001i'll call the june 28 2021 school board meeting order it is 704 pm we are in the conference room ceo of the fisher administration building 12121 west north avenue miss newman please call it miss fraley here dr jessup anger here mr mayor here miss neufeld here mr phillips here mr rowland here mr doman here we move into public comment on non-agenda items members of the wauwatosa school board valued input of students parents staff members and community members the board's regularly scheduled meetings provide an opportunity for opinions and concerns to be expressed publicly the board values all comments and will respectfully consider this input in decision making the board requests that individuals limit their comments on each item in three minutes following any comment an individual board member may respond to the issue raised however it
002is not the intent of the public comment portion of the agenda for the board to enter into debate with 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 are there any members of the public that would like to speak on non-agenda items in the room i have a question this isn't my comment yet so my question was when i looked at the agenda at home it seemed that there was a public comment um for um school board compensation discussion are you still going to have an uh public comment after that discussion yeah we will follow the journals because um that's just not here from this print thank you any other comments from in the room jamie anybody online they are
003not hands raised [Music] we move into the consent agenda portion of the meeting are there any items on 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 so moved by second thank you is there any discussion on the consent agenda on the board see none are there any community comments on the consent agenda there are no hands raised virtually yes dr jessica banger yes mr meyer yes miss mufeld yes mr phillips yes mr rowland yes mr german yes we'll move on to the teaching and learning and action item this evening it is recommended that the school board approve the universal screener as presented at the june 14 2021 meeting and iso move second thank you is there any
004more discussion on this item no discussion i just wanted to say a thank you to michelle anderson for following up with the materials with answers to our questions about uh specifically how um star works their test items and passages specific to bias and whatnot so thanks for getting back to us thanks for the presentation last time well mr rowland thank you i would agree my only follow-up is if we could somehow through the superintendent or somebody um just have an update on like how the robot is going to go out i think that's the only piece that hasn't been like specifically shared right um so that'd be great we just got more specifics on that when they're when they're baked thank you any other board comment on the side seeing none any community comment on
005this side you're not hands raised virtually all right miss newton please call the wrong miss fraley yes dr jessica banger yes mr mayor yes miss muellefeld yes mr phillips yes mr allen yes mr doman yes our next action item is a school school board representative report from our black student union are they online yet i can't see the full gallery yes fantastic please introduce yourself and we look forward to hearing from you go ahead hi i'm miles coppage and i um along with layla allen who couldn't be here tonight are the uh co-leaders of black student union at uh wauwatosa west high school and uh i'm beginning my presentation now yes absolutely please this is the introduction of the 16-19 project to the walt disney school board and this is a short presentation i'll there's
006four um slides so what is the 16-19 project what is the 16-19 project curriculum miles you might want to share your screen oh i don't oh okay um if you have a presentation i thought it would be shared i i was told it would be i thought it would be shared um okay miles we might be able to get loaded here in the room if you just want to give us a moment all right thank you i can also share the presentation if needed yeah we've got it open up here in the room just give us one moment oh okay it's up all right go ahead and just let us know you want to advance the slide all right yeah you can advance the slide so here are the four parts of the presentation so
007uh explaining what is the 1690 project what is the 16-19 project curriculum why is the 16-19 project or something like it important to teach in schools and what are we uh specifically asking the board to do uh you can advance so the 16-9 team project is a is an ongoing journal journalism project uh originally published in the new york times in 2019 and it's its main goal is that it is that it aims to reframe the country's history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black americans at the very center of the united states national narrative and it was published in 2019 to honor the 400 year anniversary of the first slaves arriving in point comfort virginia it's origin its original edition is a combination of 10 essays a photo essay and
008a collection of poems and fiction works so here's some additional information on the project after it's a original publication there was some criticism as as nothing is perfect and nothing that attempts to do something this grand could be perfect there was criticism from several historians on certain aspects of the project's content certain revisions were made to address these issues but the editor-in-chief of jake silverstein responded and declined to issue large-scale revisions to their complaints backing it up with the new york times and his own specific historical evidence and the main complaint was with one uh point made in the project that uh that was that colonists bought the american revolution to preserve the institution of slavery and so apart from this the project received uh much praise such as leslie embarrassed who was one elsie
009amherst was one of the contributors to the project who said it was a much needed correct corrective to the blindly celebratory histories so the new york times did consult with historians in the making of this project so of course the personal essays offer uh personal and narrative perspectives the 1619 project did win the 2020 pulitzer pulitzer prize for commentary and working in junction in injunction with the new york times has made material a bit available for classroom study which i will talk about on the next slide and you can advance so the 1619 project was in was made in collaboration with the pulitzer center and and the new york times 1619 project so it is not a set step for step curriculum but it is a collection of reading guides activities and other resources that
010can be used in the classroom and it allows teachers to infuse whatever parts of the project they would like to use in their yearly curriculum because as i mentioned earlier this this project is not perfect and nothing that was that is attempts to address something this grant can be perfect so i think it's actually smart that the poetic center and the 1690 project collaborated in this way as it allows for uh specific parts to be addressed on lessons that are already existing and these are just some links that have stuff on the curriculum and how it's already been used and the poetry set has already been used in over 3 500 classrooms across the us and it has said to have been used and viable from elementary through college level so it's really widely applicable
011to a myriad of levels uh you can advance so why is it why is it important to teach these things so the first thing is that sheltering children from the reality of slavery and its effects and its while it was going on it deters their education deserves from their education things such as listing sectionalism as another cause of the civil war referring to slavery as a political issue or cultural conflict as it may be in many textbooks or teaching students about black heroes before teach them about slavery takes away from the reality of the institution and its effects in the united states and the 1690 project helps and or and teaching more about slavery helps to form a greater understanding of american history which is taught in eighth grade and ninth grade in our district
012so and here are some stats showing how um how education in these in these forms is lacking currently so the southern poverty law center took a survey of a thousand students and found that eight percent of students knew why southern states seceded from the union 12 percent knew about the economic importance of slavery should be north and 18 can name an important result of matt turner's 1831 slave revolt which all of these things are important to the u.s history as well as black history the curriculum provides clarity for teachers on how to address the topic of slavery as education week stated that many teachers felt deep uncertainty about the topic of slavery and so this would help to almost lighten the load and provide them an easier path to talking about this with students teachers
013often feel the brutality of the subject is a cause for censorship and not talking about it while others choose to single out the revolutionary heroes and principles while not addressing the entire institution neither neither one of these ways fully addresses slavery to the extent that children meet to the extent that children understand the reality of the institution or its historical and current effects you can advance to the final slide so what are we asking you to do or ponder i would ask you at tulsa west black student union would ask you to consider introducing the curriculum to u.s history and 6 through 12 english class classrooms or allowing teachers to implement the curriculum into the current learning so the state of wisconsin in its constitution provides that students have a right to sound based education
014and i believe and we believe that this it is imperative students learned the totality of our country's history so every student is empowered to be a part of its future and this is the end of my presentation but just as a side note i do know of the current um legislation in the capitol up in madison that would uh basically banned teaching these sort of things so i know that it would be very difficult to do uh when if that is passed but just in the meantime i would ask you to consider what i present to you today thank you thank you very much we appreciate you taking the time to be with us tonight any questions or comments from board members oh i am pleased nicole thank you very much i'm wondering how did
015you come up with the the curriculum after i mean i know that students are having many great conversations and i'm just wondering can you help me understand that place and and how and how the recommendation came forward for this particular curriculum so i had heard about the 1619 project after it came out obviously in 2019 so it has been out for a few years and i know and i was i did was doing research on the subject and found that a curriculum was made because obviously there's complaints from many students black students specifically and students in general that they feel especially with the uh protest in the summer of 2020 that uh education on slavery and men and slavery and the effects on blacks and black americans in this country was not sufficient as they
016would have liked and many things that like obviously with social media and things many there was many things that people learned from that that they felt they should have been learning in school and so i just thought that education obviously education is obviously one of the most important things for our for uh to have a good society and honestly probably the most important so i think that getting a total education on all of your country's history in a class that is supposed to be about u.s history i think should include the totality of all of that okay then just a follow-up question so then did you also have an opportunity to talk with some of the adults in the building so the teachers and getting their thoughts on it i have not yet done that
017this was kind of this was made towards the end of the school year so with finals of things wrapping up i wasn't able to address that but i uh moving forward i would like to talk to like past history teachers i have and talk about how they feel it is being taught in our schools and if it's sufficient or not okay thank you i mean i i really appreciate when the students bring these proposals and ideas forward and i just want to make sure that we can follow up and you know and and have some action thank you any other word comments questions well i just wanted to thank you very much for joining us and i really appreciate the presentation and as always our school school students represent us quite well and thank you
018for bringing us forward bringing this forward to us to discuss to consider uh are there any community governments in the state we have one hand raised virtually todd dahlgren you have the microphone please state your name and address hello my name is todd dahlgren i live at north 122nd street i would like to add with respect to the presentation on the 1619 project um there's also other work that takes a look at the same topics but from a different perspective um and that is the 1776 unites project it's founded by mr robert woodson senior um a book was also recently published by that organization called red white and black that includes a series of essays by an ethnically diverse body of authors that offers commentary and insight on the history of our country and a
019different perspective than that which is provided by the 1619 project and i would hope that if the board and administration were to consider the 1619 project as curriculum they would also consider a differing viewpoint on those issues from the 1776 unites project thank you any other online comments jamie ah that's it i'll wait yes no we do now katie yant you have the microphone please state your name and address ah this is katie wilkes i'm a teacher at underwood and actually i was miles fifth grade teacher so more of a proud teacher moment nice job mile thank you any other online comments jamie no they're there are no more hands raised thank you again for joining us tonight for the presentation greatly appreciated hope you enjoy your summer thank you thank you all right up
020next public hearing public hearing on the dpi coping 19 school district flexibility application for 2021 school year the waiver requested is for educator effectiveness per state law the district will hold a public hearing under 118.381 b and then take action on approval of the waiver so this request um is pretty straightforward it's a continuation of the waiver that was requested and approved for last year the dpi allowed us to waive a number of um statutes we waited till the end of the year to make sure there weren't others that we had to bring forward in particular minutes of instruction this is the only one that we are requesting and that we would need effectiveness educator effectiveness is essentially our evaluation system and we put that on pause for this year so therefore requesting the waiver
021any board comment or questions i have a question is there anything less formal being done um in lieu of this formal process in terms of educator effectiveness professional development any of that that you can speak to i guess less formal is ongoing conversations um part of i guess how i look at determining effectiveness is through those ongoing daily conversations whether it's daily weekly between colleagues between principals and teachers between administrators and just giving continual feedback is there a community comment on this instance of public hearing there are no hands raised virtually please come to the mic state your name address um hello this is uh john mcfluke from 772 north 116th street um i would question the need for an ongoing waiver for this situation um it appears that we are hopefully now at the
022tail end of this situation with the ongoing pandemic and things that are returning to normal i would think that returning to normal educator evaluation would be part of this we want to make sure joel save you some time it's for this past year it's not for for the prior year because here i'm sorry i stayed quite good thank you sorry any other public comment for the public hearing portion of this seeing not we'll move on to the next item which is the motion to approve as people thank you it is recommended that the school board approve the dpi covid 19 school district flexibility application for the 2020-2021 school year as written the one waiver requested is for educator effectiveness and i so move second mr moon please call it all miss fraley yes dr jessup
023anger yes mr meyer yes ms mufild yes mr phillips yes mr rowland yes mr doman yes all right that will take us to our human resources report the staffing report from this cruise parent okay um i'm ida cruz ferran assistant superintendent of human relations and i have jenny fox here director of human resources to present our 2021 staffing plan i'd like to just start off with thanking and gratitude towards our team about kristen bowers and teaching and learning as well as marta kotkowski and business services and all the principals and the business services and student services for collaborating and spending a lot of time coming together around staffing staffing's a complex process but a special thank you to jenny fudge who coordinated and facilitated many of those meetings up to this point um i'd like
024to start off with aligning our staffing plan with highly effective teachers and staff the continuous improvement in student learning as well as community relationship with the benefits of students and sound stewardship working with our allocated budget and aligning highly qualified staff and making sure we were working with principals and hiring managers to make sure we have staff in the right place a general overview of our staffing plan considers our avid expansion at our elementary middle school and continuation in our high school along with hiring on avid tutors as well as an increase in our middle school counseling at 0.5 fte at each middle school and the reduction of staff due to enrollment program closures and an increase in data and reporting and technology support with the movement to our one-to-one devices for students and also
025building and ground shifts and the shifts and categorization so that's just a general overview when looking at the staffing plan we look at the staffing in two groups one is focused on the teacher group which includes elementary regular classroom teachers and when we think about fte we look at one fte as a full-time teacher we look at elementary specialists which are categorized by gym music art viad in spanish we look at elementary student services which support our iep services and then we look at secondary um and we'll talk a little bit more detail on how we get our formulaic ftes again student services and then how we support our programs with highly qualified teachers under the undefined category and then district level the student services department at the district level student learning department and other
026programs that include our county programs and then we look at other employee groups which are defined as administrators our select employees educational assistants which include regular education special ed administrative assistants building and grounds and food service employees when we look at the upmost updated staffing chart you can see where we are and the differences in the highlights so when we look at the entire staffing chart you can see that our professional staff is down by 15.27 fte which include the closing in the county programs um which include enrollment at the middle school um and also our non-teaching staff is down by negative 582 which are representative of administrators and changing the categories within those administrators to select employees as well as retirements and food service but we'll talk at detail once we get to each
027chart um at the elementary there was very little um movement as uh it's really dictated based on enrollment um and we're able to fill our enrollment um with our residents in open enrollment what we did see and we've already kind of changed based on enrollment and sections as we get a weekly update from student services we have at this point that we had elementary school schools down in enrollment by 1.5 fte teachers which was one section of sk at wilson and one section of jk so as i kind of mentioned this is a fluid process based on student enrollment so is that student enrollment based on this year to last year yeah and we get like a weekly update where we are with enrollment so we're saying enrollment is down from last year yes do
028you mean last year is in this current year yes enrollment when we prepared this report so i think the last update was june 8th um we've already added back a section of jk at this point with increased enrollment is our enrollment so far today from where we stand right now compared to our most recent school year currently actually uh yes and it's it's rolling in on a weekly basis thank you i just want to make sure that was clear no thank you um i had hey mr dillman the um i'm always watching the um high school resident enrollment as to whether we gain students from eighth grade to ninth grade and typically we gain quite a number of students in that transition and um it seems that that has been weakening in the past few
029three four years it's not a certainty that it's been weakening but it just doesn't seem as strong as it was and we need to keep an eye on that that we continue to attract newcomers to our district at the beginning of ninth grade thank you and uh the next chart talks about the elementary specialists uh that really are drive again with enrollment we do have specialists which are identified in art fayed um spanish general music instrumental music and it's really based on that there's just a slight decrease in sections and we keep an eye on that we do have traveling teachers to make sure we're maximizing our staff to make sure we're staffing appropriately um the elementary student services um this is really um our special it's driven by many of our students with special
030needs and driven by our individual educational plans this includes our special ed teachers our speech and language pathologists our ell teachers school counselors psychologists social workers occupational therapists physical therapists and adapted fayad so you can see in those numbers they were at a .7 fte 0.5 special ed teachers were up a 0.3 school counselor we were down slightly 0.1 with ell but as we mentioned we really look at the iep services and we monitor that closely next is the middle school formula fte and that is really driven by a formula that we use to determine based on number of students number of courses a student takes number of students per class number of classes a teacher teaches and what we noticed in the middle school um we use this formula to determine we give the
031formula to principals they then allocate their staff and align their staff uh we noticed uh world languages and english was down slightly so that is at whitman we see we're down 2.34 and at longfellow we're down 2.7 fte but again that's really driven based on that formula i just gave you again the same thing with the formula at the high school so a number of students number of courses student takes number of students per class number of classes a teacher teaches so it is similar at the high school level we're down 3.37 it's driven by the course requests and numbers so at the secondary the total fte comes from three different parts the formula the student services allocations and then what we call undefined which i'll discuss in a moment so the chart here talks
032about the secondary student services fte which has a little bit of an increase going into next year a large part of that is the addition of the 0.5 counselor at each building so a 1.0 fte for middle school counseling services an increased occupational therapy we did move social work back to this category had previously been accounted for in the undefined fte and then students services in terms of special education on the allocation of that fte will change based on student need as well next is the undefined for the high school so um that's that third chunk of fte to make up the whole these are parts that don't necessarily fit into the formulaic or student services so library media specialist allocation we also use it to bolster programs the expansion of avid has been included
033in their family and consumer sciences tech ed music to sustain those programs so those three parts make up the total fte at the secondary um so these are the middle school same thing as the high school just the whitman long fellow undefined fte the avid expansion is in there some academic support some of the academic support was able to shift into the formulaic this year to free up fte elsewhere but again this is extra that doesn't didn't fit into the formula but then we need to continue or expand programs and then we have district level fte dedicated for student services so that includes our diagnosticians our 18 to 21 program teachers which we did increase by one fte going into next year due to student enrollment and needs there in that program and then you'll
034notice the teacher of the hearing impaired moved from part-time to full-time based on student need as well and then our student learning ftes um this accounts for our reading specialists instructional coaches equity coaches um literacy coaches the gt position um that has remained the same over the course of the last three years that allocation chart 10 talks about our other programs or what we refer to as county programs you can see the uh it's dictated over all reduction was 6.2 at children's uh the reduction of two staff just based on the need and programming at the children's hospital velar phillips was reduced enrollment by two this was really based on the juvenile detention alternative initiative looking at staff ratios our staff ratio that we were currently functioning under was a four adult our four students
035to one adult and we the recommendation and going through that uh it was believed to be eight to one um as i mentioned plank road was an absorption when that program closed was an absorption at that time thinking we wouldn't increase enrollment um in many ways we're happy to decrease enrollment at our uh adjudicated youth but we wanted to make sure we were being fiscally responsible and aligning the staff based on those staff ratios river hills also closed which was a reduction of 2.10 so the process was to work with the administrators of accounting programs and our certification certified staff to really be able to move staff into our district and look at the needs and certifications chart 11 talks about other employee groups which are administrators select employees educational assistant both regular and special
036ed uh educational um regular ad assistance um special ed assistants that those broken down separately and then admin assistance building and grounds and food service so the change in difference is uh we're down to administrators uh the director of b and uh g uh moved to the select actually we moved that position to select we would not be replacing the plant maintenance and operations due to a lot of that work was referendum work so that was transitioned at the ap position at the county program was not replaced this last year then when we looked at select groups the created two positions technology has a data specialist position which is one fte and then we reclassified an admin assistant to support in a select position the assessment and state reporting specialist because of the data needs
037and then also we increased 0.5 fte nursing um and then educational assistant group decreases just based on enrollment and needs um and then the food service was their two retirements and i think this week a third retirement but then sodexo hires those staff on um uh the this portion uh we really wanted to talk about some of our efforts around recruitment and retention of staff of color we're excited to um report out after this hiring season some of our data to show where we've increased some of our staff of color and we can give you that information as preliminary data but we wanted to talk a little bit about how we're recruiting in our efforts around staff of color we have teacher ambassadors supporting our recruitment efforts to diversify and network we had a virtual
038recruitment fair that was over 70 candidates came and we were able to get some high potential prospects and hires from that actual recruitment fair we also made sure to network with handshake which is a focused around hbcu recruitment fairs as well as oshkosh uw milwaukee um and some others that were in diverse in nature we also are focused with our future teachers program and really are looking at pipeline development to really gauge some of our current high schoolers that are interested in teaching and come up with strategies to bring them back and one of the things is looking at student teaching placements especially colleges that have a much more diverse student body as well as this year we're piloting the wisconsin intern program which is a dpi grant to bring in interns that would be
039paid for by dpi and shared with us to and with the focus of students of color the other thing that we many districts are looking to do but aren't currently doing we really think it's important to have a presence in posting in areas that have diverse populations so we're posting in places like indeed handshake which is historically black colleges and universities um hispanic professionals of greater milwaukee alliance of black educators having a presence that really focuses on diverse and inclusive work environments with linkedin social media campaigns we think it's important one of the things is really making sure we're setting the tone for welcoming a welcoming culture and visibility of our staff of color to to make sure the narrative is that we are we want to increase our our schools and that is a
040focus of ours and recently i'm sure many of you saw the news stories and the focus of the fox 6 news story on the black student union that was really kind of generated from our teachers of color and our teacher ambassador worked closely with the bsu's to create that and also a big focus last year um and uh and a continued focus this year is that we've refined our hiring process worked very closely with principals um and encouraging hiring managers to really use the selection criteria to mitigate bias through our process from all the way from application to our spark hires which is our interview tool to our in-person interviews and we'll have the breakdown of data for you to see what our results are through our mitigating those biases um also making sure that
041all the interview teams uh really attempt to include a staff of color to make sure there's diverse perspectives when offering feedback on a recommended candidate um the the retention portion of it we know is very very important um we continue this year made a concerted effort to continue our staff of color group and we met via zoom just to make sure our staff felt connected and there was a voice and administration administrators were present dr ertel attended many of them i don't think he actually missed one to make sure that there's voices being heard and we're responding with an action plan staff of color affinity groups continued and we want to do a reboot of those next year to really get some leadership from our staff of color and also one of the focuses this
042last year and the year before but is making sure our principals and hiring managers have a 30-60-90 plan focused on highly qualified staff irreplaceables and specifically staff of color that they have intentional meetings with the staff of color so that they can do some goal setting and feel connected our staff can feel connected also updates in our mentoring program where we filed a grant to allow us to do some more intentional training of our mentors as well as continued support we know how important mentoring is for new teachers and teachers into our district and then also our meet this year even though we couldn't do it in person via zoom we had our new teacher mid-year feedback in celebration we heard feedback from our new teachers is that we do a good job at the
043beginning and there are some feedback loops at the end but wanted something in the middle so and we use that feedback to help create our new teacher program as well in our mentor program so in conclusion and time for any questions that you might have um uh just the decrease in enrollment has caused a decrease in overall staffing i work real we're looking forward to working real closely with the business department to make sure we're being fiscally responsible but that we have the staff necessary to um close the gaps that are needed and then uh obviously the staffing plan may need to be adjusted so um just based on enrollment changes over the course of the summer and um currently um just uh to give you an update and where we are with staffing we
044are going to hire 44.5 about staff to hire the over the summer we were currently hired and this is just teachers uh we've currently hired 27 and we have 16.5 left to hire so that we're right in the midst of our hiring season right now are there any questions so just a clarification on the decrease in enrollment has caused this decrease in overall staffing to your question before it's from the year before as we staffed last year wasn't planning for the pandemic so for our students just to make that so when we say decrease in enrollment we're actually preparing ourselves for two years ago right and can you share the numbers of teachers of color i know you had some yup of where we're at right now so currently we where we match the the
045national average of six percent staff and we've been pretty stagnant like this might change just a little bit because we try to do june 30th to july first um so we've increased our um all staff from seven percent of all staff to nine percent um we did increase um our six percent to seven percent and i think we're actually up a little bit because those were we just hired two more teachers of st of color um that are not included in this um our administrators uh we are at about 17 percent to 20 uh of uh administrators of color we're still in the process of hiring uh an ap as well um and let's see yeah as far as hiring that's where we are unless you want to know retention numbers or we have some
046preliminary data any comments or questions from the board i guess my only question is how will the board be just kept up to speed with the enrollment changes and changes in hiring sounds like it's sort of an abbing or a flowing thing this summer as we figure out what enrollments to look like for next year so how do we just stay in the loop on that yeah i'd like to coordinate up with damon dr means and uh with marta so we can kind of give you an update and whatever is going to be helpful um and how frequently you might want that it usually stabilizes i want to say just like a late september because we get those okay so then for the community probably late september is when we would say here's what our
047enrollment actually turned out to be third friday in september is yeah right but just so it's planned that we get the presentation on we usually get a large influx right the week before school starts and this year probably will be even more okay thank you any other comments or questions just a couple pretty technical questions i'm curious who the grant is through that you all apply for for the mentoring program it's the peer mentor review grant through dpi and we partnered with the school district of waukesha on that grant to split it evenly and we'll so if we're awarded that grant we'll be able to provide uh training between our two districts to offer some more flexibility and time and place but we'll be working together with waukesha should we award the grant that's great
048i love the collaborative nature of that um and then my other question similar to um mr roland i'm curious in terms of last year or not last year year before um do you have like a week to week or month-to-month enrollment like we expect that we'll get a six percent increase in enrollment in june and we'll see that go down a little to four percent in july and then we see dr earl to your point the big funk comes in august like are we looking at like short-term um benchmarks uh for that enrollment to see if they're staying true even despite you know covid so one i'll just give you one thing at the secondary schools we have an average we have a five-year average of increase or decrease that we use as part of
049the staffing process so for example west has their current average is 18.6 increase um and east is 26.6 from third friday in january to through friday in september so we can monitor that as it's going those will be good numbers the i don't know the middle school numbers would be right here but um elementary we just look at sections if as the numbers continue to go up and we add sections my hope is that we get to where we're fully staffed um and we have the 1.0 back and the other piece is open enrollment open enrollment applications i believe were under a thousand for the first time in a long time um but still plenty of open seats that we would be able to bring open enrollment students and so we'll be able to give
050updates since a couple years ago when we were able to um previously were able to enroll students back in february i believe it was and now it's we're taking them at june so people it's harder to get fill all our seeds yeah but the last couple years we've done done pretty good with it and what's the bump at which point you add a section in elementary like early childhood versus later child you know later grade elementary there's no specific number um it's really looking at the needs of the class so in discussions jk obviously is the most difficult because you really you're almost number driven then because you don't know the needs of the students but the rest of them you really look at analyze the needs of the students the building space all those
051components that play into it and then conversations with principals i think our average i'm not sure if anybody here knows our average elementary last time we checked was about 22. so we have classes from probably 16 all the way to 2627. no i'm glad to hear us talk about the the focus of the student composition of a class because depending on the number of kids with special needs depending on you know how big the room is that matters yeah unfortunately that's not the way most people look at it it's numbers as parent you want small class size because that theoretically equals better learning and that's not always the case but numbers the number of students in a classroom is a consideration so no i'm happy we're giving some autonomy to that kind of decision-making especially
052the elementary level and just to clarify when we talk about open enrollment we're talking about the elementary level right as far as right that we've taken mainly at the early early elementary grades but all the way up through fifth grade open enrollment at middle school and high school would just be students who left the left the district and they're still yeah they go tuition waiver and then would convert to open enrollment but there's no open enrollments clear for the public any other board comments or questions miss mayfield yes thank you um i'm just trying to follow along with the bigger buckets that you know we're shifting staff and i wanted to understand i just wanted to make sure that i'm checking myself so the the counselors are an increase for middle school that's real positive
053change the county grounds is a decrease because of program changes so those are the easy ones now special education and avid this is where i'm not sure what we're doing so for avid is it is it an is it an ad is it a shift is it how exactly are we running with that and then um regarding special education i know some the numbers fluctuated because of students but i'm just wondering but you know how that is working and um miss ballers you can step in if need be but the um avid is an ad to support the programming at the middle school level so that is an ad we had already put in last year some support at the high school level and as far as the special ed population that's really driven around
054the ieps and the needs of the iep and based on minutes support and instruction um is that it i think so i mean yeah we're just kind of looking at our current structure i'm just wondering i'm just wondering based on the things we've been hearing how how it's going but i know that last year was difficult so i'm just trying to figure out the relation so i mean and how is avid working with the elementary is avid working well we haven't started avid at the elementary okay so it's only high school it's currently only at the high school and next year it's beginning at the middle both middle schools which is where the coordinator position is the ad this year and then we have two elementary schools that are starting um building wide okay so
055it's not a and there's no stabbing there excuse me yes so it's not a shift of duties it's an additional resource correct okay okay yeah i still have questions around that special education support piece um but i'm i'm going to have to reframe my questions on that topic and let you know it sounds good any other board comments or questions uh could you just talk a little bit um the retention plans 30 60 90 meeting or the 30 60 90 days 30 60 90 degrees it's just kind of a check-in with those teachers and how are things going yeah it's kind of like those um questions between those rounds to make sure they're feeling connected and supported and who does those is it their building leader or their building principal or if it's a certain
056department whoever supervises them okay i would just suggest potentially i think that's great i don't have a problem with that but maybe someone else that they don't talk to every day or don't have regular you know just a check and you know and i don't know the right answer is if it's a different principle or different admin but sometimes they might uncover things that are a little bit different than you know your boss that you see every day it's just something you know i currently use you know that we kind of have you know it's a program something to think about that's a um and then i just want to make a couple statements you tell me if i'm wrong around hiring our staff of color because i've seen some things i think there's some
057misconceptions out there when we say we're putting an emphasis on hiring staff of color that no way means that we are lowering the standard or lowering the bar of teachers we're going to hire it doesn't mean that we're only hiring staff of color that they're getting preferential treatment in the hiring process in fact it would mean that we're widening our net and potentially getting more candidates which would that mean we have a stronger pool to pick from anything i said there that you would say is wrong or incorrect you're right on i think i want to just emphasize the point about the pool those have been the discussions we've had repeatedly is we need to increase the size of our pool right in fact if if we are in our recruitment process not getting teachers
058of color we're actually lowering our pool shrinking our pool which means we're actually not getting the best candidates potentially right it's probably better if we say recruitment of staff of color maybe that would reframe things properly but yeah it's our hiring process is based on the selection criteria and a process that we have in place not there's not preferential treatment given to any one person and things like making sure that we don't have bias and hiring process and things like that are not to give somebody preferential treatment but actually eliminate barriers that we understand that we probably had in the past and maybe have now but we're working to improve that okay thank you any important comments or questions all right uh any community comment on this lab there are no hands raised virtually thank
059you very much for your time i appreciate it thank you next up is the proposed budget approval mr phillips sure it is recommended that the school board approve the attached proposed 2021-22 budget fund expenditures are summarized and as follows in the following funds so general fund 10 85 million 114 189 special reserve fund 21 of 1.9 million 1.91 million special special education fund 27 13 million hundred ninety four thousand six hundred sixty one dollars referendum debt service fund thirty nine zero dollars capital expansion fund forty one of two point two million dollars capital improvement fund 49 bonds nineteen million five hundred seventy one thousand five hundred and sixty dollars food services fund fifty two point three two seven million five hundred forty seven dollars recreation department fund eighty two million four hundred forty three thousand
060one hundred twenty five dollars which equals total expenditures all funds of 127 million one hundred sixty one thousand eighty two dollars less the operating funds transfer from fund 10 of seven million four hundred six thousand seven hundred thirty two dollars total net expenditures of all funds 119 million seven hundred fifty four thousand three hundred fifty dollars the 2021 budget will be adjusted again in october once we have final enrollment state aid final and state revenue cap figures available so the tax levy will be set at that time and iso move second thank you mr allen any important comments or questions on this item as we had our public hearing last meeting compromise i do have comment i do not support this budget for the reasons i will now state a recent student learning presentation indicated
061outcomes that were not favorable in english english language arts there was speculation by staff that it had something to do with grading for learning but there wasn't a certainty with respect to that i'm not a supporter of zero-based budgeting but i do believe that when we budget that things should justify themselves and given our outcomes we need to i believe we need to engage in as a board engage in a process of affirming that our choices are effective i completely support our funding for equity activities i i think we should examine whether our particular strategies are working as much as we would like and whether other equity-based strategies would work better i did vote to support avid in early february i i now believe that vote was a mistake i wasn't i'm not satisfied with
062the um the bidding process and i'm not satisfied with at least and there wasn't an appearance that there was sufficient proposals for my liking from minority owned operations and entities and also we are this is a deficit budget and um given that i i do think the board should take on an effort to spend time to examine what what we can do to get our bet our our spending aligned with our income now things may change by october but for right now i think it's important that someone speak to this and and say that there's work that needs to be done thank you thank you mr mayor any important comments or questions that's right um i will support this budget but i do want to second a couple things that mr meyer said and i've
063had these conversations with with ms kwekowski i do not like fighting voting for a budget that has deficit uh spending and i know that we've had to do that the last couple of years i also know that as a school district we need to keep running and we need to recognize the work that's being done and as someone who when i ran for the board really thought like that there was gonna be money that you could figure out like i really did when i ran for the board thought that there was going to be something that i could find that we could you know cut or or spend more wisely and i will just say from a professional capacity the wisconsin education school funding formula is is really flawed and it does not actually support
064what our students need um and so while i am not in love with voting for a budget that has this kind of deficit and i think there is work to mr meyer's point that will need to be done we know this for a fact until we get a number we can't actually set a real budget um the way i explained it to my kids the other day as they were hearing me rant um is that it would be like me saying to my oldest child you need to go get an apartment in chicago but i can't tell you what your salary is going to be um and i you don't know where you're going to work so you don't know what the distance is going to be or what it's going to cost you to
065get to work but we do know that you need this this this and this and their response was well how can i do that and i said that's why i'm so frustrated so um i understand a lot of your frustrations mr meyer i really appreciate that and i want nothing more than to see us put money to the places where kids are going to benefit from it where our teachers are going to feel that we are recognizing the unbelievable effort that they put into this work and i also know we need to have a budget by a certain date so that we can move forward with paying the bills so the system is flawed the calendar is flawed the funding formula is flawed and yet we still have to vote on a budget so i
066felt like i just needed to say my piece here because this this the way that we do this is just so thank wrong any other board comments questions that's right thank you yeah just attack on i guess what i i would agree that i'm comfortable with passing it tonight into this like having mistaken the ground but it is built on some assumptions that based on what we've been reading in the news may or will not come to pass um so i would i just think that we as a group need to be better educated as to if there's not a per pupil increase onto the revenue cap or in funding like where would we pull those dollars and to mr myers question if we're trying to get um closer to a non-deficit budget where would
067we like i don't know i think we are prepared or at least i'll be ribs and have a tough conversation about that just what would we even do and then we can put it on paper and say and maybe we'll just say that no that's that's too much that's too difficult that's too painful and then you know we choose accordingly but at least we've had the conversation we can choose rather than just sort of going with the flow so yeah i guess i'm comfortable with voting for this with the sense that we'll have continued maybe working and in service conversations or whatever to understand based on different scenarios we'll probably know relatively soon what happens with the state budget um outside of b notes i guess uh what this is going to end up being
068thank you any other board comments or questions one final comment if i may it might very well be that the money is being spent in the right places it might very well be that the strategy is the correct strategy and it hasn't had time to come to fruition um but and it also might very well be that we do have to face some kind of cut and we need to know affirm what strategies where were wanting to add or what strategies we were wanting to continue with and what proportion they should have in the face of a cutting or or other difficult type of scenario so there's no conclusions on my part other than that we have a lot of examination to do as has been stated by other board members as well thank you
069i i i agree with so many of the things that have been said uh i would adam i'm incredibly disheartened that the great news that our state budget was in such a strong financial footing that that money isn't being invested in schools in public education so i mr rowland your your comments about i think being ready for some really challenging difficult conversations i think that's where we're at or where it seems they have the crystal balls correct that's where we're going um so i won't reiterate everything about my bright colleagues have said but i think this is a hard it's a hard budget any final comments just be phil thank you and in no way um would i like the team that put the budget together to be disheartened by our conversation this evening because
070it is where we are at at this point in time now friends what are we going to do about this we've all said we've got to have working sessions so we need to give our board president some direction on what we think that looks like so you know okay so we're all giving direction now to mr doman and said we need to have working sessions now between now and september is that what we're saying that's right that's what i'm saying and i will also say based on conversations with miss kweikowski that there is a list that will be starting to be put together of all of what those options might be what those recommended options are i think we should all be prepared to also be calling through the budget mr phillips i'm looking at
071you um you know where where are those places that they are going to have the least amount of an impact on students that that's where it comes down for me so i absolutely agree with you we got to figure out we need to be prepared for what we would do so that when that news comes we're ready to do it versus then sitting down to say the sky has fallen in fact what do we do now i just don't think we're in a place right now that we could do that in time for this vote it's the way i understood it yeah i mean this is not an unusual situation every year we have a gap and i don't like the gap no one likes the gap and this is a point in time so
072um but we do have to be mindful for planning and and also plan for contingencies and some years it's easier for us to to go to do that um some years it's harder so and we also have an opportunity with our you know with our upcoming new um superintendent so um you know so it's just another uh i think it's another positive to take a look at what we can do so um so anyway okay well i just want to make sure that we get the actions out there so we just don't leave the conversation and then it doesn't come back for three months that's wrong thank you uh my question is uh highway phrases so after we approve this it's my understanding that the district will sort of proceed with a number of things
073like the staffing as it has been proposed uh some of the contracts i mean just proceeding as if this is going to be what it is so to what extent do certain things like does the window close for us to even have an ability to impact those things like post today you know the biggest window closed may 15th with teacher contracts yeah so 75 to 80 of this budget is people yeah and majority are under contract through the year so that there's limitations so when you look at if you're looking at significant reductions it's really for the 22-23 school year and working our way through i mean the deficit budget something we do every year it's kind of the way our district has operated you you there's always you count on end of the year
074savings this year probably not going to happen as much as it has in other years but to work through i think what's going to have to happen is really looking down the road bigger picture kind of more foundational components of the budget and but as far as getting through it's it's an issue of fund balance possibly if there's not um if funding doesn't come in in october which i don't not anticipating a 200 which is what this budget was built on but we'll see what happens with it so my other i guess two things um i know mrs bidekowski presented like purchasing as a possible place to find some relief i guess for lack of a better word to what extent is that window open for discussion [Music] you know for conversation or after today
075does that window close or how does tell me more about that marta has she actually has some other i mean health insurance go ahead there's other items so we can look at health insurance either reserves or employee contribution as well as the health insurance rates so obviously that's bigger discussion that we can start putting together and bring it to the board and just to make it plain for the community the deficit that we're projecting for the next year can you just give the round number it's about 1.5 million okay thank and you that deficit require us to borrow money or we would have a fund balance to pay it for the psychology it does not require us to borrow the money just because we received sr1 and answered two funds this year to make up
076for some of the loss we've losses so just for people that think that all public schools are sitting on a just treasure trove of like dollar bills we are projecting a 1.5 million dollar deficit for the next year correct okay that's after college funds yeah and with the 200 people increase which that includes two hundred dollars but does not include srt3 funds but we wouldn't expect to get s for three for this next isn't that the following year the 22 to 23 school year no we're hoping to receive the azure funds next school year all right okay and sr3 can also go into the the following school year as well it hasn't spent by the end of 2023. yeah so just a reminder that a gain in enrollment of 50 students in ninth grade is
077worth a half a million dollars and if we continue that for four years that's two million dollars a year steady so one of the ways out of a difficulty is to offer courses that are attractive to people who are considering their choices for high school between eighth grade and ninth grade it's not all uh what would we cut situation it'd say what can we offer that prospective students will want and that is how we've solved the issue systemically in the past so you know there it's sometimes it's an accentuate the positive thing and um i think we need to examine that as well over the next few months that what can is are there things we can do to make ourselves attractive as we have consistently been in the past there's no reason we can't
078can't do that to my thinking thanks any other board comments questions all right any community comment on this on the proposed budget we have one hand raised virtually todd dahlgren you have the microphone please state your name and address thank you this is todd dahlgren my address is 1647 north 122nd um i would just like to say that i find it rather interesting that there's a projected 1.5 million dollar deficit for this year yet two weeks ago on two separate votes that were unanimous approximately 1.5 million dollars was allocated for fisher and roosevelt projects that i would consider to be discretionary thank you any other go ahead i was just going to say those are required to be done because they were under the referendum that was a referendum but appreciate the comments anyone else
079online jamie all right oh hold on two people just raised their hands let's we'll do the room first and then we'll go back to those you already have come [Music] mary jo randall 727 north 59th street um first of all regarding your discussion about the budget right now um mr meyer mrs mitfield you would remember this maybe mr rowland prior in prior years after the presentation of the budget by the business manager the superintendent gave a presentation entitled the budget alignment to student achievement and it was a series of eight or nine slides it highlighted a five-year plan it discussed five year outcomes talked about specifics in the budget year i think that would answer some of the questions you were asking mrs fairley and possibly mr miter but it was directly aligned to that
080budget presentation so i don't know if you have a new superintendent coming in you might want to suggest that to him so i'm also here to talk about avid as you know i've said several emails with some very specific questions um thank you to those who acknowledge those emails my biggest question about avid is is inequitable it's been substantiated as a new program because it is supposed to bring equity to the district i find that problematic i think you could probably make a case or some success for some secondary students who are enrolled in avid and go on to college but i don't know how you can call a program with this type of enrollment the way that the kids are chosen and this is from our district website the advancement via individual determination college
081readiness system is designed to provide students in the academic middle with the tools strategy support and encouragement necessary to succeed in challenging courses while in high school helping to ensure a successful transition into college avid students are motivated to learn and succeed students enroll in avid following a comprehensive application and screening process that includes an analysis of past academic performance which is standardized assessments and course grades to determine eligibility a written student application and an interview and families interested in avid should contact their school counselor that that to me is not a program that enhances equity in the district it's a very limited program the in looking at this i didn't get a lot of answers to the questions that i had so i'm going to take a few minutes i may go over but
082hopefully you'll indulge me since i didn't get these answers in writing um so why avid for wauwatosa um abbott's principles are entitled white corps writing inquiry collaboration and reading to support academic growth and in my mind those are already core beliefs of wauwatosa um and hopefully our teachers are already doing that i believe they are if not we need more than an outside company to come in and provide some tutors um and along those lines who will be providing that comprehensive staff development and what are their credentials i asked if you guys had received any data that showed that performance gaps in wauwatosa are due to deficits and basic instruction in core subjects which is what avid addresses um we are at time so in terms of being equitable to our other people that want
083to speak as well i'm sorry i said we are at time you are you're three minutes so in terms of being equitable to other folks that want to speak tonight okay may i hurry up and finish do you find that to be an equitable practice for the other people that want to speak here yeah because what can i come back i mean i'll come back after mr domit i did submit a lot of this and you did and we've read it and we've heard it um and i just want to be cognizant of the other people that want to speak tonight as well and not allow one sit down and come back absolutely well we generally limit it to three minutes but mr ronald go ahead okay uh can i move to a lot an
084additional three minutes second any discussion on that miss newman miss fraley yes dr jessica banker yes mr mayor yes miss newfeld yes mr phillips yes mr allen yes mr doman no okay thank you um i will try to hurry here um this is all very important um it's kind of disheartening that i didn't hear from you guys but at the same time i think it's still important for the community to to hear these questions understand these um so as i was doing my own um checking on this um i did find three uh board policies that seem to be in their violations of these um policy 2230. which is course guides which are required to be kept online all the time and they are but one of the criteria was that it needs to list
085evaluation criteria standards and methods with which will confirm the extent to which learning outcomes have been achieved that doesn't exist in the course guides online the adoption of courses study will appoint the plan for its continuous assessment which includes criteria and standards i don't believe that exists it's not accessible if it does and lastly a policy on purchasing um this contract was signed by the superintendent on december 23 of 2020 and then brought to the board for approval on february 8th of 2021 um purchasing policy 636320 says the board should be advised for prior approval of all purchases of equipment materials and services when the purchase was not complete contemplated during the budgeting process or exceeds the purchasing threshold by twenty thousand dollars so thank you for the extra time and hopefully somebody's gonna look
086into this anyone else in the room that would like to speak before we go back to online no one in the room jamie said two hands of people have not spoken yet yes we do katie yant please state your name and address you have the microphone this is katie wilkes yant 1236 woodside street i am a teacher at underwood elementary and i am the president of the wauwatosa education association i recently read the op-ed article written by mrs fraley and dr jessup anger about state funding for schools nice job by the way the article mentions workforce shortages in all areas in the state including education the article also mentions pay freezes that may need to happen due to funding which i also agree will accelerate the exodus of educators while i understand money is tight
087right now i believe we need to focus on increasing all teacher salaries in the district we currently are lagging behind many other districts in the area in a job market like the current one that's not a great place to be i am worried about the message that our the current proposal sends to our most veteran teachers by giving them a lower increase this current proposal doesn't even cover inflation thereby devaluing their salaries these veteran teachers are the backbone of our teachers they are mentors both informal and formal and the district has invested time and money into these individual individuals please make sure to show these people that we truly value them our team looks forward to the upcoming negotiations to discuss increases for all teachers in the bargaining unit i am hopeful that through advocacy
088at the state level we will get the funding we need for public schools i agree with the board members stating we need to prepare for the worst what cuts can be made that will make the least impact for kids and really hope for the best thank you is there anyone else online yeah sorry i was muted next is deb deb you have the mike please state your name and address the deb sellers 13820 lloyd street i'm a teacher at underwood elementary and i just have a question i appreciate the board's diligence and trying to work with legislatures i'm sure is not an easy task trying to get through to them but i would like to know how much money we do have in our fund 10 balance i know previously we've had quite a substantial
089amount of funding in there and that we could be using and utilizing that to help retain our veteran teachers and pay a fair wage to other employees that work very hard on a daily basis to ensure the education of our children so thank you for your time any other comments online jamie no they're not mohan's raised all right we will move to a vote on this item please call the roll miss fraley yes doctor joseph anger yes mr mayer no miss before yes mr phillips yes mr allen yes mr german yes that next business services action item doctor just finger dr jess banker can i just before you read the emotion um i would recommend a change to the motion and that would be actually what katie wilkes suggested but so for teachers under the
090teacher career ladder system teachers over 60 thousand dollars that are not considered master level teachers that are professional level teachers get half of what the first increment is so in this case would be 500 um considering the previous waiver where we did not do evaluations and take serious consideration to the movement for for the ability of those teachers to move to the master level teacher i'm recommending that that be switched to from 500 to a thousand so it would stay it would be at a thousand versus 500 for the 70 72 74 teachers in that category so the increase in cost would be 37 000 74. dr jess banger wanted to read the emotion we'll confirm that amendment get a second and we'll move to discussion it is recommended that the school board approve salary
091increases for the following employee groups effective july 1st 2021. the dollar amounts include regular step increases were applicable for the employee group during the 2021-22 school year for administrative assistance two point zero zero percent wage increase and a step increase at a cost of forty eight thousand one hundred and forty seven dollars for educational assistance two point zero zero percent wage increase and a cost and step increase of a hundred and four thousand six hundred and eighty two dollars total increase of four point two point four point two eight percent for food service employees zero point zero zero percent wage increase at a cost of zero dollars for select employees two point zero zero percent wage increase at a cost of forty one thousand eight hundred and fifty nine dollars for maintenance custodial employees two
092point zero zero percent wage increase at a cost of twenty six thousand two hundred and seventy dollars also applies to those on new salary schedule only for administrators two point zero zero percent wage increase at a cost of seventy five thousand seven hundred and twenty six dollars for returning teachers one increment increase which equates to one thousand dollars for initial educators and professional educators at or below sixty thousand dollar current salary a half of increment increase which equates to five hundred dollars for professional educators about sixty thousand current salary master educators will receive a twelve hundred dollar increase starting pay increase from forty one thousand five hundred dollars to forty three thousand dollars this will affect twenty two of our existing teachers in total this equates to approximately two point zero zero increase including adjustments
093to returning teachers increased amounts are based on a full-time teacher an iso move second so do we need a motion yeah just looking at i think the best way would be to and then airplane amendment and someone offer an amendment to what dr earl has suggested and we will have a discussion on what has been proposed if anybody has any comments are you wanting to entertain the amendment right away i thought we would make the amendment if we wanted to if we don't oh all right it sounded like there was no interest in making an amendment am i understanding the board correctly well i i don't know how okay let's start over again so dr ertl has suggested making an amendment as he spoke about the moving from a half increment to a full increment
094in my understanding so from 500 to 1000 for professional educators above 60 000 current salary so i believe we would need an amendment to what dr jessica anger just read in order to make that happen i'll move the amendment i'll second the moment i just i'm no good at the amount of things that's why i kept my mouth right so i just didn't know how to say it can i clarify what i think would resolve it in the wording so after professional educators and or below starting at at delete all the way to the rest of the next sentence that make sense one increment increase which equates to one thousand dollars for initial educators and professional educators period over period that's it but when you have educators will receive a 1200 increase correct and mass
095okay that's that sounds fine is that an agreement what your amendment is it is my only question is master educators and how we determine maybe i'm remembering this incorrectly but if we're not doing evaluation then how would we determine who is and who is not a master they stayed out there from the year before there were a couple that determinations were made prior to the pandemic and those would be shifted but for the most part 95 98 of them are continuation from the previous year okay any other discussion on the amendment i apologize for not being more clear what we were doing all right miss newman let's vote on you mendel miss fraley yes dr jessepanger yes mr mayer yes ms mingfeld yes mr phillips yes mr rowland yes mr doman yes so any board
096comment or questions on the proposal as it stands yeah and just like i know we've talked about it dr ertel um but just to say it publicly i just want to make sure that um right workforce shortage seems to be kind of everywhere um and who knows kind of how enrollment's gonna turn out as we get closer to the fall maybe we'll get a bunch in august or september we'll all of a sudden um want to work here and i guess can we just state um how we would if we we start to see at a particular time i don't know when that particular time is i think maybe it's seven hours ago if we start to see that there's a workforce shortage that is happening and we need to be more flexible we need
097to change quickly does this as stated provide the district with the flexibility to shift quickly or would we need to agenda abort meeting quickly or just how would that functionally work just so we're not caught like flat-footed on you know august and all of a sudden we're short a bunch of staff tell me how would that work current operations allow us the flexibility to move within ranges so for example tech ad is a good example that somebody starting out in tech head is not going to be a 43 because it's in such high demand it's generally going to be a higher salary um probably the highest demand position that there is with other positions there's so we have also if you break your contract there's a fee other districts have that as well so if
098we end up needing to hire somebody from another district we can waive the contract um we can waive the contract fee we can also if we wanted to look at signing bonuses if that was needed i think that probably would need to come back to the board um i think it would be wise to come back to the board with that but certainly i think there's plenty of flexibility built in for us to hire even when things get tight yeah i guess that's just my main request is that let's start like planning for that pos like what seems to be more of a reality at least in other sectors and i guess we'll just see how education turns out um but i would love to have a sense of like what that plan is and
099when we would really start to think like okay now we should really pull that lever because we're gonna be short um just as long as we're planning for it now that'd be great that's really um i doctor earl thank you for making that change i think just even from an equity standpoint it's really important that we are not giving teachers who have more experience and have demonstrated mastery less so i'm excited to see that to deb seller's question earlier about the fun 10 balance i just want us to be thinking creatively to sean's point or to your point about like whether it's signing bonuses or like how do we make sure we hold on to our best teachers and how can we use one-time funds from sr3 for something like that um i would be
100hesitant to say that we're pulling money on a fun 10 specifically for salary it's you know it's a slippery slope to that accounting um and but i would like us to to think creatively to shawn's point now about like how we're going to handle potential challenges not just in terms of losing teachers but keeping teachers um because i just want to note that while the it's a 2 increase overall it is not a solid two percent increase across the board for individual teachers salaries um which which is tough um when you look at our numbers we just we're falling and we gotta figure a way out of it um this is just a really hard way to do it that's true one other just clarifying question and more for the community i think but the
101in terms of like increase we're talking about because the staff didn't really get an increase last year right so it's really an increase from they got a bonus last year but there was no increase from last year so we're really talking about an increase from the year prior just to have focusing on communication understand correct how last year went for folks there was no salary increase but it's not like a base from right from last year yeah correct any other board comments on this thing comment you know this it's such in such close proximity to the budget discussion so i have to bring it up right is um you know are these numbers set in stone right is this based on a 200 per people increase or is there flexibility um or is there impact
102either way right should the numbers drastically change in our funding um i just want to like call that out since we just had that discussion is this are these two separate things are these are these tied together what's the approach to this compared to the approach um to the overall spending in the budgetary conversation so this would be my recommendation even if we prepared the budget at zero dollars inc i i think i mean you can debate this all you want i don't think we can afford not to give increases to our staff if we want to keep people here if we want to be able to hire effectively um i don't know that 43 000 is good enough for a starting salary i think that's gonna have to be talked about and that's gonna
103have to be moved up even next year um if we're gonna be competing with other not just other school districts but other job other job markets um we want to continue to attract people to go into education it's a it's a really big discussion but back to your main point um i wouldn't change the recommendation if it was at zero i just think it's critical to be able to do this what about the other way not to be johnny raincloud but like you know what about the other way as far as if we were to get some good news what would happen i think there's a possibility to look at compensation anytime there's additional money there's an opportunity to look at how you compensate employees and could it be more absolutely it could thanks mr
104phil thank you um i just want to say that i wholeheartedly support this increase this is a another very difficult year and our board could have and our administrators could have recommended that we follow the same path as we did in prior year but instead we didn't want to invest i'm hearing all of us you know saying we want to invest in our employees and i i want to say that this is very positive for us to do um to add to the base like this so um so it's a big leap for us it's it's it's leap but we need to do it i i firmly believe that so um so i would also support the amendment any other board comments i would just add to what's been said that continues to be unconscionable
105that our legislator does not feel the need to fully fund public education and unfortunately our teachers take the brunt of it so thank you to all of our teachers we know i know this isn't enough we hope you stick with us and we certainly want to continue to do what we can to to support you and i think you've heard from the board tonight that that's there we just need additional help from our state legislature community comment on this item let's go to folks in the room first hi john deepberg 18115 bubble tree lane i am teacher at lincoln elementary and the secretary treasurer of the wauwatosa education association earlier this month the wauwatosa education association requested dates to meet with the district to negotiate base wages as of today a date has not been
106given to me we were informed that the district had to meet with the board first tonight's recommendation confuses me because shouldn't the district ask for a total amount that could then be negotiated into salaries if this recommendation passes i wonder how it will impact our future discussion wea is working with the board and administration to make the district a great place for students to learn and people to work throughout the year we were told by the board administration and the community how much our efforts during this time were valued despite numerous obstacles teachers remained committed to providing students with a high quality education we worked endlessly to engage students in various learning environments adapted instruction to utilize online platforms and provide support for each other during this unprecedented time we hope our time and commitment
107to the community does not go unnoticed and discussion about base salary can continue thank you thank you anyone else in the room that would like to speak hello um from 772 north 16th street um just don't know what to say i'm almost speechless um the purpose of a school district is education of our students and most closely tied to that directly to their education is their teachers and yet when you sit here and struggle and question whether or not we can give them salary increases when they didn't get any last year we should be doing everything in our power to make sure they get this and maybe more they deserve it um instead of fixing the salary issues and stuff like that we're adding additional programs things like the avid program which is questionable right
108now as far as its value is concerned we're talking about adding additional support staff needed because of bringing evidence to a different level of school and yet we're not supporting teachers that we currently have in their needs we need to look at this we look at things that we've got a lot of administration in our district and a lot of them are making higher salaries than our base teachers as far as that's concerned the ones that are most closely linked to our students i think we need to make some adjustments there and in our programs to make sure that our teachers are the ones that are getting the conversation they need because they're most closely linked to our students education this is the most important thing not additional programs non-national administration we need our teachers
109to get a decent salary so we can pay can retain quality educators as they are the basis for our district anyone else in the room that would like to make a public comment before we go to folks online jamie anyone with their hand raised yes there is kendra kovar you have the microphone please state your name and address hi this is kendra colvar 2405 merlin way i'm an eighth grade teacher at whitman i'm one of those people at the 60 000 mark so i would like to thank dr ertl for changing that increase from 500 to a thousand in the past with previous administration who has since retired we use a rubric to determine which teachers move to the master level and i requested a conference three times regarding my salary so i could move
110to the master level because i was getting a raise with over 25 years teaching experience and when i pulled out the rubric with all of my notes on it commenting that these are the areas where i thought i exceeded and met the master level teacher um that administrator who has since retired um kind of flipped the rubric back across the table to me he goes i don't even use that so it's my question then if that's what we're using to get a higher pay increase with a master's degree plus 25 plus teaching years experience i'm wondering how the administration was trained across the district to use that i have since had very positive conversations with current administration regarding moving that level but i'm not aware of how consistent that is across the district and using
111that rubric to move from the professional level teacher to the master level teacher but once again i think that might be something that needs to be looked at in the career ladder handbook but dr erdo thank you for recognizing um that that 500 really is not i mean when i tell other people in other fields of education or even in or outside of education that yup three years in a row my raise was 500 with a master's degree 25 plus years teaching experience they were just appalled they couldn't believe i stayed in education fortunately i love what i do and i stay and i stick with wawa jose because i believe in the core values that wauwatosa offers but please take a look at that career ladder rubric and hope that all because there's been
112a lot of administrative changes hopefully that everybody's using it consistently thank you uh we have one more katie yant you have the microphone please state your name and address again katie wilkes yant 1236 woodside street teacher at underwood president of the wauwatosa education association um i agree with dr ertl we have to give increases to keep people this is like a critical point for us right now um i also wanted to make a point that what you're proposing right now is pretty much everyone getting a two percent increase but the teachers who are making fifty thousand dollars or higher it is less than a two percent increase please keep that in mind when you vote for this thank you anyone else jamie no there are nominal hands raised thank you move on to a vote
113on this item mr please call miss fraley yes dr jessup anger yes mr meyer yes miss muenfeld yes mr phillips yes mr rowland yes mr tillman yes superintendent report school board compensation discussion so it's my last shot um i brought this up on a number of times before in the past i just have a belief that school board members should receive compensation so i've i'm trying to take a different approach in the approaches i've taken in the past certainly that's not a compensation like i wouldn't recommend a compensation of a starting teacher or anything um but i do believe that it's we're in a situation where the only people that can be on the school board are people that can financially if you have children and there's daycare issues just at a minimum to be
114able to pay enough for to pay for daycare because not everybody has two parents uh two family or two parent home and the perfect family to be able to leave and be able to afford daycare or whatever it might be and i think whether it's an equity issue call what you will i just think it's a reasonable thing to do my other approach i don't i know board members would never sit and vote for themselves to get a pay increase so one thing just for consideration um is that you look at future elections that people that are elected in the future whether it's you as board members get reelected or somebody else takes nc so the next two years would be the time where it would be implemented so i throw that out i don't
115know if the board wants to have that discussion i just think i i think it's reasonable when you look at the list of what other school boards were about one of three percent of the districts in the state of wisconsin that do not compensate school board numbers anything at all it's not a lot of money um but like i said i think it's enough to compensate for the time to cover whatever family obligations or other obligations you may have and i mean waukesha's 6400 ellenbrook 4200 new berlin 3500 germantown 5000 oconomowoc 4124 hamilton 4500 west allis 7274 7200 muskego 4100 men how many falls 5 000. so there's just a few of them there's you can go online wasp has a list of every district in the state of wisconsin so um anyway i'll leave
116it at that whether the board wants to pursue that that's certainly up to you but i would recommend that you give strong consideration to doing it like i said i know it's difficult for a board to vote for pay for themselves our district being what it is these kind of discussions and um implementations in most districts occur during their annual meeting with us being a unified district we don't have an annual meeting in july where the community would propose something um we're different and we're in a tough situation to be able to do that it puts school board members in the tough spot but i think if you're looking at it for future boards i think it's a reasonable approach so just to be clear your recommendation is that no current board members would receive
117it until they were reelected or rehired by the public correct so i guess what i'm looking for from the board is obviously this is dr erdo's last meeting is this something you want me to work with dr means to bring forward is this the topic we want to pursue or do we not i'd appreciate any input from you since we can't we need to have this conversation before we want to move it forward that's right i'll start um i would just say that like in this time where we are at a 1.5 to 2.5 million dollar deficit range depending on what the state legislature comes back with right uh i just think that is we just can't uh that's just my opinion i think if we somehow hooked if it was when it starts is
118somehow connected to the district is not projecting a you know significant deficit i would be more comfortable with that i still think that we could probably have a long conversation about uh you know if it's the right thing but ultimately what outcomes are we trying to drive with the salaries like within these districts that they get all of a sudden get a bunch more candidates or are there like more income diversity or people of color like within like you know i mean like what is the outcome they they're paying their school board like what was the net result of that other than like these people got a little bit more money so i guess i'm not opposed to having a conversation i think the two criteria for me is like what what did they gain
119by doing this and yeah i just to me it has to be hooked into a budget that is a sunnier day than we're facing right now i'm not aware is there a demographic data taken on school board is that data i mean just available follow through or i don't know i would love to have that data too i'm not sure it exists though i don't think so i just i'm curious to know like right they did it so what did they gain as a result of right what was the outcome that that happened as results and was it worth it because that would be you know 37 000 in some case well depending on how many port numbers they have might be like 50 000. i don't know it's not small i mean it's a
120small amount of money when you're talking about 100 million budget that's my piece any other comments thoughts directions for me i will second everything mr rollins said and just add that um while i appreciate the equity perspective and that i do think that the current structure actually keeps people from can even considering it um i just can't in good faith at this point in time even i'd only say even they have the discussion except i think there are far more important things we need to be talking about as a board than this um and at the same time dr ertel i appreciate you continuing to come back because when i tell people you know who are school board members across the country that we are not even given any sort of stipend they're they're just
121really surprised aldermen are given stipends you know any elected official usually has a stipend so um i appreciate it i just feel like now is still not the time from just a not just a money standpoint money is a huge thing but if i'm spending my time discussing something i want it to be something that's about rigor for kids or getting teachers more money any other comments mr mike yes i am generally opposed to compensation for our board however my first year on the board 17 years ago was the first year that i did not have a child of mine in school and that was it was the year after the graduation and i have always marveled at how um parents with children in school find time to be on the school board i would
122be favorable to a child care reimbursement formula of some sort if um you know i was a single parent home and my my young people were older you know but there was a time when they worked and if there was a single parent situation and we have a number of those in the district if we had a you know a two-parent situation and a working scenario where it was a problem that you know a board member could be here but the other parent had to work and now we have to do child care and how do we do that or i don't know or even some child care available in the building when we have the meetings for example you know something in kind to assist although i don't know how that works when we
123go to 1am but you know you know but just some something that would um enable people in those situations that we could have their perspective on the board if if if they're desiring to try to help us so that's where i would go with things right now with the current budget situation any thank comments i i'm in this same place that i think leon articulated really well um i think at some point when i'm a community member not a board member this would be a lot easier to advocate for but i think as a current board member i would be uncomfortable currently drawing any sort of compensation with our current budget situation as it is um it is hard to quantify the amount of time that goes into this and sustainability of maintaining boards and
124that's real so i don't have any good solutions but i don't feel like this is the right time and appreciate dr pushing any other comments yeah sure i'll make one um i i feel like you know if if the financial piece is is keeping us from attracting even one you know outstanding board member uh to this to this district then it's something we need to talk about whether or not i mean i think there's two different discussions here there's one about talking about it discussing it and then there's another one about implementing it right so i'd love to talk about it i'd love to figure out why people don't run why everybody runs unopposed and if this is the root cause of that then i'd love to tackle it so that we always have the
125best board members on our board so i'd love to explore the conversation and explore you know what would make the difference to you know somebody that's on the fence who you know maybe can't afford to to you know volunteer the time that we we you know that's going to help us attract new board members and then have a separate discussion about when's the right time to do that so i'd be willing to go forward full steam with this thank you me and comment again sure i over the years i've been surprised at how many people from different political perspectives believe that there should be compensation but it's a hard thing to say i support when i'm sitting on the board i am aligned with mr phillips in the to in the theme that we should
126talk about it some more we should um publish the question and solicit input um just to find out what the community does think and just based on my experience with that there are a great many people out there who have said to me over the years that there should be compensation we would get more candidates interested in the board and if that is truly the sentiment of the community then the board might look at it differently in this room thank you mr meyer i agree with mr phillips and mr mr meyer and certainly appreciate the other comments as well i am very concerned that we don't we only attract a certain demographic um to our board and that's unfortunate and and how can we do better in that space but i appreciate all of you
127saying this i'll discuss it with dr means as we go forward and i i really like the idea of mr meyer how do we i'll reach to the to the community and hear more from them so food for thought i appreciate the conversation and we'll go from there and and thank you to dr real for pushing us on it and making us think about it i do think the equity component is the biggest thing so we need to do better there as we stress to our students and our teachers and our staff and we ask them to do better we need to do better too so maybe this is the right answer maybe it's not i'm not sure but appreciate it uh community comment on this item let's start within the room please come forward
128[Music] right now anyhow my name is kirsten darling i live at 25 20 north 93rd street good evening regarding your request for compensation i'm ambivalent i realized that last year has been extremely taxing and much work for the school board but not all work is good work or brings good results like your your early february book to stick with hybrid and the dreaded concurrent learning until april regardless of corona numbers only thanks to dr urban willing to bring this to the table again we'll be able to end that nightmare earlier one month ago i requested some simple and straightforward information from the board i asked for a list of the multiple oppressive systems you have to come back in the wabatosa school district as mentioned in your equity workshop handouts since i find it crucial
129to discuss this with my child and also because in the 11 years of school communications i had never heard of those systems so far the school board has given me nothing my other question was how the divisively offensively and erroneously titled white supremacy culture by dr oakland is being used in the curriculum for next year again nothing from the board there are two options why either it's a popular media influence topic without merit or you intentionally do not want to inform the parent body of what is happening in the schools showing an ultra lack of transparency i find neither very appealing and it makes it hard to think about compensation especially the lack of transparency is very alarming did i remind you these are our children and this white supremacy culture paper that you use
130for your in-service meeting has many to me baffling ideological mandates for example that individualism is now damaging and harmful even china has moved from the mao ordered uniformity to my knowledge there's only one country that forbids individuality and that's north korea i'm quite surprised to see the district moving forward with avid which stands for the advancement via individual determination which one is it now and if i'm confused perhaps it's due to your lack of transparency in this and the quality of communication what i do understand after re-watching the may 25th presentation of how students grades are sitting and how the school staff needs to move forward is why the us pays one of the most amounts per student and has a mediocre outcome in results to say the least there are a lot of fancy
131words many expressions expressions of equity and a strong emphasis on speed through it i come away with a feeling that my student is there to hold a chair warm with his backside those poor teachers only have 24 hours in the day and their working hours are now needed to meet and now needed to focus on collaborative reviews resource and opportunity gaps as well as on assessment alignment there is no time for the quiet kid that's not working for his potential but is doing well enough that his parents should just shut up and have no reason to complain so bringing it back to your compensation when you utilize a paper from 2001 written by an academic who's currently not working because she's following her llama broad owens and think this will create graduates who will to
132vote go into our communities and off to college and then try to keep the whole thing in from the public eye i'm rather disinclined to promote compensation yes you deal with many complex issues we are at time that is three minutes thank you okay okay any other comments from people in the room before we go to online jamie is anyone online like that would like to comment yeah we have a couple of hands raised deb you have the microphone please state your name and address sellers 13820 lloyd street teacher at underwood vice president of wea i appreciate the boards uh wanting to be equitable and also your humility in this topic i agree with mr meyer there needs to be some type of child care provided perhaps a key club could provide that even in
133the person's home so those one o'clock a.m meetings uh would not have to be at the montessori building there kept in a room but actually in their own house also we had brought up uh years a couple years ago about providing child care for our own employees perhaps in some building on our district grounds so lots of ideas hopefully we can work together to come have them come to fruition thank you thank you um uh next is todd dahlgren you have the microphone please state your name and address uh this is todd dahlgren 1647 north 122nd uh first i would just like to apologize for what i had suggested earlier on the 1.5 million deficit i was not aware that that was referendum specified spending um second with regards to the salaries for board members
134i would just like to commend all the board members for their humility on this topic i'm largely in agreement with regards to mr phillips comment in getting more candidates i would just like to inform the board that chapter 120.45 of state statutes does permit for board members to in writing refuse to take a salary if one is offered it might be considered as an option thank you there are no more hands raised thank you jim you'll then move on to consider a motion to return oh sorry today thank you final public comment on damage and items thank you for that correction is there any further public comment on the checked items miss braley yes doctor joseph banger yes mr mayor yes miss muenfeld yes mr phillips yes mr rowan yes mr doman yes we are
135adjourned thank you everyone