001TOA School Board to order it's 7:01 pm. on Monday December 10th we're in the administration building the boardroom level we'll begin with a moment of Silent reflection Mrs galante please will you call the role Mrs fee here Mr Jose here Mr croner here Mrs meld here Mrs Randall here Mrs Weber here Mr Meyer here members of the wossa school board value the input of students parents staff members and community members the board's regularly scheduled meetings provide an opportunity for opinions and concerns to be expressed publicly the board values all comments and will respectfully consider this input in decisionmaking the board requests that individuals limit their comment on each item to three minutes following any comment an individual board member May respond on the issue raised however it is not the intent of the public comment
002part 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 is there anyone present who would like to comment on a non-agenda item seeing no one we will move on to the approval of the consent agenda are there any items on the consent agenda which board members would like to remove for separate discussion or action Mr crer yes U Mr M I'd like to take up the technology recommendations separately for separate um discussion and action yes please okay all right um may I have um oh yes is there any comment on the consent agend consent agenda in general a motion this is true thank you um
003may we have a motion on the consent agenda so moved thank you Mr croner is there a second just a second to approve it minus um we'll move to discuss the consent agenda and then okay thanks MH second all right thank you um so we have a motion and a second on the consent agenda we have a request to separate out the technology section can we first let's first take discussion and vote on everything excepting the non technology section of the agenda is there any discussion on anything in the consent agenda accepting the non-technology section including the the Char the um check register which is here for examination seeing no comment um Mrs gante please will you wait before we get there let's see exactly what the words are okay it's labeled technology um we're
004going to vote on everything except the section that has the um heading that says technology in the consent agenda Mrs gante please call the RO Mrs fee yes Mr Jose yes Mr croner yes Mrs milfeld yes Mrs Randall yes Mrs Weber yes Mr Meer yes okay passes so now we'll move to the technology section of the consent agenda discussed and voted on separately um Mr croner do you have some yes I do thank you um I ask this to be as a separate item not because I'm opposed to it but because I think when we have items that are several hundred, like this one is and kind of moving in a slightly Mo New Direction for the district I I think they should be um voted on in a more slightly open process and so
005there are two items here uh one for a little over $41,000 for some laptop carts and then $192,000 for $840 Chromebooks which are our small notebooks which will be used in the classrooms I was hoping we could get just a a brief description of of how those are going to be used in the schools the uh the Chromebooks in particular are for uh Upper Elementary and Middle School and and high school level as we continue to move more toward well the wireless infrastructure being in place by the end of February throughout the district and increasing access for students um and moving more toward the cloud we currently have Chromebooks in the four secondary schools and some at the elementary level that are being utilized um for secondary princip principles felt strongly that um Chromebooks were
006a much much better way to go for technology versus iPads but the idea of moving more toward um students having their own technology being able to supplement with Chromebooks as well at the secondary level um the concept of computer labs being more or less phased out and not having computer labs and and the use of computers as being a uh an activity of going to the computer lab rather bringing the technology to the students so they have access to it in their seats and the idea of getting to the point where all students have access to technology in their seats and to be able to use technology not something that they waste time going to and and getting to in Chromebooks um with the cost currently at $229 per unit um which includes the uh
007the service plan for them and the carts are actually what's going to store the the Chromebooks as so they are they are mobile around the schools good thank you is there any other comment or question from the board M yes Mrs Randall quick clarification the reason it's on the consent agenda is that um it's already been approved in the budget this is not approving the expenditure it's approving the bidder right in the purchase of it yeah so it isn't really anything new correct okay thank you any other board question or comment um Mrs Weber please yes I do support Mr croner comments I think that it's valuable that we we have this discussion not only for ourselves but the public that are not here that do question these so I appreciate that when we do
008have that additional conversation and support of the items listed any other board question or comment I have one comment just to emphasize that uh there we're trying to Dr ear is trying to operate on a a goals oriented basis and um the goals of course fundamentally are to improve student learning and the strategy one of the components of the strategy is to bring more content to the students desk to more effectively deliver the content and um provide more efficient use of teacher time um on the road to that we put in the uh you know the um fiber optic infrastructure uh a few meetings ago we had a vote on wireless capability um that was connected into the fiber optics and this is one more step in that process to bring the content to the
009student at the student's desk um to try to improve our learning outcomes so with that is there any Community comment seeing none Mrs galante please will you call the role Mrs fee yes Mr Jose yes Mr croner yes Mrs meld yes Mrs Randall yes Mrs Weber yes Mr Meer yes now we will move to the recognitions portion of our agenda Mr croner please thank you Mr Meer 114 students from wossa East High School became new members of the National Honor Society during ceremonies held on November 14th 2012 inductees heard from Ellen Pickering chapter president Hana Brown vice president Christine ench activities director and Zoe stefanak secretary 52 students from wossa West High School were inducted during ceremonies on November 15th 2012 anaise Albers NHS president and Aaron Stapleton NHS vice president spoke the National Honor
010Society and the National Junior Honor Society are the nation's Premier organizations established to recognize outstanding high school and middle level students more than just an honor role the National Honor Society served to honor those students who have demonstrated excellence in the areas of scholarship leadership service and character two teachers from wos East High School Judy Patrick science and Sue Wes special education have received national board certification national board certification is part of the growing education reform a movement that is advancing student learning improving teaching and making schools better teachers who achieve national board certification have met high standards through study expert evaluation self assessment and peer review two teachers from the wosa school district have been nominated in two of the 2013 herb Cole Educational Foundation fellowships categories teachers are nominated in one of four
011categories Elementary Middle Junior High high school and special services Andrew Pinn a second grade teacher at Washington Washington Elementary was nominated in the elementary category Chad mateski social studies teacher at West High School was nominated in the high school category herb Co Educational Foundation Fellowship recipients are chosen for their ability to inspire a love of learning in their students their ability to motivate others and for their leadership and service within and outside the classroom teachers are nominated by students parents other teachers community members and administrators winners will be announced in Spring 2013 by the herb Co Educational Foundation and fellowship winners and their schools are each awarded $11,000 grants 36 wossa School District Educators have been named herb Co Educational Foundation Fellowship winners since the program started in 1990 since 1990 the herb Cole Educational
012Foundation has awarded a total of 7.8 million to Wisconsin Educators students and schools well thank you very much uh next yes M may I make a comment pleas of course yes perhaps I'm a little biased but I'm not going to apologize for that I believe we have an excellent or outstanding school district and when we read to see how many young people are a National Honor Society each year then we see the teachers of Excellence that have gone for the national board certification and then coal Fellowship this is what makes our district I think exceptional and I'm grateful for each and every one of the classroom teachers and administrators that we have thank you for that comment next we'll move to our action items Human Resources Mrs muel please thank you it is recommended that
013the school board approve the administrative contract for wosa West High School associate principal Clint gelski effective December 14th 2012 for 221 contract days at a salary of $78,000 prated today work and ISO move thank you is there a second second thank you Mrs Randle Mr Dr erle would you like to introduce them yes thank you uh Clint is here this evening Clint has uh is coming from new bur New Berlin where he has uh most recently been teaching Spanish um he's gone through I think I feel a pretty rigorous interview process I know I've met with him on two formal occasions and then I got to meet his wife and two girls running around at the basketball game on Friday evening at West so um Clint is here to uh welcome um hi Clint Kowski
014I just wanted to come and thank you personally for the opportunity uh I cannot tell you how excited I am to be joining your community and your schools I've been Dr said for 13 years and for the most part it's been very rewarding and and challenging every day but uh I'm ready for a new challenge and really looking forward to to work with all of you thank you I'm seeing you're wearing green somebody told me I was at tosa West very appropriate yes for for Wawa tosa West um well thank you is there any board comment or question is there any Community comment or question well okay well let's take the role please Mrs galante Mrs Fe yes Mr Jose yes Mr croner yes Mrs meld yes Mrs Randall yes Mrs Weber yes Mr Mario
015yes and Clint Welcome to our school district thank you uh next is our student learning portion of the agenda um Mr dros please it is recommended that the school board approve the contract between the wssa Virtual Academy Charter School and a Wawa tosa school board and ISO move second Mrs Weber thank you for the second is there any board comment or question um are we having the presentation of course Mr croner I knew you were very well prepared so I was just thinking about that and would you like to begin begin with your presentation yeah we're not going to have a formal presentation on the uh the The Proposal I think information was presented at a previous meeting but ultimately we we do have uh Dennis Mahoney is here this evening and um Gary mccre
016from Advanced academics which is the uh company we are going to be associating with for the virtual school efforts what we're proposing is a charter school um for virtual for Virtual School students for students taking classes virtually um currently we have students and have had students for the past five years take classes online courses and this is an extension of that as well as looking at a a program that would be open to students across the state of Wisconsin um through open enrollment we negotiated an agreement with Advanced academics that is financially um Obviously good for them or they wouldn't be in it but also and most importantly good for us as a school district there's a couple of reasons we're doing it one is to provide opportunities for our students we continue to lose
017students that open and roll out to Virtual schools in grades 6 through 12 to other virtual schools throughout the state and we feel this is a much better option not only will they stay within our school district and receive a wossa diploma um but uh financially also it's it's in the best interest of the district but we feel it's also most important because of what Advanced academics um offers to their online course offerings also the expansion of it of moving to a Statewide program um like I mentioned the the financial aspects of bringing in students through open enrollment for the virtual school is um beneficial for our district and above and beyond the dollars that we currently are um expending for online courses for our students the money that we receive will help to offset
018further courses that we plan to offer we continue to move in the direction where more students have opportunities to take online courses and I think even as we move into a new schedule in two years my goal would be that we have online courses offered in the course catalog so students can choose it and it's not just kind of a sidelight so that process is yet to be de developed but we continue to have more students with more needs and uh parents that want those options and you know Mr Mahoney has worked with many students and and families in those courses as well so tonight we do have Dennis and Gary here to answer any questions that the board may have okay so that is the presentation correct more or less Mr croner do you
019have I know Mr croner has questions because he does a lot of research on these things is is there do you have any unanswered questions so far or something you wish to highlight for the board about I do have questions thank you we want to go ahead and so I'll ask a few and then okay pause and see what other people would like to say um I understand the motives behind the school and I think they're Earnest and well thought out I think from a procedural point of view I'm troubled by the the way that it's been put together so quickly um we actually have not been given a proposal for this school as our one of our policies requires in fact there is a sentence in the contract that says where as the governance
020board has prepared and submitted and a district has received and favorably reviewed a charter school proposal for Charter School to be located in wossa Wisconsin and to be called the wossa Virtual Academy when I asked if we'd actually received The Proposal the response was to take that out of the contract so I guess my request is to not I guess do what I call is um governed by crises and to me this is kind of a manufactured crisis where this is now presented to us at one meeting we have to vote on it in order to open the school next year so our backs are kind of against the wall so I guess from a procedural point of view I wish we had would since we've been talking about this um for probably a year
021or more kind of unofficially if we had just taken it a little slower and had some more meeting more public meetings to talk about it um I do have some questions about the school and since the representatives from Advanced academics is here I just have really have one question for you I noticed from looking at the there's a report that this legislature in Wisconsin did where they analyzed virtual schools in the state and there's kind of a mix of virtual schools that employ their own teachers versus contract out and I've learned that you'll be hiring the teachers that teach the courses for our school how would you go about doing that and ensuring that they're high quality teachers all the uh teachers that are uh employed by Advanced academics are go through the exactly the
022same certification qualification review process as as any other teacher here in the state of Wisconsin I mean they have to go through and be board certified and highly qualify certifications in are expertise uh in addition to that uh the state of Wisconsin also requires incremental training that goes above and beyond what a traditional classroom teacher goes through they have to go through an extra 30 hours of online training to make them certified to teach virtually within the state of Wisconsin so all of our teachers are highly qualified Wisconsin certified teachers and so just because I don't know how this works generally do they reside in Wisconsin or out of state or both uh initially they will reside in out of state uh they are uh based in our corporate offices we have a philosophy of
023Team teaching as programs grow we will put offices of teachers within the different states as the enrollment increases that time okay and I will say I know that when you were here last I was a bit tough on you with some hard questions and uh during this past year I know many students have taken online courses and I've heard nothing but good things about it so I just wanted to say that appreciate it you asked good questions and well thought out so I I have have no concerns with this okay um a general question I have is I know from when I've looked into it it's not just for you now but there's an open enrollment cap for virtual schools in Wisconsin I think 5,200 students or something how is that going to play in
024how many of those seats are already taken up as of this year and how's that going to play into the growth of our school that cap has been removed as of last year the legislation They removed the cap so there is no cap on open enrollment for virtual schools okay good um I do have some questions about the contract that weren't clear um there's a continuing confusion with me is what's the difference between the current online program that we're running where students have the option to take online courses and we've been paying for them versus the the virtual charter school and because it's not clear to me whether resident students can apply and be accepted the virtual charter school or not students will either there's two courses I guess I would look at one is
025your a student of the virtual charter school and that you're full-time in the virtual Charter School the other one is where our regular brick-and mortar students take online courses the brick and mortar students not don't necessarily have to take um Advanced academic courses we still have the opportunity that whether we get courses from Florida virtual wherever it would be whatever fits the student needs the best but currently we have students that take those courses but they would not be full-time enrolled students in the charter school so either you if you're going to enroll in it they're going to make that full-time commitment they're going to be a full-time student in that school or they're going to be brick and mor student that would have access to online courses currently similar to what we do now
026so basically what we're adding is a full-time option for students that would enroll in the charter school so are they then physically in a sense two separate separate programs yes so the students that are taking part-time courses aren't members of the charter school correct okay so when the enrollment opens up for the virtual Charter School are wossa residents eligible to apply yes and is there an unlimited number of seats for them I mean is can they fill the whole school if if that so happened to turn out that way or half the school if 500 students elect to do it um I there I think there's a there's a process and Gary can I mean I know they have a lengthy process and onboarding process and part of it is educating students um into what
027they're going to be involved in when they're in in Virtual schools my personal feeling is taking a four years of high school for example strictly online I don't think is the best best thing for students but I'm not the one making those choices for various reasons parents and students feel and they've they've proven it is the most successful for them so I think our counselors have a job I know Amy Harrington has worked extensively and will continue to work with us on this and in talking with parents and students about what online learning is and what it isn't what kind of commitment it takes how it is different and I think there's an education process um to making sure students make good decisions and parents make good decisions about what it is so in a
028long-winded answer yes we could have 500 students that elect to take the online courses I just don't see that as POS um something that will Happ so and if a resident student is in the online charter school we still receive this full amount that we would normally receive from them if they were not in the school correct okay um the reason that's confusing to me and I talked to Mr moroney about this and we've agreed we need to talk about it tonight is that there's a statement in the contract under under item 10 that says requirements for admission to the school are and there's a list of of requirements but the fourth one says all Resident and current non-resident students that apply to the wva by February 6 2013 will be accepted and that implies
029to me that if 30 wossa students apply and 80 out of outstate students apply that all 30 wosa students are guaranteed admittance if they apply by February 6th is that what that says correct okay so that's that to me is a bit of a problem in a sense because I understand the educational aspects of this but one of the main reasons that was put forward for doing this was a financial reason and for every student that we put in there from wossa we're losing $6,400 that we would have received from the Open Enrollment and application and won't take very many wossa students before we're actually losing money on this school so I don't see how it's going to work financially if we have a very heavy resident enrollment in there I I don't think we're
030going to have a problem problem accommodating all in my opinion all non-resident applications for open enrollment in the first year we're capping it at 500 uh if we get more than 500 applications and we can manage more than 500 we'll come back to the board and ask for for more more open seats um I think it's not I I I want to clarify it's not just for financial reasons the reason we're doing this it is educational we have like I said we have parents and we have students that are electing this option and electing to walk out our doors um and there's some that I think would would prefer to stay in wos and and have those classes here so the driver for this is the fact that each year we have students electing to
031leave so in the budget you gave us you listed for fiscal year 20134 you have 100 students in parentheses and then 250 students for 14 15 and 500 for 15 15 16 you saying now that you will be accepting up to 500 for the first year we could the budget is planned on what I mean it's hard to it's hard to guess this is the second year with uncapped Virtual School open enrollment um I don't know that we have any way to gauge the number of applications we get I think it's going to depend upon marketing it's going to depend upon um how many families are out there that really want to go into virtual education so the budget is what we think could happen in the first second and third years but I think
032when you when you put the case forward that we're not going to be able to accommodate in the first year my point is that we can we can accommodate I believe all open enrollment applications in the first year but the financial aspect financially negative aspect of having tosa students is still there if there are 150 students in the school you have 50 wosa students you're still only getting the income from 100 open enrollment students but you have the cost of rning the school for 150 students so I think that that profit projections are optimistic over no not if they're electing if those families are staying here instead of electing to go open enrollment I I think that's exactly what we're trying to do and we're not losing students and paying out $66,000 to another virtual
033school so Dr ER if I may insert a question into this exchange is there an assumption that wossa residents who applied to the full Charter School our students we might have lost anyway correct okay I think it's to similar to the monor when we started the monu program we looked at the students that might have gone Elsewhere for their monor education now of course with all assumptions they could be correct or they could be incorrect but there's there's lots of assumptions and that is one of them okay I'm sorry Mr cor go ahead well I guess can I ask something too on that particular Point let see if I will pause at this point question yes M Rand okay so we get State funding of $6,400 per student correct now we get Mr Mack how
034much do we get per student 10,500 11,000 per student okay in our district and 6,400 if they in the virtual charter school for open enrollment is the for open enrollment okay all right that's all I wanted to clarify is this on this the same discussion line Mrs will you want to yield I will pause for other people okay okay Mrs muel please thank you so then a student could apply and attend wva a and because it meets all of our credit requirements perhaps year one or year two or year three or whenever they're attending doesn't work for them can they come back they're resident and they come back into the brickin mortar school yes and all of their credits will transfer yes Mrs meld are you you that was my only question at this point
035Mr crot do you have more questions I do actually go ahead please um on I'm not sure what page it is on the contract that we received again this afternoon but on section four at the bottom of the page um it says our plan is to create a physical location that will support collabor of learning um do you know yet what what the expected cost for creating a new location that would support the school would be or what did you have in mind when you wrote that I don't anticipate any additional costs we have space in the Fisher Building that would accommodate what we're looking at at this point if we look for something beyond that that's a discussion we would have in the future with Advanced academics um and we'd bring something forward if
036there was a cost point that was higher than um we bring it back to the board so many virtual schools I've learned how operate they open up computer labs for the students to to work in in the in the district so we won't re opening something like that the students would need to work just at their on their home and personal computers correct do that okay um one other question I have is some districts offer um internet support or they help students by pay for internet costs and or they provide computers so that the people I guess I would think that attend the schools aren't limited by their financial means we be doing that as well we do not plan on offering that support okay I mean I find that a little bit troubling because
037I would hate to to have a school open only a public school open only to the people that can afford to be part of it I I me think if we're going to do something like this someone from outstate applies and they can't afford a computer that's the reason they can't go to the school I think that's something that we need to reconsider um oh in the uh original budget for this year there was a one-third time teacher for $25,500 which is clearly described but under the section of funding the wva number two it says Additionally the school district will fund the hiring of an additional wva teacher from its annual operating budget is that in addition to the one-third time or is that mean the same thing Phil I the way that I understand
038it is that what we have on this budget right here is what we're asking for in the budget itself that's what we're saying that if we have 100 students the amounts for the teacher the administrator Administrative Assistant coun Down based on number and population so I don't know where the Contra comes at so this is the budget that's supposed to be attached to the contract according to our policy actually I saw this as a breakdown if you one of the questions I think Mike gave us early on if I can just backpedal for a second so we can kind of see this one of the questions that he asked he said uh the contract had some um terms that would be more favorable and ask us to discuss that so what I had said was
039that the budget would be of help in doing that and so the budget reflects our agreements with Advanced academics um there was a 6040 I believe split in the revenue and this budget reflects that and at the bottom of it it reflects you know all of the revenue and the the net revenue that's all the costs that I know at this point as far as at there was more than that I'm not aware of it so this statement that the district will fund the hiring of an additional teacher we don't know whether that's an additional teacher or not no it's it's either a third two3 depending upon the enrollment so that that reflects that budget it'll still be a teacher but they may not be full-time correct okay if the maximum is 500 that's the
040cap we're putting on if that's the cap that's when it hits the full-time status and that's how we were doing it so that really might be my fault because I'm referring to a teacher broken down this way so the the budget then is the more accurate representation of the FTE that you would be hiring for the school Okay the reason I ask is that if you were to hire an additional teacher that would be all the Prof of the school so okay um I think those are all my questions for now all right thank you is there any other board question or comment is there any Community question or comment seeing none Mr Meer oh yes there were going to be no more questions kind I'd like to make a final comment if I can
041sure go ahead um this is an interesting proposal and I would like to support it but I'm I'm just not going to at this time and there three main reasons is that we have a specific policy that describes how these schools are supposed to be approved and we haven't really followed that policy and I think the board should hold itself to to high standards as far as following policy um I think the costing of is a little bit optimistic according to what I've seen in a legislative report for other virtual schools and I think the profit that we may get is is going to be very very thin and unless things if we have too many Resident students in there you know we're we could be losing money on this school um that's that would
042be the second reason and the third reason I think is more educational and I'm in favor of technology in schools I don't think technology makes kids learn but in the hands of the right people can surely improve learning and so I've supported uh technology in our schools but in this particular case I think the virtual school dilutes our focus in our own District um this will sound a little bit callous but I don't feel an obligation to to educate students in barou or white water or Green Bay I I think we got to focus on our own School District um with the new state standards that we adopted uh probably the number of students that are minimal or basic in reach in math in our district probably doubled if we're going to follow the new
043standards and I think that by you know constantly going out in all these new directions and not focusing on basic reading basic math instruction I think we're not providing the best possible education we can for our own students um just the other day uh we helped sponsor a a small talk to a group of people about diversity that Dr Deon beans gave us and he felt the way to uh Bridge the achievement Gap was to just focus on reading make sure every child could could read at grade level and I I'd rather that we spend our time and effort doing things like that than than opening a new virtual Charter School um having said that I know the intentions are there I know that the students that are in the school will probably do very
044well but for me I just think I'd rather put the district's emphasis in other places yes Mrs Randle well I would much prefer to call the question I I can't just sit here um and have it sound like we are um giving up on everything else we do in our district when we do this um that's ridiculous um first of all we had and I I'm sorry I can't find it here but we had an outstanding presentation from Mr Mahoney last month on how we are currently serving students in our district um through the virtual school and and how we can enhance that for our current students and I know that um Mr Mack played an integral part in making sure that this like you always do that this is a financially Sound Decision um
045you don't get on board if it's not we know that but primarily what we have accomplished over the last year or two in every area in this district has been amazing it's been amazing um and so you know Mr croner we always disagree on this and sometimes I think we're not at the same meeting because we've talked about this we've talked about the educational value we've talked about the money we have talked about where we're going none of this is a surprise and none of this is an either or and I guess I'll leave it at that that's my primary statement for anybody to walk away here tonight and think that if we enhance our learning opportunities for our kids and other kids to make it financially viable um you know that's just utter nonsense
046so is that all this random that's it all right um is there any other board comment or question Mr Meer I have a question oh yes Mrs mu thank you there was a a short discussion um regarding the contract in the second paragraph about the governance board preparing and submitting this Charter School proposal is that a true statement that is removed it's red lined and it's removed okay so that's removed so I I just wanted to clarify that um although I agree um with some of Mr croner points earlier about process um I am very versed in uh what the school will offer to students and I do support it um as with all uh new uh undertakings on behalf of our students um we are sometimes nervous um you know for lack of a
047better word um but if we don't attempt it and try to reach those students then how will we move forward so I am looking for transformative type proposals which I see you bringing forward here today and I appreciate all of the work that you have put into it um and so I am in favor of The Proposal Mrs Weber please I'm going to repeat myself that I put forth in the past my goal serving on the wo School Board is to promote successful education for each and every child in our district there are young people that do struggle and I don't know the reasons but I am concerned that we give them an opportunity to become become successful if we can do it in a broader sense greater opportunity for the young people of this
048country I am strongly in support of this virtual school with all respect please to Mr croner for the questions you've asked those are important but I I believe so in the virtual schools I think this is a wonderful opportunity for our community thank you Mrs Weber Mr any other board comment okay before we call the role I have a comment um or comments I believe this proposal was carefully considered well considered by Administration Administration brings considerable expertise in these matters to these discussions Dr erle has been in fact a national leader um since before we hired him in this District he was a national leader in online schools and that was one of the reasons why he was hired I believe that this online learning capability is something where when a school district has this
049expertise and these capabilities that the student all the students in that school district will be better off and that we are entering into a world where school districts those school districts Who start this journey will be better off for their students than those school districts who do not start this journey all programs start somewhere and I'm particularly proud of where this program is starting so so thank you and with that Mrs galante please will you call the role Mrs fee yes Mr Jose yes Mr croner no Mrs meld yes Mrs Randall yes Mrs Weber yes Mr Meer yes motion passes next item of business is our reports we have Business Services report the um 2011 to 12 Financial AIT report U Judy bruny is here from Fel schacher and Company and John Mack our director
050of Business Services is coming to the front with her good evening I'm going to go through the um three page summary that I handed out right before the meeting again again this year uh the audit report contains an unqualified or clean opinion on the financial statements meaning that the statements fairely present the financial position and results of the year's operations are two single audit reports one on internal control and compliance over financial reporting and one on internal control and compliance over federal and state grants both were unqualified this year there were no findings we issued our our usual audit letter to the board which addresses our responsibility as Auditors and what you can expect from an audit it also States we had no disagreements with management and we had no difficulties in performing this year's
051audit on the next page is a compar comparison of the two balance sheets the acral basis statement of net assets and the fund basis governmental fund balance sheets at the end of the year total assets for the district was 73.1 Million compared to 68.8 million the year before an increase of 4.5 million uh total liabilities 20.3 million at the end of this year compared to 15.9 Million last year included in the uh liabilities is the OPB liability and the pension liability totaling 10.7 million net assets or equity on the acral basis was 52.75 at the end of the year that's slightly down from last year by 154,000 and the governmental funds balance sheets 42.3 million in total assets at the end of the year that's an increase of 4.5 million over the prior year current
052liabilities increased from 7 .4 million to 9.3 million and total fund balance for all funds went from 3036 million 33 million that's an increase of 2,684 at the top of the next page is comparison of the two income statements on the acel basis the district shows a small deficit of 154,000 and on the fund basis a surplus of 2,684 th000 under budget highlights for the general funds the district budgeted a deficit of 2,285 th000 you actually had a surplus 2, 243,000 so favorable by 4.5 million there are two fiduciary funds which uh show the Student Activity agency f funds she had cash on hand at the end of the year of 423,000 all of which is due to the student organizations and a small private purpose trust for scholarships which had 316,000 in cash at
053the end of the year there any questions Mr rle please um the OPB liability um was there a difference in reporting in the last year to Mr ma in in the requirements for how it was reported there's been no change okay there okay is there any other board question or comment I have one question um can you please or will you please describe the difference between the internal control review you did or your consideration of internal control over financial reporting as compared to what you say you did not do which was um expressing an opinion on the effectiveness of the district's internal control over financial reporting what's the difference and what did you do and what did you not do well there's nothing we didn't do we did everything that's always required I'm not sure
054oh that I understand I know you did everything you're required to do doing for the audit but I'm looking at page 56 under the the section internal control over financial reporting and it says in planning and Performing our audit we consider the district's internal control over financial reporting as a basis for Designing our auditing procedures for the purpose of expressing our opinion on the financial statements fine but not for the purpose of expressing an opinion on the effectiveness of the district's internal control over financial reporting so to the lay person what does that mean what are you not expressing an opinion on we're not expressing an opinion on your internal control we are doing work on internal control as part of planning the audit it's required that we do that so we actually look at
055it quite extensively okay but not enough to express an opinion so let me see if I'm interpreting this correctly in order to decide how to do your audit you have to assess in some fashion risk yes exactly and in order to assess risk to the accuracy of the numbers that are presenting to you you have to have some understanding of the internal control practices because that affects the risk that the numbers aren't what they present themselves is being is that we obtain the understanding of internal control we document it we also test it and based on that work then we design our audit procedures if we feel there's some extra risk in a particular area then we do more audit procedures in that area for instance cash okay an obvious one you know if we
056felt there were um controls that were not working properly over you know cash dispersements we would design extra procedures to look at that and you saw no need or basis for performing extra procedures based on what you saw with the internal control practices that's correct thank you is there any public comment or question well this is wonderful news it's always been wonderful news in the past and it's wonderful news now um thank you Mr Mack for job very well done okay so then we'll move oh I'm sorry I I'm clunky up here sometimes well all the time thank you for performing the audit for us and for entertaining our questions you're welcome okay so then I think I guess we'll be done with business services and we will in my clunky manner move up move
057on to buildings and grounds and we're going to have the the 2013 2014 Capital Improvement report in including a mention of the District athletic fields plan Mr KUSI that's fine how about if you say that once more then I'll say keski don't look at it when you say it Mr keski just don't look at it when I say it all right then you're fine thank you very thank you very much this is your first time making this presentation for us yes for this board all right very exciting you'll do better than me I'm sure all right so take it away please all right well thank you for the time um what I'd like to do is first start off on a review of um the current fiscal year Capital project budget and um and I
058have that including your board pack and I also brought copies if anyone needs it and then I have it up here for the general public um quickly go through that that um this um and the reason I want to go through I want to specifically talk about the middle school science areas and the project on that um the first two at McKinley are very basic a roof replacement asphalt that was done this summer um then we'll talk about a Long Fellow we had the gy bleachers are in um I'll skip the science lab for a second and then um same with Whitman gym bleachers were in and then the small carpeting the library was done this summer um the East the gym bleachers are scheduled um scheduling things in high school gyms are are difficult
059but we have it scheduled in April and then a carpenting job was completed in the summer similar a West um the bleachers scheduled in June and we're it's nice we have the gym floor so when you can work those two together rip out the bleachers do the whole floor then put in bleachers it's a nice thing the one thing I wanted to talk about was the um science labs when I started the summer the the money was allocated for the science labs but there was no no contract or not even any conversation with any Architects or student learning you know what do we want to do when we remodel science labs so interviewed a couple Architects um the one that we um cited on or are looking to go with would be uh Zimmerman the
060district has done a numerous projects with um met with um student learning and the The Architects and then our initial stages is basically find out what do we what do we need you know what what are the what is the 21st century middle school science lab have um so we're we're in that process now the construction of these science lab believe it or not it's going to take nearly three months to do um you're going to start with a lot ofus removal and then um you know includes remov you know relocating Fume hoods if possible the um gas the water right now you know and learning is different in the um traditional science labs you have your sink on the side the classroom the teacher teaches and students all look over their shoulder that's much
061different it's more round area so you're putting water and gas in the middle of the room and being able to work in movable Furniture so it's pretty it's pretty exciting to do um but so we still have the money allocated in this current year fiscal budget for those middle school areas we'll still use that for the summer and the reason I wanted to talk about that so much on the the um we're presenting the next year fiscal budget um speaking with Architects and what the you know when you go into a project not really knowing it's it's really tough to budget for but speaking of them we had to add a little bit more money for those Middle School ones so that's that's one of the reasons I want to talk about so much that's
062why it's on there so I guess with that where if there's any questions on the 12 13 projects I'd be glad to entertain them if not I'll move right on to the next year's projects Mr C I have a general question first it's very pleasing for me to see someone that's excited about putting gas on and a sign slab that's my area and that's a cool thing so that's good um I like that um for the science labs in Middle School are these the labs that are mainly used by the eth graders are the sixth and seventh graders getting upgrades in how they do science as well or good question um when we looked at this you know you obviously you can't do we longell we're looking at doing three rooms two rooms at Whitman
063um we've tried to pick areas and we just met on this um a couple weeks ago seems like yesterday but pick areas that are that it's not just this is eighth grade science it's more how can we use this where it's a rotating so a Whitman for example we're looking at doing a it's not a hard a a room but then also next to it would be a traditional classroom if you will so the whole idea of 21st Century Learning as I understand it from a zilan perspective that a teacher it's not a teacher's room how you traditionally think of it it's a science lab for all activities so it's worth scheduling and so it's something to benefit all students not just 8th grade if you will you know so and that's one thing at
064Whitman we're looking at currently we first picked two rooms on the Upper Floor next to each other we decided to benefit more students we do one upstairs one downstairs tie a room next to it as a traditional classroom so then you could really have two um sections at the same time benefiting from that lab only one's in a lab day ones in our traditional classroom or they could work together in the lab and set up and um in the lab you know when you the furniture it's really neat what's out there that just because it's a quote unquote science lab it can easily be a classroom also and then you know the desk rais to make science um and then they can move out of the way because a lot of the things science is
065doing is they need space they don't necessarily need table okay thank you um there's nothing else I'll I'll move on to the um 134 I'll um speak briefly about the science yes oh I'm sorry I heard some conversation about lighting uh for the theater do you have any information on that or what it was very brief and sure I nothing for lighting for theater has been brought to my attention we excuse me it was not light lighting it was sound sound you're you're a step ahead of me so you're talking at the West Theater yes yep and um I'll I'll address that right away for the um because that's been one area that's identified as need to be updated and um we'll that's that'll be addressed here in this budget what about the U Storage
066in the lower level of East theater I also heard conversation I spend a lot of time in theater that's why yeah you're well well address in the theater stage um that um good question on on that where we're currently at is um I left another message from Mr Hugh today were trying to play a little phone tag that the booster club there has been really active in raising funds and to re revamp that whole area um so that's what we've we've got proposals on adding electrical adding Sprinklers and then um I guess the the club itself has volunteers that would add it's what we're talking about is changing rooms makeup um things like that so that's something that we want to do it's not a capital project item because it's really a booster club fundraising
067and there'll be some support from the district for um you know for like our district electricians to help wire the areas and and things like that so is there any conversation about uh restrooms that is very difficult at East you have to go up to the balcony a bathroom or on the third floor and it's not accessible so is it did you look at that at all there we haven't looked at that yet um I guess you're the you're the first person to bring that to my attention well you'll hear from me again it's not in thank you this is why we have board meetings yeah appreciate it um well I'll go through the um the format I use for 1314 is very similar to what Mr uh Bruce Johnson used in the past um
068we did is separate each building and then give a um estimated project cost and then um um what I did is I met with youil Administration and went through the the previous ones and a good example is trying to update it where they have projects such as um solar hot water heater there some ideas on that solar hot water heaters were a really really good idea 8 10 years ago you know the price of natural gas way it's got the the paybacks not there so to do something that financially um I took it off this so we tried to update it and meet with the different principles but I always tell the principles so this is the re reason I do it on Excel instead of a PDF is because it it can always be
069updated so um what I'm working in next year presentation I hopefully should have I wanted to have it this time is to work on instead of here's everything we're doing this year here's everything we're we have on the notice for sometime in the future is to work on more of a five or 10 year plan and that helps principles too to know what you know we want to do something I know it's coming up in this year and that probably helps helps myself and probably helps board members communicate what's coming up in the future so um I what I'll do is right now is just briefly address um the 1314 um scroll down I had um for Long Fellow and then also for Whitman extra $660,000 that' be to additional supplement the middle school science
070room remodels and had um what Mrs Weber commented on the at TOA West to update the sound system for the theater that was $100,000 and I've met um started with Mr clarkco and had um we had five staff members and theater Folks at West and then in January we're going to well long as you know the board is um in favor of it to move through and getting um proposals from different companies and um one of the reasons that when they had their recent performance what I what I was told from the theater folks is they had to borrow a lot of equipment that because stuff we had wasn't working and um to get it up to to standards so um and then also the 365,000 for each high school was for the science room
071remodel with the intent would be is um summer of 2013 to be a busy science model remodel even though Middle School the majority of middle school is in last year's budget and this and this year we look to do all the projects this summer so be tearing up some science rooms um and then one of the things I probably SP most of the time talking about is um the Fisher behind us the bright L field is to add a baseball diamond and um I want to speak a little bit about that that um I believe in the packet there was a a map drawn and I have some extra copies I'll leave here um you know when you when you go back for for you know athletic projects like this um I'm sure I'm sure
072everyone stays up a night reading the 2006 Athletic Field planning report um it was something well two of the current board members were on the buildings and grounds committee that produced that report okay I may ask Mrs muell to comment on the process later on go ahead so um in that report going back one of the number I think the number one item to be addressed was what was addressed at West um the restroom concession Billings entryway the number two item was Bri field of adding additional baseball diamond um and then relocating the tennis courts obviously with um a few years ago the tennis court project at West we don't really see the usage you know the teams don't practice here um we have that there so um was brought to me you know how
073do we how do we add a baseball field um some of you know that's my um funny enough that's my my previous life is running baseball stadiums so um one thing I I thought of right away is when you do a project like this a sizable project how can we do it Beyond just high school teams um we've talked before you know there's we have the high school season out here and when that's done the fields vacant so what what can we do to make this more of a Community Asset and um to use these groups so um one of the things I suggested that we really investigated it and um see that the administration really enjoyed was doing um and I'll use field Turf it's kind of the kleenex name you know they um
074field there's a couple other brands but field Turf is the most recognizable and give you a point of reference what Hart Park has the football field that would be field Turf it's actually the brand and was you can do a field Turf infield um Brookfield Central just did one there's um Sun Prairie did one that would be similar to us and the advantage when you do a a field Turf infield for one there's it can take 40 gallons of water per minute so it can rain all day um but really what what I personally think is the biggest thing put is that on a traditional baseball field you have 90ft bases well I should maybe backtrack for those who um aren't as familiar with baseball as I am that a traditional baseball field you have
075grass on the end field you have dirt baselines and then the dirt where the infielders play referred to as Skin and then the Batters box and then a clay Mound when you do a field Turf infield the whole the whole infield including the Batters box the the dirt the mound is Turf so by by doing that it still looks it looks brown but it's just Brown Turf instead of Green Turf and then the white lines are just White Turf instead of chalk um and same with the batter's box and so what you can do with that is even the pitch Mound now they make um to you know to pitch on so for maintenance Wise It's amazing how little maintenance there is compared to redoing the Mounds every day redoing the batter box but really
076what I see the true Community benefit is that you have those 90ft bases for a high school game when that game's over you can easily put in the 60 foot bases for toasta leag game when that game's over you can just move the back bases back 10 feet for the you the 12-year-old games and so forth um it is a it's they call it wheelchair friendly so it can be used by you know it's it's um it's Crush rubber with a little bit of sand um and then so you can roll wheelchairs on it i' I've I've heard mixed reviews I have two close friends in wheelchairs one says he loves it one says he hates it so um but then you can also do your bullpens with that you can you can do the
077whole area so um the idea of be able to to move the bases to accommodate you know your your seven-year-olds playing and then follow with the high school game I think is is truly truly really neat um so the proposal we had was to add another field that been on both of them make them a field Turf infield with that so um I guess I can I can speak on this all day um usually my wife Cuts me off when I talk about baseball so the um one question we commonly get is um currently both of our high schools Play Summer League wi as most people know there's outside of the Milwaukee area most schools in the State play in the spring um when you have a field Turf by if you had spring baseball
078you can actually play your games all spring when it rains um and talking to wa they said there's 57 schools currently in summer baseball I said well what at what number do you eliminate summer baseball and they said 64 so um that was their old threshold so it's something they review every year so um what I've told people this isn't something we're doing anticipating it but it puts us in a really really really good position if they do eliminate summer baseball we'd be in a it'd be a very easy transition for facility wise so um I just go through the total project the scope it is a 1.3 million you see we estimating cost and the these estimates um Zimmerman and they've done projects like this and they've um so they're they're very they're I
079think they're very good estimates um the new diamond reconstruction just the new one at 860,000 the adding the turf portion of that is around 250 if you're looking so you still have quite a bit of um cost now you could say if you didn't do turb did a traditional would it beus 250 well no because you still have the cost of construction and and INF field and amount and such um the existing Diamond renovation to do a field Turf INF field and we'd be adding a warning track on that would be um 375,000 um and then the other cost we um in this plan the tennis cours have to be eliminated to accommodate that looking at adding a playground um for those of you that enjoy um recreation park playgrounds there's um there's two types
080of playground equipment you have a two through five-year-old playground equipment then you have a 5 to 12y old equipment all the equipment we currently have here is 5 to 12y old so you know we have students in the school four-year-old we technically don't have the proper size equipment for them so we'd be adding a a playground not only and something that I think would benefit the whole area not just the the students here um and then then adding um small 15,000 for like a lightning detection weather system and that would be at the school and um it's becoming more and more common for especially for baseball um when they play in the spring and summer for lightning detection so um I guess with that the um couple questions I commonly get this project does not
081include lights or does not include a sound system that was a common question we get um and I guess with that I guess love to to hear what questions you have and hopefully I can answer is random um Dr well Sor could I think Dr erle has something to add about the athletic fields plan and then we'll move over to you the athletic fields plan and I know the people listed on that there were board members involved in that and that was a a process back in 2006 that was undertaken and like Tom had mentioned the the fields have been the number two priority or the baseball field adding an additional baseball field one of the things and I know that I've been involved in those conversations certainly in the past four years every time
082it's been brought up I haven't been in favor of adding that that diamond and in part the big part is when I look out the window and I see that vast area being underutilized and I thought if we're just going to add another baseball diamond it's going to sit there and be an albatross like a currently I think our baseball diamond some in my opinion it's just not used like it could be um and I think when Tom came up with the idea of of the Turf and I had a lot of discussions with other people about how that could be used from as he mentioned all the youth teams to just the neighborhood kids comeing playing a game of kickball I think would be would be pretty awesome but even the property that's currently
083used when you come out on a Saturday or Sunday morning and see all the soccer teams that are playing uh he has plans drawn up of where the soccer fields could fit right inside the Outfield so we would have more soccer fields and the soccer fields actually would be in better shape than what we currently have now their the land is kind of rutted up a little bit and and kind of torn up so um I thought this was a a really good idea I think it's one of those things where we look at our facilities we're Limited in wossa with our facilities and what we can do we have some old buildings we take great pride in our school buildings and our facilities and we're limited to what we can upgrade and what we
084can do and I don't think we accept mediocrity and anything else and I think that holds true for all of our facilities and I think this is just a a perfect way of of sending that message too of having great facilities in our school district and for our community finish Mr Mrs Weber please I really am pleased with the input that you have the looking at that this is a very special field I don't know if anyone explained to you why it's the bright low field I won't go into that right now but it it's it's precious to this community um during the Spring particularly you spoke a little bit about it there's always with the rainy weather a difficult time preparing the soil or the field this would correct that correct there won't we
085won't have to wait for a period of hours to play on that when the second game is scheduled I'm not making myself very clear but yeah the um the drainage for this infield and that's really when you you have when you have rain what you're really concerned about is the infield it and they said it sounds crazy but it can take 40 Ines of rain a minute so you I mean it can literally pour then when it stops you go out and play but it's it's it's really amazing how the drainage Works to be able to play so the essentially unless you don't want to play while it's raining that' be the only time you'd have a rain out have you looked at the uh field at um Whitman at all to observe what there
086might be is there any need for some addressing there um well it's funny to bring that up the um speak briefly on the the for the um softball teams they used the West softball team would play at Whitman those are also big Recreation field the WIA has a new mandate for 2014 season they must have an outfield fence between 100 I believe it's 185 ft in or 185 and 230 feet if you put that at that diamond you it could no longer be used for recreation purpose so we didn't want to take that up so we um with um the athletic director gabrielson that's here we looked at what else do we have in the site we actually identified a field right behind the football bleachers at West that I I would at best describe
087it as a sand lot field and we we have the same problem with East because they play at heart Park and the city's not going to put up a permanent fence and say we can't play Recreation ball in it um so at East we identified a field at the corner 100 or um EXC me 80th of Min lower at a Long Fellow that they currently practice on so um was for price of I believe um one field was 15,000 the other was 14,000 to redo it and make a a um the product is actually called Magic Mix it's um a high drainage product so when it rains it it it dries really dries very very very well we redid had both of those fields redone and then um it should be this week to add
088permanent fencing around that so so I don't know if that anwers your question so you look at um fields of Whitman we'll still maintain those fields of Whitman but those will really be U practice if they're used for our our um students be practice fields but the majority would be Recreation or Recreation Department where actually the varsity field for girls softball for West would be um behind the West football leechers so right now you look at there just the infield and the fencing should be up um hopefully this week honestly I was hoping it'd be today so did you look at the condition of the tennis courts at Longfellow yes um we were actually talking about that today what what would be best there and um I don't know I I I'd like to have
089more discussion on that when we do something I see that as a need for you know when the student it's amazing middle school students they when they have a recess they like to just kind of hang out on hard surfaces so how could we those tennis courts if they're used for tennis but then also how could we upgrade it maybe make an additional basketball court or kind of an area for the the students to hang out so yeah that's a um that's a a definitely a concern I have that I don't have an answer for that um we have it it's definitely noted for a future projects Mrs Weber one of the things we're going to be doing is getting obviously this lot of people that are on this committee that aren't around anymore but
090we're going to get a Fields committee back together and start looking at um all the facilities again I know you mentioned Whitman I don't know if you were commenting on the the soccer area as well and that's an area we have to look at um with that field and and go from there but we're going to have the committee back together and start looking at good facilities again this community truly values their events through the rec department this is a dumb question is where is rugby played where is there any facility for rugby um to my knowledge there was no rugby team this current school year oh I I believe in the past it's been here at fiser Mr Channon please where is rugby play the resident expert and and Mr chanon perhaps you could
091the uh um let us know your credentials in this area which are considerable I've helped coach the the girls team here and um and uh the rec department has a summer program they they do tend to play in the fields behind fiser in the summer uh the girls program this fall was unable to have enough students and they merged with Brookfield but uh the boys team which actually kicked off last year was quite large uh I believe they played their games at Longfellow which is a fairly narrow field and does have some uh obstacles along the side of it that make it not ideal when the girls teams played their matches they played on the turf at uh har Park I I think with the with the rugby and um soccer and you know lacrosse
092was become very popular I think you'll see that in the future years for addressing a lot of those through the West site the land is very precious agreed thank you Mrs renle please um this is a long time coming we um I've only been here six months sorry I just I don't know what you want oh my gosh that was good I'm going way back um Ledger one for him absolutely absolutely yes I'm sorry if that's really sounded to you like like I meant that that way no there's such an interesting history about you know this building and these grounds and and the way the community went to B for them a number of years ago when they were probably going to be sold um so it's it's really you know as each Improvement has
093been made and as the monu School came in um and all of the different things that are happening here is just it's just incredible and I've talked to neighbors you know when I stop in for meetings or whatever and um they stop me and say we are so happy to see kids in this building we're happy to see kids on the playground again um so I am I'm really really happy that we now have a real plan and six months that's pretty good um but um I I am I'm thrilled and um in keeping with what we have been doing um I appreciate uh the effort to do it right um the other part of that is we I believe now we got one I've got one email but I believe that there are other
094groups in the community who have been involved in planning um um yeah when I um well it first started internal with the first meeting I was involved in was June um shortly after I started and you know with athletic directors things like that and we looked at the site we made some um changes and then um November 28th in In This Very Room we invited a group of um of users of the field you know High School down to the junior children Junior Raiders all variety of groups um presented this wanted feedback from those group we had some really um very good suggestions some small some big um and a lot of questions and it was um I kind of joke you're presenting a baseball field to baseball Enthusiast so it wasn't the hardest presentation
095to make um I actually see a lot of those so we we tried to engage those groups that would be using this so you know there some concern we have um you know on this we're getting rid of the two small Fields so that's what we wanted to explain to those groups they they use those small Fields we're not stealing that for high school we're we're doing it and try to explain the big picture I felt it was better for them to hear it from me and then to hear it through the rumors and the coffee shops and things like that so um yeah it was it was good I've got a lot of emails with um very random questions um but all good questions so and and so with this increase Community use I
096think it would it would be amazing use you'll get okay and then so my question for Mr Mac is um this has been on our um previous presentations as a future expense um never quite at this cost um so can we afford it and how can we afford it and will it be part of the next it the the ca is right in part of our um capital budget so that cost is just what we did is put this on a priority over RS or whatever but I think if if you go back in time and and remember we actually had this project up on the Slate but it was caught because we had to make budget reductions and now it's coming back because we're more on a normal cycle so what the money's there
097for this and even myself when I saw all of this I would just add that I think doing the field th is definitely worth it as long as the whole Community gets to use this and and that's I think the key selling point is if it was just for high school I don't think it'd be worth it but for little kids and for soccer for everybody to use this you're going to get a lot of use out of this and it's going to be a very attractive thing to play on okay thank you and I I do very much appreciate your background and um I think it brings a lot to the proposal thank you Mr Carter please thank you um I'm still in a pretty good mood about the science labs but I still
098have a couple questions all right um what is the difference in use in in experiencing the same wet weather of a magic Mixed Field versus a turf field sure um a magic well for one the price is considerably cheaper than Magic Mix what Magic Mix is um is a guy from um Appleton area created it and um what he did is he looked at warning warning tracks always dry out quicker than infields so he tried to say why don't we just use the material we use in warning tracks which is just Crush granite rock how can we make it you know I should backtrack you know in a typical warning track when a player slides in it you're almost guaranteed to rip your pants so how can we not just put that on an infield
099where you're going to tear balls and P but how do we have a a hybrid if you will um so we you know it's a um it's a crushed granite that's a little bit rounded and it's broken up much smaller now um Magic Mix is basically um this good terms infield conditioner is um baked clay that's all all it is the top of the infield it's like an eighth inch a small pieces of bake clay it absorbs water but it it can't it can't absorb you know a ton of water we've all seen games and they had to pull out the tarp Magic Mix is just maybe twice as good as that so um Magic makes if you have an untar field will be able to take rain during it but if it rains all
100day you're not going to be able to play if you have a game at 7 o' on a magic mcfield and it rains at a nice half inch at 5:00 you're not going to be able to play at 7 so but the turf is um you know it's gravel based and then Rubber and sand so that it drains right through it so frankly I I don't think there is a comparison it's just Magic Mix is a a step up from the traditional baked clay um it makes it better for softball with you know I when we were doing a softball fields I'm like we should Turf the whole softball field I think that would be great you know um if it if that cost $155,000 it no problem um but um but it doesn't so
101I don't know if that answers your question a roundabout way I guess so the extra cost of the turf field you think is worth it for the extra playing time that you get out of it I um if it kind of as Dr ER and Mr Max said that if it was just High School field I don't I wouldn't feel comfortable presenting this but the whole idea by doing Turf it also allows you to do the younger kids do the 60ft bases 70 foot 80 foot bases I think that's your true benefit instead of limiting yourself to just High School you're opening it up to all age groups Community okay and my other question is is based on previous discussions we've had as a board when we've gone through this um list in previous years
102we've had times where we were short stor on money and so I or others would suggest instead of spending $2 million on this year let's spend a million dollar and save that money to spend in other places on educational uses or salaries or whatever and I we were always told well we're way behind everything we need to do anyway and cutting back now is just going to make it more expensive in the future so why doesn't that argument hold now I mean why what are we not I see a lot of really important maintenance projects on here sure and we're not doing any of them does that concern you um well I guess I I could walk through any building and and give you millions and millions of dollars in maintenance projects so what we
103did we looked at it truly the it what it came down to either do this or the West there's an area West roof could we do it could we could we get another year out of the West roof and it's um be the southwest corner if you look at Google Maps you can see there's one large area that's still black that that's really what it came down to in my opinion was that if that rof we we said no we had to do it this year then I think I wouldn't feel comfortable presenting this to it we um with the district has always used this Roofing consultant SRI and we we took a good afternoon of walking through and I wanted I I said I want your honest opinion where are we at on the
104life cycle of this roof is it something that you're saying Tom we have to replace this year or is it something you're saying hey this rof I I always say hey can we get three more years out it knowing they'll probably be on the budget for next year and he said no we did two repairs and said you're fine you can get a couple more years out of but it's definitely but I know what you're getting at is saying can we push something else mean every time you do a project you're not doing 30 other projects and I say that's probably the hardest part of my job every you know it's not saying yes and we're going to do a project it's saying no and explaining why we're not and that's why I I like
105to do The Five-Year Plan and just instead of saying no we're not going to do it to show when we're going to we're going to do it in the future and um frankly I I Had A Five-Year Plan here I didn't feel comfortable presenting it just because my um I wanted I wanted more knowledge and more more time to be alone in random buildings and see the area so beyond the science rooms um so no I I see I mean it's you've presented it well and I see the benefit of having it in the community but a million and you know $1.3 million could be used in a lot of different places um we talk about teacher salaries later and you could put a million dollars into a fund and fund $50,000 a year for
106Teacher bonuses for 20 years or you could fund extra teachers for reading support or for a number of years so there's that's not your decision or problem but so there are number of different uses of over a million dollars if if even if you're not using on maintenance projects so but I understand you know the value of having something like that in the community as well so I have to think about it some more it's a okay it's an interesting it's an interesting project I see the value but I just have to give us some more thought I say the this process I understand we're not looking for you to um to approve a bid you know we're trying to present the projects and then um when we go out and solicit pricing and get
107more details sure understand I'll be glad to answer any questions we know thank you Mrs muel please thank you um I know Dr erle has been keeping the board very informed of your activities so please understand that has and one of the things when he communicated the meetings that you were having with stakeholders one of my questions was are the booster clubs going to be there are the parents going to be there um are the district officials going to be there um you know really having a good mix of stakeholders at the table when you were able to present um this latest version of the the turf in the baseball field plan and your vision and um you've articulated tonight that in in fact you have received a lot of feedback I'm looking forward to
108receiving additional feedback um I have received some from the community and really the history of the committee in 2006 was uh bringing together the community fundraising efforts with the district plans for improvement and I can say that in my many years of service I have been very pleased to see how much the district puts into improving their properties whether they be Fields um or any kind of systems and as well as their buildings um you know keeping our Roofing and and because some districts they don't do that and they really have problems later on because their buildings are not maintained their fields are not maintained so um I'm very glad to hear your philosophy on that you answer my question on Roofing because that is a concern to me obviously that we make sure that
109we continue on our Roofing our Roofing path uh and you will be bringing back a fiveyear plan um so I see this as an investment um I think you have articulated the uh advantages to the community we're also going to be improving our science um and our educational and those were other things that we had said we wanted to do within the next next year so um I'm very pleased to see it I was wondering though with the fields because there will be so much use on the fields would there be places for people to store equipment um with so many different I mean that was one of the considerations when um when we talked about expanding the fields at har Park you know what what kind of storage facilities would be there for the
110the school schools and the different teams that would play there and and the identities of the groups as well so if you go to a baseball game uh for for the Trojans or you go to a baseball game for the Red Raiders will you will there be some place for them to put their lineup literature and you know whatever else they might need sure um first address the storage the the current um structure out there has the restrooms concession stand our plan includes adding to the south side adding storage area for that for the two teams um as far as do the lineup card things like that um my my brief experience in schools is provide the really nice facility those are those are the easy things to add you know and those are those
111are when you when you talk about um booster clubs becoming excited those are are great booster club projects so um we're not opposed to that you know one of the I can't believe we missed and then this group caught on the 2 was a flag B I was like how about a flag B I'm like done um so we're we're open to really any ideas and um I get um I was off this last week and I had three different emails from groups with their very random suggestions and some were good and some I thought were a little crazy but um we'll listen we'll listen to anything so yes Mrs Weber just briefly you have Jim Edition at Underwood do you have any comment on that I'm wondering where you could get more addition for
112that sure um I my comment on that that was a carryover from Mr Johnson's previous one um when um Underwood I um maybe long story short Underwood was the last principal I met with was um Thursday the 29th and yeah I met with her and what I met with all these principles I went through each one I submitted this I was out starting the 30th a little baby girl on the 30th and so I submitted this without getting to speak with her and really go through that so um the Underwood one I I asked her is that something you know what's the history on that what's the background and she basically I have no idea so um I still want to talk to Dr ER and Mr Mack about that and you know and that's
113the reason a lot of those on the the future projects there's you know becoming new a lot of it was kind of guessing and trying to see how how did that get on the list and what does it really mean so um for that particular one I I don't have I can't tell you exactly what it's mean and that's one the reasons we're not proposing it this year thank you any other board comment all right um Dr ER Dr ER and I have discussed this when he wanted to bring bring this to the agenda I said well we all need the athletic fields plan then and the reason why I said that is that that kind of the history from 10 years ago is that we found that when we this community is passionate about
114sports and Athletics and Fields and and when money is spent on one thing a bunch of people with good intentions come and say well what about this other thing you know there's you know like why not Tennis Courts at Longfellow for example and you know why did you do this and that and why do you want to do this and what are the motivations etc etc so what we did was we had this the the um building and grounds committee at the time um there was an athletic field plan produced for that committee and and the thought sort of was that well we'll let the professionals and the experts in athletic fields and sports come up with a plan a prioritized plan and we'll take the politics out of this because there's all kinds of
115second guessing about why are they doing this and blah blah blah and what side of town do they live on and blah blah blah and it's like oh gosh you know okay we got rid of that and so there was sort of a an understanding not a decision but you know there's a lot of way to the fact it's like this plan has prioritization of recommended improvements number one was the restroom and Concession building including access at West High School okay number one well number two is additional um official baseball diamond at bright L field well sort of along the lines of what you're saying so if someone says well why are you spending money here now not somewhere else well it's number two on the list and we took care of number one that's
116why um so now that was six years ago maybe things changed maybe not Dr ER has said he's going to reconvene such a planning committee and update this and we're assuming that if conditions hold the same that your proposal which is also Dr 's proposal because you work together that'll be number one and that's why I would vote for it is because well that's the next big thing on the list that's what you're proposing and that's what I was committed to doing so that was you know so anybody's interested in this everybody in anybody wanting this these baseball improvements well it is the next thing on the list frankly that's why it's it's next so with that I'll hand the old plan over to do back to Dr erle and he'll come forward with a
117new plan when do you think you would have a new plan I'll let you know all right you let us know no all right is there any Community comment or question on this topic either on the um Capital Improvement plan or on the athletic fields plan I've got it oh please come up and um introduce yourself your your name and where you live please my name is David fish um I'm wossa westsider um and I was a part of Tom's meeting um a few weeks ago um he I I'm work in business um and we take stakeholders input um often for key decisions is exactly what Tom did um in fact I was able to put forth uh one of the suggestions that he uh took the recommendation and made the improve uh change to
118the field plans U which will be accommodating to I guess more teams than the original plan um so Tom I appreciate that second thing uh is it's been a little bit disheartening looking at the bright l field and how the gates have been locked for years and if I understand um Tom's plan moving forward with this new Turf infield because of the maintenance that's not required it'll be open for I guess all all the time um giving Community the ability to use it um as well as other teams so I appreciate those efforts I think it's going to um lead to more use of the community other teams and I guess just all around goodness for baseball great thanks Tom thank you for your comment is there any other comment yes please uh my name
119is Colleen bellnap and I live at 2551 North 86 Street on the West Side um I wear many hats in the field of baseball um I have four children who all currently play baseball including my daughter who's here today um my son who was here at the beginning of the meeting had to leave because there was an open gym for baseball so he was is headed over to to uh hit balls I also um my my children play on the toast West um varsity and junior varsity teams and um my I'm also on the board of directors with TOA baseball league Incorporated and I do have another son who plays in the junior Trojan program so I I'm around baseball quite a bit I feel that um at looking back I've heard about these new
120fields for a long time my kids have been playing now for 10 years and um I was very excited once we got through with the new dugouts and the shelters that went in at bright low on those on the 90 foot diamond and all the huge success that came from both the East and West sides um coming together to really create that I think the fact that you know the proposal that Tam has put together that there is going to be less upkeep and that there's going to be so much more use is just a huge benefit to this community when I um the last few years as part of toasta baseball I've been involved in what we call our final tournament day and it's um usually held either on a Saturday or Sunday as
121we wrap up our season for the tosa baseball um 6 20 baseball families and additional um 180 uh scr softball families that play um we have probably close to 500 to 600 people at bright L fields and using all the fields um throughout the entire day and it's just an amazing thing to see that many people here and excited about the community of baseball um and I guess the other comment that's been made that I just want to reiterate that yes those 90ft diamonds have been closed and they haven't been available to other teams and there's been um requests for um some of the junior teams to play on those and usually that that has been turned down in the past and I think moving forward it is really exciting to know that those fields
122will be available to such a a much broader group of children and that so many people in the community will be able to use those you is there any other community comment yes please hi I'm Dave bellnet I obviously share the history um with our children in baseball but U Tom paints a very good picture about the future use and opening up to the community but I just wanted to add a couple of realities uh I'm the Freshman baseball coach at tosa West and my team 90% of the time practices on that softball field uh next to TOA uh the West football bleachers I mean that's how limited our space is at bright low and at Underwood and using you know every possible minute of of daylight I mean my team has to practice on
123a 60 foot Diamond um and our 13-year-old Junior Trojan uh team this year played their quote unquote home games on the South Side by Mitchell Field it was the only field access they could get so in terms of need the need is great I mean just with we can't accommodate current use uh for all the people that that absolutely have to utilize a 90 foot Diamond so um in addition to opening it up to all these other groups and use by younger kids I mean it's hard to function right now with what we have so thank you is there any additional comment yes please uh my name is Bill Scallan I live at 1945 Wawa TOA Avenue and uh I'm here tonight representing tosa baseball league so uh to add to some of the comments
124made by the Bell naaps uh we're my family is a lot like the Bell naaps we have four kids they all play baseball um love the sport and the point I wanted to emphasize is just to make sure that everyone is clear that uh registration in baseb ball and the number of programs involved in the wossa community is continuing to grow so if you wonder if we're making an investment or considering an investment here is this something that we'll continue to use the answer is yes um Colleen's very involved in our registration process and she can attest to the fact that for tosa baseball uh we have 100 I'm sorry 820 total participants uh both between the the co-ed baseball program and the girls fast pitch program that girls fast pitch program has gone from
125about 80 Girls 3 or four years ago to a point where we have uh 220 girls playing in that League now so the the programs that could utilize these fields are growing and they're growing quickly uh we have a lot of other Junior programs excuse me that are are uh increasing in size uh number of of kids playing and the number of teams available so uh this is something that as you consider it recognize the fact that it at least as far as um baseball is concerned uh number of users is is going up thank you Mr Myer yes Mr comment yes please um I really do see the value of this project I have to say I'm so old that I my high school went from a cinder track to a asphalt track so
126I know what happens when you go to artificial surface how nice that can be but uh I I'm going to throw this out there because I don't actually know the answer for a new field not bright L field but for a new field is is the district open to Corp sponsorship or naming rights to help fund something like this so we have the money may be used for other things we did change the policy uh the board policy four to five five years ago to allow for that um I know Mr gabrielson has uh has W Milwaukee as a corporate sponsor at basketball games uh we continue to try I know I I tried to solicit um corporate sponsorships for the West football field seeing that 140,000 cars see that every single day have been
127unsuccessful at this point but I think that's I I think that's important and I think it's important that we continue to pursue that um Harley-Davidson field or GE field partly saying that because I know this is televised and people might see this so if anyone sees that recogniz that um also Mr Jose is going to join the Chamber of Commerce right so maybe he can help there maybe all right thank you okay is there any other community comment or board comment Mrs Randall hey just to clarify oh oh yeah I'm come up please we defer to the Tak okay before he comes up this is one of our new Cole come on up come on up yes Cole scholarship um Chad mateski that I read about so Mr mateski congratulations on your Cole Fellowship nomination
128I appreciate it thank you now I can go um for those of you who don't know me my name is Chad mateski social studies teacher at w TOA West uh High School um I'm also the varsity baseball coach at w TOA West so clearly I have a invested interest in uh hopefully seeing this proposal go through um I can't speak to softball in our district but I can definitely speak to baseball um Dave belnap is absolutely right when he talks about us having a shortfall right now in where we can prot you know take our game of baseball and our skills and really put something that we can be proud of as a community out on the field um we struggle to use Underwood we struggle to get enough teams to be able to use
129the current single 90 foot Diamond um at at bright at bright low he's absolutely right when he says we're using a softball Diamond when I was the JV baseball coach six years prior prior to right now I I was back they're practicing with the JV team only to make it more manageable at Underwood for the other East and West teams to be able to use that it was a matter of trying to just free up space for other people let alone the junior teams and the TBL teams to be able to use Underwood as well um and so I think that when it comes to managing the facilities for fostering a proud baseball tradition in this community as well as the ability of softball I think this is a must I really do I think
130that baseball is going in the right direction in this community um again I can speak from the west side of town we went from two wins three years ago to 16 wins this year there is excitement in our in our program our Junior programs are growing exponentially wanting to play an even more competitive baseball leagues and they were they were in um just playing on tournaments on the weekends um Colleen spoke to the fact that the community came together to put together shelters CU I know dugouts is a swear word in the community so uh we we came together when we put that together and we overwhelmed the board meeting that uh I I know that some of the people out when the community came together to propose it um to the city council um
131I just think that this is a is a valuable thing to consider for sure um not just from a can we play baseball games weatherwise I'm talking safety safety of the athletes those guys in the ground do the best they can all summer to help keep up that field but when it really comes down to it they can't be there as much as we would like to see them there for grass purposes being cut for keeping the right now that field is this summer in particular and I know it was a dry summer that field was dangerous bad hops taking off the infield grass and off the infield dirt I mean we're we're we're at times we're lucky that kids aren't getting injured out there and on this field that he's proposing you will get
132pure hops you will not be putting somebody in danger of being doing exactly what we've coached them to do being fundamentally sound in where they're putting themselves to make a play and a bad hop ricocheting off and hit them in the eye or something that kind of thing will most likely not happen on this type of field so from a from a safety perspective I think that this is a great investment um I just think that uh I hope that you guys I know it's a lot of money I do recognize that uh I I just think that it's it's a great opportunity not just for the high school kids but also for the lower level kids and even through the rec department for people like Mike Morgan in the back who plays in men's
133leagues they could play on that field too maybe through the rec department and be able to pay to use the field which would bring in some revenue for the school district as well I mean I think there's lots of uses for that space that we can we can um stop to hopefully realize and recognize could exist um if you guys are wanting to push through the the proposal for us thank you is there any additional comment may I say thank you very much to all of you who attended on this topic and particularly to those who spoke it's been just a wonderful thing to have this conversation here with you we have so many meetings on so many topics where there's there's no one from the community here to talk with us and it just
134makes it I think a lot better meeting for the community when we have this participation so thank you so much um with that we'll look forward to Dr erle announcing the convening of the um planning committee for the next athletic fields report and to his announcement about when he anticipates the report to be finished and if I can just clarify the process for the these fields is that we will be moving forward and bringing forward proposals for for the board to vote on to um begin the the work on it okay well thank you are we ready to move on then all right thanks the the next topic is um student learning the uh human growth and development curriculum Report with director of student learning Beth arenberger hello would you like to please introduce your
135panel of participants sarin bger after you get yourself ready there okay good evening with me this evening I have our two content team leaders for health I have Andrea powers who is our elementary content team leader and I have mag armorer who is the um second secondary content team leader and I also have Dave deter the secondary um student learning coordinator tonight we are here to share with you our progress and um to present to you our curriculum for the human growth and development um our human growth and development program that had been reviewed last year uh with the human growth and development advisory um I as you will note um we have put this presentation on the district website so um I'm just going to reference that as we go through the presentation this
136evening I would also like to note to um the public that may be listening that tomorrow morning we will have um all the links that we are showing you this evening available on the front page of the website um under uh human growth and development um curriculum um review so um I'm going to if you'll note that we start on the website with the supporting documents for our curriculum those are um the state statute the uh Wisconsin State Statute so we have that posted there for easy access for people that would like to look at and reference what the legislation says in regard to human growth and development next we have board policy 2414 which was also used to inform the development of our curriculum um so there's a link to that as well so
137for easy access the third document there is the background information that was provided last year in January we talked about the human growth and development advisory committee and um this is a summary of who was on the advisory committee and the work of that committee the following document on um following that is the advisory summary recommendations and those summary recommendations were also used to inform um the curriculum development so um so far we've got a state statute board policy and committee recommendation or advisory recommendations and then the fourth document that was used um to inform the curriculum was the national sexuality education standards these standards came out actually last January um they are aligned to the National Health standards uh the West Wisconsin Health standards are aligned to the National Health standards so there's some
138there's a very interconnectedness um between these documents so next we have the first document that was created in regard to our curriculum and that is a scope and sequence document so um as you look at this document this would be a quick quick review for any um parent or teacher wanting to see at what grade levels um curriculum is uh human growth and development topics are being taught um this is after we've done our revisions in some cases it helped to guide us to uh where we were trying to have our curriculum be developmental we really wanted to focus since we have an opportunity to update the curriculum on having it be u a meaningful curriculum that is delivered with intent not um random activities on human growth and development topics so um this is
139a developmental document as you can see here we have anatomy and physiology as one of the main headers puberty and Adolescent development identity pregnancy and reproduction and sexually transmitted diseases and healthy relationships and personal safety and these are are the topics that are used in the um National sexuality standards so we use the the topics that they were using we did not use the national sexualized standards document it's an entirety it wouldn't be possible I mean there's much more there to teach some things weren't appropriate for teaching in wossa as um our advisory Council advised us and some of the topics just you know are things that we we'd be teaching um a lot more um probably wouldn't have enough time so we made uh decisions about what was essential the next um document that
140you'll see posted on the website is um is the um Elementary um topics this is a summary of just topics for somebody at a glance um we are going to use these topics when we for the parent letters so if you um are a kindergarten parent and you want to know what human growth and development topics are covered in kindergarten these will be the topics that that will be presented in the parent um when we inform parents of what's being taught so this is a quick summary of those topics that will be put in parent letters and parent notifications so we made that for easy access there are topics for elementary and there are also topics for secondary um the next document that we have is the curriculum documents and these are actually the the
141um this is the actual curriculum that we're proposing and and so what we have is an articulated curriculum that has the focus area uh benchmarks that are align to um the national sexuality standards um then the next so at elementary middle and high school all of our curriculum is designed in the same way then we have the activities and resources that are needed to support the teaching of that Benchmark and we have assessments you won't always see Assessments in every document because in some cases we don't assess that particular topic um in other cases you're going to see assessments where they may be a cumulative assessment um but you're going to see a lot more U as students are older in the curriculum you'll see a lot more intentional assessment of learning of human growth
142and development topics I'm going to ask Andrea to to take a minute and just talk about the elementary document she's going to describe for us um just in general what's different about human growth and development curriculum at the elementary as a result of our advisory and the work on this curriculum document um first we'd like to thank the members of our content team that have worked on this um I'd like to thank the content team members that worked with us the last few years and for their efforts with the curriculum writing um we had Ed shafner fifth grade teacher at McKinley Karen Zimmerman social worker at Washington Lyn missan school counselor at Madison Emily Ry first grade teacher at Eisenhower Lisa Rearden school counselor at Roosevelt and Sally Ry our district nurse so the general
143you know consensus is that our curriculum needed some updating um so we began by looking at recommendations from our advisory committee last year and reviewed materials and wrote the benchmarks and one recommendation that really guided our committee um work was something from the medical experts on the advisor committee was that we should provide students with information before they would actually need it and so some of the topics that we have highlighted in the document would be um topics we would introduce maybe a grade level sooner than what we do already so I'll just um point out the five main changes um one would be including um discussion of the proper names for body parts of males and females in second grade it's currently covered in first we'd continue that in second grade we we would
144also like to add the topics of the male and female reproductive systems including body parts and their functions we'd be adding that to fourth grade and then continuing with fifth grade as we have it now we would also add information about menstration and um proper use and disposal of um pads for girls only in fourth grade um also to be in accordance with the Schoolboard policy um we would also include information about defining sexual orientation for fourth and fifth grade we'd also look at discussing gender roles and stereotypes um and promoting tolerance dignity and respect for all people and we'd also look at influences including media friends Etc um that affect decision making we also would add in um definitions of sexual harassment in 3rd through fifth grade and also look to add information about
145um sexual abuse in third grade it's currently in fourth and fifth and um also discussing where to go for health help um if you need support in those instances those would be some of our um main changes we'd be looking to make to the elementary level and now I'm going to ask Dave to um speak to the middle school and the changes that are there thank you and I too would like to thank Lauren Walter who is one of our Middle School teachers who worked extensively with Meg um on the middle school 6th 7eventh and eth grade curriculum uh one thing I think that's important is two things that are keep coming up are the National sexuality education standards which really directed our thinking in our curricula and then the other is this um advisory
146committee which really directed our thinking as well and I think the intersection of those two um really directed the sixth seventh and eth grade and what I'd like to point out is that it's not just topics or content that are covered in uh 6 7th and eth but it's also critical thinking skills just as it might be in any academic course so the students are taught to access and evaluate information in the context of human growth and development issues such as puberty adolescence gender or sexual orientation the students are supported in communicating in um difficult situations with diverse community members with parents that's a recurring theme that we help the students from K through 12 um K10 um identify adults that they trust and their own parents and that they communicate with those adults um
147around sensitive issues also communication as it relates to technology so texting cell phone obviously a really big issue in uh today's market with young kids decision-making how students make decisions in the area of puberty and Adolescent development how they make decisions with their relationships and the last one that I would point out is um an issue of personal safety which is really important in these days with bullying harassment Etc so that students are taught to analyze that and talk about the causes behind that how they respond to that and how again they might deal deal with those issues and now Meg is going to do the high school all right um I would again personally like to thank Lauren Walter as well um just for helping me out uh with the curriculums and then also
148our advisory and also John Simon and Mike Richards for helping out at the high school level uh really the only major change at the high school level is adding the identity section um to our curriculum we did not have anything um in our curriculum or we do not have anything in our curriculum right now that talks about sexual orientation or gender roles things like that so that is the major change at the high school level otherwise honestly uh we The Advisory just asked that we teach the same Concepts except for just making make make the activities and the assessment more meaningful and um just more interactive with the students right now it's more lectur to be honest and so I think when we make them more meaningful and interactive the kids learn more so at
149at the high school that's what we are emphasizing um and honestly kind of D it's I I sound like a broken record this is exactly especially what Dave was talking about with analyzing influences and uh decision making selfman management interpersonal communication those are all major standards for our health um curriculum and I think that does speak to the scope and sequence from K so that's what we just continue to reemphasize at the high school level but hopefully challenge them a little bit more at our level compared to the lower levels okay all three of those docu or all actually the middle school is three separate documents so there's an SK document for curriculum a 6 s and eighth grade document and a grade 10 document um that are on that will be post that will
150be posted tomorrow morning and um you can see in detail in those documents ments once again just to remind people that the document has included in it the Benchmark and then activities that align to that Benchmark and that's going to relate to the next thing that's on this website and that is the resources we are not asking the board to to adopt um any resource to support the curriculum rather the this is a list of what resources informed uh what we're using and the reason is that there are um there's no one there's just no one resource that would fit um our District's personalized needs um so first for elementary here's a list of children's books that are being recommended to support the human growth and development curriculum um next on this list is going
151you're going to find the videos that would be used um for the puberty um in in uh fourth and fifth grade and then um we also have um some additional resources some of these um relate for parents seeking more information but um other resources that we used we did use um some activities from um a flash it's called Kings County government health services website it's um it's free and everything on it is free they have activities aligned by grade level they have a complete um comprehensive developmental curriculum which we're not asking to adopt we are just asking you to review the activity that we pulled from that site for use and then we also um took several activities from our whole lives which is a sexuality education program that is um uh published by the
152Unitarian um Universalist Association of congregations it is a public school version um but there are many resources we use there um and again the national sexuality standards we also used some of the lessons from our social studies curriculum and our student services second step program which is used um at the elementary level and at the sixth grade level so some of those resources we already have in our district so we did not seek to um to add additional um you know there's no no cost to uh any of these that we are um going to need at the secondary level the resources that are being used again we use the flash resource um which actually the the website is here for anyone that wants to view the resource they certainly could it's easy to access
153with this um web link and it's also again a free website um it also has information for parents as well um if they would like and then here's some other resources that we took activities out of we're trying to give credit to where the activities came from um so all those resources are here for the secondary level um as well okay um and then then um the next thing on here is a media resource rubric um there was a discussion with the advisory Council about one of the the problems we have is that there's a lot of um things out on human growth and development topics that we teach like new activities um maybe a new um you know video link that might be really useful and teachers have not have been very um shy
154about using those because they um are not approved whenever the curriculum is approved so sometimes uh unfortunately in the past we've used some very dated things as we've waited for better things to come out it is hard it it's hard to find quality resources in this particular topic so the Department of Public Instruction has a rubric that the advisory Council looked at this is a rubric that um you know has some criteria about what media or an activity you know should include and it's aign we tweaked it to align to criteria that we think is important to wosa so um we had this put in as a way if a teacher um came across something they would like to use and it's in alignment with our Benchmark we could have three reviewers from The Advisory
155um it would either be a Community member a parent administrator or human growth and development content team leader at least three of those Representatives would have to review it and if there was consensus that we'd like to be able to say that it could be used um using the criteria that's here and the consensus from a subcommittee of the advisory so that's the r that rubric is there for viewing um there's also a staff development proposal the staff development proposal came out of um discussion at the advisory on in several ways you know uh concern about who teaches our uh human growth and development curriculum and also so are our teachers um all of our teachers prepared to talk about and address um really important topics like uh gender roles and um sexual identity and
156how much education and background have they had on that since it's a new topic for us so what we are proposing here is that um The Advisory this is from The Advisory should be taught by a teacher that has an interest a comfort level or the appropriate training to provide a meaningful learning experience for students um to to deliver the curriculum with Integrity also that the model the preferred model is not a schoolwide delivery model unfortunately um right now uh Longfellow all teachers are delivering human growth and development and there was concern that that may not be the best delivery model that we are pro might be better off putting that into a curricular area in sixth grade adolescent studies teaches it and that works but in seventh and eth grade it's been um an
157all School delivery model um there was also and I'm sorry I'm like losing my touch here for scrolling down I don't one sec um here we go um and then also um to provide training for those individuals that would be teaching the human growth and development curriculum we would like to um there are several online trainings that we found training topics like how to teach the ABCs of um you know sex education um other training videos on how to to not only teach but how to support um staff and students with LBGTQ issues um there's uh some some training videos on STDs and how to have the conversation with different um age levels so what we'd like to do is to be able to um develop a a training that our content team leaders in
158collaboration with our student services Personnel would provide for those people that would be one teaching the curriculum and then separately from that there was a a a need for maybe all teachers in the district to um have some type of Staff Development on um you know sensitive issues like sexual orientation and gender identity and how they might address those um topics as they come up not just as an educational Topic in a classroom but just as those topics may come up um you know random in a classroom so we wanted to um look at some training to be able to provide that would um you know be on that issue for our teaching staff um then uh we have parent communication recommendations uh recommendations for parent communication I first want to remind anyone listening to
159this presentation that state law allows any any parent that wishes to opt their child out of the human growth and development curriculum is allowed to do so by State Statute and we are also required by law to inform parents prior to the teaching of human growth and development topics um that we will be teaching them and so that parents have an opportunity to be to consider the teaching of those topics so our parent Communications we are um to recommend that um we we've sent parent letters so at the elementary level um the parent letter included with Reg registration forms and feed day forms and fee days where um they could get an overview of everything that's taught grades kindergarten through grades five um we also um talked about using alert now as a way to
160if we we either send a letter possibly use alert now to remind parents when the puberty um topics are going to be taught at fourth and fifth grade you know use that as a way to send a reminder out um we also talked about establishing a districtwide Elementary human growth and development parent night right now that is left to individual schools and we feel that we we don't have the consistency and or um people the Comfort level or expertise for um those presentations so having like one night where all parents are invited um post our human growth and development on District website everything that you see posted now would be things that would be posted permanently on our website for viewing at any time and to still create like a summary brochure that could be
161on posted to the website but also be available at parent conferences or in Student Services offices so that those individuals could have meaningful conversations with parents um around the what human growth and development curriculum is taught at the secondary level the use of alert now um to be able to remind parents when human growth and development topics are going to be taught um to again post on the website and to also have have some kind of brochure um that's web- based and um could be in print and then um to establish a parent night as well at the secondary level and last document on here is the sample parent letter that was created um by The Advisory um to standardize the form and then for the teacher to um insert the topics that we showed
162you at the very beginning we determined the topics that needed to go into the letter um so that we were providing accurate information to our parents in this letter so that they could opt their their child out if they wanted to do so so that is a culmination of the work that um went on with the curriculum also attached here on the website you will find the activities um you can see that there are many Blue Links so parents can view most of these activities from home if they have access to the internet at on can go to the district website anything that is in dark print will be on available in the student learning office um for review and anything in the blue you can connect to on the internet and actually see the
163activity so um this there's a lot here um there there may be in some cases more activities than we'll be able to use um as we um do lesson design but we wanted to um have uh a pool of resources to be able to select from so um so parents can have access to to reviewing um any of these activities and I believe that is everything that's on the website and and it's a culmination of the work that's been done there are a few next steps and they are that we um we want to make sure we refine the parent the parent letters so we need to like actually um get the topics and and set each letter up um we want to develop a glossery of terms so that are developmentally appropriate so that
164when teachers are um teaching um terminology that we have um consistency and in that conversation we also want to take now the benchmarks and the activities and convert those into lessons Meg has already done um some of that the high school level but we still need to do and some of the elementary work has been done but we want to actually create the individual lessons so who was ever teaching the curriculum will receive the lesson and know how to use the activity and what Benchmark they are addressing with that activity um and then we need to De develop the training model so to um to actually do that and to identify who we would train we we would train Andrea and Meg and also um possibly some student services members as well and then um
165who would we train you know like uh and who's going to teach this and at seventh and eighth grade our are we going to embed this in what content area you know where can we put the curriculum where the advisory was to put the curriculum as close to a related topic as possible so um to have to have some decisions made on that and then lastly yeah who should teach the course um so that we um have a meaningful curriculum that's current and relevant for our students that's it okay well thank you is there any board question or comment Mr CER please I will start I know I've been impatient for this presentation and I'm really really happy with what the work all of you did um it's a really it's a big surprise to
166see how great it turned out I mean not a surprise but I'm really pleased I didn't mean it that way um I took a look at it online I was really pleased um I think it's a huge step forward for our district to have gender um identity type lessons and sexual orientation lessons so that as kids develop their their sexuality develops they understand what might be happening to them and feel comfortable with what's happening and and not be afraid and I think um for the kids that are lesbian gay bisexual or transgender that they that they will feel more comfortable in our schools because I think this will hopefully help the entire student population have a better understanding and tolerance for for people that are different than they are so I'm really pleased to see
167this move forward like this um My Hope Is that someday uh the district will move even further and we'll feel comfortable having musical Rent produced in one of our theaters but we're not quite there yet um also I'm going to mention related to this I want to thank Dr erle because we are opening a a gender neutral bathroom at East High School and looking for one at West and uh some students in the gay straight Alliance contacted me and asking about something like that and it took a little while to happen but they're might not affect many students but they're really pleased that that is happening and I I think communication of that to the whole student population would also play a role in um increasing tolerance in our schools um one question I have
168is last fall I went to an an LGBT um conference sponsored by DPI and I listened to a presentation I think was Dorothy espelage who is an expert in bullying programs she's a PhD that does research in that area so I some of this some of the lessons you have seem like they addressed bowling as far as gender related issues and I bring that up now because she Works in some Schools she's from Illinois and works in some schools in Wisconsin looking at bullying curriculum and she made the comment that the our the DPI curriculum that we use is not as strong as it could be in the gender related issues related to bowling and she thinks that's a key key source of a lot of bowling so I just some of the lessons seem
169like they actually do apply to that I'm just wondering is the bowling curriculum going to tie into this as well well I've talked to tce about you know being able to work with student services because uh because they do have the bowling curriculum and this is like a a slice of that curriculum and she had agreed that we'd be a as we look at that training and um that we would work collaboratively on that part of it because it extends Beyond just um it it does have to do with LBGTQ but it also has to do with other um other students as well so we had a conversation about that um as we were working on this curriculum so that we could agree that we could work together on that particular um you know so
170it's not like an isolation of but in inclusive of the bulling curriculum so we're not doing this like over here and then we have a bowling curriculum but we still we still have to put that picture together okay and I just want to add that the bowling curriculum that we use we do use the dpi's bowling curriculum in grades three 3 four 5 6 7 8 um are the grades that we deliver the DPI bowling curriculum but we also have multp mple other avenues where we are doing some bowling instruction in all of our schools um PBIS the foundations of it are building a healthy school culture we use second step in all of our elementary schools and now in our middle schools which um has a component about how to you know Pro pro-social
171Behavior so while we do use the DPI bowling curriculum and and I agree that there are some limitations to it it's not the only bowling instruction that doesn't occur in our school so good and we actually have to thank theres because during um this process there were different versions of the second step program at the elementary schools and it was making this alignment very difficult um so she purchased um and updated uh like the third edition of second step and the feedback from those that were from student services on this um committee uh were very positive about the new version of second step and then she also purchased um the second step for sixth grade um adolescent studies teachers so they would also have some consistency in being able to deliver some of those topics
172so um she was very gracious to do that no I think this is going to be a great program I think the kids are going to they're going to know more about themselves in general they're going to because of that they're going to be more comfortable in school and if they're more comfortable in school they want to be there and they'll learn more so I think that's really good thank you yes Mrs brandle um thank you very much to um Megan and Andrea and the other people on the committee um there was a lot of time put in um and I know you were you know coming from a practice or to a practice or you know from your classrooms whatever so it it's always good to to actually be present to see the work
173that our teachers are doing and the work outside of the classroom that they're doing as well so thank you for your commitment to that Mrs Weber please I wonder if sometime we could have a presentation exactly on what is being uh how bullying is taught what um I know Longfellow has shared a few things with me but there's been a good deal of publicity on bullying and I think it would be good if we could see what exactly wa to is doing so if we could have that at a board meeting I would really I'd like to have you at least look at that it is noted thank you Mrs Weber is there any other board comment or question all right I I wish to say I uh stand with Mr croner and um in
174complete agreement with all of his comments on this topic I just have a final comment that um you know what Mrs Randall um had said about Andrea and Megan these two individuals are very committed and very passionate about having a meaningful curriculum for our students and worked well beyond um I I know uh one of them got kicked out of Fisher Building one night um Charlie couldn't wait any longer um so I just have to say that both of them put in Endless hours um outside of uh their school day uncompensated to because of their care and concern for having a quality program for a students so I I mean that I can't say enough about how hard they worked on this and thank you for Melissa Lewis for getting all this website up to
175yeah confir you know you seem to do this so easily but I'm sure it takes a lot of courage to um it's it's a very difficult topic and who knows what the you know so many communities people try to help the kids and there's a lot of difficulty and that doesn't happen in this community so um you know you um have done a lot of good for us so thank you all right with that is there any Community comment we will move to our last agenda item Human Resources the HR committee update with u Mr chanan Director of Human Resources and I'm assuming you have a PowerPoint right we're thank you yeah I it's beautiful in here I was I was afraid to wear a sweater it's perfect should we wait for Dr I think
176so I think we can wait okay that's good because I turned off the computer we'll wait for your computer to shut down there we go so Mrs arenberger while we're at a little bit of a pause here this um the bullying report or the bullying anti-bullying program report um do you have any off-the-cuff thoughts on what you'd like to do bullying is part of the student services curriculum so T I'm sure I just keep that's okay goofing it up tonight here we go okay quite all right um do need to talk on that I'm honored to have that opportunity Mr Meer to talk to you about bowling our schools and what we do proactively to prevent it and how we respond to that so sorry that would be something that I just thought the quest
177question came during the curriculum presentation there's a little piece of it oh you're partly it's good that you get us mixed up because we do work together and try to send that message that bu Neer here so it's good that you mix it up pretty good guess on the I'm living evidence you do not have to be a polished speaker to participate in this room Bas do we know how long Dr 's going to be gone not long is this is this baseball west I'm sorry is not it's Community one Mr Channon take it away please hopefully you've uh had an opportunity to read the memo that we put together in um preparation for tonight's meeting I guess I just want to start by saying uh the purpose of that memo is to provide some
178context and background for the administrative recommendation and and doesn't necessarily reflect everything that was read or contemplated by either the administration or uh members of the HR committee but was trying to put some parameters on explaining you know how we got to the recommendation that we that we got to and hopefully that was helpful and providing you with with background for today um you know the goal of the human resources committee on this particular issue was to really seek input in a discussion format uh about different policy choices that we could be making as a district or could be recommending as an Administration about the future of teacher compensation and the method in which we did that um in terms of the human resource committee uh was a series of public meetings in which we
179kind of discussed different potential policy choices and their imple Implement and their possible imple I am sorry it is late implications um in a fairly open discussion and I would note that those were uh open meetings and uh the public was welcoming and most of those that were uh attended by members of the press uh there's a broader background to those discussions that really started with the compensation committee that involved District staff last year and it met twice uh last year to begin looking at those issues um and this is all to say that it really has been a process of discussion of of what is possible some of the real core background of of where we're headed starts with thinking about where we are um like almost every District not every District but almost
180every District in the United States we have a single salary structure um there's a wide gap between the top and the bottom of that pay scale in ours that's about 100% I mean the difference between uh starting of 365 and an ending of 30 or 72,000 the drivers on that pay scale are purely years of service although steps don't necessarily equate to years of service and education and there's a lot of good reasons why that was in place uh in terms of you know equity and non-discrimination and uh collective bargaining and assumptions about funding but the reality is all of those assumptions are gone and we as many other districts in the area need to start thinking about how do we want to align our pay system to our values and we talked about potential
181ways to get there and also potential choices that could be made in the committee and I think uh committee members can uh correct me if I don't express the consensus but I think uh I express at least what the administration took away from our conversations uh we did talk about the possibility that that we could radically reform the way in which teachers are compensated by making differences based on teaching assignment um do we move forward with recommendations that suggest uh we do incentive pays or bonuses versus annual increases and raises um do we um try to move this forward quickly by making choices such as um not grandfathering employees where they're currently at but redistributing the dollars we have available uh to different teachers based on different priorities um the committee had Fairly broad discussions
182about those and and I think the consensus was expressed in in the memorandum but the administration really walked away with a a sense of what its recommendations would be uh one of which is we really want to move forward in a manner that's not harmful to our current employees that may mean a slower Pace uh but that uh really means looking to grandfather employees where we're currently at um and and that of course will mean slower growth based on funding available but uh we don't think we're going to do a service to our district by trying to radically redistribute existing salaries uh when looking at the possibility of incentives versus bonuses I think that philosophically this Administration is is of the mind that we really want to be providing increases not uh bonuses bonuses are
183not um there's no necessary proven Effectiveness to bonuses um and we're really looking to give people a sense of security and longevity in their employment with the wosa school district um so as we look at Future compensation models we're really looking at ones that would provide for increases for people uh over time uh and then the discussion was fairly broad about the the concept of differentiating based on assignments and this is a a road that I don't think we're ready to go down it is value Laden in terms of deciding what education is and differentiating at this moment among our teaching staff has very little payout in terms of what we're able to distribute to redirect resources uh but may have a long-term consequence in terms of the quality of teacher should we get in
184a particular area because really what you'd be doing is assigning kind of winner and loser areas based on a current value of Education rather than a holistic value of of recognizing that there's more than one priority in uh educating children and sometimes those are our values the values of the board sometimes they're values that parents and community members and students uh bring to our district and and so that's a a choice that that probably at this time is is best not made we also had a broad discussion about the impact of teacher evaluation changes and the question really was can we start tying um pay increases to Performance we have a new state evaluation system coming in and uh there's a lot of good resources online for that and I won't repeat that whole discussion
185but there are a lot of unanswered questions about that we are in the preliminary first year year stage of a of a Statewide pilot system um we are piloting part of the evaluation system for teachers in our district uh but it's not even the complete full evaluation package it's really just um uh the evaluation of the teacher impact uh teacher Behavior measures and not the 50% that's going to be waited by the state on um measurable student outcomes and student results so we really don't have and I don't think the state does have a full vision of how that evaluation system is going to play out and we're two years away from implementing that and so I think at this early stage to say let's start designing a uh pay system that is tied to
186an evaluation system that we neither control uh nor have an opportunity to to fully review is premature and last ly and probably I think Mr Mack would say most importantly there is a financial reality in terms of knowing what funding is available uh for the foreseeable future um at this point we don't necessarily have a um state budget in place that has predictive future increases for the district um I think there is a substantial worry on the part of administration that to put out a pay plan that promises for a certain Behavior uh that there will be a certain increase when there's not the um ability to fully fund that promise is not really beneficial to uh our teachers or our staff this is not to say that we don't believe uh that there should
187be increases uh within the means available but I think we're really looking at um how we get in a better position over the next sever several years to be able to implement the kind of pay scale that we might want and I think that is through our annual increases and I think it's through pursuing a strategy of compressing the salary schedule um our raises this year were designed to um put more money towards the bottom and the middle than the top I think that's a strategy that um well we will have to bargain collectively on uh base wages uh each year um and we'll have to look at what funds are available from the state that that is a strategy that we really do want to continue I think when we look at uh teaching
188as a profession and we look 10 to 15 years down the road which I think we're obligated to do um I think a smaller spread in salaries between the top and bottom of the teaching profession um and a higher starting wage are two ways that are going to um make sure that teaching is still an attractive profession make sure that um teachers are compensated in a manner that is consistent with their status as professionals and it it's um right now a pay scale that is set up to assume a 4% increase every year for 13 years and that's just not where our funding is at um so that that current spread of a very low starting wage and a ending wage that's twice as high uh is sustainable so what you'll be seeing is annual
189recommendations in line with this as we evaluate um our new evaluation system from the state I think down the road if uh the funding for pay for performance models uh and we can reach out and meet those requirements and bring dollars in to the benefit of our teachers uh I think that's something we'd be interested in doing um in terms of you know once the salary schedule is compressed I I think that we can use evaluations to differentiate pay but right now our current pay scale top to bottom spread really um is a dominating factor in terms of equity within our district in terms of within internal comparable that needs to be addressed and narrowed over the coming years I have a question you make reference to to the salary model that we want or
190might want you see might want I'm assuming you're being careful with your words implying that we haven't decided yet what we want is that a correct interpretation or you haven't decided on a a want that you are willing to recommend I think that um there's an overall goal in the short term to compress the salary schedule and that's necessary I think that next want is dependent on funding and um a clear picture of where we're going to be in a year or two um there are certainly I certainly have strong ideas but I think that they're going to be some time in developing and from the committee perspective which may not be the same as your belief you know I'm not asking you to you know comment either way whether you agree with the committee
191but from the committee perspective what's the next want is there a next want from the committee perspective well I'm going to speak for the committee but we'll see I suppose they will all chime in as well I think of really what we're presenting here is a is a strategy over the short to midterm and um you know with a recommendation that we do want to see how evaluation can play into uh a possible pay structure but it's very hard to evaluate a pay system that's only in its pilot stage so it's it's something monitor what am I saying you said pay system you meant evaluation syst I did mean evaluation system yeah may I comment so um the the financial pieces significant and um drives it but um the fact that we there is no
192research to support improved student achievement um and I walked into this committee and I've been saying this probably as long as I'm on the board that I always believe that if you could get you know teachers union leaders administrators board members to a table that you could come up with a way to compensate well when you start doing the research um there is nothing to support it um and not only not only can you not support improved achievement but there are um many reports that talk about um the negative effects um increased testing um the cost all of those things and and when you take this you know and use our mission as your as your vision for where you want to how you want to um move forward um you really need to pay
193attention to to the fact that um everywhere you look people have tried different things and um it's just not it's not the best thing for kids right now and and that you know obviously we want to compensate our teachers fairly um we want to um encourage excellence in in our teachers um but the bottom line is we want to make sure that we are doing what we need to do to educate our kids the best way that we can and so the goal I think is shouldn't be whether or not we can pay our teachers bonuses but how how do we get them to address and I think and you know Dr L said this many times you can't a teacher is a teacher and they're in that profession for whatever reasons they're in it
194and the idea that you would give a teacher $10,000 and they would start doing something very different and much better and more improved is just kind of it doesn't make sense it really doesn't make sense you know on the other hand the evaluation you know may give us something but again when it's so much of it's tied to test scores and those are probably one of the least reliable ways of measuring a teacher's Effectiveness you don't know how many other people have in place inuence on that child's learning or scores whether it be the teacher from the year before or their home or whatever it is so we're a waste away from that on the other hand I don't think we're giving up as a committee um you know we're going to keep looking um
195we've had some other you know suggestions regarding things like staff development um like we saw here tonight with you know with some staff members who have put unbelievable amounts of time and effort and energy into certain initiatives but as Mr chanan said too we have to um we have to pay for that so anyway I just wanted to make sure that um I conveyed you know the the reality of whether or not this is good or whether or not it will help us to reach reach our goals and fulfill our mission committee members have any other I would defer to the committee chair thanks Sam remember we had all these meetings you try to you try to figure out what's you know our our district after we got the evaluations back from the state we're
196in pretty good shape as far as the evaluation of our schools you don't want to try and do something that's going to muck that up so at this point I mean if it was a mess and then they know they you know do something but it's not a mess so I think you have to be careful it's difficult to decide Everybody Plays into the to the education of a student social workers you know everybody there's a lot of people and you just can't put it all on a test score for a teacher sitting in a math class or a science class or whatever so I'm I come from a very competitive marketplace where it's easy to give bonuses you work card you make a lot of money you get a bonus this this school business
197is not that way so I kind of I defer to Phil drle and you know the other people are involved with this for guidance and I think the prudent thing now is to move carefully because what we have is it's pretty good thing I don't think you want to do something that's going to muck that up so in time I think something will happen I think my personal opinion is going to happen through the evaluation of teachers and attrition you're going to end up moving people out because as you condense the pay scales you're not going to be able to afford to keep you know a lot of people you're going to have to get the hot candidates you have to be it's going to be you know you're have to evaluate them and move
198them out if they can't cut the mustard but that's a different approach than telling somebody I'm going to pay you more money for doing something better because I think they're all trying as hard as they can to do as good as they can do and money doesn't drive them which makes it even more difficult it's easy money's easy this altruistic business group hug it's not that easy yeah you're right it's just not that easy you got to be careful I think so that I think that's you know after we discussed all this I think we ended up saying let's be patient Mrs newfeld the idea of compressing the salary schedule the continued strategy of compressing the salar schedule when what time period would we then be at our optimal strategy point is this in 3
199years is there any prediction on that you know I I hesitate to to run a guess I mean if you're doing it at current financing where you could afford 1 to 2% a year uh it's not going to get there in any reasonable time frame and we really need to see some changes in funding if we're going to hasten compression of the salary schedule uh because obviously the goal is we don't want our top wage to stagnate either um we're going to have to have some fairly significant increases at the bottom um in several years and have to have the money to fund them and so you know without a revenue projection that's hard to to say it really is I think ultimately the the ultimate strategic goal is is a 20 to 30% spread
200not 100% spread um but really without a funding stream that's awfully hard to predict um we're going to have to make decisions annually well no I understand that but what but I see the work of the committee and I see well there's a you're talking about a future and you're mapping out a future and I understand that the variables change however we have plans for other things and to me employee relations is the biggest plan if we don't have the people that we need students and we're paying them then the answerers I mean we could certainly model out a couple of those um with some assumptions we could certainly model out what a compression would look like over 3 to five years with some predicted raises in there we could do that we could come
201back and Prov that to the HR committee absolutely well I mean if they wanted I mean that that was my biggest question when you when I read the report and you put up that slide which is yeah it's uh you know where when when can we be at the point we need to be than to evaluate some of these other systems if they're not ready yet you know I think Mrs meld has hit the the core issue and that I hear what you know Tom is saying that things are working well let's not break it and um I'm hearing what you know the report says that you know if you the the top earners you know there's a morale issue here and I'm hearing what Mrs Randall says that you know the research just doesn't
202show a positive educational outcome on the current pay for performance models and therefore we we have we take this compression philosophy and I'm also of a mind that you you don't need to make decisions before you need to make them and there's a lot of moving parts right now in this educational endeavor in the state of Wisconsin and we need to see what the current Administration does they haven't had time to fully Implement their plan yet and we've also seen that nothing is forever no matter who is controlling things at a given point in time that usually doesn't last you know and so not to predict anything either way but just to say well that's how life goes you know some years periods you're up some years you're position is down now all that said
203back to what Mrs meld was going towards at some point this difference between the low earner and the high earner starts to be kind of like a Birthright for the low ear I mean for the high earner and a curse of birth for the low earner you know when were you born into this profession and at some point we aren't there yet it sounds like but at some point that may have to be looked at with a different approach that I suspect if you look at a 2% rate to closing this this Gap it's going to be a lot of years that's correct and when that there may be a year come in the future where we say you know this has been long enough and you know some people are sitting at a lower
204salary and it's just not fair fair anymore some people are sitting at a higher salary and it's just not fair anymore now it's not fair to Spring any decision like that on people on a shortterm notice because people structure their life and plan things I'm not saying we'll ever have to reach that decision point because as we said you know the you know the philosophy of the state may change from time to time or may we may see some guidance come to fruition from you know the current philosophy so but yeah this um compression approach will have I predict will have its limits and but that that day is not here from what I'm hearing and we don't know when that day will come is that pretty much what what we're saying okay Mr croner
205please I have a couple comments but I'm ask a question based on the the immediate discussion because I had a question I I agree with the recommendation and how you reached it and why you reached it but I wrote down there's that there's a risk in waiting to reward the top end of the pay scale and the risk is that if other districts are increasing their top end we're going to lose some of our best teachers or or at least some of our more expensive teachers depending on which way you want to look at it and so what criteria you're going to use saying okay we've we need to do we need to change it so that we don't hurt the district more than we're helping it by losing to absolutely we we want to
206look at the attrition rate um what our experience last year told us and I would imagine for some years to come is that um we're not at risk of of losing our top quartile or top half paid teachers we're at risk at losing our teachers who are compensated below average uh within our own District um those are the teachers who were at risk losing uh and part of that's because like any school district when we recruit staff we we want to be responsible if we uh have someone early retiring and we're paying early retirement benefits and um we we need to to have some savings and we're recruiting teachers at the lower end of our pay range whether that's 100% spread or a 30% spread um it is our lower compensated teachers who are most
207mobile um so it's definitely a consideration and one we'll watch but uh um the other reality is looking at what some of the other districts are doing in terms of pay you are seeing things where it's $200 on the the top step and the rays are going otherwis what we're doing is um not unique I think we were a little in front of everyone um because we're efficient and we wanted to get contracts out but I think uh what you're seeing is is similar things starting to happen in a majority of districts in the greater Milwaukee area um in terms of small flat dollar amounts at the top um larger raises moving through the South her schedule and so okay thank you and Mr Jose I'm come on the same page with you having how
208do you would you identify an appropriate salary structure to award good teaching um clearly there are there are great teachers though and excellent teachers and great teachers and they're that way because of natural talent and hard work or both and the trick is taking teachers that are above average and finding a way to give them the professional development to make them great teachers or finding their the right incentive to make them want to be great teachers and that's that's I think the quantum that we're in that we can't quite know what that what that trick is but I mean you said earlier too that we do we clearly know I think in some ways what good teaching is because if we're going to evaluate younger teachers and decide whether we're going to keep them or
209not you know we have certain standards that we're going to look to so I think we do need to look at that more closely so that we can develop the teachers as strongly as we can so and have them have Ives to want to stay here and and somehow be able to recognize who those teachers are and who the which ones are not going to be those teachers and that's very tricky um my last is a general comment I very much appreciated um this memorandum um it laid out the problem it provides background information um it provided the rationale for the decision that you made and clearly described the decision and why you made it um I wish all the major decisions that we made were accompanied by documents like this this I don't know
210why the board doesn't insist on it but when people ask me what other information would you want this is the kind of information that I'm talking about just so the board is aware I I think this is really really helpful in US understanding the work that was done how the decision was reached the thought procs behind it and and why the recommendations is coming forth so thank you very much for preparing us and thank you to the committee for preparing this Mr R could I just end on a more hopeful note just with a couple paragraphs on some of the research um it talks about when finland's and I I don't know if anybody's been reading about Finland but for some time now they've been known as the top education in the in the world
211When finland's leaders sought to improve their student academic performance the instituted measures that included reducing class size boosting teacher salaries and eliminating standards I testing I mean this is kind of out there but um teaching is now a highly sought-after profession in Finland and Finnish students top the world in academic performance uh if we want to make teaching a profession worth pursuing we must pay all teachers a respectable professional wage on par with professions that require comparable education expertise and provide them with the tools they need to do their job in their opinion small classes strong mentors time for planning and collaboration scope for their own creativity and help with addressing challenges so you know the things that we were looking at you know test scores or whatever people are using currently um you know
212aren't supported but this gives I think kind of a hopeful Outlook that um as we continue our work looking for ways to do this um that maybe look a little lighter a little further okay well thank you um now I think our that we all need to root for the success of the initiatives at the state level that they haven't had time to come to fruition yet and it's my understanding that as a school district we're participating where possible and appropriate with with the state activities can you tell us a little bit about what we're doing to to work with the state on on those initiatives yeah I mean uh we have uh R Jefferson School uh Prof uh Professor uh Stephanie jonner the principal there is working with some of her teachers to Pilot
213the uh Statewide evaluation model um so we're working through what that looks like and they're part of the feedback process also uh some of our principles are participating in the principal evaluation pilot with Dr erle terms of how we'll be evaluating principles on the Statewide system um some of the stuff that uh Miss Jer has brought back she's sharing out with colleagues and in meetings with staff kind of previewing the direction that we're going and a lot of ways the state evaluation system I don't anticipate will be a huge shift for our staff our most recent evaluation rewrite under collective bargaining really Incorporated a lot of those elements what I think we're going to see that's going to change is the level of uh consistency and rigor and training by uh bringing in a Danielson
214framework and training consistently across the state that's going to give us a level of comfort in terms of um transparency and fairness and I think that when you start talking about tying something anything whether it's test scores or evaluation to compensation that level of trust in terms of its transparency and consistency needs to be there and one of the reasons that makes the step and Lane movement so successful in terms of its um the attitude of employees towards it is it is drastically Fair it is you know predictable fair and not subject to subjective influences and I think that uh if we have a rigorous evaluation model that's consistently applied um that that gives some hope in terms of um being able to use that as a factor although I would say probably not the
215only factor in uh moving compensation forward you know in a different manner I think if we work to make to help make these State initiatives succeed and I hear a lot of good ideas a lot of good ideas a lot of good initiatives coming out of the state right now that um many of these open questions we have about how to proceed with with our local model those questions will be answered and um in a few years of continuous um of a continuation of one philosophy uh I think that's really what we need that if we're waffling back and forth on philosophies it's going to be hard at our level to make decisions is that pretty much hearing you know we can't commit to some things because we need these State programs to bear fruit
216and and then we can commit to some things okay is there any other board comment is there any Community comment on this topic is there any public comment on non-agenda items Now we move off to scheduled agenda seeing none at um did I forget something again okay I did that a lot tonight 10:6 I'll entertain a motion to adjourn move to adjourn thank you second Mr Jo second Mrs gante please call the rooll Mrs fee yes Mr Jose yes Mr croner yes Mrs milfeld yes Mrs Randall yes Mrs Weber yes Mr Meer yes we stand adjourned at 10:06 10:07