001being the appointed time and place and seeing a forum present i will go ahead and call this meeting to order you all please rise and go into spread i pledge and allegiance the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice thank you here tina johnson here steve cocco here katie all right this brings us to the first opportunity on the agenda for public input for those who would like to address the board please leave your name and address if you're here in person raise your hand i'll recognize you if you are online please use a virtual raise your hand feature i do want to move along very quickly this evening so we will be watching time on this this evening just and first i'm going to start online is
002there anyone online somebody named kr who's raised their hi um yes my my name is melinda k rucker i am at i live at 406 south montgomery in watertown wisconsin and um my son attends the riverside middle school um and i was just i guess as a parent i have sent i've sent the school board members an email with with my concerns about the quarantine policies that i have seen at the riverside middle school and while i do understand there's a concern to make sure we don't have sick kids at school i am kind of concerned that we have perfectly healthy kids that have no symptoms or illness being quarantined for 14 days um just because they were in the same room as someone that allegedly had coveted so i guess that could lead into
003a snowball effect and we could have kids missing a lot of school um and kids you know i i feel like for my son they learn a lot better being in class in person so i would like the school board to consider whether they really have the best quarantine policy in effect for our local community i guess so i guess you know we're going into holidays and we're going into the winter season and i would just like people to really maybe think about or consider that quarantine policy as to whether it's really the best thing for our kids we shouldn't have healthy kids sitting at home for 14 days that is all i really wanted to discuss thank you is there anyone else online in person and you want to like to address the board
004right now please go ahead maria gracia 611 arlington way this morning i sent all school board members results of a recent survey that i conducted the survey was open to the public only responded to by parents all questions were regarding close contact quarantining and i sent the results of the survey including personal comments to all the school board members and dr shock in a nutshell of these 100 parents who responded 93 percent wanted close contact quarantining to end five percent were not sure and two percent wanted the current um quarantine to continue i also researched schools that were fairly close to us that are no longer close quarantining but rather alerting parents if there is an active case in class and parents are then monitoring their kids for symptoms and keeping them home if needed
005schools no longer close contact quarantining include but are not limited to waukesha dodgeland johnson creek oconomowoc hartford arrowhead kettle moraine oak creek franklin and jefferson jefferson has a policy only when school cases are substantial do they close contact quarantine at the last ed services meeting it was discussed that if active cases go up then the wusd is ready for more mitigation measures however it was not discussed what the wusd would do when active cases go down or anything about less mitigation measures personally i'd like to see close contact quarantines ended completely like other schools in our area have done however some schools nationwide are meeting both of these scenarios they're still doing close contact quarantining but only if active cases at their schools reach a certain percentage and warrant it i've come up with an
006example of this and it's in the email i sent i am asking the school board and admin to at minimum discuss what i just mentioned and either end ccq completely or only close contact quarantine if we reach a certain percentage of active cases at each school thank you so much for your time all right thank you laurie hoffman 1009 or 2nd street walkingtown last week a teacher shared this in a post we don't get to choose our kids we don't get to make sure they go to bed on time without their phones or tv so they can get a good night's sleep it would be easy if our kids came ready to learn but they come tired defeated and anxious and just done some days this teacher welcomes parents to participate in in their children's
007education but she can't do this alone she needs the school board to establish a bond of trust with parents and with watertown we need this so much more than listening sessions the current message watertown sends our uh the district sends to watertown whether they realize it or not is send money send kids follow instructions and get out of our way meaningful change would involve the board parents and community in an investigation into what causes the mistrust and alienation we're seeing as well as a resulting action plan start here the district's meeting management policies erode public trust one example subcommittee meetings don't allow public comment as a result resolutions are brought to the board brought to the board do not necessarily have community support this creates tension and uncertainty among board members as the community makes
008a last-ditch effort to be heard school board members i've spoken to feel pressured to support the subcommittee policy and are uncertain about discussing their reservations this creates meetings where board members talk around a topic instead of having meaningful discussions as a result watertown's school board meetings are notorious for being painfully long and convoluted in contrast city meetings allow public comments community members discuss comments in depth and citizens can always speak twice once to voice their concerns and again to provide feedback this transparent flow of information results in efficient meetings while strengthening public trust the district would be wise to adopt these these policies to start with thank you very much anyone else 1549 boulder road tonight i'm disappointed i'm frustrated by the way the public was treated at the last board meeting time limits of
009two minutes for public comment and minimal discussion by the board behind rationale about close contact quarantines sends the message that this leadership team doesn't want to hear the concerns of the public it was the concerns of the public that assisted in the support needed to expedite full face-to-face learning and to unmask our kids this is not the watertown community that i know we work together we don't try to silence each other if the public and parents that have a right to free and appropriate education and pay for that through their tax support dollars have their concerns ignored then the public will begin to no longer support the school system with their tax dollars what do you think will happen when the next plea for a publicly supported referendum comes around what will happen when the
010parents choose other educational options if the school boards and district level administration choose to ignore and silent public concerns they are they are then choosing to defund their school districts we support this district otherwise we wouldn't be here the impacts this impacts teachers someday there could be downsizing larger class sizes which we are already experiencing less individual attention for students who need help less resources reduced benefits and maybe even entire building closures it isn't the staff the staff members are phenomenal rather it is district level leadership that has failed set up the staff for support and success when it comes to communication and expectations you owe it to the public to listen if a child has been quarantined multiple times under your policy and commit suicide you will have to live with that decision for
011the rest of your lives you owe it to the public to have a discussion about the rationale regarding closed contact quarantines you owe it to the public to do your own fact checking do not accept hearsay as complete truth and information you're safe from one individual you're safe from the pandemic planning team you're safe from the staff you're safe from the watertown health department hearsay from the attorney that check everything fascinating tidbit the same legal firm that represents waukesha school district also almost also represents watertown so why the stark difference in policy where is this conflicting information coming from at this month's ed services meeting the assumptions was made that districts like hartford joint law and waukesha and oconomowoc were somehow in non-compliance with the statute really i was stunned because i asked dr schmitz
012of hartford unified personally about the district's rationale the district in fact recommends the recommendation of the health department like masks social distancing and close contact quarantines do you require like federal the federal transportation orders it is the it's at the parents discretion to heed the public health department's recommendation the liability lies on the parents to follow the health department's recommendations they aren't required meant a face-to-face education sure i would love to share this i would have loved to share you this with you at the september board meeting but you've only decided to limit my comments to two minutes when are we going to be on the same team thank you for anyone else online please hi can you hear me yes we can we see your name my name is troy schanke i live at
0131200 luisa street i have raised two kids completely through the school system i have another one in fifth grade and i have one that's pretty soon gonna start um first off i want to commend this school board i can't imagine the position you've been in for the last year and a half dealing with all of this um and the one thing i want to say is i'm really glad that this board is following the wishes of the parents and the citizens of watertown it was a tough fight with masks i'm sure it's going to be a tough fight soon with vaccines right now we're dealing with the quarantines i just want to voice my opinion that i don't think the close contact quarantines are okay anymore we're talking about a demographic that typically does not
014even get sick from covid um they're not known to be big spreaders i really think the close contact quarantines need to go away they are affecting everyone's lives parents are losing jobs citizens of watertown are losing jobs because of these contacts um moving on i would also like this board to address an emergency hearing in the near future um i believe it is november 3rd that the fda is expecting to ok vaccines for kids 5 to 13 or 15 sorry i'm not sure the actual age um but i think if that happens there needs to be an emergency school board meeting with parental input allowed and that's all i have to say but i do have to say thank you for listening to the parents all right thank you anyone else we'll move on to
015our next item it'll be another opportunity for public input our next item is our annual budget hearing notice is hereby given to the qualified lecturers of the watertown unified school district at the budget hearing will be held at watertown high school 825 endeavor drive watertown wisconsin on monday the 25th of october 2021 at 5 30 pm first introductory comments um we will go ahead and turn those comments over to mr williamson i would only share with the board and the community members that mike has transitioned into this role uh very very seamlessly we very much appreciate the time and care he has put me to putting together this evening's presentation i know he also has a strong team around him that could help him uh to gather all of the information that you're going to
016be seeing tonight uh so much gratitude on distributing some of your work and efforts on preparing for this hearing today and i think your eyes will find what he has to share uh hopefully interesting that's certainly informative thank you i appreciate that uh i'll walk down this but i'm gonna walk out here if you would like there are printed off copies i can sign those later if you like uh but you can take them home with you and peruse them at your leisure afterwards it's gonna let tyler get this shared on um on zoom just kind of oh i got the okay all right you can go ahead so you can go to the next yeah thank you so when budgets are put together this process for school districts really starts late winter early spring
017and it really doesn't end until two weeks ago when we get the final variables in so it's a long process that really begins with expenditures and programming and kind of ends with the with the revenues that are solidified late september early october and so all three of these things have to come together uh and coalesce into a budget document that really reflects uh who you are as a school district and so i think you'll find throughout the presentation uh some things that are um that we're paying attention to uh for the future some opportunities that exist and um we'll continue to use these three pillars uh to community guide expenditures revenues and programming go ahead tablet so i like to always start on the revenue side spend a lot of time there by a lot
018of time i mean two hours it's like it's not that long but but some time just talking about the revenue limit formula because that really does drive at the end of the day uh the mill rate and taxation uh sometimes people think it's it's the expenditure side and it really isn't uh i'm not anymore it's uh it's really the revenue limit formulas and this one revenue limit formula uh which takes up about 85 of our revenues between property taxes and state aid this is really the the crux of what our revenue is anything else is a very minor part of the entire story crucial in being able to balance a budget but minor compared to the entire revenue limit formula that's been in place since the early 90s so if you move to the next
019slide what does that look like then for watertown just so you know if you have questions or like want to stop me it's cool you can do that the revenue limit formula for watertown and you can just kind of look at the historical piece here of where we've been in the last five years and we're planning on going here but it's really driven by the two variables there in the top left our resident membership and the per pupil amount that we receive for each pupil there's some other additions that can occur but really it's those first two drivers that really bring about like you said about 85 percent of our revenues you can now move on time so for us um this is just a historical look again at the revenue limit formula you can
020see what has produced for us over the last five years and where maybe those increases have come from and so if you can't see that blue is state aid and you can see that's been relatively stable our fund 10 property taxes that are in the orange again um relatively stable we're talking about just the base property taxes the gray is revenue that we receive when there's declining enrollment we get revenue when enrollment declines in order to be able um to have a year in which to make appropriate decisions to respond to declining enrollment however that that's not uh i call it it's not sticky you have to give those dollars back uh the next year uh the yellow there represents the operational referendum we're in year four or five and uh as the vote went
021you can see that that has increased over the four years and uh will increase one more time next year from 3.7 to 3.9 million vouchers in the blue has been a growing at the dark blue at the top of each of the bar graphs vouchers have been growing each year in our revenue limit composition and thus in taxes overall each year for a few more years we get to cap the amount of voucher students that are allowed to leave particular school districts so this upcoming year the cap is at six percent of your student population it will grow to uh one percent each year up to ten percent and then after ten percent it becomes uncapped so that's something to uh for the district to pay attention to and to be aware of what that
022means uh especially from a mill rate or taxation standpoint and then finally um some referendum debt from um 2012 and maybe even before then uh we've worked hard at limiting that you can see 1819 kind of hitting its peak and then some restructuring of debt and doing different things to minimize that impact and the community service fund has always been just a sliver there on the very top you can really hardly see that but that goes to our pool mainly and we'll talk about that a little bit hey tyler so the two most important factors i'm not going to read the slide to you but is membership and per pupil membership i wish it was as easy as just like counting how many students are in seats and that's the number you use in your
023revenue limit formula it's not that it's really watertown residents public school watertown residents and so whether they go to watertown or they go to an open enrollment out situation with another public school they are part of our membership um and so that's why third friday if you've heard of third friday counts uh is reconciling all that information of who's in our seats who's open and rolling out who's open and rolling in and then we convert that into a three-year average that's really what is used when we talk about a revenue-limited formula and then the per-pupil amount the state has a floor in place of ten thousand dollars per pupil and that's the amount that watertown receives so we are at the floor um in this particular district and we'll see later on where other districts
024are in the area and the state average um it is more than ten thousand it's a great school finance 101 topic all right move on so looking at those two most important factors uh membership um headcount is still important it gives us a sense of where our uh you know really a trend that's happening at least and obviously with students in seats we want to know those numbers for for a number of reasons uh staffing and things like that you can see what the pandemic um exacerbated i guess last year and this is not um unique uh the dip is while not as steep similar trend uh statewide and you know i think statewide we were hoping that that bounce back would occur in 2122 and uh again it hasn't uh while the rate of
025loss has slowed both at the state and watertown level uh it's still less than it was last year and so while there was a steady decline occurring of one one and a half percent uh eight percent last year and about one percent this year um again so again we hope we hope that stabilizes uh there are some and we'll look at if you can move on tyler actually the next slide this is just uh for again your own perusal at night when you can't sleep you can take a look at our membership yeah right there perfect take a look at where our excuse me our head counts have been following the colors diagonally is how you can follow what's happening with each class and then of course if you just go across you can see
026where each grade has been and where we are currently so what's new is kind of a soft uh soft enrollment that's happening in the earlier grades again um 2021 we expected i think that 4k when uh the pandemic was at its height and parents might have been deciding do i even need to send my child to 4k maybe i just keep them at home we don't know what's going to be happening again i think many schools are hoping for a bigger um bounce back overall in enrollment and we haven't really seen that large of a increase as we were hoping uh but still increased i enjoyed the color chart and i appreciate the ability to be able to follow the year it was fun to make it was fun yeah yeah i was like oh
027what colors um so thanks yeah i appreciate that so that's how you kind of track those those students through um through from your year all right next slide so then converting headcount into membership counts and again there's a mechanism in place where you use a three-year membership average and so that softens uh the decline from year to year but eventually that catches up with you eventually when membership starts increasing again the three-year membership will stay lower than in the amount of students you have in your district and that's really when decisions um and hard decisions have to be made when a district is in declining membership and so we're trying to put ourselves in a position in which uh to have that financial flexibility to be able to make uh you know the least amount
028of changes in expenditures in order to meet those student needs when membership does increase we'll talk about that a little bit as well all right next what do i have next oh yeah i love this slide all right so there's a lot of different things going on here so first of all our fun 10 revenues that's what's in the blue without the referendum okay so the blue is just what revenues would have been in the district uh each of the past well now um three years and then this year with the referendum the next year with the referendum that's a projection for 22-23 so the last orange bar for this can't see that's a projection the uh of revenues the blue line is just the line itself is what was projected back in 1718 as
029far as expenditures go um you can recognize there the yellow line is what has actually happened with our expenditures and so this district and i say this district known for the standpoint that i certainly wasn't around into the credit of this district that yellow line is below the projected expenditures that were in place and and um that were expected and that's a great thing to be able to say we've done enough to be able to curve those expenditures and those expenditures come with some different revenues in place as well right we weren't counting on esser funding uh or federal funding in response to the pandemic we probably weren't counting on uh school safety grants that occurred and yet expenditures even with those in place are lower than the trend line uh was in 1718. what
030you'll notice on the on the right side and the projections moving forward is a little scary but i i think we're going to be in an okay place to handle some of that so once the referendum falls off that you take that orange bar away and we realize a three-year membership that is clearly lower um revenues are going to decrease significantly in 23-24 and so that's where a strong fund balance comes into place to be able to close those gaps and wait out to the next biennium budget see what happens at the state level what happens with membership to be able to close those red lines in order to operate appropriately and obviously have the time to be able to respond to lower memberships or make those those decisions that need to occur so this
031is probably at this point uh the most i can provide as far as uh what future looks like until i continue to dive deeper into the numbers and actually i'm very excited to dive in numbers that's what i do and to see um you know what what plays out the 2324 budget at the state level is important for not only the state but for watertown especially to help minimize those those red lines on the right all right thanks uh what do we have here this might be my last revenue one and then mercifully go on to expenditures so across the bottom you see different districts and the blue line represents or the blue bar graph i should say bars represent each district's revenue that they receive per student from the state in the revenue limit
032formula so for example what that means is watertown beaver dam and milton we each get the ten thousand dollars per student to fund our expenditures and then each district to the right has more and more average is more than all of these districts the state average is a little over ten thousand eight hundred uh to put that into terms for watertown if we had the ten thousand eight hundred per revenue uh it's almost three three and a half million more in revenue per student which matches the referendum that's currently in place so majority of the state is obviously around that average and then well half half the districts roughly are greater than 10 800. the orange line uh when i came on uh and took a look at this is is what i think is
033rather impressive um what the orange line represents is the additional help that these districts receive beyond the revenue limit formula so you'll notice on the right that hustisford for example has almost ten thousand i think it's ten thousand seven fifty somewhere in there and because their revenue per student is higher they have let they need less assistance uh less additional help in order to fund their operations and so you would expect that that orange line starting with hustersford would continue up in that trend like it does through fort atkinson burlington dodgeland and jefferson but you'll notice at that point districts to the left are operating on less um additional help in the form of referendum than than than would be expected and watertown at least about 13 and so to be able to manage your
034operations and keep expenditures where they've been below trend line and still operate within a low revenue per member situation with minimal comparatively speaking additional help to keep that mill rate where it is and to do those things to manage taxes uh is a is a should be a feather uh in the capital of the district uh again kind of speaking from a third person you know from the outside view but now diving in and being a part of watertown so i want to highlight that and um i'm not sure what's going on johnson creek i mean i got a little bit but we'll just leave them alone about that additional uh outlier there but we're right around the state average even though the state average most districts get around that ten thousand eight hundred okay
035mike before you leave this yeah can you comment or i don't know how much you researched but pretty much every school district you put on there is jefferson or dodge i see a built-in and i see you know kind of let's just say on the fringes of jefferson dodge but we're all below the state average for funding who which area of the state or what what criteria gets you into above the average it seems odd that we're all in jefferson and dodge and we're all sitting here below 11 000. oh man okay so i could i could talk okay a short answer the short answer is that revenue limits that revenue per member is benchmarked to 1992-1993 [Music] expenditures that the next year the state took whatever district spent in 1992 1993 and said that's
036how much you need to operate your district we're going to implement revenue limit formulas and we're going to use your 9293 expenditures if you were a district and districts didn't know that this was going to be taking place so if you were a district in 92 93 that just happened to spend more that year or paid off large sums of debt by chance your revenue per member is going to be higher if you were a district that's fiscally responsible not the wheels others weren't like fiscally responsible sensitive to the tax rates wanting to operate within a certain you know expenditure level you kept your expenditures low just like you always have done and now here's the result 20 30 years almost but it is almost 30. so is there is there an area of the
037state yeah or urban areas that are getting more above the yeah yeah if you look if you look to the expanding portions of the state yeah if you look to the east northeast um even to the well i'll just say i hartford's well over 11 000 because i have experience there um you're talking about maybe a mic away it might be 13 to 14 000 per revenue um so it really doesn't necessarily i think it's more of a reflection of community um and and what were the expectations of taxes and expenditures back in the early 90s and when people say the funding system is broken that's why why are we indexing back to a 1992-1993 school year expenditure is that sure [Music] good answer and it generally means that we're in the same boat with
038a lot of our brethren in the area yes uh either because we were all responsible in 92 or we just didn't have the right politician i'm not going to comment in any politician i'm just here for the numbers right i'm also reading it correctly that every one of these 15-ish districts that you have on here have referendums yeah and play operating without a referendum in this area this demographic is not heard of it's hard yeah but to be clear it was referendum maybe it could be one time it could be one time variety of referendum yeah and both is represented on here i didn't break out which time that both is represented still going back to the taxpayers for additional referendum correct all right i think that's good on revenues quiz will be later so
039then the same idea and i don't spend a ton of time on expenditures and the budgets in case you're again sleepy you can look at the budget document tonight and look up all the accounting codes on the dpi website but uh the same thing with expenditures like with revenues there's a large portion of revenues that are really the revenue limit formula state aid and property taxes the same thing on the expenditure side is there's a correlation is that most of our expenditures are salaries and benefits and in a service industry that makes sense nor is it out of whack with other districts everywhere right in service industry you're going to see salaries and benefits be a large portion of any budget and so there's further breakdown on the right there of where those salaries and
040benefits uh go and this is both in our general operations and because they're different funds special education as well so let's take a look at those both those those areas often just look at fund 10 general operations special education is lumped into here looking at go ahead tyler there are really a few and this is kind of going back to why we are under um projected expenditures the health insurance trend at a minimum is eight percent increase every year and that's just a given and that should be expected coming here again speaking as someone now part of the system uh this was an awesome slide to create and a lot of credit should be given to be able to stay underneath this trend to everyone involved in that because this is a large expenditure item
041of the district besides salaries uh this is this is the next largest expenditure item really and so to stay below trend uh in health insurance is why you're also able to then stay below trend in the expenditures overall even when there are increasing costs elsewhere and so um you can see where this has been and where it's projected for this upcoming year and hopefully this trend is something that continues and allows us to operate with those additional funds that can go back towards you know instructional activities on the lower left is a look at again why there may be a trend of some lower expenditures and maybe also an indication of where federal funding uh through esser can be spent so there's been some service repairs and capital expenses that have been you know reduced
042um over since 1617 and that's i think a combination of things being handled and needs may not have been um there may not have been the needs in place to be able to the needs in place to spend those dollars on uh we're in the midst right now of putting together a 10-year capital improvement plan that takes in information that i'm gathering from these past fiscal years and we'll bring that to the finance committee in november but the the large increase there for this upcoming year is really due to uh chiller replacement at the high school uh and meeting those funds and using them from the federal funding uh to be able to handle that expenditure more could occur um moving forward but that's part of the reason expenditures have stayed lower as well the
043vouchers on the right that's what can cause expenditures to look higher in some in some line items uh in the budget vouchers are an expenditure that's offset by property taxes so while the expenditure may go up the revenue matches that but it does give us an indication of that expenditure line item and why it may look a lot larger from year to year in the budget and that orange line is simply the cap keeps on rising up until ten percent so the breakdown of this year's uh budget revenues and expenditures we do have a projected fund balance that we uh hope to put away and again that projected fund balance is really meant to provide flexibility come 2023 2024 and moving forward as we see the membership the exacerbated membership drop hit our formula uh
044intensely in that year along with uh the referendum falling off um falling off the taxpayer roll that year as well so we're right around 50 million and we'll do what we can to stick around that fund balance of 3.5 we always go ahead tyler we always have to communicate to the public community what we're doing with fund 80. um the fund 80 levy is about 258 that's not about it is 258 500 uh that's been the same the same as last year and the lowest it has been really we take funds from that in order to uh serve the community with the pool at riverside uh the maintenance that needs to go into that the custodial support those yet ones in the yellow are the main ones and then there's other items that can be
045addressed through fund 80 if you know those opportunities arise it really is meant for community uh use of our facilities and programming and so time to go ahead and fund 80 budget then breaks down um levy we do receive some revenues to offset uh any expenditures predominantly from the city and uh just a little historical look at that and what we're planning on expanding this year finally that word sound great finally if you move to the next slide there's a lot of words on there you can just read that on your own well i'll go through a little bit uh i can't help it uh the mill rate now we get to the taxation part so revenues expenditures are now the mill rate the mill rate is the portion of your taxes for the school
046district anyway that for every one thousand dollars of property value what um on average what will you be paying uh that would go towards the school district the last four years uh we've had a mail rate for three or four years we've had a mill rate of eight it's all the next one but hold on um and this year i'm not gonna get away yet uh this year will be a little lower which is nice the tough part with the mill rate and having an understanding of how this filters through the different municipalities is that just because we have a military of 898 or whatever it is doesn't mean that you can just take the value of your home and divide divided by and find out how many thousands are in that value and automatically
047multiply that by 8.98 and that's my property taxes for the school when we receive the overall property valuations of the disk of our district it is based on fair market value the taxes then that we levy for tonight a little over 20 million each of the minister penalties takes their share based on fair market value however they then have to disperse those taxes based on assessed values and so when that happens there's a whole shift then in really how your taxes play out uh when you get that tax bill in january because it's switching from fair market value which we receive and how the districts or how the municipalities receive their share but then gets filtered differently so um this is how each of the districts shares or excuse me each of the municipalities share
048changed from last year to this year and those shifts are really what's going to cause taxes to increase or decrease more or less than than the mill rate that we set tonight based on the overall levy if you have more questions on that give me a call because it's awesome i'll talk about it all day next so just as then an indication we have when you get your your property tax bill the school district we set up a property tax a mill tonight the school district and this particular example that's a real tax bill for dodge county the school district makes up 33 of your property tax bill uh city of watertown there 40 the county 22 and the technical college also has a share so important to realize that it's not just 8.98 and
049that's my tax bill there's other entities that are involved in this process as well mill rate composition then on the next slide this is what makes up the mill rate and as i alluded to we've had four straight years of 898 and that's kind of been the established mill rate per 1 000 property valuation uh this year to at least for tonight we are um levying an amount a little over 20 million i forget what it is it's around 20 million that's going to create a mill rate of 8.90 so we're coming off of that 8.98 that was uh from understanding discussed as kind of a benchmark for what the referendum uh will allow the mill rate to be at 8.98 we're going to lower that to 890 that's proposal tonight and maybe and not
050maybe and make that i should say kind of our new baseline moving forward and it's an opportune time to do that as we only have one year left on the referendum we are able to kind of see what next year is because the biennium budget has been set for next year so we're really able to establish this new baseline comfortably and then move forward um and determine next steps after the referendum falls off so the good news is 890 versus 898 i should just start with that sat down is that it tyler oh my gosh one more all right so then finally there are clearly obstacles inflation is real it's a thing um not only and and well in costs all over the place of what we're seeing uh enrollment is going to be uh
051cause strategy uh needed strategy to uh continue to to wrestle with this binance budgets again this year we as i said last month districts did not get new revenue that per pupil revenue of 10 000 did not increase we usually count on the binding budget to increase our 10 000 more uh and that didn't occur for any district this year um what was on last year and i will continue to wrestle with as ecampus becomes more of an opportunity as the technology priorities the operational referendum ending is an obstacle you'll see it on both sides there and of course facilities management as it is with any district the opportunity though is is great esther funding which is the federal funding that all districts received um from the pandemic provides an opportunity uh that doesn't come
052along very often and for those um in the community we do have to uh we will be holding community input um especially that third round of financial funding that we got from um the government it's about 4.7 million dollars um and so community sessions will be held in order to gather feedback on what um you know opportunities may exist with this particular round of funding and uh i would hope we get lots of people involved in that and that we can see really where our community what values we want to make sure that we put forward in this third round of funding we will have the same listing sessions with staff as well um and and and gathered that input ecampuses as an opportunity it's in our strategic plan as far as being able to
053reach out beyond the borders of watertown school district really unlimited reach with ecampus and trying to get enrollment up the operational referendum while ending has created a tremendous opportunity to be able to handle shortfalls in the future especially 23-24 moving forward so that's really an opportunity for the district to um continue operations that are appropriate for the level of headcount and student enrollment that we have and in the last few years this district has been able to put dollars away into what's known as fund 46 fund 46 is an amount of dollars that can handle capital improvements and so there's 1.7 million dollars in fund 46 right now to be able to handle um capital improvement projects and that's an awesome opportunity the district has done in order to set those dollars aside to handle
054future improvements um so as a director of business services who's through the district all those opportunities um are great to walk into and to be able to think about strategy and be a part of this team to be able to do that so that's all i have thanks mike thank you mr winston so first members of the board questions or comments on the presentation i asked you as you went along so kind of assuming you got most of them out there not seeing any okay mike you know the so the action that's in the regular meeting has the twenty one thousand or twenty one million 160 or whatever what was that last year it was in the 20s it was all right then this anything else and this is a public hearing on this i'm
055going to open it up to the floor again this is the opportunity to ask questions or not ask questions sorry to make comments if you do have questions you can ask them we will answer them separately and about the budget anyone like to be recognized at this time seeing none anyone online all right then i will go ahead and close that portion of the meeting okay thank you very much for all the work that we did with that so we will move on to our regular agenda first of all for previous agenda any other changes to meetings no changes to the meeting all right did you have another opportunity here for public input if there are members presidents who would like to address the board at this time just please raise your hand and be
056recognized or online use your use the online raise your hand again ask name and address if you would please and to limit the length of your comments i'm going to start online first again all right please tracy finished the one zero seven west main street honestly what is it i take for the stubborn schoolwork to change the mice and ignacio requirement sure we're seeing a decline in cases that transmission and activity cases are still very high obviously most of you are too worried about pleasing the louder group in making a change for the greater good of the community in watertown and the two community counties i can't imagine what the flu season will get us our district feel like i have tried to offer you all a compromise to allow mass required as cases are
057high while giving concession to those who want mass optional when cases are low currently cases within the school district boundaries both counties transmission and activity are still very high like i have explained so many emails and spoke right up here the compromise i would like to see is that school bar requirements until cases go way down the community and district that everyone can look into making this optional the children there are more children getting sick and it's getting out of hand community spread does not start within the school it starts elsewhere sure there were zero cases back in may but there were also a lot of other cases in the community also do not even think about getting rid of quarantine protocols at all you get rid of quarantine you will see cases getting out
058of control like cedarburg school district has a spirit experience recently cedarburg has absolutely no protocols and now is experiencing an outbreak i also hear your plan is to continue face-to-face instruction for all students but if case if cases get way too out of hand you are prepared to make a transition to a virtual environment which is not what any parent wants i believe the best way to avoid virtual learning is to do yourself a favor before cova cases get ugly nate mastic requirement keep quarantine protocols then relook at every everything once transmission and activities are low thank you i have a question i have a comment on a strategic planning presentation will there be an opportunity to comment afterwards at the end of the meeting there'll be another option thank you i have a public
059comment please excuse me if i can't pop that's right hey my name is tammy fournier i live at 1101 crestview drive so i'm here tonight to express my deep disappointment in this board's choice to continue to discriminate against unvaccinated students where coded close contact is concerned the policy that is in place to quarantine mass social distance and test only on vaccinated students is causing more harm than good to the children and the families that live within our community i believe the board should change the policy effective immediately so that all children can attend school unless they are ill or at the very least have the same policy in place for all students and staff regardless of their vaccine status i would like to know how the board can stand behind following this recommendation by the
060wisconsin department of health data shows both vaccinated and non-vaccinated students are able to get and spread covet not only that but vaccinated students are said to be less likely to show severe symptoms of copic knowing that vaccinated students can get in spread covet while having fewer symptoms wouldn't one assume that the mitigating the spread was the greatest concern vaccinated student should be following this policy as well yet this board continues to only treat unvaccinated students differently not by law but by choice i know parents within this district that have had to quarantine their children multiple times this year because of a policy that's choosing to because of a policy you're choosing to implement these parents are not only worried about the lack of education their children are receiving because of these policies but they are
061also worried about the financial stability they can afford their children if parents must miss at least seven days of work potentially multiple times throughout the year with no family medical leave or doctor's note to protect them from losing their jobs because their children are healthy what do you say to these parents board is creating the us against the mentality and it seems to be very unapologetic about it you do not have any concrete answers to why you would choose to create two classes of students in your school system that is supposed to support diversity this board acts as if education is its top priority while choosing to ostracize the entire unvaccinated student population from the education and opportunities that their tax paying parents and members of this community provide now i understand that there are
062things that are out of this board's control policies that must be followed due to state and federal law yeah this is the last paragraph sorry i lost my spot now this however is not one of those situations you were all elected to run this district as a reflection of the values and beliefs of your constituents look around board members do you see masks or vast scene requirement signs on businesses within our community that are not deemed health care are large portions parents sending their children to school math stuff by choice because of covert fear are any of the choices you're making a reflection of the community you are supposed to be serving can any of you honestly say that large portions of our community are in support of the current close contact quarantine procedures if
063you can't they should change you're supposed to be working with your constituents to give the most robust education to the children within our community our opinions on what recommendations should be followed should be your guide you shouldn't impose optional policies on this community your policies should reflect the beliefs of the community it serves anyone else yes chris finch 1007 west main street i want to thank you uh start off by thanking you for and everybody in this um in these meetings for um just allowing democracy to have its place we we have two two groups of parents um one on each side um those who are wanting mass those who are don't want mass a lot of times i end up finding myself agreeing with portions of both of them um and i guess the
064one question that i have um regarding the quarantine process regarding um everything was vaccinations and everything like that i will say i do agree that there should not be discrimination between vaccinated unvaccinated that is ridiculous but my question would be if the mitigation repr practices are removed what do we do to protect the immunocompromised children that have to have in-person learning there are those that we do know are immunocompromised that we also know cannot learn at home so whether or not we keep the quarantine whether or not we do anything like that we need to make sure that we are balancing everything we're balancing mental health we're balancing protecting those kids that are immunocompromised we're doing everything we can to make sure that no one is discriminated against we need to make sure we have
065balance in what we're doing thank you gala this past week on thursday and at that gala which was a wonderful event a 100 year celebration it was very well attempted by the community the watertown unified school district was recognized for their over 50 years of membership uh in the watertown chamber and they did present the district of the plaque which was unexpected uh but uh very nice to receive uh and certainly speaks to the long history of partnership within the chamber all right nothing else nothing else so that is my announcement for right now okay if you move on to strategic discussion and our first item up is again to touch on the budget attacks on the adoption what else do we have to add forest at this point in time so again more members
066we did review this at fiscal saying whenever you did see that at this point in time and again it's something that's been in the works for many many months so but any comments or questions on get on the presentation okay i think i'll just highlight a few things which i made so number one the graph that he showed where our expenses have come under what was projected the year before the referendum and just to say you know the administration the board we asked the community to help buy some time essentially and i think that graph shows that the board has not wasted that time and that we have found significant opportunities particular around health care to reduce our expenditures i dare say i think you'd be hard-pressed to find any other area district that could
067say not only did they outperform come in less than the trend as it's referred to but actually pull their expenses way down which means we're sitting well under a million dollars less on health care expenditures than we were three years ago like that just doesn't just magically happen it was a lot of work that went into that so number one we haven't make use of the time number two we have been where we save that money we're saving it because we know there are rainy days coming we know when that referendum ceases even under the best case scenario part of the referendum we knew there was going to be a drop-off there and again we're trying to aim for that day now it's now been made more difficult by this most recent step down in
068enrollment i would like to highlight the lead here from a number of other agencies in the watertown area that birth rates have been down the last few years and continue to be down it's been about five years since this district class did an enrollment study that did projections in population we we thought we were looking at a stable situation beyond a certain point clearly that has not happened we were to go back to that colorized chart and look at the k through two numbers for the last two years that dropped 30 to 50 per class that was not what we that was not in the numbers five years ago that is very unexpected and again it is consistent what we're hearing for example from the hospital in terms of first rates it's there it's not
069expected i firmly believe it is only a matter of time before his community grows again we all set the newspaper headlines from the last bee watertown did not grow it lost population last 10 years great recession took the wind out of our sails i believe that wind will come back it will take some time and that's why it's important to look at the opportunities that were highlighted in terms of those federal funds but one time money how best can we make use of that the ecampus again how best we grow that there's a couple really big things that can be difference makers and can get us through that five year period after the referendum drops off so that's the few things i wanted reasons for concern but reasons for hope okay next up under strategic
070discussion is returning to the topic of strategic planning and i'm going to turn it over to my esteemed colleague um concerning strategic planning this is a continuation of a process in strategic planning and a partnership that's been going on for months board and administration and tonight we would just like to on behalf of the planning committee um we were tasked with wordsmithing the outcome of some uh work that was done on september 15th there was a joint meeting that was held between the administration within the board and we challenged the board we the board with coming up with now that we know what are our strategic objectives and our strategic priorities and we know how we're going to measure those priorities again the priorities are students success fiscal responsibility and enrollment growth we've got measures
071and objectives under them we challenge the administration on the 15th of september to present the number one that was going to in their collective wisdom get us to meet those outcomes and the outcome of that meeting was also the board having the opportunity to provide input to see if there was another strand and then the outcome was towards so we are presenting tonight on behalf of the planning committee which is myself doug will dave smith katie nigerian as well as cassandra and dave vitale who participated in our meeting the wordsmithing of our strategic strategies so go ahead thank you so under the strategic priority priority of fiscal responsibility um we realized that we really had not identified a strategy we an objective which was to create the three-year financial projection and based on the budget
072report and that you've just seen you can see why it's imperative that we continue to forecast forward we want to update that three-year projection by the first of july and we want to maintain that general fund balance that was presented but the outcome of the wordsmithing meeting that happened with the planning committee was the strategy statement and the strategy that gets us to the objective of a three-year rolling average is to identify multiple comprehensive strategies scenarios and strategies that impact that rolling three-year financial projection so we hope that that makes sense to you uh michael and uh we just turned it around so what i think the administration presented is the strategy he said nope that's the objective that's why you're gonna measure success that's the outcome and the strategy is multiple scenarios any comment
073from planning committee members or [Music] okay the next area is enrollment growth i believe yep and i'm not going to go through all of these outcomes and objectives this has been published this is out on the website and so if you could just move forward tyler when we word smack the strategy that supports all of those there's really two key areas one strategy is investment in staffing technology and marketing to enhance the infrastructure and culture of ecampus we've already heard discussions on ecampus and the state of technology is is a very forward-focused uh initiative and so we want to acknowledge that it's about investing in that and then the strategy the second strategy has to do with continuing to market who we are and what we have and we came up with the strategic statement
074of to expand and refine targeted marketing strategies to promote wusd watertown unified school districts broad and unique opportunities we have so much to be proud of in this district and we need to truly understand how we get out using today's technology social media opportunities to promote all that we have to offer because it's truly amazing incredible stories on multiple multiple levels so those are our two strategies e-campus and marketing okay thanks tyler moving forward then our third area of strategic priority is student success i won't spend time going through the details of how we're measuring student success as we continue forecasting forward i'm working with this strategic plan that is posted on the website thank you we have two key strategies and tony thank you during our meeting on the 15th of saying you know
075six or eight strategies he's destined for big failure so much of this initiative is to try and really get down to key comments and key initiatives so it was a great discussion when the planning committee was in because we ended up coming up with good statements that we would like to propose succinctly state our strategies as it relates to student success both at first at the elementary level and then at the middle school and the high school level what's going to be some key strategies that are really going to not only help us achieve our objectives but continue to strengthen the incredibly strong school district that we have so at the elementary level we're going to implement to fidelity responsive classrooms and restorative practice i'm sorry we're going to implement this as a combined one
076two fidelity responsive classrooms at the elementary level and restorative practices at the secondary level in order to significantly improve all students social emotional learning skills as well as positively impact the academic outcomes because they're very interrelated we can't have one without the other and we know that responsive classrooms at the elementary level with restorative practices at the middle school or high school level are some of those key wests that were spinning around those the second strategy is to implement to fidelity the fontes and pinella literacy curriculum at the elementary because this one is structured around what are we going to do to ensure our literacy scores so we're implementing santos and canal at the elementary our whole avid critical reading strategies at the riverside middle school and watertown high school and the curriculum support materials
077at rms that's a current project ongoing in order to increase these are key student rigor and engagement foster the differentiation to enhance growth for each individual student it's recognizing where each student is at and what do they need to grow and through that we're going to increase equilibrium so on behalf of the planning committee and with support from cassandra and dave we hope that we have wordsmith our strategic strategies in a way that can go to press and support us moving forward all right thank you come into the questions from board members could you share a little bit on kind of the next steps of the planning committee um i guess i really think about the the ones on the student success in particular like how are we bridging from our strategies to our outcomes
078that we're wanting and there's some pieces that we need some measurements and tied to an outcome of the planning committee meeting was we decided that we wanted to meet because we're really kicking ourselves off for the first time in this new format my memory and anybody correct me who is there is we want to meet every two months to begin to understand how we are measuring the uh outcomes and objectives how are we going to have them reported up so my understanding is the next meeting which will be in december we're going to get that structure around that every two months reporting and measuring that's more on measurement uh you said next step i mean are we going to be launching initiatives and at what level is going to show up on scorecards to trickle
079out of cassandra's office to all departments so that if there is a particular area that we said hey we're going to be a destination well that has to go into some marketing presumably um is that where it all originates from then cassandra i don't know if dave that was your question or that just follows up on that yeah i mean that's that's following up on basically to me i got it as cassandra's going to basically propose some ways in which we're going to be scorecard measure matrix whatever it is it starts because there's some i think some of us still have some missing puzzle pieces in the mind of you know how do we take social emotional and have it positively impact uh academic outcomes you know what what are the things that connect those
080dots we all kind of see that they do but what are we going to track and follow and and what are we going to do if it's if we're not getting there i mean if we want to increase our ecampus enrollment to 100 or 210 by in the next two and a half years if we're that if you need to be a third of the way there in one year and we're not then what strategies are i mean what initiatives are we going to do and what are we going to do differently and i just wanted to understand i think the same as dave no point putting together a strategic document if we're not going to follow it and live it and implement it throughout the school district um that could be a discussion for
081another meeting but i assume that the now the ball is at cassandra's report on this or where does it go from here where do we start developing the initiatives so i i can definitely speak to that i would say that the administrative team has been at work doing this they have been creating all of their uh scorecards aligned to the outcomes uh and based on the planning committee we spent some time at last week's cabinet meeting uh talking through how those uh strategies have been revised and what steps we were going to take to make sure that we were addressing those strategies in a slightly different way than we have in november we anticipate having our annual gallery walk where you would hear from all of the building principles in terms of the work that
082they're doing in their sites and how that will be supporting the strategic plan and then as we develop the strategy student planning committee we anticipate that will be our vehicle for reporting out our progress and our next steps um and as we be bringing that to the full force excuse me as well do you see that as including the marketing or do you want are you seeking board involvement good question um i think we will probably seek some board involvement in that we know we have uh some expertise on the board in marketing and we would certainly not want to leave that resource on the table uh we are more about education than air about marketing uh so there's a lot we can gain from the knowledge of the board on that uh we definitely
083want to continue down the pathway that we started and that work will be beginning again soon here as december will start to roll out when we start to need to be having our name out there and having some of our marketing strategies because we'll already be doing enrollments in fact that timeline is very much uh in our minds especially as it relates to the campus other comments or questions from board members this happens a little bit of what dave was where he was going particularly as it relates to the educational outcomes of academic success you've heard from me say a number of times this fall about focus focus focus focus and i think it is absolutely critical that our efforts pass the if not four tests which is you measure every initiative to the question
084of if not for this x wouldn't have happened not for this this number is not going to change that's what i'm looking for i need to understand how new initiatives pass the if not four tests and frankly if they don't as good nature as it may be and as generally heartwarming as that initiative may be we need to seriously seriously ask ourselves we have the energy to put to it because we've got these these are these are goals for a reason so i would just encourage the rest of you so i have to about my standard but know where i'll be coming from i'm looking for does that initiative pass the if not full test i know that if not for that initiative that outcome would have happened thoughts comments all right save schools update
085uh safe schools update there you see a picture of our in-person orchestra concert i'll talk a little bit more about that but it was a wonderful event uh and it's just another example of uh things that have been really great uh to see uh coming back it was great to see your parents there it was great to see our students in person it was great to enjoy anything of music and sarah hoffenstein who is our music orchestra teacher at the high school did an exceptional job bringing that evening to life what has been going well it looks like the version in four ducks is maybe not the one that's on the google but i will let's keep going nope that's perfect all right so our kobe case 19 data has been declining throughout the month
086so additionally our community state of national data are all trending down so that is fantastic news again as you watch that dhs website that tracks all of the community data when we began the school year that number was sitting at 66 uh cases over that seven day span this morning when i checked in again this afternoon when i checked we were sitting at 59 cases over the last seven day average uh which i think speaks very well to the fact that our case data over the last two weeks has been significantly lower and we anticipate we're going to continue to see that trending stabilizing and hopefully continue to go down uh because our kubernetes data is improving our attendance overall is improving and we're seeing more of our students in school face-to-face which is of
087course the goal uh you've heard already today the conversation about responsive classroom and restorative practices this picture is a little bit hard to see but this is an example of a morning meeting at douglas school where we're seeing some of those responsive classroom practices uh in place and building that canadian culture in our classrooms and buildings this has been mission critical as we've had some of our students back face to face uh that we didn't see it all last year and for a significant portion of the previous school year and some of our younger students uh our 5k students that didn't attend 4k for example are brand new to school this year this sort of work uh has been really really powerful to see our teachers have been fantastic and it's really great to be
088building that community in our schools once again um what else has been going well our quarantine and close contact notification practices are much more efficient now that we are completing them within the wusd i shared this last month i shared again uh the great majority of cases are executed now within one school day uh that is a huge improvement uh we have begun working with a testing vendor and we will be able to begin onsite testing on november 2nd we will have our test collector here she will be working out at the esc and we will be providing drive up testing between the hours of nine and three four days a week at no cost to our students to our families to our staff it will only be available for students and for staff not
089other community members and not other parents we will be continuing to utilize our learning platforms to make learning accessible when students are helped and our ecampus full-time enrollments from the district uh students has increased as well so yes testing again can you just just say it again it will be for students and staff it will be provided at no cost for any student any staff member there's no requirement that anybody does any testing parent consent will be required um and parents will actually need to register as well to have that testing done but it will be available uh for any student or a staff member who would like that they have to be tested especially if it becomes needed will there be somewhat of a pecking order of like those that are quarantined get a
090first shot at it versus those that you know want to go in every other day and get tested kind of a thing well i think so absolutely it's going to be driving testing we don't anticipate needing to do scheduling we think that we'll be able to execute the amount of tests uh within a day but obviously we don't know until we see what the actual demand will be certainly the goal is to get students back in class and to get staff back in class as quickly as possible so the implementation of that short reform team uh is definitely going to be a priority area as well as anyone who's perhaps failed the symptom checker and isn't able to be in school because of that question correct uh we talked a little bit about that services
091um we'd originally talked about having it at a number of sites uh for maximum access and availability uh but we decided uh added services and then again when i met with my cabinet team that having it a singular location just makes communication a little bit easier and makes it easier for our test collector uh to practice the testing with the greatest amount of fees so just add services and it will be at that the board meeting entrance store essentially people will be able to drive up uh there will be a phone number on the door they'll call and the test collector will come in come outside and do the test collection good questions any other questions on that okay avid at the secondary and implementation of the literacy curriculum at the elementary have been a
092strong focus since we began this school year here you can see the uh high school avid classroom uh with mr kerr uh just really fantastic work that is taking place in both of those areas as we kick the school year off we will have a professional development day coming up this week thursday where all of our staff will be working on uh avid strategies at the secondary and literacy strategies at the elementary to continue our work to make sure that we are implementing all of those things uh to fidelity and uh really making a difference for our students um although overall so what has been challenging on the other hand although uh overall attendance is improving we are still struggling with staffing shortages for substitute teachers if you follow the news uh you know that
093this is not just us this is across the stage and really across the country uh really really really a struggle so even though our absentee rate right now is much much lower than it was uh last year at um this time and then also moving forward we still are struggling to fill uh with subs every day so that has been an issue and it continues to be an issue we did again hire those long-term subs uh or our building subs to help assist with that uh but it does still continue to be an issue so we're still looking at how we can recruit uh and how we can reward and send those substitute teachers who are choosing to spend their time with us instead of with a different district we are also uh continuing to
094struggle with filling custodial staff positions bus driving positions crossing guard positions and paraprofessional positions so all of those continue to be needs in the district it is still challenging to have some students at home learning remotely while some students are in class it's challenging for students for parents and for staff and again although our attendance is improving this still is a strain on everyone and supply line shortages are continuing to impact our food options and our venues are costly what else has been challenging we have i talked a little bit you know we haven't seen some of these students in over a year many parents made the option to uh keep kids home keep kids virtual last year um for a whole bunch of uh very reasonable reasons uh but we're seeing um some behaviors
095that we didn't see uh last year as we reintroduced some students to the structures of school uh and we're seeing some learning challenges that have been exacerbated uh by that time away from school so we are working on that but that is that's something that's come to the forefront that wasn't unexpected but is still something we are working on navigating um testing and notification of positive cases i told you that we are executing all of these cases within a day so when a case is reported to the district we're able to execute that within a day however we still uh can only work as a function of when we find out that there's a positive test out there uh so there still is sometimes delay in that we do think our onsite testing is going
096to help with that we know that the average test return rate is between 6 and 36 hours for that onsite testing so we are hoping that that will help us um and again staff is feeling pressures focusing on student learning and balancing that with student absences planning for remote instruction and really this last one feeling the pressures of not enough time and increased demands we did a lot of scaling back last year to support our teachers and you know as as we've heard this evening lots of focus on strategic planning lots of uh getting back into a goal setting and pushing uh forward on some of those really important academic needs uh and that's creating pressure for our staff uh and there are especially have been concerns about colgan lead that that was something that
097staff had available last year and it was not something they have available this year and that again it's the source of anxiety senator can you put the student behavior on a scale a little bit so two years ago we had consistent behavior issues at this level last year i think a lot of the mitigation stuff put socialization way down so therefore any social related behaviors were way down are if we return to our two-year level are we half of that are we i'm gonna see if i have a principal that wants to speak to that at all yeah i will but it's not it it's good news i mean we just had a faculty meeting today and our goal of a 10 referral deduct reduction is being met um certainly two of those three grade
098levels our seventh and eighth graders are well below comparing it to 2019. which we feel is more of an apples to apples not many referrals when we were virtual last year but uh and and in sixth grade again nothing wild but we are as a building we are we are down in referrals in 1819 and in 2018-19 um we had 77 total referrals in the month of september 1920 um we had 65 and then 21-22 um we had 90 total referrals so we um you know we've seen a slight up uptick i would say i mean anecdotally i think some of the feedback as well is just some of the executive functioning skills um just need need some support you know especially with our our freshmen and sophomores i will say that we you know
099that that is not um super specific to watertown um in the sense that i just some different like collaborative groups that i've been a part of you know around the area um i know a lot of schools are are anecdotally um you know kind of struggling with the younger students as they acclimate to transition from you know especially like middle school to high school um some of those those skills to get them get them back on track so i know it's not it's not germaine just a watertown um but it's something that high schools in general are working um as well the only thing i would add to that is um definitely with probably the way it's a lot of group work we're getting back into and being able to work in those cooperative grouping
100and just been a challenge with some of our um younger students like she said that haven't really had that experience because of their schooling experience um and you know some of our older students in the elementary level getting back into that after such a time off one of the things that's really helped us when talking to staff is those responsive classroom morning meetings if there's a specific skill or specific area that they're seeing a concern they can kind of have a conversation with the students in the morning during those community um those morning meetings to help work through those i would tackle those same things and i think especially the younger ones like you know 4k and kindergarten who maybe haven't had the same outside of home experiences they may have had in other years
101of daycare anything anywhere besides homework learning how to share and some things that maybe in other years they've had a little bit more experience with for seeing a little more teaching and practice needed thanks good question um how are we responding i've switched some of these things already uh increase the hours of our health assistance uh return to staffing our buildings subpositions have returned to the more effective close contact quarantine procedures and have implemented those shortened quarantines and again we're going to start that on-site testing we worked with the hr committee to add copic leave uh to help support the staff that needs uh to be out due to the circumstances beyond their control and that is a resolution this evening and uh while we do plan to offer face-to-face uh we are prepared for
102a transition should we need to make one uh we have not uh needed to make a transition at this point even in an individual classroom level uh so we uh continue to be hopeful that we will be able to continue with that as we move forward and as hopefully again we see our faces stabilize and uh go down uh you are aware uh you can check our copic 19 data it's updated every wednesday and friday again if you look on there you'll see the very clear trend that we were moving up pretty dramatically and now we're seeing those numbers come down the opposite and again if you look at that dhs website you will see the same information about our community specifically and the state as a whole uh our data we do have 13
103cases at this time that we believe may have been the result of a pulse contact at school and we determined that by quarantine the positive that's out of 143 passive cases or approximately nine percent of our cases and approximately two point two percent of our warranties um continues to be important for our families to check that symptom checker make sure that your keeping kids home when they are not feeling well um and uh just a reminder that the watertown health department is offering regular vaccination clinics for individuals 12 and older and we do anticipate as early as next week that vaccinations will be available for those individuals 5 to 11 as well safety plan updates determining close contact and quarantine practices we did some updates there we updated the symptom checker uh just to reflect
104um that if your symptoms are improving and it's clear you do not have copied uh you can come back to school um short and quarantine we made the change we had said that you would not be eligible for a certain quarantine um for household quarantines uh the health department wasn't differentiating that uh therefore we didn't feel like we wanted to have a stricter policy than what the health department had so we did make that modification and again that covet testing information is in there as well and that is don't close out of their tyler because that'll be my next one too but that's uh my safety plan presentation any thoughts comments questions well this is i don't know is this the time to talk about if we can make some recommendations for future sure okay
105so um we have a resolution coming forward for um additional 10 days of because of the code for our staff employees and one of the reasons are because of employees have to stay home with their children due to quarantine so and looking at that and just based on what we've heard today about how about someone for the families with that there's other school districts that were we were made aware of tonight and changing that policy as far as just if there's a positive classroom notify the parents and let them decide if they watch your children just like we have with any other there's some symptoms coming up you don't send them to school so i think we're you know we're approving 10 days for the staff which i'm totally in support of i believe there's
106you know things coming our way as far as or i mean put on our staff that they need some relief so our parents have the same concerns how do they keep going to work when their students are at home or their children at home so i think maybe giving them a really warranty would be suitable at this time that's just my comment thank you for opening the door doug um personal uh observation i got a call from my daughter who lives in another district and her youngest son was a close contact her and her husband both work they are unable to take care so we had to travel 25 miles pick up this child and we kept child for two days until the weekend and the next day or the next week he was able
107to attend school so you know there are ways that parents can't get around it unfortunately i have a daughter that lives fairly close a lot of people don't and i think this while we give deference to our staff we give no deference to our community and our parents so i would be full in favor of allowing the parents make that determination and go away i guess to that to those points just because someone voices an opinion doesn't always make it true and so whereas people have voiced that we should be like this community or that community you know i guess i take a look at okay have we verified factual information have we what's credible information and just simply looking at one piece of information does not give us you know the whole picture and
108how everything looks and impacts and everything like that um the other thing that i guess i would put out there is just remind us as far as when there was discussion and communication um the incredible liability that we would be opening the district up to by not following those guidelines and things like that and it has not been recommended to do that the way i understand it from our attorney whom we take you know they they check out all the credible information and you know and who we rely on versus opinions you know just how we feel about it how we want it to be isn't necessarily the right thing to do mr chairman yes i'd like to respond to that as was just stated opinions personal opinions come out in your speech here i
109would just like to say that we as a school district have responsibility to our families and to their children to have education on an interrupted basis we had a whole year where they are behind we talk about the fall fallback that our children have taken over the last year and this quarantine is just exacerbating the problem we have a pandemic and i've used that term before and i'm very serious about that that has a 99.9 whatever percent survivability rate we know and that is fact based that the children are not spreaders and they are the least susceptible to um the illness that would cause them harm so just you know just to fear monger to continually fear monger about this is not good for our society or our culture and we need to move on
110we haven't done this in the past for any type of serious flu which caused more deaths for children in years past than copenhagen has so i i reject your premise that's okay we can do we can we can disagree sure um thank you doc for opening up the door to this conversation as well here's my take on all of this we get inundated with people's community members emails all of the time many of them which are here tonight um and we are elected bodies for our constituents right um here's a fact we know that our student behaviors are at an all-time high because they have not been in school and to be honest that's on us we chose to close our doors that is on us so what we should be asking ourselves is what
111are we going to do to fix this we know we can fix this by shortening quarantines and keeping our kids in school that is a fact we know we can do this we know jefferson lake mills other schools in jefferson county whose health department they will follow the same health department but they are doing something different that is a fact i don't know how they're getting around it but they are doing it another fact our attorney and attorney of another school district who has chosen not to quarantine come from the same firm so you cannot tell me that we follow the same guidelines and recommendations because it is simply not occurring and i would recommend oh it's a fact and if you want to fact check me we can talk after this meeting i recommend
112we take firm action to keep our kids in school because that is what we were elected to do i know we could debate this all night we know that oh i'm sorry um you know there's going to be different like i said different opinions and things like that my children were at home last year and did exceedingly well they're great symptoms they haven't had behavior problems things like that um you know we're talking about constituents and things like that i mean we can point to you know all kinds of different things you know there's a small group here today you know when we did an election in april i had the most votes so does that mean that i represent the majority of its constituents you know i mean we can flow back and forth
113and things like that but i think we need to take a look at the incredible information and what have we been advised through our attorney for liability when we're taking a look at the credible information that's what we have to take a look and make our decisions on that not just based on personal opinion or you know things like that like we have a greater responsibility to all thirty three thousand thirty two hundred whatever kids that there are in the district not just you know a few hundred we have a greater responsibility than that okay um there's other two factors that came into play just recently one is the vaccination of kids 5 through 11 next week that can occur so if a parent is concerned vaccination that's an option we didn't have that before
114so that's coming for it that's a fact and the second fact is we have testing on site now so that's going to help in determining you know johnny has sniffles within six hours you just said he doesn't have a copic he has sniffles so that's a factor in being able to reduce the quarantine time as well there's two of them that just came to light this month so i'm very open to engaging in the conversation for me based on what i've been hearing i think that we would help our parents and our community to clearly define um i i like where districts have gone in terms of if our code rate is here we're doing this if our covered rate is there we're doing that so that there's an understanding that as we head into
115winter if we get above a certain rate we need to take action and correspondingly as we're currently on a really good downward trend that means we can review what we do because certainly the impact of having kids home is so multi-faceted i think we've heard the economic impact the educational impact so i'm up for um continuing this discussion and really trying to figure out what's a better solution or a best solution at this time i think that part of that in getting data and information is i would really like to also understand how our staff feels on any changes again but let's keep the conversation going let's engage in a tough conversation and perhaps have something different when you meet again because of the things that you're mentioning that are coming into play well i'd
116like to agree with jennifer remove the question and and cassandra can we get i mean can we get data that shows how many hours missed always of school kids have had do we kind of get that very easily we can't um i mean it's fairly easy but i'm told that we'd be able to pull that data uh there is a difference in you know we have we keep our quarantine data but we don't necessarily designate the school district quarantined this child and the health department quarantined this child so we would have to pull some of those pieces apart because you can't just draw it out but could we do that i too very much like this conversation like it to continue um i would love to keep to make everybody happy and i there's one
117thing i've learned that that isn't gonna happen uh on this um so i i just like to put a little perspective around i don't know where where i specifically stand but there's a lot of talk about the 14-day quarantine but we've done a lot to mitigate to making it a seven-day warranty and i'll just use my son that was quarantined last week as an example it was day five from his contact that the test results from that person caught up and quarantined him he's able to get tested on day six and go back to day on school day seven so we're talking about investing two days of school not 14 cases so there's some perspective around what it is and i don't think that's an odd scenario that's probably fairly common scenario of what you
118knows exist of a compromising situation that we're in so we have done a lot of things to begin to compromise on this um i i don't know what the right answer is i like the just the same i think it would be absolutely wonderful if we could make all the points go away and if we could be there it would be absolutely wonderful once we start getting into that significantly i mean is that going to help will that will be able to utilize that to get kids back in school quicker well that is definitely the goal uh for students and for staff and the short quarantine piece as well as that failed symptom checker if we can rule over it out uh as the cause of why someone is needed to stay home again the
119new symptom checker information that we have allows them to come back as long as they are having improved symptoms so uh yes that should again it's voluntary you know some we aren't going to require anybody to do that testing but it is definitely an option to get back other board members i'd just like to uh i guess echo tina's comments and i believe quote ben franklin democracy is more than two wolves in a sheep voting once for dinner we know who the majority is we hear from the majority we can either hear them uh at the public comment we can hear them in our inboxes we can go back to the main meeting and we voted 7-2 to remove mask and that's pretty much how we hear from the general population and the democrats the
120people who voted us into office but remember we represent every single one of them not just the ones we agree with but we also represent the immune compromised we represent the ones who do have concerns we owe it to a it's not even my personal opinion i'm not going to tell you which ones i agree with but that has really no spot here dave to your point exactly we're never going to keep them all happy my comment has been when asked point blank what's your position i said i think i'm doing pretty well because everybody's pissed at me now taking a blended strategy no masks no vaccines limited quarantine you gotta pick your poison which one do you want you want the vaccine you want the mask you want the quarantine nobody here can make
121covet go away nobody here can change what the cdc is going to tell us so yes we have to make that decision but we have to make it for more than just the people we agree with we have to make it for even the people that we don't agree with they are also taxpayers they are also constituents and they may even have voted for some of us who we do not agree with them so i don't want to just jump on a bandwagon of the populist bandwagon we know where that takes us okay now i don't have anything else going on tonight we can debate here i'm sure a lot of people in the audience like the resolution on it i'd like a resolution on it but i don't mind at the next esc meeting
122i don't mind meeting tomorrow jefferson i believe if i was reading the paper right i didn't read the contents of their meetings but i think jefferson had to meet three or four consecutive weeks because they kept on going back on what they decided the previous week and the only thing i said in my household i said well boy i'm glad i'm not a school board member at jefferson because what i'm not going to do is meet and talk about this four consecutive weeks to then rescind what we've voted on or take new information so if we're gonna go somewhere different than where we are we better know why we're going there and it can't just be because of the loudest we can claim facts but i can tell you that from a purely analytical perspective
123a lot of people are drawing conclusions from facts not evidence tonight they claim that that's the reason and there are a thousand different reasons why kids could be under more stress or teachers may be absent or crime could be up okay so i'm all for the open discussion and i'm all for settling it tonight but i want to remind us all that we have a responsibility to more than just the people we agree with thank you other comments so speaking for myself i do think that there's a point at which the quarantines are not necessary and i hope it's just hope that we are past the people's past with that in mind i am trying really hard to learn from the last three times we made decisions in this topic here in which it came
124forward in a very abrupt manner with essentially no warning to anybody and of all the criticism we received those decisions the one that has struck home with me the most is our lack of process and transparency and making people understand that there was something important to them that was going to come up for a vote so i don't repeat that as much as it may be tempting this evening to try and take an action i would not be in favor just for that reason very open i i think there's an end point i think we're all well and frankly well on our path to that point there or not just for the board to decide i think we're up on that trajectory but i for one would not be comparison after the season let them
125know what's up for discussion uh 100 degree 100 agree is it possible normally this is discussed at the esc meetings at least major changes recommendations to the safety plan is the committee of the hall appropriate on november 9th at the esc meeting is that possible mr president or if we want to resolve this or have a dedicated time to spend on it with public comment looking for a opportunity i i tend to agree the esc meetings although productive they don't allow for public comment they're usually in the mornings um i don't want to necessarily supplant what we should be talking about yes at psc which is actually the education of the the kids but we end up spending about half the time on the safety plan i'm looking for suggestions on when we could do
126this and go ahead and make the sausage i'm not sure he's interested in taking action this prior to our next monthly meeting it is the board's preview to schedule a special meeting report will be noticed i'm encouraged to give a time and location that would allow for maximum participation which as you said tuesday morning at [Laughter] do you have to have a resolution already drafted to vote upon in order to debate it or can we draft the resolution during that meeting or do we mind what that means is the purpose to draft the resolution that will then be voted on at the next board meeting well my suggestion would be that if you want to take action at that meeting you have a clearly outlined proposal may not necessarily be the final wording if we
127intend somebody's gonna make a motion to remove close contact warranty and let's put that on as a topic so everybody knows what the potential vote is right down here for somebody saying let's it's for them to have a clear sense from the meeting notice as to what action is proposed cassandra if we were to remove it what is the health department's response to that today will they then pick it up again or that is what they have communicated to me um you know again i do think i've done raises good points that we have some changes that are worth coming in terms of a vaccination of younger individuals um i would reach back out to the health department to see what there's i mean i can do some of these things before our special board
128meeting i can reach back out to our council i can reach back out to the health department and see if they have changed their stance but certainly the last time that we reached out they said that they would assume those uh those quarantine responsibilities and again they have stated that they feel that that is their statutory obligation under isolation uh in quarantine and that they would assume that again but yeah i could pose the question absolutely again 100 how are other districts other entities whatever dealing with the difference between a school close contact in which tina and i are now five and a half feet apart not six versus siblings that are sharing a bed right next to each other most health departments and again that's a very broad term uh my understanding of what
129most health departments are continuing to do is to issue those quantities for households siblings and again those that translate to us and we implement those uh and then my understanding is that most school districts are doing their own contact tracing and uh following up in cooperation with their health department that varies some from local health department to local health department shows how that's doing how they're doing that uh you know there was a conversation about jefferson county i know that in jefferson county they're reporting all close contacts to the economy um and what action the company is taking on that uh is data tracking so that looks a little bit different than what our health department has said at this point but again our last communication from our health department was in collaboration with all
130of the health departments that serve us in our community so to play that back what you're saying is what many people are pointing out as they're doing it but we're not correct is oftentimes how that local health department and the school district are aligning or not aligning in what they're doing so if waukesha is an example it's the waukesha health department has a completely different interpretation in the watertown health department on how they're going about it correct uh and again you know just to go back to uh our our attorneys um i can't say you know what any individual district is doing in terms of their specific legal counsel i can only speak to what our legal counsel is doing and how that aligns with those interpretations of uh state statute again the scenario is
131a little bit different than it was even at the beginning of this year and perhaps there's a different interpretation of that so i can certainly reach out again and see if there is and there's also been no legal precedence but i think that school boards have been sued from both sides of this issue both to force quarantine as well as not mandating masks or to blaming i think most recently cedarburg for an outbreak because of lacks protocol uh dave to your point i believe it was the jefferson county health official who just admonished jefferson's school district for their lacks procedure so apparently jefferson school district and the county official in jefferson are not in agreement i don't know if anybody else is in agreement with the county official but i know that the paper as
132it was written the the school district crossed the line and that's why they had to meet four times so it's it's not easy it's not clean and once again i don't think anybody can be happy i think that is accurate another potential thing we can look at doing is having perhaps some legal counsel present uh to speak specifically to uh their interpretation if that would be a helpful piece so i would say um hearing i think the board's desire to do a special board meeting i can do some addition some additional follow-up with the different health departments with that legal counsel i can work with tony to set that date and we can see if we can put some proposed language out on the table that then can be at least the subject for that
133discussion and i would i mean for my part i'd be supportive of that cassandra and tony but i'd like to know that we were going to likely end up someplace different than where we are no need to have a meeting to just say status quo and then have a long lengthy debate where we're not changing anything so if you don't find that there's an opportunity to change anything either because as dave accurately pointed out if the city health is going to still come down with a seven day quarantine regardless of what we do or what we say then we're just passing the buck and we're right back where we started at the beginning of the year which we knew was not sustainable similarly if legal counsel says precedent is such that they're starting to ruling
134these cases and you get a better chance of getting ruled against for being too lacks than being too strict we would have to take that from a risk management perspective and recognize it as well so i don't know what you can find in the next let's say week before we announce the meeting and draft a resolution um i would just hope that would be meeting for some substantial changes to the safety policy not just to debate it again an open forum for two hours and then still come back out right where we ended up which is as i stated nobody's happy but such is the world and i can definitely capture that information um so i can definitely do that and then we can determine what the will is if we want to measure that
135but i just like to add that a word would be more willing to take a note from the so is it your interest to have a special meeting david says if it appears that there can be a productive outcome from that yes and you would like that meeting to occur before not wait until anything else on this subject [Music] uh the first slide on there is board appreciation week we do appreciate it very much everybody's happy wow while not everyone is happy the work you do i think it really truly is difficult and uh is appreciated uh by by the staff uh by the community uh and i think there is a general understanding that these decisions are hard and uh you know you do the very best you can to make the very best
136decision that you can so i certainly think um our administrative team our staff feels and knows that and you truly are appreciated and as such you have a small token of our appreciation uh this evening as well uh we did also uh post recognition in the newspaper if you had an opportunity to see that uh in alignment with uh several other area school districts and um we also recognized you on facebook and hopefully you got out there and saw a lot of uh positive comments about your leadership and uh your willingness to lead through difficult times so please know you are appreciated uh and i think again the work you do is hard and we understand that you are not in it for the money this is hard work uh [Music] service to your community
137and that's why you're all here as super exciting news uh watertown high school is the new electron midwest record holder uh and here you can see um our teams uh jessie dilmer led this team he does an amazing job with uh skillsusa um and has really really uh just done amazing work with these kids and making sure they get the recognition that they deserve for the hard work that they have put in which is countless countless countless evening hours building their vehicles uh and then bringing them to competitions so fantastic work for them and uh huge kudos to webster ensures so first of all all of our elementary schools all of them we believe are among the best elementary schools uh in wisconsin it just so happens that two of them were recognized for that
138u.s news and world report and that was webster and sure school so this is the first year that u.s museum world report has recognized elementary schools so we are very glad to have those to make that list this year i talked about it already the legendary fall concert it was fantastic to see i'm looking forward to many more events as we continue the school year and in case you have forgotten we are hiring we're hiring bus drivers uh we've actually put out a call to some of our coaches uh to get their uh cdl so they can assist us with some of this driving uh please if you think you want to drive a bus uh see mr williamson he's got a program for you to get reimbursed uh and drive those kids so that
139we don't have to release them quite so early for their school day to get to their events which is where we're really getting crunched is in those uh in those athletic events and after school activities especially at the middle school and i know everyone wants to drive a bus full of middle school students to their events there is no better more rewarding experience please consider that and if you don't like that be a substitute teacher be a paraprofessional uh be a cleaner for us we will take you we have a job for you uh no experience on needed the bus drivers will get the mcdonald's i don't know all right and that is i think the end of my slide so oh yes how's the review policy review so we're going into committee reports uh
140okay let's see here policy committee met on october 13th board members present for myself steve confident dave schrader other members of the administration that were present was uh jamie and mrs correct just on that i know that you did post in your board update that we had a policy meeting in november are we actually i was hoping that we would discuss if we wanted to meet we'll discuss a little bit special board meeting [Music] all right fiscal management over there great payments reported various reports um continue to discuss the payment reports as far as when there are reoccurring expenditures from your year or the metrics needed in order to determine whether they should move [Music] skip the budget update we all saw that tonight uh we do have an instructional sound system coming to the
141board tonight to purchase that's greater than twenty thousand dollars super excited to hear the principles in case you have questions on that um maybe that's there um uh we discussed the damage that was done uh to the furniture at the high school we saw a potential dollar amount that um furniture that dollar amount has not been made public because we still may bring that to a bid and i don't want to have that bumper out there that anyone can go and see um so that's but i think it would be apt to say there was some sticker shock to that dollar amount it is a it is covered under our library insurance and we just want to make sure that we get what is needed and what needs to be replaced and that is basically
142what i'm going to follow up with is insurance company has seen what sort continue to work through what a construction manager rp looks like for future specifically for future projects related to air handling distribution comfort um including that rfp to make sure we are doing that due diligence and giving the best house of service for the best possible and finally we looked at the fiscal management descriptions of board policy to make sure they aligned with what the policy finance [Music] hr we met on october 18th at 5 30 p.m uh committee consists of myself jennifer bakke paul then landon langenberg and tina johnson also in attendance at that meeting was board president tony arnett and vice president doug will along with uh dr schub we went through the consent agenda which is comprised of a
143committee review of the staff resignations and referrals and appointments um we are in a good situation there i don't know margaret if you want to expand upon that at all or in our constructive job yeah um other than echoing what cassandra has already said about our need for hiring which is very very specifically to highlight one area our paraprofessional ranks could really really use some good solid substitute candidates which are excellent positions for parents that are taking care of their kids at home perfect hours and duties and great environments for an and that agenda will be voted on this evening uh we also went through the health insurance plan performance and that was initiated by uh andrew o'halek who represents us for the court's benefit for this calendar year uh he stated that we are
144doing very well we're seeing an increase of four and a half percent this year which is very good um things are we've been very blessed i think that was spoken of well by our by mr williamson as far as how we're doing with our insurance company and insurance for our staff our hr director ms brady will prepare is going to have a resolution for consideration uh concerning that this evening also we discussed the coven 19 lead policy which was uh alluded to a couple other times prior in this meeting i don't know if we have to go into it i think it was that it was presented already but there will also be a resolution to that this evening we also uh discussed the policy that governs the human resources committee and its description of
145uh duties uh it was felt that we need to [Music] uh delve into this a little bit more and to make it more relevant for what we do as a committee and uh that will be further discussed in the future and that was the end of our meeting so uh our next meeting will be november 15th are there any questions here is done and services we had on october 12th at 7 30 out of each school uh we had three things on the agenda all committee members were present as well uh you talked about the safety plan which again cassandra went over tonight so i won't double up on that the second thing on the agenda was a policy 8140 uh referring to the head services committee about the description of the duties and we
146just kind of we discussed language related to the educational services committee and its focus as part of the board's work most most significant changes were suggested in the policy will be further discussed with the november policy to do committee meeting we suggest that teaching and learning uh reports following the full view of educational services that a future committee board meetings so i hope anybody wants to add on and then the third portion of our meeting got a chance to tour the building uh principal marquette and student tour guide gabe gave a tour building the grounds at the leap elementary uh the tour included uh checking out the new aquarium so a view of the butterfly field and the greenhouse mr getz took time to acknowledge the many donors and contributors that have supported the school
147and its efforts uh to build focus on environmental and agricultural education um our next meeting will be tuesday november 9th at 7 30 at watertown high school room 112. comments questions reports all right teaching and learning unfortunately covering that yep thank you i know you also got a copy of this in your weekly upload to update dr um it's just a recap of some of the professional law that we have coming out this week it's a good week because thursday is a day for professional development um you can see overall the focus um on 4k all the way through 12. 12th grade is on literacy and aven specifically at the elementary level we'll be working on writing conferences and then we'll be doing some more in-depth lexia training if you remember lexia was one of
148the online platforms that we moved forward with um during the last school year for the next three years so our teachers will be learning how to access the data in the program look at student progress see when they need to intervene and when to celebrate the students who are progressing through that program we'll also be doing some work with that constant male um curriculum materials k2 we'll be doing shared reading and three five will be doing book clubs um as always the board is welcome to join anyone um during one of these events um you can see at the high school working on the avid strategies specifically in critical reading and at the elementary level and at the high school level also time to apply those apply any of the strategies one that they in
149their classrooms continue with restorative practices and then the thread assessment team members will be attending for essential training um you can see at the middle school continue to work with that literacy research study team that was mentioned earlier they'll be doing some site visits to stoughton and mosquito um in addition some of those folks from the middle school will be going to that doj threat assessment training as well and then avid the um taking place our elementary special ed staff will be doing a training of event teaching force which is a process that we use for our functional behavioral assessments and behavior intervention plan we had done the young learner portion of that with our 4k childhood staff and now we'll be doing that with kindergarten through fifth grade style um aaron does have some
150staff attention for the little high school level elementary level um which hopes to move that into the middle school in high school in the near future and then you can see at the high school and musical level they're still looking to find attitudes so again a plug for some additional staff i think i hear a theme here looking for staff um and then aaron was excited to be able to share the good kind of doj coordinator and that person will be starting on november 2nd all right questions or comments on that report all right thank you very much so our next item is the consent agenda resolution 9064. the consent agenda includes our board meeting minutes committee summaries personnel staffing that's resignations as well as hiring retirements the approval of bills and the first and
151second reading of policies we do have some of each of those this evening do i hear a motion on 9064 any comments or questions on the motion hearing none we'll all vote please david sherry all right david smith yes yes doug miller yes yes jennifer becky yes tina johnson yes steve cocco yes yes and the motion carries next we will move on to our other resolutions for this evening first up is resolution nine zero six five this is the budget and tax levy which i am going to go ahead and read out it resolve the water time unified school district adopted budget for july 1st 2021 june 30th 2022 submitted to the board of education's 25th day of october 2021 a copy which is on file educational service center b ends here by approved and
152adopted be it further resolved and thereby and hereby is levied and assessed against all taxable properties new and personal within the confines of the watertown unified school district city of water town and towns of kleinman emmett lebanon lowell and shields dodge county and towns of concord farmington exonia milford and watertown jefferson county wisconsin an irrefutable tax in the amount of 21 million dollars to be applied to the operational budget community service and debt service funds on the basis of the equalized valuation certified by the department of revenue and to adequately cover any and all long-term obligations for capital expenditures of the wesd as set forth by approval of the board of education do i hear a motion on resolution nine zero six five [Music] 0.99 sorry 8.90 mills which is 8 cents less than last
153year again that is the rate how it affects each individual property owner has to do with a number of other factors including the change the value of their home over that same year so but the rate is going down and the comments or questions on the motion i just want to put that in perspective and i could be wrong here if my math is right so we're basically going down from eight point nine eight to eight nine so it's about a one percent decrease in the rate the amount that we're levying is going from 20 million 702 to 21 168 so that's about a two percent increase in the amount that we're levied levying property values if i got it right have gone from 2.304 billion to 2.377 so they have increased by about three
154percent so the net effect here will likely still not result in the vast majority of taxpayers seeing a lower tax bill we are doing our part to help to do that all right other comments on the motion hearing none roll call vote please david hi david smith yes next is resolution nine zero six six for the phonak digit master budget bundle system sorry do i hear a motion on nine zero six six removed by david seconded by katie comments or questions and these are essentially in classroom microphone systems health with voice amplification any other comments questions on the motion please david trigger hi david smith yes yes doug will yes tony arnot yes jennifer vodki yes tina johnson yes sweet popcorn yes yes and the motion carries next is resolution nine zero six seven which
155is the renewal with the court's benefits for health insurance do i hear a motion moved by steve seconded by paul again as was previous mentioned this is at a rate increase of 4.5 which is well below the national trend any other comments or questions on the motion looks like contract maximum again this is the maximum 4.5 so this is this is the negotiated frankly expected any other comments or questions hearing none we'll call vote please david sugar aye david smith yes yes um yes yes jennifer yes tina johnson yes steve pop out yes yes and the motion carries our last action is resolution nine zero six eight which is the updates to the employee leave do i hear a motion on nine zero six eight summary for hr does provide that copic related leave or
156staff comments or questions on the motion yes and the motion carries and that brings us to our last opportunity for public input these are members of the audience online or a person who would like to address the board please raise your hand to be recognized at this time and you can use the razer hand feed feature online i'm first going to check there's anyone online list all right let's go ahead and recognize our first and again please give your name and address and keep your remarks free hi my name is cassie siebenlist i am at 104 north main street in greeceville i opened all my students into the district i just kind of wanted to address some of the things that were brought up throughout the rest of the meeting um so it's kind of
157random points but quarantine is important to stop the spread it is not used because there was a case in your child's classroom i've gotten multiple emails for cases in my child's classroom it is only used for close contacts and children are able to spread this last year my son was exposed at school and brought it home and gave it to the rest of the family without quarantine he could have spread it to countless classmates um quarantine and other mitigation measures are extremely important especially given the fact that the mitigation measures that are supposedly in place aren't happening there's no temperature checks being done at my daughter's school which i'll be sending an email about later tomorrow so it's important when we know that a child is sick or exposed to keep them home to keep
158everybody else safe the district does owe responsibility to all families to provide an education that includes a safe education for all of their students not just the ones that are the loudest not just ones that are healthy includes the ones that may have be immune compromised or go home to immune compromised family members i've noticed multiple times to parents claiming that the board doesn't listen the board isn't listening the board isn't changing anything just because things aren't going your way doesn't mean the board isn't listening the board is trying doing their best to make the decisions that are right for the community and i appreciate everybody on the board this is not easy what you have been through is a challenge i would not want to be put in that position but it is important
159to follow the guidelines put out by the school district the health department the cdc to keep everybody safe um i would like to also bring up something that wasn't mentioned it's that the urgent care in watertown is still closed it closed in september due to cases they weren't able to support the urgent care and the er and until something changes i don't think anything i don't think anything should be rolled back that keeps our students safe until the community is safe and the community can seek the medical attention that they need if they're in a spot where they need it until all of these things happen i don't think we should get rid of quarantine i think my two minutes is up so again thank you everyone all right thank you for your second one
160online melissa please hello hi um alley contest 400 chadwick court um i just wanted to say first that i appreciate those of you who have who spoke up tonight i know that you put your necks out there um because you might not have a popular opinion um you're right though you can't make everyone happy but the number one priority should be the kids and keeping them safe healthy and getting a good education and there has to be some middle ground there we can't just pretend like there's nothing going on anymore our numbers still are not great for heading in the right direction but stopping precautions now will make us just backslide and then it will just be a vicious cycle it's important to remember that kids even though most children do not get severely ill
161from ovid they still can spread it and they can be asymptomatic and still contagious people are contagious before they have symptoms so basing quarantines solely on symptoms is is flawed and dangerous because it can just lead to outbreaks um and we don't want to head back down that virtual road that's not what anybody wants we really need to stay cautious and and keep things going forward not falling back we really need to find that middle ground which is not no mass no quarantine nothing it needs to be there needs to be precautions and this needs to be taken seriously for all of the kids and all of our community and i think that it's really important that you remember that you do represent all of us not just a lot of of us and you
162need to make decisions that are based on what's best for the community community not what people necessarily want thank you all right thank you okay in the room please and i know you identified yourself earlier with you thank you lori hoffman um based on experience and the strategic plan presentation i would like to suggest another place to look when creating an action plan to establish a trust relationship between the district the parents and the watercolor community messaging the messaging the district sends to students is currently focused only on the individual and the classroom this is consistent with the valuable but incomplete fidelity fidelity response classrooms model proposed in the strategic plan there's no mention of parents or the watertown community the community according to responsive classrooms is defined as the school or the classroom only
163even the messaging from the posters on the walls of school is all about me me this isolates kids from the vital support of their families and the watertown community as a whole if we want kids to come to school ready to learn then the district has to acknowledge include support and respect their students families and community you the enrollment growth strategy presented focuses solely on marketing for the for the main campus i suggest that you focus on improving the quality of the relationship you have with parents in the community as well as marketing i also want to note that the strategic plan is is a very good start but i think it needs a lot of work all right thank you i just have one more comment tammy when you speak to your lawyer i
164would like you to ask them if employees employers would be more willing to accept excuses for missing work from a health department than from a public school district because employees parents like myself have a much stronger leg to stand on when a health department tells us that our minor children need to stay home then when a school board decides to use certain policies that other school boards in the district are not using or in this state but if we can say the watertown health department has informed me my seven-year-old child cannot go to school for seven days they're more likely to keep me around for legal ramifications on their part for letting me go right thank you please oh hi um i'm lisa noble w599 um thank you to all all of you for being
165here i know your job is a hard job i certainly wouldn't want it um but i do want to thank doug for opening the conversation i want to thank katie and steve for continuing it and all of you board members for the discussion tony for your um although i don't agree that yes you know i would like things to change tonight i understand your view on this as far as the whole public the full school district for making you know not going into a quick rational change and upsetting more people um anyways a couple other notes i want to make um back in the day 10 plus years ago high school kids couldn't miss a couple days of school because they would be so behind in classes i have a 27 and a 34 year
166old graduated from watertown they would be so far behind right now i have an 18 year old and a 16 year old my 18 year old was recently close contact quarantine guess what there was no education he had no education at the time he was close about that 14. some say yeah your child was only out for two days that's fine your child may be only out for a day or two days if they get tested i am not going to test my healthy child i'm not going to test i'm not going to put a mask on my healthy child if my health if my child shows symptoms then i'll consider doing the test but i'm not going to do a healthy child putting a mask on or testing for that um i made a
167comment about um to to the the cassandra on that one um that she had that my son was close contact and he was sent home with a letter the letter was if we have questions to call the school so we did we called the school my son received no education he received no wi-fi which we did not have at home he received no computer from the school he had no education so to the board thank you for giving my son a free pass to enjoy his time at the farm doing farm work still socializing but not in school again very sad that how kids were back in the day ten plus years ago they'd be missing a day or two days of school they'd be so far behind now it doesn't seem like they are
168at all because the school in my eyes did not care we called the suit the school never got a phone call back from the principal never got anything the other thing that i do want to urge you and encourage you is yes you are all the board is elected for you know you are elected by us parents um possibly send out a survey to all the parents that the school superintendent you know cassandra and you tony that you have equal equal i guess um but you both can see it equally not it's all given to one person not you know that you can see it equally see what the parents want see what each individual family wants for their kids do they want to you know this close contact do they want to end where
169do they want that's all i have thank you thank you all right our gortman 1549 boulder road i want to point out a couple of observations also um you know the discussion we talked about two days of quarantine potentially do you realize how much effort has to go in to two days all of this testing all of these contact tracing that's a lot of anxiety that you're putting up on your staff members for what you know those kids are exposed in the classroom you know six days you know already and all for two days to keep a model classroom i think that's all a huge ask i think you're going to start to experience better behavioral issues the longer you're able to keep kids in the classroom i just think it deserves discussion i appreciate
170the discussion tonight i hope it continues all right thank you anyone else please chef wonderland um uh number one my daughter was quarantined after being identified as close contact with a positive student and an interesting side note here is the students the positive student is vaccinated my daughter is not so fun fact not opinion vaccinated or not protected from coping then spell cdc and their local health department will tell you that is not a fact your teacher has attempted to be supportive of their needs and i support them for that um to prevent her from falling behind while she was out of the classroom but they were not fully aware of the level of commitments that used the administration placed on that in prior board meetings that became very clear very quickly so either a
171the teachers were unaware of the expectations b they misunderstood the expectation that the administration foresee the level of expectation was never clearly expressed i don't know what the answer is all i know is it's still a problem um the intended role one of my other after attending the educational services committee meeting the intended role of the board is to be the voice of the tax paying public especially where legal matters are concerned the board has a responsibility to let them instead what's happening in this case is that the board is asking the administration for assurance that everything is above board and legally sounds do you know that's really the case then i'm going to go with the next agenda item this is not an adequate level of oversight for direct development as we've referenced earlier
172in need tonight and certainly the case as katie referred to that somebody from our legal firm is advising other communities differently so why is that so i encourage you board members to please look into the legality yourself thank you all right thank you all right now entertainment stay