09/23/2024 Regular Board Meeting

001e this is the first of our two public comment sections um couple things here we had some calls after the last board meeting and I want to make some some things clear that this is a business meeting for the board um public sessions we allow to have the community here by policy we have two public sessions all right we had requests uh from after last board meeting to remove some of the items from the board Mee so you folks have more time to talk we are here to do board business all right but in that vein we did extend both public sessions for tonight's meeting all right also uh please sign up this is a public session and we have to have public record if who speaks Lyn does a good job of writing your

002names down but please write your name down down on the slip also I understand that we had a lot of people signed up uh filled out on the form last week but didn't get to talk we had a lot of people who came up and didn't fill up the form who did talk um please give you a chance sign up um and talk if you haven't signed up to do so um this we will have this session but there is another session at the end I would encourage you to give people a chance who can't stay through this meeting um if they can to the ones who speak here who can't stay before the end of the meeting um also I know we got some regulars in the crowd let some other people talk uh

003if they're new here they want to have a conversation and we have a talk with board um and then we'll go from there from tonight all right thank you everybody so who would like to speak first please uh come to the podium state your name and your address for the record please hi I'm Curtis I live in Watertown Wisconsin um tonight I'd like to talk um about a powerful tool that can help us create a more supportive environment for our children social emotional learning or some would call it seal some will contend that the obligation to teach children social emotional learning lies with the parents and I will not contest that parents and caregivers play The crucial and pivotal role in this however Watertown Unified School District is a public school OB obligated to teach

004all students regardless of their backgrounds family situations or levels of Parental involvement implementing these practices into the school culture is not intended to subvert the role of the parents but to supplement it and address critical shortcomings it's not just a buzzword it's a transformative approach that equips children with essential skills such as problem solving empathy identifying and controlling emotions sharing listening and expressing emotions by integrating it into our children's lives we can prevent bullying before it starts and help ensure that Bullies Are Not created in the first place first let's consider how it can help prevent bullying at its core it teaches sympathy or empathy when children learn to understand and share feelings of others they are less likely to engage in hurtful behaviors they begin to see their peers as individuals with their own

005emotions and experiences which Fosters a sense of respect and kindness additionally it provides children with conflict resolution skills instead of resorting to aggression or exclusion they learn to communicate effectively and resolve peace disputes peacefully peacefully this is not only reduces the incidents of bullying but also creates a more harmonious School environment self-regulation a key component of social emotional learning involves managing thoughts and emotions to achieve goals including organization actions controlling impulses and solving problems s positively it benefits various life areas such emotional well-being academic success health and overall achievement influences on R self-regulation include biology skills motivation caregiver support and environment it can be developed through practice and support even later in life parents and caregivers play a crucial role by providing warm and supportive guidance while some stress can build coping skills exess of

006stress like poverty or trauma can hinder development self-regulation develops gradually with significant growth during early childhood and teenage years sure um I just want to say this okay um but seal is not just for children parents play The crucial role in their child's seal as their child's first and foremost teacher parents influence extends far beyond the early years parenting does not stop at three or age five or 10 or 15 18 for some of us 29 it it evolves as children grow and parents need ongoing support to navigate these changes I think we need to support our school district we need to support our teachers teachers have been teaching SE working on it since schools have started if you can think back to when you were a kid and you saw a bullying or U

007or a fight a teacher stepped in and they need these supports it might things have changed things have um gone differently since we've been kids but if we can support our teachers have this added into the classrooms which it it is but we need to embrace it as a community so that the kids can be stronger our families can be stronger and we have a strong Community thank you I got a timer I give everybody about three minutes just get everybody through all right so if I you off just because you hit the mark then ask you to thank you um my Entourage may not last very long so I'm thankful to you guys to let me pop up here Elizabeth boxel 809 casc drive I'm here in my role as the vice president of

008the sh PTO to invite anybody but most especially the board to our Trunk or Treat event October 31st from 4:30 to 5:30 um over half of our families show up it's our third year doing it it's an amazingly fun time and it's a really small amount of time a commitment from you guys make a really big impact I know I'm really grateful for those of you who were able to attend the teacher kickoff it means a lot when we can see your faces um and your presence within the community all you need to do if you don't really want to decorate your trunk you can bring candy or non- candy items or just be there and introduce yourself and hang out with our kids as they're dressed up and our parents and it's a really

009amazing time so I will be emailing you guys a link to sign up in case you're looking for that 4:30 to 5:30 October 31st the Sher Elementary staff parking lot and just to bring your attention again to the amazing work that the PTO do I know Webster just had ours sh just had ours well ours I'm not Webster but the middle school has an amazing PTO and with the energy that's here it's so beautiful and just maybe a little reminder to the people out there that if you have a student at an elementary or middle school level check out your local PTO it's a great way to get your voice heard and a great way to support not only your but also the teachers I'm staccia Studio East Main Street um I'm gon to talk

010fast I got a lot of things I want to say um first of all the bullying um as we all know what took place about three weeks ago where a young girl took her life I know that that situation is multifaceted it's not just a school thing but maybe when she reported The Bullying last year had the teachers in the school been more receptive she would have felt more comfortable asking for help this time around I've been made aware that there is bullying on the buses the restorative justice that you guys work so hard with is failing it's failing terribly guys um getting kicked out of school is not a deterrent um no punishment at all is not a deterrent um I think maybe some extra funding in to Paras I've spoken to a couple

011of them they're not interested in the benefits their spouses already take care of it pairs aren't necessary um they kind of do all the background work um that the teachers can't do um maybe some more pay maybe some more hours but we need more staff with our with our kids and um teachers are sometimes lumped into the bullying because they've got their favorite kids or their friends with um the parents and stuff that's kind of got to we got to watch that I know that there's a designated person for school for bullying I'm wondering um how often do you guys meet with them what kind of things happen because there is a huge fall through um again I I hate to beat this horse again um the the the boys in the girls locker room

012could be a bullying thing too if you've got an almost adult male a senior going into a locker room with a freshman girl that's already a weird time I remember not even wanting to get changed at RMS to go swimming with all natural born girls um I think Safety and Security needs to be addressed there um May you know it's possible that some of the females could be scared to speak up because then they'll be labeled as something that they're not trying to be it's a super weird age um I think I I I I want and I've spoken with City Council Members too by structure you guys are two separate entities you guys got to start holding hands um there has to be a connect because there's such a disconnect you know maybe working

013a little more with police officers and um the restorative justice or whatever is going to be done but I think there's such a disconnect that this City and the School Board needs to start holding hands a little bit and we need to start working in unity um thank you for listening to me um thank you hi I'm Phoenix from Watertown um I am a student at Watertown High School I would like to point out a lot of issues that we are facing obviously three weeks ago the girl who took her own life as she had stated um was being bullied for quite some time and the school did barely anything about it if not nothing which is terrible two years ago I met the sweetest girl ever she was so young so innocent her name

014was Destiny and she also took her own life due to bullying she was so sweet and so innocent she had barely even started and that all was taken away by other kids her age acting as if she wasn't another human being the things that students go through just to seem recognized to be noticed is too much we have I have had friends who have spoken up about very serious situations very serious things that are enough to cause trauma and there's nothing being done about it I have had friends who have felt uncomfortable sitting in the same room with someone who has done something terrible to them they've had to switch out of classes and yet the school board still did nothing to punish the students who have done that or District I should say not

015board the district honestly in my opinion as an inside voice is failing we are we are failing the students it's just honesty the students are facing backlash from other students for even trying to speak up they are getting called names and being labeled as things for being the victim and it is terrible hearing people come crying to me saying something terrible happened but no one is listening hurts knowing that I personally cannot do anything about it and they have already reported it they have already said something about it is the worst feeling in the whole world thank you thank you yes thank you Stoler I live on North Washington Street Watertown um I just have a short little thing to say my son um quite a few years ago was bullied very badly in the

016in the middle school and he had some friends that were being bullied and one day outside of the school he saw this girl being bullied and picked on and physically being pushed and so my son stepped in and wrestled the kid that was bullying her and he ended up getting suspended and my husband went to meet with the vice principal at the time and was trying to find out okay what my do you understand why my son did what he did you understand that he was protecting another student and they didn't care they didn't care my son was suspended and my husband asked the school do you guys do active shooter training and they're like oh yeah yeah we have that you so you guys have a plan if an active shooter comes they said

017yes and my husband said so what is your plan for when someone gets bullied do you have a plan for that no do you have training that if this happens this is how we react and they said no and my husband said well what's more likely happening in our schools bullying or an active shooter and that was almost I think my son is now 22 so that was quite a few years ago and it's over and over and over I'm hearing the same things about kids being bullied kids dying kids my son by the time he was a sophomore because he was still bullied and he was still that he pretty much dropped out of school and he's still struggling with trauma and things back to when he was in in middle school being bullied

018and so no matter why you're being bullied it should be stopped and there should be a plan and there should be an active and these kids should stop getting in trouble for for fighting back against their bullers for standing up for other kids and they should feel that they're being protected protected and the schools need to have a plan they need to have training and they need to be able to enforce against the bullies and not against the kids that are trying to fight for other kids that's all thank you thank you I'm not seeing anyone else right stop here section one last call does anybody want to speak all right thank you and then we will move on to our next section the announcements recognitions and Communications our first announcement is that October 6

019to the 12th is School Board Appreciation Week um so this is the week that we um publicly honor you because by the time we have another school board meeting will have been gone um so therefore I get to um do an official act as a publicly appointed official by a n member board and um mine is to read this resolution whereas the Watertown Unified School District recognizes the importance of public education in our community and whereas the Watertown Unified School District appreciates the vital role played by the local school board which is established is policies to ensure an efficient effective school system and whereas the Watertown unified school board members serve as a voice that enables our community to preserve uh local management and control over our public schools and whereas the Watertown unified school

020district school board members are charged with representing our local education interest to the state and federal governments and ensure compliance with the state and federal law and whereas the Watertown Unified School District local school board members selflessly devote their knowledge time and talents and as advocates for our school's children and community's future whereas the Watertown Unified School District local school member school board members are strong advocates for public education and responsible for communicating the needs of the school district to the public and the Public's expectations to the district District now therefore be it resolved that the Water Town Unified School District recognizes and Sals the members of the Watertown Unified School District School Board by proclaiming October 6th through the 12th 2024 as Wisconsin school board week thank you for your service we do have

021a little something for you each of you at the the tabl spot and so I hope you enjoy those um wusd of course swag for service because we know that your salary doesn't really time efforts and energy you all this is official although I can make it official by my public appointment I need to make a motion air graph six whereas uh unified Unified School dist local school imian sew board members so we have a roll call vote on that L we just do General accept accept all in favor um I also have announcements Item B couple of generous donations uh from uh different members of our community the first first is a donation of $700 towards the FFA this is in memory of the David zolik family um and um this letter to the

022board my father was an ad farmer his entire life and a graduate of the Watertown High School our friends and family would like to make this donation in his I am sure the students uh will put uh forward to good use we hope to end cancer SAR thank you for your donation another donation that came in from the water tunel Lions Club um they raised $850 in their stuff the bus event and that money will go to [Music] for the support other announcements right on to our strategic discussion first item would be the rooms communication tool presentation that for us evening I have a video to show you in just a moment but I just want to talk a little bit about something new called rooms that we're going to be adding over the course

023of this school year so this is a new Communications tool that will be um primarily between teachers and families also for coaches and family communication so this grew out of the communic audit that occurred over the past year and a half where a lot of people said that if they have children in different buildings across the district we're using several different Communications platforms to communicate with teachers so rooms is really handy and that's kind of be a One-Stop shop so if you have children in three different buildings you'll have this one app on your phone and you literally just toggle between each of your kids rooms is made by a company called AP we already are connected with ap for our website so really it's a seamless transition so we're moving forward with rooms being

024a primary communication device in conjunction with Skyward so rooms can be download on your smartphone not quite yet because we don't officially have it but we do have an app for the school district which is essentially our website through app form so once rooms comes into play Then That app is going to be really important that everyone downloads it so our goal for roll out um right now we're in training with the building principles so we have a whole schedule of events that will take place um we have another training session with principles next week and then we'll start to invite teachers um ap's leading this for us to start training so it's really nice they're they're very easy to reach um they will hold hands of all the staff that needs to download this

025app and become comfortable with it it integrates directly with Google classroom and I think it's going to be a great thing for the district so can we show the video in teachers everywhere [Music] while easily managing classroom communication all one place it's faster and easier to use than and parents are M even their school is closed teachers can also send announcements for the class feed or broadcasting message to the entire class to get individual responses from parents and Guardians auta language translation helps brige the Gap with all and whether or not messages have been read or [Music] changes simplifies School communication for students this gives parents one place to keep up with their students classes and great things happening at school and the not so great join the thousands of schools today and start messaging

026by mobilizing your school's identi so our hope is that we can bring this on board for second trimester for the high school and then with second semester for the middle school and the there any questions I can answer yes um for the high school is it's going to be a tool for students to use also oh absolutely it's for student communication with their teachers as well but what's really nice is the instant translation that's part of this and it's also every single thing that occurs within this app is archived so if there's ever an open records request or of a conversation happening it's all archived and documented what's the retention on that long we ar uh that I don't have an answer to right now so right now it sounds like we use um we

027use Skyward as the main correspondence between parents and teachers is that correct So currently we also use thrillshare so AP is the company our website is powered by thrillshare so when we want to send out an alert right now for school closing um we just emailed out the newsletter districtwide we used thrillshare for that so that's already in place so we don't use Skyward or I don't jar answer that we sometimes still use Sky alert okay um but as we get more and more into this tool the need to use that will be less less because um essentially thrillshare does the need and with rooms we can set up a district wide room if we want to what I like about it is also that um coaches can create a room um and um advisers

028from different clubs can create their own room um and we have the ability to do SUB rooms or multiple teachers in one room uh if we need to um it should start replacing all of those things that we saw with the the multiple different things um remind 101 seesaw Class Dojo you know um even stuff within our our Google Classroom environment I will see teachers probably uh moving more towards using the room platform and it will it will go out now students will still need to complete homework assignments and other things in Google Classroom that doesn't go away um but the alerts to remind students to do that or remind parents that it's out there inste instead of going just through the classroom it may go through this um and on this as a parent

029I get to see both my children their whole schedules have access to each teacher if I want to um text one or text them all I can um and it'll put it all in one spot the other thing I like about it is it makes our our school district app something that's useful because right now it's not very useful it's more of a calendar um of events that's out there um and this will be something that will'll really interact with them and then push people back to our we page and or rle classroom or other things like Skyward where we'll still keep their grades in uh and do those kinds of things so um hopefully it's a way to better streamline communication um that's our goal given our communication audit um and to see some

030of those uh things where I had to learn multiple things as a parent to try to get my message across to one more centralized location I'm never going to say anyone tools good and that's the end all or be all but I'm hoping that this one really does help out um and really does get to um the concerns we heard from parents about you know 11 to 14 different modes of communication just to talk with those that support their child so along those GS you know that's that's my long my question uh if we if there's a teacher that PR first to use let's say seesaw or some other mold um I guess I would assume that we're still going to allow that in which case um we're still going to have 14 different modes

031or methods of communication so um I I guess I would encourage us if we're going to select this as the mode that we uh if we're conditioning parents and families to utilize that mode that's the mode we should use and we'll we will get there uh again changing culture takes some time right uh adopting new tools takes time and so that's why we talked about a soft roll out and not a hard and fast um we don't even know for sure how much um in those other tools there is a Reliance or that they're storing actual curriculum or other things that need to slowly transition over and we can't expect that all to happen right now right but we've got a lot of other things that we're working on within our district um and we

032need to continue working on moving those forward as well as this but just keep going down the process of getting better right and that's what we're looking for um for that is that change to keep it in those other items like seesaw and other ones if these come up for contract renewals we're reviewing those to determine whether or not we want to maintain that or droping those in favor share that's great okay I just wanted to say thank you um thank you I was part of the back the committee when we did the communication audit and things like that and even things that I had experienced as a parent and so I appreciate um you know us looking forward and looking for growth and looking for a better tool um you know really listening to

033what people need you know from all different areas and things like that and giving this a try so thank you I had two more things um one nice protection for teachers though you know we're all connected 24 hours a day teachers will have the ability in their rooms to set their classroom hours or their Communication hours so it's not expected that they are messaged by a parent at 9 o'clock at night that they have to respond so that's very very clear up front then the other nice thing is once you register for rooms your child is always registered you're always registered so if you have a first grader and you enroll them in rooms they're going to be enrolled all the way through so it's not like you have to do that each year um

034I have a new District newsletter that has an article about rooms if anyone would like to read it I left them in a pile right there on that round table thank you question as a parent had to sort through multiple Friday folders iate glad thank you I'm not I'm not saying the Friday fers go [Laughter] away but but the alerting you to what's in there might better better yeah next item we have on the agenda is Y dash local Jason Chris yes thank you uh we always want to start with gratitude so I want to thank the board for continuing to support our development of a culture around student being student driven and data informed so your leadership is appreciated um we did uh Chris and I did our board uh data Retreat I think

035in June or July and we showed a little bit of what wise Das local could do and I think at that time we had unanimous support to move forward and give you access and so tonight we want to show you what that access looks site there's a a supplementary uh document in board dos for you to follow along and Chris will show and has a hand up and Chris will show you some of the highlights if you ever have questions about the use of wise Das local or need some One onone support just please reach out to Chris or myself and we'd have be happy to help um as you well know Chris woy is a wonderful uh part of this district and Community uh a teller as many times as I can that she

036rocks so just to inform you that Chris boy rocks wise Dash local learned about that so they put her on the board so now she's on the board of wise Das Lo and really bringing some of the very work that we're doing here across the state so that's some a point of Pride and I'll turn it over Chris she made me tell her tell uh she made me commit that I was end with Tada so Tada here's Chris boy because now we're going to use the board number to um so this is not something you need to be using right now it's just everything I'm going to go through when you get home if you can't remember how to find something I showed you I have this document and it's already loaded by Linn in

037your board doc so that if you don't want the paper copy you have it digitally as well so the first thing I want us to try is to get you logged in and then I'll explain a little bit what's there if you are um on your computer and you open a tag um one of the things you will see is you have wusd bookmarks mine is different than yours but you guys see what I'm talking about in the upper left hand corner okay one of them should say y Das local and I want you to click on that I'm just waiting because mine doesn't say Y St local because I have District level bookmarks so when you get to that if you click on it what you should see when you get there is the

038log yal Y and this should be linked up automatically so you don't need a username or password and if it's not working for you at any point in time just let me know and we will get you hooked up but you should be able to just click on the single sign on is lost there we go so if you click on the single sign on and then you have to pick your District so click Watertown Unified School District unfortunately we're alphabetized so have to scroll down a little bit and then go ahead and log in your instructions are good for Chromebooks now they should be but otherwise no I'm saying they're good not for yours so go to the menu and then go to staff resources and then in the staff resources you'll see a

039y St as well sorry about that all right so once we're in there we wanted the board to have um data at their fingertips when they needed it for some of the District overview level you will never be able to see any individual student data but overall levels for our schools and our buildings so there are four tabs across the top that you can see you have access to academic Excellence demographics attendance and behavior under the academic Excellence is going to show our test scores so star early lit which is the first grade reading test we scroll down you have star math star reading the Wisconsin forward test that you see there you can see that it does not have this year's data it will upload that as soon as it's uh no longer in

040bargoed by the state same with the prea and act you're being able to compare it um from the previous years but it's not going to show you like cohort data which is what you guys have wanted to see several times unless you filter it um so I wanteded to show you that piece as well if you go and you look at that blue tab across the top that says filter data you could say that I want to just look at third grade data for example click on the three and then you need to click on the filter data after you do that again and it'll just show me third grade data when you see this now all of a sudden the early literacy there's not going to be many test scores there because third graders

041generally are not taking the early literacy unless they're students with disabilities and we do have some so you'll see there is still a little bit of early literacy data there for us and then now I can look at star maath for just our third graders and I can look at star reading for just our third graders you'll see that it already in here has the fall of 2024 data in there for Star um the way that Yash local is getting the data is to different ways one of the things is it's getting updated each night with Skyward so any attendance or behavior data is updated every night while we're sleeping well least when I'm sleeping you might still be awake but it's automatically synced up in there so you can see day-to-day those changes in

042enrollment and that the star data we have a partnership with Renaissance where their data just updates with us every night as well the other tests um I have to send them uh spreadsheets to give them that kind of data for like the act the prea so iil it email over and they upload it for us there's no hand entry of anything like that um so right now I had filtered in the third grade and if you did that with me I would um x that out because otherwise a lot of the other data is not going to make as much sense if you have it just for the third graders um they won't have a whole lot of data for some of the other things we're looking at so then if we go um the

043next tab is demographics um on the previous one I should have mentioned it but all of the graphs if you hover over them they'll give you a little bit more detail so instead of just the it will'll give me the numbers and the percents that were in the different areas so as of today we have 3,125 students enroll we look at this tomorrow the number will probably change right it's updating a night students enroll students leave the district daily so it doesn't always um stay consistent it is also going to give you what percent of our students in are male or female what percent of our students are special ed free and reduced lunch how many teachers we have our attendance rate for this year do you see right now it says 95 has in

044green if we get below 95 it's going to put us in yellow if we get below um 90 it'll put us in red um kind of just kind of letting right away incidents is behavior incidents that have been written up this year and then if we scroll down and it'll give us our enrollment for each of the races and for each grade level and then the buildings the next tab we have is attendance this one right now yes um question for you thank you very much this is wonderful a great tool we can be informed um so for example like the number of incidents 273 like is that calendar year is that year it it is for this calendar year so far and when we get to the behavior text more data and it'll break

045it down and give you a lot more because just a number like that not probably really useful to you guys so yeah is this just for this year or will historic data also be loaded we have so when we get to the behavior one yeah no that's right um then you have attendance like this is kind of a we talk about this does have a little of like longitudinal data where we can kind of see for the last five years what our attendance rate is can see that right now it's at 95.1% Which is higher than it has been for the last several school years um this is telling us how many unexcused ABS we've had each day before I kind of scroll on to the next one I want to kind of just give

046you a warning that it looks a little bit odd because it's much higher than it will be at the end but like right now we've had like 16 school days can someone correct me if I'm wrong is it 16ish 15ish okay so if a student has been absent twice okay their attendance rate is below 90% so it's going to say they're chronically absent well if you're sick and you have a little kid they're gone two days every time right so it will appear that we have and this is always kind of the first month of the school year until we have enough days in it's showing us in each building here what percent of our kids are in green which means they've been here 95% of the days it tells us which one are in

047yellow which means they're in the 99 n excuse me 90 to 95% of the days they've been here and kids in red means that they are what we consider chronically absent they've been here less than 90% of the day but because we haven't had many days yet this year they've been sick once they are very likely chronically absent um so I have this and the um administrators have this but they have the ability then like I can click on mine not this one on the red and then I can I see which of these kids are chronically absent and then we can kind of reach out another issue with a chronic absent right now is we are working with students that have not showed up at all yet this school year and then the administrators

048are trying to figure out if they enrolled in another District which is usually the case but we can't just exit them because they didn't show up until we verify they are enrolled in another District so once those are all figured out those red areas will all decrease so look at those again in October and you'll see what I'm talking about there um I think the very bottom here yeah this is where you'll see um how many kids have been absent zero days one or two days and then if you look off to the right 10 or more days there's 17 kids more than likely all 17s have not shown up at all I know at the high school Jill was trying to work with that figuring out where the kids were that weren't there but

049we can't and the district can say they're here but they have to actually request the students reference before we can take them off of ours and then those days don't count um as absences in our district if they've been somewhere else the last piece then is the behavior piece that you had there um so the number of incidents per year that chart on the left is giving three years of data so it's giving you totals for 22 23 23 24 and 2425 and it will give you totals for those across and then for the year going down and so you can scroll down and kind of see those some of the incidents for example the trenes I think it says there has been 59 trenes I would say I think I looked at them say

05055 of them are at the high school it's something that we only collect at middle school and high school level as far as truancies and usually um just so that you know when you look at it for the high school about a third of their behavior incidents each year are like truin or parties they just kind of very um precisely um are keeping all of that data housed a little kindergarten watch in a minute lately or not like up Target referral for that um so if you look in that you can also at this point then if you wanted to see by school you could say I want to look at behavior and incidents for just the high school you could do that and that will make it easier for you to identify issues within

051certain buildings if you were looking at that um it tells you trenes is the number one and then it kind of puts them in order what we had the most referrals for all the way down to the least as we go scroll down there um this next one is just a a little in school suspension days this is like the average if someone was given an in school suspension on aage average they've been given one day of in school suspension okay um out of school suspension the average for students this is just this year has been 1.9 year-to date in school suspension so students that have been written a referral what percent of those referrals were then given in school suspensions and out of school suspensions what percent of referrals were given out of school

052suspensions and then you have historic data for how many in school and out of school suspensions were given for the last four years with this one kind of just there questions yes pretty Chris really appreciate this yeah we do have a small ability to um work with Y loal so if we are missing something that you guys feel like would be an important piece Jason I and I can discuss if that piece we feel like is appropriate and try to get it in there for you I have like several other pieces but we felt like this was a good start for the board and until you guys tell us there's something else you might want to read they set up the design for this so do we have control over that um some of them

053we do some of them we don't if they created it for me then they let me mess with it if it's part of something that many districts have they won't let me mess with it you're on the board I am on the board they still don't seem to care I asked for several things with the board actually they were like no we can't I'm like could you really and they said no so no any other questions for busy yeah um and Diana we will clear out your access okay thank you thank you Chris Jason Chris anything else there no thank you appreciate that very much all right the next item up is our safety drill evaluations and state schools updates so I can uh start the conversation but there's a deep question we have Kevin

054here who um runs our safety management team Kevin centr as you know is our building supervisor but he also is our safety officer for our school district and uh helps to make sure that we're all think compliance um each year um by October a board is to um review safety drills from the previous year um and uh if you look at the sheets that we have available to you um I know that one of the goals that we had last year was to uh condense these to one form we are uh to one form for this year and you should see that um at at at a couple of meetings prior to the school year it was put out to our admin to make sure that they're utilizing that form and I want you to

055know that we are uh making sure that we're putting that information in that one uh discrete location instead of uh when I there were multiple either handwritten logs or spreadsheets and or the state form that was produced um and you can see a little bit of that uh still this last year next year it will be Allon one form that Evan has worked with L on um to make sure that we have one one good spot those are all going into one folder um and are viewable um you are responsible for understanding that um each uh month uh we are to run um a fire drill uh for our students um and uh two tornado drills a year as well as two safety evacuation drills um other drills under the subsection of 11 18.07% [Music]

056our local EMS and other things and and we've run a scenario where there is a possible medical emergency uh we go into a lockdown mode and we see if our our team or emergency team at that building um can go through that assistance so sometimes those are substituted um you will see in this current documentation that um not all of our buildings met uh every piece of the requirement but I also want you to understand that um under the discretion of the building official if their uh students may be um facing inclement weather during a scheduled drill um that it's up to their discretion whether or not to take the students out we Clement weather just to run a drill to do a a different kind of drill that day maybe like a tornado side

057or to just go about business the way it is um and then those conversations are had with our our security man our safety management team um and um the documentation is there for the drills that occurred you'll see often times that like a drill is like from this time to this time and it looks like a nice round number I'm going to tell you that it's not always nice a nice round number with the actual data you know if you were to take a stopwatch and do that but we're not required to denote the actual time we're we're just denoting approximate time so that we know how long it takes us to do those things and we can try to improve and get better on those things so you're looking at it and saying Jesus

058how do you get a nice round number every time we're doing that's aot but any any other questions that you might have or any other discussion points that um we'd like to bring forward and I'll try to answer them and if I can't Kevin again um so as I I'm I'm paging through here noticing a little bit of a trend when it comes to fire drills roughly about the same time um every month you mean same time of day yeah okay um roughly like it depends on the building right is it possible to try to diversify that a little bit more so I mean because it's important that the kids know when they're in a different section of the building this is the plan sure and I don't know I just observation yeah and believe

059me our building principles take that into consideration and account um they also take into account how much running a drill is going to disturb the learning environment and or things that are going on those and some things are are are easier not to move the schedule WR but a point taken and we try to balance that as best we can so we do introduce every once in a while something different right to make sure we're all on our toes and we um have the kids dve different places and it's not the same same all is they looking through this we see that we kind of we don't have a form pattern for when we invite fire department to this so RMS did not invite fire department at any point and then the Elementary yes no

060it's it's not formalized is there a reason when we do and when we don't invite Department to parti we try to balance um their need for being there um and sometimes they are the ones who tell us we need to be here to do an observation and stuff because because they're also doing their statutory requirement right um so we're really trying to balance our our need to run the drill statutorily their availability sometimes we invite them and get called out on something so uh I I just want you to know that we do work in concert that's what everybody should know we work in concert with our Emergency Services teams uh and we do these drills whether it's the Police Department fire department or EMS um and we try to do that as much as

061we can are they aware when you do this they may not be aware every single time okay okay um and and like I said nor do nor do they have to necessarily be aware every single time that we're doing every single Dr um but what what I will say is um we do enjoy a good working relationship with our Emergency Services uh we connect with them they're part of our our planning teams when we meet uh to go over our school a plan um we talk about and and have worked through in the past tabletop exercises that talk about a large community event that may happen and how we would help as a response to that so there are many things that we do right now let's just uh stay focused on these are the

062emergency drills that we do we work in conjunction with them but they're not here I just want to make sure that it was there there was not a difference between their being made aware and their inv as you said sometimes they're invited and then they can't make it you put a no that they weren't invited because they weren't there does that mean that they were there was they not there I want to make sure that we're clear on the so um so first on my list which I it sounds like we're moving towards as far as like consistency and Reporting yes um as far far as recommendations um second thing I have my list as far as the recommendations that are though that are there so what happens to those from there is there like

063a checklist is there an action item list so then it's like oh okay yep this was taken care of like how what happens to that just to ensure that the same issue doesn't isn't repated so I'll kick that one to Kevin Kevin did you hear the question yep okay uh so that's part of moving to a standardized form with drill documentation coming in so that it's more than one set of eyes on a drill form when it's completed and we can check in but they are largely for um the staff then the school that conducted them to look you know to say hey we did this last time we're noticing this maybe we have an issue with getting One Wing out we need to come up with a different uh solution for that and then

064it's tested the next time we do a drill is that all like documented though like you know what I mean I mean typically if something's written we can see you know we can visually see that if there's a pattern and that's I can't speak to the past that's why we're moving to using the crisis or the drill report forms as opposed to just spilling out spreadsheets so that number one that gets stored in a folder that the folks at the schools have access access to and then those drill forms are also being reviewed by myself and if I see a couple patterns it might be an email saying hey I notic the last couple times you did a drill you know one of the things you noticed was the kids in the 4K Wing weren't

065able to get out or they had an obstruction or what can we do to solve that problem next thing on my list was and maybe this is I I just wanted to make sure to do my due it looked like as far as RMS their log didn't match the detailed reports so I think on their on their log like their log they have two things listed but then like they have a bunch of separate pieces of paper am read that right I thought the same thing and then I wondered if maybe they switched formats is the you know the log where they list oh they have a tornado and a fire is all they have listed on their actual log but then they have I believe that's more pieces of paper I I believe that

066is a function of us trying to get better at not only cating the documation and then also reporting um and you see um if you went back like last year you would see the same thing where sometimes a full report sheet would come in or sometimes it was just a not down their laog ma sheet um and you know if I if I can stress another theme for you know not only this year but years the last couple of years and moving forward what's in our strategic plan right our continuous improvement process we trying to get better at what we're doing and so I thank you for observing that and saying you know here's another question for us to continue to look at but I think it's it's us trying uh as we're changing reporting

067structures and moving forward that practice getting caught up you're seeing it all in one space in one year okay okay that individual streets they are with the exception of the first one that appears to be on the L the rest of those are from subsequent later dates in the year so it looks like they transitioned off of that log form into individ after 14 Deion um and then more um I think this that hey I want people to be safe that's right um that this goes along with recoring but just as far as making it a point as far as sh has the law but doesn't have the actual assessment that I would imagine become consisten um Kevin with the new form will there be any required Fields uh yeah they're required to list the

068day the uh type of drill the time date it occurred um and then there is a section where they're supposed to follow up or that we'll be watching for like when the drill is initiated when the drill like when the clear was given or when it was completed and then that's their part for debrief too where if there's things that they noticed that came up or they need help with and um you know it's not just necessarily looking at did the kids get out but you know was there a building obstruction did we you know this door didn't work right so it was hard to get out or something like that so it's a chance for us from the maintenance side to look at things too and how can we support that so but yes

069that that's part of the form thank you two more things um for whs when I was looking at their drill documentation it looked like it was all prior drills there wasn't any block of gold drills during the year you they're all I don't know about the documentation I know that they did a they did a Evac drill and they did a lock and P oh they did do an evacuation drill which one whs first page here Lock's a lock hold it was dated uh 10:24 23 uh 9:00 a.m. evacuation Dr is done it is flaged evacuation drill well it because it says says lock evaluation right and remember again like I shared with you you know from what I share the number of DRS that have to happen some of them may not have happened

070because other right um some of them may not have happened because they substituted different which they can do so just want I want to make sure that you know that's reiterated no I get that but I I just want to show all the categories that's a good that's a good learning have multi select and categories yeah and with our forms we might with the the type of drill we might even be able to clarify that and lock it up instead of having different functions just say it's a safety drill it's a WEA drill is a fire drill and just simplify it and then just the last one that I have is whs on June 3 um it looks like it's listed as a drill but that was an actual occurrence like I was there it

071was and you can count that as a drill okay you can you can account An Occurrence as a drill because it does meet the statutory obligation for being not noticed right and so you can count okay so you count okay and we're we're also covered because in June they did a they did a drill with the summer school as well so we did have a inclement weather drill in June as well with that cohort okay okay thank you question I have one but it's a good one that was not a SL that's what you um so I I guess um I'm I'm noticing in one of the reports uh it spells out some vulnerabilities we probably want to be CAU about broadcasting those kind of vulnerabilities to the public so we could put that in

072administrative content in future and that's part of Shifting to a spreadsheet log of reports in the future you probably won't see each crisis drill form you'll see the spreadsheet that shows what drills occurred and when they occurred without that content attached for that exact reason do we I mean I think um like Kevin said next year when you see the information you're going to see a different level information clear information to well we've already published this as public content I don't know if we can pull it back and also I would hope if there are vulnerabilities that you know Kevin and de already know [Music] any other questions for Kevin appreciate you guys question again we're just aing to continue to get better thank right next item on the agenda and strategic discussion is the

073preliminary budget so this is the preliminary budget in advance of the budget hearing that's next month and there's a number of documents voted um into the agenda I'm not going to go over all of them but I want to h a few highlights and then take any questions if you look at the the document that called the preliminary budget for publication that document shows the summary budget for all of the funds that the district uses including fund 10 and then if you look at the projected Revenue sheet and the proposed expenditure sheet that one details out fund 10 more um more detail and fun 10 is the operating budget so it's the biggest budget and um the one that has the most detail if we look at those we can see that um for next

074year right now we are projecting a deficit of about5 half million which we expected um and then if we look at the document that says preliminary budget not that document lists out all of the different assumptions that have been kind of built into this budget some of those we know for sure like we know the state budget for sure this year we're not waiting on that um and then a few other things that we know for sure and then it also includes a few things that are still estimates at this point so the big things that will change between this preliminary budget we're looking at and then the final budget that we look at next month are all revenue side um items so we will find out what the property values are for sure we'll

075find out what the equalized aid is for sure from the state um we'll find out the student count which already happened but we don't have the report all the way done yet and we'll also find out what the actual voucher amounts are so those items are big things big drivers on um the revenue side and so those are really the only adjustments that will be made to the budget between now and next month I don't if anyone has any questions about that to our consent agenda agenda consists of minutes committee summaries approval Bills first and second read so first of all let's go with sorry back to reports Jer um so um as you can see this is the report for September uh this picture that you see down here was from the first day

076of school of high school a bunch of students there uh W to highlight a celebration um both Jamie K and K KL uh were recognized as Hometown Heroes um they were recognized for their extraordinary efforts in serving uh W HS staff students in G Watertown um this recognition comes from Modern Woodman uh which is a fraternal uh Financial Services organization um I'll let you uh be able to read this slide but basically it highlights Jamie cap being a tireless cheerleader and uh KY perkle for all of the stuff that she does um uh in keeping the student staff in administration this building just really function couldn't think of two well I could I I could think of two just as good um probably um 100 just is deserving people on our staff to do this

077but I will tell you what these two are super worth recognizing and I I'm not I don't want to take away from their recognition I just know that there are so many people around our school district that we need to do that um also hold up just as high but these two are super amazing and if you work with them at any point in time day or year I will tell you that them getting this award is is something that we need to start doing and looking at for a lot of staff so if you see any recognitions out there uh from any programs through your word providers or anywhere else right start nominating our staff because I will tell you there are a lot of people here who get who need that recognition I'm

078super thankful that uh Modern Woodman um the people who nominated them to mod um they decided to Roiz also some celebrations uh homecomings coming up uh next week uh 29th through October 5th uh this year's uh theme is live on air um you can see the different uh classes and what they're looking to um emulate um from The Freshman with spun spot SquarePants all the way to the seniors uh summer I turn into pretty um and uh those will be some themes that you see throughout the week with them um there will be celebrations throughout the week of course um they're listed there uh USA day uh soccer mom versus barbecue uh dads um last t-shir day and gos Pride day of course one of the best things that I like about um our homecoming

079is that we honor our distinguished alumni and this year's recipient again is Mullen uh that award ceremony um is on Friday followed by the homecomer parade at 4:00 and then the homecoming tailgate football game that evening of that Friday uh homecoming dance will then be held from 8 to 11 in whs comms and that's um Saturday October 5th so any questions about that information um some opportunities uh here you see uh some second and third graders uh students at Lincoln Stem Elementary recently enjoying reading books with their dog uh buddies from the read education assistance dogs program or read program for dogs uh and the students um moved among four different stations in the gymnasium uh with each station featuring one adorable therapy dog uh and a selection of books to read I will tell

080you that um this isn't the only way we involve uh therapy dogs in our programming um we've done so at the middle school and some other opportunities um and actually foreshadowing something for Educational Services in October um uh Douglas is thinking about getting a therapy dog and bring that idea uh to you Educational Services next next one um also uh an opportunity is going out uh we want you to know that the um fiscal Services uh committee um looked over a draft request proposal uh from the fiscal management um committee um we're we're looking to find somebody a construction management company to select and work in conjunction with plug P for associates our Architects and PR the shape of facility's Master Plan uh and um that Master Plan uh was started already and uh we

081are looking to approve step four of that plan later today um and then um that RFP will go out tomorrow we will look for um a instruction manager to come help us finalize some of that programming and that plan um some important dates um I just want to turn your attention again to October 21st um just a note there that human resources going to start early because we have a special board meeting um after that um that special board meeting for the community is um a uh superintendent and board check-in um I have quarterly evaluation meetings that I have with the board it's the time where we sit down we talk about how am I doing in their service what can they do to support me and we get better as a team moving forward

082that will take place in Clos session um at 7 o'clock um on the 21st um and then um the rest of the meeting is there uh tend to follow what we're doing um eyes towards October 30th which is a board retreat um and um that is being organized by the planning committee and spirit headed again this year by uh Tina so thank you T Johnson for helping to organize that comments questions just a clarifying statement I guess want to tell us to the discussion regarding P yes and putting outp uh for a um for construction uh consultant yeah that is preliminary a preliminary discussion about what we need to do for construction for members of the public that are listen yeah yes we're not we're not actually yeah we're not actually constructing anything they're helping

083with the plan um but the RFB um includes should we um take those plans and have a um pass referendum that same company then would work in conjunction with PR to continue those plans moving forward that they helped uh draw up and right so um you're right there is no commitment um and and we can't do that because we wouldn't know what the community will support or not support in that as a referendum plan but it's for this the planning St um and those will come back I believe leave in November right if I follow our timeline appropriately is it is it November approval November board okay November board meeting so um the the selected group is going to be for you guys to approve or disapprove questions all right head Services report head Services

084met on September 10th uh mostly it was uh first of all all members were present uh we received updates on several different topics they're all listed in the minutes uh none particularly uh of a call remarkable note um so um I guess the one in there that we should push a little bit is if I'm not mistaken September 26th is the Avid night at RMS from um 6:00 p.m. till 8:00 P.M so we all got flyers for that to hand out and leave at our places of business and with the public here just want to make sure you're aware of it as well so that's September 26 from 6:00 to 8:00 pm at RMS that's a Avid night and then uh the only item that is going to make it to the agenda is the

085advanced learner handbook was uh presented by Stacy barg uh some discussion I don't think any major edits uh although a couple of questions and clarifications but is as is our policy those handbooks uh will eventually make it as a board purview and that is an agenda item for approval and uh we set a record and we got out in 1 hour and 34 minutes uh next meeting is on October 8th same time same place FIS all right so September 16th we had the fiscal meeting uh most of the committee was present purchases over 20,000 we did have a couple of them this last month they're presented to committee uh first item uh is phase four of the facilities Master planning process as presented by P and the proposal uh phase four is the community engagement

086portion of the process the cost for phase four is $24,000 uh the committee recommended moving forward uh this forward to the full board uh tonight the second item was the purchase of a new Ford Transit passenger van to be used for whatever the district deems necessary uh the vans that they currently have are are scheduled out consistently so there was definitely a need for another van uh vehicle purchase was budgeted for the 2425 school year so the committee recommended uh moving this to the pool board tonight uh the construction management RFP a draft for the request uh you've heard already for construction Management Services was presented to the committee the construction management company selected would work in conjunction with p and shaping the facilities master plan uh the committee asked if bringing on a construction

087management team would mean there would be an expectation of construction we've heard already tonight that no that's not the case uh if it does move forward that far then potentially yes but uh not right now uh the preliminary budget Sarah already talked about tonight that was discussed uh and then fun 10 was definitely discussed in that as well and uh in November there will be an update on S three for anybody that's interested in that and we adjourned we made it quicker than ad services at 7:46 and the next meeting will be October 23d right Human Resources here we go we Monday September 16th um in reviewing our consent agenda of Staff appointments resignations and terminations there were some questions as far as you know sometimes we see Trends from certain buildings or certain positions

088um and so through that discussion we were talking about um wanting more information as far as exit data um we can't do that on individual basis so that is something even just as far as like how quickly the exit surveys get out and um you can see that's one of our action items that Mark will be um taking a look at that process and seeing how that can be streamlined is part of an automatic how that gets sent out so we can have um information gathered from there then we also have the employee satisfaction survey action plans um if you're interested in the details of those please go back to the um meeting agenda and the attached documents that were in there um the great thing about having the um strategic plan is that then

089we can take the pieces of HR and it's all put together in the plan so that we're all moving in the same direction um a lot of the the items that came out for the employee satisfaction survey um are into the HR plan which are F into the greater strategic plan um and then our next meeting is October 21st there was agreement to shifted the start time um referred to from 5:30 to 500 p.m. um and then we are also going to be at that October meeting anyone who is interested in listening to the calendar work group um we're going to be having presenting some of that information there as far as the thank you we met on September 11 all committee members were present we welcome Jason as the new co-chair with that with

090me um where Dr Burke can step aside and Jason will be working alongside me as the administrator with that and with that change some other things change as well one of which being that we will shift our meeting similar to what ad Services is doing and that's where here are some updates kind of thing shorter discussion type things and then just regular discussion topics so as you can see under the updates just a brief up book It was supposed to be a brief update on reference that kind of got a little sidetracked so it work better with that we talked a little bit about the superintendent evaluation working with the Donan group um we'll bring that up again in the future to see with the extension of that and if we go that route as

091well as um the board retreat which you noticed earlier the date has been set for October 30th our discussions then went deeper content into the Strategic plan um Tina had just kind of referenced that where we talked about the whole plan and HR they focused more on on the HR portion and I think just about all of us have now seen that prior to today um we talked a little bit about norms and commitments and that's something that we're going to focus on here in the up incoming months we as a team we as a group have Unwritten norms and unspoken norms and you'll notice that some of the Norms even occur at this meeting for example time boxing different things um I'm watching my timer now I have three minutes just like Community has

092three minutes so there's no way I can read everything that's on there brief summary um so just trying to make that a little more structured um throughout the planning committee and then maybe in additional committees and then we adjourned at 76y we met on Monday September 9th U and all committee members are present as well as member Diana Johnson Sam and little better attorney superintendent B director of Resources Director of Human Resources Mar and Jason we uh we discussed the administrative guidelines regarding the transgender students we we took a look at several different drafts of the transgender guidelines it was the determin that more coordination between the draft guidelines should be completed um Dr ber and Sam will work with legal councel towards a guideline that the committee can have majority support of and the

093work will be brought back for the October policy we also discussed the policy 3122 and 4122 not discrimination of anal employment talk to Legal councel about specific verbage and legal council responded uh by stating that the board has the discretion whether or not to use that verbage it was determined to remove the verbage from the policy both policies will go for first read at this particular meeting uh of forthy note uh policy 4122 that language has not yet completed um in as it is under first read now the paragraph reports and complaints of discrimination and retaliation so that doesn't near 3122 I don't see so 3122 reflects that um the the accurate language under reports and complaints of discrimination retaliation under the second paragraph uh 4122 that langu which still exists in that second paragraph

094so sure so we've got the two policies we've got two different here we had these marked up but we have final versions here vers so we see what [Music] changed our our our procedures have been the board sees the final um Craig you're right that the change didn't get completed in that draft so um please make an amendment to the approval including that section uh you know appropriately following the changes of the commit okay so our apologies for not that so I appreciate you bring out so it will read the the 4122 in that section second paragraph will read the same as second paragraph in 3122 that's correct um so which allows us segue pretty smoothly into uh the 3,000 policies uh those are U similar policies to the 4,000 uh group of policies they're

095actually three pretty much a mirror of so we were we tackled 11 policies in 3000 group and uh 14 in the 4,000 group uh work is I'm told uh already in progress about 6,000 series of policies with our business office and that will be coming forward before our before our October policy committee so we can them uh our next meeting will be October 9th at 5:30 thank you just so everybody's following along we do intend to have our hold to finish the 4000s uh and the 3000s policies um and the reason they track each other is one deals with our professional staff the other deals with our our other support staff those policies will move forward and we hope to have a start and I know that we will um we're already working down that

096path having some of the 6,000 I don't know if it'll be two or 20 but we are going keep going we are doing those um all like we did at the start of every other Series right just we have a meeting tomorrow that's sched Sarah and I Sarah understand process has already started work on the minor changes um Sarah and I will work Sarah we work on the major changes next item up is the consent agenda resolution number 9340 this is inclusive of e minutes committee summaries personnel and Staffing updates approval of Bills first and second reading of policies good motion com questions I'd like to uh make a motion to amend policy number 4122 specifically page two the reports and complaints of discrimination retaliation section paragraph two starting with discrimination to use the language

097from policy 3122 page two the reports and complaints of discrimination and retaliation section paragraph two starting the Discrimination in total roll di Johnson yes yes yes yes CRA yes yes yes yes motion car all right back to resolution 340 do we have any comments or questions board discussion on this none roll call vote please Diana Johnson yes Tina Johnson Sam yes yes Dan yes Craig whart yes Mike Higgins yes Lor H yes yes next item up or action items first up will be resolution 9341 phase 4 agreement of the facilities master plan as outlined by P cause not to exceed 4,000 riew by the fiscal management committee we get a motion to approve second questions so my question is um it says phase four agreement as far as the resolution is concerned and so if

098I go back to the fiscal um the fiscal information it says in the purchases over 20,000 phase four is the community engagement for of the process then it talks about the construction management what is the what is this what is this for the P portion is a continuation of the work that they've already been doing and then it's including Community engagement the RFP is for the constru construction management piece of it so it's two different things the RFP for construction management does include some Community engagement some um Communications I should say but um the P portion is really continuing what they've already done which they they kind of presented to us when they were at the meeting last month so to be a little to be clear phase four um is not only getting feedback

099from the community groups about the concepts and the path that board has put them down to start um drawing but in the drawing of those detailed Concepts they're going to be working with that construction manager that we're working on the RFP with to build the uh budgets for actual costs to do what it is we're asking or looking to do in any type of construction phase during that Community engagement phase not only will they be finalizing those plans with a buildout to actual costs with the construction manager but they'll be communicating those costs and discussion points with the community getting feedback and then hopefully the end of that is to talk about where we're going in the future and should it go towards a referend question or and if it goes towards a referendum question

100you'll be then engaging PR in section five of of the RFP that they had and that would be a referendum engagement uh process so this is getting from where we are now to a decision of whether or not we want to take this plan to the community for a referend discussion or not so is it mainly the so here this is where I'm trying to evaluate this is you know we had our strategic plan and we had the you know the different Community um you know meetings and getting their input and things like that well then as a board it's not like we just took their information and adopted it like it was like some parts of it had big changes to it plan that's separate right but and so that's where it's like okay

101I understand the Strategic plan and that was a similar cost like is that going to be a similar process I'm like how we value import wor the the price tag well again um in the end you as a board have a decision to make around facilities if you want to accept their the plan that they and their plan again it will be a phase plan over a number of years right um but then you'll also have to discuss what was the community's input in that plan if we uh hear do we hear that are we going to utilize that to what extent do we use that how much um and like our strategic plan I'm sure you're going to have to take all of the voices that were out there right and try to um

102do what you did with the Strategic plan which is find what the middle voice is in that right and try to find a compromise to serve as many as we can in that plan right and you'll do the same with facilities um but again p is very different um than Don group necessarily um how they engage the public um and what information they get back is going to be related to facilities um and making sure that our facilities U you know flow with the programming that's available in those so part of the feedback that they're getting is not just Community Based but it's also digging in deeper with our staff about programming and our abilities and that so that they can finalize that's what this next section okay so it's more construction based versus [Music]

103engaging to find pain points for pickups and drop offs different things like that that we would roll into further to how efficiently our buildings are are um running not only in regards to energy efficiency but Staffing efficiencies and um you know student course loads and those kind of all discussion yes um I did have two I did to have some more questions totina on this particular one I think uh I think the intention is to have a group that kind of can sharpen the pil so to speak when it comes to some of the numbers associated with u proposed plans going forward as District um but those numbers can be floated to the public um those those particular plans can be floated to the public with some degree of understanding of what this may cost

104taxpayers before we decide go further down that road great thank you for that that was almost verbatim from from our meeting meeting so thank you for explanation other comments and questions roll call vote please Diana Johnson yes Tina Johnson Sam yes David Sher yesman yes Craig whart yes Mike Higgins yes L yes FR yes motion carries next item up is resolution 9342 dotion of the advanced learner handbook for at Services motion approve second motion Mara second by Mike come to questions there none roll call vote please Diane Johnson yes Tina Johnson yes Sam yes David Trader yes Dan bolner yes Craig whart yes Mike Higgins yes Lor how yes motion carries last item up is resolution 9343 the purchase of a Ford Transit passenger B by Diana questions in this none roll call vote please

105Diana Johnson Johnson yes Sam o yes David yes Dan yes CRA yes yes yes yes motion carries I'm noticing this is probably a slight on my part that we did not have a section in the agenda tonight agenda on future board topics of discussion want the board if there was don't use anything for that so good all right uh this will bring us to our second of our two public input sections again as we stated before please fill up the form so that we can again we need to have your record to up speaking to David burn Water Town someone texted me while I was here I I just wanted to verify it sounds like there's a mental health coordinator that has been hired for the district by the name of Kenda Roman is that

106correct okay and I I think that's a tremendous move in a in a very good direction I uh I appreciate what this young woman said tonight because I think that's the um a good example of what happens if the child doesn't feel supported or it doesn't feel that they have staff that they can turn to the the death of this girl is uh just uh incredibly tragic um I don't know the individual circumstances of it and having worked with the school district for a long time with um school counselors and some teachers my my experience by and large has been just very good I I I think there's some unsung heroes there um and in other areas of the school too like with the goling nest for instance um you know my hope would be

107to see more school counselors available I do think access to mental health is important that's how I make my living I also know that for some of our students particularly here in Watertown I practice in okonak now where it's less of a problem they simply don't have access to mental health care and um when I was practicing here in town I I always got an open door to the school counselors particularly here at the at at the high school uh some of them are retired I I I think it's critical that we have more school counselors and um I do want to say a couple things about um trans kids since that comes up frequently trans kids are no different than other kids they're going to need staff and uh teachers who are available to

108them um without um fear of punishment or or public disclosure I just think that that's critical um again I don't know the circumstances of this youngster but I know if they can't talk to teachers they can't talk to parents they do act out I've worked with these kids before um it's critical that they have access um to teachers but particularly school counselors you know I've always hoped that our school counselors and actually some of our teachers too would be uh recognized for the work that they've done my experience has been has been under the radar all these years um I don't know that they want public recognition um but we need them and and we need them desperately um thank you got one uh chrisy hi Christy shunan a resident of Watertown after I spoke

109at the last meeting another speaker had said that they felt bad for me I don't speak to tell people to have people feel pity for me or feel sorry for anybody's situation I tell my stories as an educator and Advocate to make people aware of different situations um and I don't uh so Society especially those for who Society has deemed not normal or doesn't fit into the regular um in light of the events that happened with somebody taking a student taking their own life um it doesn't matter if you have a disability or not mental health needs to be a priority and counselors need the counsel um I had an experience back in high school where I was being blied and the count I went to my counselor and he said there was nothing they

110could do about it um so that just there needs to be Improvement all children and their well-being no matter how they identify we shouldn't have kids forming Nazi groups or any other hatef filled bonds it's about time we we all love in har live in harmony and truly accept everyone for who they are hate has no place here thank you thank you anyone else here can people talk twice because I just have something quick to say staccia Studio main East Main Street um the girl that passed way um was not trans and I find it obnoxious that um turning something about helping kids that are struggling and bullying that we now need a subgroup to take care of the the trans or the lgbtq community so in public schools we don't teach or talk about

111God if parents want their children to have a religion based education they pay for private school this is a public School academic curriculum no more no less I'm tired of it that's it can I get a motion toour all favor