa wisconsin um so i'm proud to say proud to say that i am a graduate of wabatosa west class of 2019. um i'm currently entering my senior year at the milwaukee school of engineering with a degree in software engineering i have hopes and aspirations to come back to wauwatosa after i graduate to have a family of my own i like to think of myself as a product of wauwatosa i am your child i am your daughter i am your friend i am your neighbor however after listening to the last school board meeting i have
147never felt so unsafe and unwelcome in wauwatosa as someone who's experienced issues with mental illness like depression and adhd as well as being part of the lgbt community the amount of ableism bigotry and misinformation is not the wabatosa i know i came here because i can talk about my previous experience as a student with the previous curriculum with all due respect it was quite disappointing there was minimal discussion on consent and sexual abuse in high school i barely knew about the forms of birth control which is critical for someone like me whose mother has had uterine cancer and that is part of the treatment and also i can tell you as a young adult today study after study shows that abstinence-focused education does not work and it has never been more needed today and let's
148talk about that survey right because i know that we're all talking about how it's inaccurate or what not i will say i'm just frankly very disgusted that a mob of conservative uh pearl clutches led in part by scarlett johnson a failed candidate of the mequon and you heard me right not wauwatosa mequon school district has decided that she suddenly cares so much about the children of aubameyang this is not my first schoolboard meeting okay what is someone who is not a stakeholder in our district able to manipulate and validate the results of a survey to reflect her own disgusting rhetoric bigotry and misinformation do not fall for the lives of someone who only cares to try to be reelected in the future or elected in the future let's also talk about the points of misinformation
149at the last meeting brought up some by some people and actually this happened today too people are masquerading as hell professionals you can tell someone's very easily spreading misinformation because they're using the term gender ideology i find it hilarious that some people think i and other members of the lgbt community have the power to dictate your child's education trust me the suicide rates of our community would not be so high if we actually had that mark my words you can paint me in my communities groomers and monsters but no amount of the use of the word will ever make it true i am not a monster and stop exploiting victims of sexual abuse to justify your ignorance let's also talk about those math and reading scores as someone who's a stem major you cannot extrapolate
150one statistic and align it with some narrative without deeper study that is not how statistics work i have read through the entire curriculum and i encourage the board to pass this comprehensive sex ed and human growth and development curriculum thank you thank you [Applause] you are likely our last speaker in the room this evening uh we'll be going to online and then the uh the gym space for three years thank you sir understand thank you this will probably be our last speaker this evening uh in this space can we let the next speaker speak please all right my name is dianna kerr i live on 76th street and i'm a resident and a mom of a senior kindergarten student at jefferson um and i have a two-year-old with a disability who i hope will be
151able to benefit from our school district in the future um i want to thank you so much for listening and keeping an open mind i sure do not want to be here right now and maybe some of you don't either and i want to say how much i respect literally every single one of you and every single person in this room not because we all agree on everything we don't but because everyone deserves unconditional love and as i look around i don't i don't really see two sides here i see people who are actually very similar who crave belonging who feel scared sad hurt disappointed worried confused i feel all those things who are passionate about our children's well-being who want every single child to feel welcome safe and included at school like look at
152all these people who care it's awesome we are more alike than we realized uh yeah obviously this curriculum has been controversial it's triggered a flood of hurts for people who both agree and disagree with it and if that's the case for us adults how can we be sure it won't be equally painful and divisive for our kids like if the narrative continues that kids who opt out hate their lgbtqia classmates doesn't that hurt the lgbt kids the most to make false enemies out of classmates who actually love them i mean i certainly don't want my son who will passionately tell you that jesus loves everyone and he does too to be misjudged like i've been if he opts out but him aside might it actually be harder on the lgbt kids with this curriculum to
153see so many classmates potentially leaving the room than if we had a more age-appropriate curriculum where more students could be present another question to consider how will the use of this nationally controversial curriculum as well as the logistics of managing excuse me uh very nervous managing the opt-outs impact our district's ability to attract and retain exemplary educators when we're already declining academically compared to other schools and struggling to fill vacant teaching positions also how will it impact all district students which includes lgbt kids every single kid when more and more families like mine maybe leave public schools because they're told like we've been that this isn't a place for them and they're not welcome here which would further reduce our district enrollment and funding i think the most important question to ask is what are
154you going to be known for in this community and what do you want your legacy to be as a school board member do we want to keep making national news for how divided we are or do we want to do the hard work to embrace the radical middle and create a curriculum appropriate for all students without pitting them against each other if we want to proudly and honestly call this curriculum inclusive of all students i don't feel it's ready to approve as is i believe we can do better together thank you i'm going to humbly respectfully request that we reach our process here and make sure that we allow dab palette to speak she has been a committed consistent voice in this room for students with disabilities and i'd ask dearly to allow her some
155time before this is all over let her give her opinion thank you thank you for the comment we are going to i know missed out did you speak on this last time [Music] i believe you did so i'm going to go to the other two you're right and i had additional information after um i'm basically wanting to speak for the one percent i'm gonna go to the other two spaces i i value your your perspective but we are i'm gonna stick right now to kind of our original plan thank you mr meyer um thank you so much for respecting that um we will go to comments first in the let's go online and do three online comments and we'll do three comments in the uh gym after that uh and then we'll be wrapped up
156for a public comment for this evening and please state your name and your address my name is ann cowling and i live at 8537 glencoe circle my children were educated in the wauwatosa schools and graduated from tosa east although my kids are out of school now i was curious about the new human growth and development curriculum and some weeks back i spent a few hours reading over the entire thing clicking on all the links from kindergarten through high school and i was very impressed by how thorough sensible and inclusive it is in fact i wish my children could have learned from this curriculum heck i wish i had been able to learn from it myself back when i was a kid education changes education has to change here's an example when he was old enough
157to learn how to read and write my grandfather had to learn how to hold a pencil using his right hand even though he was clearly left-handed he was never allowed to write using his left hand as you can imagine that was extremely difficult for him and although he went on to a successful career as a christian missionary and medical educator being forced to use his don non-dominant hand created lifelong problems with stuttering as it did for many left-handed children who were treated the same way but in those days left-handedness was frowned upon it was considered wrong the majority right-handed people looked down on the minority left-handed people and pushed them to conform it breaks my heart to think of my sweet grandfather as a little boy being pushed to do something that felt as unnatural
158as uncomfortable as writing with his non-dominant hand all while feeling that there was something wrong with him that he was somehow inferior or deviant fortunately by the time my mother entered school the bias against left-handed people had eased and unlike her father she was allowed to hold a pencil and form letters with her left hand when you know better you do better the fact is we are not all the same difference is not a bad thing it's a good thing the wauwatosa community is full of all kinds of people all kinds of kids all kinds of families we know something that people didn't know back when my grandfather was a child diversity makes us better more interesting more lively i urge the school board and our entire community to embrace difference and not fear it
159let's give our children the kind of curriculum they deserve thank you thank you scott shelton please state your name and your address oh scottsdalenet815 glenview avenue and i'm a parent of a freshman and senior at tosa west can you hear me got the floor is yours we're listening in wrapped anticipation thank you um so i reviewed everything from the senior kindergarten up to the high school and to me uh i like to compare stuff to denmark where they make these little plastic bricks but uh they have a a national campaign that's sex week and it starts in kindergarten and i've researched a lot of what they do and i feel like the united states is so far behind and i think that wauwatosa has a opportunity to get caught up to where we already should
160have been on teaching this new curriculum that's about all i have to say i think that this is very well written looks good and i would encourage you to vote yes to approve it so that we can stop being a joke to the rest of the world so that is all thank you we'll have one more online comment rachel please state your name and your address hi my name's rachel h scott i live on milwaukee avenue here in tosa i'm a tosa resident and a parent of a current sophomore at tosa east and a 2020 grad of tosa east i've also been a family physician for the past 15 years i wanted to just make it clear that the information that was quoted by some of the community members who spoke is fringe quote unquote
161science that is based on conservative religious views and not actual scientific evidence the science is clear treatment and recognition of trans and lgbtqia plus children saves lives and improves mental health anything outside of this is simply not scientifically based my kids learn things that i may not agree with at school my job is to discuss that with my children at home and to help them figure out what they and we believe it's a balance for each family and the public school system should present scientifically based curriculum that is not based on any one group's religious beliefs that's why my children attend public school this is an excellent science-based curriculum and the board should approve it our final three comments will be from the auxiliary gym and then i'll be coming back to the board for
162comment and vote hi my name is riley brewer i live at 109 49 west wisconsin avenue here in tosa uh i have a daughter at underwood elementary and i hear a lot of comments tonight of people expressing concern that this curriculum is going to give kids problematic ideas it's going to encourage um self identities that are going to later hurt those kids in life this fear that this curriculum is going to put kids at some kind of risk but i feel like the risk is greater if we don't adopt it because representation matters and it matters not just to those lgbtq kids who are sitting on the floor of this board meeting right now and their friends and their peers it matters also to their cisgender and straight peers as well that they see the
163value of their classmates as human beings as people with real value to these communities into their classrooms that if we pretend that these students do not exist that their identities are not real then we make those kids out to be frauds and we other them in a way that disvalues them i i i think it is more damaging to hide this reality from our students if we want to welcome them uh into a community of inclusion we need to acknowledge the existence of these students and i think the fact that we have several people who have come in from outside our community no less to stand surrounded literally by these lgbtq students and to discriminate their identity and just value their humanity to their faces speaks to that point that my generation the generation that
164came before me did not have this inclusivity in our education we did not have this representation and many of us walked away from it with a fear of the other and a willingness to discredit them as human beings not for my children i want them to see the value in all of their classmates thank you good my name is alex coletta i live at one zero one zero zero west blue mountain road here in wauwatosa previously i lived at 2210 north 73rd street i've been a wauwatosa resident my wife and i for the last 35 years so i feel i am a stakeholder i'm not against sex education but after reviewing the outline and lesson plan for the human growth and development program i fear they'll do more harm than good to our children discussing
165oral and animal sex is not appropriate for fifth and sixth graders discussing gender ideology to elementary students will cause confusion and not clarity i'm concerned about the overload for our teachers it should be the parents responsibility and not necessarily the schools to educate children in terms of family values sexual responsibility and personal growth and development i thank you for the opportunity express my views and they may differ from other people but that's the beauty of our country that we can express our views god bless you all amen last public comment of the night on this topic my name is pat masterson i live at 2545 north 84th street i'm a 21-year resident of wauwatosa i'm active in our community as a coach and a faith-based men's ministry i support families leadership development and serve homeless
166shelters i'm a husband and a parent of a teenage girl the world is a complex place and it's changed a lot in the last 10 years i personally believe every man woman and child are made in the image and likeness of god i believe in respecting the dignity of all human beings are worthy of respect as parents and community members we have the responsibility to support the dignity of our school-aged children by providing them a safe environment where they can achieve grow and thrive we need to educate our children in an age-appropriate way i believe that educators should focus on really important topics like reading stem music and the arts the topic of human biology would also fall in this category the topic of human sexuality i believe crosses a line into an area which
167is not a clear set of facts because it involves emotions personal decisions and family values i don't pretend to understand the insights and the decisions that each family makes the hgd curriculum as written crosses the line by including topics where some people may see this as part of our culture while others may see this as directly opposed to their family values i respectfully ask the board to vote no for three reasons one provide more time to allow parents to weigh in two allow for a more balanced dialogue around age-appropriate material specifically the k5 through sixth grade curriculum and third protect the innocence of our children thank you i want to bring it back to the board um mr meyer asked earlier and on this topic public comment is now closed thank you um mr meyer
168asked that folks have an opportunity to kind of as we consider i want to go back and actually the board may have some additional questions as a result of public comment so if the board has any questions at this time anyone have any clarifications are i'm gonna go okay i'm gonna go miss people uh thank you i have a clarification on the policy implications that were asked about tonight and the possibility of what would happen if we delay the vote by 30 days would the administration be able to respond well in regards to policy we've received council that the development of human growth and development is governed under 24 14. if we utilize policy 2210 steps within that policy were not followed in this development and so that's why the distinction is very important um
169so that's the answer to the policy question in regards to let me just clarify yeah so we have com we have conflicting administrative guidelines no i think 2210 talks about the development of curriculum in a very general sense 2414 talks about the development of human growth and development curriculum in a very specific sense and so when we look when i look at the policies that govern this work i believe it falls under 2414 and not 2210. it's also very important to know that if we utilize policy 2210 technically based on the process that has been used we haven't followed every step of the process in 2210 we have followed the process in terms of developing this curriculum under 22 or excuse me 24 14. so that's the difference between the policies and then again just
170to clarify the more specific policy for human growth and development it's 2414. we have followed that yes okay so the second question what if the board wishes to delay for additional time under 22 [Music] the other policy i think i'm going to defer to dr marble on this but i believe it would be more than 30 days in terms of a delay because according to that policy it states that there's the first step is to have an external audit conducted and the findings of that audit is then brought to the board to give you an overview of the gaps very similar to what we've done with our curriculum instruction and assessment audit and our our special education and student services audit so according to that policy that's the first step then those findings are handed
171off to um they're handed off to a curriculum committee and i think that's the distinction between the two policies and that's the that's the kind of the fork in the world because under 2414 and also the state statute it clearly states that an external committee is the driver of the work not an external audit so i think the nuances of the two policies while similar they are different and i think that's why um it it makes sense for people to defer to 10 but when you look at the was the the wisconsin statute of 118 i think it's uh specifically parent five it clearly states that the external committee and that's why that committee is so important the external committee is the the committee that's steering the process it is supposed to represent the community
172because this is such a sensitive topic um and so that's um i think that's the distinction between the two policies thank you and so this is why i'm asking the question because there there have been changes and the community would like more time to review the information it seems so depending and because of you know the summer vacation so i i mean what if i mean just to allow further community input to this curriculum that could be valuable into the curriculum development and creating a better base of understanding versus you know divisiveness i wouldn't want that i've never wanted that would would that be possible in 30 days and still be able to i don't know what the time frame would be but still be able to work with the staff after opening day on
173implementing some of the curriculum in our current school year so i believe we need to implement a revised curriculum in our current school year on the timetable but i do realize that the quickness of how this was brought to the board for community feedback you know i think we could take a look at it if my colleagues would agree to that we could wait a little bit longer i just don't know what the administration would would you support that and could you work with that we will work with whatever guidance that you give us um depending upon the timeline of everything that may impact our ability to have a revised curriculum for our first trimester for our sixth graders and so to be consistent we potentially would have to go through um this next school
174year for our sixth graders with what is currently in place um rather than anything that was being revised um again depending upon the timeline we might also be able to adjust the lessons for 10th grade that doesn't come up until december and if we're talking 30 days we that still should allow us enough time to look at elementary and um seventh and eighth grade ms b field mask what in the next 30 days would you be looking for well i'm only looking for and i'm just i'm i'm a board member who wants to bring every voice to the table as much as possible and you know that's my history and so i i can empathize with all of the parents and everybody out there who's been on you know summer vacation and it's august and
175they've only really had two weeks and we've been making changes so i do agree with that i and but i also it's a deal breaker for me if sixth graders can't have the new curriculum because that's a you know that's a pivotal year as well so if we can still accomplish with giving some time for a better balance and more opportunity for people to look at the information especially parents and caregivers um that would be good for me i just don't you know i just wanted to ask a question any other poor commentary question are you is it a vote explanation or uh both it extends on mrs muschmelt's compliment perhaps as well because her comment the motivations behind her comment aligned with my boat explanation okay now depending upon how we proceed my board
176could change understand um i'm going to see if there's any other comments that are not connected to blood explanation [Music] if that's okay and then we'll come back to you mr wire so just to reiterate because this was important to me dr means um legal counsel did suggest that we operated within the appropriate policy when conducting this curriculum audit yes and unfortunately we have maybe conflicting or even vague policy that exists right now that didn't initially give clear direction for the district in terms of what policy governs the development of human growth and development it is natural for someone to hear your revising curriculum go to 2210 when you are considering human growth and development however our legal counsel has stated the specific details of the law which is wisconsin statute 118.019 parens 5 stipulates
177that there's a little bit there's there's a difference that external committee that is driving and really forming the curriculum the way that the wisconsin statute is written they're representatives of the community they are the people who are the voice and it's my understanding that the process that we utilize starting almost 10 months ago invited anyone and everyone to be part of that process so that's the uniqueness of wisconsin statute point uh 118.019 parents 5 which is different than 2210 but i want to acknowledge and i think it's been pointed out during some of the comments this evening that maybe initial communication that went out referenced that we were configuring this new curriculum under 2210 if that's what people are referencing that that's not accurate the the proper policy that's governing this is 24 14. and
178when you asked a question around did we follow the process under 24 14 it's an affirmative yes we did and to be clear because we talked about this about best practices even around this curriculum development i know this because there's a jefferson parent that was our dpi consultant that helped direct and steer this work correct we had an internal auditor uh work with our curricular team the nuance of it is according to 2210 that auditor would have brought their findings to the board of education and share those with the board prior to the work moving forward the challenge with that is that the statute i'll go back to the statute the statute states that the district has an obligation of forming an external committee that external committee is the one that really digs in and
179looks at the the curriculum um and and so i think that's the nuance of of 22 the differences in the nuance between 22 10 and 24-14 and i would be remiss if i didn't know that within 24-14 there's another policy that's referenced and it's 9140 that talks about the fact that there's a a committee that is formed as a result of this work so i think there's there's but it's confusing i think we we we need a policy committee that's going to clarify the difference between 2210 and 2414. i think another speaker made this statement of you have you know i don't think a community member or parent has to have an alarm clock every three years to say it's time to look at the curriculum if we're more specific around our work in 2414
180i think that would be lifted up more um and legal council has advised that we need to do some work and differentiate 22 10 and 24 14. okay if i can just respond to your question um having been asked to serve as the board member representative on that committee um we received a binder like this the first day that sort of like laid out state statute and all the requirements um it's to say that there are mixed messages from the state on so many things within education and you know just look at our funding formula ridiculously complex right um i would say from from my perspective and i don't want to speak for other representatives but like we spent a significant amount of time looking at that statute to make sure that we were in
181compliance with that um so i would say i think because it's called curriculum um you can see why it falls under both places but there isn't another like we don't have and correct we have i'm wrong here state statute that as as explicit about ela matt and like those are the things that fall under 2210 like very specifically like the state statute is so different because how it is implemented across the state of wisconsin it looks completely different district to district to district in terms of what must be included what needs to be included and i'll just say that state statute alone needs an update because there are really problematic parts of it in terms of things that we have to teach and opt out that actually are potentially harmful to kids from an abuse
182perspective like that they wouldn't get on the opportunity to learn of potential abusive um strategies unless they were in the opt-in um portion of the content so um i don't know if you would want to add anything to that but it's it's a big binder of like a million things that we had to sort of stay within i would just state that ms sprayley's statement is i would say yes and the the wisconsin statute is clear you because i've heard this from the community as well we're listening why even teach this this is such a sensitive personal family oriented topic why are you even teaching this as a school system the statute states clearly if your school district has a policy then you must follow the rest of our statute in the wauwatosa school district
183there's a policy now there's some school districts in wisconsin that don't have a policy around human growth and development and so the topic of should you even teach this that that's now something a board can wrestle with and say we don't have a policy so we don't have to teach this this is uh this is a religious issue or a family issue but in this district we've had a policy for a long time and that policy is driven by 9140 and it's also driven by statute so there's process that's guiding 2414 that is a little different than 2210 sure thank you can i have one more comment to the person in the audience who brought up about this idea of um i think it actually might have been on the phone about like should we
184have to remember when these things come up that's a completely fair comment and this board needs to be held accountable for that um i i will tell you from my perspective as a board member what i have learned over the last two years with dr means coming on board is that um there are lots of pieces of curriculum that have come before us and that we've looked at and we've engaged in and so sometimes assumptions are made that all the curriculum that should be coming to us is coming to us and that was not happening similarly we had some challenges with with financial stuff and and when we had the audit you know things came came to be and so it is fair for you to hold us accountable i absolutely hear that um and
185there's it's one of those you don't know what you don't know until someone points it out to you and i think that this board has really worked with dr means over the last year to get better on processes to get better on systems and structures and to not uh dr means joked earlier i'm the one that keeps saying trust but verify so when we make a mistake we need to own up to it because we are accountable to you um [Music] in terms of your question miss befeld i think before you oh i'm starting from mrs newfoundland question i had a follow-up yes at once please thank you for your patience with me um i am a strong supporter of h lgbtqia2 s plus individuals and rights and lifestyle um so let's make that clear
186everybody i'm i'm not saying anything negative about anything there if this vote by me were just about what i think my vote would be yes as many of you know from hearing me over the years i was a widowed parent of two girls from age five and 22 months i sure wish we had this available for them they would have been better off i would have been better off but that is only my view and this program curriculum whatever we choose to put it under is like a one-of-a-kind first time we've had so much division and so much difference of opinion from and i know there have been some negative some comments that were not like up to our standards that said there are there's opposition from people of good will who are trying to
187be respectful and i have to represent them as well i have to represent people who have hold different values from mine because this gets into for my thinking the privacy of the family now we have for example a letter signed by 370 residents three were members of the external committee opposing this i have to honor their sincere opposition of goodwill now this gets to mrs meuvelt's request and i don't want to misstate your request ms mufild that there be some more time here i would modify that in my perspective to say that we have only one solution strategy here we have only one paradigm and then the other paradigm is opt out and i don't think that's enough for all of the people who have a heartfelt disagreement with this i i'm i'm gonna throw
188out some idea like could we have an external committee of the opposition to develop a choice program that we have our main program here because evidently there is a majority of parents and students who want this but an alternate program of substance not simply opt out and i don't know how we get to that i don't know how long it would take but if we pass this tonight i don't want there to be only opt out i would like to see a sincere organized effort and just to coin the phrase external committee of the opposition okay you don't like this that's fair tell us what you would like to have that we offer you know a second path and i think we're a district of means of resources of abilities we could offer a second
189path now sure there's going to be classes where somebody in the chair on the right is from the one path and somebody in the chair on the left is from the other path and they might talk well that's what kids do anyway you know there's all kind of stuff going back and forth between kids that you know it's amazing what they bring home with what they heard that we we didn't know was they were talking about just amongst kids so i i for me i would like to see a second program that people could choose and we can't have a hundred programs i get that but we sure could do two programs and the external committee of the opposition to this program okay tell us what you want i'd even say we'd authorize the start
190of this main program here if we in good faith proceed to develop a second program in parallel thank you that's interesting so for clarification sake administratively it would there will be three options for families then because there will still be families who will opt out there will be an alternative to the curriculum that's being proposed tonight and then there will be the curriculum that's being proposed tonight is that what i'm hearing yes and i certainly am not proposing this for anything else that we do this is very much but this is we all know we haven't seen this before this kind of heartfelt disagreement sure i mean this isn't about how many open enrollment kids which is a big deal this isn't about how many elementary schools we have which is a big deal this
191is deeper more personal than anything we've ever had in 20 years i have a question if if i may maybe miss fraley can answer this um but wouldn't we still have to follow that state statue and there's still i think we've seen themes and topics right around masturbation around um anal oral and and vaginal sex that are still mandated by the statue right that we would still have to include even in this lesson or else we'd be out of we'd be in violation of a state statute is that correct may i say [Music] i'm a lawyer the law is important but i don't want to pivot this on legal analysis in the room here tonight on the fly at the table i think if we were to say law firm represents us tell us how
192to do legally a second you know paradigm so we have offered two choices here where we've been a district about choices for a long time tell us how tell us what we can do and then within the law we do that other paradigm okay i don't want to you know do do you know i'm opposed to this so i'm going to find some legal thing to stop it no no i don't i'm not going there tonight not me anyway so okay thanks i i'm struggling with that mr meyer because i do feel like this curriculum you can literally peace out lesson by lesson what you want to have your child engage in or opt out of so i do feel like it's a really flexible curriculum and allows for that family choice i struggle with
193how this would actually be implemented if we had sort of a three-prong curriculum how that would stretch our teachers and our staff when we know all of the struggles we've already faced in the last year this just doesn't feel like kind of the the the thing that that we should be maybe focusing all of this effort and energy and when families do have options for for literally every lesson and they can talk about we're giving them materials so if they opt out they are very welcome to pick and choose from those materials what they want to talk about at home i hear you but your arguments have not been persuasive on opposition in the community and i actually don't think opt-out is much of a choice i mean really so i mean yeah it's it'd
194be really hard to do this but i'll do one of those platform things we do hard things here well towards the right okay so thank you so is there i wanna we've got an agenda still beyond this too um i wanna if the board has any emotions that they want to share that we might entertain as a group otherwise i'm ready to call the question so are you as chair suggesting you would entertain a motion to require the convening of a second external committee to propose an alternate paradigm to choose from getting a little tricky here on the word smithing here right yeah i i don't know if you would have to re convene another group i think you would convene the external group with the charge of developing an alternative curriculum to what they've
195already created that is more in alignment with some of the comments we've heard from the community i think that's what you procedurally to stay within 24 14 that's what you would do you would keep the same committee but charge that committee with creating an alternative curriculum would you you know with people may i speak i'm sorry doug joseph okay um [Music] are the is the majority of that committee are they of a perspective that they could entertain an alternate choice decision making process i mean some people validly so in goodwill are so believing of a certain path that they're they're not the people you'd want you know developing all the alternate no i don't know that i wasn't in the media i don't know i don't think we can speak to that okay yeah what
196what i would say it's great conversation what i would say is that i think it's slide 32 in the presentation but this slide that has the final statement that was actually read a few hours ago by one of the committee members it states upon review reviewing public comment so they've reviewed opposite they reviewed all the comments received via survey results and considering the viewpoints of all committee members the external committee recommends by majority that the school board adopt the human growth and development curriculum with the modifications outlined so i think they've spoken now now with that being said i think they're also a very committed group they're very professional and if there's a charge given to administration to go forth and create an alternative curriculum i i think they would do it my only uh
197caveat to the board would be we've we've been here before uh we were here if you remember around december uh when it was time to decide on avid and the board gave us the charge to create or create our own um curriculum if you remember so this feels similar in a way i i don't know if it feels like deja vu all over again i would say mr meyer you're welcome to make your okay motion and there may be a second or not they're going to be votes to move it forward or not the doctor means how much time would the process take i don't think it would take ten months uh i continue to make eye contact with the curriculum team and they're looking at me like you should stop talking um but i
198i would just say that it wouldn't be 10 months i think your your your consideration is thought-provoking and very intellectually stimulating to me it's it's something to think about i just don't know what type of capacity we have to take on that to take on that that duty for this year even if there was a longer runway for us to come back a year from now with the alternative curriculum i think that that would even feel different uh to me in terms of being able to pace it out a little bit more my motion would need a deadline thank you so my request is just to allow uh another time period until a second meeting in september [Music] for the community and parents especially the elementary parents and um you know the well all parents
199to really be able to take a little deeper dive into this curriculum and give us feedback that's sharon can you frame that as a motion uh i can um so the date for second meeting is september 26th 26th yes ma'am [Music] i motion to table the current um proposal until september 26th is there a second second more discussion please be phil you're sorry let's really keep looking right at you i think my only fear is um we got 100 pages of feedback um i'm curious who would be making the decision in terms of the revisions to the curriculum because the external committee and i did not specifically go to that meeting for a reason um gathered and said that they were going to take some of that into account um but i question whether or
200not it will be to the level that will feel satisfying and so i want to i don't want us to do something that will end up feeling disingenuous um [Music] and i also hear you on the it was summer and all of these things like these are all very fair things and we also let folks know when this would be happening months ago um so not ideal could our process have been better always um [Music] i just i i wonder how much it i wonder if it would change enough for for folks who are not feeling heard right now to feel like they were hurt or does it feel like we're just pacifying people and saying we're going to take more time um if it's not going to end up like is there a different
201group that's going to look at it because it went through external internal and curriculum counsel um so i i guess i just want to be as upfront as possible about what that process would actually include and do we envision that it would make any uh significant maybe isn't the right word change i'm not thinking about this as the culmination of a 10-month process and there's a phrase in qualitative research saturation and sufficiency i can't imagine what i could possibly hear that i haven't already heard um i'm sure there's people who are unaware of the curriculum i there's always people i don't know who they are and i'm not sure how they're going to hear in the next month if they haven't heard already um so my perspective is uh we've had a really pretty robust
202conversation uh and discussion as a community and we've engaged the community as the external review team who set all the outcomes as curriculum council and two and a half weeks of public feedback um i feel pretty informed as to where the community stands on this one for myself i suppose my question would be um it was clearly obvious that our data was compromised would we even be able to put safeguards in place to collect data from only wauwatosa residents within that time frame which i don't know that we could i am it's mine i have another comment but i'm not sure what compromise data means you know influenced by by folks who weren't connected to the district well the staff said they filtered it yeah the new right the the new so would they have
203to go through that process again well the term compromise carries a lot of insinuations and i i is is it representative of what of the people you want to or we want even to express opinions i think that's a better way to say it compromised by something nefarious or and if we're going to say that we better be able to support it sure i mean i think we there from both sides i think that there were groups from both sides both supporting and opposing this curriculum that got statewide and national nationwide access to the google link that was therefore they were able to provide feedback and i think like just myself going through you know the over 100 pages of feedback um it was really challenging to discern which were community members and students of
204wauwatosa and who we're not no sir thank you for your commentary i okay i don't want to live and die based on a debate over what compromise means or what happened there may i comment on the underlying motion let's let's move on the motion and then i'm going to call but i would like to amend the motion i mean the state i haven't had a chance to speak on the motion yet so my objective is is not to modify the proposal before us i want to vote yes on the proposal before us and i want an alternative proposal so if i make a motion to amend you met motion for amendment it would be to say in the time frame specified report back to the board on the feasibility of proposing an alternate curriculum and
205then at that time in september 21st 26th 21 6th 26th that we hear that report on the feasibility of a second choice of substance not just opt out the second choice of substance and what that timeline would be so you can vote on the underlying voice so no new information i'm looking to get the yes on this because i like it one of the things that's interesting that we haven't heard tonight and there was a comment made about the radical middle and i would i would articulate i come at this from an interesting standpoint of growing up in an evangelical church in school where there was no sexual education curriculum at all and then now being a in a liberal religious tradition that is much more progressive so i'm curious might we have two or
206three options then because this i would articulate in my review of it is the radical middle and i'm curious if then what we present is a curriculum that many in the community maybe didn't voice tonight but they're articulating this gets us part of the way there but they may not be happy that we're still not further along others who are very uncomfortable with how far this goes so there isn't two pathways here there is at least three i see i'm not sure we can deliver on that so i would further complicate and money the waters for us that are there two are there three i would propose that we are at the radical middle and i come at that from being at the radical on each side okay i'm too ignorant to know what radical
207middle east or what you're talking about i believe it's this oh okay so um you know so i'm only wanting to honor a division in the community to give a second choice and to define my desire as to be essentially producing three or more choices isn't hearing what i'm saying and so um i need to speak in a little more plain language for somebody of my limited abilities so i'm moved to amend the amendment to require on that september date as stated in the amendment that the um administration report back on the feasibility of and timeline for providing a second choice and i so move [Music] is there a second [Music] second any poor comment that's really so i think where i'm struggling here is if i think back to where there was the most
208disagreement in the external committee it was around gender it was around sexual orientation and um i actually at first i want to say i really love the thinking outside the box like the like what are the other options like let's push ourselves to think beyond that um and i think where i'm struggling is is the is this other option that might make a a group of parents feel better about what their children are learning is it actually income in conflict with what we have said as a board is science or is reality so if you've got kids in one classroom that are learning that uh gender stereotyping is not positive and that you know there are kids that are identified as non-binary and then you've got kids in another classroom who are learning the way
209i grew up there are men and there are women and they get married and there's no anything in the middle are we actually creating more conflict like for kids in in schools and and this is you all got to know like this is a struggle like this is none of this is easy answers um and so i'm hearing the option but from a public school perspective are we actually then saying we're teaching religious belief versus science and that's where that's where i struggle because we are a public school [Music] thank you miss fraley for saying that i'm happy to provide lots and lots of peer-reviewed evidence-based research that demonstrates inclusive curriculum is best for all students it reduces bigotry it includes it increases inclusion it reduces mental health difficulties and we all sat and talked
210about our strategic plan which has a whole arm that includes diversity equity inclusion and accessibility and i would argue that not including all of our students is not being inclusive it's not holding true to our entire mission statement so i would absolutely disagree about having an alternative curriculum i think families may opt out if this is against their family values or their religious beliefs we are a public school we teach evidence-based science mr meyer then i'll i think i'll call the question these two arguments from miss fraley and dr hoyt presume that you know the content of what the alternative proposal will be and there could easily be whatever atheists people of different religious persuasions um who who would need something different and it's not going to be a religious paradigm it will be something
211different be it timing be it you know some changes in specific content i you know you know i don't know be it who's in the room when they teach it i mean we don't know what they propose so i'm just sitting here saying and i'll be like cold financial here we can't afford to lose 300 students on the september enrollment count so um we need to talk about working together inclusion well i would say folks in opposition you get one alternative you got to figure it out you got to populate this committee with the voices of the opposition i don't think it's very sincere to populate the committee with the voices of a majority of people who propose this proposal because they don't agree and they don't want anything differently so i mean just good
212faith try to come up with a way to keep as many families in the district as possible and offend the fewest families possible as i said i would put my children in this program that you're proposing tonight but i cannot expect other people to agree with me can i answer one question miss fraley and then we're going to call the question mr meyer i'm going to ask you to re-read it my question is for you dr means because one of the things that is in the state statute is specifically that if students opt out there is the opportunity for them to receive religious instruction during that time and mike you're i i appreciate you calling me out i was basing those comments on the the vast majority of feedback being grounded in christianity and gender
213identity um so i'm curious dr means if you know or dr marvel of any other districts that have done that successfully because my takeaway based on my experience within education around the country is that is often a a little add-in that they put into a statute but nobody actually does it um so i'm curious if you are aware of any place that has that opt-out opportunity that has been made available i have not personally seen it i have heard of it in wisconsin okay where in smaller communities a minister at a church will say i'll work with that group of students who are opting out and and they work with the school administration to find a time to deliver instruction that's more aligned to their beliefs i've heard of it i think that would be
214very complex in a community the size of the wall of childhood okay thank you so we have [Music] a motion and then we have an amended motion both of which have been motioned and seconded um ms b phil do you have your motion written down by chance uh the new motion the admitted motion well i might come back to you if the amended motion doesn't work so we'll be back there but we're going to start with mr meyer's amended motion okay mr meyer can you read it again well i'll ask for friendly leave to wordsmith it here on the fly it won't be exactly what i said before but the spirit of it is the same on september 26th the committee [Music] the administration [Music] on september 26 the administration will report back to the
215board on feasibility and timeline for a second additional proposal as a choice for the opposition to the current proposal both proposals would be implemented that last sentence it's not a to propose a different proposal and we'd want to pick that one it's how do i i do do we need that last phrase in there to say both proposals would be implemented so my thinking would be i'm curious if you would be open to the idea of this passes this evening as presented and if you were requesting a second proposal to come forward to the board on the 28th that the board would consider at that time for implementation [Music] i don't think that we can say that the board will accept anything now before seeing it and considering it we could articulate that we would
216ask the administration to come back on that date on a future date okay the underlying motion was to pause until september 26th i'm amending that to say at the end of the september 26 timeline um a choice proposal would be presented to us that would leave us with two two sets of curriculum okay um any questions from the board on what you'd be voting on it's beautiful thank you i like the wording feasibility because we may come back and [Music] it may not be feasible right or and or it may be feasible in 10 months but not in 60 days and that would be what we'd be told okay we're going to start the main program this year if you want a choice it's going to take another 10 months so the opposition be patient
217something's coming for you opt out for 10 months we'll bring you the a choice program in 10 months well i i'm sorry but i just have to explore i don't want it to also be disingenuous either that we if it's not feasible and we've seen this when we were doing cobit options if it's not feasible then we disappointed some you know some citizens and i don't i don't want that either so i think from a feasibility standpoint i can speak confidently for the or academic academic performance team it is clear we could bring something back this time next year that's an alternative pathway that that is i believe that that is possible that is something we could do to try to bring something back this year would be i think that that would be the
218feasibility conversation we would have is it possible yes we would have you know ironically we're supposed to talk about strategic planning tonight it may result in us pausing certain components of the strategic plan to focus on this so is it feasible absolutely um and i think that's what dr marble was saying with her response of we'll take the direction of the board there there's consequences if you choose to to ask us to to accelerate and have this conversation for an alternative curriculum can we do it do we have the the capacity no will we do it absolutely but it will mean that it's at the cost of something in that strategic plan under strategic goal number one which as we've heard from stakeholders they want us to focus on reading and writing and math and
219and those things that would be the that would be the the trade-off i think it makes so much more sense to gather all of this data about who opts out what what pieces of the program they're opting out of and reconvened in a year or we can decide to do it in the january 2024 time frame and then use actual data to drive our decisions about how we might modify our curriculum moving forward and then it also doesn't interrupt our really really aspirational and important strategic plan i'm gonna call the vote on this one um i just want to clarify what we're voting on so we're voting to table the vote tonight we are to ask for the feasibility of a second program there's two votes needed on two amendments an amendment and an amendment
220to the amendment we need to vote on this on my amendment which says when september 26 comes we get a report back on feasibility and timeline for a choice so the initial vote is so we voted until on on september 26th what we would get on september 26 is the first vote this the second vote is actually on mrs meuvel's motion right mrs mufild yes to pause till september 26th so hers is the pause of september 26th mine is though what are we waiting to get on december 26th so if you vote no on mine you still have to vote on the pause so right that's where i just we all have the same so tonight so could we vote yes on yours and no to miss me fields or they go hand in hand
221because we're pausing or his motion is to also pause it but to get that additional information if you vote no on miss mean votes they're both a no someone could motion something else later okay so but you do have to hold it in mind first because it's it's an amazing amendment yeah we got to reverse engineer it back down so thank you for taking the time mr meyer can you one more time explain your amendment okay on september 26th the administration will report back to the board on feasibility and timeline for a second additional proposal as a choice for the opposition to the current proposal so in discussion we'd explain we'd find out in september 26 whether we have to go with only one proposal or we could actually go with two proposals and and
222we could agree to say yes on the current proposal as is and tell them the good faith opposition of goodwill that yes we're going to come up with something for you we don't know what it is yet but you didn't like the main choice so we're going to give you a legitimate sincere choice that's that's not just to opt out we're going to give you a program you're going to have to accept the sets you're only going to have two choices then that's about as much as we can do for anybody that's kind of my explanation of what i'm trying to get us to and to clarify that would result if passed and us not approving tonight and dr means articulated that they cannot deliver a second program in the next month that that would
223take a year to develop as this one has 10 months so clarifying dr means can you call the roll yes it's freely no dr hoyk no mr meyer yes it's mewnville yes mr phillips no is willis no after joseph anger no we are now voting on ms meufeld's motion to table to gather additional information until the second meeting of august which date i'm liking september 27th september 26th yes to allow more time for existing families and everybody to review the curriculum because of the timeline of it being brought forth in august only two weeks ago and changes being made within the two weeks thank you mr phil miss fraley no dr hoyg no mr meyer yes mrs b fellow yes mr phillips no ms willis no doctor joseph anger no let's call [Music] ms fraley
224can you re-read the original motion that we started the evening with it is recommended that the school board approve the human growth and development curriculum renewal and iso move second thank you mr film dr means ms freely yes dr boyd yes mr meyer no it's mean phil yes mr phillips yes ms willis yes dr jessup anger yes the motion passes [Applause] [Music] so one of the things that i want to share and one of the things that i think we lost a little bit is in the midst of a lot of conversation the board sometimes will explain their vote or not um what i want to articulate is that this is clearly a community that cares a lot about this issue clears that love cares a lot about kids um i hope everyone had a
225chance to see the importance of engaging in democracy tonight we may not all agree um but i think more often than not people operate with a great deal of respect and care for each other um keep pushing that i want to really applaud the students um who shared some really powerful stories um in my time on the board we have tackled some hard things and i think we have done it with care for the community and care for each other and people don't always agree um i don't know if i've had a time where i walked into the boardroom and saw the students um saw my kids and i've often thought we are centering our children and doing our best for them and thank you kids i'm not you're young adults um thank you for
226sharing your perspectives tonight for voicing your perspectives whether you agree or disagree um it took a lot of bravery um and thank you i hope we continue to engage um in doing that i don't know why everyone's going the important stuff of the strategic plan and the policy committee is just around the corner um the board is going to be here for like six um thank you to my board colleagues uh for your creativeness um mr meyer while your motion did not pass i think what you are articulating and what mr phillips asked to come back to in january 2024 is really essential because i think finding that path that supports all families is really important let's take a ten minute break and we'll be back how much cards thank you yes [Music] i'm ready
227to retire i told my parents that this weekend it's like we all have day jobs oh no i don't have to i don't have that excuse for that you know it's like okay i'll write in with leanne oh um [Laughter] that your daughter no okay i kept seeing like parts and i couldn't okay she looks really grown up tell me about it seriously from last fall with this one i was like oh he's freaking tall that's cool [Music] that's [Music] and teachers i want to thank all the hearty souls to be here um i think we're pulling our pulling the meeting back together um we are going to soldier on as a as a kind of a meeting reset um next is up is the superintendent action item approval of the 2022-2025 strategic plan then
228there's board of education action items uh people and family support family support report that's a hard one to say human resources report finance and human resources discussion item and finally closing public comment so we should be wrapped if anybody can run over and grab us breakfast in a few hours it we appreciate it um what literally bless you next up is the superintendent action item approval of the 2022-2025 strategic plan jenny you can read this one out it is recommended that the school board approve the 2022-2025 strategic plan and iso move may i have a second second thank you mr spells um dr means and others who may be providing updates i have a brief update the board uh took this plan that was presented on august 8th and you made revisions during your august
22917th meeting we also had an opportunity during that august 17th uh in-service meeting to have our chief of people and family supports chief of talent and chief academic officer am i missing oh and our chief our cfo sorry um we had those four individuals in the room to guide the work i think the highlights that i would um but i would defer you to board um the board was very clear that you wanted to insert co-curricular and the mission statement and i think that was a very good catch um you added a fourth component to the vision which was to ensure an exceptional student experience um just as a side note i had an opportunity to meet with our new teachers this morning and shared that first one and it resonated with people uh they
230they really they thought that yes that's why we came to wall chosen um we inserted stakeholder input and engagement and you we took your feedback in terms of core values you added another core value net core value states or reads we believe that thriving students are encouraged to pursue their interests and talents by engaging in co-curricular and elective course offerings you talked about making sure that we're addressing the old child and ensuring that they have multiple opportunities to share their talents and and so you made significant changes in the mission vision and core values and then throughout the strategic plan you you made i believe significant additions and goal one around academic performance you added a new objective and that was to establish a student profile system that provides insight on every student's potential interest
231goals and expected growth the student profile system will provide anticipatory academic and or social emotional behavioral interventions and plans for all students that's a very forward thinking objective and in goal number two we should start with the fact that you renamed it and that it's uh you've asked us to scrub it and make sure that everything is identified as diversity equity inclusion and accessibility while we did not explicitly talk about our students with special needs and our first iteration of this plan it was clearly top of mind for us and the feedback that the only way you can ensure that things are top of mind is if it's in writing we want to express that this is top of mind for us so using the terminology of d-e-i-a was important and goal or strategic objective
2322.1 you asked us to be very specific around the students we the students and staff and i want to be very clear i think that's the reason why it was difficult for us to insert special education in this one because it talks about students and staff if you read that one um when i look at objective 2.4 you were very clear in including special education black and brown students um and that was goal number two under goal number three specifically under uh strategic objective 3.4 there was another sentence added around expanding social emotional learning curriculum into the middle schools grades six through eight you added a new strategic objective in goal number three ensure appropriate mental health behavioral responses occur when students are dysregulated at school this will include leveraging our mental health professionals to
233support students in crisis this is again an addition you made as a board and goal number four you added components under strategic objective number four to ensure that we expand mentoring to all new employees in the district and we expand opportunities for employee recognition under goal number five you were very clear and strategic objective 5.6 was re-revamped um and it now reads establish a multi-disciplinary problem-solving team or teams consistently in every school to support teachers and caregivers and meeting the needs of students with chronic behavioral challenges and goal number six you made a change and you made significant changes here again you added two strategic objectives under 6.8 it states that the boar quarterly will review resource management metrics around the revenue generated from facility rentals the purposes and the reasons for facility rentals and
234you wanted to know that to see if we were connecting with the community and how can we expand those those relationships explore methods to expand the use of district schools as the hub of the community revenue generated from and programming highlights of the recreation department annually the district will solicit vendors to participate in partnerships focused on advancing the experience of students that could range from internships to scholarship money and they review the district's percentage of minority vendors and efforts to strategically communicate opportunities uh contractual opportunity opportunities contractual relationships with a with a more broad and diverse group of vendors so that was that's a very extensive objective you added then you added a ninth um objective in goal number six and it reads quarterly the board shall review the following governance protocols review uh recommended
235district policy changes and or auditions in collaboration with the superintendent review areas of the district that have accomplished positive results through the implementation of innovative strategies and discuss how the innovate innovations can be taken to scale across the district you were very clear as a board you wanted to make sure that we're just not measuring everything in the strategic plan but we are we're lifting up innovations and and trying to find a way to take those innovations across the district and then finally the district will engage in discussions review data research regarding core programming in the district in order to positively promote innovation expand board knowledge and continue to set an aspirational vision for the future so that's a lot that you you you contributed to it was a hearty three-hour conversation i think it
236was a good collaboration with the chiefs and their feedback um but with those changes board members um we are at a point this evening where we are we're proud to say we think we're ready to have you act on the strategic plan it's a three year plan i didn't get a chance to say this august um eight most strategic plans are five years or longer we made it three years so we can continuously improve that's the core of this there was a lot of conversation around does this strategic plan tell us who we are i think in many ways it does not with your your modifications and changes there's every aspect of this organization is touched i believe by the strategic plan um i have a couple of amendments i would like to offer and
237the first is with respect to objective 2.1 now i am as i said in the in-service i am now wanting to specify as to outcomes of administration judgment on what to do first and what to do second or the degree to which equity must be provided for various populations or for particular individuals that said so you know what i'm not trying to change that we mentioned specific populations i am told this is not legal advice but i'm told there's some people with equal protection issues with that so i've just just forwarded to the superintendent my amendment and it's rather long which is why i put it in writing and it is to be inclusive of all of the things that this administration would be allowed to cover or consider when they're forming their priorities and
238making their plans on a management basis so the amendment to the 2.1 objective only to the objective heading and not to the bullet points or the key performance indicators reads as follows immediately begin to implement strategies and programs to increase for students and staff representation and the sense of belonging of the individuals with disabilities individuals of color lgbtqia2s plus individuals individuals with varied religious atheist and agnostic identities individuals of varied immigration citizenship and dreamer statuses and individuals with limited socioeconomic statuses as acknowledged in the wauwatosa school district that um okay um i had a little mix up here because i had redundant wording okay also acknowledging in the wauwatosa school district that we are on ancestral pottawatomie and menominee homeland that they were forced to seed this land in the 1830s treaties this was followed
239by decades of federal and state efforts to forcibly remove the sovereign nations from the territory through ethnic cleansing this was followed by decades of federal and state efforts to forcibly remove the sovereign nations from the territory through ethnic cleansing today the wauwatosa school district respects the inherent sovereignty of the first nations of wisconsin and recognizes the needs to excel in serving the students and staff of first nations citizenship heritage the strategies are to be completed by october 22nd so basically what i'm trying to do here is say we're not ignoring anyone that i mean we tried to be as exhaustive about a list of populations groups individuals who might have suffered i mean i'll be blunt for the fact that they're not white male like me and um but it does not specify priorities or
240choices to the superintendent and the dr means has the i'll try to send this to you again dr means i have it yeah yeah i i have a i think i goofed i was trying to get everything out of there yeah the first one has a redundant sentence a repeat okay so if you use the first one and forward it to the board so they know what my motion is so the good board can decide whether it's worthy of a second yes sir mike could you please explain the first part just again or even just say it how you said it about the problem with that okay that objective dr means could decide that an allocation of resources for what to do first or what to do second and the the amount of resources from
241a limited pie of resources that he needs to focus on a particular group i accept that what i don't want is to let anybody think that we forgot about them right and that's what this is about so everything's in here and there's some pretty controversial stuff in there about native you know native first citizens and and but this is a plan a strategic plan this is not an implementation plan it's just to say we don't want to forget about anybody and and i intentionally did not get to the bullet points or to the performance indicators i don't want to get down to the implementation choices on a management or resources basis i do want to say at the get go we care about you all and not now we're going to do our best that
242that's the point to this it's it's please you know accept my good faith good will i consulted with somebody who really knows how to worry about everybody so if everything's in here i love this i mean i think it's very inclusive and very comprehensive i just wonder if it live if that's where it lives i mean yeah i'm sorry we shouldn't be a pepsi i apologize yeah i one my question was is that where it should live in that you know i i was very um direct you know during our our end service around the strategic plan as to why and who we were naming and you know there's data and evidence to support that our black and brown students so i just wonder i i again i love this and i think it's comprehensive
243and inclusive but i don't want to detract from [Music] the fact that our district has work to do around black and brown students and staff and i don't want to detract either way i know none of us are i believe it should be stated somewhere in this document so that nobody can point to us and say you forgot about us and this is not just to be a legal protector so we really do care about everybody we really really do so we haven't forgotten about you now at the get-go on this three-year plan these are the bullet points we're doing and you know and it does mention on the second bullet it only meant only right non-white employee well i'm not getting down to that level i'm only saying here's our high level objective and
244and you know president joseph anger has reference to similar wording that's from a uw is it at uw so my friendly amendment to this would be i think mr meyer wisely shows the land acknowledgement of the university of wisconsin-madison but not wisely enough uh i would i would friend my friendly amendment would be to shift that to the university of wisconsin-milwaukee version that is milwaukee specific fun uh history knowledge information of the day it's uh it was done by the elector queenie institute electroquinee was the first kindergarten teacher in the state of wisconsin and native american so it is a advocacy center at the university of wisconsin milwaukee so my friendly amendment to this would be as we consider it that we swap out that component just for this language which is is a little
245bit uh adjusted in terms of the native american nations that we're here uh in the milwaukee okay are yours are they stated i mean it shouldn't be just between us here how do we get that to the whole so i i would be happy to uh and if you just google uwm land acknowledgement it's the university of wisconsin-milwaukee uh we acknowledge in milwaukee that we are on traditional potawatomi ho chunk and menomonee homeland along the southwest shores of mishigami north america's largest freshwater largest system of freshwater lakes and where the milwaukee menominee connect rivers meet and the people of wisconsin sovereign anishinaabe ho and mohegan nations remain present my friendly amendment to my amendment or a friendly and friendly adjustment to my amendment and i totally agree with that so if if we're all understood
246you're sharing someone we have everything and i don't know if we'll go for it but if we do go for it yeah i just really meant that into it just really um i appreciate the comprehensiveness of this and and i think i agree with you jessica that i like this i'd love maybe it's in that start like that first page um i think the question becomes for because i like i agree with this like we are we are to serve every child um and this is really good comprehensive um and going back to the the point that you were making about was 2-1 um i think the question is is do we cover it if we say immediately begin to implement strategies and programs to increase representation and the sense of belonging um for all
247students and staff particularly black and brown students you know because we are doing like we don't want to leave anybody out but we're speaking specifically to the disproportionality of this one group i would say group number two would most likely be students with special needs but that would not be for me to decide that would be for the administration to decide and look at the disproportionality to decide what's what's number two because i do think we've got to be really smart with our resources in terms of like where we're focusing our energy um and when i read this i don't think that it's we're not gonna focus on other people and i also realize that it's helpful to get more specific so i don't know if that's helpful i i mean again i really like
248it and do we use it as another um objective and have a key indicator where we're measuring those things we're using data to indicate to us do we need to allocate more resources to certain marginalized groups of students well i have a motion on the floor with a friendly edit there is not a second so uh i'll withdraw my motion i don't want to allow discussion do you want me to withdraw it in our discussion second does not mean that we're going to vote second means that we're going to discuss we could always amend the emotion afterwards okay that's me second okay so friendly motion to this is to expand it expand this with the language that mr meyer had with my friendly amendment um we've already started into the are you open to where
249that would go in this document yes i am and since you know always but especially sometimes i'm trying to help us with how we phrase things to mitigate risk of problems so as i phrased it in the year 2.1 there is risk that dr means would make a management decision that wouldn't align with the specific immediate emphasis you want but there's less risk that somebody could challenge the wording because we left somebody out so it's kind of pick your risk mitigation emphasis here that i'm really liking hearing from other board members that be really good to have this somewhere in the document okay and maybe that mitigates the risk i mean also there is legitimate sincere belief that we're still kind of short cheating on kind of we are short-changing students with disabilities with this
2502.1 and that we should have something in there that specific you know that says it out loud you know students with disabilities you know i don't know i'm trying to find a path here that we can all like vote yes and go home quicker you know because we all want the same thing i think right yeah i mean i appreciate the inclusivity and i agree that's a when you read this i mean i think we there was very similar discussion last week that there was concern that this particular how's it frame this strategic goal two talks about diversity equity inclusion and accessibility but then many of the strategic objectives are very narrow in their focus which i i both understand why that needs to be because we need to we need to be sort of
251laser focused on specific things if we want to actually make change if we do try to take too much too fast we're just going to water the whole process down and we won't do anything probably so i i understand where these decisions came from but i also do feel like you know just as somebody reading this document i thought what how did we how did we get so narrow when when there's so many different kinds of people in our schools so i really like the broader statement somewhere i'm not hung up on a particular exact set of words or a particular place in the document so i'm i'm trying to as i hope you're seeing trying to get to a yes for everybody what can we do here that's where i'm going to leave it
252with my words i'm gonna go to ms mcfadden okay thank you so where we were with strategic objective 2.1 is that we do have and we have had for several years black and brown students are not um we need to improve their student [Music] achievement that's the reason and our data shows that so we targeted this group because we want to make sure that we make progress on this i could support a larger statement as another objective also with possibly a different timeline and then i also would like to see a strategic objective around completing the special education audit reforms which is a similar statement as when um we have the cla audit in section six so i mean i would like to see those three areas explore you know as a strategy i don't
253i don't know the timing of mr meyer's proposed everybody strategies and programs to increase representation i don't i don't i don't believe that can be done by october well there's different strategy detail strategies you could have a detailed strategy for as you're saying black and brown students you could have a less detailed strategy for other groups or people i i mean we can't do everything all at once we know that i mean to me a strategy would be here's the things we're going to do first and here's the things i mean included in a strategy would be what to do first and what to do second well we're going to do these first and we are going to get to these other things but we can't get to them yet and in year three you
254know we're going to come up with a you know some something like that i i i'm really not locked into a precise formula i i am locked into wanting to name as many groups as we can sincerely so that they're on the radar so that you know you know there's there's going to be phases with this stuff and maybe phase one is is black and brown students and other stuff goes in other phases but and that's the can we maybe possibly articulate that that if we add in immediately begin to implement um to be completed by october 22nd and then add in uh additional work will be done uh kind of kind of going forward and that that's a component of our governance check-ins that will be i think that we put as an expectation
255for ourselves quarterly because i like the idea of the inclusion of this i think if we are not specific it provides the district of the okay then where do we start and we're both giving dr means latitude for that and he may still get smacked around by the board at some point in the future well that wasn't the latch we meant for you to have um so we're articulating this that i think we are all aware that the data articulates there's a need for deep attention here and we need we know that going forward we will also need to give deep attention to all of our students who are likely to be an invite as we talked throughout the evening earlier tonight we need to make sure that we're striving for all students to create
256a great learning environment so it's kind of a both and to approach to this so this is where we're starting and as we move forward we would also like to see plans um and that those will be evaluated in our quarterly deep dive conversations as a board um as we discuss this and move forward so we're gonna be like just changing your so our all marginalized groups starting with instead of and you know that makes it simple and inclusive and sets a priority for the next three years is that is that at both end well okay so what would we do for words i'm just thinking a lot so immediately be glad to begin to implement strategies and programs we could say immediately begin to implement strategies programs or [Music] prioritize for future action let's
257think it was um starting after the sensible awning of all marginalized groups starting with okay that's the same does the same thing right without calling at all yeah starting with yeah okay is that how are we doing there and dr means on describing the friendly conversation have a friendly thought okay hey friendly at 11 30. yes keep mr meyer's language up until you can make the dreamer status the period then take the uwm language starting with we acknowledge that we are on traditional make that paragraph two i think we do we want to include the individual to limit socioeconomic statuses so that so paragraph one keep the same and i think that goes through that captures everything through dreamer status well after dreamers is individuals with limited socioeconomic status i miss that then i i
258just want to be clear are you framing us to be under 2.1 or under our goal statement under 2.1 so yes that would it would the period would be it thank you social economic status then we would go to the uwm language acknowledging traditional pottawatomie and it goes on then could paragraph three be this distress strategies to address black and brown students are to be completed by october strategies for all other groups will be accomplished across the duration of a three-year strategic plan in other words we would have a responsibility to bring back to you on a quarterly basis the other groups that are not addressed by october 2022. that feels good like that okay can you do that like can you kind of scribble down there i will email it all okay yeah because
259i'm this one i would like it specific again specific to black and brown students because that is an area that our district has been struggling with for years and years and we haven't made much accomplishment the second thing is following [Music] following what we set out to do in as part of two special education audits and the reforms that we committed to in those documents so because what i don't understand is how would we um if we're looking at this document how would we actually implement some of the key performance indicators for the populations that you're specifying you know these were specific kpis to black and brown students weren't they yes yes so so to clarify are you saying basically first priority is black and brown and in a second with disabilities i mean yeah
260a separate completely new objective but but if you want to include your language i think it's okay if we put it as another strategic objective not tied to this strategic objective 2.1 i would support it to be a separate objective i also would like a separate objective to completing the reform some special education on it so i'm going to go to ms fraley because again you're doing it again yes i just don't know if it fits under 2.0 like i actually would like to see the special education audit reforms captured under goal number one under academic under academics that's great yeah so i agree with that so we have an ela audit and we've got special education on it and there so the only difference is is that 2.1 to your point sharon is around
261just proportionality around belong so belonging is different than academics but i i want us to and if we think about the special education audit and where most of the work is that needs to be done it feels like it falls more in goal number one than goal number two and it's not to say that we don't care about belonging it's again to say like if we're gonna focus our energies and and i had called out specifically 6.6 as well saying like again it says we're going to follow up on these audit recommendations like i feel like we actually have to state that somewhere in the strategic plan even if it's like a bullet point maybe it's not a strategic objective per se but because i was trying to go between like okay strategic objective 1.1
262is review curriculum instructional resources programming assessment blah blah blah like if if we are following up on the special education audit the ela audit i feel like it fits there so it's not an objective it's a bullet point it's it's a metric to say did we do this and if we did it well it should do those things above it so i want to focus this in on one thing okay i just don't want to decide on that i say they're all interrelated um so i want to come back to i think sharon's good point of dr means i liked your language a lot around we are going to focus on strategic effect 2.1 on black and brown students first this is a group sharing articulating this and i i don't i'm gonna i'll just
263speak for everybody then you can smack me wrong we the data is pretty clear we need to do better with this with these students buy them for them um and i really like mr meyer's perspective of okay and let's do over the course of the three-year plan let's tackle each one of these systematically and figure out how to do that creatively i like that a lot it gives us a path um and so that we are kind of moving forward how what do people think about kind of that adjustment and so just to be clear it's going to live in a separate objective this would for this one just here this is 2.1 and updated 2.1 we've got a couple others that we've talked about of other objectives that we might have but just for
2642.1 this would be inclusive of mr myers language with the call out of starting with black and brown students that's due at that date these are key performance indicators um the rest of the key performance indicators do not work we could we don't have time honestly to works with it this evening but we can come back and we can amend this as the as the team comes forward with new things where we update those and that's on us to be accountable for that we're on video now some people can hold i think i'm inclined to agree with miss mufil that it needs to live in a separate objective i think that's what you are articulating and we need yes correct separate key performance indicators to those other marginalized groups so i leave strategic objective 2.1
265as it is create another objective with mr meyer's language being inclusive of all groups and have separate key performance indicators which we can't work smith tonight or come up with but that are related to those groups even if it's using you know using data to inform what we're going to do over the next three years with those marginalized groups based on the evidence that we find in our district that we need to allocate resources so is that a 2.2 and everything else it's not down one level 2.2 becomes 2.3 2.3 or 10.4 sure or even even if even if that became 2.1 if that was the the 2.1 and then everything got knocked down the 2.1 was you know including all of those groups comprehensively but having separate key performance indicators to really you know
266drive that work so for if i'm a key performance so let's say we created a 2.2 and pump everybody else down you know 2.253 a a key performance indicator for the new 2.2 would be to to develop key performance indicators for these other areas because we can't create them all tonight but we want to have something in here to say it's on our radar we haven't forgotten you and we don't have indicators yet our our our assignment our mission is to develop those indicators we only had time so far to have the 2.1 and it's indicators now we have a 2.2 we don't have indicators yet for all these other other pope and we're gonna get indicators that's the that's the objective to get indicators for everybody else is that what we're saying okay we
267have emotion well we have emotions i will draw my motion so that we can fix the motion i'll find out may i have a motion that captures broadly this conversation requesting dr means and the team to document as discussed in the meeting and object strategic objective 2.1 shifting all other strategic strategic objectives down one to a 2.1 becomes 2.2 and so on that would lead with mr meyer's articulation with my friendly amendment okay let me give it a try you can just say i might play with the performance indicator being the creation of indicators forever if someone just wants to move that so moved we have a second second mr means can you call them doctor means what did you do [Music] a lot um what was just moved was mr meyer strategic objective 2.1
268yes that would be articulating that we want to move forward with the district creating to implement strategies and programs to increase representation of the sense of belonging of the breadth of those groups over the course of the three years of the strategic plan okay with the key performance indicator being the key performance indicators were in place for each of those groups over the over the three years of the plan and that would be an umbrella of we were we are kind of moving forward with each of those in a stepwise fashion as mr meyer articulated we would you and your team would determine based off of data where we focus our time what we are articulating is the data tells us immediately black and brown students is the place where you are starting and that
269this specifically would be due august 2022 after that is complete you would move forward with examining different different groups that we are looking at how do we support and kind of systematically address each going forward okay is that claire's mind i don't know if you're making fun of me or not i am not i would never do anything like that sir uh i'm ready to call the role please do ms fraley yes dr wig yes mr meyer yes it's me and phil yes mr phillips yes miss willis yes dr jessup anger yes let me ask i have the two amendments but they're shorted on this one was the students with disabilities can we actually before move on we've got another one hanging out from that conversation yeah and that's ms mufald's comment about adding in
270um the yes right so listening to mrs muellerville i think we've created a strategic objective 1.7 which would state the district shall complete all special education audit recommendations and then the key performance indicators would be the district will engage educators and families of students of special education students in the development of strategies to meet the audit recommendations the district will communicate semi-annually the changes being implemented based on the special education audit recommendations so not only are the recommendations being created with a diverse group of people but it's being communicated because there's always a sliver of people who who are in the know but we would take on the responsibility of communicating out twice a year here's the work that's happening here's what we've completed here's what we still need to do i think that avoids
271the the need to have continuous watching of the district but there's a there's a there's a pace and cadence that's embedded in the strategic plan okay um could i have a could someone move what doctor means just articulated he has captured it in writing and if you would like he can repeat it again or if you're just comfortable removing the implementation of that as that captures misbehave what you were looking for uh yes it does um so so we can have further discussion i will move to add strategic objective 1.7 regarding completion of the special education audit uh reforms may have a second second discussion i just wanted to ask mr opinion and miss clem is that good i can't see her over there as i can't see over there mrs club but yes um
272our attentions have always been to as soon as the staff are back engage them in conversation of how to tackle the recommendations um a lot of the recommendations are actually embedded in the strategic plan because if you remember sue doyle presenting and about our multi-level system of support having equitable access for universal to selected to intensive interventions um that takes a big slice of it off but there are certainly other pieces as well um that we would be tackling collectively with other staff ms clem i don't think anything else you'd like to add that doctor means please call him ms fraley yes yes mr meyer yes ms muenfeld yes mr phillips yes it's willis yes dr jessevanger yes mr meyer we're back at you um page 17. there's the regular font text that says if
273staff and teachers are found to have treated students of color inappropriately they will be recommended for removal from positions estimated cost increased vigilance from chief of talent i think this is gratuitous that of course if teachers are not behaving according to our values there where there would be hr action of some sort that goes without saying and as written here it suggests [Music] an hr standard that kind of puts us in a vague area about what are we saying exactly like what's appropriate what's inappropriate who defines that do we need i i just think we're going to a a place with these words that h.r is already going to handle this if dr means is doing his job and we we're kind of i the word gratuitous here is kind of what i mean we
274don't need to say this mr mark can you frame this in a motion i would move to remove that text which section um page 17. staff and teachers ending with um chief of talent it's three lines and the reason being it just opens us up to stuff this of course we're we're gonna do this right if if there's racist behavior by teachers there better be some action but the wording here suggests standards for removal that haven't been well defined within the document so we would be keeping everything in the bold yes yes i could i could second that with the understanding that whoever's on the policy committee makes sure that it is very clear in policy that um there is a process by which you know a process already exists but like that it's really
275explicit um that when students from any marginalized group grieve that they have been treated inappropriately like that there is a a clear process i mean we call out advocates here that they've been through the restorative practices etc so i'd be okay removing it here because i hear what you're saying mr meyer so long as we're making sure that it's clear in policy i'm i'm not so i think we're sending a lot to the policy committee that is really well too much for them too much authority i agree we need explicit handbook guidelines for how we treat people yeah and what happens if you don't treat them correctly whether that's policy committee or not i don't care um i have a feeling the policy committee is not short on work to do that if it can
276be done in a handbook from hr yeah handbook's fine writing yeah right so there's a that's like that we could so far don't know where we are yep and i'm gonna if people are okay with that i wanna have you call the role in this that team is meaningful very well yeah so i just also wanted to mention that i would be comfortable if it was in a handbook um i think that's where it should reside uh it could even be an administrative guideline i'm not sure you know where that would where that would be but i would support that we strike the if staff and teachers let's let the professional hr attorney people or the professional hr people tell us how to write these things so that it can be implemented and it's defensible
277absolutely yeah okay and just to go back to my belief deep belief in policy there are a lot of districts with policies that state that the board shall review the employee handbook annually so one way or another it will get to the board at times so we so i think the recommendation is to strike the non-bolded that's language okay i believe we have a motion and a second on this one um can you call the royal doctor ms fraley yes dr hoyk yes mr meyer yes it's moonfell yes mr phillips yes mrs willis yes dr jessup anger yes that passes all right i had a couple things um i just wanted to point out um just so it's not overlooked but and um section 2.2 dr means you didn't it there was something added and
278i just wanted to highlight it because i appreciate that the directors took the um opportunity to listen to my request but it was under 6.2 bullet three ensure that the director of buildings and grounds meets semi-annually with families parents of students with special needs to gather feedback on accessibility needs you know i've heard great things about what we've done in the past with our grounds and i just want to make sure that that was memorialized here so that we continue to do that work um i would like to make a motion and this is for section 5.5 um it really is in accordance with um 2.4 objective 2.4 where we talk about um just decrease the disproportion just man i can't even talk to this proportion yep thank you discipline rates of special education and
279black and brown students so just to make sure that we're consistent and adding that language to 5.5 i would like to make a motion that we not only evaluated student behavior through a cultural lens but through an ability lens so just adding that language and through an ability lens second well just a moment mr meyer all right re withdraw a second can i second that yes chair no if i could second it i would mr mayor i accept your second i would like to call the role on this one that's free late yesterday yes mr meyer yes it's mean phil yes mr phillips yes miss willis yes dr jessup anger yes that's all i have for this strategic plan thank you anybody else have any i don't see any any other comments from the board
280so i think mr phillips dr white will have more we'll get through yours no she has so many good ideas we cannot and i'm not saying that's bad i'm just saying you articulated i heard you say i have one and then we will go okay it's um six eight um so it's about um it says annually district will solicit vendors i would like to replace that with give preference two vendors that actively that participate in partnerships and experiences of students just puts a little more defending second preferred system we have a motion and a second or discussion i i'm not understanding the motion i'm at 6 8 now 6a starts with the word annually i want to replace making a recommendation to replace the word solicit to give preference wait i'm done 37 i'm there
281it's annually it would change from annually the district will solicit that will prioritize sure did you say prioritize reference give preference to vendors to participate in partnerships focused on advancing the experiences of students so okay may i ask a question [Music] so let's say we're buying yes are we creating a requirement that you know we have that that's you see where i'm going i i don't want to create somewhere where we did something we didn't intend you'll have to be in the procurement policy on that spelled out but there will be okay skip thousands to those that want to work with us and provide the experiences that we need for our okay for students so the process i thank you mr phillips got it that's solid um dr means miss fraley yep dr hoyge yep
282mr meyer yes ms meanwhile mr phillips yes sir ms willis yes dr joseph anger yes dr hoyt thank you for acknowledging me um okay i actually only have one thing i want to say so thank you um this is on page 21 strategic objective 3.4 so i advocated in our previous meeting that we should have an sel curriculum for all of our students not just grades six through eight now in conversation with mr opinion he helped me to understand that we do have a curriculum for elementary students although i would argue that that is not practiced or provided consistently so i would like to add a statement here that says something like we will prioritize commensurate commence rich sel programming across our elementary schools or something of that sort to make sure that we are
283ensure implementation to fidelity fidelity that's another word no idea what i just said did you write that down will implement social emotional learning curriculum grades k-8 with fidelity expanding a program is part of that can't implement it until you have it okay you have a second second more discussion i want to make sure i captured your amendment we will prioritize the implementation of the district's seo curriculum throughout or excuse me we will prioritize the implementation of the district's seo curriculum to ensure fidelity k-8 no i think the wording was implement okay right implement a social emotional learning curriculum in grades k through eight with fidelity okay which would then as ms really pointed out encompass expanding grade 16. so implemented seo curriculum grades k through eight with fidelity with fidelity that was thank you it
284is getting close to vietnam got it and so does that are you suggesting we can eliminate the sentence that reads a span if okay so to to mr meunenfell's point if we just simply say implement an sel curriculum k through aid with fidelity got it thank you ms fraley yes dr hoy yes mr meyer yes miss being phil yes mr phillips yes miss willis yes dr jason baker yes we are going to return to the original motion on to [Music] the language um jenny had this one um the original language is recommended that the school board approve the 22-25 strategic plan i might suggest as amended to add on to that as a motion mm-hmm it is recommended that the school board approve the 2022 to 2025 strategic plan as amended and i so moved
285may have a second he was trying to fix his mask i i tried to take away his second before so i felt hey you all passed my emotions so i'm gonna i um more discussion on this one the only thing i ask is that before this is finalized we go through with a fine-tooth comb and make sure that there's consistency around how we're talking about diversity equity inclusion and accessibility or whatever order you all choose to put them in it is inconsistent through this and through the um other document the framework yeah that we were looking at so so you propose that the superintendent bring possibly even in the consent agenda at the next regular meeting technical adjustments to the document as approved today yeah got it um i want to say [Music] incredible work
286by the community members um we just did a lot of final wordsmithing but i i want to bring us back to the work that the community did on this the work that the staff did on this um i am excited about i got an email from one of the wisest staff community members i know um who was articulating about the level of of great words tonight aggressiveness and aspiration that we have in this plan um i'm really excited about the board who has really engaged in some thoughtful discussion over the course of the last two weeks but thank you so much for those who've pulled so much data together dr means for pulling this together um this is an incredible amount of work and i'm really excited about where this will take us and how
287this will be integrated into how we are governing as a board and pushing the district forward for kids so thank you to all my colleagues thank you to the members of uh the community thank you to all the the chiefs and the directors and staff who put an incredible amount of time into this um our kids are indebted to do this work um dr means can you call the role community commenting i'm excited is there any community coming to this item reverend tyler rasmussen 1333 martha washington drive and pastor mount sinai from church across the street um last time i stood up to talk about the absence of truancy within 2.4 as a key indicator um i want to bring some more data to you at this point and ultimately again state doesn't release this
288so it's five years old not my fault um so the goal in five point i forget where truancy currently resides is to really reduce truancy and chronic absenteeism by 70 that would bring us at a similar rate as what is the currency rate currently in elmbrook because we are current um the last numbers that were public but we are we had a 2.86 currency rate elmbrook was at a 4.82 currency rate and yet even though elm brook has a much lower currency rate black students are 10 times more likely to be considered truant in elm brook than they are than white students just like here i mentioned last time that toasted students are nine times more likely to be considered truant if they're black than if they're white so not having it in the equity
289section of the program and not having a specific discipline area and just so you know i looked up the student handbook and in the dis in the area where this habitual truancy it describes a missile code which requires that anyone who's eventually chewing to go before a municipal judge and things such as suspension of their license and other and required community service and other things can happen i would call that discipline um so to me this is a discipline item and if it's not in that equity section even if we lower the rate if we don't look at the inequities happening in truancy right now we'll continue to have those inequities going forward and the school has the ability to determine who is trained and who isn't you have the ability to decide what counts
290is what doesn't you also have the ability to decide what counts as an acceptable excused absence and what does not count as an acceptable excused absence if you're not looking at how those things affect students who are black versus students who are white and how our policies might be built in such a way that is wrongly affecting one group over another group then you're never going to fix the problem even if you lower the rate you're going to still have the inequity and you need to look at this with an inequity lens i also want to speak about 1.6 which um that is new and honestly the language really bothers me i worry about how profiling students might lead to bad outcomes even it was meant to be good in the first place that it
291might lead to teachers having a certain set of expectations about students because the profile tells them they should only expect this are they surely like this achievement rate and not that achievement it might lead then to students only achieving at a rate of what they're expected in this profile and i get really bothered by what might happen even though i'm sure your intent is good of what might happen if we start profiling students about what level of achievement we expect out of them um and i again i think communion is good i worry how can we use wrongly and if it stays in there i would i would greatly ask that there are tons and tons and tons of safeguards put in place to make sure that it's not used wrongly and i'm not sure
292what level safeguards are possibly to put in to make it so that when we're profiling kids one by one that they are not harmed in that process um finally um george webb only has brain products a la carte um with bagels and english examples i think this is my all-time favorite public comment including smacking me around a little bit and providing some really good analysis uh deep level care for students and an offer of breakfast um thank you may i respond please pastor i want the same thing you want [Music] your implementation strategy or what you want sounds like but i know that's not what you want us to do like we change the definitions and so that the numbers are better so that people aren't labeled as true and okay if we have an
293unfair definition or an unfair labeling i agree to change it now that said i would rather force us to offer things that are an incentive for students to be here course offerings in high school for example um morning meal programs that are more favorable to the people who are you know i'm sorry i'm a guy you make me breakfast when i'm 16 years old i'm i'm if it's food i like i'm i'm not gonna miss i'm gonna i'm late for everything but lunch you know right or you know i so um music drum you know whatever you know drumline exhibitions at the front door before school starts i mean whatever well i'm i'm actually very serious about that you know the drumline you get to play in front of the building you know 15 minutes
294before school starts and and everybody who's coming in gets to see your your your perform i mean stuff that that make people want to be here let's be sure we do do that as well and i don't think we do enough of that stuff to to make on a cultural through a cultural lens things that people want that we have it here for them and we seem to be pretty stubborn sometimes to my thinking about not getting there like african-american history class sorry folks i know i've been promoting it for many years but first hour or whatever so please i'm agreeing with you and also saying let's use this as an incentive for us to provide incentives for students to be here thank you for the thoughtful comment and breakfast offer okay i follow that
295but my name is alicia barts and i'm at 1421 north 69th street i really look forward to this strategic plan channeling your out of the box thinking and audaciousness because it seems that there's so much that we know we need to do the special education plan lots of curriculum updates um audits and yet when we come here we hear lots of proposals for a homegrown avid program and multiple you know human growth and development curriculums and so many different copit options for so many different parents and i love the fact that you're trying to appeal to our diverse vibrant community and all of our needs but i actually think if people see a real continuous improvement process in in practice they won't ask for the perfect starting point every time so i think if you
296can start with good solutions and iterate your way toward perfect solutions that show the community you know how to do that you won't have so many people insisting that you have a perfect solution out of the gate so i actually hope the strategic plan really makes quick progress of showing this community how you iterate um someone said they didn't see the agile process in in practice and that's because we haven't really seen it and i think we need to see it by you starting with a good solution and iterating your way towards better so i hope the strategic plan really helps that because i think that wins the hearts and minds of our community that wants so many different things thank you thank you may i respond in agreement just real quick i think i
297want to agree our ability in my perception our ability to execute on plans is affecting how i vote and i'm i'm 100 agreeing with you uh with what you're saying we need to prove we can get it done and then people will be less skeptical about the about the proposals thank you hi deb folk palek um i am speaking about strategic goal objective number 2.1 i emailed the board with my suggestion ask request immediately began to implement strategies and programs to increase representation in the sense of belonging of and i asked for students with disabilities to be placed in there it's very difficult for me to listen to people prioritizing minority groups who's more deserving black brown kids with disabilities are kids who are economically disadvantaged i think it's wrong to be prioritizing who should
298go first for representation and sense of belonging in a minority population even dpi if we remember tracks achievement gap for these groups that i just mentioned including students with disabilities the federal register if you follow updates to that and the deia information that was just included i strongly strongly suggest that before you vote on leaving objective 2.1 as it is and not including students with disabilities in there that you have a strong understanding of constitutional and civil rights do we need a complaint to finally be heard and to not have to wait any longer seven steps to the complaint is how i understand it there are five already completed step seven is pushing submit we cannot prioritize minority groups this is actually a disturbing um conversation to hear people talking about dpi gives you guidance
299federal register has just put information in there the constitution and civil rights need to be looked at so i'll move objective 2.1 change belonging of black and brown students to belonging of students with disabilities and black and brown students we did that i don't i thought i understand i understand but this is a new comment we haven't met the expectation so i still move i'm gonna ask that we finish a public comment okay the amendment has it just the way she said it yeah i thought so but i have to hear people right it's not just about what we think it's about what the community thinks inclusion working together we're told the language isn't adequate let me just clarify what the appropriate language is or what the languages that we passed in one of our
300many amendments well okay here you are you're digging in you guys again and this is what you do and so i'm i'm willing to change a couple words to get this i'm gonna let's continue with public comments and then we'll pass or none of this 2001 north 119th street i'm on 40 student milestones um and i kind of echo some of some of the same things that deb stands up here at the mic with how long do students with disabilities have to wait and it says in here it's the district's responsibility to best equip our students for their chosen path upon graduation from high school that sounds great we graduated one from this district we have two more to go and one of our sons has a disability an invisible disability um so then i
301read down here it says the milestone takes into account that not all students will meet proficiency in certain situations behavioral intervention plans or individual education plans will serve as proper measurement of students achievement preparation for post-secondary success we need the bar up here for all the kids and i just got my son's forward exams um results in the mail the other day they weren't good it's the second year in a row we had poor scores but below below basic that's at the bottom my son is very capable he needs resources put in place he needs intervention put in place and he needs his teachers and this district to put him up here it might take him longer to climb those stairs but he can be just as proficient as his older brother who's now carrying
302a 3.8 gpa thank you uh 772 north 116th street um some very important things that we're discussing here tonight and i hear a lot of good things um i do agree with the need to focus a little bit more on our disabilities um i do question however the planning of the meetings in relation to this topic this is so important and two meetings in a row now we put this type behind the human growth and development which we knew were going to be important things and we are now here past midnight you know with foggy heads and stuff like that discussing what is arguably more important than that 3d planning we should be planning meetings so that we don't run into situations like this this is too important or to be dealt with this hour
303and night and when people don't want to be here you know participate and to speak up because it's such a late hour we have to look at the big items and make sure that we're not addressing two three big items in one meeting and space about it as needed we don't need to rush one thing over another you know both things did not be to be addressed tonight um so look at our planning when we talk about planning um so i accommodated before teresa two hill two one two five north street uh walters wisconsin um so i did want to bring up this one with adhd um i do think it's very important to acknowledge people with disabilities and i do suggest that perhaps the board consider making a separate objective to address that um
304however i do also think it is important that we address the struggles of our black and brown students and you know as a white woman i i will say i've seen disparities within the classroom and you know this is going back what a few years but i do worry that we aren't making enough progress so i think that we should hold both levels as important but i think i worry that if we you know combine everything that it's going to get lost in the weeds so if we have separate objectives i'm hoping that we can still have that level of importance hopefully that makes sense sorry it's after midnight seeing no more public comment i'll come back to the board no problem yeah we do have online comments uh bjmr you can talk now thank
305you very much my name is bj ermance my uh pronouns are she and her i thank you for supporting the uh the subject before this one thing i would like to mention is that on the strategic plan is that dlm students are missing in goal number six for measurement my major statement though is how disappointed i am that we do not have a due date for objectives for people with disabilities and special education and why do i say i'm disappointed because we had an audit we received the results we had listening sessions we had more listening sessions we received a report from third party experts that being independents first but we still cannot give a date when a plan can be in place i think that is not acceptable and i think a date needs
306to be sent preferably before the end of this calendar year because people with disabilities and special ed students have been put aside for long enough and it's time to bring them to the fore thank you very much for letting me speak thank you and you literally hit three minutes on the dot i feel like there should be an award for that um now point of information i believe that with the audit in the review of the audit i believe we just put a date on that did we not oh well i i would like to clarify we added an objective to 1.7 for specifically completing the special education audit and reforms and so whatever dates are spelled out in those audits that's what we're tracking to i would also like to ask the administration to
307clarify the other initiatives that we have in the strategic plan for special education there are many but i know we i see we have one more comment okay let's take the last comment and then we'll come back and start with an answer for sharon's question andy you're allowed to talk please state your name and address and you're still muted okay um [Music] i think to answer miss mean phil's questions with all disrespecting and aligning with her her question to administration i think we have lifted up special education special education students in this plan significantly there's an entire objective under 1.7 that's new that was added this evening that tossed the ball and keeps our administrative team was responsible in regards to completing the audit recommendations i think uh when you go into the change that
308was promoted and and approved earlier excuse me earlier this evening with 2.1 it references individuals with disabilities in terms of those special student groups that that are identified so candidly i think since the august 8th meeting there have been a lot of additions around special education i think uh to the comment earlier um under 1.6 we have struggled with the the term profile because it feels like you're you're judging or prejudging someone but when you look at the language um as a whole under that um that specific objective it talks about the fact that we want our teachers to have strategies ahead of time ahead of crises ahead of problems and that's really the core of that objective and then finally it was referenced that in the case of when you look at the milestones
309in the case of some student and this is accurate because we can't say all um in the case of some students we will have to defer to their ieps their individual education plans or their behavior intervention plans every student cannot fall under the milestones they don't there are certain students with certain disabilities that we have to defer to their ieps if we didn't have that language we wouldn't be inclusive of those young people candidly we had that conversation a few hours ago when we talked about the one percent in the curriculum for human growth and development for those students those are those are the young people that we're speaking of with their iep so actually again i think a very wide net has been cast with this strategic plan my concern for the team is
310i think we heard it earlier at the microphone it is audacious this is based on the feedback i've received from everyone in the community so everyone's anxious for improvement and to do things to improve the opportunities for kids and in the district the one caution i have is that we just hope that there will be a an element of grace shown to our team and to our students ultimately and our teachers because we can't do everything at once uh it's going to be hard and how we pace this out will be very very important just a few reflections i moved to add the words to that students with disabilities and prior to black and brown in strategic objective 2.1 on the record i move we did already well then i'm repeating what's the motion on
311the record i need clarification if you don't mind sir so a few minutes ago mr meyer you presented some very comprehensive language for 2.1 are you pulling that language back and simply going with special education no no what we voted on in the past is what we voted on in past okay i make a practice of hearing comment and i thought what we did addressed the community concern now that we've received more comment are one of the leading voice that's leading voices in the community have said we did not address their concern now if we're going to talk working together and inclusion and heartfelt listening to people it's not about what i think alone it's not about what seven of us think alone our community has spoken and they don't like what we did so
312we do what we do but i mean i don't think it's it's going to break the bank or or destroy us to add those four words here and then our advocates for students with disabilities will feel hurt mr opinion you had a comment it seems a bit out of place now what i just wanted to echo what dr means was saying and i would be remiss if i didn't also speak to our intention and our obligation to represent students with disabilities in all other goal areas as well for example goal area 3 all around mental health social emotional well-being we will certainly be addressing the needs of students with disabilities as we develop a framework around those three areas for staff training as we shore up advisory lessons as we look at sel programming and
313as we shore up student services staffing so i just felt i needed to get that out there too that they are part of all that as well so mr meyer i just have a question on your edition because in our prior conversation we talked about the key performance indicators are specific to the black and brown students in this particular objective which is why we added an additional objective to make sure that we are capturing the key performance indicators of all of um to get that sense of a belonging with each of those student groups in addition we added 1.7 to make sure that we would complete the audits two audits that were done and follow up which is what i understand you know we need to i mean we just need to do that so
314i guess my question to the and i we're not supposed to get into the debate but we're well i mean my question is i'm not sure what we're not covering for students of dis for students with disabilities in the strategic plan well i i thought actually we were fine with the motions we passed now i listened to the comment and again i repeat it's not just about what i think it's listening means listening and it wasn't adequate so that's why i made my motion and that's all i can say is there a second on the motion singed on the motion does i mean it's not applicable to that particular strategic objective which is why we added two additional objectives for this specific population right okay any final board comment before we call the rule saying
315none doctor means ms fraley yes andrew hoy yes mr meyer no it's moonville yes mr phillips yes ms willis yes dr jessup anger yes thank you all this is a exciting moment and i look forward to supporting and holding a column from the district uh we are next moving on to hey look at this policy committee members mr phillips no it is recommended that school board approved the appointment of dr jenny hoyt and miss jessica willis to the policy committee and iso move may have a second [Music] a second thank you any more discussion on this item yes mr i the two of you have considerable expertise in areas where others have nowhere near as much expertise your time will be limited your calendar short i hope you focus on stuff that's in your wheelhouse
316because if you go to something else the stuff that's in your wheelhouse won't have the benefit of your contribution so i'd ask that you prioritize as you're gonna have to do to go after the stuff where where you have expertise that others don't have including myself i have nowhere near your expertise in the areas that you're working in so i would who knows life is short elections happen you know um people board members come and go for various reasons even when they don't expect to i'd ask that you with you know that you just kind of do the things you know best right yes yeah yeah yeah not spirits yeah the rivers rise and all that kind of stuff right but i hope you know what i'm saying you're you're special i do think in
317many regards but especially with what you know and the rest of us don't know so please i ask humbly that you do that first any community comment on this item hi deb funk pelican i'm going back to an email that mr phillips sent me on may 9th about the policy committee when he said that one of the um yes i do like the policy this will be the first group of policies that will be reviewed and updated as part of our newly formed policy committee and that was 91.40 so i don't know like back in may when you were talking about the policy committee and the work you were doing if that still is going to stand and also um i would like to i'm wondering because we have two new board members on such
318an important um committee are there is there other you know someone with more than four months of experience really getting into the policy that would be helping um including potentially you know we have some community members that really can cite policy you know you know know what it is so is the committee going to include more people but uh back to when mr phillips was and i think it was miss fraley that um had started the policy committee and we're talking about um how that was all operating and when he had said that 9140 would be one of the first ones um from when he was on the policy committee if that would be something that still would be considered based on what he had suggested and recommended because i thought it was a good
319idea any online uh see raleigh you are allowed to talk appreciate your name and your address see riley you're still muted we're going to move forward um dr means mrs fraley yes do i have steam okay yes sure mr meyer yes mrs meunville yes mr phillips yes miss willis yes dr jessup anger yes action to approve a board member to attend the national school board association's council of urban boards of education 2022 conference ms neufeld me okay thank you i don't know how i lost my spot here in accordance with the board bylaw zero 0125.1 is recommended that ms jessica willis be approved to attend the national school board association's council of urban boards of education [Music] cube 2022 conference and iso move may have a second thank you second thank you thank you dr
320hoyt uh i believe uh there was a request for a form that was completed yes sir i emailed that form to all board members during the meeting this uh this evening uh there is a shared uh budget line item where the superintendent's office and the board shares professional development opportunities as a line item there's a total of six thousand dollars in that line item um ms willis is seeking to attend a very popular uh conference it's hosted by the national school board association and it's um it's their special group of council of urban boards of education um it is in miami florida uh it's the location of the um the conference this year um when you look at these are estimates right now when you look at airfare registration fees lodging um the estimated the
321anticipated cost right now um is 2543.75 eric can i share a little bit about this conference um so it's first recommended to me by dr means that i look into this association just with my um background and interest in diversity equity inclusion and accessibility and even upon talking to john ashley who is the director of waspi he also encouraged me to look into this organization and opportunities for me to have professional development and network and you know just the opportunity to grow as a board member i'm super excited about this to miss thoughts point um you know there's a lot that i need to learn and one of the i'm just going to briefly go over some of the opportunities i have there one of the breakout sessions is governed like a boss and it's
322talking about governing board members assuming your power and governed like a boss policies and practices start with you board members will gain greater confidence in their role and learn about different equity-based models policy solutions tactics and strategies to advance racial equity some other things that stood out to me are walk like you talking creating authentic spaces for student voices driving student enrollment how miami dave leveraged best practices to recruit students um and understanding the impact of implicit bias on leadership so you know if approved today i'm really excited to attend this conference to gain as much information as i can to grow as a school board member and take those practices and just help move our district in a positive direction any more questions mr martin so the action item references by law 175.1 175.1
323requires that reimbursement be in accordance with bylaw 144.1 144.1 a states that anticipated expenses must be approved prior to attending using the approval for meeting attendance form that form is a public document the form as submitted to the board tonight lists roughly 2500 in total costs um 7.75 for registration 104 meals 1 125 for lodging and 525 for airfare and a small amount for mileage i've never voted to approve this kind of travel expenses for a board member i have voted to approve registration fees and meals so i will continue with that practice tonight with my vote um i just can't for my beliefs on the board i can't support sixteen hundred dollars in travel and lodging for a board member to go to miami thank you any other board commentary session i think professional
324development's fantastic i think it's something we should all be taking advantage of if there's a budget set aside for us to use annually i hope that all of us will take advantage of different opportunities to learn and grow in this role i think even in the short time i've been on the board i've recognized that there's lots of room for improvement and how this board functions and i think professional development just as somebody who also goes to conferences for my career i come back and i'm so excited and i often have really fantastic ideas that i've gleaned from the people that i meet and the talks that i go to so i hope you are able to go and and learn a lot and come back and tell us all about it one of the
325things i noted in the policy is there's a it's i don't know when this policy is written but there's definite clarity and a high level of support within the policy for board member attendance professional development um so i'm certainly supportive of this i'm excited you're going um what i will probably do is mandate some sort of in-service for the board where you can come back and bring some uh ideas so not a stipulation but a request if you can come back and do a um a bit of a teaching of sorts i would be happy to that that would be beneficial i would love to so that your learning is our alarm absolutely any community comment on this item i will assume at this point everyone online is sleeping um still nope there's a hand
326is there a hand oh it just went down now we're being yeah they're if they're awake they're wretched and we saw you um oh did you see him i'm gonna call him roll or dr means can you call yes mr meyer no it's me and phil yes mr phillips yes miss willis i'll abstain from this vote dr joseph anger yes um the next couple of com are reports there will be no public comment on these um people and family support report as an impossible thing to say at 12 30 at night um and then on deck is the monthly teacher retention and staffing status um if the human resources report might include some exciting pick-me-up from a really great day of uh first day of orientation for new staff just to snip it that would
327bring joy i'd be cool i want to say thank you to the team that stayed and are finally coming to the microphone at 12 35 a.m over a topic an item that i believe at some point i've talked to every board member about either as a board member or as a parent in the community the issue of discipline in our school district last year was was a high priority and was something that many people had uh opinions on i shared with the board that we were not comparing apples to apples in terms of how we were logging our discipline so what some schools reference as a fight may not have been logged as a fight at another school another component of the work that we really dug into as we listened to the staff was
328that our administrators felt that they needed some type of framework to operate from um so we could calibrate and make sure that we're handling things in an objective way the team that you'll hear from in a second did an amazing job we had a shell of this work done when they came on board on july 1st but it was one of those issues where it has to be their work and boy oh boy did they take it and they ran with it they did amazing work with it it's a living document it will continue to evolve um but i'm really excited to um introduce the team to you and i'll let mr opinion introduce the team um but we're really excited about this document and what it can mean for our families our students and
329our educators stupid thank you for that dr means um i've laid the background better than i could have at 12 30 at night um that on may 23rd you have brought forward sort of that shell of the matrix um i'll let my team introduce themselves but just set a little bit of context here so they're going to unpack really two parts of the document the first half is really all the proactive environmental strategies that we want to make sure in place making sure we do our due diligence on the front end to prevent behaviors from happening and then of course giving a little bit more guidance within the matrix for our principles which i know firsthand after five years working heavily in the discipline field our administrators are very excited and eager to have a
330little bit of standardization and calibration we've had a couple iterations of this with them we've got another one coming up but um like you said it's a living document and then we're excited to sort of establish a baseline with us consistently moving into the year so without further ado i'll let my team introduce themselves hello i am lashonda holland i am the director of diversity and inclusion i am going to provide an overview tonight i'm emily o'connor the director of student success so both emily and i have had the opportunity to work on the disciplinary framework since we started on july 1st this framework was developed from the disciplinary matrix that was presented by dr means on may 23rd so for the past month and a half or so we've been working to get the
331disciplinary framework ready for our building leaders to implement for the upcoming school year the disciplinary framework will be utilized to assist building leaders in supporting the development of learners to successfully participate in the learning environment while promoting psychological emotional and physical safety it will also serve as a guide for the building leaders to make equitable decisions regarding disciplinary issues while allowing them to intentionally build positive environments form healthy relationships with students and families and create a culture of belonging while enhancing the opportunity for students to advance socially emotionally and academically we engaged in a feedback cycle on august 2nd um with the division of people and family supports along with other key district leaders and we participated in a professional learning opportunity that allowed us to seek information regarding short-term improvements and proactive planning for
332future professional learning for the disciplinary framework to assist us in guiding systems and practices in each school next steps the division of people and family supports will continuously review and evaluate the disciplinary framework throughout the 2022-23 school year to assess the need for improvement in the frameworks guidance and the practices it outlines to ensure that a district as a district we are promoting welcoming diverse inclusive and accessible learning for all students and families we will closely monitor student outcomes overall behavior data and the effect the disciplinary framework has on decreasing the disproportionality amongst our students we will make adjustments to the framework based on review of the data and building leader feedback and finally we will maintain consistent communication with building leaders to ensure that we are fostering students social emotional growth and maintaining equitable
333practices within every building thank you miss helen and i would just add that it is a i would stress what dr means shared already that this is a living document um as we've engaged in initial conversations with building leaders and deepened our own collective understanding around this to build some common language and some consistent practice um this we will continue to make adjustments as necessary to the framework itself but then all of the related practices and systems that are outlined within the framework um here so i want your questions from the board hi everyone historically we've had challenges with uh consistency around reporting you know some buildings will report this and some buildings won't want to report this for certain reasons like and i see like in section three clear consistent consequences but i just
334wondered like is there like how are we helping solve for that yes yeah thank you that's a great question as mr opinion pointed out um we need to have some consistent conversations together as a team first sort of around just access and data what what system do we use we use infinite campus commonly here so really having some calibration conversations around not just what is outlined here or with the specific behaviors and how we're defining that but then how does it physically get entered in with some consistent steps into infinite campus so that we can have some conversations on what our data looks like district-wide not just within the buildings but across the district i know that the building leaders that we've talked with are really excited about that even today i got a phone
335call of okay i'm really looking forward to some calibration conversations i've already got some examples i can't wait to get some feedback on them so we're looking forward to that because i think it'll just lead to some greater um ongoing improvement continuous improvement sticks out to me um as part of that ongoing learning process and i'd like i'd like to add to that too i think our administration's really hungry for this for that standardization and i think we we want to be very transparent with the board about what that might mean for our data as well as we come to different practices as we come to consistency that might mean you are observing different things either more or less of so we want to make sure we're transparent about that as changes are made so
336you can look to some of the future updates from our department as we move through that word that comment reminds me um of student conduct issues on different campuses there's a big ten school several years ago that reported zero sexual assaults on a campus um that wasn't the accurate accurate data and so i think unless we have really accurate data we won't know where to flow resources and supports and so i applaud you for for leading into that um and thank you for kind of articulating we're going to have really good data for you we're striving for that and it may look different and it may mean that we're reallocating resources in different ways but the goal is always to put students at the center and how do we make sure that they've got the
337the the resources they need to be supported and successful in school um so i really applaud you for leaning into doing hard stuff here this is an opportunity for us to give um accolades and celebrate lisa winters who is our director of infinite campus for those who are still watching at this hour infinity campus is our student information system so that's where you place a student's home information and and it's really the way you can track them that's the system that we use you'll notice on in this framework ms winter's already started the process of identifying actual codes based on the discipline so now it's just simply a matter of our administrators identifying the behavior and placing it within the code that in itself will standardize a lot of issues that we have not had
338standardization around in the past making it easier than it has been it's going to make it so much easier i think what you heard from ms o'connor um i would say it differently she was being very modest about it i think it's going to create an opportunity for her to coach and to lead professional development for our administrators right now they felt like they are isolated and they're by themselves the the more skilled administrators in our district they do call one another if elementary school principal a has a situation they will call a colleague to say what do you think i should do this takes that call away and now it accelerates the conversation from uh what should i do call to now calling miss o'connor and asking well let's coach me coach me through
339this going forward the last thing i would state is and i'm kind of going back into my principal days the question that i normally received is that student a and b were in a fight and student a was the aggressor the family of student b will always ask so what what discipline did student a get what happened to nay with and that's a that's a fair question for a parent uh to ask if their child was on the bad side of an aggressive act this document allows for a family to get a sense of what type of discipline we're going to levy without asking the administrator to tell them explicitly what happened and i think from a communication standpoint that's going to be beneficial to to our family and community as well might add as
340well from an equity standpoint this serves a larger purpose too we had a meeting today with lisa winters to her point or to your point there and the office of civil rights data collection and just making that more seamless process too a lot of credit to lisa and danielle anderson for teasing that all out last year to to get accurate reports for the office of civil rights we'll go we're just going to go around the table um okay thank you so as far as the staff interactions i mean what i understand is at the building level there's the classroom recording and that's very intensive for the teams and the buildings how will that work with these levels and who has access to what student records to be able to input the information yep so certainly
341there's still the need to know provision that we don't need to give access to people who don't have a legitimate need to know the the information so classroom teachers have the ability to input referrals for their for their staff i think one of or for their students one of the areas we want to get to more consistency on is how we're logging minor incidents which would be teacher managed versus major incidents that are more administratively managed i think there's probably more consistency from what we're gleaning in our first two months here around those majors and we're trying to come to some consistency around where we're housing minors what that looks like and how we're writing those up so that's an active work in progress right now well maybe a real uh situation would be in
342the secondary schools where you have you know kids in the hallway and one teacher who doesn't have access to that child's information witnesses the behavior and has to make the record you know just making that seamless for people um how you know and making sure that it's appropriate observation that's just one example so i'm hoping that's been i mean i've been hearing that there's no way for them to enter that information if they're first-hand witnesses to this whatever happened in the hallway i think we would have to check with lisa winters on just access right we wouldn't want to make a way where it's not we're not putting barriers in in front of teachers to record accurately in a timely fashion but we also want to make sure we're not opening up a whole access
343for individuals that have no legitimate reason to see 12 years of history of the student and their behavior if they don't have them in front of them for any class so we'd have to work at least around what that looks like and making really clear guidance as well on how how to write up the minor right how to write up a major because you know sometimes it can be a little clunky and infinite campus so just making sure that that process is well articulated would be helpful mr opinion ms allen ms o'connor tell me if i'm wrong because i love the question isn't this also an opportunity for a classroom teacher to collaborate with administration and it goes back to now your strategic objective 1.6 so if there's student a in the hallway and they're
344misbehaving that's an opportunity for the teacher to work with the administration to say i saw student a in the hallway i would like to levy this discipline and now there's a conversation between administration and that classroom teacher to say here's a little bit more that you should know do you do you still want to move forward with the discipline the answer may still be yes but now at least there's an informed response is that also a component to this work yes i would say we want to be encouraging those conversations to happen in fact all minor incidents still require the administrator to go in and review and close those out so the system is inherently trying to make that collaboration happen so absolutely if i could just piggyback off of what this mean feel brought
345up um you know and and to what the pastor brought up before just making sure that we're not giving too much information um that we're profiling our students right when we see a student maybe in the hallway and we look up like oh they have a history of this let me go ahead and make another incident and an infinite campus rather than talking do they have a behavior intervention plan do they have a disability do they have some trauma or something that might be contributing to this you know reoccurrence um because i have you know as a teacher i've had access to infinite campus too much access where i can you know get weight you know any behavioral referral for any student but oftentimes you know teachers have their biases and it just creates this
346negative implicit bias to profile the student and maybe continue down that path of you know just doing behavioral for after behavior for us so just making sure we have those safeguards up and we're very thorough with that yeah okay um so lesson question more uh well i'll perform it i'll make it into a question in terms of how you're doing your calibrations are these written are they video like how are you is it like uh subjective or objective how how are you doing that so that people are actually seeing and responding to the same incident versus reading off of a page and interpreting it in their head in a particular way yeah so that goes back to really well-designed professional learning opportunities for all of us um some of it's going to have to be
347pretty concrete and technical right listing out the steps to enter a referral with some really clean screenshots and some nice handouts and supplemental materials that go with that but i suspect through our monthly calibration conversations we will absolutely be bringing real scenarios that are kind of gray areas that we can all learn from there are some free use videos that i've used before in professional learning opportunities that are great examples as well so i love i love that thought of combining multiple modes of learning so that we're not just reading something and talking simply from a theoretical perspective we're actually taking into account real variables that our school staff are encountering yeah if i can just please recommend video or audio and then also requiring staff to enter technologically how they would rate something versus
348i say out loud what i think and then you know sharon says oh yeah what leanne said versus being able to see on the screen everybody rates the discipline and you're able to see on a poll like who you know not by name but by like 50 would have rated this the other 50 percent would have rated that now let's talk about it i just i feel like calibration and norming can go so wrong um because people don't want to be seen as being biased so i just feel like so important um and that's the only thing that's going to get us to moving away from bias particularly kids of color kids with special needs etcetera if anybody has anything so item three on page one educational programming representative of the student population and equitable
349to all students i'm a big believer in discipline i really am and i'm also a big believer of presenting content that's not boring and you don't remember back in high school right when it was boring right and we well we were all there right we knew people and so 18 years i've been beating the drum here content relevant to people and why did a teacher in wauwatosa have to go off syllabus to teach the biography of malcolm x why why wasn't it part of the regular curriculum for example um so in 1971 i was in la crosse central high school we had 1500 students there were no black students in the school and on the bookshelf in the library were books that i bet we don't have related to the civil rights movement and the
350history of the black panther party and they're compelling books so um african-american music history please let's let's help let's uh i mean all i can do from the board chair is beat the drum and it's it's pretty powerless so i i plead with you folks to be aggressive and let's get some stuff some courses some more books or something i mean you know what they are i don't know what they are i mean i you know look at me i don't know what 16 year olds will want in high school now to be relevant but i'm pretty sure we're pretty boring that i'm pretty sure of if you had a round table with your students to ask them what would you like us to teach what and listen right and not that you don't listen
351but tip over our apple card and make us do something that you know we got all in trouble over a human growth and development tonight let's get all in trouble over something related to equity and diversity okay you know give me something to vote on there please so thank you um i really appreciate the tenants you use to kind of ground this entire framework it was really nice to see not just a disciplined matrix but really a thoughtful evidence-based approach as to how you kind of got here and how we're going to prevent these problems from hopefully happening repeatedly i did have a couple of questions though um can you help me understand the maximum infractions there's um a minimum seems to always start with a certain singular number but the maximum is variable is
352that over multiple infractions or what is that what does that mean yeah severity and frequency that really accounts right certain incidents and in context is everything when it comes to investigations and discipline and what happens so that really allows a little bit of that latitude depending on recidivism and severity within context so i mean maybe this doesn't even matter but wouldn't that our maximum just be what our maximum is and then people use discretion within that i would want to encourage progressive discipline so i think leading in with the lowest within the maximum kind of encourages that versus just jumping right to a six okay what are you um vaping um why is vaping a max it starts at a minimum of one and it maxes out at three whereas alcohol and other drugs started
353a three and max at a six that kind of suggests that we think vaping is like a less serious thing to be doing on campus and i would argue that it's not any more or less serious at least than alcohol um which are both legal substances to be used in our state this is on page sorry this is on page 16 for anybody who's of follow along we talked about the use of a vape pen and with prior experience sometimes vape pins don't have anything in them so you actually have to do testing to see whether there's something in it with alcohol you know if it's alcohol but it's not as easy to determine whether or not there's something in a vape pen and that's why we started off low if we knew that it
354you know was definitely something we could also go higher although i would argue that people bring in can bring in alcohol in like a random bottle and you don't really know it's alcohol i guess you could taste it but i guess we could have somebody smoke off their bait bed if we wanted i mean it just it sort of sends it and i think vaping in particular is a tough one because i think it's happening really significantly at our middle school and high school level um and it just feels like we're taking kind of a soft approach here so that i don't know for an infraction that's happening really frequently i think that's good feedback yeah we will definitely take note of that absolutely thank you so much and have a wonderful evening we will
355bring back data on a quarterly basis on how discipline is moving forward so the board can receive it and it will be the segregated data as well so this isn't the last time you'll have an opportunity to have this conversation i think to one of the community members who spoke earlier this is the structure we want to we want to start working within and giving you the opportunity to continue to govern at a higher level i think the feedback you've provided this evening is helpful and i would assume you're going to continue to give us feedback uh this is this is truly an evergreen document um so as you see the data i'm i'm assuming i hope that you're going to ask us to modify and consider components of this as we move forward as
356well so this is just step one can i just ask can we have a executive summary and some recommendations along with the data so that when it comes there's a yeah you know there's some substance between just getting nervous yes forever i've been saying okay truancy rates what does that mean sure you know that's good feedback so i mean i like your expertise on what's working well what isn't working well do we have to what pop you know what do we have to tweak or stop doing start doing that's great feedback thank you so much have a good evening as you should go home now enjoy your few hours of sleep monthly teacher retention and staffing status as miss zelizovsky makes her way to the microphone we started new teacher orientation yesterday so um on
357monday morning we had we had a number of new teachers with us and i'm really proud to say that people um we ran an activity i want to share this story with you we i had a chance to run an activity and i asked our new teachers identify why you came to walla tulsa in one corner it was for our diversity equity inclusion and accessibility values and another corner i asked did you come here because of our innovation and new programs and professional freedom that you may have a third corner was it was a unique vacancy that you wouldn't find in other districts and the fourth quarter was compensation it was just a great payday i can tell you no one was in that last corner that i just referenced in terms of compensation i
358would say 90 of all of our new teachers were in the corner of our commitment to diversity equity inclusion and accessibility and some of the stories that staff shared our new staff shared in terms of why they're here it's powerful people talked about the fact that they felt that they could be themselves that they felt that they were honored and and valued here and that's why they they came to walla tulsa it was exciting um i would say another 10 were in our innovation corner they felt that we are a district that invites innovation and will allow them to be professionally um courageous and and take risks and that's that's good i think that speaks to what you inserted in the strategic plan so kudos to ms zelizoski and our team um for really kicking
359off a really good start um my opportunity to speak with them yesterday was grounded in the the now approved strategic plan and and your changes and they were excited and it just affirmed a lot of people's um decision to to make the professional jump and come to tulsa so you should know you have some really excited new teachers who are happy to be in this district um there were about a hundred of our new teachers along with their mentors there this morning um and it was a great way to go ahead and start our new teacher week tomorrow morning each of our divisions gets to have a chance to greet again our new teachers and i believe there's going to be an activity related to songs that may capture a theme for the upcoming school
360year i can't wait to see what that looks like um [Music] you received in your board packets our updated human resources report for august you can see that that our retention rate is right around 82 percent going forward we are starting to go ahead and get some comparisons with other local milwaukee metro school districts the average nova in those school districts um right now again knowing that those those numbers are not going to be final until september when school starts the average turnover in those districts is about 9 to 10 again that's voluntary turnover um and the range of turnover when you look at that the full gamut is from a low of about seven percent um to a high of about 18 percent we are not the only ones experiencing that right now [Music]
361i will continue to go ahead and um and keep us abreast of that information um one of the more fun activities that we've been engaged in as we're getting closer to the start of the school year from a recruitment standpoint as we've held a number of career fairs which have really been the work of all of our divisions along with our principles and really being available for candidates when they came in as of today our career fairs have resulted in eight new hires folks will be starting with us who started already and who will be starting with us next week we have 13 pending offers with a couple more to go out tomorrow and [Music] we're we still have somewhere around 20 vacancies to fill for the school year but my team is working with
362principals to identify those areas that maybe we need to go ahead and start looking at a sub star to start the school year in as well as those areas where we have promising candidates and just need to go ahead and close the deal so we are finishing strong as we get closer to students being here next week and i look forward to showing and talking with you about more data the last piece that i would add is that as i get some more time on the ground here in wauwatosa um i've been trying to continue to add to the data and the um the story about our employee retention and our employee experiences so the link to that the page that lists the vacancies across the district does have some desegregation related to vacancies uh
363by school and then the types of positions that we're filling i've been trying to update those as well again just to help contribute to our knowledge about what uh what that story is and may just be me but were other folks able to open that link okay yeah okay the link is now yes okay yeah so we'll just name that okay i will be happy to go ahead and update that so mrs levski just because i know this document was updated on august 17th and now it's august 23. um so what is our how many fte do we still have left to to fill just on keeping up with the numbers yep uh so um if you uh with our pending um offers uh we have um um we have about um 18 um fte
364uh left to fill right now um granted some of the pending offers are also for support staff whereas this report is focusing on teachers um but we're under 20 um at this point do you know how many of those are classroom teachers because i know there were some coaches i saw i think that resigned just recently um yeah um so uh there are very few um like elementary grade level classroom teachers um there are a couple of student services positions there are a couple positions that we've added based on changes in enrollment that we're seeing with our confirmed registrations [Music] i would say that as i'm visualizing my list of new hires really it's just a couple of positions in each building um there's not one building that has um a really big gap in
365it right now as far as you know like five vacancies or so it really is just a couple of vacancies per building oh good okay and spread out thank you i know this is a unique here uh and this is a heavy lift so the work that you're doing i know i as we move forward as a board we certainly want to talk about kind of creative recruitment strategies and boy have you all done them uh and then one of the things i know i'm really curious about is what other things we can build into for retention and i know there's a lot of efforts there's a lot of strategic plan but that's one of the things that i've kind of neared dear to my heart i i want to make sure that we can
366keep as many great people in education as possible certainly in tulsa but in wisconsin in the region in the nation so um thank you for your work on this i look forward to hearing more mr martin um anecdotally here well sometime oh maybe it was 10 years ago or so i had caused to get a yearbook from east high school from 1974. and the reason was i wanted the names of the debate team that crushed me when they met me when i was with lacrosse central in 1974. it was pretty pretty bad what they did to me and i wanted to just congratulate him but while looking through the book i saw teachers at the high school in 1974 who were teaching my daughter in and it just reminded me of the proud tradition of
367our community in our schools and i think that's still in our dna that as a community and i moved here in 86 so i'm going to claim some infusion of dna from the locals so um for what that's worth whatever we are we're gonna we're good but we're gonna be better this this just this will be a a good place to be you know for people to start and stay thank you our last item unless there's anything buddy does anybody want to add any additional items and they probably can't do that you want levity we have to add this you know i'm impressed that people are still digging and asking questions that's the level of going into governance um next up is finance and human resources discussion item approval of the self-funded health plan and
368benefit recommendation and you can drop the approval side of this is just discussion and update for the board um the only open item from last meeting's discussion was uh our intent to move the plan year from october 1st to january 1st and with high deductible qualified plans um that becomes complicated with federal guidance that we've gotten so far from those that we've worked with so we're tabling that for this renewal we're just at the point where we don't can't get the resources to to investigate that further for right now um as i mentioned last time we do intend to pull together a good group a collaborative group of different staffing groups look at future plan design and we'll include that topic as part of that planning so we have time to plan into any navigating
369the kind of complexities we might have with that but other than that that's the update i have for tonight so about a minute tonight versus two minutes at the last meeting once once again my favorite report of the evening i don't want it to end um yeah it's relevant so just this week i had i learned of a person in their 30s who has a serious health issue and needed some surgery not related to wauwatosa but had to struggle with their insurance company for authorization of additional medication and it ultimately was authorized but it's so hard when people are sick to have to fight your insurance company and we just talked about staff retention and i hope you know i'm sure we are but just to emphasize let people know how good this place is
370to work and our benefit package and and that you know at 30 something having to struggle or an additional refill on a prescription after surgery and having to appeal to the insurance company to cover it something the doctor wanted them to have and i'm pretty sure we're not like that and so blow our horn tell them our it matters that stuff when you're down and out when your luck has gone bad we're there for you and so you know preach our our buses here please thank you i actually do have a question so when it says in paragraph two or i'm sorry i guess it's the second paragraph the 2022-2023 budget includes a three percent increase in district health expenditures is that like the equivalent of like the increase from the the insurance company or
371is that like three percent we're spending three percent more than we have typically in the past correct that's on the district budget side of what we fund towards the health benefit for employees and we did include three percent increase to our line item for that yeah and that's in line with what the real rate increase was that we've gotten because we put it all together just so to understand so organizationally we only saw a three percent increase in our health insurance that's correct we've been tracking about i think it was 89.6 of our current year or last year's budget to actual costs so we had a little bit of a buffer there about 10 percent we have health inflationary trends of eight nine percent that later on to that and then some other increases so
372then i just wanted to try and figure out how how we communicate that out i am in the midst of open enrollment at work we had a 24 increase to our premiums 24 and that was down from 38 which is what we negotiated so i know our pay is not where we want it to be but our best like we just communication wise we gotta figure out how to communicate like how hard we are working to have a benefit plan that folks i mean you just can't compare it to any place else in the state so kudos and let's do a better job of making sure folks understand that is part of compensation because my comp just went down based on how much more i'm going to be paying for my family down here yep
373and we will do that okay thank you for this update um is there any sorry i don't i [Music] there was one motion on that it was a mirror it was an update it was a misnomer of sorts there was no approval oh yeah got it okay yeah the executive content um thank you very much last item public comments on any non-agenda items to close us out tonight is there any public comment on any non-gender items this evening so tired um okay i i wanted to share a little bit of information here um regarding the one percent of students the dpi has this one percent threshold that um we can't have more than one percent of students over the alternates or using the alternate standards and i know it was presented earlier that we're under
374that i actually did speak with dpi today the person that oversees this and this is public this is publicly posted on dpi's website that why which host is over that one percent threshold which means we have to send in justification why we are i asked if i could get that report but tpi says you have to do an open records request to get it and then it would be sent i've never done that they said you can also ask you know your school district to release this but i also think it would be a good thing for the board to see those justification reports every year if indeed we are over one percent um i really wanted to encourage because the and i had a great conversation with mr opinion um earlier today and or
375yesterday really since 1 30 in the morning um and you know the the curriculum for this one percent of kids it was not looked at it wasn't tribute um for this human growth development curriculum what we currently use and then language was put into the faq or somewhere in the documentations that we use a variety of curricular resources so at first when i went and dr marvel put out the two materials we used um that was that i it nowhere is there documentation that we reviewed those for what we told everybody we'd be reviewing for current and up-to-date information and then nowhere was it discussed what we even looked at that was alternate to what we have and now it says we use a variety of curricular like what are those the one percents or
376one point you know five or six percent deserve to know that too we do so what are those things and we can't hide and i told mr opinion today we can't hide behind it's an iep thing you know we have to own it if we didn't do it we didn't do it and i wanted to ask the board you know can we give direction to say okay we realize we miss these people it's okay but let's go back and make sure we look at the curriculum alternate um options out there to jenny's point earlier when she talked about professional development to the importance of it you know we're sending jessica for 2500 to miami for the conference you know could we authorize a hundred dollars to bring in an expert on this sort of thing
377right over at children's to look at what we have give us guidance on other curriculum that's updated beyond to be used with these i mean grandma there's like 100 200 to take a look at this and have materials for our staff we should be proactive instead of reactive thank you seeing no other comment man or wooden passenger 11805 west oxford place while we're talking about the inclusivity and making everything as equitable as we can i'd like to bring up two things for your consideration um some of you may or may not be aware that tosa is only one of two school boards in the state whose members aren't compensated and i'm sure given everything that we've had to deal with it's probably the last thing on your mind but with mr meyer as you mentioned
378elections coming up um we should make sure that we're getting people to fill these seats that in a most equitable situation because not only is there a time commitment to your positions um in in time sacrifices but there's costs involved to this as well um even your i mean which is great i was so pleased to see that you were advocating and attending a professional develop conference um as a professional myself i attend them and find great value of notes you mentioned um but there's loss of work there's child care and it leaves a good chunk of people out who can't run um and probably don't look like me [Music] so um [Music] i think that was all i wanted to say on that i don't have my glasses either and this is way past
379my bedtime did you say there were only one of only two in the street correct and so all your other collected yeah it used to be five it's it's it's down to two two now it's remarkable yep yeah and and you know i mean it's not like it's out of place either i mean all of our other elected officials are paid um and you know i appreciate even more so all that you guys do and the fact that there's and i mean it's obviously not going to be a lucrative position but just right back mr myers yeah no no i'm not going there um you can retire again but i i just i just think it's critical that we make it more equitable and that you folks are compensated for this um my my other
380piece um is okay sorry i ramble um [Music] we've got to do something to make these meetings so we don't have all these folks from out where outlying communities and everyone's coming and when there's folks like myself who probably would have liked to have something to say and the survey data i mean my gosh you guys it's 2022 we have got to have a way that we can pull the data from all the residents i'm not saying that just because i'm a parent of two young children that i should have all to say in the world although i do think it's pretty important um but that we we need to make sure that we're getting the full picture of wauwatosa because i guarantee you it is not what we saw tonight and it is not
381what we have seen portrayed in the media and not what you guys have seen in your data and there's just as a whole because clearly we've got a target on our back this isn't the first time that we've made the national headlines and they're coming for us and we need to make sure that we are doing what we can to to keep our our voices heard and that i don't need to cut off my family vacation just so that i can make sure that i get here and that our our voices and and our opinions are heard thank you your time what question you are in service tomorrow we are an agenda to talk about these things like common right but are in service tomorrow and i don't know specifically what you contemplate for governance
382i think that we know there's a lot of things but we could continue tonight the one tonight yeah later today right later today but you know correction to miss raleigh not all of us work and i typically stay up till two or three in the morning so i'm just getting started here um i'm retired we're going to start having questions but seriously the the compensation question the you know who could comment question is that appropriate to be at least mentioned tomorrow night or not dr means and i spent some time over the last week or so kind of talking through what tomorrow will be and i have those notes in front of me compensation wasn't part of it i think there's a variety of different where we will probably start is with literally a discussion
383of what is our moral imperative um and how does that connect to our mission the mission vision of of and then i think we can once we ground ourselves there um if you haven't read the governance or book please do you've got you've got 16 hours of skimming or at least the section on the moral imperative um you add a year go some of us um what i would say is i think we can get there and it may not be tomorrow just trying to be open-minded as he as we all are so yeah hearing what's big size and raised eyebrows but only two and it's like yeah only two carrying the weight of that [Music] no we don't there's no hands raised um i want to thank all the board members for uh sticking
384in it tonight um i owe you over the course the next few months some very short meetings um we've been really digging in uh doing some really good work um thank you for sticking with it thank you for being thoughtful thank you for listening in such a respectful manner um and again thanks to all the folks who are uh here still and and continue to be engaged for everybody who is here tonight um dr means and the staff who are still here really outstanding work your professionalism shine through um and thank you uh may i have a motion to adjourn move to adjourn may have a second second point of order are are you trying to break your record as president for the latest meeting here tonight please call the role mr braley yes dr
385yes mr meyer yes miss mueenville yes mr phillips yes ms willis yes after jessup anger yes you might be one and two eric i'm not sure it's not my fault returned