1/24/22 Regular Monthly Board Meeting

001presence i will go ahead and call this meeting to order if you would always rise and join me in the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you paul would you please take the role uh even traitor here david smith here paul vanden langenberg here doug will here present jennifer bockey tina johnson here steve kaufel here katie nigerian here all right our next item is a preview agenda are there any changes we need to make to the agenda there are none all right then this is the first of two times for the meeting for public input for members of the public either in person or online to make comments

002if you're online would like to make comments please use the raise your hand feature to be recognized those in person please raise your hand i will recognize you when you make your comments if you please give your name an address for the record and keep your remarks brief is there anyone like to be recognized at this time please i'm just going to step up the little table we've got there in louisville thanks tracy finch uh west main street um i'm coming tonight with a few questions hopefully that will lead to some clarification in your safety plan your current wording of your plan that has led confusion when it should be clarified the current plan says the district is prepared to go virtual but there is no metrics to allow parents to know when this will

003happen i understand that the goal is to keep children in school as long as possible but given the current rise in cases it would be very helpful to have some questions answered first there is a number of cases or a percentage of students and staff infected quarantine or quarantining that will cause the school district to go virtual will the entire school district go virtual or will this be handled by a school-by-school thesis how old parents do you receive prior to the school going virtual with cases an alarming rate they're raped right here in our school district it seems that we are moving closer and closer to needing to go virtual parents on both sides of a mass debate agree that virtual learning is detrimental to the education and mental health of our children we can

004remember back in october 2020 when the vast majority of parents wanted their children back to school and several parents shared heartbreaking accounts of the difficulty virtual virtual learning cause the reason pushed was to make quarantine optional the main reason behind this was this is push was to keep children in school now with pieces rising we are getting closer to virtual learning again looking at the safety plan there is there is no previous prevision of bringing mass back into fact to avoid virtual learning why is that there is nothing between everything is optional and virtual learning would it make more sense to have a progressive approach to the mitigation efforts i have suggested having a compromise in the past and this is where we would see it if we had it if we had a step

005and we had a step in the safety plan that said we would we would be required to wear a mask in school for a set amount of time it would provide a buffer between first everything optional in virtual learning even if you only require math for a short time you could add support needed to keep children in our class you please draw your marks so let me finish with two questions first which is more detrimental to learning and mental health math or virtual learning second is the board so strongly against masking in schools that you are willing to cause virtual learning even though it is more detrimental to education and mental health than wearing a mask in school thank you next in person please in the back michelle stewart 1403 shoeman drive i have quite

006a few questions um i still have yet to get answers to questions i emailed back in november in regards to anything that i asked back then um but i am becoming very concerned about the amount of strain that is being put on our teachers in this situation with the evidence of rising cases within the district and seeing the strain this places on the ability to educate students why are the only options to help alleviate this or to either go fully virtual or to take away instructional minutes to give staff full days to plan to make up their missed prep dives they need the prep time now not a month from now and two months from now with staff telling you they feel pressured because of lack of time why is the go-to option to keep

007school open to have teachers give up their prep hours to cover other classes um has the district looked at other districts that are able to not only keep their cases low but also keep their teachers from burning out and feeling overburdened due to lack of prep time because of providing coverage to see what it is they are doing to accomplish this um there's the amount of teachers leaving the field of education is rising the amount of teachers either switching districts or leaving the field mid-year is also rising what is the district planning to do to change what they're doing to keep the quality educators in the district teacher burnout is one of the leading causes for leaving a district and the lack of prep time because it has to be taken away to cover is

008one of those leading factors a lot of teachers are very are very frustrated with districts that don't use any data don't use cdc recommendation to make their decisions and so they're leaving the entire system what are you doing to fix that in this district i also am not always receiving a response back when i request information on whether or not my child is considered a close contact and i'm going to guess i'm not the only parent that has had this issue so this tells me that the system that you have in place is not working what are you going to do to fix that thank you anyone else in person please in front i wanted to take the opportunity to thank you for the decision to make close contact quarantines a recommendation and not a

009requirement i also wanted to take the time to thank you for the flexibility to adopt the shortened household quarantine periods to five days but i'm confused about something if a parent chooses uses an at-home test to get a positive result on their child the district has no problem taking them at their word but when the fifth day comes around the district requires a release from the health department or a medical provider not only does this effort exacerbate the already taxed medical community but most medical providers will not issue a release for a child that is recovering in a healthy manner without seeing them never mind the financial implications the entire time we have accepted people at their word about improved symptoms and for the onset of symptoms but wait all of a sudden this policy

010implies that a parent who's been forthcoming enough to inform you of a positive case and prepare to keep their child at home is going to lie about the date of the test or whether their child has improved symptoms really i don't buy it this is not the wild wild west after all if the premise was to make it easier for people to comply with the shortened quarantine protocols then make it stupid simple to comply this can be done without exacerbating our critical medical community with the busy work that you're requiring them to do because someone somewhere doesn't want to take the parent's timeline for a positive test that sounds absolutely ridiculous to you then maybe it should i understand that things are challenging for the nursing staff this year but does that really doesn't have

011to be really more complicated than looking at a calendar and scheduling a follow-up call next week to verify improved symptoms get back to education thank you he's in the back hi um this is humboldt w5 and in three country watertown um first of all i just wanted to say thank you for seeing your old silent faces um but then also to say thank you for keeping the masks off our children and for keeping and for ending the close contact quarantine um i do hope that continues and does not change and when you take any steps backwards thank you all right thank you anyone else if you have somebody online i'll take that next all right online chris finch please join his microphone thank you um chris finch1007 west main street um i also had a

012couple questions about the virtual learning um given given that my daughter has an iep and needs some special help um it does add a lot of stress to the situation when we if we do go virtual so um i guess the questions i would have with that again looking for clarity um if we do go virtual how much notice are we going to give parents i mean some of us have a benefit of being able to work from home some of us have to try and work things out with our employers so it makes sense that we would have some sort of advanced notice and then also how long would virtual learning last in our safety plan it says we're prepared to go virtual but we don't give any more details we don't give anything

013that says if we go virtual it's going to be for a set amount of time maybe a couple days maybe a week maybe two weeks who knows it doesn't give us any of that if we think back to the last time we had to go virtual it was very very hard on not just the kids but the families involved as well so if we do go virtual please consider putting in some of these extra steps as far to provide clarity so that we can have that support of knowing okay this is when it's going to happen this is how long it's going to happen and it gives us that ability to get that target to help support whether it's mental health and just making sure that we can talk to our employers and get everything

014set up before it happens thank you all right thank you do not see anyone else online at this time requesting to comment anyone else in person please i'm chad bailey from beta 4 little lane i know you are aware of the recent media piece which addressed our district sending special needs kids home from school at the end of the day this is just the latest in many examples of a decision to remove kids from a learning environment without a realistic plan to help them avoid warning loss they're obviously very concerned about the problems with pcr tests keep in mind these are the same pcr tests which still cannot discern between the blue and copen and it's winter as we scramble to react to the artificially inflated positive case numbers it seems apparent to many in

015the community the same concern is not afforded to building medications in parallel conversations we talk about how to increase enrollment support accelerated learning how to spend seven million dollars in lesser grants for the benefit of learning yet we are sending kids home we need in-person learning the most i hope the irony is blaring the obvious in this situation across our student population special needs needs students need for in-person guidance and extra help is absolutely critical for any learning to take place the district may want to consider open enrolling 35 kids with imps if it's not possible to staff adequately in meeting their needs and putting on cnn during a zoo class does not meet the definition of learning especially for a special needs student none of this addresses the topics of student family disruption emotional

016impact or legal compliance which all of you are very familiar with i'll conclude with this comment if we really care about quality education learning acceleration and reducing emotional problems of students we first need to stop perpetuating the damage this is the choice within our control the starting point for ending learning loss was and still is providing in-person learning especially for our special needs students thank you all right thank you anyone else at this time there will be an opportunity new game all right thank you all and we will move on to the next item of our agenda which is announcements and recognition slash communication i do not have any announcements to share with something okay um we may have our student board members however present so that looks like a no all right thank you

017thomas i was looking for names and we will move on to strategic discussion and our first item up is a presentation from mr getz about the elementary all right control so just uh thank you for having me at port just want to give a little update as we moving forward last year uh we started to make some good gains and we started to move through so the first slides you'll see is our elite elementary new logo we have uh decided to keep our leopard as our mascot we wanted to update something that reflected more of where excuse me where we are headed it's going through so we had a couple different choices as we go through but this was the one that made uh the top when we surveyed uh students staff and families this

018was one of them uh as we go through ty they're gonna go in the next one all right so what is sleep and leap stands for lebanon environmental agricultural pathways and what you'll see up there is actually our vision statement so we spent time last year meeting getting together um meeting with people who definitely were better wordsmiths than i am um i love coming up with those ideas because when so our vision is cultivating uh response responsible citizens and stewards of the land so we know we want to have those citizens that are well educated knowing what's going on current events but also connected to the community and those stewards of the land we know that out in the area and other places we need to use our resources uh intelligently and we also need

019to use them to benefit as we go along our mission statement leap elementary through a strong learning community is committed to getting my glasses engaging all students in meaningful projects based learning connected with the environment so one of the things we know is that out there in our school we have a very strong community very passionate people passionate teachers passionate students um within that we want to keep engaging that we know that that's part of what makes a student feel really good we also want to try and bring back our students who are connected to lebanon and beyond and the community and surrounding areas one of the things that we decided to talk about was meaningful projects and that project based learning we know that project-based based learning engages the students um in their own

020learning lets them go above and beyond what we often expected with it we wanted to be able to connect to the environment we have a great space out there green spaces that we keep upgrading every single year and we want to make sure that they're real life um example of a student last year helping plan the garden she did all the research about the items that we had the uh how much space when how much dirt needed to go in there did a wonderful job with that all right um just a little bit of information about enrollment as we go through the upside there says we track we're tracking enrollment in uh quarterly we're also tracking open enrollment the number of students that we have coming in that we know one of our goals is

021to increase enrollment um right now currently we are up um five students from last year um we are down to an open enrollment students but that wasn't because of them leaving the district that's because of them going up moving up in grade levels as we go through um the other part of it is is when we talk to parents we met with the pto and i'm going to plan on survey in february here coming into the end is to how are we doing how are we meeting are you meeting expectations what are we doing so the first thing we did was we met with the pto and we set out our phases what are we going to do we focus on enrollment growth we focus on rigorous instruction for all as talking about our project-based

022learning and we also focused on becoming more of that environmental school as we go through so you'll see one of our goals was to inve and create an outdoor uh classroom space it hasn't and we are did not hit our deadline we had plans everything else um as we go through this school year then starting off as we go and so a few other complications have come along um as we get the space but we are set and ready to go for spring uh hopefully bill and i will be able to work together to get that accomplished here shortly as we go through up on the upper right hand corner you'll see is our flyer we are attended i attended the lebanon auction which i had never attended before and that was a great experience

023um i was in the same space as the lebanon little league and we were handing out flyers and small little keychains to any student or any kid who came around from that area trying to encourage leap we are also currently trying to work in getting them out in a couple different uh locations out in that area and do have a plan as a staff to start to hit the community events as they're coming back up and going through that next slide please um curriculum focus as we go through reading and mathematics are the same as any elementary school we have used everyday math and we use the smell to see good things the difference really is that focus on social studies and science is as we're looking at building the project-based learning capacity within that

024and the best way i can understand project-based learning is not necessarily just having everyone design the exact same project it's having the kids learn about it um the best way i often think about it is like giving a cake if it says like the science fair you say okay here make your three full board and you go through and you have kind of the recipe for the cake project-based learning is learning what the recipe for a cake is you may know all the ingredients that go into it but you're not going to necessarily know what the final project is until that comes out sometimes there's going to be failure but other times and you learn from that other times you get a beautiful cake and you learn all the elements that go into that the

025staff that was employed at the time during the summer in august got to spend virtually time at the project based or pbl project-based learning world conference you know we'd rather go out to napa but we didn't think that would be really sensible unless you know we took school board members with us right uh but we did do that virtually as they went through um so we are doing that we are meeting one of the project-based learning things that we are going to do is on the next slide so as we talk about that project-based learning we really want to focus with a staff as we make sure we cover this with fidelity and do it right the first time as we're rolling up so we've been planning we had a did have a staff member

026switch at the beginning of the year which has made it a little bit more difficult as we get going because they don't have the background as much but we are meeting next monday night we are starting one of our first projects and it's going to be a school pollinator garden so we've really started to design what k1 is going to be researching and looking at those types of pollinators two and three are going to really research the type of prairie plants our plants and pollinator plants that we like in there to show what's going on and then 4 5 is going to take focus on the whole entire project and they're going to find ways to present the information that they found out they're going to focus on those math standards area and perimeter and

027also figuring out costs with plants and seeds and all kinds of different ones along with the calendar that's needed on the picture on the right is you see a donated greenhouse to us that we are in the process that will be used to start some of our pollinator gardens next one um community and uh school connections we know are really out there a lot of uh great community members like all of our watertown really supporting our schools um we have every year a local family um give a presentation on maple syrup as we go through over in sugar island they are from you'll also see in the upper right hand corner we had a commun uh community members donate a wonderful one-of-a-kind table with benches um that's for our outdoor classroom that was used during

028the spring last year to get out and enjoy the wonderful area it was off for a little bit over by our bird feeders that we have if we keep track of our fractions by bird feeders we've got them broken up into eight that um we have the ffa coming over to do a presentation about the perfect food as we go through and we're really starting to build that ffa uh connection up there a lot of ffman members have come from the lebanon area as we go through and um jessica jones and i are in the process of planning an earth day celebration it's called feeding america it's kind of almost like the day on the farm kind of ones lots of presentations um done by the ffa members and really to promote the great things

029that are happening out there we hope to give you more information as that gets closer and planning gets finalized as we go through that uh one of the cool items is we make sure that our environmental focus and agricultural focus goes throughout all of our content areas you'll see the lovely work that mrs templin um does the art teacher out there the up top pictures are all native plants that the uh fourth and fifth graders researched and then were able to create a picture and painting up on the outside of it it is actually cardboard painted with gold paint she reuses all of the cardboard that she had on there um in recycling the bottom picture actually if you look we are using the tops of the foam containers that lunches come in and they're

030using that it works out perfectly for print styrofoam the printing one is go through ms templin said you pay an arm and a leg for it if you order as amazon as printing foam but if you use it as a lunch container it's a lot easier so you see kids are drawing and getting the picture of starting to use the foam there she also did a project with the kindergartners and first graders out there making 3d models of their house and home different things or houses that they want and she was able to use a floral cutter to cut out the actual individual pieces and make 3d ones to it so it's great using the resources that way next one so what's coming next um our outdoor classroom in the front of school is in

031the final phases we just have to finalize a few things uh we'll be getting our greenhouses planting and going through i thought i should have done a fundraiser the other day it was like negative three negative four degrees the sun was beating right on the greenhouse and i went in there and it was like 45 degrees i could take my coat off get fresh air but also be nice and warm i thought i should sell tickets on that day um and then the last one is just a picture um we are got a few fish out there we'd like to think uh woods and water um in columbus they donated perch to us for our tank wonderful and then we also have tropica fish so do some comparing and contrasting and we're actually going to

032get some goldfish and start some aquaponics there as we go through uh and i never thought it would be as fascinating as our k1 love to read to our fish those fish have gotten so many stories read to them and they're so engaged with showing them pictures and everything it kind of surprised me at the first one but it was great to see it and it really calms it down questions or comments board members please what is capacity uh it would be right around 70. we really want to go with the district uh average as we go through and that would be around 23 kids so um how many students will be here what is the projected goal for um open-enrolled students as far as the growth factor is what would be a target or

033a projection of what we need for that as far as just growth students outside the district yeah growth from students and openly i would i would hope for at least five to six for next year and then going from there up to up to 10 in the following years coming up thank you i know it's optimistic but if you look at some of the easter bunny's district that one like other districts when we start to pull we're actually closer than they are into that one we are i they may have been we won't go to that may have been handing out flyers at a wrestling other comments or questions from board members so doug and i had the opportunity to be out of lebanon last friday and though of course a lot of it's under

034snow but still you can see it shaped taking shape and obviously this is not the most ideal conditions which start a new school concept but they are making it work and i think there's a promising start here thanks for your time appreciate it thank you thank you thank you all right our next item up is our audit report mr williamson and as our guest we have chuckle here so with all due respect to mr getz and we i'm jesus you are here uh for our audit report update and uh chuck is here from hawkins nash to entertain us all i told him to keep it under an hour if uh and if i could just say um coming in new uh in july and kind of you know maybe freaking out a little bit like

035one of the auditors gonna ask um stacy um rital jamie fisher take the brunt of the audit and i've never gotten so few questions from the auditor because they were able to work through the two of them and it was fantastic and very few journal entry corrections and stacy is typically so good with with understanding uh what needs to happen at year end so chuck if you have something different to say you certainly can but that's uh that was my takeaway okay uh can everybody hear me chuck you're good okay um i'm i'm um on the road i mentioned to mike this morning i'm uh currently in north carolina uh my son and daughter-in-law welcomed their second granddaughter this morning so uh that's that's why i'm on the road um a little a little early

036only four pounds ten ounces but she's doing fine so um anyway so i'm gonna spend a few minutes going over the um going over the audit uh i guess to echo mike's comments early on uh stacy and jamie and and the whole crew there in the business office uh really do a good job um and i and i guess um uh i don't want to say shielding mike but shielding mike from questions no they uh they're able to answer questions uh uh relatively uh well uh and next year it may be um that we have some questions for mike hopefully yes um but we um we we certainly enjoy working with the staff there uh like i said uh jamie and uh stacy and the whole crew was a very cooperative very helpful uh you

037got a good crew there so without further ado let's get into the audit report uh now i'm looking at the pdf so when i refer to pages i will try and refer to both the page number in the uh pdf and the actual page number in the in the um hard copy if you will or the the paper copy so i'm going to start on page four of the pdf for page three of the actual report this is the um auditor's opinion it's a clean opinion it's the best opinion you can get it's the same opinion we've given you for for many years again it says that everything's done materially correct okay and i know i mentioned this in the past but uh it bears repeating we do not look at every transaction um and

038you know frankly we wouldn't want to spend the time for that or you wouldn't want to spend the money to have us do that we do enough to satisfy ourselves that items are materially correct um and it's uh you know the the auditor's report it's independent so we we have no ties to the district other than doing the audit management has some responsibility we have some responsibility and then at the top of uh page five of the pdf it's the opinion and that's where i refer to the the clean opinion now be aware that next year the auditor's opinion is going to look different there's some new standards uh that we're subject to and it's going to actually have the opinion at the beginning of the report uh not not halfway down because really people

039are interested in what the opinion is um and then we will give some audited responsibility and and management responsibility so again a clean opinion uh after that if you look at page eight through roughly uh oh i don't know probably around 15 this is your management discussion and analysis again this is a what i kind of call the reduced digest version of your financial statements um there's some financial highlights there it kind of gives an overview of how things went for the year and uh not a lot of detail but it gives some numbers and it kind of gives you some some background information so if you look at page 11 this is your condensed statement of net position uh if you're a um it's 11 in the pdf and nine and you hard copy

040this is really what in commercial terms would be the balance sheet shows your current and other assets capital assets and then you have these crazy things called the food outflows and deferred inflows those will turn into assets and turn into liabilities at some later date and then your long-term liabilities and your net position is kind of what your equity would be you know the top part is what you own the middle is what you owe and the end is what you have left if you go to the uh the next page this shows you major sources of revenue and major expenses again your major revenue sources of property taxes and state and federal aid now you'll also see some operating grants and contributions some of those are stuff like special ed aid that are specific

041to a program uh food service uh revenue from the federal government specific to your food service so that is in the operating grants the general revenues for staying federal aid would be like general aid that state gives per pupil instruction aid some of those type of things and property taxes obviously what you what you levy each year major categories of expense instruction pupil and support services administration and business um just a couple of comments you um the uh in instruction you're running at about 56 57 percent of uh of your expenditures uh that's that's a good number uh the districts we do in manitowoc uh went from 54 to 62. i'll see kind of in the middle there if you look at um and then you have some you have you have good fun balance

042at the end of the year um which allows you to avoid short term short term borrow because you have enough cash flow to to pay your bills and your wages and salaries even if you have sporadic times when the money from the state comes in you know they don't give you a check every week uh the federal government doesn't cut your check every week to pay your bills you have to budget for that and you have adequate fund balance to be able to do that not have to borrow a show to them if you look at page 15 of your uh pdf here's your capital assets not much going on there this year mostly just the depreciation you didn't add a lot of fixed assets last year and if you go to the next page

043that's your long-term debt um and again not much going on there really what you did was you paid you scheduled that payments during the year uh one thing to note you know you do have uh long-term debt and you also have post-employment liabilities for health insurance for employees once they retire um for a certain number of years and that you're funding on a pay-as-you-go basis um so we uh just jump along to um if we go to page uh 20 of the um of the pdf just a couple of items to note here this is really just a little more detailed from what we already talked about but um again issue your wisconsin retirement system um this wisconsin retirement system obviously pays retirement benefits for uh people who have finished their teaching career and accumulate

044assets for those that are still teaching and will be retired in the future you always look to see what kind of position they're in and currently the wisconsin retirement system is funded at of expected benefits that's an excellent that's an excellent funding ratio i suspect the wisconsin's in the top five in the nation with with their funding um and really even if there's a down market or the funding falls a little bit they're generally in the upper 90 percent of the funded um so it shows that there's a asset in the net position of wisconsin's retirement system um into the tune of nine million dollars you can't go and spend that but it's just kind of showing you that the wisconsin retirement system has a net asset position not a deficit where you would in

045theory be underfunded and have potentially uh higher contribution rates in the future so again the wisconsin retirement system in really good shape um i suspect california illinois and some others would be ecstatic to have the kind of system that you that we have in wisconsin for retirement for public employees um and then the uh the if you go a couple of pages further uh you have your balance sheet on page 23. this is kind of what you typically see in your monthly reports uh you know assets liabilities and next pages your revenues and expense expenditures one thing to note due to a change in accounting principle in the past we had the student activity funds in a separate fund and it was called student activity custodial fund fiduciary fund well since the district does exercise

046some control over that via having faculty advisors and such we're required to move that into the district's books and if you go to page 24 of the pdf page 18 in the financials you'll see there's a second to last line kind of to the right there's a change in accounting principle about 390 000 that's just moving your student activity funds from a fiduciary capacity into the into the district now the activity fund does not affect your state aid is strictly where it's reported on your financial statements students continue to operate them as they as they see fit as they uh operate by the guidelines the district has promoted and uh with faculty advisors and such giving giving advice and so if you go a couple of pages further you will see there's no student activity

047listed anymore and your statement and that position for fiduciary fund is empty that was you had a small trust fund there about 2 600 again that got shifted over um so you have no fiduciary funds no custodial funds anymore after that it's uh mostly footnotes um a lot of boilerplate language in here there's some information on wisconsin's retirement system goes on for about four or five pages um again shows kind of what you guys have funded uh what what funding level it's at um and then if you go to page uh in the it's probably going to be about 45 in the pdf um yeah this is your post employment that's on page 43 note 7 post employment benefits other than pensions and this is when i talked about the health insurance for for retirees

048from their potential early retirement age up till the uh medicare eligible age you provide certain uh uh retiree benefits um certain percentage and again that that liability is about 10 million dollars at the end of the year again that's not something you're going to have to go out and pay right now but you are going to pay as you go so issue you you pay the premiums that are associated with that and the last thing i want to mention um is during the school year if you go to page 47 of the pdf uh self-funded insurance and as you're well aware halfway through the year you discontinued your self-funding and went to a a commercial insurance commercial uh health insurance dental uh funded plan um you know self-funding is good and good use but it's

049bad and bad use and it really uh um you know districts who want to take that risk they are at risk for it if they have some you know some sort of a couple of catastrophic cases what have you um commercial insurance in in your case you're not you're not at a large district i mean you're not tiny but you're not a large district and commercial insurance in your case probably makes some some good sense um just because you you have you don't have to worry about how we're going to fund some some massive claims most of the districts that i have that have uh self-insurance programs are probably in the uh 60 million revenue or above range just as a as an example so um that's really all i have on the financial statements

050um you know if you if you go farther i i say there's always a lot of detail behind there um one one other thing i guess to note you know the food service program generally you here in the last year so generally you'd have students pay a portion of the of the cost of food service in the last year year and a half the federal government picked up the entire tab so every meal that you guys served for first meal to a student was paid for by the federal government and reimbursed at the at the free meal rate um which is i mean it was all due to covered and again you had a lot of uh all districts had to make changes through the covet from how they were going to deliver meals and

051and uh making things safe and you know that's where some of the asus funds come in so i'm open to questions if you have any thank you chuck board members questions for chuck i know we did review this at the fiscal management meeting so some of you may have already had your questions addressed there any other questions tina please i just had a question um on page 66 where it does the evaluation and pardon me if you went over this during the budget meeting there um page 66 yeah page 66 are you going by the pdf for it what's the actual page yeah that would because there's only about uh there's only about 57 pages in the entire in the hard copy actually number two okay so page 66 8 8 i think page 58

052maybe 58 56 there we go 56 okay um and just taking a look at this as far as um you know evaluating how things how things are going and things coming together and stuff like that um what does that second section mean as far as um the summary of the auditor's results financial statement um the significant deficiency identified not considered to be material weaknesses there were some identify okay okay so uh and you know tony's been on the board a long time and and he could probably answer this question please for me but certainly i will uh i will answer it um the the only finding that we really have for you is preparation of financial statements and what that is is in a perfect world the district personnel would prepare the financial statements and

053we would look at them say they give them a blessing as you can see the financial statements take there's a lot of information there um in addition to the i mean you know you you business office staff provides what's needed to run the district on a monthly basis but the financial statements have some of those disclosures let's say on um uh your opib healthcare liability or wisconsin retirement system and the way i like to describe this is you could have staff there become knowledgeable and and uh be able to do the financial statements but as i mentioned you know the statements change uh like this year there was a change next year there will be another change and to keep your staff up on those changes you wouldn't have to invest funds every year to

054have them do continuing education on the other hand with us preparing the financial statements uh we're able to spread that cost over a multitude of clients so most of my clients have uh the audit prepare the financial statements and we're required to give you a significant deficiency because of your inability to prepare them now it's not to reflect poorly on the business office at all um if we do if in our manitowoc office we probably do an excess of 100 audits um and i would say 98 percent maybe 99 percent of them get this same this same uh finding okay because they would would want every municipality and every school district in the state to hire one more person for the financial offices in order for america in order to prepare these annual financial statements

055right that's what they'd like to have happen instead we vote in our job to do it yeah yeah i guess his way of explanation and it's not just government auditing standards and government entities i i do a lot of not-for-profit accounting uh auditing okay and and they have even i mean if any of you are not-for-profit boards you know that you have even less resources than than school districts and and local governments uh again i have this same finding for i think nearly all of my not-for-profit clients also mike anything else to add nope all right chuck thinking thank you very much for joining us again congratulations on your new grandchild yes thank you and obviously if there are any questions later on somebody thinks of i always offer get them to mike or the

056business office he will get them to me and i will respond as needed all right thank you thank you have a good evening okay our next item of business is open enrollment seat availability mr williamson so i'll just briefly speak to the open enrollment piece specifically to the regular education side of it same thing as last year we are opening up the regular education open moment sites wide open again um again we know that we are in a declining enrollment and there is physical space [Music] an issue yet we also have of course ecampus and allowing as many students that want to come in and open and roll if we believe that ecampus is the only option then we would offer that to them if there would be a space issue so much much like

057last year just for your own information i just looked it up again today is to make sure i'm a reporting portal out there uh we have an fte out right now of uh open enrollment out fte of around 360. and an open enrollment in of an fte sorry so really what we care about is that next position every year the dollars typically increase for an in-and-out student that we have to either pay out or bring in it's 8 100 ish this year expected to go to 8 200 ish next year 13 000 for special ed but really in the end of the day we care about the net position of that difference but on a special ed side through looking at case loads and formulas and staffing we are opening 28 seats for special education

058again if you know if you'll be able to fill those without a net out 28 times 13 000 determine some additional revenue there but really it's about the space and what we have available to educate those those students that may want to come into the watertown generate them yup 35 so i am totally on top of this so 35 uh all right questions and comments again there is a resolution in this on this with the agenda okay thank you then our next item is the safe schools update uh go ahead you can scroll down to the first slide on there um so what has been going well we have been able to continue to provide face-to-face instruction despite challenging circumstances over the past month we have seen a surge in our covert case numbers we've

059been working really hard and trips above our staffing to keep kids in school to the very best of our ability and we have been able to do that we've seen any number of districts um who have had to uh transition schools uh or even full districts to virtual and at this time have not had to take that pathway and we are working very hard to sustain that i just want to really say the principles have been absolutely fantastic in terms of coordinating those efforts and our staff has been amazing in terms of providing coverage moving from classroom to classroom staff who are not traditionally serving in classrooms and counselors are coming into classrooms and providing support so that we can keep our doors open and keep our classes face to face staff has been fantastic

060our principals have been amazing uh we are in very regular communication regarding attendance and staffing and again happy to have been able to keep our doors open uh to the great majority of our students over these past several weeks um you can go ahead and what has been challenging uh in the month of january we have definitely experienced a surge in our covenant on 19 cases for both students and staff this has created real challenges for staffing our sites and increased accident rates for students and for staff we are experiencing about 75 attendance rate up to about 85 um over these past few weeks again that's a considerable percentage of our students out of school on any given day our sub fill rate has dropped to below 50 percent on most days um and this

061means that again we are providing internal coverage for classrooms uh this means that teachers are losing their preparation times uh which also provides that critical instruction planning time so while we've been able to keep our doors open we know that that comes at a cost as we are requiring that additional coverage and as i've shared virtually every month we are continuing to experience staffing shortages for substitute teachers custodial staff bus drivers crossing guards and paraprofessionals which again is putting pressure on our staff um i've shared this in the past months again experiencing some challenges regarding student behaviors and learning i mean go ahead to the next slide um so what are we doing to address this uh again most of what's in this slide i have uh covered over the past months but providing on-site

062testing has helped our staff and students avoid long delays for testing and test results and the testing is free to staff and students we have seen this resource used getting in about 50 plus tests in a day over the past few weeks so we know this has been a tremendous asset to our students and families we are also seeing those uh cases come back at about a 40 positive rate so again getting that information back to our family so we can respond in as timely manner as possible uh has repeatedly been expressed by both families and staff as a really valuable resource as it's very difficult to get those testing results back we were experiencing a delay two weeks ago it was taking closer to 72 hours to get those test results back typically we

063were seeing them back in 24 hours we are now back to seeing those coming back in about 24 hours um we have worked with the hr committee this past month to propose two planning days for teachers on february 21st uh which would um fall alongside a weekend and a professional development day to serve as conveniently as possible for the families that we serve uh creating a four-day uh weekend for families and also creating a really needed opportunity for us for teachers uh to plan and march 25th which would uh extend spring break for our families and again would provide a really critical opportunity for our for our teachers uh to plan we know that this is not a perfect solution uh and it does not offset the additional uh time and stress on our staff

064at this time but i have heard from uh many staff who have seen this resolution coming forward uh that it helps them to feel hurt by um and helps them understand that while this has been a really difficult and challenging time uh their concerns are being occurred and there are attempts to address them we have also worked with the hr committee again this month to provide additional incentives for substitute teachers increasing the rate of pay again for substitute teachers and to hire additional uh substitute positions to help to provide support for our students and for our staff again we've done that basically every month throughout the course of the year we still haven't quite hit the number that we need to hit to be able to execute as effectively as possible uh so we are

065continuing to expand that resource uh and we are hopeful we've already got some applicants for some of those positions that we will uh again be able to better offset um those absences that are coming into the district following positions um margaret do you know how many positions we have overall for those substitute positions um four at the elementary and then one at rms for those super sub positions and then we also have the high school and rms both also have a full-time contract that building substantive so the super sub is in addition to that full kind of one-year contract and the super sub is our our invented term uh not an official term uh and that is essentially paying a long-term sub uh cost to a regular sub to help encourage those cells to be

066in the district on a daily basis uh instead of alternating with other districts we did implement that uh at the elementary saw some success and now are looking at expanding it to additional supports and we do have minimum some men and women attendance expectations and some expectations that they go to wherever the greatest need is so you know i mean we really limited the ability to turn down assignments in exchange for the long-term and i will cover this last bullet on here which has been on here a few months but i know there are a few questions about it this evening uh we plan to continue to offer face-to-face instruction for our students we are prepared to transition if needed to a virtual environment if we did need to transition to a virtual environment our

067hope would be able to do that and provide resources to students before they went home on that day so we would be able to quickly transition if that were to be possible we would need one day of virtual uh asynchronous learning before we would be able to transition fully into virtual programming again it is something we have not done uh this school year uh but it is something that we have the devices and are prepared to do should we should that mean arise there was a question from somebody about notification early notification yeah we would certainly notify our families as quickly as we possibly could um and the intention would be to give at least one day before we were going to make that transition for families but the conditions that are causing us to

068make some transitions to virtual are twofold one is staffing just being able to have the staffing for coverage so sometimes that's a little bit difficult to anticipate how our staffing is gonna continue to roll um day to day to day and also numbers of positive cases in particular classrooms or cases where we are suspecting that there is a spread in a particular classroom due to the number of cases in that classroom so those are the circumstances now the turnaround time is very very quick with these five days uh so again it becomes um difficult to anticipate exactly um exactly what the future is going to hold as you're continuing to get those return dates back in very very quickly uh in many ways that's been helpful in terms of getting your staff back and getting

069our students back but it also makes all of those transitions just a little bit more difficult to anticipate it would certainly be our intentions to inform our families as quickly as we possibly could so to clarify for the way to hear you when i hear people talk about it i think commonly the public's mind they're thinking about a whole building or even the whole district going virtual right here you describing is a classroom by classroom evaluation and basis and to your mind at this point we've not reached anything that is causing you to say hey we need to be looking at whole buildings let alone correct we've worked very very hard to transition the smallest possible environment uh which right now has really looked like the classroom level uh to virtual when that need arises

070again based on staffing based on should we need to make a larger transition uh that communication would come out as early as possible as well as the communications that we're doing uh right now when we do need to transition an environment again uh it's never uh enjoyable to be making those phone calls to parents we know it's really challenging for them to find uh childcare for their students and to find alternatives so again we are working every possible angle to staff classrooms when possible and to keep them open whenever possible most of those classrooms are done for a day two three what's the longest we've done so far it's been at very short turnaround times uh again especially now with the five days uh in terms of when people can return to the classrooms so

071i think three days is probably i can't think of any situation where it's been longer than three days that we've had to transition to a virtual situation and i would not and that was i think even earlier in the school year uh when we had the 10-day out so i would not anticipate long-term i mean the ones that the special ed classrooms that were done last week were are going to be they're back tomorrow so they're going to be a day and a half kind of a thing correct they will be back in session um tomorrow uh face to face all right um safety plan updates we did a number of safety plan updates uh based on um the new isolation and the new quarantine guidance uh that uh the plan has been updated to

072reflect that we did send a family communication on isolation on january 4th we'd hope to send out our weekly newsletter this past week but we are our quarterly newsletter this past week uh but that is delayed so that's going to be coming out this week uh therefore we sent a family communication out separately on thursday of last week we have updated our family letter regarding quarantine and close contact tracing and updated the isolation and quarantine guidance throughout the safety plan we've also updated that can i go to school or work document to reflect the new vaccination recommendations from the cdc as i've shared every month we're posting our program 19 data to our website uh and it is also available uh it's also wise to track that dhs uh wisconsin website which shares the school

073district overall numbers uh and that's everyone living in the school district not just schools aged children questions tina please actually i have a number of them okay um so when i'm taking a look at the first page there as far as what has been going well like what's our measure for that can you scroll back tyler so i can look at what that first page is the first page the first uh well yeah so what's been going well like you know because when i'm taking a look at that you know maximizing distance when possible there's been a lot of issues with that that hasn't been followed so i would say in a lot of respects that hasn't been going well so what is our magic like have things changed a lot from the last meeting

074or i would say uh as i've shared previously uh really in january we revisited with all of our administrative team and with all of our staff um the really uh importance of ensuring that all of our safety plan protocols were in place i know that there have been times when people haven't haven't paid as much attention to some of those points as we would have liked and again i feel like our staff is really working very hard to make our schools safe and our principals are working very hard to make our school safe and we felt like it was important to revisit that and remember that and remember that vigilance was really going to be important especially as we anticipated um we were going to get some higher case numbers coming in and then as

075we saw that saw that come to fruition and not only public cases but um illness that's out in the community as well so we're looking at distancing like i i'm guessing it was like last year like we're so conscientious about distancing you know classrooms were reconfigured and tables were taken out or however it went is it back to that because we didn't start the year necessarily like that um and it wasn't like that at you know other buildings and things like that that you know rms last year i think was like lunchroom every other you know things like that are we back to those things um at rms and what i know they still have marked off uh in their cafeterias and they have table seeding expectations uh again at the time that the board

076was looking at the safety plan uh really the expectation was to more generalize that language into maximizing uh distance and that is what we have communicated with our staff that we should be utilizing every opportunity to maximize distance in our classrooms uh in our cafeterias to prevent spread and i don't know if any of the principals wanted to speak to that at all and i don't want to put you on the spot it looks like maybe you know so again i think i'm so again having toured the buildings again very recently what i see different compared to last spring is that it's obviously over the summer they again took every opportunity to push things to the corners we can't like squeeze every square foot you know you used to be you walk into a room

077desk would be fairly concentrated in one space you have open space for other activities and clearly that mindset of spreading out into the womb i also know you know like teachers weren't necessarily putting the empty desks in the middle you know those were on the ends and things like that so i know that it doesn't necessarily always been that way and i guess i was just concerned because um you know what i've heard from because obviously we have a lack of staff and so the concern becomes you know i guess probably mainly at the elementary level when you're combining classrooms you know i get we're trying to do what we can but just to know that not having the staff also affects you know the distancing that we're able to do that we say we're

078you know working to do that um i guess i'm taking a look to what is our usual absence rate like pre-coverage yeah uh our average average average attendance rate is 94.1 i uh and that's taken from pre-coping so we use that as a factor to measure against uh where we're at now okay so when i'm taking a look at you know i mean i know we all like okay in student your you know face-to-face learning is the best for students okay we can all agree to that however when i take a look at the data as far as like at what cost you know it's it's one thing to say yes we're providing face-to-face instruction however the quality i really have to and it's not a it's not a teacher um issue it's a situation

079issue and when i take a look at if our usual absence rate is six percent right now we're running 15 to 25 percent absent and it seems like to me you know when you have probably what 12 to 17 average staff that are out what's the average are you talking about right now or are you talking about per usual um right now we have more than that amount of staff open out on any given day uh margaret out of 500 yeah is just making the point that it's 10 that are out in terms of staff as opposed to 25 and that is an accurate point we are much closer to 10 25 staff although we are for example at rms uh last week saw about a 25 absent rate for students students okay thank you

080for that clarification so i guess i'm taking a look at you know we have the least restrictive um safety protocols you know looked up cdc and all this kind of stuff they still recommend masks and distancing and i get nobody wants to do the mouse i shouldn't say nobody because that's not true um but when we're taking a look at what cost the way that we have things right now of kids are missing out on instruction that 15 to 25 of kids are missing out on instruction which we deem important plus you have 10 of staff out you have combining classrooms you have counselors that are covering classrooms so that means that they're not able to do their counseling duties so then that affects you know we're taking a look at i mean other you

081know some other districts okay well yes they go virtual because they have a threshold like what is our when we say on you know how are we responding and preparing you know when we take a look at that should we need to make a transition like do we have any kind of a threshold or any standard that we're i mean because it seems pretty much like a crisis sound like okay obviously it means that either we should go virtual for five days or ten days or require masks if we don't want to go virtual and i would share i have been in communication with the health department pretty regularly and i know that there could have been like our commitment is to try to keep kids in school um as much as we possibly can

082we did meet we did talk last friday i spoke with the health department because our cases were very high on friday and um we didn't know what to anticipate over the weekend uh monday we had all of our health assistants come to the esc so we could look at all the cases that had come in over the weekend uh and reconfigure those percentages and see where we were going to be at going into this week and if we needed to make any uh additional transitions or changes our cases uh had come were a much lower number than what we had seen last week that doesn't mean they'll stay low but that means right now they were much lower than what we had friday we weren't available for testing correct but we did have testing today

083and it was a lower number of uh tests that were given as well today uh which for whatever reason uh is the case uh so therefore um we and we also the percents are very um they move very quickly right now uh because frequently we're getting the cases uh after kids are even able to report back to school uh because of the five day really really short turnaround so those percentages are moving very quickly much more quickly than they were when we had that 10-day so it's a little bit more difficult to to track it as the volume of cases come comes in and then as you have to determine the flow in and out so monday we wanted to take a really good look at that based on the data that we had in

084coming in monday we anticipate that on tuesday we'll have better attendance for students and better attendance for staff uh i am consulting on a daily basis with the principals uh regarding attendance and regarding staffing uh we are making transitions where we feel that we need to make transitions while keeping our doors open uh to the very best of our ability is it ideal is it what we would like to see we would like to see 100 attendance on any given day uh we would like to see all of our students all of our staff healthy and safe at school every day that is not the case right now but we believe that serving that 75 percent is important uh even in those difficult times i i recognize uh the desire for a threshold number uh

085i do think it is um something that you know the board can you know certainly consider doing i do think uh it is a little bit more difficult to do now than it was a couple months ago if i could add to that again one of the reasons why i went out to buildings last week was to get a better first-hand understanding of what's going on and if there's one way two ways i could describe what i saw besides the stress we've seen it is uneven from building to building the effects and conditions were very different and within buildings from classroom to classroom the effects were very different you could have classrooms in the same building where one classroom might have one or two students out and you could have classrooms where you had six

086and as an average it gives you one story but on the ground when you see it it is a more complex story i just i guess i just want to clearly understand that there's no threshold set and if we're not taking action like basically to either go virtual or you know go with masks we're okay with the 25 15 to 25 absence rate i i don't want to say i'm okay with that absence right i mean i certainly think we want our kids in school right we want our staff here uh 100 uh and i appreciate the concern and i appreciate the frustration uh i really do uh we want our kids back we want to continue to provide a really high quality education in a face-to-face environment i guess i would say some people

087you know i know it's always nice to have okay what's the threshold because it gives somebody a visual i mean at least not necessarily having a threshold gives you a little bit of flexibility you know to be able to maneuver without having to be caught in a box but mostly it's been going from we're looking at like classroom to classroom rather than i i do just really want to share that i really do believe that the health department wants to see us continue to offer face-to-face learning as well i i'm sure they do but they also want us to do you know distancing and base covering so you know you can't have all of that or we're not willing to do all of that so i mean to me the idea of threshold i i

088don't know exactly where tina you got your 15 to 25 but my guess is there was a day that was 25 and a day or two later was and i think that's what makes the threshold idea so difficult to me is i mean again i don't want to say okay with anything here but if they say 15 is okay but 25's not but by the time we say well we hit 15 and we implement it we give a day off then we start virtual we're back at 15 again you know so it's like those numbers move so fast that to me allowing us to do it at the smallest possible level seems to give us the best scenario i mean yes it it really isn't desirable when we have to take a classroom or two

089and send them virtual for a day or two or send them even just home for a day or two it really sucks um but we're not doing it to mass people you know likewise if you take you know the middle school and what tony excited and you got you know maybe you have one or two of this of the classroom teachers that are out well that means the other you know five classrooms are going full bore and going great and they're able to get great learning and yeah there may be two classrooms that you have a teacher in that is not normally teaching that subject and it's subpar but that's what we're getting if we go virtual we're getting subpar across the board steve i'm sorry let me clarify i got my numbers from cassandra

090as far as student absence goes and it ranges per building um best case scenario 15 are absent worst case scenario 25 absent which is um at the middle school and staffing i mean what i've been hearing some buildings have 12 people out in the same building some people have 15 people out in the same building so that's where the impact that's what i was referring to you know in my office there was one out well that's 25 well he was back in four days and he carried on we didn't try to alter our plans i i submit that most of the general public is trying to roll with this recognizing that the ones who are impacted whether it be a teacher or a student the good news is it's five days in their back end

091it's not the same student every single time it's not the same parent every single time and the transactional friction of turning on and off the mass and the virtualness of it uh as as i think cassandra uh and dave alluded to is it jumps around so much that the ones you're trying to fix today aren't the ones that are are broken or won't be broken tomorrow so part of it is i can appreciate our unwillingness to box ourselves into a corner to try to follow a moving target when compared to the background noise of the community in general i don't know this but i would surmise that our numbers are not out of line it's not like we the the school district or any one particular classroom by itself as a super spreader i don't

092have that information off the top my head but based off of the people that you probably know and that i know and the number of people coming down within the community at large i would just say that our school district is reflective of that or or at least mirrors it in some way that says okay well what's the greater community doing well they're still quarantined and they're still isolating and they're still behaving as best as they can but life moves on and and my office had to continue working and my employees have to keep working as do i and i think that we recognize that the teachers and the parents and the students are all sort of facing the same thing and i'm not 100 sure that if we try to put in a fix

093here that it will be fixing anything that isn't the say the fix may be worse than the the the problem um so i don't have all the the numbers to back that up it's somewhat sus the supposition as well as just observation uh the ones that cassandra and her staff have decided to go to a next level whether it be virtual or masks or separating they must have had their reasons that it was untenable in the situation that it was and i still like to leave it in their hands to make those decisions on a case-by-case basis as opposed to across the board blessing or limiting their ability to make that decision i mean i know we want a magic bullet we want a magic bullet as a society and we want things in writing

094when we look at a safety plan but as paul just stated that that does take away some of our flexibility to manage situationally and i'd rather leave that cassandra stands and her staff than uh expected to be decided at a school board i share your concern 25 absentee is a lot the good news is it doesn't last cassandra do we have any breakdown as to that absentee number that is directly positive for covid has been family member quarantine or is just some other absentee yeah yes we track all of that data and so we do consider all of those pieces uh when we're making a decision on transitioning our environment so yes we have we do we do have all of that information but is it like are you seeing it like 50 50 is

095it i mean because i know i know there's a whole lot more than covered going around the community right now yeah well and that's certainly true and i think it varies by uh by situation uh there's definitely i mean the number of copic cases over the past few weeks are definitely the primary source of absence for our students but there are additional students who are out with other illness there are additional students who are out on quarantine from a household situation uh i can certainly we have a spreadsheet that tracks all of that uh and i can certainly share that with you but um and again at some of our sites uh those the percent out with a positive copy case is higher some it's lower uh and we again we look at all of

096those numbers on a daily basis and as you noted previously those numbers do shift and change uh day to day yes we see i'm along with what david was saying i would have to say that i think that the administration's been doing a good job with what we had considering the hyper sensitivity to this whole situation i think everyone is on pins and needles this whole idea and i've said it before this whole idea of risk aversion has caused in my estimation a for backup lack of a better term mass psychosis to a number of our people and i think that if you look back honestly in years past at some of the flu epidemics we've had we've we've closed on schools we've closed on classes for a week at a time and if not

097for like i say the hypersensitivity of this not everyone that's out of that is out is even ill so i think we don't want to paint ourselves into a box here i think we're handling the situation appropriately and again risk aversion is uh not a good thing it's based in fear and fear it does not think clearly and there are so many other mitigating things that we could do that have been suppressed to alleviate the illness in our in our communities and as soon as you start talking about that all of a sudden you are labeled uh you know you aren't you're contrary the narrative and i think that we are doing a good job given this consider are considering the situation so i think if he moves the citizenry to be proactive and to

098take their health care personally be responsible for it personally and not rely so much on the public discourse and i think we'll do just fine we'll get to this okay other comments at this point you need to join no i'm good all right you were done another reminder we do have cover 19 testing available uh pre-registration is required it is available from nine to three monday through friday at the esc and again it is a no cost for students and staff only uh download the right way bus app um we have uh had a number of challenges to transportation and uh we want to make sure everybody is able to make sure when their bus is going to come and when they can specifically uh expect it here comes the bus app will help you

099with that uh by being able to actually locate your bus and its approximate arrival and departure times mr [Music] is the communication piece that if you're if you have that app they are the ones that know right away whether it bus is going to be late or whatever the case is that they'll send a message out through that app um to those specific families and students that are affected so even more some gps they really like the messaging piece that comes with it question does he call the reverse way that the parents could tell the bus company not to pick my child up uh i don't think there's a reverse messaging but that's possible does anyone have it that i will let their app developer know that they should have that credit for it um

1004k and 5k enrollment will begin on february 1st uh we really really really encourage you uh to enroll your four-year-old or your five-year-old uh the sooner the better so we can start um we know we have um the potential for some additional full-day 4k programs that we're really excited about uh and knowing our numbers as early as possible will help us determine the very best locations for those full-day 4ks so we can best serve the students and families of our community and all of those enrollments really help us to anticipate our staffing numbers as well so we really really encourage get out there enroll uh we can't wait to have our new 4k and 5k students coming in through the district uh thank you to st paul's sugar island church they provided all of our

101sure students with a beautiful blanket which was very well received and an unexpected gift we thank them very much for thinking of us and in case you did not know we are hiring bus drivers uh please consider uh being a bus driver uh for right way or dhs uh here in the community uh we would really really really uh support you uh in making that decision and would love to have your help and that's all of my report for this evening all right any comments or questions on superintendent's report fiscal management our meeting was january 17th we had all members present will be in cement and trader king jerry we also had uh tony rnax sean myself we went through the payment reports we discussed um questions came in we talked about those on the

102email uh various reports uh just this month provided a memo on some of that breakdown what i'm looking at when i look at the appearance report discussed a couple pieces um mr vitalia is not uh needing to discuss the ecampus promotional campaign although it was discussed at services and will eventually be brought forward to financial services when a final proposal and gallery announced it's there for the committee to see that's completed dr uh talked about the online tutoring piece that we're looking to roll out i believe it's we've already seen the audit report and what uh check from conference had to say we did uh discuss the esser feedback that was received by community and staff from january 12th as well as emails that have come in as well about appropriate use or at least

103ideas i should say of how to best use esser and uh the funds associated with really estro3 we're really just looking at the best way now to move forward with that feedback and potentially having a strategic plan meeting sometime in february the whole war that's still being worked out though but that was what was discussed again a plan doesn't have to be to the state until we have been working with two additional vendors to the one that provided us the quote for the insurance just as a side note i did get a second quote today and it is competitive um with the original quote and so to follow through with that particular vendor let's see make sure it's apples to apples we did discuss the potential for some debt refunding and a long-term strategy uh

104we had three possible institutions that financial institutions come in and discuss um their defeasants or refinancing or making large payments um in the future and really uh discussion revolved around um what's going to be the next steps as far as that goes so we'll continue to discuss that in february with continued background information um next month will probably also be a long-term budget um first look at a long-term budget for this year and so by that strategy will come into place with that we looked at the 10-year capital improvement plan and kind of had pared it down to district um a district list in other words outside vendors who kind of came with their own facility study we're moving that off to the side right now to maybe work with some third-party individuals to see

105what the urgency is of some of the projects specifically that performance services gave us the current 10-year plan which i really hope to bring next month with the internal projects is about 1.4 million probably spread out more like over the course of three to five years um but when the board approves if the board does approve that those projects on there would start to lose fund 46 funds that you have set aside in essence to be spent on capital improvement products that need to be completed and that wrapped up the meeting our next one is one third doug and you want to add to that comments or questions for members all right thank you then we'll move on to human resources report human resources at this uh met on the 17th uh those in attendance

106were myself and paul vanden langenberg also present where tony arnett doug will kanan nigerian david schrader dave smith sandra shook and michael williamson along with our human race resources director margaret brady i caveat there is these meetings were ours was first hr and financial follow so thus the heavy attendance so we went through the consent agenda uh review of staff appointments resignations and terminations those we will be voting on in the consent agenda the 24th this evening i should say we then went into the employee assistance program there ms brady presented us with two different proposals margaret would you want to uh one was expedia the one other one was through aurora right we had two different bids from empathia and from advocate of lower health care and we discuss the pros and cons primarily

107the pro with advocate aurora being that the providers that come through that service also fit into our current health insurance provider network so there would be some continuity of services if that was needed and we talked about the reasons for that as an enhancement to our benefit program given the current stresses and strains and the individual lifestyle life challenges that staff have been experiencing along with just about everyone else in in their work life experiences and this was seen as a a resource that would be made available to staff for addressing some of those concerns that we're hearing from staff and from administrators we did put together a recommendation or a resolution for adapting the program agenda any further questions for us on that uh we then discussed the starting pay for our part-time cleaners

108uh the weekend cleaning positions we have been relatively unsuccessful in retaining uh men and or women that uh have bought in for that uh we looked at the pay rate mostly because it is uh weekends and off hours and we decided that the uh we needed to be more in line with wages paid for such things uh in the public sector and we're looking at a 15 per hour uh i'll pay for that so we hope that uh that will help with that issue uh calendar changes uh the second stage and all uh superintendents should uh went through that a little bit and um i don't unless there's some questions on that i think i'll i'll skip past that that was covered earlier also it's we went into the incentives for substitute assignments which was

109also uh discussed earlier and uh we are looking at uh increasing the pay for that and there's going to be a resolution on that later on in the meeting and with that we concluded the business for that meeting and our next meeting will be february 21st at 5 30 pm thank you comments or questions in the report all right ed services head services met on january 11th at 7 30 in the morning uh all committee members were present in addition uh david talley uh dr jay boris uh aaron meyer and uh president junior networks there um cassandra went through a safety plan update which today again was uh much more updated so what you heard tonight was probably better than what we discussed at the meeting and then we also had a strategic plan update

110ecampus promotional campaign an rfp review the committee discussed next steps in highlighting aspects of the ecampus academy that would potentially result in enrollment growth of ecampus as part of the wusd strategic plan proposals were submitted by three advertising agencies that specialize in marketing campaigns more information will be gathered and shared with the board about specific marketing deliverables and examples of brand development in time for an ad campaign to be launched in the coming weeks as part of our strategic plan steps under enrollment growth uh then we have an extensive report on future ready technology plan involved quite a bit of things here the cbrs and the wusd madison college broadband network pilot uh dave vitale shared information about a collaborative effort between uh our school district and madison area area technical college to offer expanded

111wireless internet access to families and students the partnership would combine the use of the usd radio towers from its former former wireless lan and matc's installations of new transmitters that would connect with wireless hotspots distributed on a signed basis students the district would no longer continue to get its hotspots service plans with various cellular providers in the area a former formal intergovernmental agreement uh would be forthcoming uh the committee expressed its support for this particular project in addition we talked about an rfp for internet phone service audit leap proposals are being stocked from telecommunications companies to upgrade internet and phone service that left leap school through a lease agreement for fiber optic the current esl service plan has been unstable resulting in intermittent service outages at the school the new plan would be eligible for

112e-rate discounts and between 20 and 90 percent of the total cost we talked about server data center console consolidation and ransomware protection uh dave vitale reported that heartland business systems is reviewing the network infrastructure to identify areas in need of server upgrades and consolidations this would be a precursor to enhancing the district's data security and ransomware protection also we talked about wireless controller upgrade and e-rate application bids are being sought for replacing the school district's wireless access point controllers that are over 10 years old and beginning to fail the cost of replacing this hardware is eligible for an e-rate discount and a rating between 20 90 as well the ebay is the federal commission commission federal communications commission program that supports schools and libraries with technology purchases we also talked about cyber security awareness training

113uh the district is pursuing an agreement with infosec a wisconsin company that serves schools and organizations and cyber security training and awareness for their employees it was noted that cyber security training is linked to insurance coverage in the district's cyber security policy we also talked about online tutoring service pilot dr shugg presented documents highlighting service plans from two different online tutoring providers tutor me and papers this was part of a discussion about improving student performance in the wake of learning loss due to disruption disruptions to typical school operations that resolve coven a small scale pilot has proposed to learn more about these services in the event that the watertown unified school district finds value in continuing with them in the future committee members expressed support for this proposal as well as an interest in identifying

114a means of measuring the impact of tutoring services on students using them a resolution will be acted upon at tonight's meeting of the full board uh then we also have the teaching and learning report uh which we heard just a little bit about earlier uh open enrollment seats students with disabilities the annual requirement uh tinney borist and erin meyer identified a proposed 35 special education open enrollment seats that would be available to students with disabilities who applied for open enrollment the 35 students would be spread across several levels it was noted that students may not be denied open enrollment placement placement unless the non-resident district identifies a lack of space to accommodate the needs the district would receive an estimated 13 thousand seventy six dollars for each open enrolled student that has an iep and

115this compares to about eight thousand two hundred twenty four dollars for every student that's open enrolled that doesn't have an iep um the board will vote on a resolution to set the number of open-roll seats at 35 for students with disabilities at tonight's week with that just briefly we had a staff development days could you is there anything you can just say about those that we they were after our meeting uh i asked emily to share a little bit about the elementary uh responsive classroom sure our elementary teachers did day three of the four-day elementary court course a responsive classroom um this past week and we had three trainers two of which made it here one of which got stuck in washington dc and had to be virtual but one trainer flew from vermont to

116philadelphia chicago to madison and showed up the next day so it was very exciting but it was a good day the focus was engaging academics um and the morning meeting component of activities also we discussed quite like student choice and which is a key component of engagement as well as engaging families so the teachers had time to like plan and um integrate some of the strategies we had learned such as interactive modeling and role play so it was a good day um that would be about 90 elementary certified staff that attended that for the full day and then day four is coming up in february and uh we're excited for advanced training coming up this summer too for a select group of okay people then jason and josh would you share a little bit like

117what happened in your sights sure so in the morning at the high school we focused on avid which included a large um reframing you know that since you know starting the school year was important to just you know get perspective and understand you know what the overall goal and you know our progress towards that so we we had a nice session larger session in the morning and then we split off to individual professional development choice groups the teachers have been engaged in um all year so they had a chance to coordinate and collaborate with those groups talk about progress and plot out next steps and then the afternoon was focused on restorative practices and gave teachers a chance to be in those circles um as uh practice that um and then continue along along that

118path yeah riverside we circled up early in the morning and got uh kind of reconnected to our community building as a staff um it was nice that the staff got a chance to kind of share how they were feeling in a proactive nice way with each other um and the importance of allowing kids to do that in the classrooms as we're transitioning back into classes from that from a slightly longer weekend we reconnected with our avid work that we had been uh committed to over the last three years and kind of did a status check for our development team um which was excellent and then using star and forward data to instructionally group students we have training on that which teachers could take back back into the departments and say okay i have 25 kids

119in my class at this variety of levels we have most data like what do we do with that and how can we make instructional choices to hit all levels of learners in our classes so it's really productive uh use of our time that morning and afternoon all right thank you so with that we adjourn our meeting at 9 42 our next meeting is tuesday february 8th at 7 30. thank you comments or questions in that report tina please i just wanted to say in the um in the board docs under reports the educational services report is a repeat of the financial management report it was so good that it was in there twice um oh yes yes the educational services report is down somewhere in the committee summaries that was listed down there it's in

120there just not i will get that thank you all right any other comments or questions paul this brings us to the consent agenda resolution 9077 the consent agenda includes our meeting minutes and committee summaries as well as staffing actions that's resignations and hiring it also includes the approval of bills and first and second reading of policies as a note there are no first or second reading of policies on the consent agenda for this evening do i hear a motion on the consent agenda so we'll move by steve seconded by doug comments or questions on the motion please under um staffing personnel and staffing is that the type of same person residing science [Music] margaret are you able to i'm sorry is that that person's listening to resigned and hired i just want to make this

121sense right because actually that is correct that was a two-day employment step for any other comments or questions on the motion roll call vote please hey smith yes all abandoned landing birds yes doug will yes tony arnett yes jennifer bucky excuse me she's not here uh tina johnson steve coffel yes keating nigerian yes david schrader yes and the motion carries we will then move on to our action items the first is resolution 9078 for open enrollment seat availability and you do see it listed in there again that's the 35 seat number no limitation on regular education 35 seats in special education as allocated across grade level as noted do i hear a motion on 9078. by paul seconded by tina comments or questions on the motion roll call go please kevin smith yes all abandoned

122langenberg yes doug will yes tony arnett yes tina johnson yes steve coughville yes keating nigerians yes doug stephen schrader yes and the motion carries next is resolution 9079 this is the order of candidates on the ballot for april for the board positions do i hear a motion on nine zero seven nine so i'll move by doug do i hear a second second by t second by tina and just for those in attendance the order has been set as laurie holland david schrader craig wortman paulvan and langenberg chad bailey and mike higgins in that order any other comments questions on the motion any of us on the ballot need to abstain from the vote okay please uh david smith yes all the language yes doug williams tony arnett yes tina johnson yes steve caulfield yes hidden

123nigerian yes david trader yes and the motion carries next is resolution nine zero eight zero this is setting teacher planning days on february 21st and march 25th as an adjustment to the calendar it requires formal goals for action do i hear a motion on nine zero eight zero second moved by paul seconded by katie comments or questions on the motion again this was mentioned in the safe schools update as well as the ed services i'm sorry in the hr comments or questions on the motion i'd like to make a comment um please i'd like to encourage us to take this time to plan for any future events that might look like this um to me our number one reason we're here is for student learning um that's why we're here that's what we're doing while

124we understand we have to balance that with other stakeholders such as staff and parents involved we this this resolution takes two days away from student learning um and gives it to the much needed without a doubt you know right now at this very moment in time our staff is is stretched beyond stretched and uh you know the planning days are gone um but what we're talking about doing is putting those planning days to plan for the future is what planning is we're talking about putting those four weeks and eight weeks from now when we're all very hopeful that this slug has passed by um so it while i support this it just is disjointed in how it's really happening all right any other comments or questions on the motion yeah i just like to say

125that uh you know i know it's it's lost time for students but the teachers are the ones that are teaching students so i think they need this so it's going to work out all right anything else roll call vote please david smith yes paul abandon langenberg yes doug will yes tony arnett yes tina johnson yes steve kaufman yes katie nigerian yes david schrader yes and the motion carries next is resolution 9081 the employee assistance program do i hear emotion by kina do i hear a second second seconded by katie comments or questions on the motion against was discussed at the hr one comment just the measuring factor of engagement and use of it just so we have conscious of that i had already communicated those expectations and the measurement of metrics that we had talked

126about at hr creator to the providers right and as a condition of considering that going forward and also worth noting that this resolution puts this in place for one year so it's not open-ended it does have a sunset date it will require four if there's nothing else then we'll do roll call on this note please smith yes doug will yes yes tina johnson yes steve coffel nigerian yes david trader yes and the motion carries and our last action item is resolution 908.2 for the online tutoring pilot do i hear a motion some move second by david consecrated by steve comments or questions on the motion done i have a comment um i was i was attended that meeting where this was discussed and i believe we were talking about having maybe a 500 yeah we

127had talked about having a transition a small pilot to transition and then to move into the larger pilot um i'm still working with tutor.com in terms of what that might look like in terms of a pricing adjustment they could do monthly uh pricing adjustments they didn't meet the other bid that we had and added on another month and so doing uh so i um i am working on what the details of that might look like i don't know that we'll get much more of an additional price adjustment if we do a short hybrid so i wanted to be prepared to do um all the seats that that we put out there but again i'm no that's for all the months that's for the remainder of this performance that's correct so february so so is the

128proposal that's in board docs is that identical to what was provided it is not they adjusted to add the extra month and they also decrease the per people cost no but all that's in board docs is is your written proposal for the for the pilot oh is that the same it should be the updated uh contract that is in there which is adjusted to 14 dollars per student and had the additional month of june added in there as well so it goes from now until june from now through all of japanese but not the different numbers that we were talking about really piloting it versus correct small scale pilot versus large scale pilot right we can still do the small scale pilot i don't know that we're going to be able to have it impact

129the numbers that we would pay because it's a monthly cost unless we said we wanted to do all of february as as that smaller scale pilot so again i'm still working through that with tutor.com and also with the building principles in terms of uh how that makes the most sense to deploy we met uh this past week and then our meeting again tomorrow after the principals had a chance to go back to the teachers to determine what the best way to deploy that is for a smaller pilot so we could if we go with a month-long pilot reduce that first month of it the 500 students to the 14 per student and then it would uh expand to the 8 45 for those remaining three months so that would be a difference of it would

130be a smaller reduction than that i'm sorry the math was going to be a little bit longer but it would be a minimal reduction in cost well i think there's much more than dollars spent in costs here i mean there's there's a lot of resources to go behind doing it on a large scale versus a small scale i i guess i don't know what that i don't know what to ask is now when we came we came to committee and had suggestions and now the supporting documents that are in board docs for the resolution are are the same so what what is what are we being asked to you are being asked into uh that looks exactly the same as the previous contract except that it is less uh so it is less per student

131and then it is also the addition of one full month it could be reduced further once i continue to work with the principles in terms of how long we wanted to do that short sale pilot and that would be reduced by 345 students for the first month of implementation if we imagine that 14 per student extends over five months that'd be about three dollars per student that we would uh take off of those three hundred uh those 345 students i just wondered how they can make money at fourteen dollars person of course four months douglas common who does not want to start it online i i would anticipate that many districts uh do not um hold accountable um the use of the program and that allows them to provide that level of pricing it would

132be our intention to ensure that it was in fact available for available for our students and then also that we would have the expectation that it was being used so my questions were similar to what has already been phrased which is the proposal document is exactly what we saw so i was looking for what's going to be different tonight i hear you saying you are pursuing still a concept of a smaller scale pilot although it sounds like you and i are still on a different level and here's what that looks like because you're just talking about 500 that's not that to me is still 500 would be the minimum number that of licenses that tutor.com will allow us to use the principles are working on the numbers of students that would actually be used in

133the smaller scale pilot because we had a fairly short turnaround i reached out to tutor.com have them revise the contract had them also uh meet the price of the other vendor i met with the principals they are meeting with the staff they're coming back and making up the staff again and with me again tomorrow so i do apologize for not having that updated document uh in more docs that had done my intention but i uh the wrong document okay but it sounds i'll say it sounds like you are moving forward with pursuing a smaller scale which i appreciate thank you to work and then the other questions that came about in our discussion were about measuring and in particular the idea of the two things one are the students who they benefited from the most

134truly using it and number two better measures that tell us that any gains we measure actually came from the tutoring as come as as compared to just coming from correct and so i'd still say those are outstanding um i guess i'm potentially okay with moving forward on this for myself if i know that in short order we're going to get an update from you that's going to show progress on those two topics then i guess i can like i'm trying to be supportive while still saying like i think we need to address these things absolutely and i did again meet with the principals on that who are going back to meet with their team which i think they've already done and then we're coming back again our next uh tomorrow to meet on that and

135to determine what it is the teachers feel like is a tenable measure that will give them that uh impact number that work so it's also about how you construct the pilot in some cases some of the some of the classes you were selecting you have opportunity to do side by side correct and we'd also sort of talked i think about uh not one not wanting to withhold a resource uh from a group of students either so yes we absolutely talked about the fact that we have english 10 for example uh some sections of english 10 that would be offered this in some sections in english 10 that would not therefore we have that ability to compare those two uh in the pilot so i think i i mean again we can take another month if

136you want i am i would think if we're going to have a short-term pilot to try to do that in february and then try to impact change a larger pilot over march april and may it's going to be hard to really know the impact of that in that short period of time so again we're trying to work through that and i was trying to bring this back to you as quickly as possible given the number of items that you wanted to see sort of moved since our meeting last week yep go ahead josh yeah just just as kind of a side note i know a number of teachers that have been asking and i've been really excited and interested in engaging it and i just in my own experience as a huge indicator a pre-indicator

137of success in terms of just buying in an engagement um so i think once they get the tool in their hands i'm excited to see what it can do right other comments or questions from board members on the motion tina it sounds like you have a good handle on this you have the process associated with it you understand the parameters of it it may just not be detailed in this document however you will understand the sentiment of it uh to try to put into place uh those different revisions i'm very excited about the opportunity to pilot this i don't know if it's going to be a successful pilot or not but to me it seems like a resource with a whole lot of upside uh in addition to that we will be the only district

138in the state of wisconsin employing this uh you know we sought this out we found something that was unique and different and had the opportunity to serve our students uh 24 7. i just think there's a lot of upside i would like to move forward with it uh and i think our staff would like to move forward with it i think it would be a big win for our students and our families katie i forgot to ask this at our school on hrv is this something that discovery academy would have access to i'm not as we currently have it proposed each campus also has talked about wanting access to potentially some seats in this again not as we currently have it proposed but we do have the ability to play around with those numbers uh

139as we do the final definition of how many seats are we going to invest in uh and the scale of the pilot but it certainly is on the table and if not now in the following um in the following year should the board decide to move forward with the full-scale implementation and then do we have to revoke if we want to use this over the summer does that uh well we have it through june um so we could uh use it through june and summer school uh in that regard but we'd have to if we're going to extend it through july yes i think we'd well it would be a smaller than um a smaller than twenty thousand dollar item as it is now um however uh we would probably want to bring it back

140to discuss the evaluation of a pilot before making the decision i did a little research and online all right well i appreciate that because i asked specifically and they said no that's fantastic because we should see if they would donate to us thank you i see that all right to me to me because to me cassandra the the idea of being able to have the measurements that tony was talking about so that we know what the impact of this is is more important to me than the number of seats and the dollars that are spent if we have to let seats because they only sell us 500 if we only want to use 300 for the first 45 days so that we get those solid measurements and we know where we're going that has more

141value to me than chasing the dollar for a short period of time i think i think we got to make sure we nail those measurements so we know the effect of this as we go on because this is another one of those reoccurring things that if we don't have the answers up front we're going to go and say well we don't know what will happen if we get rid of it because we don't know what happened when we put it in place so well and i certainly appreciate that and just because we have the 500 seats doesn't know doesn't mean we need to use the 500 seats in that pilot it is just that that is the minimum number that they were willing to uh to go to all right there's nothing else in this

142then we'll do we'll call both please david smith yes paulvian and langenberg yes doug will yes tony internet yes ken johnson yes steve coughill yes keaney nigerian yes david schrader yes and the motion carries that is our last item under action items for this evening so this brings us to public input this is the second time in the agenda which members of the public can address the board can't ask you to raise your hand if you're in person step up the table when recognized give your name an address if you are online again please use the raise your hand feature and we will recognize you but again start your mark with your name and address is there anyone like to be recognized yes please street um i just want to refresh for my last two

143questions first which is more detrimental to learning and mental health math or virtual learning and then second is the board so strongly against masking and tools that you are willing to close virtual learning even though it is more detrimental to the education and mental health than wearing a mask school i recently found now by sitting here is that the oconomowoc school district is doing actually a correct way that they're giving the statistics they're giving them numbers if certain things get to a certain level then they wear a mask then if like they get over 12.5 it's a school district-wide mass mandate and it they even say if it gets to over 12.5 or even up to 20 then they're going first of all so parents have the um notification that they know when something's going

144to happen obama school district is actually doing the right thing compared to you guys that aren't that just want to make one person make a decision and it seems like why don't you follow the comments since you guys can do so good at following other school districts and what you want to do like making everything optional so that's all i wanted to say was go look at them commonwealth school district because they got the mitigations that are actually decent enough to actually follow and everything else thank you anyone else in the audience this evening please go back sir james popple w593 county road t i just wanted to say thank you to everyone that's still thinking clearly and can keep things in a realistic perspective i'm sorry to see that there are those that are

145still being manipulated by it i'm very sorry to see that i don't hope you would all consider turning off your media and avoiding the propaganda with that being said i'd like to offer some hope for those caught in this mass psychosis i would invite you to listen to a very helpful resource i find it very helpful myself it's a christian radio station out of milwaukee called wvcy 107.7 fm they have a show on at two o'clock three o'clock in the afternoon don't invite all of you even once and see what's going on it's called crosstalk from two o'clock to three o'clock in the afternoon they give you a very good perspective and it might help your well-being thank you very much thank you he's up front katie vander linden n8071 high road watertown not going

146to talk about or mass anything else we talked about open enrollment we talked about the importance of getting students here because we have a really great school system first i should have said thank you by the way for still being here and being a part of our school one thing i do notice when i look around the room everyone looks just like me 80 of our student body looks like me doesn't i looked to see who was running for school board i don't see much diversity in that group either it would remind us that not everyone is here at the table and we may write invitations or we may try to open it up for everybody but we're missing at least 20 percent at least 20 who identify as a different race or ethnicity i

147know of students who are multi-racial who go by one or the other or whatever just so they can fit in more so i just want us to be aware that as we look for how to bring in more students and as the world gets more diverse our leadership needs to reflect that maybe when we look at who sits on committees or how we invite people to the table we remember that there's different ways of invitations and there's different ways to reach people so i invite us as we look to the future and the next meetings the next boards and the next groups and we look who's at the table who's invited to the table and if everyone at the table looks just like you or i maybe we're missing a few voices that need to

148be heard all right thank you anyone else in the room i do not see anyone online so therefore i'll ask for a promotion to go into closed session for the reasons stated in the agenda for those presents we do not anticipate the action occurring after this closed session right here in motion moved by katie seconded by tina [Music] johnson yes steve coffel yes yes no david schreiner yes you