001all right this being the appointed time in place to see an important presence i pledge allegiance to the fire 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 jamie would you please take the rule tina johnson yeah did you know jerry here david schroeder here david smith here paulden and langenberg here doug will here tony arnold here here looking at the agenda we are going to have our student board representative move up to the frontier they generally have a scheduling conflict it's going to make sure that he gets a chance to speak first and then we'll do public input hi everyone i'm owen harris i'm a senior at the high school and i'm just here representing student
002council i'm just going to give a little bit of a student update on what we've been doing recently so our most recent event that we just had was calling out where uh it's just an opportunity for all the kids uh in watertown to call in uh there's a group of us students that station ourselves in the office here at the high school and we get to pose as elves and they tell us their christmas wishes and we just say that we'll report them back to santa just a fun little event to um get in contact with the community and that's just our more recent event um otherwise since homecoming happens this last fall uh that's like our big event throughout the year we haven't been as active uh with too many events a few dress
003up days we're actually planning this week uh was pajama day at the high school tomorrow is red and green day and then wednesday is our like ugly sweater day uh student council is fine to have like a contest so we're gonna like post on instagram get the students involved that way otherwise that's pretty much it for the remainder of this week until break and then freshman preview night is coming up and i'm pretty sure that all the different clubs are planning on having tables uh located here at the high school which is just a fun event for incoming freshmen to come in and find out a little bit more about their classes and their schedule and just clubs that are like they have opportunities to get involved in so that's on the rise as well
004i'm in a few different clubs here at the high school a couple of different honors societies but just wanted to give the student council update and let you guys know what we're doing so yeah thank you all right thank you all right then we will return to our normal agenda order the next item up is public input if they're members of the audience either in person or virtual that would like to address the board may do so at this time so please wait to be recognized online please use the raise your hand feature and we will say your name before we turn your microphone on ask that you please again name your name and address and keep your marks brief is there anyone here in the room to start go ahead trixie finch 1007 west
005main street i'm asking you to reconsider bringing back the quarantine and close contact tracing protocols before you made the change last month parents who care if our children who have been in close contact don't like this new change where the parents have to call in the school for the close contact to be completed one letters are sent home at the end of the day friday you're basically out of luck two there should be emails instead of hard copies so that way parents can um contact the school before the end of the day three there also seems to be different types of positive case letters out there that is very confusing to all of us your symptom check can't always work through though it is good to have first of all a person can have covet
006from somewhat someone who's showing no symptoms the cdc has answered that both flu and covet can spread to others without showing too very minimal to no symptoms at all the infected person is still contagious even without a fever here and also it sounds like not every every school is doing a temperature check at all it's like it's gone um with your option of choosing whether or not to quarantine their child or whether or not to get them tested at the education center that's free for students and staff is getting dangerous what does this say that there's a good handful of students who are already positive but only have minor collect symptoms or no symptoms at all they will be spreaders to other students that will have a harder time and worse maybe a more severe
007reaction like a very bad fever and then more students will get sick why don't you take a day for example after winter break and do a district-wide testing to see how many positive cases you will have in the district you might be surprised of how many to test positive with minor to no symptoms at all bring back the requirements of quarantine and close contact tracing as i and plenty of other parents have been dealing with the optional protocol is ridiculous parents getting anywhere from one to five or more notifications a week then having to contact the school if their student was in close contact is getting seriously out of hand otherwise you need to bring back wearing a mask by covering the nose and the mouth which hospitals and other health people have said it
008works your education the education is your core responsibility but it does not eliminate your responsibility for the well-being of child which includes mental health and physical health when a child enters into your school to learn it becomes the responsibility of the school to ensure the well-being of the child you can claim it is not your responsibility all you want but the fact of the matter is you are when they are in your school they are under your care and you are responsible for them all right thank you anyone else in person and i do not see anyone online all right there will be another opportunity for public comment at the end of the meeting and also be an opportunity in response to the esser funds presentations next we move on to announcements and recognition communication
009we do have some additional donations to publicly recognize this evening again skillsusa has been working very hard with many of our uh community manufacturers and businesses and uh has continued to broaden thr bring in funding from a wide variety of those individuals tonight we recognize blaine's farm and fleet for a 150 donation silver lake auto for 250 components plus for 250 metal tech for one thousand dollars river city truck repair for our 150 itw shake proof for one thousand dollars and next month you'll see that additional five thousand dollar uh equipment donation state bank of reese bill for one thousand dollars first baptist church watertown for five hundred dollars and class and quality coatings for five hundred dollars so uh good work to the skills usa team and we are very grateful to all of
010our community donors and we will we will pass that around a short round of are applause other announcements or communications to take care of at this time those that is the only one for right now all right then we will move on to item four on our agenda which is the presentation about the s or three funds mike williamson this zoom so mike i'll hand it over to you hey thanks everyone um i'm gonna share my um screen so that you can see the uh presentation and uh just uh let me know or knock on the screen or something if you can't see uh what uh what i'm showcasing here so [Music] with our sr3 funding this is a unique opportunity that districts really across the country have uh uh that have received uh one-time
011funding from the federal government and um there were three rounds of this funding that occurred between march of 2020 and march of 2021 and getting very unique with the name they're called sr1 sr2 and sr3 and ester 3 is the biggest allocation of dollars received by most school districts across the country and for watertown school district this was this is a one-time allocation of nearly 5 million point seven million dollars uh in in the third round of esser funding and the stipulation and and there's a few the stipulation though with esser funding is number one these funds have to be expended by september 30th of 2024 and what's unique with sr3 funding is that the community parents staff students all have an opportunity to provide districts feedback as to how to best utilize these dollars
012and those that feedback will be taken into consideration as we move forward with plans for this particular round of funding sometimes it's difficult to put into context what 4.7 million dollars means for watertown school district a couple of different points to make first of all we have um a board policy that states that we must or should have at least 15 of our current year's fund 10 expenditures in fund balance for example we excuse me we spend approximately 45 million dollars every year out of our general operations so this is approximately 10 of our board allocated or board goal of 15 fund balance to put that into context we have [Music] we have non-salaries and benefits here of approximately 13 million so this allocation of 4.7 million is a little over a third of our
013non-salaries and benefits expenditures in any given year the referendum amount that we have is this year is currently 3.7 million next year it's 3.9 this particular allocation trumps that as far as uh total dollar amount in total out of that fund 10 budget we have somewhere around 1.7 million in supplies and capital equipment this is three times that our health insurance budget for our entire district in any given year is about 4.7 million and that's the amount of dollars that we're talking about here so to put the 4.7 million into context these are the types of dollars and the magnitude of the dollars that we are talking about so there are different funding priorities uh that both the wisconsin department of uh public instruction and the federal government have laid out first of all 20
014of that 4.7 million so nearly 1 million must be allocated towards learning loss and that learning loss must be um allocated towards evidence-based strategies and so there's definitions that go along with that evidence-based strategies but that learning loss as you can see i'm not going to read the slide here but it must go towards particular learning loss to different student groups um across the district and can be allocated in several different ways high qual high quality assessments um meaning just the comprehensive needs of all students providing information assistance to parents so many different ways but 1 million of the 4.7 million must go towards learning loss the as i said the department of public instruction lays out uh different buckets of dollars that the funding can go towards the us department of education has expanded
015that typically federal funds are very prescriptive in how you can spend them think title dollars or special education flow through dollars there's usually a long list of things that you can and cannot spend those dollars on here though as a the funding has progressed from sr1 to 2-3 and has time has passed we've seen the definition of what esser3 funds can be spent on uh to loosen uh and become more elastic over time so dpi has their initial list as you can see on the top and the department of education adds some additional language that really does provide a lot of flexibility with the funds for our school district we have wanted to make sure that we allocate these funds towards our own buckets uh our really our strategic goal uh and objectives and so
016when we look at this 4.7 million we want to make sure this funding is broken up between the student success fiscal responsibility and enrollment growth uh objectives that are outlined in our latest and newest strategic plan and you can certainly go online and see more detail about each of those three buckets and the overall objectives that each are meant to to reach so for each of these um excuse me for each of these particular buckets of dollars we have broad ideas on where those dollars could part potentially be allocated towards but then an overall dollar amount that we like to see put into each of these particular areas so for student access you can see some of the ideas there but that really in all we're looking at somewhere around 1.9 million of the 4.7
017million being allocated towards student success as far as fiscal responsibility ooh the water's moving i didn't realize that was that's awesome we're um at really one-time operational purchases here underneath fiscal responsibility this is a way to uh knock off potential projects that really would traditionally need a referendum and really don't have much fiscal responsibility beyond the one-time allocation of dollars so that's meeting that fiscal responsibility piece in any number of those operational ways and finally with enrollment growth really focusing on the expansion and the needs of ecampus with those digital learning platforms and any other needs that arise in the ecampus in order to scale that and make it successful putting 450 000 into that bucket and creating that robust program uh if you add that all up excuse me if you add that all
018up we are about still 250 000 of additional funds that really aren't allocated towards anything yet but again with all of these dollar amounts we have three years in which to spend we have three years in which to respond to needs as they arise and this really is only the beginning of a really great opportunity that we have in which to align our expenditures to these uh to our to our strategic plan now we're looking at a couple different sessions in which we can gather uh feedback on how to uh spend these funds in appropriate ways so for example tonight is a perfect opportunity for the community to be able to provide some feedback or some additional ideas on how to spend these dollars we're going to have staff and family listening sessions on january
01912th excuse me we are in the midst of putting together a student survey to be able to get back you know that feedback from our students about how can we improve our schools and really when you're thinking about either tonight or throughout january reaching out to us and giving us this particular feedback just a couple of things to keep in mind one this is one-time funding expenditures cannot be ongoing we won't be able to support that after 2024. you must fall within the guidelines again a lot of flexibility but check out um you know especially the federal guidelines provide a lot of flexibility to check those out to make sure that ideas fall within the allowable use we have to put about a million towards learning loss funds have to be depleted by 2024 so
020nothing beyond that particular date the funds will be used up by then and as we said many times here possible to find suggestions the district's strategic plan or goals all right thank you mike so this evening i'm going to have an opportunity for public input to do that first and then we'll bring it to the board before i open it up to public i just want to mention a little more context for this so again there's a three year window here through 2024. the board views this as a strategic moment 4.7 million dollars could make a big impact and we don't want to rush into it so and yet the state has asked us for a preliminary plan of how we are going to spend it and they're asking for it essentially the next couple
021months so we've developed this preliminary plan with the expectation that in the next few months the board will work with the administration to create one that is far more detailed about what we tend to do so this is the first step of the planning for these funds not the last step of the planning for response it's a preliminary view state wants us to report to that and so we are doing what they ask with that said again we're going to open up for public input in the room or online in the room raise your hand online use the raise your hand feature again please come up and address the board give your name and address and then keep your remarks brief and i'll start here in the room go ahead please a recurring theme that
022i seem to be hearing often about is manpower uh the idea that man power um actually i i feel firmly that manpower can lead us through some of this learning loss by uh allowing some more individualized attention perhaps a pair of professionals to be utilized in a full-time capacity in some of the following areas um like a full-time full-time subs at rms high school and a floating full-time sub for the district might be beneficial and i know that we do have some full-time subs currently this year but maybe an additional full-time sub for the next following years then also i think that special education teachers are terribly needed that may also provide some more in better individualized attention for students that are struggling also uh ell program uh if we are struggling with literacy perhaps
023this area might benefit from a deep dive into comparable case loads and if the individualized attention might be a great benefit to this area as well maybe something as simple as adding an extra pe teacher can free up resources as teachers don't have to take on extra students in guided studies individualized attention for these students are so valuable and i support those efforts wholeheartedly thank you anyone else in the room chris finch okay i think i'm off mute now um chris finch 100 seven west main street um i i just want piggyback kind of off of what the gentleman prior said individualized learning is very very important and not only does it help us get um that learning loss uh kind of gain that back but it also helped with some of the the mental
024health struggles that we've heard many many people uh mentioned in the past where their their son or daughter had done well in school and then with the pandemic now all of a sudden they're doing poorly in school and they don't know how to adjust to it that if we can use some of this money to kind of give them that individualized learning that that not only helps them gain that knowledge loss back and that education loss back but it also kind of gets to that secondary need of rebuilding their mental health a lot of people have brought up the mental health struggles and i think that having these extra resources not only gives us that ability to have that learning loss corrected but also that mental health side corrected as well so i also support
025this um additional funding to better be able to support our children thank you thank you do not see anyone else online anyone else in person all right i'm going to close the public participation part of this bring it back to the board board members questions or comments i know we reviewed this at a prior committee meeting but please go ahead paul uh on the student success slide i don't know if you can go into that uh i pretty much know what these other things look like i was just wondering if somebody could give me an example or explain a little bit more about learning acceleration yes uh i think we could and i'm not looking at the slide uh that's right right now but certainly learning acceleration one of the things we talked about i
026believe at fiscal and maybe at ad services as well was for example an online tutoring program that we're looking at uh bringing back into conversation so an online tutoring program could for example help to accelerate each individual's learning outside the hours of the school day but that's not the only sort of acceleration opportunity some of the suggestions that were made here today supporting the kurt yell is certainly an area of need and could help to benefit our english language learners that we know were some of our students that were that saw the biggest dip on our report card performance so we know there is a need for acceleration in that area investment in our summer school programming is another piece of acceleration that we would look to perhaps implement again in a slightly yeah absolutely
027and that is we are trying to refrain from thinking about learning loss to thinking about how we can accelerate our students from where they're at so thank you for that clarification as well tony all right tony you mentioned this is the first step in the process and we know that the 20 has to go for learning loss and you generally put it into three other buckets of 1.9 2.1 and 0.45 do we have projects in mind that we built this from or did we base those that split off of our strategic plan and try to allocate it towards proportionally to the strategic plan or do we kind of know that there's a blank that might cost this much in order to make a dent in the campus and then we're building from the top down
028or from the bottom up but i recognize it's iterative in which case we're not there yet but i was just trying to get an understanding of how the other items the other 80 percent got split in this first presentation so there was a draft list that the board did review several months ago and at that time that's when we said hey let's take a step back on this there's good ideas they're able to take a step back take more strategic view on it and so yes generally speaking the proportional amounts align to that original list that was presented but it's frankly a starting point yep makes sense other questions or comments from board members please tina um addressing um the student's success the student learning part of it that yes it's i want to make
029sure that we're addressing everybody's learning um you know one of the great things that i've heard you know i guess i'm also speaking to the gifted and talented kids just because they're scoring high does not mean that they don't need that you know that assistance just like all the other kids um one of the things that i liked that i heard um at the um principal showcase rounding never did is you know measuring growth for all kids one year's growth in one year's time at all levels so i just want to make sure that it's not just based upon a low score but we're looking at learning for our kids and i think that's a really excellent point here and i would even say specifically one of the points we talked about being exploring that
030potential tutoring online option and i think as we work collaboratively together we will absolutely keep that in mind as we as we move through thank you for that right any of the comments from board members at this time dave a lot of the the public comment was around putting an additional person on our payroll which as i go away understand dollars can go to that that person then those dollars have a cliff in which that person can be hired but they are do not have any funding after 2024. you are correct so if that's a part of our question do a little of this which we've always talked about doing a little of yeah we're identifying positions that would behoove us to make those positions a temporary nature of only a year or two not
031envision them as longer because there is not the fundamentals all right doug so um as far as just the fiscal part of it just say we go into a contract to put you know a different air handling unit on something and it's it can't be done until july of 2024 but we signed a contract does the money actually have to be spent or a contract is is good i think mike is probably the best person to speak to that yeah yeah good good question no from my understanding it is that the money needs to be spent um by september 30th so there is some planning that has to go into that particularly that last summer if there are funds left that work needs to be substantially completed by that september 30th that we would feel
032comfortable allocating the rest of the dollars to pay off a particular project um so we have a million dollars for this learning loss two million four projects and can we put all four million to learning loss no restrictions with no restrictions correct so we're wide open right now yep all right any other questions or comments from board members one comment i have is i hope that there's some marketing and other opportunities for public input so maybe this is a request to the newspaper to help us get the word out and we should certainly put it up on our website and if there's a number to call just so that we continue that outreach as i expected and i'll just repeat what um what mike showed up on the screen there will be both staff and
033parents community listening sessions on january 12th there'll be virtual options for attending in those so we want to make sure i can primarily emphasize those as the best moment all right doug who would be in charge of characterizing all those requests buckets from the requesting from the public section and also a staff who who is in charge of that so we'll capture all of this up for the board administration to to sit through those part of our planning process anything else all right thank you very much and we will move on to our items under strategic discussion first up is a update on our 4k program this forced yeah i'm going to try to keep it brief just five minutes um i think we had a great discussion at services a couple of weeks ago
034at this point there is a power point um [Music] um but i'll just briefly go through some slides um if you're ever interested in some additional research about uh um early childhood education and the uh return on investment and whatnot i'm happy to share that with you as well and that was in the original forward point that i shared of their but i did in the interest of time uh edit some of those slides out um you can see this first slide is just our enrollment trends over time you can see we didn't peak around that 2013 2014 year and seen experienced some decreases um over time i think it's fair to say that the population of students in our community at that age is lower we've seen similar trends in our private schools as
035well you can see last year was our lowest year at 130 29 it did bounce back a bit to 1.4 this year if you remember this year we did add a full day 4k we had one at douglas we added a bilingual full day 4k at sures and we had an april 1st deadline if you were interested in a full day 4k section um in the next slide you can see that i pulled where our enrollment was at on that april 1st date of last year so we could look for some trends you can see we had a 94 enrollments process so between uh april first and third friday of september we went from 94 to 144 so clearly a big increase in time we had 53 requests for full day at douglas orchards so
036at that point just over half of our families were interested in the full day program 70 of our first choice requests were for the an elementary school placement so we do if you remember have sites at maryland head start and gingerbread so 75 percent of the families roughly wanted to be on our sites which are at webster douglas insurers and 25 were more interested in those community-based sites so you can see that we have a range of interest in what folks are interested in um i just wanted to briefly uh mention some of the benefits of the full 4k in the district um it's something we have now two um like i said two sections one at douglas one at sures and really we're seeing just that additional time as being very valuable those academic
037benefits really new literacy early numeracy they have a whole lot of fun learning in those grade levels then that social emotional time we are doing something called pyramid model implementation which is a really research-based early childhood model of social social and emotional learning we also use family involvement time as a part of our 4k program which is very important and then our enrollment benefits our goal is to attract and retain families to enroll in our 4k program and stick with us until they graduate from high school so our hope is by offering a lot of different choices our families come to us at 4k and stick with us all the way through i did do a survey to our full day 4k families you can see overall very positive feedback my joke is on a
038day that might not be going so great to go in and read the comments from families is a it's a real picking up when you see how much our families are invested in our full-day 4k program how all of our 4k teachers are really meeting the needs of our students something that i felt was really interesting is it said our 100 of our families at that point were intending on rolling in a five-page setting a couple of the comments alluded to the fact that perhaps families were looking at other options including private school options before they were able to come into the full day 4k exam um full-day 4k program so our hope is we bring people into the full day and then they choose to stay with us as well um you'll notice that
039we're beginning enrollment on february 1st we always like to start our enrollment on february 1st because that tends to be when [Music] the state opens open enrollment um so we want folks to be able to apply for open enrollment and for us on the very same day we've started marketing uh kudos to kailyn logan and jamie cottle they did some really adorable short clips of videos it was a really fun day to go around and videotape for that so look for those on facebook um our plan is to continue with that full day at douglas and a whole day of bilingual lectures and then as always in years past to run additional sections based on enrollment when we think about the next school year 22 to 23 you know when we think about adding additional
040full day 4k programs we want to really be proactive and preventative you know i know we've talked about learning acceleration versus learning loss i think our teachers of the youngest and our principals would tell you that some of the students who are the youngest may have been very impacted by colby haven't had as many experiences as typically would i think our principals could attest to some of the changes that they've seen in students coming in um we just really want to provide that boost for them early we're hoping that there will be uh future funding through state and federal initiatives um however perhaps the federal initiative this weekend was not moving forward in the way it would and then again like i said that body of research supporting the implementation of early childhood 4k programming
041i would love to review that with you at any time if you were interested in that you can see on the next line the ed services committee recommended that we put a resolution that we would offer up to three additional sections of full-day 4k with our targeted enrollment of 19 students per section and then again as always we would run those 4k sections based on enrollment um again we really want to emphasize the choice that families have in our district families may be interested in a half day program they may be interested in full day they can do full day with us or they can do full day at a community site and head start um just to provide as many options as possible and then make decisions on which we're running uh based on
042our enrollment through the enrollment process we always ask for first second and third choice i've often reached out to families to see what really they're interested in in doing that and tonight that's what we're asking is that we could um approve up to three additional sections for full day okay on the next slide it just outlines um where this fits within our strategic plan enrollment growth it's such a focus for us um and then those student success areas that early literacy and that social media um and on the final slide uh we talked quite a bit mike and i worked through some scenarios about what are the additional costs of the district we estimate that an additional forty five thousand dollars per full-day classroom to cover the cost of the teacher and the parent salary
043and again i'd be happy to walk through that with you and i know mike would be as well and i think i'm at seven minutes so i'll go to the next slide which is what questions might you have katie the costumes at 19 versus 18 verses so 19 is the number that we've traditionally worked with our community-based 4ks on there are sometimes daycare implications as well they have a different set of rules that they have to follow including the school district rules as well so 19 is that number i think if we talk to our 4k teachers as well they would tell us that 19 is a busy classroom with four-year-olds do they have full-time paraprofessionals with them yeah so we work to cover the classroom with a paraprofessional um within the district you know
044we tend not to hire people who are like the seven-hour people so we work through providing coverage in that classroom with a paraprofessional during the times up there but yes there's two people uh typically in the room or one person taking a kid to the bathroom and the other person's in the classroom when you figured that cost did it include a full-time teacher and a peer professional yes yeah the salary on that yeah and mike did a nice comparison of our community-based sites compared to our district sites too when this cost analysis is pretty similar between the two thanks the questions other comments or questions on the presentation again i know this view that services anyone else nope all right thank you very much so our next item up is our safe schools update i
045have a very very brief update for you today um not really a lot of new information um but i wanted to stay consistent and uh make sure if they had questions uh we could answer them and i always like to throw on a cute picture or two of some of our favorite what's been going well we've implemented the new quarantine in close contact notification practices we have seen lower quarantine numbers which is certainly not a surprise with that change in practice we have been able to implement again our program 19 testing center uh that is open five days a week from nine o'clock a.m to three o'clock p.m um and it has been very busy uh certainly this week uh there there's been a lot of cars every time i've walked out of the office
046and we will now be having some holiday hours as well so we'll be sending out a message to our families and to staff to make them aware of what those holiday hours would be we know again that that has been a really good resource and again those test results have been coming back within 24 hours um we've been continuing to experience a high number of uh positive public cases in our schools in our community we were sitting in about 30 cases a week for about three weeks in a row uh we then dropped to 29 and then last week 21 so that's a good sign that but the community numbers are still really staying at that higher number so we will see how this week goes uh and then obviously we'll have the winter break
047and uh sort of start over when we get back together in january uh we have seen um lots of sick people kids and adults lots of influenza and viruses that have been going around so we are seeing a lot of absences for both students and for staff we know that some of our families have indicated frustrations with needing to reach out as you heard from tracy tonight reaching out to wusd staff for close contact tracing that previously that was something that was done and then quickly communicated to them that taking that extra step uh is an inconvenience for some of our families um especially when it could be at coming out at the end of the day and families want to make a decision for the following school day continuing to experience a shortage of
048substitute teachers uh this week is always a hard week so we made it through today margaret we're going to make it through the next two correct plans [Laughter] so we are hopeful uh to have that as you heard earlier we do have our substitute teachers um full-time subs available at the elementary middle school and high school and that has helped us tremendously uh to navigate that staffing situation um we saw some examples this past week that not only um there's a lot of articles uh if you look online not only are we seeing some unusual student behaviors they're really uh seeing these unusual student behaviors nationwide uh and we certainly saw some of that this week in the district and in the nation uh and continuing to work through some of those challenging behaviors with
049our students uh really really glad that we have our grant funded threat assessment coordinator with us this year she's been a fantastic addition and has helped us to navigate some of the situations that we've had um i've already gone over these items and already gone over these items a reminder that you can check our cover 19 website data as well as you know i check every day that dhs website data oh i'm sorry i'm wording on my screen and not forwarding the clicker i have in front of me 19 data so just a reminder that we are posting that data twice a week and um again that dhs website is really really valuable cover data next slide um since we have implemented that new quarantine close contact notification we have had 77 um requests for
050close contact raising and we've had 66 uh new total positive cases since that time and again just as i do every month i really want to encourage families to continue to use that symptom checker uh again it's not just coveted out there there's all sorts of uh different viruses and the flu out there please uh keep kids home if they are feeling under the weather um we had a household full of sick kiddos uh ourselves so next slide is just questions and feedback good so how are how was the plan and expectations shared with staff the plan uh the the overall safety plan or the quarantine notifications um so the safety plan has been shared on a number of uh a number of occasions with staff one of the primary ways in which we've shared
051it is by having each we have created a video with all of our safe schools protocols which we've asked all of our staff members and support staff to view and then to sign design that they've done that principals then continue to communicate with staff if we have any shifts or changes i communicate with staff as well through full district emails but really the principles are the boots on the ground for any changes that we're moving but there is absolutely an expectation that the staff is familiar with the safety plan again they did they were asked to view the video and they were asked to make sure that they are following those protocols because my concern is that the plan is not being followed with the fidelity that it needs to be and we need to
052do better um there have been areas um you know as far as a few classrooms are set up for physical distancing you know there's been issues as far as transportation and not having face problems you know i don't know if it needs to be added as a checklist for field trips um you know there's been the things that people have approached me with the thermometers in the classroom don't match the thermometers with the health assistant that kind of thing um you know visitor and activity checks that hasn't been you know really solidified there um you know we have a prioritization list that says when cases are low we will you know the physical distancing won't be as you know that's the first one and although we say our cases are high we're already zooming to
053number one in the prioritization list and we're not there um you know parents are expecting us to follow through on this plan our community needs us to follow through on this plan and how it's implemented um i don't know if there needs to be another review after you know break but parents are expecting us to do what we say we're going to do well i will certainly the principals are here i've heard that feedback as well we'll certainly uh discuss that at cabinet and perhaps in january when we return is a very good time to revisit some of those key safety protocols um there is absolutely an expectation that they are being followed so we are always navigating that sort of push and pull and we will certainly revisit that with staff so thank you
054other board members comments or questions on this um somewhat uh what do you call uh tangential to this you mentioned uh one of your slides what's been challenging and you mentioned uh oh just uh nationwide uh behavior issues i forget how you put it in this thing uh we've had the dodge county in place since roughly september october uh can anybody comment that this is not per se safe schools as much as is it getting used how often is it getting used uh are we seeing cases that we wanted it to address being addressed yeah great question yep i can share a little bit of information we had a slow start one or two families that were trying to access the services the last i checked we were in the 8-10 range so we're seeing
055an up to take in it we're seeing interested families and all of our schools are aware of what the process is to get a family connected with the open door and our goal was about 10 to 11 families served correct in a given day right so you could have more families you know depending on how often they were seeing them thank you all right other comments or questions from board members all right and we will thank you very much we will move on to our next topic which is our safety drill evaluations and school security assessments i'm sorry that is me i was waiting for something to appear on the screen but i don't think we have anything to share with you there the board was given the safety drill evaluations as you know we
056uh complete our safety drill evaluations uh at least on a semester basis but our target is quarterly uh and then we bring those before the board for approval as is required by the department of justice so then we upload those uh to them so you have the opportunity to view those and see we're continuing to do our safety drills uh we will do two more safety drills uh going into second semester so one each quarter and we will be changing the format of those drills uh to um to make sure that they are addressing us more additional issues other than what our students have seen in the last few drills so uh the safety team has been working hard on that and you will see that uh in the future uh we also every three
057years need to do the safety team are the safety assessments of our sites and that's the other information that you see there for your approval that each site has been reviewed and mike williamson collaborated with the principals on that to ensure that those safety assessments are in order as well any questions on that comments or questions to the board against standard operating procedure we do test these scenarios throughout the year every year we've been doing this for quite a long time i'll emphasize the value of our partnership with the watertown police department valuable contributor to this process how much how much time does it take away from i mean it varies from case to case but if we take we do what we say here we do typically for a year for a year that
058adds up to a typical kid being in the safety bill for entire day a half a day they usually are relatively brief uh some are going to be a little bit longer so some of the drills we have coming up in the second semester will last a little bit longer sometimes here we're going to maranatha and take a break so we can have some of those longer drills that could take up to three hours but for the most part it's done in less than a class period so you're looking at probably between four to six hours at the very most over the course of the school year and the teachers and staff know they're coming know that if i'm teaching government in third period i'm going to lose that period they see they're coming we
059coordinated so it's on the same week within the district and we try to have it on the same day that sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't uh each principal and then i send a family letter then each principal does the drill then each principal sends a letter home to their families that the drill has been done and teachers are in the loop with all of that communication as well and i think very very accustomed to the practice i mean the teachers however spend quite a bit more time we do a training at the beginning of every school year on updates on the safety plan and updates on our protocols uh for new staff as well as for veterans staff all right stephen um the full content that we have so is that what the
060um assessment part of it is that what is reviewed every three years correct yes okay because i noticed like some of the names are correct on there and you know and things like that so i didn't know how current that needs to be or how that works that is what is reviewed every year um and mike went through that with uh the principles at every site so i'm not sure which one you're looking at yeah there's sorry you might if i interject um the top portion before we submit to the state needs to be updated with my name the current principal's names the enrollments really the meat of what was reviewed though was that the comments throughout versus the top portion all right anything else okay thank you very much next we'll move on to
061reports start with the superintendent report all right so you can go back to that powerpoint again for me together and this will also be very very brief um another reminder that uh we do have our clinic open and we will have holiday um for our autobiogne testing available and we will have holiday hours available for that slide there tyler and then the net the next still adapting to the clicker um the next slide uh please join us again one of the events that we were not able to offer last year was trivia night it is back this year with i think a very positive theme and certainly appropriate theme of everyday heroes that's going to be saturday february 5th if you haven't joined us at that before it is really a fantastic night and all
062of the funds uh go to support our booster club and uh yeah show off your smarts or laugh there up it's a lot of fun okay the gosselin career fair is another event um that we were we had online last year virtually last year um the year before it was the last in-person event we had uh before the uh the shutdown of the schools uh so we are very glad to bring that gosling career fair back uh in person i would also say that margaret brady in cooperation with sarah tarpi uh applied for a grant to support that for 3 000 additional dollars and we are very excited to how that is going to additionally support that career fair it's typically really really really well intended uh and our community business has really appreciated the
063opportunity to connect with our students and our students really appreciate the opportunity to connect with our businesses and manufacturers and we also have secondary schools most secondary schools represented there's problems you can absolutely if you haven't been there yet they gotta go it's really uh pretty cool you'll be amazed all about what's going on and lots of the uh lots of the vendors have uh snacks and other uh items that you can take with you so it's definitely uh worth it for nothing else than a free tootsie roll uh it is very impressive i it really is thank you who's leading it this year uh jesse domer and sarah tarpy uh coordinate to uh put that event together and it's being led by the district more so than the champions chambers no the chamber is
064a partner in this as well this is very much a collaborative effort between the chamber and the school district good question thank you for having me highlight that um another event that came back this year was our saint bernard's holiday concert uh always just absolutely spectacular we've had several other concerts that have taken place over this past month and all of them have been fabulous many many many many many many many other holiday events i started trying to put some additional pictures in there but there are things going on at all of our sites our students and our staff are working to support our students and families in the community in such a wide variety of way of ways i would highlight the adopt a gosling program here at the high school where you have
065the opportunity to adopt a gosling and send home uh with a student in need a blanket earbuds uh a gift card for a local business uh a pair of socks uh and each one of those is gonna go home with oh uh a winter hat and winter gloves if you're looking for a way to rekindle some holiday spirit i encourage you to reach out to whs and adopt a gosling the time on that is short but it's really a fantastic opportunity to get a nice warm holiday feeling as we get ready to go into the holidays in a few very short days and in case i haven't told you later lately and we are hiring bus drivers if you are interested in driving a bus we really do we really do and they're not the
066only people we need again if you want to if you want to clean uh or you want to drive a bus we got a spot for you here in the wusd uh and unless anybody has any questions that's the end of my report anything for the superintendent all right and we'll move on to fiscal management okay uh so uh we had our meeting on december 15th the entire uh committee was present along with uh dr shug myself uh steve kauffeld and tony uh we had our payment variance reports well almost the entire veterans report i sent that to the committee afterwards we discussed a few items on the payment report as well and the variance report i'm going to continue to work on a memo to summarize that better for our committee we did bring
067forward to the committee a debt refinance proposal from one particular institution elders public finance while the numbers look really good in order to refinance some debt hopefully before we see interest rates rise we are going to grab some additional information from some other public finance firms to take a look at their fee structures in order to move forward with a debt refinance that is best for watertown but more than likely a debt refinance will occur here sometime in the late winter we discussed the air handling unit at webster we got a very robust bid package from about four different vendors and we are recommending tonight that we go with the low bid from ahern which you should see in the board packet this was really good news from a financial standpoint we had originally thought
068that this particular project could be anywhere in the low to mid 300 thousands and going through this process and utilizing an outside consultant with really no skin in the game as to whether we do the project or not we ended up getting a packet big package back at around 186 and that's what we're voting on tonight and we'll use sr2 funds to cover this particular expenditure so that frees up more dollars for other things um you do you will see a door replacement purchase tonight in your board packet as well for proposal or for vote um currently we have two bids and so the resolution is for a cost not to exceed the current low bid but we have another vendor that we're going to be reaching out to for a third price and then
069we'll let the finance committee know whether that fell in below the bid or not that the lowest bid that we currently have finally tonight you're going to see a proposal for a new fire alarm panel at the high school you're only seeing one bid for this as this fire panel is proprietary to johnson controls uh the fire panel the committee asked when was this fire panel put in it was original with the building in 1994 and so it is out of date we are no longer able to get parts for it if it fails and you really can't have your fight alarm panel fail so uh we're gonna um hopefully you can vote on this uh to to upgrade that fire panel moving forward uh we did we also discussed the damaged furniture at the
070high school um the good news is is that we do have a current proposal to replace all the new all the damaged furniture at the high school that's going to be below the insurance quote that's going forward to the insurance company however we are going to get some additional bids uh just to ensure that uh the proposal that we currently have is in line and isn't out of step with our needs so we want to make sure that that comes to the committee and to the board in january in order to make sure that that furniture gets here in the summer and then you saw the esser presentation tonight which we had discussed briefly at the committee and you're going to see some additional pieces of that come forward throughout january and as tony said
071it's a state thing that we need to get this initial proposal in within the next couple months late february early march anything else doug well i just want to thank you for your extra effort on the bid package for the webster handling unit and coming up with that solution to go with a contractor that good job thanks other comments or questions of that report all right nothing else then we will move on to hr thank you mike hr committee met december 13th at 5 30. uh the full committee was there uh jennifer bakke paul langenberg and tina johnson we're also treated with the presence of our board president tony arnett and mike williamson our financial director we went through the review of staff appointments and resignations we find those on the consent agenda this evening
072um we addressed the uh we reviewed the school calendar and there were concerns brought up with that which we will be discussing a resolution later in the meeting we were notified that uh there has been uh union recertification election results came in for our staff and the nutritional support staff or weak region 7 bargaining unit did not receive enough votes to continue in that and we were notified by the wisconsin employment relations commission that the collective bargaining unit has been decertified that leaves us with the uh ule education association we x7 uh our staff our teaching staff and the clerical staff as the two represented bodies in our district compensation review committee update uh they met on the 16th i haven't heard anything more about that i don't know margaret if you want to elaborate
073or we're going to leave that to the liquidity media next month um we had a meeting related to the outcome of this survey the consultant was going to report to this to the committee the outcome of the survey and will um we also miss brady went through the open benefits enrollment update for our staff and there has been some transitioning in there generally our staff is very satisfied with with the benefit package that we offer and uh things are going well there so with that uh business team taken care of meeting was adjourned our next meeting will be january 17th any comments or questions in that report thank you we're done then we'll move on to that services ad services met on december 7th at 7 30 at douglas elementary school all committee members were
074present we had three things on the agenda the first one was close contact quarantine notification practices update which we heard an even further update tonight from cassandra so um i won't go over anything additional there uh the second thing on the agenda was a 4k planning and program update again which heard a presentation from jenny tonight so uh there's really nothing for me to expound on for that the third thing was uh we had a short uh update um teaching and learning report from eric meyer it was about a pilot for the wisdom literacy curriculum from the english language arts correct classrooms at the riverside food school uh there's planning for a further update that will be shared to the full board in march uh erin is there anything you want to add to that
075or pretty much right now they're highlighting what's called module 0 which is a beginning step like what should the classroom look like what are our procedures and then after break all of the ela programs will be living a module going through the whole process of the actual book study and what they're doing and they're very excited and i can't thank them enough these are difficult times with not a lot of extra time on their hands and we've got some great training and support and we're going to continue to have five weekly check-ins with the support people as they're doing pilot so questions anything you want to add dave uh just one thing quickly resolution 1976 is uh in the wake of last month's head services committee meeting when mr domer and mr bartley presented uh
076new course uh proposals to the committee in social studies respectively and those course editions were part of your packet that appeared on this agenda so that's coming up okay uh with that we adjourned at 9 30. uh our next meeting will be tuesday january 11th at 7 30. do we know where that's going to be at dave uh either uh more than likely riverside thank god all right thank you calm comments or questions in that report you're done we'll move on to planet thank you the planning committee met on december 8th and starting at 8 30. uh committee members present where dave smith katie nigerian and myself that blue was unable to join us but president arnett joined us as well as mr vice valley and assange so the first thing that we talked about
077was the gallery walk that took place during the last board meeting i think there was a general feeling of a resounding success and not enough time so one of the efforts of continuous improvement is to look ahead and see how to maybe turn that into two board meetings so we're not as rushed and also the idea of perhaps getting some of the presentations in advance so we can have more conversation uh and two-way streets but the general opinion was that it was a great success and deeply appreciated we did talk about um as a new committee with a new strategic plan coming out uh how we want to manage strategic plan reporting um so dr shah gave us some good overviews of how she deploys the plan and it is something that we will continue
078to refine uh during this first year of the new strategic plan how to stay informed about the progress monitoring on the plan we also then had a really good discussion on the implementation of the plan and what is the right what are the right data points for a board level overview of it and really wanting to see some leading indicators um so dr schub is going to talk to administrators and come up with some suggestions on uh leading indicators moving forward so during this first year we're again putting some meat on the bones of the strategic plan and understanding the best way that we as a committee can function so correspondingly there was also a discussion that we should probably have some type of annual strategic plan retreat but during this first year when things
079are just getting up and running it doesn't make much sense but certainly something that we would look at in the second and third year and there was good discussion that that strategic plan retreat and review really needs to be early on in the calendar year so you know in that february time frame so that we can again get ahead of all the planning that takes place so that when summer comes you know you really understand where the board is going and gives the superintendent and her administrators time to respond accordingly when the new fiscal year rolls around july 1st um we also as all the committees in support of the policy committee reviewing board operations during the upcoming months we spent a few minutes reviewing in support of the board policy on committees our planning
080committee job description so to speak and we will also revisit that again the first draft was created but needs more work and requested continuous improvements and that next meeting will be in february because we are alternating every two months between policy and planning so january will be policy any additions dr show we did also talk about having a june board retreat for court development um that that would be when the new board is elected in april and that that might be a really good time um to help us get to know one another um and to share some more practices and more development would like to add anything any comments or questions we will move on to the consent agenda resolution 9069 tonight's consent agenda includes meeting minutes maybe summaries personnel staffing and the approval
081of bills there are no policies either first or second reading in tonight's consent agenda do i hear a result a motion on resolution nine zero six nine so we'll second move by steve seconded by jennifer comments or questions on the motion hearing none roll call vote please tina johnson yes steve coco yes nigerian yes david schroeder yes david smith yes yes doug will yes tony you're next yes yes and the motion carries next we'll move to our action items the first is resolution nine zero seven one for full day 4k 2022 2023 school year again this is the proposal to add up to three sections based upon enrollment do i hear a motion on resolution nine zero seven one check why paul seconded by david comments or questions on the motion hearing done roll call
082vote please tina johnson yes steve cockrell yes kate nigerian yes david trader yes david smith yes paul van wyk yes doug well yes tony arnott yes jennifer becky yes and the motion carries next is resolution nine zero seven two the school calendar for the 2022-2023 school year do i hear a motion on 9-0-7-2 [Music] move by steve seconded by paul i'll just make a brief comment alluding to the discussion that was made at the hr meeting there was a question as to reflecting on this year's experience with the ready set go conferences and if we wanted to take some different direction with that did that cause any potential issues with this calendar as proposed and i've received assurances from the superintendent that approving this calendar does not by default mean they're going to the same
083practice on the ready set go that's still very much open for discussion any comments or questions on the motion hearing none roll call vote please tina johnson yes steve proposed yes yes david schroeder yes david smith yes yes doug will yes tony internet yes yes and the motion carries next is resolution 9073 this is for the replacement of the air handling unit at webster elementary school do i hear a motion by jennifer seconded by tina again as mentioned during the report on fiscal this is the replacement of that air handling unit along with some associated distribution units and that unit has reached the end of its life i will also mention though that because of the change in the process that mr williamson did we are seeing a substantial reduction in the cost of this
084project it was originally estimated that more than three hundred thousand dollars is coming in less than two hundred thousand dollars any comments or questions on the motion yes david schroeder kept stain david smith yes paul ben and langenberg yes doug will yes yes and the motion carries next is resolution nine zero seven four this is the replacement of entrance doors at webster elementary school do i hear a motion so move by david is there a second second invite tina comments or questions on the motion we get a confirmation of what specific doors is wherever i tell you that the ones on 10th street for two exits on both wings i know they both come right out at the tents yeah yeah out of the seventies when they're colleges down there they are just rusted out
085all right any for the comments or questions on the motion we are getting more fit for this was not to exceed that or i believe yep we still need to get one more quote so this is just a not to exceed at this moment with the two quotes any other comments or questions green none roll call vote please tina johnson yes steve coco yes yes david schroeder yes david smith yes paul van wyk yes doug well yes 20 or not yes yes and the motion carries resolution 9075 this is the replacement of the alarm control panel here at the high school as described in the presentation for the fiscal report do i hear a motion on 9-0-7-5 moved by doug seconded by katie comments or questions on the motion hearing non-roll call go please tina
086johnson yes steve coco yes katie mcgerman yes david schroeder yes david smith yes yes and the motion carries and our last resolution is 9076 which approves the additions of several courses to the high school program for the 2022-2023 school year again dependent upon enrollment do i hear a motion in 9076 move by katie is there a second second by jennifer comments or questions on the motion i have a comment um or a question i guess um i i'm the two [Music] courses for the ap human geography and i i just noticed that and i believe dave can talk about this that we have those listed on ap under our ecampus and that students are taking two courses on their e-campus and if there isn't enough on a regular you know student staff during our school
087can they go to ecampus and take the course rather than setting up a whole course yeah that's a great question dave do you want to speak to that yeah i mean our parents will request our guidance counselor for requests or even students requests access to uh digital courses um that are offered in a face-to-face setting or in some cases not we do avail those courses to our kids and they could take the course that's listed in our campus course but it wouldn't mean they're ecampus kids but they're just accessing that video content and if we didn't have the enrollments that would dictate running that course we would absolutely each counselor meets with the students who have been enrolled and would provide some alternative options which would certainly include that campus option that's a great question
088he wishes that there were ap courses of this feature and by golly [Music] way to make it i myself took a cultural geography class in college some of the things you can learn in that kind of class is not only how we've been influenced by geography but how we influence geography so that's one of the key things remember is our our major interstate highways create these heat ribbons there's a reason why weather is different north of 94. than it is this happens in a number of places in the u.s where it was back in ohio same thing interstate 7 it creates actually dividing line the weather patterns which science [Laughter] around the is around the rivers very strong we grew up hence watertown so i have one more um as far as the ap government
089in politics the do we have a teacher that i know mr thorpe was for the ap human geography is there we have a candidate for the other course yes yeah i mean they're all certified to teach any of the courses in the social studies program uh at this point i don't think they determine that um i guess it would be either mr schleicher mr souski but josh if you're on the call here maybe you can confirm what you guys have discussed at the department level but um if the numbers are there we'll we'll have it and the follow-up on that um as far as there is any professional development that needs to be done to be able to teach that course yeah so we'll attend the ap summer institute we're looking at some training as
090is the case with any new ap course or even teachers that have taught take courses in the past so great opportunities in the summer and also to network with teachers internally as well to get prepared right any other questions or comments on the motion hearing none roll call voc please tina johnson yes steve coco yes katie nigerian yes david schroeder yes david smith yes yes doug well yes yes yes and the motion carries all right this brings us to the second time on our agenda for public input again people present in the room or online online please use the raise your hand feature and if recognized please give your name and address and keep your marks brief is there anyone who'd like to address the board at this time do not see anyone in the
091room raising your hand or online with that in mind i will then entertain a motion to adjourn move by duck seconded by dave all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed you stand a jerk thank you everyone