001I would like to call this Germantown Board of Education meeting to order at seven o'clock I'd like you to join me in the Pledge of Allegiance stand if you're able official media notification Mr stelson he has public notice of all meetings has been given by communication from the superintendent's office to the public to those news media who have requested such notices into the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Northwest now Express News and West Bend Daily News public notice has also been posted on the schools throughout the district and the gsdwi.org website as well as cable access Channel 96. okay roll call this is renmin sadderberg Medved here low here Borden here Barney here myself here and Pollock here approval of the agenda do I have a motion motion approve the agenda second any discussion all those in
002favor aye that passes number three citizen comments we do have people signed up tonight first on the list Ellen gatry gold tree good evening good evening I want to begin by reading a short speech given by an African-American woman that spoke in regard to CRT at a board meeting recently in London County Virginia because they feel that she explains it much more eloquently than I can the woman began by quoting Dr Martin Luther King Jr she says in the words of Martin Luther King Jr I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character she then goes on to say now I have a dream that we will Implement love
003not hate for supporting another Jim Crow's agenda CRT is not a nice dialogue it was a tactic that was used by Hitler in the Ku Klux Klan on slaveries many years ago to dumb down my ancestors so we could not think for ourselves CRT is racist it is abusive it discriminates against one's color let me educate you an honest dialogue does not oppress an honest dialogue does not Implement hatred and Injustice it's to communicate without deceiving people today we don't need your agreement we want action in a backbone for what we ask for today to ban CRT we don't need we don't want your political advertisement to divide our children or belittle them think twice before you indoctrinate such racist theories you cannot tell me what is or is not racist look at me I
004had to come down here today to tell you to your face that we are coming together and we are strong this will not be the last great in me respectfully the speech ends here like I have mentioned in the last two meetings my family escaped Hitler during World War II and escaped communism years later it truly breaks my heart that it appears to be coming full circle that my 84 year old father and my 80 year old mother need now to worry about their own grandchildren being indoctrinated like they were so many years ago CRT and all ideologies that incorporate like-minded divisive philosophies need to be banned from our schools we must have full transparency and representation from all sides of the ace committee continues it cannot be one-sided if this does not happen Ace
005needs to be banned immediately segregation in our schools is simply not okay lastly I sent an email to the entire school board and Brett expressing my concerns regarding the school climate questionnaire that Ace wants to distribute to our student once again sadly I did not receive a response there are many things wrong with it for example point B States quote do students choose to interact primarily with people most like themselves and students need to respond on a five-point scale with one being strongly agree and five being strongly disagree given the majority of our students are Caucasian 81.8 percent as stated on the equity section of our website just by basic math they most likely interact with people most like themselves or maybe they possibly interact with other students that play soccer participate in theater or
006perhaps are in band this is a leading question purposely included to twist the outcome and conclude that Germantown is in fact a racist Community this is nothing short of CRT and wokeness and since the board has promised the community that CRT will only be included in two AP classes I can't imagine that the board will allow this to be distributed to our students thank you for your time Ena Turner um Ina Turner last time I spoke about how we the parents need to teach our kids to Love Thy Neighbor love our country and defend our freedom I would now like to expand on that this school district has a moral duty to teach math science English and history it is not the school district's Duty to teach our kids what to think and to make
007them believe that America is a racist country nor is it their responsibility to Define that our kids by their race their skin color their gender and their religion this is exactly where the new ace committee is determined to take the school district starting with this crazy school climate questionnaire containing nothing but bias in baiting questions this survey is directly from an organization that recently changed its name conveniently from teaching tolerance to learning for justice to clearly fit their indoctrination agenda and has hidden their CRT agenda under the name of critical practices for anti-bias Education surprise surprise that this organization is linked directly to the Southern Poverty Law Center which according to the Washington Post has lost all credibility after years of smearing good people with false charges of bigotry and was recently sued enforced to
008issue an apology and pay 3.4 million dollars to a leading critic of the radical islamist ideology this Association is not what we the parents and taxpayers want for this school their survey with all one-sided biased questions is designed and written specifically to evoke answers that will paint the picture they want and that picture is to paint your school district as racist which opens the door for the ace committee to bring in their agenda to further embed the concept of systemic racism reverse discrimination in hate for our country into Foundation of this school this committee must not be allowed to proceed with zero transparency in a one-sided agenda by a group of individuals with one shared ideology and goal and that is to do everything in their power to paint this school district of Germantown as
009racist non-inclusive and in need of fixing instead this board the superintendent and the director of teaching and learning must prioritize Excellence which inspires students from all racial backgrounds to achieve their full potential so we the parents today choose education Excellence over indoctrination by Ace [Applause] Christa you work we need the school board's help to rebuild the trust that has been lost between the community and school administrators parents continue to bring Delight issue after issue and we are met with silence and half-truths for example the teacher in service that was used to push hateful ideas from the book me and my white supremacy no one from the Administration has publicly explained the intent of the training through foyas we have discovered Brenda O'Brien has stated that two teachers asked for the training and were willing to
010lead it but both opted out of school this year prior to the training taking place instead of this training being scrapped Miss O'Brien reached out to umbuntu in an attempt to have them conduct the training in an email from Brett O'Brien to Ubuntu staff stated the ultimate goal was CR to create building level action plans around improving the school experience through different lenses policies procedures discipline practices Etc she further directed Ubuntu staff that her budget for the training was to be no more than three thousand dollars from this information Ubuntu responded with a project proposal that cost three thousand five hundred dollars which included radical accountability for creating Equity known as race framework that challenges systemic oppression and it manifests within programs policies and procedures within an organization this does not sound like a failure
011of an overworked employee to understand what the original two teachers were proposing but the work of a highly agendized and active participant in the Implement implementation of CRT in our teachers pedagogical philosophy to further illustrate this look at more of her actions outlined in a report published by the McIver Institute last week titled critical race theory in Wisconsin K-12 education the article highlights an October email in which Brenda O'Brien provides teachers with a link to socialjusticebooks.org this white website provides hundreds of books geared toward elementary students on CRT based topics including books such as rise up the art of protest what we believe a black lives matter principles activity book pedagogy of the oppressed what does it mean to be white developing white racial literacy different but beautiful white fragility for kids she asked teachers
012to review the list and advise her of any they would like to add to their curricular topics she also goes on to give advice to staff on how to teach social social justice to their students in order to rebuild the trust of the parenting Community I'm asking the board to find a way to provide real-time transparency on student curriculum and what is being presented to the teachers thank you Sarah Larson good evening just three quick items uh the first one is historically the courses have been added to the district without eliminating and so in the December January time frame we talked about as the courses for the high school were being looked at that we would be eliminating courses with it like 12 or fewer enrollees and so I'm asking for a report out at
013one of the July meetings because at that point the schedule should be pretty much set as to how many courses are being eliminated and what that approximate budget savings is anticipated to be the second item is with height heightened parental awareness and desire to participate I'd like to see the teacher and administration interview process revised to include three parents or community members and scale back on the ancillary staff that participates in the interview process I recommend advertising the opportunity in Express News and on the School Board website to generate a deep list so that we can put it in rotation and I would then like to see them participate in the interview process beginning with all interviews after August 1st last meeting I indicated that I'd like all of the curriculum and resources to be
014posted on our website to avoid the flare-ups and mistrust that's developing in the community and so to do this I would like a date established as to when we would anticipate all the curriculum and resources being up on the website I know resources are limited and that's a daunting task I would recommend that now that the website is up and running perhaps the person who's doing that spearhead this and start organizing what that's going to be I am willing to get a group of volunteers together to help with uploading all of those materials I don't think you're going to find that you will have a shortage of volunteers let's be on the front side of this and show other districts how it's done thanks [Applause] Scott happily good evening and thank you just a couple
015quick quick points I know we have a lot to cover tonight uh the first one is uh and I don't know I was I come to every meeting but sometimes it gets late and I don't know what's passed and what's not passed so I'm not sure if a decision was made that we're going to go down from two meetings to one board meetings I think that's a bad idea in light of what's going on where you have a bunch of engaged parents I I thank them for all being here I mean I've been coming to board meetings for over a year and at times it was Mr Pollock and myself and very few others so the more the merrier I know the board has asked for people to come and speak their minds so it's
016great that they're here I don't want to reduce their ability to speak now that they're engaged it really doesn't matter why or how they're engaged they're engaged and they're here and I think you need to listen to them okay and I feel that's part of good communication and good transparency you you say you want to do that well this is a great way to do that so again I don't know if the decision was made but I'm hoping that we can keep the two board meetings uh second point is budget related not sure I know you're going to talk about it later but it's my understanding that we're going to cut a school resource officer from Kennedy Middle and again if I'm wrong I will come back and say I'm wrong but my knowledge of
017it was is that the village covers most of that person's salary through the police department so I don't know how we're saving all this money that's on there you guys know more than I do but I like having school resource officers I definitely think the high school one should never be talked about ever but Middle School I think they're very helpful for disciplinary reasons and other things and having them there makes me feel safe I don't know how the other parents feel but that's how I feel about it then in regards to the you know we always talk about the board talks about well it's all about the kids okay it is about the kids but you know what it's also about the families okay these kids have parents we're the parents and I'm a
018big one on semantics because I was raised by two teachers one of them happened to be an English teacher that taught K-12 so words are one thing but actions are what speak louder as everyone knows so I like seeing action I just don't want words out there oh you know we're doing this and we did this and we're great and we do all this show it by action show it by meaning show that you stand behind the words that you put out there and you know I've been coming here for a year I mean people probably think I'm complaining about everything but I'm just pointing out that when I hear certain words like you know we're Visionaries okay you don't assign yourself being a Visionary people decide you're a Visionary let's work with that let's
019let's be action oriented the last thing I'll say is I'm probably speaking for myself but I am getting really tired of Germantown being the focus of the week on The Mark Belling show okay people are sending me the podcast it's driving me nuts all right and I understand we've done some battles with Mr Belling you know the Au thing that went on last year the swim coach thing I don't know what else is going on but you know why are we feeding the Beast you know Mark Belling is got a big audience and you know he if you just poke the berry he's going to keep he's going to keep finding ways to talk about us I don't I don't want Mark Belling to be talking about it's as a focus of the show every
020day I don't know about you guys but I think that makes us look bad so I would hope that this board decides to just not get in fights with Mark Bowen I just don't think it's good for us thank you [Music] [Applause] Jody Gray well I'm saddened here of more and more families exploring or having already committed to leave GSD or even Germantown as a whole I'm so thankful for the positive messages from endless families and teachers who are so grateful to be making the choice to mask or not mask We additionally look forward to your continued trust and empowerment to end contingencies on quarantining and allow parents to responsibly monitor their children applauding your decision to no longer restrict student body Health freedoms the overwhelming majority of students and staff have exercised the right
021to not mask as was also shown in the unmasked happy smiles at graduation yesterday thank you for giving those students the seniors and families the graduation that they deserved as well as an end-of-year experience for each District student as they make the right choice for their own body we hope you'll step up to ensure this opportunity for the graduating 8th graders as well as most don't contact you it was amazing for you to see where the silent majority stands please know the majority also stands for equality and looks forward to a commitment to stop all discriminatory categorizing and political teaching and increased transparency as anyone particularly young families leaving the district would like to ensure Germantown middle and or High School are still viable options when the time comes to again make a choice on
022proudly enrolling in the district I'd like to positively acknowledge that there is already anti-discrimination efforts in GST policy but we'd like to continue asking for the following to be added to the employee handbook as well as posted on the district website as follows the Germantown School District believes in equality for all students to ensure District Personnel students and parents are working from the shared understanding we all vow to execute the below items in order to best promote equality in the classroom regarding race color ethnicity gender sex national origin religion ability or age teachers and staff shall one not direct or compel students to personally affirm adopt or adhere to one of these category characteristics or groups as being inherently Superior or inferior to another so all students are equal and deserve equal opportunity without segregation
023or categorizing teachers in South shell too ensure that individuals do not receive adverse treatment on the basis of one of these characteristics nor promote adverse treatment of people based on one of these characteristics so again all students are equal and deserve equal treatment lastly teachers and staff shall not direct or compel students to personally affirm adopt or adhere to be an inherently responsible for actions committed by members of their shared characteristic group and not classify nor call out to distinguish students on account of any of these characteristics so all students are equal responsible for their own behavior not to be classified nor defined by any personal characteristic rather only by their character think these are all things that we can unarguably get behind as a community thank you for your dedication to our students and
024community thank you [Applause] Alyssa Paolo at last school board meeting it was discussed that the material from the ace committee would become readily available soon on the new District website I checked the site today and I am still not able to find any new information there is no information regarding meeting agendas how where or when to attend the meetings and no posting of meeting minutes or action items the lack of transparency with the ace committee is leading to Growing frustrations and is building more distrust within the community to learn that the ace committee has subcommittees within itself seems to be that this group is growing well beyond the intent it was originally formed for and I worry that the board has lost sense of control with this group I again ask that there will be
025prompt transparency with this group and if that cannot happen then the group should be disbanded as per critical race Theory I feel it is important to point out that the majority of CRT teaching will not go by the name of CRT instead it has many other warm sounding names such as Equity culturally responsive teaching social justice and intersectionality to name a few so while we know on paper that CRT is taught in two AP classes the pedagogy of CRT extends much farther in our classrooms when reading the book critical pedagogy the opening sentence States education is a political act that sentence alone should concern you and should bring into question the entire Audiology and practice of this pedagogy I recommend to the board that you develop a CRT reporting form which was recently developed by
026a parent in the Elmbrook School District it is a simple Google doc Forum that allows parents to report any questionable material that their child is bringing home this document can link to all of your emails you can see receive the responses in real time at the end of the day if CRT is truly only being taught in two classes then this should be a relatively easy thing to implement and you will not be bombarded with emails I still remain concerned for the teaching in service last spring when they discussed the book of me and my white supremacy I ask that moving forward the board should have more involvement in the material that is discussed if we need to hold future diversity training sessions I would like to recommend two sources the first is Unity training
027Solutions which is founded by Dr Carol Swain her program focuses on building strong teams by respecting individual talent and providing viable alternatives to the divisive and counterproductive critical race and gender theories the second is the theory of Enchantment this is founded by Chloe baldari she has developed an Innovative framework for compassionate anti-racism that combines social emotional learning character development and interpersonal growth I encourage you all of you to please watch her Ted talk thank you thank you [Applause] Melissa thierrowman thank you first I'd like to thank each of you for your service to the community I recognize you are being presented with a multitude of requests and commentary in the interest of delivering on the transparency which the board and districts speak of I am requesting that the district add a section to our website
028which includes the following information dating back to calendar year 2020 and going forward staff professional development calendar indicating dates plan topics recommended and required reading lists and links to any Powerpoints and handouts utilized in-service day calendar indicating planned activities at each school and links to any resource materials utilized for group activities school and District annual goals indicating what each School site and administrative area will be focusing on for the year planned action steps and recap of results at your end hopefully by sharing this information it will help alleviate Community concern I would also like to propose a transparency Committee of parents and community members who can assist in making all curriculum and teacher in-service materials available for public viewing I am confident that you will find many volunteers just in this room alone in regards
029to quarantines for close contacts please vote to make this parent choice parents should continue to monitor their children if identified as a close contact for symptoms of illness the goal here is to prevent healthy children from missing in-person school and to avoid discrimination based on mask use in the future I expect you will ensure students are not discriminated against for vaccine status as well thank you [Applause] Diane Peterson you get two for the price of one no I'm teasing it um first impressions are rarely what they seem Coca-Cola recently put their employees through diversity training they told workers to act less white maybe management should try to act less stupid Disney forced their employees to fill out a white checklist to show their white privilege I hear there might be a checklist for Germantown students
030Miss O'Brien told teachers to read a woke book and then ask them to tell her how they'll Implement that ideology in their class you and these parents have learned CRT is being taught excuse me in two classes we've heard many students tell their story at the April meeting here's my story Born Into A working class family with no money we live paycheck to paycheck grew up in a rental house I was asked to help the first black girl in my grade school class learn her way around school as I did for other new students I had many black friends in Milwaukee west division high school one girl said her family moved to Milwaukee from the south because her father who's a teacher was threatened when trying to encourage black friends to vote I told her
031I said everyone has the right to vote guess not in Liberal South and that's how naive I was I finished high school got a job paid my bills my husband and I often work two jobs to save for our home yes we too have a budget like you have a budget on the agenda tonight I completed Alverno College and weekends at 48 years of age while working a full-time job never used illegal drugs worked 62 years and I lived and still live a very modest lifestyle now today I Endure idiot liberals and race Hustlers telling me that I'm a racist due to my white privilege I guess not the board may have innocently thought the idea of equity CRT and other ideas were ways to solve bullying as I heard at the April meeting now
032you have learned the truth about what CRT and Equity is some might say you screwed up but there is time to stop it the buck stops with the board approval as noted in your policy 2220 you decide the final course that is taught here if you believe teaching CRT and other things like that is acceptable then you are the oppressors since you are the decision makers in biblical terms you're allowing Satan to enter Germantown curriculum you stand self-condemned you are not acting consistently with the truth of the US Constitution by supporting socialism if you support CRT which intends to have race as the lens of life in your white then you demons that demonstrates you are the oppressors if you accept that fact then continue CRT but if you disallow that fact then you have
033to abolish it you cannot have it both ways there is no Common Ground here this curriculum is too expensive for your budget thank you [Applause] Gene Mary I have reviewed the suggested tolerance survey for students it seems that it's designed to denote the school district as racist the particular problem is in the first section Item B is a glaring issue quote students choose to interact primarily with people most like themselves unquote since this can be interpreted any number of ways who wouldn't Circle one strongly agree I would put me in a group with a people and I will gravitate toward anyone who travels internationally or love skiing or gardening because those people are most like me I don't care if they're pink purple orange or whatever kids are no different it is a question designed
034to be distorted when I left teaching I went into marketing and this is what's called a loaded survey it is designed to provide a particular outcome in this case labeling the district as racist to justify a CRT and Equity teaching approach the other clue is in the footnotes those are important according to those notes the survey is adapted from tolerance.org and mixitup.org both are lgbtq organizations and from the Sacramento California Unified School District website seriously we're not able to find a more mainstream and Midwest resource why would we Source a survey for this district from a state and from organizations that are known for pushing a particular agenda if we find it necessary to survey our students let's at least find objective sources that will give legitimate results better yet skip the survey and spend
035more time teaching students about other cultures nationalities and religions give them the ability to understand and appreciate differences rather than using those differences to label and categorize them teach them about our Constitution and our system of government so they not only know what their rights are but also what the responsibilities are in preserving our freedoms and making our country a better place the latter will never be achieved by disparaging or destroying what we have thank you [Applause] foreign [Applause] thank you all and thank you all for speaking tonight um just to clarify some of my comments from the last meeting I think um I I try to lighten the mood um and I've tried to make a joke about the 15 minutes I was also going to reference Mrs Larson's comments about how we sat
036here for years without any public comment Mr Heffley spoke tonight and he also said there was the past year the past several years we were here and there was never anyone in the audience if we had one or two parents that was a lot if we had anyone speak that was rare so that was what I was trying to reference I made a joke at Belle Platte lesson learned I won't do that again so just to explain my myself someone else asked in the audience who is this guy and I think a little more background on me is probably appropriate as well um I don't usually like to talk about myself so I didn't bring this up in my last introduction but I've been around in this fight for a long time back in 2013
037when we rejected Common Core as a board and that the majority of the board was around at that time we knew what was going on in the curriculum around the country a big part of rejecting Common Core was because we saw that there was stuff coming into our curriculum that was politicized that was indoctrination that was leaning so that is the reason we rejected Common Core in 2015 because of what Germantown had done I actually wrote an essay in a book called common ground on Common Core where several people from both sides of the aisle rejected the idea of common core for the same reasons so I've been in this fight for a long time in 2017 I tried to get a common sense educator elected to the Department of Public instructions in Madison I
038learned very quickly how evil politics at the state level are and how corrupt they are [Applause] and unfortunately not enough people were paying attention at that time that we weren't able to get a common sense educator onto ndpi to start fixing these problems at the state level so I hope that all of you at some point will look to that when the next Epi election is and fight to save the State education system because a lot more needs to be done so just to give you a little more background on me I literally wrote the book on how to fight back against bad school boards and I I I hear what you're saying and I think this board in general if there was anyone in this District that I believed was working against us and
039was trying to indoctrinate our children I would be actively seeking to remove them so I'm paying attention we're all paying attention I think everyone needs to know that and understand that thank you [Applause] Ida 4 May 24 21 Board of Education minutes do I have a motion please yeah I'll make a motion to approve the minutes with one correction in line 13 we amended the motion and then voted on the amendment so line 14 should be us voting on the amended motion not the original motion correct do we have it okay Brian one more item if Tom's done okay I'm finished you have a correction well I just uh reading a line 18. both the Ed hot ad hoc curriculum that we discussed well it doesn't come right out and say anything was approved in
040that section of the board meeting by the time we get to the end of item 18 it sounds like some of this is going to be done you know it's just the way it's written so I'd like to add a line for a number 18 that all these items were discussed but none were approved you know just to make sure that we're clear on what's Happening Here anyone else today in a second well I I can include that as part of my original motion okay and then you can look for a second okay so yeah do I have a second I'll second it okay Mike seconds any discussion further yeah just you know the reason why I brought that up the last sentence of number 18 for example it says book lists and policies will
041also also be readily available on the website we didn't approve any of that you know we just didn't so you know by the time you get to this end of this paragraph it sounds like you know all of this is going to be implemented you know it's just a little unclear so thanks okay I have a second any other further discussion all those in favor hi opposed that passes May 24 2021 closed session minutes do I have a margin make a motion to approve the May 24th closed session ends all second any discussion oh there's a typo on line two I don't think Mr Barney is called Mr Carney but that's a typo that's relevant or not okay any further discussion all those in favor aye that passed her opposed that passes reports and information
042items Middle School circles pilot class Mr thousand yeah thank you so Carrie Berg if you remember she um we piloted this circles class and she talked a little bit about it at one of our April meetings and we didn't have a chance for the video so we asked Kiri to come back when we had um because we were at one of the school sites so we had the better video uh capabilities here and so we have a short video and then she's gonna talk a little bit more about the program and we'll go from there you tell me when you want me to start the video um so tomorrow our course that we've been piloting this semester has our last session and as a group of students and myself as the instructor have just really
043built a strong bond intellectually seeing the kids strengthen as they set their goals and have open discussion about their strengths and areas of improvement every day has just really been empowering to them the students themselves just really kind of see they aren't alone nobody's perfect we've brought in certain people even such as like Mrs Mr akola Mrs climber to give interview sessions of kind of how they got to where they are what were their trials and tribulations what kept them going when things were kind of down on their Locker in a valley versus a peak in life so I really just saw them kind of open up to look further into the future and tweak habits that they saw were holding them back and make changes so I also previously kind of gave you an
044update with some review on their grades from Q one two and three each just there were many improvements made for each student so if anybody wants another copy of that too you can please let me know but other than that the video is kind of my favorite thing to look back on right now I hope you enjoy it because the kids were excited to make it I did ask them for the video it will entail that students were asked to place a symbolic picture on a slide and then write a testimonial on their thoughts thus far about the course and then we put that together um to share to you so you can take it away and if you have any questions after it's viewed please let me know and I can stay around here
045to answer those thank you community [Music] connected I know this is [Music] a lot of times [Music] officials [Music] eyes [Music] um [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] foreign so it was really fun for me to watch I hope you enjoyed it as well um I've watched it a good 15 times so it warms my heart and we just really did develop a good Bond and we had a great time and thank you for the opportunity for me to Pilot the course and I hope to be in further talks to perhaps continue it or maybe expand it um do does anybody have any questions from what they heard or saw or yes I remember when you were here a while back and the board had some good discussion and we approved this and personally I
046just want to apologize to you because I think during that time I said I would love to come and speak to your class it's been a very challenging year over the last year and a half and maybe I would have learned a lot by talking to your class and sharing some things but it's been been a good discussion so yeah we tried keep up the good work thank you very much and I appreciate the offer um it was kind of your offer that made me Branch out and have other guests come in including trying to get you in as a guest but um that was actually a really cool tool even students parents were on the list of trying just out of their stories they would share about their parents and how they struggled and
047fought through to become successful with being a small business owners and things so um it did open up kind of a great idea that you gave me so thank you well I've got a lot of stories to share thank you for coming back and sharing that I think that was that was great anytime we get to hear the students tell their success stories I think it it warms our heart and it helps us know what we're doing it it really means something so thank you for all your effort you're welcome yeah this truly was a success story so thank you for sharing it and thank you for all of your endless efforts in doing this and we hope hope to bring it back and see what we can do to help yeah absolutely I would
048look forward to it so thank you so much thank you have a good night thank you k5b 4K update Mr self yeah someone asked Mrs O'Brien to talk about um where they are in the planning stages if you remember we're going to start Half Day 4k in the 2022-23 school year Mrs O'Brien sure I had another 4K curriculum meeting um this past or a couple weeks ago and we actually broke off into some subcommittees so we have three subcommittees who are working on uh one being the curricular aspect of it as well as the furniture fixture and equipment that would need to go along without fitting the classrooms and then that committee is also talking about inclusive practices for our Early Childhood Program that's currently housed at Rockfield so some of those students would be
049in the 4K classrooms we also talked about funding and grant opportunities that are available especially for startup 4K programs but also the continuation of some of the activities and events that we would want to do so doing some community outreach for that as well as grant funding opportunities and then the last one is the marketing committee who met to talk about some of the parent information that would need to be created as well as some of the marketing that we would want to do in terms of the student handbook or other venues to make sure that our marketing for this program is also very robust and that we have Outreach and that people know about this 4K opportunity for their students and what's the what's the target date to start getting marketing material we are
050hoping for the um Target date of around November so that then we have registration in January that would coincide with the time that we would also be registering kindergarten students so we would be registering 4K and kindergarten students targeting the end of January well just one comment it's great to see you're moving this forward I know the community's been asking for 4K for a long time so I appreciate the update billing committee update from items discussed June 7th earlier this evening Tracy thank you a number of updates were given by Mr Erickson regarding some fun 10 projects and facility services I'll just give a couple of examples uh rooftop Chiller here at the high school was repaired has been performing without any issues since there was work done uh for the roofing here at the
051high school Amy Bell wall elevation repairs and County Line Courtyard wall restoration as well all within uh well within budget and uh there was uh I think I had the number hopefully corrected roughly 28 000 left um for for that so that was good to hear I do want to mention a couple of updates regarding the Kennedy Kennedy Middle School dugouts they have been built painting will be completed this summer I want to give a special recognition to Anonymous for for taking care of that for us it is much appreciated they look great and I'm sure once the painting is completed they will even look even better than they already do also at the high school baseball concessions stand has been constructed uh once again want to recognize three and two baseball booster group and
052also the Germantown High School construction class students who helped build it that too looks really nice also at the high school the Gazebo railing has been replaced this was funded by the high school science club and also installed by the construction class students so once again thank you to those those groups for not only funding it but also installing it a couple other things the the high school lower b-wing heating system leak uh is covered by warranty will be completed during the early summer the MacArthur Elementary School Gaga pits will be installed uh in the near future also uh we got an update regarding the second shift custodial work or discussions that are that are being done they will be ongoing but Mr Erickson did provide us a couple updates regarding some of the equipment
053that they that they may invest in GSF May invest in also discussions regarding some of the consumable supplies where we might be able to get some savings or additional savings there depending on who is able to supply them lastly the committee took action for Rockfield Elementary School to approve and install a Traverse Traverse rock wall this is being funded by the PTA and I think that would be it any questions from the group okay thank you moving down to new business discussion and possible action regarding return to school report quarantining procedures Mr stealthy yep and before I um jump into this I just I want to um do a little shout out to Mr Farren and his high school admin team and the counselors and Susan Bast and Julie call for all the work that
054they did to make graduation a success it was almost a year ago when you know July that we didn't know if we were going to have school or what was going to happen and there's been a lot of things that have happened since July and August of last year but the the event itself when we had five tickets of family it was in the field house that's the same number of tickets that were issued two years ago to families and it was it went very smooth and it was because of their preparation and planning it was great to see all the all the kids and I think they were very happy to be done with their senior year so congratulations to the kids and also those that were part of the planning uh this is
055this is the best these are the best numbers we've seen all year um this is the burden rates that we show every other week and um you know we're looking at everything under 50 or 50 and under um and these were in the hundreds several more the hundreds last week and if you remember way back when we were at 2000 at one point um and now we're in in single or double digits so um the the trends are good and then and as far as our schools we have had minimal minimal cases if any in most of the schools and um I know we're going to talk quarantining and just a couple things around that is we've been more concerned with the contact tracing part of it versus the quarantining meaning we want to make
056sure that we least notified parents that your child was within three feet and really regardless if they had a mask on or not we want them to know and then with with that we also ask them to watch for symptoms and if a child has two or more symptoms and they were close contact we asked them to get a negative test before returning but that's kind of how we've been been operating and how we hope to operate for the next two and a half days of school and Tammy and I the school nurse have uh we we talked last week about summer school what does it look like for summer school and and kind of the same same approach we also talked about um that if there's let's say there's two cases in a summer
057school class that we would just send a letter to the whole family I mean to all the families to say look just just so where there's two cases please you know continue to monitor your child's symptoms the same thing for the fall we're looking at a similar approach but also monitoring if for some reason like we would do with any illness if it's norovirus or any of those stomach bugs that go around the flu that we would we would have a lower threshold to where we would at least notify all the parents and say so let's say it's 15 so 15 of a class that's out or a grade level we would notify families to say look this is what's what's going on and families then we'll choose what to do with their children or
058hopefully they'll monitor their symptoms better and we'll remind them of good hand washing and just good health health procedures at that time right now our board policy is at 30 percent so for 30 percent we shut down a grade level um I don't we haven't reached that since I've been here even with um with coven 19. so we we haven't picked if it's 10 or 15 but we just we think it's a just to alert people of where we're at so some things that we're we've been kicking around um around that topic so that's all I have okay any questions so just to clarify if you have a student that's a close contact wearing a mask or not wearing a mask you're treating them the same yeah and we're tracing you're tracing and notifying the
059parents correct and then asking them to monitor for symptoms yep okay okay so we're not mandatory quarantining anyone nope we're letting families decide right now excellent thank you Mike do we need a motion no that's already been decided hey I don't know if if you feel better with emotion it's fine but I think um I think what I would like to do is Bill bring back at least for um like for next fall here's the and I don't even need a board motion for it but if we say look we're gonna if we get to 15 and I think we're just going to notify families it's just a practice it's not a requirement it's just something that we we think we're trying to get in front of things quicker than than we were in in
060previous years so yeah I guess we're hopeful that things settle down we don't get to those levels anymore yeah yeah so it's it's it's totally up to the board what they've do you want us to revisit that part that 15 or do you want us to decide yeah I mean I think I mean if the board's okay I would just bring back and say Here's what here's how we're going to approach this because we already have the policy at 30 percent but this is just a hey we're at 15 just so everyone knows if in a particular class or grade level or if a school would would get that get that high we would just communicate early sure I think coming back before school starts would be appropriate and I think seeing what happens in
061summer school will give us a good gauge as well yeah that well I mean that's that's been that's gonna our plan was that we would continue to trace in the summer school regardless in using the three three foot rule Trace let families know and then um you know I'm talking to Tammy she she said she'd be surprised if we have two positive cases in the summer at summer school you know she obviously she could be wrong but she just doesn't um think we'll have have that many cases so let's hope okay any other comments Mike so just to be clear are we at the point where we are seeing a quarantining is optional and if the discretion of the student's parents yeah that's yeah I would say the only caveat to that was that if
062a child who is a close contact is exhibiting two or more symptoms we ask them to get a negative test Okay so you know I'd just like to mention one more item I emailed Tammy earlier today just in case she wasn't here this evening and she's not here this evening so she sent me an email back I'll just read one short paragraph from her my question was is if we saw any increase in covid cases in the last two weeks because you know of course we did get some emails criticizing us for that decision making masks optional for the last two weeks anyway the paragraph is as far as covet numbers go for the last two weeks I believe we only had two for the high school in the entire District but that might be
063even even stretching it students and staff alike are all testing negative that need testing however the amount of people needed to still get a test is very low so I think in the last two weeks you know the numbers have all dropped to just about nothing in the entire District good news yeah and I'll just have to say at the graduation yesterday it was nice to see all the smiling faces that's thank you okay moving on Item B discussing an action to approve summer school contracts Miss O'Brien it's not nope you should go before again what was that oh you're good you're wrong uh I did put a updated list of summer school contracts and your places at the table this evening and I would ask that you appre approve those contracts as presented and
064I did I'm sorry I did remove Diane Sarah unfortunately the healthcare Academy that usually runs is not running this year she hopes that it will run next summer I'll make a motion to approve the contracts as presented second time any discussion see none all those in favor all right all right opposed that passes moving on item C discussion and action to approve ccihs for pre-calculus yes O'Brien yes so on March 8th meeting I gave an information item that the math department was looking at adding an additional course for a dual enrollment where students could earn college credit as well as High School Credit so they have requested that honors pre-calculus as well as pre-calculus be another College course offering for our high school students so starting with the 21-22 school year if approved we would
065be offering pre-calculus and honors pre-calculus as a dual enrollment through UW Green Bay where students could earn both college credit and high school credit for taking that course okay two what motion improve the ccihs option for honors pre-calculus and pre-calculus beginning with the 2021-2022 school year second you got it Tracy Tracy any discussion so you're none all those in favor aye opposed that passes moving on to Item B discussion and possible action regarding debt refunding options Brittany yep so we'll give to Brittany and she has um Mr Mike Clark here from Baird so sure um so on April 26th at the finance committee Mike Clark from Robert W Baird presented some possible refunding options to the finance committee and then we were going to bring back more communication and what the next process is and
066the steps that we'll have to take if the board moves forward with this and the reason behind why we are recommending this so Mike has a presentation that is in your packet as well as a hard copy at your station and then we will entertain questions okay good evening since I was here last we've been kind of working on on this refinancing approach it's something that that is is a New Concept but before we get into the steps we've in the new information we have regarding it I wanted to just kind of review a few things uh and when I was here in April we looked at all your debt issuance and kind of talked about the possibilities of refinancing and they were fairly limited other than the the referendum approved 84 million dollar issue
067and that's what we'll be focusing on tonight so just to kind of review um there's there's 79.3 million remaining on that issue remaining interest costs is 30 million a little over 30 million dollars the issue is callable April 127 so under current IRS regulations we're not able to refinance a current refinancing where we could use tax-exempt rates to replace the existing tax exemplates you have with lower rates would be a more traditional type refinancing right now the IRS does not allow those Advanced refundings meaning more than 90 days prior to the call date refundings to take place unless you use taxable rates um so that's why we're not talking about tax exempt rates in this approach and there's another couple other reasons the other costs associated with this the referendum is where the district falls
068in the aid formula um and we'll look at a couple slides in a second they're in your packet but the district because of the property wealth behind each member or student in the district is is there's the tertiary there's a primary Aid which every well not everybody with a few exceptions uh everyone gets Aid at that primary the secondary where the majority of school districts receive additional aid from the state because of the property value and the guarantees is the the state sets then you get into the tertiary well some districts don't spend to that level and the district was right on the border up until the point of past the referendum where its expenditures because debt costs is part of that calculation was added to the per pupil expenditures pushed you well into the
069tertiary and so because your high property value you actually lose state aid so for every dollar you spend this La in this current year it also costs 45 cents a reduction in aid for every dollar which has to be made up with Levy so the district and that was all calculated into the time the referendum so there's that was all part of the projection in terms of the cost so that's not I want to make sure that's very clear but using the low end where the district has been in that tertiary versus the high end you know you're looking at probably 38 to 4 38 to 50 million dollars a loss through the current or the remaining payments of the existing debt if you go to the next I'm looking at this slide now it
070says October 15 General Aid the chart below is the main thing I wanted to to kind of emphasize going back to 2016 the the district was right around negative 40 percent in this last year in 2021 it was negative 45 percent you've been in that range over the last several years I know going back about 12 years you were about 35 percent that's why we included the 35 because it's was in your history at some point but I think given your increased valuation you're looked at as more wealthy relative to the rest of the State per student which is push you further into the tertiary and then with the referendum expenditures has had a bigger impact in terms of your Aid loss another way to look at it not is I'm on this this slide
071right now is you see the the wide gray bar that's your evaluation per member and the the kind of The Wider line that's kind of going through those wide bars that's the guarantee level the state provides so if if your valuation per member is below that line you receive more support from the state if it's above that line is again pushes you into that negative Aid where they take aid away again it increases the levy to the to the the community um the next chart I'll just I won't really spend any time on it but kind of another way to show other than the one fact that in 2017-18 you drop below that line that was the year the debt was issued and the district received a premium which only can be used to pay
072debt costs so it wasn't additional dollars the district had to spend on anything or projects you got the 84 million that was it but those additional dollars or what they call a deductible receipt so it was a revenue that offset some of your expenditures so it dropped you below that line and that year you didn't have any negative Aid and that's that's the type of thing we're trying to duplicate or replicate going forward in terms of minimizing your Aid loss so the the basic idea of of losing or minimizing your Aid loss is to group The expenditures into fewer years because in the aid formula there's a component that says you can only lose 15 percent of your prior Year's Aid and we'll look at a specific example what that refinancing would look like so
073in years you wouldn't have expenses similar to what happened in 1718 because you had that offsetting Revenue you wouldn't have that negative Aid and then if we group all your expenditures into one one or multiple years but fewer years you will only lose 15 of your prior Year's Aid and any expenditures that occur in that year beyond that 15 percent you never lose eight on the um and then higher Levy at a higher level in the Years where you have no Aid loss I want to make it clear Levy at a higher level within fund39 right now you're we want to we'd probably be an example I'll show you we're going to try to Levy at the same or lower level than your current situation but part of your Levy right now is just making
074up for the aid loss so you take that levery that's discovering the aid loss and you put that towards your debt and paying your debt down more quickly generating some savings the structure the district would continue to Levy annually into fund 39 this is your debt service fund to pay principal and interest payments the annual cost of the taxpayer would be at or below its the current level interest payments would be scheduled on a semi-annual basis but another component of this refinancing is that we would try to group through a defeasants or expenditures in the same years you're making principal payments and it'll be clear in a second when we look at an example and we have principal payments every five or excuse me four to six years and again we use levy on an
075annual basis so in years where you there wasn't a scheduled principal payment those dollars would be deposited into a segregated account um and we have talked with the district Auditors we've talked with DPI we've talked with the district's buying Council um everybody's on board the person I was dealing with the DPI is on an extended medical leave so we've had to kind of switch so we're doing a little backtracking and going forward but we've had several conversations and and we're in a good spot in terms of moving forward with this type of a refinancing the the the reason you're able to accumulate funds for a a future payment that's a few years off is because we're using taxable rates if you use tax exempt rates we would not be allowed to do that IRS doesn't
076want you to issue tax exempt debt and then build up funds and earn interest now in this environment interests are so low on the investment side it doesn't work but it in theory that's the why why that's not allowed but since they're taxable interest rates on the new debt that's allowed and again the funds would be accumulated solely for that purpose they'd be in a restricted fund for only making principal payments um so we would by doing this we'd be able to shorten the repayment of the debt currently the debt the final payment is in 2037 and the example I'm going to show you we would reduce that final payment to 2033. and that's where part of the savings comes from so so then now we're looking at this this chart and this has a
077lot of little numbers and I apologize we did put it in two pages it was on one page when we first put it together and I said that's definitely not going to work so so this is a basically a projection of what your current based on your current aid for uh percentages in the tertiary it's your scheduled principle and interest payments plus using that 45 percent negative 45 percent what that interest costs or Aid loss cost is to the and then so the blue the combined Levy before that's your total cost between principal and interest and Aid loss going forward and we we calculated that number so we kind of added a baseline to establish well what what the new levies would look like we do have some flexibility there and as as we you
078know if the district chooses to move forward this we'll we'll provide we can look at some different structures and see exactly how is there a chance to maybe provide some near-term tax relief and still generate a benefit and there are there's some trade-offs though whenever you delay paying principal you're incurring more interest costs so here's what we're projecting the the cost going forward for the district anybody have any questions on that how the aid works you know these are your principal and interest payments this is this is what the schedule is we didn't have to do anything with that it's just that Aid calculation now if if something would change at the state level where they would eliminate tertiary Aid I know it's been discussed for building projects there's really no Risk by doing this
079because you're getting that point it would just reinforce that you would lose Aid actually the proposal to reduce that hold harmless to ten percent which would make this approach even more beneficial to The District in terms of you only can lose 10 percent of your priority so that's in the budget so we don't really see anything from a legislative standpoint so now we even get more numbers onto one page so first off I'm going to start right here where it says the 90.98 million dollars taxable refunding issue some of you might go well we only owe 79 million dollars remaining in principle but you also owe 30 million dollars of interest and a portion of that is locked in there's nothing you're going to do so to pay off the old issue we have to
080pay off all the principal and the interest that's before the call date against callable in in 27. so those payments are locked in there's nothing you can do at any point to eliminate that obligation so we have to refinance the remaining principal plus the interest that you have associated with that that that's how we calculated that new dollar amount so and you can see the principal payments we only have four principal payments scheduled in the new issue if you see that column and then and then you'll see interest payments but they're in a lighter color we're taking some of your Levy in the years that you have principal payments and prepaying that interest we and this would wouldn't be done all at once it would be done over time so if we called that or
081something like that so what we want to do is pay the interest in the same year you're paying the principal because you're going to far exceed that Aid loss and of the 15 percent again because anything you spend beyond that amount is a a positive for the district it's zero Aid loss on those dollars so that's the principal payment and the interest payments and then the hypothetical defeasants that's the amount going towards pre-funding your interest payments and again those would be done every few years so we can always make the determination does it make sense or not to do or do you just make your interest payments just as they're currently scheduled so if you drop down the yellow column in the middle by doing this we are achieving some interest savings about 1.4 million
082dollars now on a present value basis it shows a negative because you're paying the debt sooner and under present value calculation it it puts it says dollars in the future are less valuable than dollars currently since you're paying them in more current dollars it's a negative PV savings we're required to show that calculation but at the time you went to referendum you did not discuss the cost on a present value basis you you talked about your principal and interest in Aid loss so I think the the 1.4 million dollars of AIDS or excuse me Interest savings is is significant the next column the green column this is the the aid impact so when you look at these numbers negative Aid impact numbers are positive for the school district it's a negative cost when they're positive
083numbers it's a it's a cost to to the to the district so if you if you look at that series of columns you'll see that there are several years where that there's negatives and this is using the same percentage we used before the 45 because your your expenses are reduced by e bye you know 10 million dollars nine million dollars eight million dollars depending on how we structure it so that's there's no Aid loss in those years and then in the Years where you can see the 2.5 positive number that's an estimate we we put in there to say well that's your Aid loss because we're going to so that's the Year we're spending we're we're prepaying interest and we're making your principal payment and if you go back to that 15 calculation if your
084Aid it's it's a conservative number if if you only can lose 15 percent of your prior Year's Aid that means your your prior Year's Aid with 16 million dollars you've never had Aid that high so it's a conservative number your Aid right now is about 11.6 million dollars so if you take 15 of that your Aid loss would actually be less than 2.5 but we wanted to be conservative in that projection the case things change in the years that you actually spend the dollars and if you actually ever get to 16 million dollars we're loving a lot more and prepaying more of this debt anyway so but the bottom line is you can see at the bottom of that column it's just under 20 million dollars negative that means you'll receive actually on this new
085issue as opposed to losing 50 million dollars in Aid you'd actually receive your net your net benefit is about a positive 20 million dollars which means about a 70 million dollar benefit over what you're currently doing with this new structure over the life of the debt now I think at the finance Community I did talk about I I worked with Pewaukee and and Wauwatosa on their recent referendums we didn't do this exact structure we did something similar this is actually a little bit more beneficial because there was some um gasby changes in terms of the accounting which actually don't even that got us thinking this way but actually don't even play into this because it's it's kind of a non-factor we don't we're not dependent on an accounting rule but it got us thinking about
086the segregated account using taxable interest rates because obviously we tend to think of using tax exempt rates because they're lower it's most but because of where you're at in the aid formula um it's beneficial but we did some other things in Pewaukee and Wauwatosa that had same goal is time to reduce that that Aid loss because of where you're at in the aid formula so in terms of what what we need to do next we talked about accounts we've talked to Auditors we're working to confirm a DPI I guess again the person I was working with she's out so we've kind of had to circle back but we've had positive conversations with them we're working on the segregated account working with Quarles and Brady again I want to make it clear too that the district
087has not incurred any cost while we go through this process so if you decide to do nothing you're not out anything if you continue to explore it up to a certain point you're not out anything um uh you know we the we our thought would be is to have the board approve the segregated account again it's within your books within fund39 or Debt Service fund it's just a separate bank account with more restrictions on it it would show up as restricted funds in your financials have the board approve that resolution establishing that account the month prior to potentially bringing the district a refinancing issue to approve I think it would help the sail to have that mechanism already approved versus just saying well the board's planning on doing it if it's actually there and again
088it's it's it should be a fairly simple resolution at least in my mind we'll see what uh what Bond Council comes up with and see how simple it is in the end but it should be we've had plenty of conversations but then obviously work with with us you know in terms of looking at the various structures that I had indicated you know we can provide maybe a little bit more relief up front if that's more of a priority and give up some longer term savings go for the maximum longer term savings um but we can look at those options if it's something the board and the district wants to pursue so with that I'll take any questions that you might have okay I'll start and just to clarify so that I think we're all on
089the same page what you're telling us if we redo the refinancing the way you're describing it we would gain an additional roughly 20 million dollars in state aid over the term of the loan you you would you would gain over 20 million dollars on the new issue and you would alleviate the loss of 50 million dollars of Aid on your current issue that's where the 70 million dollar net gain comes from seven million dollars seventy seven seven zero seven zero seven so we have a 70 million net gain that would be a 1.46 million dollar savings for the district over that time no it would the the 1.4 is strictly the interest savings okay the aid savings is 70 million so that most of that would go towards it saving local taxpayers all of it
090goes to saving savings to local taxpayers because these dollars cannot be reused for any other purpose okay so is there any savings to The District in all of this from no from an operational budget standpoint uh it will have nothing now however if again and I if if there's certain when we work with districts we try to understand what their overall financial goals are on the operating side as well as the debt obviously we we work mainly with the debt but we also work on the operating side so a good example we um just did a brief debt issue for Saint Francis School District actually I associate that meeting as well tonight but they said I didn't have to go um they did they had a debt issue plus an operating question for operating needs
091the past and the question was a five-year operating question so we structure the debt because to create a drop in the debt that at the end of the five years when they most likely will or potentially could go back to the voters to renew that operating question it has there's a there's a drop in the tax levy when they might be asking for more money so we do try to take those things into account so if there were some initiative the district was considering I'm not saying you are but if the example would be if you were looking at trying to generate additional operating dollars we try to try to structure accordingly but in terms of this transaction it's 100 taxpayer savings yep yeah I think it's wonderful saving our taxpayers our constituents 70 million
092dollars over the life so great job on that but I got a question for you um I I like the uh the spreadsheet that you have here what if we don't track the way it's projected what do we do well and what we're looking at is is to have um and we haven't had the detailed conversations out of some of the options so we could do is have these deposits made into this restricted account you know we'd have some principal payment so maybe we lower the levy targets that are in this and make it optional so that you could love you more if if the if the criteria come you know hold true now the aid formula has been as you know with the tertiary since the mid 90s as I stated earlier any legislation
093that um the only component really that impacts would impact this in the state the governor's version of the budget would actually only improve it it would reduce the aid maximum Aid loss to 10 percent if if they increase if you're you're negative Aid percentage increases but yet they keep the hold harmless in which I think like I said if anything they bought it there's been an effort to reduce it it would only make this better in terms of your savings if they eliminate the negative tertiary completely which is was discussed at one point for construction projects then you'd want to do this anyway because you're paying your debt down more quickly the fact that we've come up with a structure that doesn't depend on a an accounting regulation or Gatsby statement to make it work
094it's really independent of that we've kind of eliminated that so the the so one of the suggestions or one of the ideas we have is getting back to your more maybe specifically is we have we structure it so we're not paying quite as back as much principles early so the levies are a little bit lower so if if the factors aren't don't come out exactly what we think or there's some something that we don't foresee you're not required to pay it back at that same time period but if they do then you'd have the option of leving more and paying the debt back more quickly we'd have some call features put in some flexibility I think once we if we get to the point we can just look at different structures and see what they
095do and don't do what the pros and cons are I think that might make some of those things a little bit clearer when would you be wanting to flip the switch on this thing when everybody's ready when everybody's nodding obviously you've uh you know rates rates are are good now and obviously that's still a component whenever you're issuing debt but because it's a New Concept um you know we have Bond Council and the Auditors and DPI all kind of in agreement I think the next step is looking at some different structures seeing what it means to your taxpayers near-term long-term and find maybe finding a balance and then as we go through that maybe spending more time saying okay if this happens what's what's the outcome to the district if if this variable changes what
096does this mean for what we're trying to do here and and understanding it completely so we're we're not in a hurry you know we think rates are going to be favorable and again the the nice thing about this is it's not very interest rate sensitive the bulk of the savings comes from the aid formula I mean 1.4 million 1.5 million dollars in interest savings that's tied to your interest rate different of that in paying the principal back more quickly but the bulk of the savings comes from the aid form and then actually when it in a strange way with rates move higher when the money's sitting in the segregated account waiting for the principal payment you almost want higher interest rates so you're earning more money on that money while it's sitting there waiting because
097that the dollars you earn on those dollars while they're sitting there in between principal payments contributes to your savings as well because that dollar in interest is a that you earn is it one more dollar or dollar less do you need from the taxpayer so you know I would think you know if if um we you know come back in a month with maybe the structure of the the account and if the board was comfortable adopting that because it doesn't commit you to anything at that point as far as refinancing you know but if not do that in August and over that time period look at some different options and then maybe look at September October and times potentially of doing something like this the other component too in that time period is hopefully and
098I think we will we'll have a state budget that'll that'll see if there are any other changes to the aid form at least in this biennial that we might want to factor in if they do drop the whole harmless to 10 percent this only makes it better that's the only thing we've seen in the budget but that should be in place before we do any action to see if there's anything in that from that standpoint that might cause us not to be as attractive we don't foresee anything but just it's just another Benchmark to look at thank you yeah um two questions one would the benefit to the taxpayers be almost immediate and over time would they see fluctuations in the savings which would that to them look like oh it increased this year versus
099the previous year when they're looking at the school portion of their property tax bill those are those are the options we'd look at because again depending on the structure if you want to provide more immediate relief to taxpayers which you know is was you know which is always nice when you get Incorporated that means you're delaying paying some principal which means you're going to incur more interest costs but again with this structure the interest component is is secondary really to what we're trying to do as far as the AIDS so it really comes down to what the priorities are of the district or if you have established certain goals to say you know we want to be you know every year we want the levy to be 500 000 less than what our current issue
100would cost us we can do that or if you say it's you know you know there's a breaking point where you know it it starts to eliminate some of the benefit but if there are some things you'd like to see or a structure you'd like to see we can try to produce it for you and kind of walk through the pros and cons so this structure was trying to just mirror what the taxpayers obligation is on the existing issue and eliminating the debt more quickly we shortened it by four years if you'd say well what if what if we just keep and have the debt paid off in the same as it currently is what type of annual taxpayer relief could we generate by doing that we could show you that but those are the
101trade-offs you're going to maybe lose the interest savings the 1.487 million dollars of Interest savings by pushing principal out but you we most likely would still achieve the vast majority of that that Aid savings thank you any further questions all right I'll entertain a motion I'd like to uh move to approved Director of Business Services and Robert W Baird to start the process of refunding our existing debt I'll second I'm second any discussion further see none all those in favor opposed that passes thank you thank you sounds like you got work to do okay moving on to E discussion in action to approve 2021-2022 preliminary budget Brittany sure um in front of you today is the preliminary budget for the next school year um 2021-22 um I like to or school districts should approve a
102preliminary budget before any expenses start on July 1st we shouldn't start spending money um July 1st if it has not been approved by the board so a preliminary budget because the state is not done with their budget is the best thing that we can do right now so um I'm coming to the board to ask for approval this will change this is just a preliminary budget because there's so many unknowns at the state level if we get more funding obviously the revenue will change if we don't get more funding we'll have to look back at this before the annual meeting but a final budget will come to the full board and the community at the annual meeting so this is just the next step in the process um when we first started the budgeting process
103back in January we were estimating about a 2.75 million dollar deficit this is due to as you know our funding is connected to enrollments in districts across the state have seen a decline in enrollment um so it's on a three-year average there is something in the state this year that says that they might allow us to use either next year's as our three-year average or the previous year as our three-year average then you wouldn't have that that drop that we had this year it doesn't look like that's going through but they're still talking about it so if that is that would change our budget um we were planning at the beginning to put 250 000 into our fund balance um next year but um due to all the unknowns and the covet expenses that we've
104had um that was removed from the budget that I am bringing forward today um so that leaves us with about a 2.2 million dollar um deficit in which then we brought options to the Committees and the board and very many difficult decisions were made but we were able to reduce our expenditures by an estimated 2.1 million dollars which leaves us about a hundred and twenty six thousand dollars left to not have a balanced budget I'm comfortable with having a preliminary budget that's not balanced by that amount right now just because we don't know what the state is doing if they give us more Revenue that will go away if they don't um I don't think 126 000 is going to be um that that much of an issue defined before the annual meeting um so
105I listed in your summary the areas of expenses that we reduced as well as some areas of Revenue that are built into the budget again also in your summary are some of the assumptions we did build a 1.23 or the CPI in at the front end um for budgeting purposes we did put uh 400 000 in our capital projects as you know this year we did not have any fund 41 we needed to decrease that this year because of budget reasons so we're adding it back in and the goal would be to increase that by uh fifty thousand dollars each year until we get up to the rate we were at in previous years we do have an increase in health insurance and dental insurance built into there right now there is no per pupil
106increase on the revenue limit and no permeable increase on Equalization Aid because that is what the state is saying today so I don't want to build in uh imaginary Revenue into the budget so right now it is zero if they're not going to allow us to use the Cur the next year or the pre previous year's enrollment getting money in those areas isn't going to help us because we're getting a declining enrollment exemption this year so for every kiddo we get to count we're losing money in that declining enrollment so we'd have to get a certain amount of kids which um I don't think will hit that so I'd rather um get the students and lose the money this year that would be difficult but next year it will be beneficial if we had the
107students this year if that makes sense so every student that we get next year that we didn't have this year we will lose ten thousand dollars in Revenue just because of the declining enrollment exemption but to have those students and be able to count them in the following year will be beneficial for us so it's a puzzle um and then um as you know we reallocated our debt so we will not be taking any debt payments out of the general fund or fund balance they're all going to be on the levy and levied in their appropriate funds so that was done this year I spoke about the declining enrollment exemption and then we have a projected enrollment obviously we don't know that until the first day of school or the third third Friday account in
108September so we have an average enrollment and then we do have um built in there a net decrease of 10 students for enrollment because we are hoping that more students enroll in unless students open enroll out we have a net of 10 decrease in this current budget but again everything could change and probably will change before the annual meeting but to be able to start spending on July 1 I would like a budget approved preliminary budget approved by the board tonight questions I'll entertain a motion I will move to approve the preliminary 2021-2022 budget as presented I'll second any discussion right but I just want to thank you Brittany for all the heavy lifting that you've done along with staff Administration some tough decisions were made and the board had full visibility to that and
109I just want to thank you for doing that and I like how your comment was so things will change and things do change but in the end we'll have a balanced budget and all will be good so thank you so much for all you do Tom um yeah my comments are kind of along the same thing I appreciate all the hard work that you've done that's quite a big deficit that you identified all the findings for us to come close to balancing it you mentioned 126 000 you should be able to find that somewhere in the budget in order to approve it I guess I would propose I'd like to see it two hundred thousand dollar deficit just so we can fully fund that SRO at Kennedy if you can find 126 I'd hope you'll
110be able to find 175 or 200. anyone else okay all those in favor aye aye opposed that passes thank you alrighty we are on to closed session the Board of Education will entertain a motion oh I missed one sorry I already circled it all right um discussion in action regarding resolution of authorizing the taxable Tax and Revenue anticipation promissory note for cash flow purposes and the amount not to exceed five million dollars Brittany Matthew again yes um coming to the board tonight I spoke previously on our um that we will have cash flow issues um Coming the end of June this is similar to the cash flow shortage that we had last fall so to be able to continue to pay our bills and our payroll we are asking for a five million dollar line
111of credit and we would be paying that back it's short term we will be paying that back in August when we get our property taxes this will happen again and fall again and it's due to obviously not getting our last property tax payment until September I mean until August and we we have a gap and also the decrease in fund balance that we have that we will work to increase and the more we increase that the less we will have to go out for short-term borrows but again this is um going to be a line of credit that will be available available to us for a Max of five million dollars between the end of June and the end of August okay I'll entertain the motion motion to approve the resolution authorizing the taxable Tax
112and Revenue anticipation promissory note for cash flow purposes and an amount not to exceed five million dollars second discussion I have one question this seems different than what we've done in the past usually we borrow and get a loan and I'm not sure I understand what a taxable tax is it's a line of credit so in past you could do a traditional borrow in which we would borrow the entire um dollar amount and we'd have it in our account and we'd pay an interest rate on that if we would have a line of credit and we have five million dollars available to us we play a lower interest rate on what's sitting at the bank still that we haven't pulled and we pay a higher interest rate on what is actually we're using that we
113actually borrowed so this is um a smaller interest rate because we're keeping some money in there for a period of time and we'll polling it in small amounts than if you borrowed the whole five million dollars and you were and you didn't need it because we won't need it all in one day we'll need it over those two months um you would be paying a higher interest rate on the entire dollar amount you pulled okay so there is cost Savings in this okay any other discussion all those in favor aye aye opposed that passes okay now as I said before we're going into closed session the Board of Education will entertain a motion to convene in closed session pursuant to S 19.85 1e and F and G Wisconsin statute says appropriate to discuss Gea negotiations
114and Personnel issues the board will take action in closed session if necessary and appropriate to entertain a motion to reconvene into Open Session to take further action if necessary and appropriate and or to entertain a motion to adjourn the meeting Pro call no move going to closed session pursuant to 19.851 EF and check second all those in favor or roll call Thunderbird yes Medved yes loaf yes Borden yes Bernie yes Pollock yes random yes we're in closed session at 8 45. thank you all for coming drive home safely