001You guys all get the on your emails? >> Okay. Well, I'm the one that they dealt with. So I just wonder she just sent me maybe >> I don't see >> Yeah, I don't see anything. >> Okay. >> What was it for that youth summit coming up? >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Weird. Um, I will say last year, was it last year or the year before when they did some kind of thing uh at the u what's the name of the little place over here by the um the mail uh US mail? What's that name of that hall there? >> Oh, it's at Turner Hall again. >> Oh, okay. Well, last year or the year before they invited uh I think it was one board member, too, and it was Diana. >> Okay. So, >> maybe
002you're the one, Dan. >> Well, yeah. Um, I'm sure Diana talked to them, too. I know that David was he introduced me to her and he was on a board with her previously. So, but I met with them over there at the collective. >> Okay. And we talked about bones and that sort of thing. So, >> and last night when we talked to uh Leanne, she said they have one bus with 60 kids that they're taking to the the uh medical u you know where they can do the hands-on stuff. See if they want to be in a medical field. >> Is that at the tech or is that at the hospital? >> Where is that? >> No, I I think I think it's somewhere in I think. >> Okay. >> And She said, "The
003buses are just so expensive. They'd really like to do it." And I said, "Well, call Tina. They might >> know. Sorry. It's all right. >> I got to get your book back to you." >> She said when they came back from the one where the contractors and all that sort of thing, they had to do woodworking or whatever. >> Yeah. >> She said that everybody was talking about going into the trades. >> Sure. Yeah. I mean that's a smart thing to do honestly because they do not know how they're going to fill a gap when everybody starts retiring. >> Well job that's why we do these kind of things you know or we take them because they don't know what kind of jobs are out there. >> Right. Right. >> Hey Scott, I see you're
004on. Can you hear us? Okay. >> I can. Thank you. >> Yeah. Okay. And here we go again with >> While you sort that out, I am going to call the meeting to order at 5:30 p.m. Uh let's take a look at the agenda for tonight. Uh looks like everyone's in attendance. Y and the first item is public comment. I'm not seeing anyone. So, we will move past that to our first discussion which we're gonna need Scott for. And that's uh some Neola policy updates. So, Scott, no rush, but uh >> Oh, thank you. >> have you started. >> Great. Well, it's nice to see all of you. I really wish I could have been there in person. Can you remind me when I entered the three datab here. >> I had to try. >>
005So anyone here speaking? It might be this, but I'm not sure if I could add her. session. >> You want to try talking now, Scott? >> Sure. Can you hear me now? >> Wiggle my shoulder this time to make sure I know that because I can't remember where I >> Oh, yeah, you are. I'm just uh I'm just got two windows opening me out. It's all right. Yeah, because this this first um this first this update >> that's okay. You need to shut up. See if that works. Hey, Scott, try to mute and unmute yourself again and see if that works. We made you a meeting up. >> All right, how about now? >> Can you hear me? >> No. Try unmuting now. Z I try to mute you and see if you can unmute
006yourself now. >> All right. Can you hear me? >> I think it's a connection issue. If you've got him talking, it looks like it's >> Yeah, maybe try plugging and unplugging the owl's connection to computer. I don't know. with us. >> Is the tab itself muted? >> No, he he muted him. No, he's unmuted at the transcript. >> Can you hear me now? >> If you look at the top, I can't If you look at the top uh the tab that says me, like your little uh thing at the top. Sometimes you can mute those individually. >> No, up further. So, you've got your agenda tab, your WD policy committee. Yeah, that one. Yeah. Right click on >> right click on that and see if that's muted. >> No, it say see it says mute
007site. So, that means it's not. Yeah, sometimes that happens. >> Our test speakers. >> Yeah. It's not getting our speaker, is it? Yeah. Is it It looks like it's on. I see the eyes are >> testing. Testing. >> Yeah. >> Testing. >> It's got a little uh microphone button. Maybe you can turn it off. >> Like a plus. >> Try again now. >> Testing. Testing. >> All right. It it was the speaker wasn't picking up, so I shut it off and I turned it back on. That's all I did. >> Thank you. >> Sorry. >> Oh, no worries. No worries. Just as long as you never can uh teach my wife to do that, we'll be in good shape here. Okay. So, >> you're welcome to me. >> I'll call her. >> Oh. All right.
008Uh is all right if I just get started? Is that good? >> All right. So, uh thank you so much. Um, as I said earlier, uh, evidently to myself, but now I'll say to all of you, thanks so much for letting me join virtually. I am out of the state right now, but um, normally I would always try to come to these meetings in person if I could, but we'll do the best we can. Um the the purpose for me to be here is uh partly to celebrate for you uh as a committee and for your board for your good work on policies um your excellent work integrating your existing policies and getting uh in the end your policy book active and doing it in a in a timely manner. you from where we started
009to where we are today. You really um you know moved through things and I think you did excellent excellent policy uh policy work along the way. So I'm going to start with this rather quickly. I'll I'll share my screen unless uh there's some way that that you all um want to do it there. But I'll share my screen and cover uh the information that you had received um that you had received from me prior to the meeting. So are you all able to see this? Okay. >> Do you want to hit the X on the people? >> All right. >> So I know that I know not everyone perhaps there is familiar with Neiola. So, I'm just going to cover briefly what what we do. Um, first I'll just take a sec to introduce myself.
010Um, I uh am a retired superintendent and former business manager in the McFarland school district in McFarland uh Wisconsin and uh also I'm very uh familiar with Watertown. I spent uh 10 years there. I went four years to Marinatha Baptist Academy and then on to the college uh there as well. So, it's always uh always a nice thing to meet with uh any folks from Watertown. If you've been on the board a while, my high school principal was uh J. Mark Holland and my 10th grade English teacher was Julene. So, I have a lot of ties with with all of you there. So, it's it's uh it's good to be with you. So, uh Niola, uh just to sort of give you a quick um overview here. I'm gonna try to do this this way.
011Okay. Neil is 40 years old. Uh it that's when it was founded. It really operates a lot like um a CISA we call it cooperative policy development with all the schools that are in our network. They provide a lot of policy uh information and updates and things that work or things that were concerning. So, we work uh with um in Wisconsin, I think we're on 370 school districts out of 425. Now, um we represent 1,600 clients right now in six states. We've been in Wisconsin for 35 years. We have 12 offices, so to speak. Uh that means we have 12 uh folks that do what I do, work with school districts um and uh are spread out across the state in different geographic areas. um all of them are retired superintendent. Um, and uh, I
012I think um, as someone who's done this job for a while, this has been just a a real honor to be able to do this and to stay in touch with um, working with schools, working with superintendent um, and uh, many of which somewhere along the line u from when I taught school finance and then taught um, the superintendency, many of the folks that I get to work with are my former students as well. Um, the policies are written specifically for Wisconsin. We use uh Ren uh Lewis and Lacy, probably in your area. If you work with Ren, Lewis, and Lacy, you may work with Shaina Lewis in particular. Um, and we also work with a number of other law firms. Uh, because obviously we have so many districts that our policies are in place,
013we get really good suggestions from other firms to for us to consider for updates or changes or things they see. And then we do have an attorney on our staff um that uh handles some of the national, you know, matters like title nine and the national school lunch program and things like that. Um we partner with board docs and running and lacy. So that's really um our main partnerships that we have that would impact your uh your district. Um, we really pride ourselves in some of the things that at least I learned when I was in McFarland that Neil is able to do. Um, we're really able I think to seated people um are able to keep up with their policies and rather than maybe saying we're going to go through this section this year
014or these two sections, Neiola is always updating its entire book. So, um, for the most part, uh, districts that sign up with us and then, um, are involved in our update process, which every district is involved in the update process. if they're able to process the updates as they come out, um they stay current with their policies. And then as a committee, they often have time to work on a lot of things that maybe wouldn't be in any catalog, but are things that are really district specific um that that the committee may have concerns about or wants to discuss or wants to look for a policy in a particular area. Um but the majority of policies are topics that would need to be in a board policy book. Um we really think uh we completely
015cover u but then again every district is a little different uh in the way that they form some of their custom policies. You had a fair amount of custom policy work. Your committee and administration I think really worked hard to take the best of both and uh um so you you've done quite a bit of custom work along with taking the old policies as well. We are strictly nonpartisan. Uh which, uh, having now worked for the company for a while, I've learned that we, uh, we tend to offend people on all sides of the, uh, political spectrum, just because uh, there there are things that we will put out that just follows the law. And if it's not clear in the law, then we don't put out a policy on it. we might put out
016some advice for you to talk to your attorney, but if if there isn't clear statutory or um administrative rule provisions or some something like that, uh we won't go outside the law. So, we we pride ourselves in that. We think that our policies are are overall nonpartisan in every way. And it's a it's a regular discussion um among uh all the associates in the state and and with the company as well that we sort of just stay on the the straight arrow and don't let any partisan issues influence what we what we're doing. We have a proactive and systematic process. You'll see that in a minute when we talk about the updates. Um, obviously the velocity of state and federal law and rule changes is something that is is very valuable to people. Neiola spent,
017I think, $300,000 on its uh title N policy. Um, uh, and then spent another 100,000 when one president changed and then spent another 100,000 uh, reviewing everything uh, and reversing the policy backwards. So, we have a we have a lot of uh um a lot of expense, but we can share it over a lot of clients. But those type of policies are something that would be fairly expensive for a district to do on its own. And hopefully we're able to provide that at a a very cost-effective price. So overall what we hear if you all are going to the school board convention here in January probably the number one thing we hear from all of you as board members is that this is a primary function for a board um to oversee policy and set
018direction and uh we often have folks come to us and say we just have a piece of mind knowing that we're up to date and the policy books that I drafted in districts you you the districts that are joining now tended to have good policy work as as you did, but there were some, you know, earlier that we would end up with policies that were, you know, 40 or 50 years old. Um, and the the policy book had never really been looked at in the district. So, it's nice to bring uh that type of district up to date and in a good place. Uh, we do assure that we have that our client that our our policies are legally compliant. Um and we as a part of that guarantee or assurance um would be involved
019if there was some question of the policy with our attorney helping your attorney to determine um you what the next move might be if there's some type of question over our policies. Um it's it's important I think to always try to follow our language. Um especially on some of the critical policies like non-discrimination, title n um but obviously policies like facility rental and things like that every district does completely different. You gain from the experience of other districts. Most of our updates that we do, I would say about third, a third of the material comes from um our attorneys or some change in the law and the other twothirds comes from client experience that they bring to their associate. Then that associate proposes um at one of our update planning meetings to consider changing this
020policy maybe because it wasn't clear or this suggest this uh suggested addition and things like that. Um even uh your district when we put out the act 20 reading policy, you can imagine that goes to all the director of instructions across the state and a lot of them have uh really good ideas. So that policy will probably keep evolving. Uh the AI policy, we're coming out with a a new AI policy. A lot of that policy work came from feedback from districts and other resources as well. Um, so you have a local policy manual and then um you also have a number of policies that are yours, your combined policies. So you always have access to all our templates. It's not a one-time thing. In essence, you're always able to look at any of our
021most current templates and policies. No two districts look alike in the Neola Ecosphere. We have um uh we have lots within our policies. We have lots of choices for boards depending on uh legal choices but cho depending on how they want to handle particular situations and things like that. Um two policies I can think of the social media policy offers everything from your your social media page is closed to comments whatsoever to having it having it be somewhat of an open form. Our student publications policy has everything from really strict control over student publications with a lot of oversight to uh what what the uh student um student association for um for student publications. Uh they would like to see it very very open where there isn't really any restrictions on what students could say
022or write in a student publication. And so when you draft that policy, you have the opportunity to make choices um and that are board choices that will uh will represent what you as a board feel is best. Where we're at today is we're heading into updating your your policies. And uh just to kind of give you an idea here, um you uh the committee and the board has have reviewed any old templates and for the most part there's still a few here and there, but they're active and you have active policies. Um we look through your existing policies and match them up and we did some reing of your policies. If it's one that you had before with an old number, we made it fit into the Neola numbering system. Then you've approved your final
023policy manual and you've made that active. And now the last thing on this list is to complete the NEOLA updates missed. So while you were drafting Niola every six months was updating all of its policies and generally those updates involve um anywhere from 30 to 40 policies and then there also are some technical corrections like legal citations or maybe uh typographical errors that people will catch. Those are considered technical corrections and those um I believe by your board policy 131.1 can be um can be done by the superintendent and we never put a technical correction out that our attorney doesn't confirm that it would fit under the definition of a technical correction. So we uh the big next step is to start to go through and update all your existing policies. you've done this work
024in good time. You finished, I think, pretty close to two years. Um, and if you look at when your drafting actually started, it's almost two years to the date. And that's our goal that a district will complete in two years. So, you've completed that goal. Um, there are there are districts that I still work with that are five years in the drafting. And then I've had districts that complete their drafting, you know, in less than a year. It just depends on what the structure is and what the board interest is and a lot of other a lot of the other matters. Our next goal for you would hopefully be by 3126 to get NEOA updates 341, 342, and 34 and 351 applied to your policies as you were drafting. if you hadn't touched a section.
025So, let's say when you first started you were just doing uh the board bylaws, the um the zeros, uh if if an update came out, I went ahead and updated the templates to the most current templates. So, you don't necessarily have to do uh update everything that's in those updates, but for the most part in 342, um that one pretty much everything needed to be updated. And then uh 351 351 will come out sometime around November 15th. So we'll add that um to your work. The update process again comes from legal counsel suggested changes from you uh and associates uh finished drafting in water maybe I think it's been like two years ago and as they were drafting the board president who was also the policy committee chair had a question about the wording of
026uh it was dealing with supervision of students when they're on-site or off-site or at activities or things like that and he said I really think this should be made more clear and here's here's what I think would be a good idea. So, I opened up the policy. I made an edit to it. I put it in the book for the next update for considerations. Then, coincidentally, I went to their first meeting like this where they were going to take on their first update. And uh I I can't tell you how good it felt for him to see that his change was already in the next update, that he'd been listened to, and it was a great change for all our clients. So that one board member through a suggested change changed that particular wording paragraph
027towards end of that policy for all 370 districts. So together we're better. We're going to make um better policy. Sometimes boards were board members will suggest things that don't u make it through the update process or administrators will suggest some changes. Sometimes we'll s suggest them as associates. But in the end, we meet for a day and a half, cover every suggested update, and then from there, we we make the next update, which again is 351 coming out November 15th. Um, for the update process, uh, as as part of what you what you pay for um, the two updates a year, which is, I think around 3600, $3,600. you get two on-site visits and six hours of of my time to meet in whatever way you want. I can meet with a policy committee to
028cover an update um or I can meet with the as I've done here meet with the superintendent and we go through it and he brings the changes uh for you all to discuss uh in this type of meeting. So um uh in addition to that um in included in that cost is providing um the policy part of board docs that was created just for Niola. Um and then also um you get the opportunity certainly to call us, ask us questions um and things like that. We don't uh we don't charge like an attorney or something like that. If it's something that's going to take quite a while, we might need to charge a client, but for the most part, we're able to get that done. I will say this as an aside. Lynn, are you
029still there? >> Yes, I am. >> Lynn is uh and and Jared for that matter, but Lynn is the person that I talk to a lot in terms of planning these type of things or these need to be added to our active policy or we have a question about this or that. Uh Lynn is outstanding at doing that. Um, at one point I was working with over 60 districts at once and uh, out of all the administrative assistants that I've worked with, uh, she would be in my mind one of the best. So, you're really lucky to have her. She's done a lot to help facilitate this process. And if you want to give her a stand right now, you can. and I'm just not there to >> um I want to show you I
030want to show you now uh like where the updates are uh located in your board docs. Um so I have two different things opened here. First um this is where we prep the updates and this is what I we only went through. Uh this is this is actually two different updates. We went through these and we only went through the end of the 4000s because at that point you still had some 5000s and 8,000s out there I believe that you were doing and we thought this would be a great start for for the committee. I'm going to show you an update in a in a minute here, but um sort of a sample of one of them, but I like to mark them up with an NC or a C. and NC stands for no
031choice. That NEOLA updated the wording in the policy, but they didn't add any new options or anything like that. And then if it has a C next to it, there's something that that either uh Jared would decide and send it to you for your approval or sometimes there are things that it's just best for the board to decide. One of the things recently in updates was about board members attending uh meetings virtually and how that's how that's noticed and and things like that. Those are usually decisions that the board directly probably would want to weigh in on um or like the board ethics policy, things like that. But for the most part, other than the bylaws, which are the zeros, um the administration will bring recommendations to the policy committee. If you want to get
032through your work a little faster because you're going to be reviewing, I would guess, say your policy book is 420 policies, you're probably to get updated with these three updates, you're probably going to be reviewing about 80 changes to policy. Um, so sometimes what uh when these are all put out for you to look at, sometimes uh if the policy committee wants to run it this way, they say if there's any of the ones that have no choice. So like if we look at board powers here, um all they added was or otherwise under the supervision of school authorities. Coincidentally, this change is the one that came from Waterlue. So that's kind of a kind of a So that must be in that must be like in 34 one. Um so this this this is
033the change and the suggestion sometimes for a committee especially when you're going through the updates for the first time is to say anyone can bring up a policy that's a no-choice policy because they just have questions or want it explained or things like that or uh but anyone's with a choice. we're going to discuss and make sure we're comfortable with a choice that's made. So, you might come to a committee meeting and let's say there are 20 of the policies don't have a choice in them. Uh given an invitation for anybody who would like to discuss any no-choice policy, that would be the start. And then after that, you would work through the ones with a choice. That can save you some time. In addition, um when you when you look at uh the update,
034so I have the update um right down here. This is these are the actual updated templates. So we show how they were um you know how they were updated. Each update um so this is update uh 331. I think I actually misspoke. I think we start with 331. I think that was wrong in the slide. But every policy we update this is really a prep document for the administration and the board. We explain like what revision we did in there. and we'll often put recommended but not required. Recommended for consistency um just to kind of give boards a heads up. The the update summaries are written by uh Renie Lewis and Lacy. So that's where these come from. And for every policy that you're going to be considering, you will be able to find at
035least this rationale uh behind behind it as a part of the process. All right. So, one of the policies I just thought I'd show you is the start college now program. Um, uh, we, um, have added a policy title here. Um, generally, if we go into a policy, um, and it has pronouns, we change those. Um, I wasn't aware, but, for the most part, um, uh, all legal writing now does not use, uh, pronouns. So that's at least part of the reason for that, but we aren't worried about it. So we just make the change when we actually update a policy. Then we added a section called other instructional costs in addition to tuition. Um, and just because that was something that we thought was important to help guide the district, we added calendar days
036there. And that's that's the update and one that doesn't necessarily have a have a choice behind it. um your purpose today and uh I'm happy to help but I also know that um I've met with Jared and Lynn and I know some of the administration had feedback on these but your purpose today is to start to get through this list of policy policies all the way through the 4000s and then once you get that get done with that we'll come back we'll do the 5000s and then when 351 comes out November uh 15th or will um be in a position to either add this to add that to the list or wait till this gets sent in and approved. The next update after the one in November comes out in uh in May, I think
037right around May 15th of next year, 2026. So, you have a you have a fair amount of time. I thought that trying to get these done by March um would be great and probably we would send them into production with a rush saying please clean these up and make them active. Whenever Niola changes a policy um under under your tabs on board docs uh when when you approve a change we retire that policy and it's always available for you to see. So, um, eventually the retired area will end up with quite a few policies that are the result of all of all the updates along the way. And we also store and archive all the work you turned in. We have a record of all the work you did when drafting with the with the
038original markups before they were cleaned up and made active. So, we try to keep a a really good record of everything um a district is uh is doing. Um, some of it some of it is visible to all of you. Some of the things we keep in an archive that we can bring over to your site um if you need it. We just don't want uh the sites to get get crowded or get confused confusing, but you have access to any of the work you've done along the way. I think that's it. Are there any questions at all from the committee? >> Not for me. Perfect. >> Jared, sorry. Go ahead, Scott. >> Oh, uh, Jared, do you want me to stick around here or do you want to just start covering with the committee
039the update that we reviewed together? It's totally up to you. >> Yeah. Well, I will leave it up to the committee. Uh, do you guys want him to stick around for extra help or do you want us to start digging in? Because I will tell you that um the ones listed here, like Scott said, um Lynn and I met and and some administration along the way, we went in and for all the no-choice ones, we wanted to just make sure that that aligned with um the work we had previously done and and we accepted uh in the draft form those changes that we were uh looking to make. Okay. through all those and then uh the ones where there was choice uh we picked the choice you can see which choice we picked but those
040are all up for your suggestion but we picked the choice that we thought best fit our situation what you as a board would probably give us direction but if you want to go in a different direction that's totally up to you too but uh we wanted to try to get ahead of the work for you uh and to give you an idea of what the administration might see are good choices remember those are just suggestions right? You you are the final decider and aimer policies and so we just tried to give you a little bit of look and guidance as to what the administration might think but we're happy to go any which way you need us to. So >> sure that sounds great. Um Scott honestly if you could stick around I think it's
041a great opportunity for us to be able to ask some questions. I know you're not uh necessarily like the end all beall of information at Miola, but I would love to have you stick around. So, while we talk about a few of these, we could maybe get some of your insight. It might be a little bit more helpful. And that way, I don't have to put Jared on the spot. Usually, he's the guy that I'm like, "Jared, why is this going on?" And he's like, "Let me talk to someone." So, you might be able to give me a little bit more information there. Um, and I'm sure I'm not the only person on the committee who has questions uh after looking through the policies. So I would like to put it to other committee members
042before I uh start off on mine. Um >> I have well I have three things. >> Okay. >> What's your first? >> So if we look at PO 1100 this is really just a clerical like um the third paragraph doesn't have I think it's supposed to say super in the third paragraph the first sentence. So um are you in ours? Yes, I think so. >> Is this the right spot? You can you do do you want to share a screen there and I can just follow along on an extra screen here or do you want me to keep sharing my screen? >> Yeah. So, the third paragraph starts with shall instead of like I'm assuming it's supposed to be the super shall continuously monitor the effectiveness of the district organizational plan and >> Yes. >>
043So, it's really just a typo kind of thing for that. >> Got it. Thank you. >> Got it. Yes. >> And you need a second one. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Not a problem. Is that a change one or a nonchange? >> It's a non change. >> It's 1100. >> Oh, it's 1100. >> So, it's the third paragraph one. I just think that super needs to be added. Superintendent needs to be added in front of the third paragraph. >> Okay. And then 11:30, the ethics and conflict of interest. Um, in the third line there's just a double word. I think it's shall. Shall is listed twice. >> Which one? >> Um 11:30. >> I know. I'm sorry. Which paragraph? >> Um, it's a I'm sorry. It's under a. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> Uh, duties is
044actually >> Okay. Yes, it is duties. Yeah. Um, and then the last thing is just a question. So, board powers 0122. I'm wondering why it doesn't list in there that part of board powers is um to select curriculum for the district. Maybe that's addressed in a different policy. But I'm just wondering why it's not listed in the board power section that we have to decide on the curriculum the district's going to be using. Scott. >> Um, I mean, a couple things. I I I don't know if that wouldn't be a bad addition in the area in the 2000, which is instruction. It makes it pretty clear that all curriculum has to be approved by the board as in other words, the board directs the um the superintendent administrative team to bring curriculum. But that's an
045interesting question on on board powers. I will uh I will take that back and maybe you'll see it in May. So um but that's a that's a good question. >> We can can we adjust it as needed for our district currently or >> Yeah. I don't think I mean >> updates, >> right? I I think a lot of districts, you know, make changes like that. And, you know, the only the only key thing I don't think there's going to be an issue with this because I'm certainly I think we're all well aware that that is a responsibility of the board and a power of the board, but uh there's sort of two ways to do it. One is you can make the change and you know, I'm going to I know I'm going to submit
046it. So, you'll likely see that change if it's something that the attorneys and the rest of the group feel is necessary. You'll see it then, but you will have already you will have already made it in your own policy. It might be worded a little differently than what you you'll word it and maybe you'll change our wording or you know or not. Um if it's if you were asking a question for something that like none of us knew the answer to um like uh a question that needs you know research or something like that. As long as it's not like immediately critical, I would put that in the next update and try to get an answer for you. If it's something that that that we look at, run by, you know, our supervisor and that
047person says, "No, we need that answer now." That's that's that's that's something really important, then we'll just do it right away and get you an answer on it. >> So, we'll just consult with our legal counsel. But, this one would be one I think you um you you could put in. I I don't know if like there's so many board powers that that this is quite kind of the catchall exercise of powers and discharge of specific duties >> imposed by state law and whether for some reason these were the ones that um that that we consider the most important but um certainly that would cover anything that the law says is your responsibility board business openly. I mean all those are more generic catchalls for everything >> but I don't see um a harm in
048saying you know to uh review and establish curriculum you know I think it would be worthwhile uh from my own experience I think it would be worthwhile to list that >> all good I know I'm just going to get totally thrown off if I hear my own voice like we were talking about earlier uh so from my own experience I know that I've heard from several members of the community who asked about curriculum adoption pro proceeds because we've been talking about that recently and although we don't list every board responsibility due to the length I think it's useful to have that in a sort of summary policy like we have in 0122 so I would say would other members of the committee be interested in having that change come forward adding that on probably between
049J and K' >> awesome that sounds Right. I think uh E- without and I it depends on if you want it to stand on its own or if you want to embed it into E where it talks about strategic planning. It talks about improving student learning, establishing annual goals, continuous instructional improvement, monitoring progress. I think there you could say also adopting curriculum and curricular materials and it just be part of E and it would uh do us well just there unless you wanted to stand on its own. I don't >> put that you put that at the beginning and >> yeah right that's why I said exactly it would fit into either E or do another on its own that's up to you guys how you want to do it. I personally feel that it
050would make more sense as a standalone item that's more about strategic plans and the organization side of things whereas curriculum is more about it's almost a purchasing uh situation where we're selecting which items to purchase for the district. So I would say that and that would be a better place to put it if we're just thinking about the layout either before or after e' be a good place to put >> just one thing I'll share with you. You might notice that this policy at the bottom has the Neiola copyright and the Watertown Unified School District. So all of these items A through K came from your original policy. This is the total length of our board powers policy. >> Um so I mean I think it's awesome but you're you're you're actually I don't know
051that we'll it will make it to a suggestion because we don't do the whole list in the way we present board powers. Um, so I doubt that it will end up being changed uh in this, but what you're really editing is your original policy. I I suspect that you had prior that you combined or customized to make this policy. >> Sure. Sure, that makes sense. So, yeah, I think we can add that in. Is everyone on the committee good with adding it in between uh D and E then? Okay, cool. Yeah, I think that's the best place. >> Yep. between uh I'm sorry between D and E or would you doing it between J and K? >> Uh do it between D and E. We talked about how that kind of fits in with uh
052>> close better. >> Yeah. Close into E. Yeah. >> Okay. And it's review and established curriculum. >> Yep. >> And approved curriculum materials. >> Yeah. All right. And then once Lynn has that, you had a third item. >> I did. >> Okay. I do have a question. >> You do have a question. All right. Go for it. >> Okay. So, in 3120.04, 4 um third fourth paragraph down first first cross out >> um we removed >> it's uh employment of substitutes >> okay yes >> we removed the um requirement for a criminal history record check for substitutes is that because it's somewhere else >> yeah it's a it's a struck paragraph Just to recap, first page, >> fourth paragraph down in green. >> Yeah, we have I mean we have a policy called criminal background
053checks that >> requires that for I know all those positions, but um I'm just going >> had us take that off. Okay, that's what I thought. But I thought, well, you never know. >> Yeah. >> Thank you. >> It's just too hard deal. So, >> so I guess I I would ask the question then. Um, why wouldn't it why wouldn't we want to reiterate that this is where they would look for that? >> I tend to agree with Craig on that. >> Yeah, because it does talk about a satisfactory background check in the third paragraph. So maybe we would just want to put like as a sort of footnote the number of the policy that refers to those background checks. >> I'd rather repeat the same information in multiple policies than have people have to
054look through our entire policy book to find one policy with that information that could be reiterated elsewhere. >> Okay. So the the one thing I will say to this that um uh in a previous district, different time, right? a different attorney. They really tried to strive to not have duplicative language because when attorneys start interpreting uh duplicative language unless it's exactly the same, right? you may end up having one word that changes what you said in that policy uh versus this policy and then you have cancelling policies and then it becomes much harder to depend and that was their response to it and they they encouraged not duplicative language. If you have it somewhere, you can always at the bottom of this one reference that language in a different policy, right? Do a reference at
055the bottom to a different policy and then people would look for that policy. But that was the reasoning, >> right, >> of why you wouldn't want to necessarily do that, >> right? So, just just real quick, I don't want to interrupt you. This is the original template, and I can tell it's it's either been updated since you drafted or or you maybe changed a language. I suspect it maybe has been updated because of the similar question. But um with the most current template um it says uh verify a satisfy background check, criminal history check has been conducted by department of public construction appropriate state agency and authorized authorized district personnel or a contracted vendor. And I think the rationale for that, at least in the the Dayne County area, all of us run our sub
056programs uh through a vendor, um was part of the way that we were able to hire retired teachers um to to teach for us and also it was it it gave us a larger larger pool of subs. So um I'm not sure when that u when that change came in. I'm going to have to look and see or I'm going to have to look and see what you all turned in for your work and whether for some reason that was changing the work that you turned in. But um I think like this paragraph right here um would uh if we if we put it right here. Are you in there right now, L or not? I don't know if you're in >> Are you are you in the policy that policy? And you have it
057open. >> I do not know. No. >> Um, so I'm confused. That is in the policy. It wasn't removed. It does say there >> this this would be um, you know, I I bring all the update material over. I I take it would take a few minutes to check and see whether this was something that I missed. But this is the language in the template now which might answer the question um you know for all of you. >> I have a followup question for Scott. >> So what's the difference between a satisfactory background check and a criminal background check? >> Yeah. um there can be things in someone's background that isn't a part of a criminal history but gives concerns on whether that employee should work you know in your district. So um it just
058it really depends on like how far you know you go in terms of uh in terms of a background and what things you want to look at. I think the practice for most districts is to um uh really rely on the criminal history, not necessarily um you know investigating other areas in people's lives or things like that. But um uh I I don't know if there's a difference between a satisfy background and criminal history. Um, it's really for most of us it's what it's what comes back from DPI or uh the Department of Justice when you do the background check as well as DPI because if you're getting licensed by DBI to be a substitute, you um you're going to end up having a background check as a part of that license. But I don't
059know that I can honestly differentiate between the two. >> I'll give an examp I'll give an example that we've used. Um yeah uh somebody has been uh dis dismissed from employment for whatever reason at another place. That reason wasn't criminal dismissal. It was they just weren't a good employee, right? We do the background check and we found out that they got released from employment. We follow up and ask why and then we find out. It wasn't something criminal, but it was just like does that pass our background check? Probably not. We don't want to hire somebody who was dismissed for reasons that were criminal but weren't good. >> Sure. >> Go ahead. >> But I'm also wondering if you're also creating a loophole on the on the other side of that coin. If somebody interviews
060and says, "Well, I paid my debt to society and but I can't pass a satisfactory background check." >> Yeah. It's >> so maybe you still want that in there. >> This this was this was this was a discussion in another state not too long ago about another school district >> who changed their policy, >> right? >> Um and so we want to make sure that we are covered here, >> right? Yeah. Well, it looks like what Niola is giving us, what Scott's talking about is actually having a slightly altered version of that third paragraph that does include the phrase criminal history. >> Um, so I think uh the change that Scott is making there uh looks good to me. I read the language in there. I actually appreciate that it expands to DPI, state agency,
061authorized personnel or contracted vendor. Um, so I think overall that looks like a an improvement on the whole discussion and option as you brought it up. So yeah, I would be happy with that change that Scott made right there. It's a lot of words, so I'm not going to state the whole thing out loud. >> Sure. >> Thank you, Scott. >> Yes. Thank you very much. >> You're welcome. >> Any other questions, Lori? >> Um, same problem with the um what was it? Uh 3120.08 I had the same question satisfactory background check with no criminal background check. >> Oh yeah that's in the >> same issue different policy. So 3120.08. >> Yeah. Third paragraph from the bottom >> on the first page. Yeah I see that. Yes. >> Um, >> it's right below the green
062high text. >> Yeah, I notice again that this has your your copyright on it. So, I just wanted to see what we have that might be different. Um, what's Can you repeat the question? >> Yeah. So the um so underneath the struck out option two highlighted text it says the superintendent shall require a little bit further down from there at the very end there's a statement about uh the last sentence starts on the third line right there there must also be verification that the WUSD through appropriate state agencies or other applicable means has conducted a satisfactory background check and so perhaps adding >> yeah adjusting that so it says conducted a satisfactory background and criminal history check would be appropriate but >> yeah that so that's that's again that's your custom language so I think
063however you'd like to change it you can it's not in our actual policy >> yeah so if we could add the phrase >> I do not >> so it's on 31208 Right. Uh it is the second paragraph from the bottom of page one >> starts with coaching and advisory. Okay. >> The last sorry it's the one before that the superintendent shall start with >> it's the last part of the last sentence of that paragraph >> adding the words uh Sam will again >> criminal history >> background slashcriminal history check. >> Yeah. Perhaps >> I should probably say background and criminal history chat because we don't want one or the other. We both background and criminal history is better than slash. >> And I have a couple more questions. >> Okay. On the same policy. >>
064Okay. Just want to make sure. Do we have any other questions about this policy that we're looking at before we move on to the next question? No, >> go right ahead. >> Okay, so 0144.5 page three, second paragraph under board interactions with staff, it says, "No board member had has inherent authority to require any staff member to respond to the board member regarding specific a specific request for information. Can you clarify that because we ask for information all the time and and and I just thought that was kind of odd. >> Can I have that location one more time? >> Uh 01 144.5 >> page three second paragraph under board interactions with staff. >> I can clarify that if somebody would like me to. Um, basically you can ask that to provide information. However, they
065don't necessarily have to comply with you. The um the individual that you would direct those questions to would be the superintendent. >> Okay. >> And that's so it just it just seemed odd because in the course of >> Yes. you know, you know, if if we have something some question for, you know, the business manager about, you know, finances. >> This is why I've always said to you guys, >> CC, you know, >> it's like whether whether or not you want to put it in policy or whatever. It's just good practice to let me know you've made those requests. >> Yeah. Because if it does become an issue where you feel like um you've been asking and asking and asking, instead of getting frustrated, first call should be to me. Yep. >> And say, "Hey,
066I just want you to know I I made an ask for this." >> Okay. >> Because then I can say, "Hey, uh I know a board member is looking for this information from you. >> U would you please give that to them?" >> Sure. >> Because then then they know they've been directed by somebody who can direct them. >> So far, >> because our board policies say you don't direct them. So far it has not been a problem but I thought it was odd. So yeah. >> So it's this structure function. So I would put forward Ben and I'll put this to the committee that perhaps we adjust that paragraph for the purpose of clarity um because it obviously caused confusion for you when I saw it. I had a question about it as well.
067That was one of the ones I was going to bring up. Um so that uh we take that clause uh to require any staff member to respond to the board member regarding a specific request for information to put that clause at the uh after perform or not perform any task except as provided by board policy or directed by majority vote of the board. We discuss the request for information and we put a clarification in that the request for information should go through the superintendent and that the superintendent will ensure that that information is provided to that board member in a timely fashion. >> Yeah, however you however you guys want to do it that's fine. Um just it's it's more of a a structures old chain of command discussion, right? Uh, and I think every
068board that I know of in the state of Wisconsin, right, they say this at every function I go to, like you guys hire one person, it's me. You direct one person, it's me. You hire me to direct everybody else, >> right? I haven't seen it here, but I've been in places and especially when there was union activity, people would be like, I don't care that you're a board member. I have I have a boss in the chain of command and this is my supervisor. if you want that information, speak to them. And they've been that bold before in the past, >> right? Because they're working the policy. >> And I just want you guys to know like I don't see that ever happening here. Um, usually it's more of a, "Oh, man. Yeah, that's right.
069Dad, it's super busy. I need to get to that, right?" And then I go, "Well, yeah, yes, you do because now you're being directed to get to it. So, please let's let's make sure that happens." Okay. >> But if if you want to clarify that more here, that's fine. But it's also clarified in other policies, right? It was it was more of a question about like because I I was told, you know, if you if you need to find out about some details about finance, talk to Sarah, you know. So, so it was more of a okay, what does this really mean? So, yeah. >> And and I do that all the time. I say, hey, if you get, >> you know, you guys meet with administration all the time, >> Right. And that's why
070I said, you know, um just know that if if there's something that I think you you think I need to know or or you're not getting what you need, tell me right away so I can >> Okay. >> You know, help that along. >> Yeah. I I think also in boards that tend not to work well together. Um, sometimes what happens is you may have one board member who feels like they want to have some sort of a quest to go to request a bunch of information and take the the the administration down a a path that the board is not necessarily on on uh the same uh wavelength with, >> right? in which case you kind of want to have a policy in place like this that kind of prevents that from happening. >>
071I'm I'm fine with that. I just like I said it's it's not how I've been doing things and I'm like, "Oh, >> is there a problem?" >> Yeah. So, >> Alison, we've had situations like that before and then first thing I do is I go to and I say, "Hey, I'm getting you a request from a board member. Is this a board member or is this a committee uh thing that I may have missed or is this something your board wants in general? How do you want me to handle this request for information? >> Okay. >> So, sometimes I ask that too. >> Yeah, I I think it's fine to leave it in place. I just was curious >> because the other weird uh dichotomy between that is right um as an individual board member,
072right, you also don't direct me. the only individual board member that directs me >> through your direction is the board president, >> right? Or it's you as a group or as a committee direct me. Right. >> Right. Uh and so there will be sometimes where like you let's say Sam would ask me a question. I'll be like, "Oh, thank you for that." And then I would call up the board president maybe and say, "Hey, just got this question from a board member. How do you want me to go about handling this? How do you want me to organize this information?" So because it wasn't a board directive, it was initiated by one person on the board. >> Sure. Sure. Yeah. I was thinking more in terms of just to request for information rather than a
073directive of any kind. So >> So then we have two options. We can leave it in place kind of like you floated out or we can move that statement to the end and we can have a clarifying statement about requests for information. I because I do think that requests for information sit a little bit in a gray area. If it requires a specific action by someone, then you are requiring them to act, which only the full board has the authority for. But I like I said, I think that's a little bit of a gray area because not all requests for information require that level of action. Um, again, if I go to Sarah and ask Sarah for a piece of information and it's not um the example I always use is handcopying three books uh
074out of uh such and such's classroom, that's an unreasonable request. If it's hey uh can you tell me where to find this? That should be able to be fulfilled without um the specific request of the whole board. Uh sometimes a board member just wants to find that further information. If we want to add adjusting adjusting language, clarify that, we can. But David and Tammy, do you guys want to see a change or are you okay with leaving it where it is? >> I'm okay with what you've been saying. Makes sense. >> So, I don't see a big change needed in my mind. >> Okay. Well, in that case, if we've got two board members who are or committee members, I should say, who are okay with leaving it as it is, then we'll leave it
075as it is. That's cool. >> What do you think, Danny? >> Um, it was clear to me, but just because I know the background. >> Okay. >> You know, but I understand how it could be misconstrued. So, >> like I took that statement as like I couldn't go and ask a teacher for something, >> you know, like walk into a classroom and say, "I need blah blah blah blah blah." >> I if I can add one more thing. Yeah. Really quick. Um I think where it tends to be a little bit confusing and become an issue is in an instance where a board member may be requesting information that would normally be uh provided through an open records request to to another yeah like member of the public. And if if the board member a
076board member doesn't check their uh regular civic rights at the door to be able to give information um because they're a board member. So sometimes the language in this can awfully look like that's what's happening. >> Sure. You know. >> Absolutely. Okay. As long as we've got that understanding, I think we can move forward. if no one wants to clarify it, but that would be my purpose in clarifying it. >> I don't I don't have a suggestion to make it better. So, >> yeah, I didn't either. That's why. >> Yeah, >> all I was going to put in is all board member requests for information shall be directed to the board president and superintendent who shall fulfill the request in a timely manner, but we don't have to put it in there. I, you know,
077I could I can go either way. And it doesn't sound like you guys have an issue with leaving it how it is. So I just typed that up if that's where people wanted to go. >> Clarity and good policy is a virtuous thing. >> The only difference is I don't want to necessarily be the curator of of the records which or policy um definitely stays as the u is the superintendent. So >> yeah. Okay. >> Leave it as. >> Okay. Sounds good. All right. Any other questions, Lori? or was that the last of yours? >> I just had one one more clarifying question. Um 144.5 uh board expectations and the title also says collective commitments. Um and I I I didn't see any of our collective commitments in there. I saw a lot of other
078disjointed things. Um, so I was just wondering what the history was behind that and if that is a place that we put our collective commitments because that's what the title says. >> You would I don't I don't know that I have a a great answer for that. I've also just been trying to while we're talking here just understand what language is yours and what language you know maybe came from the like I said you all did a fair amount of custom work so this takes a little bit a little bit of time to um to chase that down but let me just look at the actual title first of all to verify that that's our title that's probably where I need to start here >> I don't believe it is your title It only has
079the >> trademark. >> It's Yeah, PO 144.5NC is the code. >> Yeah, I see it. Um, so I'm just looking at it right now on a different screen here. Yeah, that's our title. So, you're right there. I guess I probably should have figured that because it didn't have a water town. Um Um No, I take it back. Our title is board member behavior, communications, and code of conduct. >> We use the word collective commitments here instead of code of conduct. That was switched when we made that change. >> So, is this the place we're going to put the collective commitments? >> We replaced the alphabetical list with the ones that we have written recently. >> Yeah, >> it was a bit of a puzzle. I I believe that the intent was to add to this
080document the collective commitments not to necessarily replace uh the general expectations of board members. >> So will there be reduction >> because expectations are one thing and what you commit to as a group are another thing. So then what I would say is to simplify the conversation. Um could we take the section general expectations of all board members, compare it over the next month or or so? We'll talk about that in a in a little while. Uh and then kind of make sure there's no redundancy between this list and our collective commitments and then we can keep whatever is unique to this list. Add the collective commitments and remove all of the redundant ones from the general expectations list. we can um and going back to the conversation that we had around this, this is
081where we were getting like this is why we didn't add the collective commitments to this >> since we since we developed it >> because we said are we going to then go back every year we do a collective commitments >> and rewrite the policy every year. I don't know what you what you want to do. Um, >> in that case, >> and if you want to, we can. And it's really just totally up to you guys. >> It would be simpler to keep the the collective commitments separate and just strike and collective commitments from this document. >> Yeah. >> And just leave this document as Yeah. behavior and communications. Just have it say that instead. >> I think that makes sense. >> I'm here for you guys. >> That's their less work for these guys.
082make that simple. I I think Scott >> baseline standards then >> could be a little mucky next year you know >> a little could be very mucky but um so yeah I think that's a good idea Sam which is to take off the collective commitments piece just leave the title the way it uh was without the code of conduct or collective commitments piece >> and those would still remain a resource document an onboarding document um uh that we have but it doesn't necessarily have to sit in the policy piece which will would require you to every year change it because I'm sure every year you're going to tweak those collective commitments and I've seen boards uh even halfway through a year go like you know that colle that collective commitment is not really working for
083us let's reward it you know and so you know I think that's yeah I think that's great and I'm hearing general agreement from the committee so we can move forward with that just yeah super simple way better than doing >> Mr. the >> Yeah. Um All right. And then I have one question. Uh you guys covered anything I would have brought up. So that's great. I have one more question about this policy and then I'm done. >> Yeah. Yeah. This one 0144.5. >> Um I just wanted some clarification. Scott, you might be able to provide me with this. Uh, one of the updates that we see here is the addition of the word reputation on the second paragraph at the top of page one. Can you give me a little bit more background because I
084do think that the word reputation is a little bit ambiguous and I'm just wondering kind of what Neil where Neil was coming from on that. >> Yeah, let's take a let's just take a look at the the update overview real fast because that might answer the question. Just just confirming it. So that it's going to be 342. See if I got this right. clarifying language has been added to several provisions as well as direct reference to conflict of interest. So, um you know, if I uh if I could revisit my notes from that update meeting last I think it was April. I might be able to to tell you more. I think the they're recommended but not required but I don't know I don't know the genesis for it. I do have one other place
085I can look here. you all all of us take notes as we go through. Um the problem now is that I actually help run those um run those update meetings. So, uh I don't I don't always uh uh when the associate put in this request for this to change, there should be a record of of like if it came from the actual update uh recommendation of why it would be there, but I want to qualify to say that it might be in that policy that um that the idea was to add a direct reference to conflict of interest and then when everybody read through it or the attorney read through it they said I we think we ought to add this language here but I'll be able to tell you I think in a second
086here at least tell you if I if I do know the answer to that so appreciate your patience >> you go And while he's looking for that, the reason that I bring this up is because I have seen not here necessarily, but I have seen uh in various boards or groups when there are social issues or there are complex topics, people might bring those things up and try to articulate them. They might say something that sounds confusing and maybe uh looks bad to members of the public. I think the term reputation is so broad and so abstract it could mean so many things to so many different people that I'm a little cautious about that because I don't want to >> I think it's too speculative. >> Right. So here I I found I found
087out the back I found out the background on it. Am I interrupting anybody? I don't want to do that but I >> had >> Yeah. So I mean this just this just kind of shows you a little bit of the work that goes on behind the scene. This was for 34.2 to update. This is where everybody puts their suggestions in. This was associate Steve Valley and he was drafting with Indian Community School District and there at Indian School District as a part of their drafting they community school they actually uh would run our run our policies through their attorneys and for the most part um there weren't changes but evidently these changes came from Michael Best and Frederick Frederick which I believe is the law firm and then our lawyers looked it over and thought
088it was okay. But I I certainly don't think you should feel any pressure to to take that change. I don't I think for some reason attorneys thought it would help, but listening to the arguments that you're bringing forward or the questions you're bringing forward, I think that has real merit as well. So, but that was the that was the genesis for it. It came from an attorney review and another school district of that particular policy. So I suppose what I would suggest to the committee would be we hold off on that if we get further information that would clarify why the term reputation is added to this policy. We can always go in and add it later if we find that there is good reason. But I would be cautious about that because I feel
089like it uh feel like it puts a lot of demands on, you know, especially new board members who might come on into the coming months if we get new people. I just wouldn't want them to feel like they're not allowed to express or try to articulate an idea that they have off the top of their head. It's I don't think that would be necessarily fair to them. That's how I feel. Any disagreement there or would any everyone feel the same keeping the word reputation off of this policy for now? I personally don't think it should be on any of clarification. >> I agree. I agree. Okay. >> A chill speech of the board. >> Yeah. All right. We'll keep that off for now. >> The only thing I'll do as followup is just send the
090associate Steve Lali a quick note with the question because he might know more details like what the thoughts were directly behind it. Um, and if I get something back, I'll send it to I'll send it to Jared and he can share with you. >> Clarifying context, then maybe we add something that's a little bit clearer to the policy at that point. Thanks. >> Um, all right. Any other questions from policy discussion uh a all of these policies that we have here? >> No. >> All right. >> Thanks for joining us, Scott. >> Yes. Thank you very much. Hey, thank you all. Um, you guys are good, man. You know, uh, I happened to, uh, do a hike before I came and, uh, ended up, uh, and ended up actually sweating a little bit here and
091I couldn't figure out if it was from the hike or from the hot seat of visiting with the, uh, Watertown Policy Committee, but good work. you you you all are very very thoughtful and my uh >> my best to you and uh perhaps when we get into the next section I can pop in again just see how things are going or if I'm around I'd be happy to stop by but you're off to a good start. Thank you so much. >> Yeah, thank you Scott. It's great speaking with you. >> Have a nice day. >> You too. >> All right. Okay. Well, if we have no further discussion on uh item A, we'll move on to B, administrative guidelines for policy 2240, controversial issues in the classroom. All right. Uh Jared, I know that when
092last I spoke, uh it was with Jason Bull on the subject. Uh do you have anything to >> Yeah. So, um you all know that uh because of the Supreme Court um ruling, right? Controversial issues in the classroom has like that policy and conversely uh also not conversely but also in addition this AG were templates that Neola got on right away. And so when we first started the conversation about having an AG, uh Neila really didn't have one for us to look at and we were starting to think about and craft our own and we were crafting our own uh materials uh to to um instruct and then we were going to try to take the materials that we used to introduce the topic to staff and try to create an AG. I actually like
093what Neiola put together for an AG. Um we took that as well as um a a second um kind of ag combined them both because and then added a little bit of our own language that uh was clarifying language that we had talked about as a board uh and put it into this and I just want your rehaction to it um because I think um it does encompass quite a bit of the things that we were looking for and if there's anything else I would love to hear how you might change this or think about face differently. >> Go ahead, Lauren. >> Um, it looks good except for one question. Um on page on the last page, page two. >> Mhm. >> Um under the paragraph under alternative learning activities for opt out students, it
094says um board policy authorizes that such requests are to be honored if if the reason relates to a conflict between the subject subject matter and religious beliefs held by parents. Um in the policy we didn't >> it should be religious beliefs or personal conviction because that's that difference. >> We should add personal conviction there. You're >> right. Probably. Yeah. That was the only >> good catch. Good point. >> That was my only question as well. >> Y good catch because in our policy we we denoted it as for good reason. Yeah. >> Okay. Thank you. Yeah. >> Yeah. So second page um that opening paragraph under alternative learning factors. Good catch. One sec. Let me pull up our previous material that we had and I'll see about Yeah, here's my So, I I do like
095it. I agree with Lori, but I do think that we lose a little bit of the clarity that we had on the how to teach controversial issues uh tool or or reference that we were giving out previously. So I was wondering if we could take some of those points and merge those points in. So is that something that you already kind of tried to incorporate in this draft that's being presented here or >> what would you say? No, we were we were looking at this in comparison to that >> and we felt that this covered those statements um and actually covered them more broadly which gave like if if I'm using this as a as a guideline, I'd rather be broader in the guideline and more specific on the training than um get so specific
096on the guideline that we we can't I want to have broader authority to be able to say hey listen >> um here's where that where where you're thinking you're not meeting that right >> I always try to when I write policy or administrative guideline I try to give the administration and the board the broadest with which in we can interpret and react to a situation when it gets down to like special development materials and those other things you want those to be very clear and specific like we had them uh and we and we keep developing them. When it's policy or administrative guideline, I like it to be broad enough for our interpretation to be able to act and and respond to multiple different situations. And that's why we went with this and that's why
097I liked Niola's version of this because it was broad enough for us to be able to act in multiple different situations. That's my only like if you want to change it, I I'm not >> sure. No, I can definitely appreciate that. Um I think that the handout we were providing uh previously uh worked well maybe more on the level you're talking about >> and that's still going to be what we we direct teachers back to at the first level which is at the principal level train and in the building. >> Then if there is some discussion about like that's not being followed or through then we go to the administrative guideline and we reinforce with the administrative guideline and policy if we need to. >> Sure. Right. um for for all all those pieces. >>
098Yeah. So, I think that sounds good. I think that, you know, there's a little bit of ambiguity, although words are treacherous always. I think >> if you want to clear something up, let's clear up. >> Yeah. I would say letter D on the first page discusses views being derogatory, malicious, or abusive. And I definitely agree that we need to maintain civility in the classroom. However, I am concerned that with the idea that people will be, you know, maybe unfairly accused of holding a view that's derogatory, malicious, or abusive. Uh we've seen that happen. Um unfortunately, not recently, but we have seen that happen in this district in the past. Uh where teachers have accused children who in this case held a pro-life stance of uh being Nazis. That's specifically what the teacher told the child.
099Um and I would like to know if we're going to leave that in there because I understand the utility of having that phrasing in there. How are we going to ensure that uh students are not suppressed? >> How about how would you say it um uh of those views that is not intended to harm uh other students views or towards a particular group? >> Sure. Yeah, I think that sounds good. That does not harm >> derogatory, malicious or abusive. Yeah. and just say uh views that is not intended to harm other student views or towards particular or toward a particular group. >> That sounds good to me. >> That work for the members of the >> um derogatory, malicious, and abusive are are those legal terms though that we're losing >> because this is in
100the policy, right? >> It's a great point. >> True. And um I think a little bit back to what Craig was saying like whatever in a word like you know how he said uh you were saying like well if you use those words it could be interpreted to say like well I actually have a choice to go the other way with it. I I >> I want to remind the board like however you pick the words, >> right? Um within a a board policy and however uh the administration determines to um interpret the words of administrative guideline. We are the maker of those and we interpret those. >> Okay. >> Right. And if we interpret derogatory a certain way, we interpret a certain way. We inter the term harm in a certain way, we we
101do that in a certain way. >> So as an administrator, >> and I know that this that being said, I also know that anybody else in the world can challenge that with an attorney. I'm not saying that's the end all in the beginning, but I am saying that the start is we're the ones who implement policies and we're the ones uh who implement the administrative guidelines and we are also the ones who interpret them. >> Okay. So, >> and it's the consistency at which we interpret them that's going to be the >> based on based on your statement. What's your suggestion for clarity? >> I I'm clear either way. I hear what Sam is saying about how um it may be used to misguide or misinterpret a a reaction. >> Yeah. >> Right. >> It's
102harder to misinterpret harm because harm is a lot more in the eye of the beholder and the person who's judging what the eye of the beholder said that feels like harm or not harm. >> Yeah. It's It's broader. I would say maybe intentionally. If we just add the word intentionally, that would really help. Yeah. >> Yeah. Just right after not. >> Yes. >> Just put intentionally, >> right? Intentionally and use the same words here. >> Yeah. I'm I'm okay with it either way. I think what they were missing was the word intention. You know, the intention. >> I I agree with that. I like that change. >> Yeah, that's better because you got all kinds of interpretation of those words. >> I know. And somebody is so apt to be hurt that somebody else most
103the other people not but that person's going to really be hurt. I see that happening right now. >> Yeah. >> And you can you can certainly prove intention more than that. >> Yep. >> Yes. Yeah. >> Yeah. I like >> Absolutely. And that's easier for the teacher. And of course, as a clarifying point, we already have standards and policies in place that state that students cannot use obscene, vulgar language, slurs, things of that nature. So, it's not like, well, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. >> A student's not going to say, "Well, I didn't mean to be offensive when I said that word." Yeah. It's still there's an understanding that certain terms are offensive. So, I think that works. Uh any other questions? I do think that it looks good. Uh I think that this is good
104to move forward with as is. Um I did have one or two other questions, not so much about the document itself, but about some of the other elements that surround the controversial issues and it's a pretty big discussion. Let me know if this is better off to take to ED services, but I was wondering about um a I provided kind of a an example of a walkthrough of how do we like determining whether or not something is controversial and how it gets implemented in the class that will come walkad. I thought that was great. >> Um and then also uh we had previously talked I think it was not last month but the month before about um sending out these requests uh or or sending out notice I should say of controversial issues because we
105were experiencing a lack of clarity in the district about whether it should be for an entire class or an individual module and how we were going to do that. >> Right. I I think most of those >> uh other than maybe the last one, right? The last one I think was um an implementation discussion, right? I don't I think that there's clarity and I don't know that we're going to see that moving forward. If we do then I then I think yeah we got to come back and clarify that but I just think that that was an implementation issue but going going towards the other no I think it is uh and and >> good well yeah I mean and and if it's not right if it's not it's somebody who's just trying not to
106follow policy and making issue of it and we got other policies we can use to deal with that. Right. So, I I don't know if that's where you're going or not. If you're thinking there's an intentional willful uh neglect of following the following implementation discussion, but I'm going to go with um it's new. When things are new, uh people, you know, um need time to, you know, go through the new and we're all going to move forward the way we're intended. So, um positive attributes is what I like think about all the time. So with that uh moving forward I think the other things that you're discussing are things more aligned to pedigogy around the topic. Yeah, that is clearly at service stuff, right? That's not necessarily policy. It's it's defining better pedigogy around >>
107teaching these issues and leaning towards that. Those will also reinforce the policy discussion points and I think have us on a clearer path to um past implementation humps and into actual what we need to be doing. >> Okay, that sounds great. All right. Go ahead. Is is a student protected by his first amendment rights? >> Yes, >> we have students expression policies. I think uh student activism a couple of other ones. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> That means you can say anything. >> Um if you can't see theater, I understand all that, >> you know, but >> as long as they're not harming some other student, you're right. or being disruptive >> or being disruptive to other other students education or the educational process. >> So there are some confines even with protection speech. >> Yeah.
108>> That that are are controlled right of our environment. >> And this isn't talking about a teacher keeping a student from saying something. It's about whether or not the teacher encourages that language to move forward if that makes sense. So it's more about there is a pretty wide discussion there but this is more I think about verbal attacks towards other students in that context. So yes please encourage people even if it's disagreeing is is what this AG is saying but >> and listen >> disagreement isn't attack it's not the same thing. >> Yeah. It's like if Sam and I are talking and Sam thinks that you should get a free coffee from McDonald's and I think it's no dice and then I look at Sam and I say well you're just stupid. Okay. Well, then
109that would be malicious, right? Like now I am not addressing the issue. I am attacking Sam personally. >> So ad homonym is what they call that in the debate world. Yeah. >> I think that's questionable. >> Well, well, it's not that they can't say it, it's that this is a learning experience and they're learning to converse controversial topics >> and honestly >> in a in a productive way. So, it's it's it's part of the learning experience to not, you know, um insult people and and be unkind. >> Yes. I cannot stop you from saying that, Carl. Like, this is what I would say to a child. I cannot stop you from saying that, but I can tell you the consequences of you continuing to say that while you're here in the school district, >> right?
110I understand. >> You make your choice. I won't stop you from saying it. >> But know that what you say may come with consequences. When I went to school, I was sent to me. >> It's just I just asked question. >> It's a great question, Carl. I appreciate you asking it. And it's it's true. We should air on the side of free speech always. Um, but obscene language, uh, picking fights and things like that, a little bit different. It gets a little bit closer to fire in a theater. But I think that discussion has to happen and we've got uh ways of doing that. So >> on speech, but we are gonna say there may be consequences. >> Thank you, Carl. Okay. Um any other questions on 2240 then? Okay. Yeah. I'll send a follow-up
111email to you and Jenny about ad services because I'm there too. So talk about that. Uh if there's no further discussion on item B, we'll move on to C which is 0155 committees. Uh we had some discussion last month about this. >> Yeah. And I just want to make sure that I um you can see down below we've added well we've changed the educational services committee to focus on the things that I thought you said to that you wanted that to focus on. And we added the curriculum committee and put under the curriculum committee what I thought you said you wanted there. I'm okay to clarify any way, shape, or form. You guys are the ones who create the committees. You are the ones who design the work of the committees. Just want to make
112sure I capture it correctly. >> I was good with your clarification. >> Yeah, I think it reads really well. >> Yeah, agreed. Okay, cool, cool, cool. Okay. Uh, then we're moving on to item D, 0167.3, public comment at board meetings. I think that the two members who brought this up previously were Craig and Lori. So, I'll let Lori start as a member of the committee and then Craig, you can pick up where she >> and just so you know, we've just attached it. There's no changes that we've offered or offered. It was um a request of the committee chair to put this up for discussion. >> That's good because I've changed my mind on this several times. >> Um so, so I've really thought about this. I mean, we want people to be able to
113tell us what they think. Um, that's a very useful piece of information. Uh, and when you're, you know, when when you're about to cover an agenda, you want to concentrate on the comments on the the agenda you're about to cover. And so, um, initially I thought, well, let's put the general like comments about other things at the end. And um then I thought about well what if it's a long meeting and they have to sit through a long meeting right so um >> or they're a third ship person and the beginning of the meeting I can make but the exact can't right because that's what we've talked about that in the past >> right so so I came up with a a possible solution so what if at the very beginning you have 10 or
114however many comments that you guys decide are are reasonable for the first half on whatever topic and then the second half of the comment section right before the meeting will be only on the agenda items. So that way you can roll right into the meeting with those comments right there from the public. And that was my proposal. and you would keep the end >> and you keep the end. You you do whatever you want at the end. >> So what would the timing be on those two segments that you're discussing? >> That would be I would defer that to Craig because >> usually have >> he's got more experience with that. >> Right. So typically 15 minutes as well for possibly five members. Um and we are uh when we have people that want to
115participate the board has um aired on the side of listening to more. >> Mhm. So I you know I we're we're I guess I I value that but we also have a meeting to uh move forward with and you know the the board may be more interested in listening to uh commentary that's related to decision making that that is before them at that particular meeting. So I I don't know I don't know what the right course of action is. >> Okay. >> Can I offer this? Like I I I'm trying to think of that through the eyes of me being a commenter, >> right? U a lot of times when people come to the podium, they've got more than one topic they're wanting to address, >> some of them may be on the agenda, some
116of them may be general. And if I'm that person and I know you want agenda items closer to the meeting and general uh like I don't get two chances to speak there, >> right? >> So I'll I'll want to say them all anyway >> by three minutes. >> So I don't know how we would help them parse that out. >> Well, you >> because they're going to say what they're going to say in three minutes. >> It's it's not saying don't put the don't say anything about the agenda if you're talking about something general. It's the first the first half of the comment commentary section would be you talk about anything pertaining to the school district, right? The second half would be, you know, and that includes what's on the agenda, what's not on the
117agenda, you know, whatever. The second half would be focused on just agenda topics so that we could roll right into the meeting and focus on whatever they just said. Um, and yeah, you can remember all that and you can take notes, but it's um it's more efficient to to have the public comment on the agenda right before the agenda. It just makes sense. Okay. So, a couple things about that. All committee meetings, they should only be discussing things that pertain to the committee, right? Like they shouldn't be bringing any other discussions up that aren't specifically to that committee. >> That's correct. That's why we have >> and then during So, is this more pertaining to like the monthly board meeting? >> This is only pertaining to the monthly board. >> Okay. My personal opinion is
118I I don't want to dictate anybody's speech. I don't want We have no other commenters, but Miss Smith is not going to come up and give her statement because we've exceeded the open comment section and she's discussing something that's not agenda related. So, she cannot speak at the second hand of the comments before we initiate the meeting. Right? Like I don't want the community to feel like they have to present to us certain information. >> I think that they should be able to bring up anything that they find pressing. >> Yeah. >> David, do you have any thoughts on this? >> I'm I'm developing them. So I would say then as you continue to uh percolate uh I I would say that I generally agree with Tammy and I think that Jared raised a very
119salient point when he said that you're going to have a situation where people want to talk about two or three items. Maybe one of them is on the agenda, two of them aren't. And I think that more than that what ends up being and maybe this would be a positive thing I suppose with engagement but I think what would end up happening is people would say well um I'm going to talk about the three things I want to talk about and uh also I I really don't like or I do like the item D on the agenda and that's all I have to say about that you know so take two minutes and 55 seconds to talk about the things that you want to talk about take five seconds to talk about something that's agenda
120technically it fits that works. Now, if you were going to uh say you're only allowed to talk about the agenda during that second half, again, I think I just generally agree with Tammy. I would rather let people speak on what they want to speak on. That's where I stand at least. >> So, oftentimes you don't know that something's important to a community until the community presents it to you. And if we start guiding their speech, will we find out? >> And it's no secret that my favorite part of the day is the opening comments. I love it. Uh well, this came up because we already have limited time and um you know, anybody can email us, >> right? Uh and I want to hear about the agenda topics most before a meeting. And so I
121I'm fine with leaving it as an open forum to whatever, but I think it's more productive to hear from people on the topic that you're about to work on. >> Okay. Okay. So, can I ask you like from your experience since being on the board, how often have the people coming up to the podium specifically discussed or made a statement about what's upcoming on the agenda? >> I think about half the time. And do you think any like because I've only seen there's only been one board meeting since I've been on the board where we had to close down public comment before everybody got through their statements. >> Um maybe maybe twice >> since April. Yeah. >> Okay. >> So I don't know. I mean I'm good with whatever direction the committee goes in but
122I personally don't think it's necessary. >> Okay. I withdraw my my request. >> The only other option, let me throw it out there. I know you want to say something, but this might be kind of in line. So, I I definitely understand the utility of that. What I think would be reasonable at that point. If we were going to do that, if you were going to do a split, you would do 10 minutes of open comment, 10 minutes of closed comment, uh specifically agenda comment, and you would see how that goes for a month and see how that happens. If people are coming up and you're getting to that second half and it's like, "Okay, no additional comments." What you've done is you've essentially robbed two people of their opportunity to speak on things that
123they think are important if there were still additional people. Um, now if you wanted to, maybe you could say, uh, we're now going to transition to agenda relevant comments. If there are none, we will continue to take other comments. Does that make sense? Uh, I think that might be a possibility. I just wouldn't want to take away the opportunity from someone who wants to speak on something else. I wouldn't want to take that from I don't think that would be very fair. >> Can I give another thought after I've been deliberating? >> Yeah. >> Go ahead. >> We are already criticized somewhat heavily for restricting people's comments supposedly. Yeah. >> Even though you say what you say all the time, they still feel restricted. If we if we do anything more to restrict things, that's
124just another another stone to throw. >> Yeah. I don't really see. Yeah. >> Yeah. And I I think that I think your idea is a good idea for getting things done. It's not going to help us right now, I don't think, with the community. >> I certainly agree with you there. >> Go ahead, man. We see some of the same people every month getting up to speak and that may be restricting other people who would speak, you know, once a year because they're taking the three minutes. It would be like a call-in radio program where you can't enter contest, you know, and 90 days later you can answer again. But I'm just wondering if there's a way that we can let people who haven't spoken get a chance to speak first. >> That's >> Yeah.
125Can I That's a good idea, Tammy. You know it is. >> Can I share an exper not here? Um but um there was uh a time during COVID where there was a very um eloquent speaker happened to be um a physician uh in the area, right? Everybody took their comments or messages to him because it seemed like he he had some respect from the board and had just a a certain way of saying things differently. and he was the one that we just kept hearing from all the time. >> Okay. >> But he was representing a lot of other people. >> Mhm. >> Right. Um I don't know if that happens here or not, but I'm just saying I know from past like that that happened there. I don't know if we want to take
126the ability of of people to organize and have somebody who wants to speak for them um a pastor or whatever or whatever, right? that they're actually saying, "Hey, here's our issues. Uh, I get some protection from you going up there instead of me going up there." And maybe they listen to you better or not. I don't know. But >> okay. >> I I don't I don't want us to cap that. >> Yeah. >> For people possibly. >> I just know it's happened in the past. >> Yeah. I would at the end of the discussion I would still say I I don't see any direct benefit to uh altering the content of the comments section. Uh I would say maybe if we're worried about time, let's do a hard cap at 15 minutes at the beginning
127of the meeting and say, "Hey, this is because we got to get the other stuff done. If you really have something you need to talk about, please bring it back or call us or email us because I read every single email." >> Yeah. Go ahead, Craig. Um, I have less of a concern about public comment aside from uh perhaps maybe in this particular policy that we should maybe include something about about um handouts to the board. um because it that again creates a public record and um if if I think that there's missing language here that specifies what what happens with that whether or not the board is willing to accept any type of handout or whatnot um for for whatever purpose that that is trying to be illustrated. So those are my thoughts. I
128>> So you want to add a section about like if we will or will not accept handles. >> You know, it seemed to have been a suggestion from uh at least uh one entity that was a legal authority that indicated that perhaps maybe we shouldn't be accepting any type of handout to the board at all. and >> because of a record >> because of a a record. >> I don't want to create that barrier between us and the community. I think we most certainly should take handouts, especially if they're taking their time to attempt to educate us on something we might not be aware of. >> The concern would be if there's objectionable content in the handout and then being required to give that to members of the community. That gets pretty complicated because now
129a member of the community comes up, says, "Hey, let me see what that said." You give it to them and they go, "This is disgusting. Why did you give it to me? This was wrong." And then you get you get into all sorts of issues. >> Well, you get in the same thing with email, right? Because those are all public records as well, Sam. Right. >> I suppose that's true. So, they can Yeah. Even if they send you an email and you never open it, if they've got a picture or they've got something really nasty in it. Yeah. >> Yeah. Technically, you can't really control whether or not you receive someone's email. I mean, you you receive what they send you and at the board meeting, you you can at least say uh this is
130our policy on on on particular handouts. And um I I I would push back on uh Tammy a little bit. I think that that there are uh there are other avenues that uh members of the public can uh provide their feedback to the board and email was one of them you know so uh if it's that essential for a member of the public to provide that type of documentation to the board to do it an email and it is public record at that point. Uh if I think of seldom situations where minds are going to be made up by a handout that is placed right before a board that's not not really going to have the opportunity to to digest that information anyway. You know it it probably would be more encouraged for the board
131to have that information ahead of time and an email would be more appropriate. I don't know. Just some thoughts. >> Yeah. Uh Lori, David, what are your thoughts on the subject? >> Kind of handouts. >> Yeah, >> I kind of agree with Tammy on some part of that. Another part of that, you can have handouts that are totally inappropriate >> and and you mentioned that. >> Um how many times do we get handouts? >> Not often, but three or four times in the but I I have a workaround in mind that might be getting to what I think Craig you're you're looking at which is the possible disruptive nature of something like that in lifetime. >> Yeah. >> But yet balance the need that people like Tammy and you said may have to want to
132instruct us, >> right? Which is to have some verb in the policy that says um during public comment time we do not take handouts. We would ask that you give them to us 24 hours in advance prior to the meeting and reference those handouts uh during your comment. So that way you still have the ability for them to give you a handout. You have it in enough time that you can see it before their comments. Actually strengthens their ability to um make their point during their comment, right? And it's not restricting speech, but it is putting it in a way that um might not be disruptive to the meeting. I mean, even if it's accidental like we what you're saying is like you're also trying to provide protection to the people who right >> give
133you that thing and then all of a sudden it's disruptive to the the meeting and it's not bringing their cause any justice. >> I see where you're trying to have some protection for them in that too. I don't know if that works or doesn't work to resolve the issue that you're talking about and and find some common ground for you guys. >> I think I think that sounds great. I think that's a good compromise. The only question I have is 24 hours before the meeting is a Sunday. And so I have no idea how they're going to get the if they want to give you a handout, a physical copy of something, there's no reasonable way they're going to get that to you. >> It's not a physical copy. I said don't email it to
134>> Sure. the I don't know if the city still has this but in 2013 I gave them handouts and their policy was almost exactly that it worked very well for them and it was one business day before >> sure one business day that would be Friday the Friday >> before and it it seemed to work well for them during that time that makes sense so we potentially uh have a box where people can submit handouts in person if for some reason they want to give a physical copy of a handout like in the in the ESC because I just know that people may for one reason or another not prefer to do it digitally. >> We could make anything. Well, I want to know what your thoughts are and if if that requires us to
135have a Dropbox for handouts, we can make a Dropbox >> or they could drop it off at desk. >> Yeah, I was going to say >> 2013 email wasn't super common. I mean, if you if you want to receive >> we brought in physical copies >> and we gave them to the the clerk, >> you know, it's received them, >> just let us know and we'll try to figure out a work, you know, a way to accommodate that workflow. >> I don't think it's in the best interest of the board to put barriers up to get information from our community members in any regard. I I imagine a parent going through a stressful time in their life, having issues with the school district that their children are attending, and now we're making them go through
136this extra hoops because it might cause a little disruption for them to give us a physical copy of a handout of information that they think we need to see. and me trying to articulate to the person why it's justifiable to put that barrier up when they're dealing with substantially more important conflicts in their life to a point where they've come to the board to address their concerns with the district. >> Go ahead, Kirk. Sorry. I'm not disagreeing with that kind of kind of instance, Tammy. I guess I I think that um that the tendency would be to not give it the time that it's otherwise. I mean to to take them in take those types of circumstances into consideration for the board to be able to review that you know I I I think that
137it just uh a business day uh is actually I think a good compromise. I mean it it doesn't it says that you don't necessarily we we do accept them. It gives us an opportunity to make a record of it and it also gives the board an opportunity to really understand the position that that person holds otherwise they may have to wait I don't I don't want to say that we one way or another but I I think that tendency of um in the past that I've seen is a board member a board member may receive a piece of information as a handout and immediately discard it right in front of that particular individual too. That also sends a a terrible message. >> Well, I think it's on the individual board member at that point. And
138I don't think that this is where I really strongly side with Tammy. I do not think that it should be a policy that throttles the individual board member from receiving information from any constituent. >> Sure. At that time, I think a board member has the right to say, "I'm sorry. I'm not going to accept that information. Don't like the way that it looks, but I I think it looks objectionable." I should say, um, I understand why someone might take that approach, but I prefer to have as much information as possible. Um, I still think at the end of the day, I think asking people to deliver it at uh one business day before is great, but I think people should still be able to deliver that information as they are available to do so. >>
139So, um, I I think we're talking about two different things here. >> Yeah. one, the first the first thing we're talking about with 24 hours is that it's part of your meeting packet, right? It's part of your, you know, you've got time to disseminate it. At least you've got 24 hours, right? And and it's it's part of what you need to see for that agenda item, right? Um, anyone can walk up to somebody and and and hand them a, you know, hand them a document. >> Um, especially if you're in a meeting, if it's before the meeting, >> they're going to hand you a document and you're going to read it before the meeting. Not likely because you won't have time. Um, but you know, they can email us five minutes before the meeting, right?
140We're still not going to have time to read what they whatever they emailed, right? But it's not part of the meeting packet. It's it's more spontaneous. >> And then you have to I was uh I was trying to offer a compromise before, but I also I really agree a lot with Tammy here on the idea that like we don't want to impede speech. I mean, >> let's say they don't have a handout. They they come with a sign in the back, right? They're following the policy that says signs can't be in front or block other people's vision or whatever else, but that's not a it's not even a handout, but it's information to you. >> Well, I'm not saying. And so, like I I I I have a hard time saying we're gonna we're gonna
141um throttle back uh handouts, but yet I can I can put a sign up or or or hold a picture up, right? as long as I'm not being disruptive and I'm in the back and I'm following that part of that policy. >> I've only ever twice since being involved with the district had people give handouts. Okay. >> Both comments directly related to the handout. One was like more information, right? Like one community member said this is my statement. I've also provided an article with further information for you if you want to learn more on this topic. Okay? So, I don't see how that could hinder the meeting, especially if she's just giving us or a community member is giving us more information for us to look into at our leisure. >> Yeah, I I think
142you're missing kind of kind of not understanding my point. My point is anyone at any time should be able to come over to us and say, "Hey, I've got this for you." Right? But if you want it to be part of the meeting packet that you prepare for the meeting, >> so encourage it ahead of time, but take it ahead. >> And so, >> Yeah. And this is significant because there was a specific instance, I'm going to get a little bit more specific about it, in the past where a community member brought in packets, laid them down at each board member's seat, and then a member of the board, I'll put it very broadly, decided that that was not appropriate, picked up the packets, and threw them away. And so there's where the issue comes
143in is does the does the board president or a member of the board or superintendent or someone decide whether or not something is appropriate for each individual member or do the individual members of the board decide whether to intake or disregard that particular set of information whether it is informative obscene or grotesque or or whatever who who does that come down to does it come down to the individual or does it come down to the someone in a >> I would say it comes down to the individual >> that's But if it's part of the meeting packet, >> yes, >> in preparing for the meeting >> reasonably to prepare for it, you need 24 hours notice. >> Yes. >> So that's what I'm saying. >> Yes. If you're going to have it on the agenda,
144then have it be have time, >> right? >> Yeah. Well, I don't think they'd ever put it like if they send an email, if a community member sends an email to us about a comment they're going to make the next day with some attachments in all in those situations, Lynn wouldn't add that to the to our meeting agenda. Correct. That would just it would most certainly be public records requestable. If like I sent an email and saying I need all the emails received on this day, that email should be delivered to me. But Lynn wouldn't necessarily add any of their handouts or presentations to our agenda. Correct. Like on boardex is what I'm referring to. >> Okay. And so there there are a couple of things that are in the mix in the conversation. And
145I want to make sure I'm parsing out speech versus um things that uh can be disruptive uh to a meeting and or um maybe uh handed out or shown to because sometimes when they do the handout they hand it off to you and the audience, right? >> And this is a public forum place and in a public forum place oftent times we have students or other people who attend, >> right? Um there are people who uh sometimes because they're so passionate about what they're speaking about and they want to make the point that they want to make about they forget that there might be minors in the audience or that it may be disruptive to our psyche and or discussion points about how do we how do I see that and then get my thoughts
146back on like these fiscal topics or whatever else at this point. That's why our policy addresses that kind of speech differently and it gives our board president the authority to to to cut those kind of comments off or make sure that those visuals aren't here or whatever. You guys give that authority to a board president, right? For those purposes. That's different than some of the other stuff that we're talking about that we don't want to call speech on. But there are some reasons to quell speech in those specific kinds of incidences. So then what I would say is uh it should say we encourage them to be handed out one business day before. Once a meeting has begun, no material shall be distributed to the board. And uh >> yeah. No, I think that I
147think that covers it. Well, I don't know if we want to do that, Sam, because what if somebody wants to hand it out right before they give their public comment? >> Well, that gets into disruption. So, a person might be able to come up and do public comment, but then if they're holding a big sign and they put it down in front of people, they can't obstruct people's view with their sign while they're giving their comment, right? So, the issue of handing it out while you're doing your comment is it's becoming uh invasive and disruptive. So, that would be that would be my thought there. Well, and I think we also need to indicate that there's no guarantee that we would have the time to read that document that night because if three people bring
148up documents, we're not going to be able to get into the meeting on time. you know, to Lor's point. >> I have literally presented before this school board years ago and um and and told them when I leave, I will email you all the document that I'm referring to. >> It's not hard to do. >> Yeah. >> I still think that if someone wants to before meeting starts, if a person wants to put a document down at each person's table >> or Yes. But during the meeting, no I I do think that once the meeting has begun, you're in the process of having that active meeting. It's a whole different deal. What are they are they going to walk in front of the owl? How is that going to happen? That's just it's a little
149bit too complicated. So I can I can definitely understand that. Oh, and also specifying that uh handouts shall not be given to members of a public, I guess, or I don't even know if you can say that really because like a person can just give what they want to hand them out to people, >> right? And if and if someone feels that what was handed out to them was inappropriate, then I think that they would have to take like legal channels and things like that, right? If they're like, "Whoa, don't give that to my kid." You got to say like this, you got to go to a police officer and say, "This person handed this to my child and I believe it was appropriate." I think, right? I mean, >> well, we wouldn't be liable
150because we're not the one passing out. It's a community member. >> Um, so a couple of things to think about in regards to that, right? Um, and this is where I would say that it really depends on the situation and you would really want to involve your attorney. Um, but we do have uh some responsibility to the public to conduct an open forum, a public forum where they have safety, right? And and those kind of things, right? So, you're right, like when it comes to before they get in the door, before we start the meeting, we can't stop that. But we can stop it as we've already started our meeting and that's disruptive stuff that you're doing, right? Uh to the meeting and to the people who are attending the meeting. We certainly have a
151public interest right that we have to be able to help control that if we need to, right? I I just want to say that there is a difference in that, right? Just because people are like, "You can't stop me from handing the things out." the the issue is well yes we can during our meeting time and during the public interest that we hold we certainly can I don't want you to think you can never do that right I know that people can challenge that right and that's when we get our attorney involved in the we say this is why we did that right we protect the interest of those who are attending the meeting and during the meeting time but you're right as soon as they go out that door or as soon as the
152meeting's over people want to start handing out whatever they want to hand out to anybody who will take we can stop that. >> So, at the end of the day, it just seems like there's not really a whole lot we would add here that would change anything with any substance. I I I don't know. I I just want I mean, it's good to have the discussion reiterate. >> Oh, yeah. And I also I also agree with you guys in that we don't ever want to be seen as people who are going to like try to quell speech, right? But we also are people who want to make sure that we protect the public's interest of safety and during our public forums, right? That's also why we ask officers to be here, right? The public, you
153know, protect our safety and the public safety. >> Yeah. I just uh I I appreciate the conversation. I I just want to be on the same page with people. >> That's that's really that's really where I'm at. Yeah. really like I I really want to live up to the board's expectations on what what happens in at that period of time in our meetings. >> So, >> yeah. No, I appreciate you bringing it forward. I think it was a great conversation. I we're all I think we're pretty clear on where Tammy stands on that. Dave Lori, you got any further thoughts to build on anything we've talked about? >> Oh, good conversation. >> And then I know Carl loves free speech, so I want to ask him, right, Carl, how do you feel about it? You
154got any thoughts? first year the committee. I'm not a member of that. >> It's very respectful. >> That's very respectful of you. >> Okay. Um well uh I don't think there's going to be any further discussion. If Tammy comes in and she says, "Oh, I had something else." We can pop back to it really quick. Then we've got the Neola policy singles. Uh this is actually something that I believe Tammy brought forward. I think we got an email from her about this, so she's probably the best person to start off the conversation. Uh Lynn, you did add some clarifying comments about uh 5722 when you were asked about >> So this is actually a policy, a 5,000 policy. >> Oh, wait a minute. Oh, sorry. It's got a very similar name. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
155We got an email about that earlier. Um yeah. So give us some information, guys. So, um, you want to go because you you work closer with them and >> I just need to open this open I'll open up >> and andor if Jason >> Jason if you're on too maybe we can you can help >> while you were gone. We all decided you were really barking up the wrong tree and we're going to censor you. >> Wow. >> Not at all. >> It's for the rest of my time. >> So, so Jason Bull, we are on the last agenda item. school sponsored publications and productions. I know you worked with uh Jenny Boris on that policy. Is there anything important that you would like to share or that we should know around this policy? It
156is a Neola policy that you guys um put your attention towards. >> Yes, thank you. Um first I always start with gratitude to Lynn and Jenny and I I think uh took took a look at this o over the course of two sessions. So thank you for the collaboration. We I think it's important to note that we not only looked at the Neola policy but also some neighboring district policies and felt that the decisions that we are proposing here align with not only the the the the uh direction of of other policies that have already been adopted but are aligned with districts neighboring districts. I think the foundation of it is that we I think it what what we have selected boils down to we want to give students the opportunity to be engaged in
157in learning activities but always with under the supervision and advisory of an adult that's connected to our district. I think those are the things that I I think are important to note. Lyn, what? >> Sorry. >> Questions. >> I don't get any questions. >> It looks paused. Yeah. >> Hey, Jason, we're gonna start talking. Sorry if you are still talking. We'll try to shut up if you jump back to life there. >> I think it looks like my video is frozen, but I can still hear you. I don't know if you can hear me. I can hear you now. Um, if you turn off video, it might improve your connection. That always works for me. >> Um, yeah. Anything further before we open it up to the committee, Jason? >> Uh, not no I I'm
158have it up here in my office and uh be happy to answer any specific question that the team might have. >> Awesome. Thank you, Jason. All right, Lori, Tammy, Dave, any questions there? Not yet. >> Um, this is new to me. Um, I am curious to see if bullying is going to be an issue with the expanded social media use, but that's my only question. >> I think our policy on bullying and the use of social media for bullying would still hold true with anything like this. >> Yeah. >> Good. >> Yeah. Excellent. Tammy, you got any thoughts? >> No. looks good on this policy. It looks good to me. >> Yeah. Uh, yep. I don't have any thoughts at present. >> Then we could we can forward it to first read at the board
159level, right? And then uh >> Oh, did you I'm still trying to wrap my mind around what would what would um be an example of school sponsored social media for students? Well, um, so I I want to remind you that this is not just social media. It's it's publications and productions, right? Okay. >> So, it has anything to do with, um, like our middle schoolers uh, work with a green screen to produce some of the daily announcements every once in a while, right? And they're doing like a TV broadcast. It can be that. It can be a newspaper. It could be a yearbook. It could be like really anything. But the um expansion of the social media portion is really just an uptick in what we see as a media that they are starting to
160use more often. And we wanted to make sure that uh we started to think about that in the same kinds of ways we would think about how we would um teach uh appropriate speech through those other venues. And that's what this is really about. >> Yeah. It's not school sponsored student social media. It's student media that is sponsored by schools. So it would be videos, uh, articles, things like that that are sponsored by the school, written by written or produced by students. It can only be on the social media that is approved by WUSD. >> Yes. So, so basically any student um involvement in media publications going to be supervised by staff anyway. >> Yes. In general. >> Yeah, in general. And before posting it on social media, it needs to be approved by the
161district, >> right? I mean, we we do have some some clubs, right, that aren't necessarily run by a staff member or paid by a staff member. They're they may be a volunteer, but in that's why I said in general, it's going to be through a staff member, but always it's probably going to be reviewed by an adult, right? And and I know I said always probably and that one negates the other a little bit sometimes, but um I always leave that 0.008.1 uh percent chance that it may have missed an adult's eyes. If >> I could just add some context, I think what Dr. Burke has highlighted is exactly what Lynn, Jenny, and I thought of. Um um as an example, I in a former life, I was a high school principal and thought about
162uh a studentled organization that worked through the yearbook, the newspaper, promoting the school through social media and thinking about those checks and balances to ensure that the content that was pushed out was appropriate and the messages that we wanted to uh to push out. >> Okay. Yeah, I don't have any further comments. Anyone else? No. Okay, we will move on from that to uh item number four, policies, new major revisions. We have none. So, we will move on to future agenda planning. Do we have anything uh outside of the action items we've discussed today that we would like to see on the next agenda? Cameron, you mentioned something to me on the phone the other day about training on how to respond. >> Oh, about um when we get disgruntled community members. >> Yes. >>
163I don't know if that was necessarily going to be a policy or if it was going to just be something that was articulated to the board. So, we responded consistently. >> Yeah, there probably be a planning discussion. If anything, it would be >> professional deal would be policy the day when I brought it up. >> I think it would be planning for professional development or board development. >> Yeah, it could. Yeah, I could see that. county. I uh if it's uh because Tammy I I think she was asking I'm trying not to get into a conversation but she was trying to if it's not if I'm not mistaken trying to articulate how we would approach that uh from a unified front you know in a in a particular type of situation uh that awfully does
164seem just speak to like uh a little bit of like collective commitments, right? >> Yeah, I feel like we have that in our collective commitments already and we actually talked about board behavior earlier today. It's uh 01445. So, I had this conversation with Jason >> Bull >> um and Melissa and I don't think we were looking for a broad policy on it, but actual the actual execution process, >> right? Which would fall under I think like an administrative guideline or verbal. So, how we've um attempted to address this in the past, right, is to um you know uh take that up at any any certain committee, right? Uh because the policy committee doesn't have to draft every single policy. Your piece around district communication falls mostly where planning is. I would say have planning take
165it up. Have planning decide to research uh maybe other drafts that may be at other schools or or create your own draft. >> Um go through your process of drafting that, right? And then uh send to the to the board. If there's interest, they can kick it to policy for refinement and then uh resolve it. And that's how we've done things in the past. >> I guess my question is do you think something needs to be drafted? And that's really me asking, right? like this was really only came up in the conversation as we started putting the tables out at those events. >> I think something needs to be drafted only because it will start the conversation. >> Okay. >> Right. Let's get that. >> You may draft something and go like, "Oh, well that's
166great. That's great. I mean like for instance, we start the draft of the controversial issues uh eg because we we knew we needed more than the policy. Um and then we then we saw that Niola came with something else and it was like oh well we can ban the work on this because this is actually better. It's broader. It tackles the situations that and we went with that. But if we didn't have that it was good to do the work that we did because we would have been in a place where we would have said hey let's take from all that work that we've done and let's refine something to offer the board. And the board will say yes or no. And if the board says no fine we did the work of the committee.
167we we've put our minds around it. Board says yes and refine it, then it went, you know, a little further. So, I I I wouldn't want to stomp on any idea. I think every idea that um you think is worthy of some committee work or some discussion, >> do that work and then bring it to the full board and say, "Here's the start. >> Is this do you want us to keep working on this or should we abandon it?" Okay. Right. >> Yeah. So, perhaps look to have a discussion about that. >> Jason and I touch base anyway. So, yeah. All right. And then yeah, any other thoughts? All right. Um, that's uh I'm actually gonna technically number eight is next meeting date, but let's talk briefly about this because you mentioned this before the
168meeting started. Obviously, we've got the holidays coming up which tightens our schedule availability. Um, Lynn, can you bring up the schedule for November and what you've got listed for meeting dates? >> Meeting dates. Uh, she You increase it. Go up to the percent. Yeah. Thanks. My eyes are getting older. 12. All right. So, the dates because we wouldn't be looking in the last week of November if we were going to have a policy meeting next month. Currently, we're set to have one in December. Does the committee want to see at least a standing meeting uh to be on the books in November or would you like to see this go and pass a month as we have done historically? >> Well, I would personally say yes, we keep it just because we have updates that
169we still need to work for for Neiola. So, I don't think it would be beneficial for us to skip a month if we're behind on the updates. Right. >> And my understanding is we were right like we only got through the 4,000s >> and he said that the second batch is going to be coming in November, early November, right? Discussing with them. So we would have things to work through. Um but it would be coming after the board meeting most likely. Um, so we'd be looking at the 3rd, the 6th, the 7th, or the 11th, the 13th, or the 14th if we wanted to have a meeting before November's board meeting. >> And like I said, I don't know when in November, >> we're going to get them. And so to have them ready for
170a November meeting, >> you'd have to have it pretty late. >> I mean, like I I don't And again, that that last week uh is the holiday week, right? um the the Friday, at least the Friday before, I'm going to be on vacation, maybe even the Thursday before. >> So, I like anything after the 17th gets a little bit more dicey in in my schedule. Um I'm not saying we can't do it, but I do know this, we the next meeting is the 3rd of December. >> It's a very quick turnaround time. >> And that's why I'm saying is >> so so >> I'd rather have a longer meeting on the third than try to jam in two short meetings. And um that's that's my opinion during holiday time. And um you guys also saw
171the schedule of events that we have coming up for other things, parent teacher conferences and everything else. And you're scheduled on some of those. We don't even have this is just our general meetings. We don't have even those up here. And I don't know how many of those are in there. >> I must have looking at the updated document because I'm still showing December 10th. Perfect. >> Yeah, you're you're seeing the old one. the new ones up here on the screen. Um, in years past, uh, we we did tend to skip one of those months in there, >> whether it was in November or in December. um for planning or policy. >> For planning or policy, I I I felt like it was usually December that we we decided to to um not have a
172meeting because >> I feel like with us trying to start a curriculum review committee, we should keep it at November and discuss possibly skipping December. That way if it if we need to bring anything having to do with the curriculum review committee to policy to get it to move forward quicker. We shouldn't delay that process. >> We can just have a quicker meeting in November. So, uh if we're going So, and this is kind of uh splitting the difference because I definitely hear what you're saying. Um, I would say if people are open to it, uh, having a standing meeting on the 14th, it's a Friday, which is not super fun. Having a standing meeting on the 14th, if we get those documents, then we have an opportunity to look them over, but we have
173a hard stop time because it's a Friday. People don't want to be here all night. We're going to look those over, get done when we get done. And then if we don't >> motion to move to the next meeting. >> Yes. And if we don't get those >> about a one topic uh meeting on poetry >> if we get the neola policy updates. >> Oh just the updates >> the the next batch update. So that that rules out what she was saying about a curriculum committee. Uh >> well I think >> update or >> and I don't know that there's anything policywise related to that because now the only thing that's next is the policy is written. You guys have approved it. >> You're going to discuss a a meeting date. Craig's going to put
174together an email that sends out to you and says anybody who is interested in the curriculum committee let me know. >> Yeah. >> Right. And then he's going to assign people and then they're going to just meet on the first date that you guys had created for whatever whatever Tuesday of the month or Monday of the month or whatever it is. They will meet on the next one that's available after after the commitment uh from the board president say yes you're on this committee floor to pack. Right. So like I don't know that there's policy work. It's it's more clerical steps that's got to go through >> the back end. So >> yeah, it's like when we do board restructuring, he does those same things that there's no policy that have to blow on that.
175It's just >> he's following the policy that's already in place, which is if there's a committee and there needs to be membership of the committee, >> the board president has to do that. And so when you guys finalize the policy for it, he will then make that piece go. And so that's why I'm saying if we have a standing meeting for say the 14th if for some reason we need to talk about the curriculum committee as a part of policy we have a standing date that we already have set up so we don't have to scramble to find it and then if we also get the Nola policy updates we also have a standing date so we can get some work done on those. The reason that I would do the hard stop time of
176uh 7:30 you know get a 2 hour that way people don't have to be worrying about being here until 8:00 p.m. on a Friday night that's just not fun time for people. Um, so that's where I would stand on that. What do the other committee members think as far as the idea that I just put out there? Would you rather see us go without in November or would you rather have that standing meeting? >> I would I would like to have the option of the standing meeting. >> Uh, that way if we only have one item on the list, that's fine. agree. >> Yeah. Another thing that was done in the past was uh if there were updates or I mean we're talking about updates at this point in time and it was about uh
177you know policies that the staff was working through or alignment and uh instead of having the meeting if the staff could have those updates sent to the committee uh you know at a pace that over the course of that month in lie of meeting at least you can review those updates instead of having meeting and then um when it comes in December you can have a larger list of updates. Yeah, we used that idea to speed the meetings along and it did you know because what we also said is if you have a comment right send it to the chair of the committee so that they can collect all those and work independently with the administrator if need be. >> And so my only concern there is I think that gets into walking orum territory.
178No, it doesn't. When I if they are sending you information, >> it's one way. I don't say anything back to them. >> No, they just they're sending you information. You say, "Thank you. I received it." You and I can work on those comments as workg group, bring them back to the to the full. We're not having conversation about it, right? We're just working on uh those comments. I don't see that as a walking forum. >> Sure. I think >> because what will happen is those comments will come to the group for everybody to discuss. >> Okay. not put him out there and say now let's discuss him some more that be become a walking forum but just basically sending them out and saying you know if you have any information to give us back give
179it to one person don't give it to everybody >> don't reply all >> yeah don't reply all >> not to reply all reply just to the chair um because that's how that can work and we can move things forward >> I do appreciate that and I think we should take that into account I guess 801 one. I'm going to ask for a call of hands so we can wrap things up. Uh call of hands. Uh do the members of the committee want to see a standing on the 14th, starts would start at 5:30, go until only 7:30, or would you like to do uh just duty updates uh uh email model? Uh all in favor of the 14th as a standing meeting date, raise your hand. >> Okay. Yeah. And I'll I'll go along with
180that. Certainly. I just propose it. >> Although although getting getting the information ahead of time >> Yeah. is is is also helpful. >> Yes. Oh, yeah. Always. I mean, if you want to email us something ahead of time, go >> for a quicker meeting, if you you know, you've got all your questions answered. >> Yeah. And if we're not seeing anything materialize by like the 10th, >> I'll just say, "Hey, we haven't gotten that." >> Yeah. And then we'll we'll do we'll just uh Yeah, we'll call it. >> We'll just, you know, we haven't had enough time to do it by the third. >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So, let's uh let's let's see where that goes. But at least we have a standing date, so if something does turn around, we don't have to scramble
181to find it. Um, all right, that sounds good. Uh, Lynn, we're going to move on to uh action items. Can you give us a rundown of our action items? >> Um, policy uh 1022. Um I don't remember what that one was but anyway um I need to add between D and E review and estab established curriculum and approved curriculum burials uh policy uh 1100 district organization uh the superintendent should be added at the beginning of the third paragraph in front of the word shall um policy 11:30 ethics and conflict of interest remove in letter A, the word duties was in there twice. Remove uh the second duties 0144.5 board member behavior communications um and collective commitments. We're removing collective commitments from the title and we're not accepting the change that Nola recommended um accepting the
182word reputation or in the second paragraph. So I'll strike that 3120.04 04 employment of substitutes accepted changes regarding criminal background check that Scott updated uh 3120.08 08 employment of personnel. Um I need to add um and criminal history check at the end of the third paragraph. Neola policy updates um that Scott, you know, helped us through. Those can go first read to the October meeting after the updates are made. Um the controversial issues in the classroom guideline. uh you need to add or personal convictions under the alternative learning activities and also in the same um in the same guidelines under letter D remove derogatory, malicious or abusive toward and replace those words with not intentionally intended to harm and then that can go to first read after those um adjustments have been made. committees. Uh
183the committee's policy 0155 can go to first read and the policy 5722 school board I'm sorry school sponsored publication and productions can go to first read. Um we are going to schedule a policy uh committee meeting November 14th at 5:30 and we will do our best to email any um updates uh to you guys ahead of time with that meeting. >> They all sound great. There's only one item and it's very technical. Uh but uh in the uh controversial issues. >> Yes. >> Uh letter D. >> Y >> what I heard from the committee was putting the word intentionally between the words not and the word derogatory. >> Yeah. It was not intentionally intended to harm. >> Okay. Okay. So we're replacing derogatory, malicious, or abusive with int not >> not intentionally intended to harm.
184>> Okay. Not intentionally intended to harm. Okay. Yeah, sure. That sounds good to me. Okay. Um, if there are no further comments, uh, we are adjourned at 8:05 p.m. >> Perfect. >> Good seeing you guys. I'll see you >> I have something for you guys once we >> I do because I got feeling I'm the only person. >> You guys may want to close the meeting out. Have a good night, Carl. Hey.