WSD Board Meeting, Regular, June 14, 2021

001i call the june 14th 2021 school board meeting to order it is 7 p.m we are in conference room c of the fisher administrative building at 1 2 1 2 one west north avenue miss newman please call the roll miss braley here dr jessepanger right here here ms neufeld here mr phillips thanks he's absent mr rowland here mr mr doman here thank you we will begin with 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 comment on each item to three minutes following any comment an individual

002board member may respond on the issue raised however it is not the intent of the public comment portion of the agenda for the board to enter into a debate with members of the community because non-agenda items are not publicly posted in advance no action will be taken on public comment regarding non-agenda items this evening are there any public comments on non-agenda items this evening please state your name and address good evening i'm deb faulk palik and i live at 7435 west wall street tonight i am going to be speaking truth to power i am addressing the seven of you who i respect immensely as the elected members of the wauwatosa school board i have spent many years and much time advocating and speaking up for those with disabilities personally professionally and in my civic life

003and this includes those in administrative positions in this district and tonight i would like to address you the school board members my comments are not about the special ed teachers and assistants it's about leadership and special education in this district we talk a lot about equity in this district and i often wonder how students with disabilities and their families are included in that conversation is equity an activity or is an action in this district equity for students with disabilities must include the identification and removal of obstacles roadblocks and barriers to achievement and opportunity both in policy and practice equity for students with disabilities must include the removal of attitudinal barriers and biases that prevent achievement and opportunity but what do you do and where do you go when the people in power being those in

004district administration may be part of those barriers this spring there was a presentation given via zoom by the special education director the presentation was given to both tosa east and toaster west parents of students with disabilities during the zoom presentation the special ed director was sharing her screen in the non-presentation mode for a period of time for all of us to see it was disturbing and concerning to see her remarks to her staff about parents of students with disabilities within our district and yes there is a screenshot of these remarks this was clearly only meant to be seen by her staff whom she was communicating with an administrator sets the tone with those who report to him and her and this is not a tone that should be set with staff the meeting began with

005showing the three themes of equity within the district the district director of special ed is in a position of power to control the outcomes of students with disabilities and this is how she thinks of us there should be no place for this type of attitude within our district towards parents of special ed students or really any parents attitude and bias impact achievement and opportunity for those with disabilities last month wisconsin tpi found the wauwatosa school district to have been in non-compliance with the individuals with disabilities education law district leadership staff cited equity as rationale for really what was a practice or policy in place that suppresses opportunity for special ed students in this district for a very long time i have strongly believed that we need a committee on disability in this school district i

006have collected and brought forward examples from other school districts the csa contacted the wisconsin dpi to get an extension to a half-page grant application for funding to create such a committee should wauwatosa schools decide to apply the highest levels of district administration were aware of this i sent the board the email with this information from the csun because i didn't think you'd believe that the tpi would extend this grant application to wauwatosa schools we need to start addressing some of these barriers motion to suspend the rules to allow um as falk malek to continue second thank you i should be completing in a few seconds i think we have to vote first oh any discussion on it miss newman yeah yes i mean i would support that sure cover um yes please miss fraley yes

007dr jessepanger yes mr mayer yes miss neufeld yes mr rowland yes mr doman yes please continue thank you so much to all of you i have tried and tried to work with various administrators in this district and the excuses are endless to even begin with a small group of special education parents to start talking about both the good and the things that need attention this only is going to happen though i believe through board action school board members i am directly asking you to form a committee on disability the only way for barriers obstacles attitudes and biases to be ameliorated is for engagement with the very stakeholders impacted i am asking for one of you step forward liaison to this committee i leave you with two questions about this if not you the seven elected

008members of this school board then who if not now then how much longer wants to wait thank you please state your name and address hi i'm jen janowski 2609 north 90th street um my comments aren't as long as misspelled pallets i do want to just take a moment here to thank the board for sending our kids back i have three children in the district and i can only speak from my experience that it's just it's been such a relief and a godsend so for those of you that did vote i hope that's very affirming and validating that we had success finally at the end of the year uh as ms faulk palette mentioned i am i'm also here as a parent of a child with special needs and i implore you employ you to pay

009more attention to special education and especially the administration i understand there was an audit conducted 10 years ago that was before we entered the school district my son was special needs this in sixth grade now just graduated from sixth grade and i thought at the time coming in that that would only mean good things for my child that hey we have an audit we're going to do something about it and what i'm seeing and feeling and experiencing is that that didn't happen and the dpi findings of compliance violations 100 confirmed that so again i implore this board to hold the administration accountable not just for communications of these findings which i also discovered that you guys weren't proactively communicated about this finding hold them accountable for the communication and then the corrective actions for these

010findings because it didn't happen 10 years ago and it has to happen here and again i would support 100 percent the formation of this committee and i'm happy to participate and if not me i'm happy to find other parents of special education children that would be interested in participating we are here to make this district better thank you for your time thank you any other public comment on non-agenda items raised virtually um mary jo randall 727 north 59th street um i'm here tonight and i have this written so that i get it all in i'm here tonight to support deb paleck and her always respectful her always informative and always collaborative comments to the board of education full disclosure when i heard her speak at the last meeting i felt a real sense of regret

011um and a little embarrassment that i sat on your side of the table at a time when she and other parents stood up to ask for nothing more than equal and unobstructed access to a high quality education for all of our students with disabilities like you i believed i was doing all i could as a board member by following up with administration with the expectation that all possible remedies would be explored and necessary changes would be made where needed but it's clear with another idea non-compliance ruling issue by dpi that there are long-standing systemic issues that have to be addressed i fully support ms pallek's five suggestions to the board at the may 24th meeting and those are partially meant to raise awareness and engagement by all of you to achieve a common goal there's

012so many things already in place to overcome the existing problems of inequity in special education our dedicated special ed teachers and support staff are highly skilled and they carry out their exceptional work driven by the love they have for the kids and families that they serve it's past time to figure out where the leadership gaps are um that keep this district from its goal of delivering equal opportunities for all students thank you thank you any other public comments on non-agenda items [Music] thank you move on to our next item we have a commendation for superintendent dr phil erdo i believe his finding is here come forward come on please yes all right well dr riddle it's an honor to be here i'm state representative robin vining um and uh i have been told that um

013this large plaque that i am referring to as the citation with all the ands um is we kept compiling what we wanted to thank you for and um and uh it was and and and and and then they told me that they didn't make plaques this large anymore and so we found one but i want to thank you on behalf of the state of wisconsin on behalf of senator quianga and representative sarah rodriguez and myself uh for the time that you've spent this district for how you've loved our kids for how you've cared for our teachers for how you've listened to public comment because this matters um and um and it has been a pleasure to work with you so i've been honored to work with you for the last two years so on behalf

014of the state of wisconsin we want to wish you a wonderful retirement and thank you for your service [Applause] thank you yeah phil so here you go all right what do we have now thank you thank you for coming all right we will move on to the consent agenda are there any items on the consent agenda which board members would like to remove for separate discussion and action yes i ask that we uh remove for separate discussion and action the easement items is there a second second so we've asked to remove the easement items be removed for separate discussion and action may i have a motion to prove the remainder of the consent agenda so moved second any discussion on the remainder of the consent agenda miss newman please call the wrong miss braley yes

015dr jessica panger yes mr mayer yes miss newfoundland yes mr phillips oh i'm sorry mr roland yes mr gentleman yes [Music] all right i'm going to discuss the item that mr meyer wanted removed yes um miss um kwikowski has a request i believe for a technical amendment to the um easement agreements for um clarity in the wording yes thank you uh you have an easement in front of you there's this additional language that was added to paragraph six um the language that was added as provided in paragraph 11. if you read paragraph 6 and 11 they contradict each other so by having this language added makes it clear that the district can't cancel the easement for not using this language was added to both eastmans [Music] so there's no change in in substance or intent

016but after we added clause 11 it was noticed later that the um the um exercise of rights clause didn't work real well with clause 11. it left some ambiguity so um miss greenkowski did you um miss uh did you get language from was it we energies that you worked with this afternoon is that right actually uh sent from our attorney to we energies approved by them so at this point if it's signed we can send it back to them okay so all the attorneys from both ends are in agreement with this is that right i'm not sure if we energies attorney period it was the person that's responsible for easement but on our card was our attorney okay so then you spoke with representatives of both both parties that our attorney and we energies and

017so we energies was consulting yes okay thank you i support this thing and well i'll move for the amendment approval of them approval of the item that you yes to amend the i think help me if i'm wrong we have to have a motion to incorporate the language stated and then a second and a vote on the amendment to the noticed item and then we would vote on the noticed item right because we have a posted item we want to change it therefore yeah i would say two motions okay okay so your motion is to make the amendment yes is that how does that sound like the right motion okay um it's exercise of rights from both seasons yes for both easements to incorporate the language as described by the business manager is there a

018second second thank you any discussion on the amendment well i just want to clarify something because i see [Music] item 11 in the contracts is this the amendment we're talking about and in in the publicly posted documents the the amendment is is for um the exercise of rights paragraph because the exercise of bride's paragraph says that um none of the rights here and granted shall be lost by non-use then later we added the termination for non-use paragraph which says the school district has a right to terminate for non-use so 20 years from now if somebody's looking at this they're going to scratch their head and say well what do they really want to do here and because this this exercise of rights paragraph doesn't exactly work with the termination of non-use paragraph so the added

019language in the exercise of rights paragraph points to the termination of non-use paragraph to show that the two are working together okay i see that i just i i think it's already in the documents that we posted oh no that's right it isn't okay got it all right i got it it's in my copy yeah there you go thank you yeah and thank you thanks to everybody who like spotted this this afternoon and worked on it and got it to be a better statement of what we want um it is what we originally wanted but it it was perhaps ambiguous if you were to read this 20 years from now which is when we're worried about it so okay thanks any other further discussion on the amendment ms newman ms fraley yes dr jessup anger

020yes mr meyer yes ms mufeld yes mr rowland yes mr doman yes [Music] all right now any further discussion on the item itself as amended mrs newman please call her miss fraley yes dr jessup anger yes mr meyer yes ms mufild yes mr rowland yes mr doman yes thank you everyone for your work on that up next is the administrative contract superintendent miss before yes thank you it is recommended that the school board approve an administrative contract for dr damon means for the month of june 2021 which will pay a per diem amount of 851 dollars and 53 cents per day worked and iso move [Music] second thank you and i believe we have some jenny to speak to us yeah this is pretty standard for an administrative transition to allow time for dr means

021to acclimate to the district and work with dr ertl to support the successful transition and you you spoke to dr means i didn't about this did he give any sense of how many days he thought it would be he we did not talk about a number of days any other questions or comments on this item um yes i just have a [Music] a caution that it'll be coming up in later discussion the matter of the avid program and the avid program as it was approved in february and i wasn't aware of this at the time but we had a conflict of interest originally and between staff and the school district and staff at avid and legal advice was sought to find a way to resolve the conflict of interest problem and that involved the superintendent

022of the school district wauwatosa school district directly handling the avid relationship but we also know from dr means work in georgia that there was some shall we say controversy surrounding abbott and i would ask that dr means tread carefully with respect to handling of avid before and perhaps you know consult with the board on how to handle the avid relationship so that we know we're okay because this board made a commitment to the community that what happened in georgia would not happen here about misunderstandings and relationships and all that stuff so i 100 support this 100 support dr means and we need to thread this needle um with respect to consultation with the board so that we are fully aware of the relationships and that we have in place thank you just because words matter

023i want to make a clarification there was a potential of a conflict of interest there was not a conflict of interest the potential which is what led us to seek legal counsel to have it addressed so i just want to make sure that people know that there was not a conflict of interest we addressed it and i agree with that there was nothing inappropriate done um we need as a board to be faithful to our commitments to the community that we're going to stay fully aware of what's happening and then we can do things and the board will be able to explain them when we do them so thank you very much any other important comment on this side any community comment on this item you're not hands raised virtually miss newman please call the

024roll ms fraley yes dr jessup anger yes mr meyer yes miss mufild yes mr rowland yes mr doman yes thank you uh business services action items the fisher parking lot project bid package mr round all right it is recommended that the school board approve the recommended vendor polacki paving corporation for the fisher montessori parking lot project which includes re-pavement of the east parking lot and basketball court re-pavement of the west parking lot and replacement of the south exterior wall bid tabulation attached an iso move second this second missed me felt thank you any board comment questions on the side just really i just wanted to thank mrs kweikowski um i happened to be at fruit of the bloom one day and they um i don't know how it came up but i said i had

025to get into a board meeting or something and they were i happened to be talking to the owner and they were very appreciative of how closely you worked with them um given their long-standing relationship with the community and wanting to you know be able to provide for wauwatosa what they had done in the past and just making it all work so um it wasn't unnoticed and i feel like it's really important that we're good community partners um with our businesses even when it means that they're in our parking lot and maybe in our way for something that needs to get done so i just wanted to make sure that got back to you thank you any other board comments on the side any community comment on this they're not anthropolis thanks deb fault alex 74

0267435 west wells i know you're probably thinking i have the wrong topic to talk about parking pavement but i actually have passion about this um you guys heard me commend melissa nuttershine before she left at about one in the morning and one of the items that i worked with melissa on is ensuring that the active accessibility icon was painted at some of our schools so i know i think i'd started with east high school and some of the new elementary schools so with this parking repavement here at the fisher building i'm requesting if someone could ask poblacky since it sounds like they're the vendor to ensure that they use the active accessibility icon a picture really does say a thousand words and that icon shows persons with disabilities in an active motion instead of passive

027and i think it would be really good to have this i do chair milwaukee county's commission for persons with disabilities the county's office has the template it can be checked out by anybody for free i would offer to bring it i'm not sure it would fit my vehicle but if somebody could get down to the courthouse but some of these paving companies i'm not sure who took over for melissa but perhaps pablocki already has the template but i want to make people aware that for free it can be checked out from the county and i'd be happy to help facilitate that and i'm hoping that somebody can ensure that this icon can be painted on the new parking lots thank you do we know if that's the intention let me use it or can someone

028follow up on that this is something that we definitely can do on greg is here and we can definitely make sure that our all parking lots have the accessibility signs and are designed the same way any other board comment or anything i'm sorry any other community comments raised seeing none miss newman please call the roll miss braley yes dr jessup anger yes mr meyer yes ms neufeld yes mr rowland yes mr doman yes [Music] up next the roosevelt site improvement bid package mr meyer it is recommended that the school board approves the project at the roosevelt elementary school bid package number 1170736 fully scoped for site improvement to include new concrete paving sidewalks asphalt paving playgrounds and playing fields the current bid is for 1 344 165 dollars which includes 330 000 dollars owner purchases

029the funding source is one million dollars from fund 41 and 344 thousand 165 dollars from fund 49 and i so move second thank you is there any forward questions or comments on the site yes please i i just want to say i noticed there were a great many emails today from the roosevelt community supporting this and roosevelt was the first elementary school that my children attended the only elementary school in wauwatosa that my oldest child attended and it makes me very happy to have made this motion so thank you thank you mr meyer any other board comments steve i would i would just like to say that i think this is a really great needed improvement um in i really echo uh mr meyer's comments and a lot of comments from the community of a

030great way to kind of create a safe accessible spot for both the community and all the families that use the space and the kids will be using it for years to come i would just add that assembly following through on what we said through the whole referendum process that um we're going to have four new elementary schools and we had the standard that we wanted to set and make sure that all kids had opportunities for that and all the buildings regardless of where they went they're not brand new buildings but the opportunity to do this i think is really important any other board comments any public comments on this side there are no hands raised thank you jim mr moon please call rob miss fraley yes dr jessup anger yes mr meyer yes miss neufeld

031yes mr rowland yes mr gentleman yes business services reports a presentation of the proposed 2021-2022 budget so i'm i'm gonna go ahead and start it out i don't jamie are you gonna put the presentation up yeah i got it you can move to the next slide [Music] so this year's budget presentation i know is going to be a little bit different than what has been um presented in the past obviously for a number of reasons but i should say obviously we have a new assistant superintendent of business services um and also getting feedback from board and as we've gone through to share share information we spent a good amount of time at the last presentations um kind of talking about what's in the budget and what are we getting and how does it align with

032the strategic strategic plan this year is a little bit different and for the whole budget process is different i think this is my 11th state budget that i've been around for as a superintendent by far the worst proposed budget in my opinion that we've seen um the current discussion of increasing special education funding by two percent reimbursement whatever it might be i think it's about thirty thousand dollars increase that would come to the wauwatosa school district um when they're talking about zero percent on the revenue revenue caps and essentially saying the ester funds are what we should be operating off of and i think anybody that knows finance at all is you don't run operations on one time money that money was intended to cover expenses for coving it has done that we don't have

033a lot left over to to run our operations for next year um i certainly hope there's some actions that take place between now and the time the budget signed whether it's the governor's fetal or the republicans and democrats can work together to come up with something that's good for public education we've seen the estimates come in for more revenue in the state of wisconsin plenty to give tax breaks that some folks want and plenty to give increases to schools so hopefully that comes through but once again we're in a situation we're trying to set a budget for the unknown we don't know what the state budget is going to be it is based on 200 increase per student i'm still hopeful that comes through and that actually happens with the budget process but again the

034the june budget is more of a and probably this year more than ever before an estimate um best case estimate or a best educated guess to mint on a budgeting process that ultimately the budget being improved in october is what is is critical because that is when the levy is set but this budget also includes pay increases for all staff and i just think that's probably the most important thing we need to do there was a pay freeze last year for everybody the education marketplace is looking different than it ever has before um we're falling behind in some areas and i don't think we can afford to fall behind we need to give our hard-working staff an increase and i'm going to be bringing forward a recommendation to the school board for the 28th meeting

035um to have it approved so we can actually get contracts done um hopefully by the end of july for administrative contracts other teacher contracts and everything completed so the new year can start with everybody having an updated pay pay scale also we're going to be wrapping up the completion of the referendum projects probably the most noticeable one will be the demolition of mckinley and when that starts and starts going down on the grass going in and getting that one wrapped up but also the other summer projects and the other buildings that meet the capital projects are going to run throughout a little bit throughout the year in some cases to try to get those completed the easements are that are approved tonight are a good help in three of the schools um to keep that

036moving forward the other one we look at major initiatives um we don't have any major initiatives we're looking at right now obviously i'm gone in a couple of weeks and dr means can come in and bring something forward to the board that i don't anticipate a lot of that happening but we are as was mentioned earlier the expansion of avid was approved in february it's really where a lot of our time energy um as far as initiatives go and are basically our only kind of new um and it's really not new it's just uh an expansion jamie can you move to the next slide please that's just a tentative timeline that actually runs through um where we're at with with avid and where we're going and that will extend beyond that timeline this is just

037an overview of where we're growing and going with avid thank you dr i just want to start the presentation with reviewing our strategic plan one of our goals is to have employ highly effective teachers and staff and be financially responsible to our taxpayers so this budget presentation includes salary increases also onsite clinic for employee spouses dependent and we're changing the starting pay for our teachers next slide please [Music] over 75 percent of our budget are salary and benefits last year our employees did not get a salary increases they got a 1 000 bonus we also hired teachers to help with long-term leaves building stabs so as you see pretty much all the categories increased from 2020 to next school year there's only one category that is going to be increasing next school year and that's

038computer technician last year we purchased a lot of technology equipment we do need people to be able to support the equipment this is a working budget and the numbers will change especially in a teacher and aids category it all depends on enrollment and student needs next slide to build this budget i needed to come up with assumptions i increased the revenue limit for 200 hours per student which is in the governor's evers budget proposal that's approximately one million dollars to our school district if we do not give this money we have to come back to the board um to see how we can balance the budget i took a very conservative approach to enrollment i only increased it by 52 ftes um because of the declining enrollment uh we get declining enrollment exemption and that's

039402 000 if the enrollment goes up the declining enrollment exemption will go down so i did look at uh different enrollment numbers so for example if our enrollment goes up by 100 ftes our declining enrollment exemptions would only be 224 000. if our enrollment increased by 200 ftes that the declining roman exemption will be gone and our revenue limit will increase by 000. there is no increase in the utilities as we know utilities go up each year but we're going to have 40 buildings um so we're hoping to save money on that all the one time covered expenses are eliminated we're not sure what september is going to bring we might have to hire more nursing if that's the case our deficit will increase sr3 is not included in this budget the reason why is

040because we don't know exactly how much we're getting when we're getting once we have this information we'll work with the board and community on proper location of the funds next slide please on the benefit side the health insurance uh will remain the same which means the plan design and deductible will be exactly the same i'm anticipating four percent increase four percent is being very conservative i hope the increase is actually going to be less um the next year's increase for general on life is zero um again i think that the four percent for the health insurance is pretty conservative we might be able to see some savings next year cpi is 1.23 however keep in mind our employees did not get pay increases so in this budget i'm proposing two percent pay increase for employees

041our starting teachers pay is going up from 41 500 to 43 000 and that will affect about 22 of our teachers also proposing pay increase for teachers that's part of this budget next slide please uh in this school school year we received two astro funds sr1 and sr2 ester one was 333 000 that was shared with nine private schools so our torso portion was only under 260 000. the district received the money uh we did ask to be reimbursed for nursing and chromebooks sr2 uh the district received over 1.3 million we're in the process of claiming those funds we're asking to be reimbursed for nursing building subs technology and technology where we purchased was classroom cameras monitors chromebook cards we also purchased software we paid for instrument covers and tents all the expenses you're seeing

042are only their one-time expenses again this is not included in the budget that was proposed to in october because we didn't know what was coming how much we were getting so it's actually good news the deficit is not going to be as large um because we were able to cover some of the coveted expenses there's asset two part i call it part b that's based on how many students attending in person that data is being collected by dpi right now we don't know exactly when the money is coming or how much so that's not part of next year's budget um also in fall of 2020 the district applied for fema grants of 517 000 as of today we still have not received any of the funds our applications shows us pending and we did ask

043to be reimbursed for deep cleaning ppe and other supplies next slide please okay um so 15 of our budget is spent on the health insurance um last year we bet out our stock carrier because our renewal came back at 40 percent um and this has to do with having multiple high claimants one of them was over a million dollars we end up increasing our stop loss from 200 to 225 000. currently on our policy we have 1553 adult members and what we know is that last year 20 of them did not engage with primary care physicians and 39 did not have wellness um so it really makes sense to have onsite clinic we wanted to make sure that um you know we can lower the health insurance cost as well as provide this benefit to

044our employees we're scheduled to open our onsite clinic at the official location on october 1st the clinic will be open for 20 hours and will be free of charge to employees spouses and dependents we're also looking at other services we can add down the road we also talked about opening community-based mental health clinic more information will be coming to you in upcoming months one of our goals is to grow the wellness program by offering biometric screening and engaging our employees in their health not only this will save district money but also make our employer help employees healthier we're partnering with the city of owatosa able to use their clinic for 20 hours a week so our employees can go to their clinic their employees can come to our clinic this will benefit the taxpayers because

045they do support both entities next slide please we're projecting that next year our general fund is going to have 1.5 million 1.5 million hour deficit this is our best estimate at this point the numbers will change based on enrollment staffing health insurance renewals and we are anticipating that 30 31 of our revenue limit will come from state and 69 comes from from local taxpayers we're projecting the mill rate to be at 8.26 cents last year was 8.45 so there will be small small decrease last year we lost a lot of students um because of covet we're just not sure what the enrollment is going to be we're hopeful that our numbers will go up if our enrollment is still down at the elementary level our plan is to fill those seats with open enrollment students

046all copied expenses are eliminated but again we're just not sure what september is going to look like i know that in past the board reviewed the numbers from year to year this is really hard to compare just because our numbers are so different than they ever been because of covert next slide please fun 27 um next year we anticipate decrease in our general fund transfer and this is due because we are receiving more money in high claim costs our preliminary numbers are down but this will change they always change it's always based on students needs and ieps um you know already received a request for additional special education aid that it's not part of this budget so special education fund changes entire school year it never stays the same again it's based on student needs

047so i just want you to know that um the reimbursement is a 28 if it goes up our transfer will go down however there's a lot of expenditures that are not reimbursable so there's three main funding source for special education one is idea grant state reimbursement and then transfer from special education next slide please that service um in 2019 the board issued two 20-year bonds the debt was structured that we made principle every other year to maximize state aid and then the interest is paid every year so as you remember in may of this year you voted on setting up a defeasing account to prepay the debt there will be no expense next year you're still living the money um but for the state a purposes there will be no no expense and fund 39

048next school year let's explain please um fun 41 this is where we are going to uh budget our major improvements um this is done again to maximize the state aid last year we used general funds this year we're using fund 41 which is the capital expansion fund there are two major projects one of them we just voted earlier on is the roosevelt site improvement of a million dollars and then longfellow roof replacement because of very limited resources we constantly look at this list and if there is equipment failure or safety concerns things get moved around so this is just a preliminarily most likely will change but i just want you to kind of see the big picture where we're thinking as of today next slide please the referendum work will continue next school year and

049that is so um some of the projects will be done over this summer uh so this will go into 22-23 school year depending on how much we actually paid this school year if we don't pay some of the mayan mckinley and wilson schools those money will be carried over to next next school year we're in the process of hvac work at eisenhower and longfellow next school year the district is going to have to do arbitrage calculations to make sure that we did not earn more interest than the interest expands and obviously with the interest rate being fairly low that should not be a concern next slide please um last year the federal government made all meals free to children's regardless of income level since january since our students came back five days a week our

050distribution when meal distribution went up currently we serve about 4 000 students meals a day pre-covered that number was 3 000 so it's much higher um next school year the federal government government will continue with free meals to students we switched to seamless summer school operation to be able to feed students all summer long and get higher reimbursement rates so as you see the reimbursement rates are four dollars and 25 cents for lunch and then 2.42 cents for breakfast those numbers are pretty high so we're projecting uh profit next school year we are able to buy equipment so we're buying a freezer at whitman we have set aside about 250 000 to be able to do that we also are adding two additional breakfast sites one in lincoln and one in jefferson schools next slide

051please so our fun 80 community education fund registration continues to grow um we are opening new activities and expanding our numbers obviously following the covet guidelines we had very successful open swim we are looking to add mental health services to our community education fund and also to be able to provide before and after school jk for our students next slide please so i put my information to so for the tax commit uh taxpayers to be able to reach out in case of if they have any questions um before i finish i just want to take a moment to thank the school board lecturer and to our staff to commitment for our students i know last year was really difficult thank you for approving budget with a deficit and sparing no expense to make sure staff

052and students were saved i know it's not always easy to depend into fun balance but i want to thank you for doing that thank you any other comments doctor before i open it up to the board at this time any board comments questions on the presentation mr meyer yes i have a number of items first a question how many new elementary open enrollment and student how many additional elementary open enrollment students do we anticipate that is an increase from what we typically admit what's our change in number of elementary open enrollment that you we're anticipating having to help us with our decrease in resident enrollment am i making sense yeah i think i can try to answer that it's going to be up a little bit i can get you specific information we're not going

053to have until august probably final numbers but as we went through and started placing students in some schools it's going to be a little bit higher than it has the last several years but still i guess i would say it's not as high as i would have expected well i i think we have no idea right what's going to happen until kobe you know as covet is ending so um i was just curious as to what the thinking was i um i support the strategy um second point i keep beating this drum i i would like to see in the budget and um wish that we could have had the staffing plan tonight but an african-american american history class to add to our black literature class portfolio of classes and i i'd extend that and

054say i'd like to see a an african-american music history class as well i think that would i just like to see how that would turn out and success of the other class the literature class indicates to me that that would be an investment well spent i would again ask for a part-time arts administrator position the reason for that is that for many years i've gone to the public events where the high school music performances are offered where there'll be an ensemble playing or a group singing and people of color are not sufficiently represented in those groups and the um the music teachers tell me that if we would do more outreach to families of color and disadvantaged families and families with special needs children that we could they believe we could get higher representation of

055those populations in our music program i also support any requests from the business office for software needs for the analysis that they do for us it was quite a good presentation tonight and then finally i ask that the board especially the people i look to on the board for guidance as far as thinking on pure student learning and education matters that we have had the four-year decline in english language art scores and i don't think it's critical of us to say well if what we're trying to close the achievement gap you know it's a problem no one has solved that the experts we have on the board who can help us with that analysis to help me know that where we're putting the money is the best place that we we aren't continuing with a

056strategy that perhaps if we modified our strategy we could do better i mean there's nothing controversial about saying that you know you try something and see whether it works if it doesn't work you you know try something else you know you know ms fraley you frequently mentioned in your line of work how you know you do data assessment and you go oh my gosh you know this isn't working this other thing might work i think we need to look at we don't need to look at our strategy i'd like to know more about this avid thing about why it's said for expansion maybe it's a great thing but i truly don't know enough about it i'd like to know more i'd like to know what else the people on the board and the mr means

057think so that when i cast my vote i i know that we've done our our due diligence as we all want to do that we take hard close look at what we're doing to know that um we need to continue with the exact current strategy or maybe there's some new aspect we need to our to our strategy to meet the education needs so thank you very much thank you mr meyer um before i go to any other board comments i just i thought i was a member of public that was going to stand up and talk absolutely there will be time when we're done to do public hearing i just want to make sure you don't spend the rest of your time standing so please enjoy the scene ms fraley um so i i guess

058my question may not have an answer yet but the the question i have is around the estrella three funds um the applications are due august 20th press or three funds we know that they are going to need to primarily be one-time funds we know that we can pay back debt with them but paying back debt isn't going to necessarily help us to increase achievement and so i guess i'm just sort of curious at what point we might be able to get a sense of if and when that s or money comes through which it should um where we think we'd be spending that and how that relates to the rest of the budget um and and who do we need to be pressuring to make sure that you have that information because that information is

059available in lots of other states um and i'm just a little i'm more than a little concerned that applications are due by august 20th and for the first time ever in the federal application it is required that there is what's called meaningful community engagement and again it's never been done before so whether or not the government is going to just check the box or if it's going to actually be meaningful community engagement we don't have a lot of time so i'm curious if you all have recommendations as to what you're hoping it will be and when and how we might be able to figure out what the community thinks um and basically who do we need to be bothering to get answers on this because it's just not clear to me so i just want

060to tell you i had a conversation with actual means about this last thursday and we have um we're gonna get together the first i think first or second week in july to talk about this and our next stop how we're gonna engage community and the board in terms of what decisions will be made so it's i would say it will be coming sometime in july okay i just that timing really makes me nervous um because writing this grant isn't going to be a piece of cake either i would just hope too that the district will come with recommendations um not that they're any more valid than what the community would tell us but i i think it's going to be important to potentially even have something for the community to react to um do you

061could you at least is there any sense of what kind of numbers we're talking about um the last time i spoke to dpi was around three million dollars okay because it's a big bucket of money um okay so esther's really just on my mind um my other question actually you want to go to someone else absolutely any other board comments or questions thank you thank you very much for the report uh the question i've got is and maybe this wasn't here and i just didn't see it so how are we tracking this year uh according to plan i saw that there was a deficit projected for the next year's budget do you know how we're projecting for this year in terms of dollars because of the assert funds the deficit is going to be less

062than was projected because that was not part of the budget next year the 1.5 again the numbers can change based on enrollment health insurance so i will have much better idea in september where we are financially but at this point that's the vast guest amount okay that we're running a deficit this year but not as big as 2021 yes the deficit would not be as as big as we projected just because of the astra fund so it's over uh 1.5 million dollars that we got in astro funds or getting an astro fund so they'll definitely decrease our deficit okay and the deficit for this if you had to make a stab i don't know if you have it before or we could just talk later but do you have a sense of what it is

063for this year so the uh the astral funds were not part of the budget but also the one-time bonuses were also not part of the budget so if i net those two together uh probably 700 to a million dollars um not you know what we projected so i think we projected 5.5 million dollar deficit so around 4.5 okay okay um and we talked earlier today you're going to provide a sense of kind of where the fund balance is um you know at the end of the year and i forgot how much it was in prior years it's kind of like the august cut off when kind of the number zero out and i feel like in prior years was around like eight million then it was around like five million so talking about cash on

064hand yeah yes the fund balance uh the beginning of this school year was 36 million 569 but you're talking about cash on hand and i'm waiting for um the payroll to clear and that will be on june 18th and then any accounts payable checks that will run so that number should be coming to you early june in early july in terms of cash on hand okay and then just a couple of assumptions i think we talked about today but this what we went through doesn't include like a significant wba enrollment right right so wpa enrollment and expense increased um from 600 000 to 2.7 million obviously that was due to covet so all copied related expenses were they're not part of next year's budget okay so it just it goes back down to 600. goes

065back to how where it was in 1920. okay okay yeah and then the only other thing is um just the the list of the things i think similar to what israeli was saying is for the su-3 assuming the good news yeah that we get that and it all works out fine i think for me on the other side if uh you know the assumptions that are in the budget booklet you know don't show up and we end up with a zero dollar per pupil like i would love to know that sooner than later and i'm sure all of our friends on the board that are on the legislative advocacy committee would love to know that as well as community members would love to know that if we got a zero dollar per pupil inc increases

066ridiculous work is zero what would that where would we pull that from because we've already talked about making some commitments within this budget about having contracts out the door by the middle that's right where there's some things that we're making solid commitments on that we're not going to be able to walk back we've just allocated a million dollars for um roosevelt so we're sort of locking ourselves in a little bit so if if this uh doesn't come in then i just want to be able to have this board and just community know what what would our plan be in that worst case scenario so the 200 uh increase per student it's about million dollars a little over a million dollars the overall budget is about 100 million so in order to cut a million dollars

067is definitely doable it would exactly be easy as soon as we know the money is not coming we'll be coming back to the school board with suggestions on how to handle it there's multiple ways to handle it sorry and for teachers and administrators that's not something there's you can do you can't do any layouts just because the you missed the deadline however um there's things that we could do maybe freeze purchasing or do a hybrid approach some money will come from fan balance and some money will come from freezing purchasing for example so more as soon as we know we come into the school board so i'll just add something that um has probably not been discussed in a long time and i certainly haven't recommended it since i've been here but i think it

068might be a point in time where um considering how the state funds schools that the idea of not short-term borrowing and i mean i think the pressure is being put tremendously on school districts like wauwatosa that have managed the finances well over time but you can only do so much with the limited funds that they're giving and when the funds were coming in at a rate of the increase of over 250 dollars per student by state law during the qeo process or the qeo time it was it was a different a different way of funding schools but the amount of money available to pay people in the district has been reduced so significantly that i still think it leads to the impact of we're looking big term i said act 10 at the time we're

069going to see my biggest concern is down the road who's going to go into education and become teachers and we're seeing the limited number of people applying for jobs and that's not just wauwatosa and wisconsin it's everywhere and it's a bigger picture um piece but i think it's something that as a community is going to need to be wrestled with not a long time down the road i think it's coming if the state does not fund schools mr rollins did you mean a question thank you that was a lot of information thank you very much it is definitely difficult uh budget environment and when [Music] we know that this is something that wauwatosa faces every budget cycle for sure a couple things i am looking for in this budget i know we're talking about avid

070expansion um but i am wondering about other teaching and learning uh improvements going on and um let me just say that i appreciated the information that was sent to the board on the virtual education and digital learning and progressing that forward so i i did some uh you know addition i asked some questions and thank you for the administrative team for responding um but i also um as you know i'm the season one border control um a member and i'm also the rep here for wauwatosa i had a conversation with the executive director and cesa has some esser funds that is not currently allotted that is possible we can tap those for professional development or other initiatives if we reach out to them um so i would encourage uh someone to do that because the

071way i look at it especially coming off of a difficult year with students you know many of them struggling with digital learning we are definitely there was a committee that was looking at how to improve digital learning for those children that want to stay in digital i i think that there's an opportunity for us to advance digital learning to help our students grow and maybe one of the ways like for example pearson could help us that information that pearson's on us was really hugely important as well they have tutoring available that could help our staff because i realized that our team of staff members also might need some additional help but i'm looking for i'm looking for some way we can retool still in this next school year coming up that would alleviate some of

072the learning curve for our staff give them more comfort and also you know try to increase the achievement levels of the students since we heard the data presentation that we you know we have some uh we definitely want to do better we're hearing tonight about the special ed and you know some improvements we need to make in that area as well as equity the equity work all across the district that we're working on so i i want to continue to make progress on those initiatives and and i don't want this to be a status quo budget where we're only really making a few avid improvements um and that's kind of what i see here but i realized the constraints and you know i realize all the you know all the unknowns um i want to

073give people a raise i still don't think we're doing very well with our um starting salaries i know we're making some progress and we'll hear more about that on june 28th i don't want to give that up i i want to add the classes that we need for all of our students to be feeling engaged and coming back strong to in-person classes while while assisting our adults to help them and better help them so again i'm kind of looking at maybe some ways we could redirect to outsource or with cesa one maybe there's money available that they can help us and um so again uh you know kind of just looking at those questions and uh wondering wondering the fun balance situation that's a big question for me thank you to mr rahm for bringing

074that up that's a big question enrollment is a big question but i i strongly believe that if we focus on the students experience and making sure we're doing everything we can that you know we can realize that we can we can realize that and we can avoid students and families from going somewhere else or attract more students and families so you know i want to go into it on a positive a positive note and i know that our you know our levee is dropping a little bit that's great but still high a lot of taxpayers will tell you it's still high um so again those are the things that are running through my head but i know we will get more information on staffing at the next meeting so i'm kind of waiting for that

075piece before i and i'm going to think about what you said today and see if i have more questions so that's where i was at [Music] thank you dr jessica banger i can't see are you do you have any questions or comments before i come back to the folks in the room yes steve uh could i i'm interested a little bit in hearing anything else we've got about kind of things underway uh in terms of enrollment i know we saw a drop this year and my understanding it was mostly um no i don't know if it was mostly but a large number of jk and sk students and families um can we hear a little bit about kind of some of the efforts that have been underway already and maybe underway over the course of

076the summer uh to uh bring those families back into the district so there's just a couple of things i know i mean starting with the fact we know some of them will come back that um that just didn't send their kids to our schools this year we know they're coming back they've already enrolled um we've done some targeted marketing to families that did not students do not attend um our district schools i know we have the number down to roughly about 13 of our our population was not attending the wauwatosa school district our school age population down from about 26 percent so looking at that percentage moving forward to see where that's at also the 4k day care provided before and after school that ms kwaikowski was talking about that's probably one of our most

077important targeted strategies and we know that if we can get 4k and 5k families in they stay so there's some rebuilding that we're going to have to do and we're going to continue with with the marketing um it's not all about marketing i think word of mouth we know how home sales are in wauwatosa right now too so we're expecting we're getting a lot of enrollments on a daily basis people signing up into the school so um those are just a couple of them i think i'm missing do you guys have any other i know we've we've increased 4k when we put the 4k rap program in um one of the things we looked at also this year was is our way to fund 4k rap that's not probably feasible so we looked at before

078and after school and we know that's probably a bigger area of need we could be able to do that at each elementary school so once we get that information out more so people understand that and get them to um enroll that's always been an issue 4k 4k and childhood child care is always the biggest challenge because some private schools offer full day 4k um a lot of the other questions i had have already been asked by colleagues so uh that's it for me right now thank you that's really come back to you mr rollins hit my other two questions okay mr mike yes i want to build on those comments about enrollment and risks for this year i think we have risk for this coming year but we won't know until enrollment of in fall

079of 2022 whether we have a problem this is going to be a transition year we might need transition strategies but our fundamentals could be just fine and we will be just fine in september of 2022. if we do what we're capable of doing we know from 15 years of studying we have 15 16 years of enrollment data that we've studied and we know that when students come to us in jk and sk that they stay with us through elementary school we know that we get increased resident enrollment at the beginning of middle school and those students stay with us we know that we get increased resident enrollment at the beginning of high school and those students stay with us so i fully agree with the marketing comments from dr hertl but as we know it's

080marketing has to have substance underneath it these wraparound programs maybe we should look at all day 4k maybe we should examine what can we do with our middle school offerings to make us more attractive what can we do with our high school course offerings that would become an incentive for those families making their high school choice decisions to bring their young people into the wauwatosa school district so we have a lot of ability to control our own destiny here over the next few months and so we just need to to do this to do these things that we know will work thank you any other board comments before we go to the public oh i just want to add i just really want us to think beyond for virtual and digital because that's the platform

081we built and i know that the committee that looked at it was really just more focused on responding to the current needs of the students who want virtual instruction and making sure that that if i understand it making sure that that is is better coordinated and better delivered based on our experience but the next level of digital learning i really think can help us it can help the students it can help ex you know enhance what the educators do and um and and i just think it's huge opportunity and i'd like us to look at it more in a visionary as a support and a help thank you thank you miss piccolo all right we will move on to the public hearing part of it um part of tonight just so the public is aware

082we will not be voting on this budget tonight that gets voted on june 28th which will likely be our next meeting so but by all means we'll move into the public hearing so please come forward state your name and address chen janowski 2609 north 90th street um great conversation on the enrollment and i would encourage you all to be very cautious in your optimism i can think of three families just at the top that have sold their houses in our neighborhood and their ten kids are not coming back to tosa i know of another probably a dozen families that have moved their kids to private schools we have really good options in wauwatosa both we've got toasted catholic you've got christ king right in our neighborhood and you've got saint jude's and people have even

083sent their kids over to what's the one in brookfield anyway dominic's over in brookfield so i know families that have moved their kids to all of those schools one including a walk towards a teacher that moved her kids out of wauwatosa because she wanted her their kids back in school so i wouldn't be as optimistic about these families coming back because and i get please please i get it the plural of anecdotes is not data i get that um but i know these families and they're not coming back so i just i think we all need to be really cautious about our optimism on that um my comments were more about the budget and i guess one of the questions i have is where are those 52 full-time employees coming from i also haven't heard

084uh with any degree of certainty of tosa connected is officially going to be shut down i would address to consider that strongly because that seems like it's a a huge um a huge draw the other thing too and i know desperate times call for desperate measures um health insurance co-pays i work for a corporation i have to pay an increasing amount every year for my health insurance uh 70 of the public schools in wisconsin have their employees paying for some of their health insurance if we're looking for ways to find money in our budget that's an option and i think we have to be open to all options when we're looking at severe budget crunches and i do thank you mr meyer too for your comments on the additional classes around critical race theory and

085specific classes to reach out to our diverse population because i think it's things like that they're going to be incredibly attractive to not just the white families but any diverse population any people of color in our community it's it's a good thing and we need to do more of that not less than that um and anyway one and i have two other families that should be having 4ks and um i want to chose them they're not coming so just lots of data points out there to be cautious doman mate i was addressed in that comment that was fun i agree with what you're saying that we cannot be optimistic we cannot rest on our laurels but we have wherewithal to offer very attractive programs and we need to do that second i don't want to

086get into terminology about anything about critical race theory this or that i want a black american history class a black american music history class i want outreach i want to do things i don't want to get i know you weren't getting stuck on labels and terminology i just want us to all to be clear i'm not going down that rabbit hole i want i want to offer stuff that the young people want that's that's what i'm about call it anything you want but we're not going i'm not going there about calling it one thing or another i i want to offer substance for the young people that they want to have thanks yeah miss joey can i go ahead off or something just to clarify a couple other things that you raised with the 52

087fte i believe that's full-time enrollment for students in the district that's not full-time employees full-time employees correct okay i've never seen it yeah i just wanted to clarify thank you that makes more sense to me no problem and then for healthcare i know that was brought up too is uh a potential and it's my understanding of the district um as opposed to the copays we have the high deductible plan that's sort of like kind of right ultimately they ship in about 12 of their take home one way or the other but the way we have a structure is a high deductible plan yeah i'll challenge our rates to anybody over the past 10 years that has run a self-funded health care insurance our rates have gone up minimally which allows us to use that money

088toward a lot of other things including staff raises if we were not self-funded if we went with a high deductible plan which encourages use as compared to a high um or the co-pays would encourage use versus hypothetical something we've learned over many years of running the health insurance plan so i think it's important thank you for bringing that up we we paid both premiums and have high to productive volatility in the corporate world hi deb paul palin 74 35 west wells um i am not sure if the school if district administration is informed to the school board of the new program starting in fall for our students with disabilities that are transition age the 18 to 21 program if the school board has received a presentation on that but i would hope since that is

089happening in fall come september that perhaps it could be agenda as an item to learn more about it to get community comment on it and also to learn about the funding needs for it i heard that that special education staff is based on need i heard mrs kweikowski say that there was a request for another special education aid but that that can't be done so to me that kind of contradicted did i hear that right it's been included okay it's been included wonderful um the other thing that i wanted to bring up is that for me equally important as to what's coming in is what's going out and how are we spending things i'm very curious about the where could the taxpayers find in the budget the amount of money spent on attorneys particularly in

090the special education area and i understand ms krauske here you said that and thank you very much for this as being open to helping family taxpayers to understand that certainly we've been asked as special ed parents to do advocacy with our state legislators on increasing funding but i'd like to also know where some of this is going out and if we do end up having a committee on disability i really think that this would be a deep dive into fund 27 helping taxpayers and families to understand that fund to understand better the expenditures and money coming in would be helpful thank you thank you any other public comments for the public hearing portion of the meeting tonight anybody online jamie yeah we do have one uh katie yount you have the microphone please state your

091name and address this is katie wilkes um i am at 1236 woodside street i am a teacher and special ed teacher at underwood and the president of the wild church education association i would like to make sure that everybody realizes the importance as dr ertel brought up our salaries it's a big it's a big deal it's a big deal around the state i'm on a lot of committees where this is talked about on many many times how we're going to get people into education um i've spoken to people at the district level with teachers in our buildings we currently have quite a few teachers who have been teaching for 15 20 years who are still not making 000 in our district that's not okay that should not be happening we need to make this a

092priority um we do have good benefits and we know that we have good benefits but we cannot lose the great teachers that we have in our community thank you thank you miss mom anybody else online jamie no that's that's it this will close the public hearing portion of the meeting and the budget look forward to a vote at our next meeting we are not going to have this staffing report this evening so we will move on to the universal screener presentation you yeah if you could just start off by introducing yourself to the public that would be great hello i am michelle anderson i am the district aid analyst and assessment coordinator and thank you for having me here tonight to discuss the universal screener so universal screeners are an important component of a well-rounded

093strategic assessment system an effective universal screener helps schools to proactively support students and teachers by matching learning supports to learning needs universal screeners can help accomplish this goal in several ways the first is by gauging the effectiveness of our universal level of instruction to support the majority of student learning needs in the classroom universal screeners can also help to identify students who might be in need of additional educational sports or challenges to meet their individual learning needs finally and most importantly a worthy universal screener should provide specific accurate and actionable data that helps identify areas of instructional strength and areas of instructional need across classrooms and grade levels so that we can provide continuous improvement in our instructional practice and feedback as we begin the universals as we began the universal screener selection process we

094formed an evaluation committee of key stakeholders to help guide our decision making each member of our committee is valued for their knowledge experience and commitment to improving assessment and student learning within the district members of our working group included reading specialists math coaches school counselors diagnosticians school school psychs special education specialists interventionist building leadership and teachers as a committee we work together to develop a list of must haves and look fors for a good universal screener assessment we poured over statistics on reliability validity and classification accuracy to ensure our assessment was well designed and psychometrically sound we met with vendors to watch product demonstrations and we interacted with product sandboxes to get a sense of how each assessment looks and feels from the perspective of both students and teachers finally the committee came together to

095form a recommendation of star which we are happy to present tonight in total we evaluated seven universal screeners using the highly respected national institute on intensive intervention universal screener evaluation tool each assessment was evaluated and rated on an exhaustive list of attributes including psychometrics ease of administration quality of data and equity from this evaluation three assessments were selected for further exploration a side-by-side comparison of these assessments helped identify the relative strengths and weaknesses of each in comparison to other assessments star stood out for its flexibility of its testing windows the shortness of its administration time the level of detail available in reports the quality of its psychometrics and the extent to which it is gone to increase cultural relevancy and minimize test item bias as much as possible another important consideration for each universal screener

096was its alignment to our state summative assessments a good universal screener will be strongly correlated with scores on the board exam and act assessments and will demonstrate strong predictive accuracy both star and map have performed linking studies with the forward exam star performs a little bit better than math with a very high rate of correctly predicting forward proficiency levels based on fall screening scores next each screener was thoroughly evaluated through a careful process focused on four primary areas of need as identified by our assessment selection committee for an assessment to be highly effective we need data that is timely and flexible we need an assessment that measures both breadth and depth we need data reports that can be easily drilled and explored and we need an assessment that is deeply student and instruction focused each

097of these non-negotiables is grounded in the belief that assessment should be purposeful actionable and equitable for simplicity's sake we will compare map and star on each of these areas in the following slides research has shown that assessment has the most positive impact on student learning outcomes when it is collected and used at strategic moments throughout the school year a flexible assessment system that does not limit us to narrow predefined testing windows would allow us to be more flexible and responsive to student and teacher instructional needs when the data is still actionable currently map only allows for three predefined assessment windows per school year which are limited to fall winter and spring testing outside of these predefined windows can result in less accurate data and is generally not advised star allows districts to define up to

09810 assessment windows throughout the school year these testing windows are not limited to once per season which provides the flexibility to screen twice in the fall and between windows as needed we are excited about the option to screen more often in the early months of the school year because it will provide valuable information for planning better instruction a 21st century assessment should focus on both breadth and depth to reflect the complexity and rigor we expect in our classrooms web's depth of knowledge helps us to measure the complexity of assessment questions a 2019 study by uw madison found that nearly all items in a randomly selected sample from map were low complexity with a depth of knowledge of one or two in comparison star includes items with a depth of knowledge of three and four the

099this more closely mirrors the depth complexity and rigor we expect in our classrooms and more closely approximates the level of rigor measured on the forward exam and the act assessments once we have collected data it is critical to have detailed reports that are easy to locate easy to read and quickly provide actionable insights about instruction over the years teachers and building leaders have consistently provided feedback that map reports are difficult to find and do not provide the information needed to improve universal instructional practice it is especially difficult to drill down to a level of detail that is informative with map reports for example there is no report that allows us to easily find the percent of fifth grade students who have achieved mastery in a specific standard skill or sub-skill star provides a robust and

100informative suite of reports that are aligned to wisconsin's learning standards and progressions we are very excited about the mastery dashboard report the mastery dashboard provides the ability to easily drill down to the domain the standard skill and sub-skill in both reading and math here are a series of sample reports that demonstrate how we can use star data to better understand our students learning needs in the past we have observed on the forward exam that fifth grade students struggle with accurately quoting from a text star will allow us to dig deeper into the standard to better understand which specific skills and sub-skills students are struggling with by drilling down to finer and finer detail we can refine our universal instructional practice and provide teachers with valuable feedback and professional development that is specific to their needs

101research has shown that assessments are most effective at helping change outcomes when they are deeply student and instruction focused assessment data should be used to deepen our understanding of how students learn dig into misunderstandings and misconceptions and improvement universal instruction to support all students learning needs having focus on creating student watch lists may improve test scores for a few students but it does not improve learning outcomes overall in the school or district additionally too much focus on fall to spring growth targets particularly when tied to teacher and building goals can have an unintended negative impact on student learning with the map assessment teachers often feel pressure to rush ahead with new content to be ready for spring map testing because map rewards a thin level of breadth over a deeper level of depth fear of

102not meeting fall to spring growth targets can also encourage a certain amount of fudging to artificially improve the data a common form of this has been to provide inadequate supports and accommodations and all acts testing environment in the fall to produce test scores that underestimated students abilities and then in spring to pile on extra supports one-on-one test administration and a pristine test environment to show a miraculous amount of growth the consequence of this is bad data that pushes more students into watch lists and interventions that might otherwise be there and it creates missed opportunities to really understand the strengths and the weaknesses of our instructional practice at the classroom school and district levels finally we must be conscientious that framing growth and achievement solely through test scores may have a negative impact on equity by

103unintentionally reinforcing negative stereotypes and bias towards some groups of students so how can star help with star we want to realign our our use of district assessment data to evidence-based best practices our first priority is deepening our understanding of students individual learning needs so that we can provide additional supports and challenges as needed in the classroom re-centering our school and district use of assessment data on instructional diagnostics providing helpful feedback to teachers and informing professional development is our next priority data that deepens our understanding of how students learn and helps us to become better educational practitioners must be our focus finally the proof that map is no longer working is in the data even by its own standards map has not helped us grow in the past four to five years the assessment is limited

104in breadth and depth it is no longer well aligned to the complexity and rigor expected in our classrooms or on our state summative assessments and our use of map data has not focused enough on improving universal instruction for all students it is with all of these considerations in mind that the assessment evaluation committee recommends star to be the new universal screener assessment for the wauwatosa school district the proposal for star includes 4 500 student licenses for students in pre-kindergarten through grade 12. these licenses can be used with stars universal screener assessments in reading math and early literacy as well as their curriculum-based measures and native spanish assessment teachers and building leaders will have access to the full suite of star 360 reports and dashboards for professional development the district will receive 10 hours of customized

105training and professional develop development from a live star renaissance coach and additional hours of pd can be purchased if needed all teachers and staff will have open access to renaissance university articles and sell study courses as well from an efficiency standpoint star will auto roster students and teachers nightly from infinite campus which means no more complicated rostering or test session set up we will also be implementing single sign-on which will allow students and staff to log in to star using their district google credentials finally star offers robust and easy access to technical support via phone email and live chat with negotiated discounts and price locking star will cost the district a little under seventy thousand dollars annually the current subscription rate would be locked in for three years after which i anticipate an increase of

106approximately 10 to 15 cents per student it is important to note that this is equivalent to what the district currently budgets for map annually and will not increase our current operating costs i hope that this presentation has been informative and that the board is is as excited about this innovative change as we are for additional information about the star assessment i encourage you to explore the appendices in this data presentation which can be found online on board docs thank you thank you any board comments or questions mr mike um you have 4 500 student licenses but we have more than 4 500 students so explain that to me how that works i'm sure there's something i don't know so help me out please absolutely we test students through kindergarten through eighth grade we test all

107students in kindergarten through eighth grade and then we optionally test students in nine through 12. so because the cohorts that not cohorts but the grade levels in a given year that aren't utilizing the star then we don't need a license for every student that's correct okay thank you any other board questions or comments thank you um yeah i was like oh i have a question i have a question thank you this is great so okay i get that this will be much more robust and we will we'll be able to use the information that we receive now the timing of these assessments and will there be more on the average or will there be the same and will some of the assessments we do in the classroom now be transitioned to the star i i

108don't know i mean i'm worried about over assessing i think you know where i'm going here okay yeah the number of assessment windows will remain the same as what we've currently done in map but one lovely thing about star is that it takes about half as much time to do the assessment so we can actually get more data for less time good we need that we definitely need that the the other question i heard you say is about the technical support and i'm wondering i've learned recently that not that we're using our mobile phones more but not all of the educators are comfortable basically loading apps onto their personal telephones and i don't know what we can do here i'm sorry i forgot to mention the budget you know area i just see this as

109another opportunity for us to figure out some better technology and quicker response this has come up with you know with the safety work and i'm thinking it's going to come up more and more in teaching and learning and these um you know and these tools that we have to assist the educators so i don't know maybe the team could take a look at this and how we could you know help our teams be more comfortable with the mobile phone apps because i i just think that's more the direction they're going i know we're doing the laptops but i want them to have i guess the technology that they need to help themselves help the students so okay any other questions or comments um okay so i probably have a couple here first i'm curious about

110um you're talking about depth and breadth of the tool and whatnot i'm curious about from a school perspective and a district perspective how reporting will help us differently or how we'll be better than what we had with math so currently um if we want to sort of really drill down at the grade level rather than just the individual classroom level it's very difficult for us to do that with maps so what i would do is pull out the data extracts that star provides and then we can run district metrics where for each school and then for the district overall for each grade level we'll be able to look at each standard skill and sub skill and then really narrow in where we've developed mastery and where we might be lagging a bit and then feed

111that back in to really inform our our planning and our instruction so i hear that what's our time lag on this because i think the biggest issue from my perspective is is not how we get the data it's one is the data good and then two how quickly can we turn key the data to influence instructions so that we're looking at data on a monday and we're behaving differently on a wednesday sure not oh i gotta wait for my data to come back from fisher and now i don't know how well is it still the same because this is two weeks later is the kids still struggling right um with the teacher level reports uh one thing that's really nice about star is they don't have to wait for the district window to end with

112map we do have to wait for the district window to end to get those reports so now teachers can pull their reports the same day that they've assessed as long as they've assessed all their students for the district level metrics that we can do i'm really hoping that we can have a week turn around on that once the district window closes so with me transitioning into being full-time data analysts that really opens a lot more of my time and i think once we have the structure of the data set we can feed it right into tableau and start creating those those reports where we can just keep appending the data and then it makes it really easy for us to update it and then send it out to our buildings as quickly as possible so

113then you have the data it goes back to the schools what is the way we are are then using that data to support teachers to be changing practice our data teams um so like our presentation two weeks ago where our reading specialists and our coaches came in they're gonna feed that into their classroom data cycles and their school data cycles as part of that process okay i'll hold off on my additional questions on that because i did watch it but i still have a list of questions for you that i haven't seen so i'll be i'll be honest um i don't love maps but our teachers know maps maps has flaws um star i'm sure has flaws too my biggest concern is once again with the time frame like i just gotta say we do

114this again and again and again and it's like okay we're going to make this decision in june and then we're going to start ramping this up in july and then august and then september teachers are going to come back and we're going to retrain them on something and then they're going to have to do something new again and i just look at canvas and how we still have teachers and parents and students that can't use it effectively and again i'm trying to separate out like the actual information the presentation from what the rollout would be but i just have real concerns that i would need to have alleviated about the rollout and just the stress this puts on teachers yet again um in that were like i was even looking at the list of folks

115who were involved and i know it said it included all those books but when i started counting up i was like how many teachers are actually in this group not that we could ask teachers to do one more thing this year but i just i i would love to have a sense of like how excited are teachers about this do we know that um because i can't it's hard for me to look at this roll out and think that we're going to get the bang for our buck without a huge level of investment on their part from learning to implementing to then having the energy to then do something with the data sure no i definitely hear all those concerns um loud and clear so this is um something that i've actually been working on

116for a few years um and been having a lot of conversations with teachers directly um for a number of years as they share their concerns with me about assessment and data and how it impacts them in the classroom and what's helpful what's not helpful um that can be a bit clunky to administer um and also i just i'd rather do no assessment than have bad data because i think there's really there is a cost to bad data and that is lost instructional time loss co-planning time and i think map at this point is just giving us bad data with star one of it it actually surprised me that star ended up being something that i really liked and was excited about i wasn't anticipating that but it's one of the things that was really appealing

117about it is its ease of administration um teachers don't have to go in and create test sessions like they do with map they simply need a list of their students um usernames and passwords and we can set the passwords to be the same for every single student in the classroom which even makes it a little bit easier teachers don't even need to log into the platform really just to administer it they can just hand out test tickets very similar to how we do the forward exam students open up their chromebooks go to the app log in and they can quickly take the assessment in about 15 to 20 minutes so from an assessment administration standpoint it's probably going to be one of the easier assessments that we have to administer in the school year um

118pretty similar to how the forward exam works but without all of the the extra rules and um yeah um so there's a lot more that goes with that and then you know a lot of the training that they've already had with map um such as test security and making sure that they set up um a classroom that is conducive to good assessment they're already so familiar with that and i know the time line to turn this around is quick but i do as assessment coordinator i've always tried to provide our teachers with as much support and good training as i possibly can my motto in the district is assessment without tears so well the other thing is we did we have notified everybody that we're moving away from that i believe it was over a

119year ago we did that so i think people are they know it's coming right i'm just thinking of the time and i i'm not trying to be a negative nelly here but i i really think when i look at this timeline in the appendix like i would just encourage us to think about like how do we if we move forward with this how do we lessen the load for the for teachers in particular um and are there you know i just think a lot of the feedback that it got about canvas was you know we could have done some of this earlier in the summer or you know on our own versus having to wait and then being like pounded with it and and then literally kids are starting school and their campus sites are

120still not set up etc and i i know it's not apples to apples here this is different um but i would just encourage us to really think deeply about is there anything that we could do virtually true is befell's point with teachers where they do a self-study and you know we give them credit or a 50 you know whatever for like getting stuff done by the end of july and if they don't they they have to do it some other time but for those folks who don't want to feel this pressure is there are there ways for us to help them go into the year not already stressed out because they're going to have to be giving an assessment in september administration of fall assessment literally right after they walk in the door um and

121would we even consider saying we're just not going to do the september assessment we're going to wait and we're going to do the november one it's possible um i certainly want to move that september 1 to the very end of september so that we're i don't like to assess kids when they're coming right in the door i like them to build relationships because i think that's very important and also for teacher sanity i absolutely want to provide a number of different avenues for how teachers can engage with the materials so some of that can be self-study some of it can be in-person trainings with hands-on um but in in some of it you know we're also going to put together step-by-step guides as we do for all our assessments i kind of view the september

122one as a little bit of training wheels and i don't want it to be high stakes and that's one thing that i do want with universal screener is we need to emphasize that it's important but it's not high stakes you know nobody should be in tears over our universal screener it is informative and it shouldn't be something that's stressful because then i think it really detracts from the purpose and the goal of what it should be and just to be clear i want nothing more than data sooner versus later after this past year so i realized like i'm talking about both sides of my mouth so our teachers do too i think yeah so i want the data but i don't want another start to you know all right um mrs fraley i share your

123concern about finding out about what we need to do in june and for example the you know if we were to reduce staff it has to be done by may and we missed that window for this year that isn't what we're talking about here but there's a dragon display and that's the decision-making process across the board needs to be moved earlier in the in the year so we can make decisions in time for the next year so i agree and i agree with other that other rollouts have not been as um positive as we wanted so two things i agree on and i i i hear you and this is the first rollout that this department with this leader has brought to us so i in a statement of faith that we you know retained

124that department and built it and they're coming to us and say they want to try this and they have a training wheels phase so i think it would be responsible of us to say this is we're going to believe in this team it's a new team a new leader a new leader managing a rollout so i don't want to hang past problems on this team am i making sense yup i know so i share miss frailey's concerns but i think you're entitled to your shot here for your new program and your you know the rollout you're managing first rollout you've really owned this you know it's it's new that you're doing the presentations this is a big happy thing but the data is much better so um i wouldn't want to pick data as the

125first place we try to slay the dragon about how we do our timelines i we probably need that more than any other thing so i'm supporting this with confidence that if things aren't going well you're going to come back to us and say we need to adjust the timeline sure that you you won't go oh my gosh i committed to the board and i've got to go live i've got to do this and i'm not going to be ready i'm now a retired guy but i did i.t rollouts and it was pretty normal to ask for what we called relief we need two more months and we nobody wanted to go live before our system was ready so if you need relief for a delay in the rollout because it's not going as well as

126you think it needs to go as you think the board expects it to go if you're committing that you'll come to us and say that it's not working on the timeline you need it you need more time as ms braley said that if you're if you're going to be strong enough to come and i think you are come back to us and face us and say nope i need more time absolutely and if it helps um i also oversaw in the district the rollouts of the badger exam the florida exam the new access for ells 2.0 dynamic learning maps uh act with writing and aspire so and all those rollouts went well so it's not it's not my first rodeo with rolling out a new assessment if that helps so if if you're finding that

127miss fraley's concerns are coming true i'm you need to come back to us to tell us that her concerns are coming true and you need more time sure that would be my perspective on this mr ellen uh the only thing i would add to that i guess train of thought is just uh how that parent communication will be integrated as part of this plan um just knowing after the last year where parents had to learn like canvas and then have been in camps before and like all these other flip grids and or whatever um there's a lot of parent education to like keep track of that um so just want to make sure that that's integrated into here with just like briefly here's what this is we're not trying to mess with you it's gonna

128be easy um that just has to be there because that's i think the main place where we would get feedback from people other than teachers that that doesn't go well but i assume it's going to go well since you're saying this thank you yeah i will absolutely work on this parent communications any other important comments that's a big film i do thank you um you know i i think we always tend to look at this area as more of a deficit in a deficit mindset than really an opportunity and the opportunity really especially going into this year is that we all want to get to know the kids better when they come back in person the teachers want to know we all want to know and i guess i learned something tonight that maps isn't

129really that helpful i mean you really pointed that out but there are two elements that are helpful that we can get to and compare while we launch this new um you know star and i'm also respectful that also coming off of this year we need to have rest our students need to rest our educators need to rest and recharge so having a more mellow start to the rollout and opportunities for you know as much information as possible available as soon as possible and and looking at it like i said as an opportunity so we you know so we can better have impact quicker and that's what you're seeing star offers and i believe you um and i do have full trust that that you know what you're doing um but again i'm keeping those two

130things in my mind that it's an opportunity but i know people need rest before they jump into this year they do so so um i'm supporting it but again you know make sure that that it's a ramp up and that students understand it's a ramp up for them parents understand it's a ramp up for them and and so for the educators in an opportunity mindset so i like that any other board comments steve um a couple of call comments as well uh the things i would love to kind of continue to see us do with this is really again uh similar to what others have said is focus on implementation uh communication to families michelle can you share a little bit about map i know was often kind of looked at and utilized in its

131my understanding is map was is designed as a diagnostic tool at the student level but we have often also used that more broadly is star can you talk a little bit about how star is similar or different to map and the type of data that that will have and how it can be utilized it sounds like there's some some differences that might be important for the at least might be important as a board member to know sure so you could also consider map to be universal screener it included in the screeners that that i assessed from the institute we've also used map as an accountability tool as an assessment to measure growth from baltic spring and spring to spring and that's a really important function as well um i would posit though that with star

132one it's a better universal screener i think that it will provide us much better data at the individual student level as well as at um sort of a systems level um than what we're looking at and then from the growth perspective what we're going to look at is with star we're going to do fall to fall and then for spring to spring we already have the forward exam the act aspire and the acg with writing and i don't like to duplicate something if we've already got the data and it's already working well and i think that with especially the forward exam and aspire they do provide really good metrics on spring to spring growth for us um as a ditch as a district my uh last question is how will we know if this has

133been successful i love your kind of comments and i know it's not your first rodeo and you and i have had many conversations so as it is as a board as a community if you were to come back a year from now let's say three years from now and say this is what star is giving us uh and this is this is how we're utilizing it this is how teachers are using it this is how families are using it and here's some changes we've made can you give an example of what that would look like it sounds like yes i think it would be coming back and talking about the narrative in the classrooms of how the data is being used in those data cycles to really improve instructional practice for teachers and the feedback

134that they are receiving to improve their own practice [Music] to me that will be success in the first year with any new assessment or any new intervention that we are implementing we're not going to see huge gains in student test scores right away those come slowly and incrementally over time that was true with map it's true with the forward exam it will be true with any assessment that we implement but if the practices that we put in place where we are being very student focused and very instruction focused then we will see that slow and steady progress over time where our forward exam scores are improving our act scores are improving and our fault of fall growth on star exam is also improving and over time that adds up those little incremental bits they add

135up over time and closing achievement gaps thank you um my questions are uh looking at slide four where we talk about bias checks and we say star is the most extensive um that they do that can you tell walk me through a little bit of what we looked at how we determined that kind of what that looks like yeah so we actually went back to each of our vendors and asked them what they do to ensure that the content that they select and use in their assigns and their assessments um increases cultural relevancy and minimizes bias and star came back with um an extensive list of seven items that they do and to summarize them a lot of it comes down to hiring staff with content expertise we're continuously trained in identifying um certain types

136of bias to and making sure that the questions are neither unfair insensitive that they accurately represent the culture of all of our students who would be taking the assessment so they also have um it says each product has a documented set of content specifications which include by specific bias and fairness criteria that address how to avoid stereotypes misleading characterizations of people or events and language that could be construed as demeaning patronizing or otherwise insensitive they also conduct statistical analyses specifically differential item analysis to ensure that when they actually test the items they perform as expected which is to say that they do not perform differently for different groups of students they also have content review that's being continuously conducted by a committee made up of internal and external diversity equity and inclusivity personnel educators and

137educational advisors and they have an advisory committee made up of external dei consultants and subject matter experts as well as educators and educational advisors this was by far the most extensive amount of checking for biased content and a test that i have seen map doesn't go this extensive and fast bridge i'm sorry to say hardly did anything so so they say as a company they take it on as a cultural competency yeah yeah what about um did they discuss in those seven things how they how they um keep out bias for students with disabilities i mean we often think of you know quite quickly the you know cultural you know racial um and gender you know issues did they discuss that at all they didn't specifically but i can certainly go back and ask the

138representative for specific examples as i look through the sample test items what i see in the content is the the questions that they are using include references that are culturally rough relevant in in pictures they're making sure that they are representing a diversity of people including um of ability and color and cultural background and also in just in the the samples that they're using for the reading passages they're including a range of experiences and and that's been my um my experience so far with with star's content so yeah that would be great if they have anything additional there that would be great my last question um slide 11 talks about stark and deepen our understanding of individuals students areas of strength and need and i'm wondering how that will help us um you know we

139talk about an achievement gap and right we really look at that from a test standpoint um lots of people refer to it as an opportunity gap i don't know how we measure that exactly is this going to help us kind of address those opportunity gaps potentially highlight them evaluate them help us understand where we're failing where we're succeeding those types of things yes that's the goal um so when addressing um for individual students areas of instructional strength in areas of instructional need that can help individual students to really be able to stretch their mastery so they are ready for new concept and that they are on the path to the progression to learn more complex concepts and the goal always is to make sure that we are providing um that support in the classroom before

140students need intervention and i'm hoping with star that because it is a more robust screener that we can identify students who have instructional needs and address those in the classroom before intervention is is needed and i think that's an important way that we can help to close the opportunity gap um because we're not letting kids get further and further behind before we do anything second is really improving our instructional practice universally for all students that alone i think is incredibly powerful to closing opportunity gaps when we are meeting all students in the classroom where they are and what they need then we're really providing a much more equitable education um and classroom experience for all students so you feel this will help us identify where the students are and what they need therefore we can

141meet them more than any other universal screener that i saw yes i believe star will do that job better great thank you any closing comments from the board before i move to the public great public comment on this teaching and learning item please i needed to stretch um i i'm curious about accommodations and thank you mr doman for your question about students with disabilities and and the assessment i really appreciate it so i'm just curious about accommodations and if there are better accommodations for people with disabilities with what you're presenting i'm also curious to learn more about our dlm population and how this compares with other other ways i reflect back on mr rolland last spring i thought you asked a very good comment i had um asked the board to look at within the

142equity plan is including dlm in there and mr rowland had asked what kind of accountability can we build into the dln population are the ways to track this and our our efforts you know how can we make sure we're we're doing this and the administrator who answered you said that for the dlm students when we start looking at school improvement plans that is when dlm data is taken into account or into consideration and so our pta at our school asked for the school improvement plan and i couldn't find that information so i am curious going back to last year because i thought your question you you dug deeper to ask how do we how do we track these these kids and how do we make sure we're accountable with with these children so i'm just

143curious if this can help how this can help and that we don't leave that behind and if the answer is through the school improvement plans then perhaps we can really look at those plans and see where is this because i couldn't find it in our schools thank you any other public comment they're no hands raised virtually thank you jamie thank you thank you very much for your time i appreciate it a wonderful evening thank you uh we'll move on to our last item find the final public comment on non-agenda items is there any further public comment and i will stress on any non-agenda items tonight there are no hands raised virtually uh mary jo randall 727 or 59th street um dr erdell i wanted to congratulate you on your retirement i know that you are

144looking forward to spending time with your lovely family um and i know you always relied on me for um something funny and i was hoping demand means would be here for this short little story but um when you were hired by the board prior to the one that i was on um i was running for the board and so you and dr means were two of the three finalists for that position that you are holding now and um after your selection of the little local newspaper which is defined now i think asked the school board candidates what they thought of your selection and i quoted in the papers saying um well i would have preferred dr means and i know i told you this over the 15 years that i served on the board i

145reminded you of that more than once but framed on my wall so yeah and i i really wish uh demand was here to hear that but i'll share that with him at some point as well thank you so it only took 16 years for her to get what she wanted patience patience thank you any other public comment tonight i just wanted to thank you all for coming tonight greatly appreciate all of your thoughts and your comments and coming forward uh with that entertain a motion to adjourn hello second thank you mr moon please call the roll miss fraley yes dr jessup anger yes mr meyer yes ms mufild yes mr allen yes mr doman yes we are adjourned thank you everyone