Regular BOE Meeting - May 21, 2024 (6:00 p.m.)

001thank you so much Jose and Brenda and thank you for leading us and return being the first one in our return to this tradition thank you that brings us to the next item uh superintendent and board recognitions tonight we are honoring our school board student representative aquil sure sure yeah definitely and first off thank you again um to our wonderful pleasure of Allegiance opportunity there um we have a certificate of recognition for Connie and first of all let me just say not first of all again but let me just say um Connie thank you so much for serving on the board in this in this work um it's been a long year I know you know that um one of the great things about being a board representative is that you get to hear all

002of the conversations that we're having um as it pertains to um the work of of our board and also um conversations that we've had um on the side Mrs um Connie was also um very eye openening for me as well I appreciate your ability to you know bring your concerns to me um in not only a tactful way but but in a special way and I wanted to say thank you for at least um allowing me to to work with you this year um I know the the board is very appreciative to your work and it goes without saying that this has been a service opportunity right um you've served in this capacity um for a whole year and so whenever you want to come back and run for the school board I'm pretty sure

003you'll have some votes um thank you so much for the work that you've done for the school district of booy and I know our student body is is super happy to have you as their representative Connie come on down let's take this time to have a rousing thank you for our uh board representative student board representative Connie ailly Connie has done an outstanding job as a representative she represents the Board of Education to the booy student body sharing to her fellow students how the board functions as it takes steps to bring the best possible education to all of bit's students and she represents the bit student body To Us by sharing the opinions and suggestions of her peers it has truly been an honor and a privilege for me to get to noani I can

004think of no one who deserves praise and appreciation more than she Connie is a shining example for the school district of bloy Connie is thoughtful Wells spoken curious responsible kind humorous determined intelligent and courageous Connie is headed for a wonderful future in college and her life beyond we are very lucky and happy to have her as part of our team now and forever once a purple night always a purple night Connie you will forever have a place in my heart it is my hope you will be able to find time to stay in touch and return home to booy where you will always have family and friends waiting with welcoming arms [Applause] than there's your certificate this brings us to public comment oh I'm sorry student board report thank you okay um thank you very

005much uh it's definitely as Dr Garrison said it's been a year and I truly am proud to be able to represent not only the student body but the huge amount of students who represent students who have a story like me um some of you know me in this room because I I started originally my journey with the school district of beloy started in Marill and then I went to Cunningham then I got to go to the high school so it's definitely been a journey and to be able to not only connect with students at bmhs where I report uh their opinions and highlight the wonderful achievements that they accomplished I also highlight the authenticity that they want to bring to the the board and so I truly am proud for that um I also have

006a few things that I would like to highlight right now that I feel really deserve a good amount of recognition um the essentially Ellington competition um if you see if you seen their performance it was amazing and I really am proud of my peers who were there for their service um the step team is having their their annual um showcase this weekend so be there our sports team to be a student is one thing but to be able to be in sports and regardless of your circumstances to just show up that's a lot so I really am proud of my peers for that um youth apprenticeship the work and work release again being a student is hard for many but to be able to help out your family in any way or to just go

007further in your profession that's a really big deal so when I see students like that constantly working on not only themselves and their grades and their future but also their interest that to me is a huge deal um and lastly I mean our teachers I feel like you guys hear it a lot but I think it's important for you to hear from someone who has been in all grades and who's been in the district for quite a while um you guys are amazing and if it wasn't for you guys I wouldn't be in this position and I wouldn't be able to feel brave enough to show to not only show up but to hear my voice and to spread the truth so thank you to not only the teachers in here but the teachers who

008have touched me and the school district of beloy and just showed up for me I mean there was so many times where I thought I wouldn't be able to go forward and share my story but thanks to you guys just being there I really grew a lot of Courage um I also would like to um reach out to the younger kids who are some are out here which is great um keep striving forward keep sharing your story keep being you that's the best thing you can do and I'm glad there's a few of them here today uh thank you to the two students who were doing the pledge even to just public speak it's hard for many so for them to do that and just do the pledge that was great um and the students

009in here right now who probably are going to return here I'm not I'm a senior But be sure to not only be yourself but to share your truth no matter what boundaries are in front of you no matter who tries to hold you back share your voice cuz that's the most important important thing to do when you're in a position like this it it starts with staying true to yourself so I would just like to say that and I'm grateful for the board I'm grateful for those on here who did not only give a welcoming smile when I join but also ask me questions or ask for my opinion on things I really do uh appreciate that and I'm thankful for being on here with you guys um congratulations Tom congratulations uh board president Tia

010Johnson I'm really excited for you guys to Tia to return back on the board and Tom this is going to be a great journey for you um but yeah thank you all are there any board questions or comments Brian Nichols well Connie thank you for the nice things you said about us but it's all about you tonight and um we're so thankful that you stepped up you were you were uh voted on by the students and you've been on the board for a year and you've been you've been a breath of fresh air for us I believe and uh those words that you those words that you just shared are Way Beyond your years but they are so so point and so right on target uh never be afraid to speak that's one of the

011beautiful things about this country is we have the freedom to speak and uh so yeah don't ever forget that we wish you nothing but success as you move forward and as board President Johnson said yeah you're Belo you're purple night forever and don't forget where we where you came from and we want to see you and hear how how things are going wish you the best God bless you [Applause] anyone else okay is it okay to jump in oh no thank you go ahead Megan sorry no I just wanted to say congratulations and good luck with everything and if you ever need like a letter of recommendation words of encouragement uh an ear to listen I know all of us are here for you and we're all really proud of everything that you've been able

012to do and we're proud of everything you'll be so thank you so much thank you any other board members hearing none that brings us to public comment we ask that if you are here for public comment that you fill out a public comment card and give it to board secretary Shope everyone each person will have three minutes to speak on their topic of interest or concern should you require um uh translation assistance a translator may be provided by the district or one of your choosing public comments requiring translation will be given 6 minutes all others 3 minutes and you may have an extra uh up to 9 minutes if two people will yield their time they will also have to fill out cards Miss sh do we have any public comments yes I I have

013um one email and then I have um several people in the room okay let's um since we only have one email when let's get that one out of the way okay um the email is from Mike zorl I demand that you sever all ties with new rout immediately this organization is leading our schools down a dangerous path using our children as guinea pigs for their radical untested social experiments new Roots so-called restorative circles are nothing short of a psychological assault on our students forcing children to participate in intrusive discussions about deeply personal and emotional issues often without parental consent is just is not just unethical it's a flagrant violation of their privacy and mental well-being teachers are not trained therapists and subjecting them to handle these sensitive matters is reckless and irresponsible this dangerous practice

014exposes our kids to potential trauma and long-term psychological damage adding insult to injury President Johnson I need to stop there um I believe that uh if I continue the next part will um contradict board policy um thank you uh secretary sh um friends Neighbors blers we want and encourage public participation at our board meetings I believe our district will improve and be strengthened with input from everyone in the district students staff and citizens our board meetings are prescribed by Wisconsin State Statute chapter 19 and by our board policies it is imperative the public realize we board members are individuals working and acting as one to provide you a service and our students and constituents a service verbally attacking any one board member or District employee will not be tolerated we are in the Barbara Hickman

015boardroom Miss Hickman served the school district of booy with a spirit of excellence and held herself and others to high standards I want to continue to follow Miss Hickman's model therefore I require you to refrain from Individual attacks this is board policy 187 public participation at board meetings all of us here know we have a tremendous amount of work ahead of us in the few next few months we all bring special talent skills and knowledge to the board we want the best all of us want the best for each person here and for our students we all need one another's best Spirit patience and consideration of one another as colleagues and Neighbors in our Collective pursuit of Excellence thank you public comment is there thank you yes we have public comment here in the room

016the first person I have is Shirley W thank you yep thank you apologize I didn't realize that I am a w but I am a w cuz my last name is not shared currently uh thank you uh board those of you who are in the room and also hear my voice the school district of bloy has done an excellent job of building up students courage and dedication making sure that they become adults as a whole person that they have confidence to stand up and speak as a young man did today he and his sister when they led the Pledge of Allegiance I want to encourage the school board to continue to to continue to guide students with courage and dedication by being able to resolve the budget whether that means that we actually are able

017to eliminate the 10.9 million or whether or not the citizens in beloy are confident that we can pass a referendum for you to have additional money we need the money is money or cut and I'm not willing to cut I believe believe the school district of bloy does an excellent excellent job you build confidence students have patience and they love to serve their Community I have been away for a couple years and I can't tell you how many students that I engaged in Prior that are now leaders in the community please continue to encourage them by doing the right thing in building the school district of blid for our community each one of you are important and together you guys Bill Unity thank you thank you thank you our next public comment is from Amy

018M hello can you hear me okay my name is Amy um I'm a purple Knight I graduated in 2004 and that's why the the topic I'm about to speak on is so meaningful to me because I grew up here um it's an honor and a privilege to be here and to represent uh the DLI program for Converse Elementary School um diversity equity and inclusion that is where it's at in 2024 and especially in boo um it's crucial here our community um it is a source of personal Pride that my son and I have had the opportunity to be part of this program um the the Dual language program at Commerce element El school and I am imploring you to not pause it and and to expand it you know to others to have this chance

019too my son is in first grade right now um he's all special needs so diversity Equity inclusion are are particularly important to me in that regard um he's been in this program since prek so for three years um Miss Westbury and Miss Garcia the two teachers are two of the finest I've ever met in my life um and he has had them for the past two years that continuity for the kids has been amazing my son can read speak and write in both English and Spanish along with the traditional studies in Math Science Social Studies Library gym and music is holistic and it is giving him an opportunity that I wish everyone had I have watched videos of the children on seesaw learning how to roll their RS and videos of them reading books to

020each other in English and Spanish my son and a girl in her class at one point were translating books to each other back and forth from English and Spanish there are maps on the walls in the hallway showing where the children's families are from and it is nice for me and my son as primary English speakers to have this chance that we get to participate in this program however I stand with the students and parents in our community whose primary language is Spanish this is a significant large significantly large population in Belo which further underlines dli's importance um I believe that the more students that have the opportunity to participate in the program the higher the benefit to all to Belo as a community and to society overall um the di di program is necess

021and a benefit to blit um and I thank you so much for the opportunity to speak on this topic I hope that my words will be taken into consideration thank [Applause] you is Tulio Duran in the room yes okay our next uh person is Lisa s and she needs a translator [Applause] [Music] good evening my name is Lisa Stanton Lisa Stant my address is 519 Turtle Creek Drive Creek Drive Delan Wisconsin andan Wisconsin 53115 I am a 4K teacher at Converse Elementary primers I have had a wonderful opportunity to teach at three great schools in Gaston Gast Converse Converse the students families staff and dedicated building administrators have made me a better person and a teacher today I am speaking on behalf of the DLI program at Converse on the board DC under budget reductions

022the district is considering the [Music] following a pause of expansion of dual language immersion program at Converse Elementary additionally I wanted to bring to your attention that our 4K DLI has not received Spanish instruction this year please understand the lasting impact that the decision and issues have on our students families and excellent DLI staff we need to remember that our strength is our diverse Community thank [Applause] you are there any other there are sorry oh no problem um so I the next person I have is Stephanie R and uh Melissa R is yielding her time just really quick I just wanted to remind anyone that wants to speak you do not have to share your home address you write it on the card so it we have the information but you don't have to say

023that into the mic I'm sorry all right good evening Dr Garrison and members of the school board uh before I get started with um what I really want to talk about I wanted to mention one thing and that is with the closure of the Westside schools I know that was very contentious and uh we had a lot of back and forth over that but I do want to say that it has given me the opportunity to work with a lot of students that I might never have ever gotten to meet or work with so I I am grateful for that because I did meet a lot of um awesome students uh in our buildings this year that lived on the other side of town that I might never have gotten to meet before so I

024do want to put that out there um I am a teacher at Aldrich I teach seventh grade language arts and I'd like to speak to you here tonight about student accountability regarding behaviors and academics um I do teach seventh grade ELA at Aldrich and while I do give huge huge props to our admin team of Joe Ryo and and Berling and Sheila Mar Marshall I do have to say that each time I hear it reported that we have no discipline problems in our buildings I cringe you cannot do a 15-minute walkr of a building and see a true picture of what teachers and other staff go through on a daily basis regarding student discipline if you want a true picture you have to come spend a day in our classrooms sit through an entire High

025School Lunch Period spend an entire recess period with the classes at element country buildings walk through the Halls during passing periods last year I saw a a girl's nose get broken in a fight one of our eighth grade teachers suffered a concussion trying to break up a fight as she was pushed backwards into a wall I've been cussed at by students and parents when I'm trying to discuss this disruptive behavior there is a discipline problem in our schools and until we all admit this and begin looking at it and really following the school handbook regarding holding students accountable for their behavior you will continue to lose students and teachers to other districts while 95% of our students are outstanding and well- behaved it is just that little 5% who are not and who disrupt the

026learning of all and give our district that bad name please help us hold these students accountable and allow us to teach in an environment that's free of violence and disruptions the second case of student accountability I wish to discuss with you is that of an academic nature while I totally agree that our students have suffered greatly during the covid pandemic and virtual school we cannot continue to use this as an excuse to keep passing them on to the next grade level regardless of their achievement and failing grades we've had failing students being passed into the next grade long before the pandemic even hit it's kind of become a big joke with students and I've even had many tell me it don't matter what I get you can't fail me I get passed even if I

027fail every subject my mom says you can't keep me back so it doesn't matter I can get all lefts and I still get to move on there's no academic accountability for our students until they get to the high school and by then these students have already developed bad habits regarding their work ethic and they begin their High School career already behind and struggling how are we preparing our students for the real world and a career when we allow them to turn in zero work but still get a 50% grade for it and despite all the studies and research that shows a child who receives a 50% is more likely to turn in more work or feel less anxious about a grade than a child who receives a zero I'm here to tell you that that's

028not the case also there are many of our parents who don't understand this grading And when they see a 50% grade they don't realize this really means their child is failing or has turned in nothing and therefore they're not understanding when their child does fail a subject and they're confused as an educator it bothers me to pass on a child to the next grade when I know that they're ill prepared and I'm setting them up for more failure in their future please reconsider the grading procedures we have and give us the tools we need more interventionists more tier three classes tutors things that will help our students be successful adults and community members we cannot hold our students to high standards when we consistently lower the bar thank you for listening next I have Carolyn

029L good evening and I'd like to go off of what Stephanie said there are some wonderful students in this District um Jose is a former student of mine so I'm very proud of him um I'm here to talk about discipline as well um students running out of the class and even out of the building students causing their class to evacuate their classroom for safety purposes students being disrespectful and insubordinate to staff these are all un unfortunately common occurrences within our schools these behaviors disrupt the learning environment of our schools so what do we do first ensure that we have smaller class sizes not 33 in a classroom at one school and 18 students in a classroom at another school but smaller class sizes across the district and class sizes in increase when classrooms are being

030split up due to lack of substitutes smaller class sizes would ensure teachers are able to make more meaningful connections with their students and meet their individual needs in a more effective matter second we were told this year that teachers were not allowed to write office managed referrals we could only write classroom managed referrals the processing of referrals and consequences are not consistent with the code of conduct allows teachers to maintain accurate Behavior data to bring to sit meetings or other Behavior meetings to allow us to best support a students's behavioral needs next in the midst of the reconfiguration the self-contained therapeutic classrooms were dissolved sending those students with significant behaviors into the mainstream classrooms without a clear support plan for such a major transition why did this happen and how does this help sustain a

031successful learning environment for any student if we do not offer a therapeutic classroom maybe there are other options for our students with significant Behavior concerns have we looked into the option of allowing outside counseling into our schools to alleviate the transportation issues families currently have when it comes to seeking outside counseling we have some great students in our district there's a large handful of disruptors though that need more support that a regular classroom teacher is not able to ex me that that is not able to give them so let's get more peras one in every grade level in every building to help support our students there are students who would greatly benefit from having a parod who could just take them for a quick walk in the Halls to allow them to talk through their

032frustrations and come back to the classroom refocused and ready to learn this also would allow teachers to continue supporting the rest of the students in the classroom with little disrupting to their disruption to their learning also Administration and coaches acting as interventionists are constantly being pulled out of our building for district meetings meaning you are pulling our support our district has so many great opportunities to offer our families there are so many amazing staff members in this District who want the best for all of our students we hold our students to a high standard when it comes to academics and extracurriculars so why can't we start holding our students to a high standard of behavior expectations support our teachers support our students learning cannot happen if it keeps being disrupted thank you next I have

033James H and uh Kathleen B is yielding her three minutes to him hopefully I don't need all six minutes uh my name is James Hoy and I teach down the road at BO Mario high school and I am one of the incoming cbea presidents and I'd like to comment some of the critical issues on tonight's agenda first and foremost effective School dist discipline is essential for creating a safe and conducive learning environment for all students when discipline policies are well- defined consistently enforced and supported by the staff and Community they contribute significantly to Student Success and well-being the expulsion hearing process is on the agenda for tonight and you'll hear about changes to the process that were made a few years back I encourage you to return to the previous expulsion process that included an

034independent hearing officer in the past the hearing officer was war Medina an attorney hired by the district for this purpose using an independent hearing officer for the expostion process in our district ensures accountability consistency and impartiality here's why that's important accountability independent hearing officers are accountable to the process rather than any particular stakeholder or institution this accountability helps maintain public and staff trust in the disciplinary process and ensures that decisions are based on evidence and legal standards rather than personal biases or institutional pressures consistency using independent hearing officers promotes consistency in the decision-making across different cases and District buildings since these officers are trained professionals they are more likely to apply consistent standards and guidelines in evaluating expulsion cases impartiality an independent hearing officer is a neutral third party who can adjudicate the case without

035bias or conflict of interest secondly tonight you will be presented with information about possible benefit changes for staff these proposed changes have never been discussed or even mentioned with the be a we only learned about these possible changes tonight when we saw the slides posted for tonight's meeting the proposed changes include health insurance premium share changes that would increase employee contribution from 2 to 4% along with possible adjustments to the HSA contribution schedule last year CPI which measures inflation was over 8% and the district imposed a 4% raise first time it's been imposed in a long time it was half of CPI this year CPI is over 4% and the district again so far is proposing a raise that is less than half of CPI raises that do not keep up with inflation are basically

036pay cuts to propose any increases in insurance cost without adequate raises to keep Pace with inflation only results in further pay cuts for employees and it balances the district's Budget on the backs of those employees your teachers are not the cause of this budget deficit and your teachers should not have to carry the burden of solving the budget deficit we understand that staff Cuts uh may need to be made to address enrollment numbers however many people have seen the proposed cuts and are questioning why are there not more more proposed cuts to positions that do not directly work with students on a daily basis this includes positions at kek teachers are currently fleeing this district for a variety of reasons this includes what is not limited to discipline and student Behavior loss of prep time

037to subbing and multiple meetings an inconsistent District level administrative support for these concerns and others those leaving are not just new first year teachers veteran teachers with years of experience to this District are not leaving to retirement they're leaving to other districts if you hope if you have any hope of attracting replacement teachers or better yet retaining any long-term employees this cannot continue in conclusion I urge the school board to consider returning to the previous exposion process and to push back on any attempt to balance the budget on the backs of Staff by propos that increase employee Insurance costs especially when the pay increases have not kept up with inflation let us work together to uphold high standards of discipline while ensuring our Educators receive the recognition and support they deserve next I have Tammy

038uh s and Kurt H uh yielded his three minutes hi I'm Tammy stanky and I'm a special education teacher over at Converse Elementary and I have a couple things continuing with what James said about insurance if you're also making that the same for Paras you're now asking Paras to pay to work and that's just not going to happen also I personally worked on a um a parent over the last year and so to work to become a perah and then she promptly went to Rockford where they pay $5 more so we really need to work on what you're offering Paras as well because yes as somebody mentioned we need them in a significant part of our rooms and um we're struggling in the Spud Department of getting enough Paras we do not offer longevity pay

039we do not offer pay when we have pairs that have to routinely change dipers all day long lift heavy heavy students um no they're not paid any different than a crosscat parah who is able to work with students who can um Talk do not bite kick hit and go home at the end of the day more comfortable than the other ones and there should definitely be a bonus if or some other stipend that um is provided for for working with more difficult and challenging students also at Converse I'm the last one standing of the original sped teachers right now we have one other sped teacher there who she H is covering our ID program um and we're together trying to manage a case load of I don't even know what the count is 60 to

04080 students in the building maybe even more um and then as far as seeing students our I it our um Exodus of teachers this year came as a result of the fact that we had enough students for two special programs and we did not fill one at the beginning and then as teachers were triying to as we people attempted to fill them move them around um and whatnot we just fell like flies if you really want to make a change because therapeutic rooms of which I have worked in therapeutic rooms elsewhere I've been thrown against a wall the problem with these rooms is you are working with grade levels from and and then my current elementary building you can work with them from prek all the way to fifth grade you have to provide curriculum

041you have to provide deescalation all day long you have to provide so many physical interventions all day long and you don't have a co- teer to balance that effect Nationwide they are wondering what's going on we need a board to stand up and say no these rooms are extremely mentally and physically taxing they need a minimum of two co-teachers in there all day long where they can plan so that way somebody can only only has to worry about the reading and math somebody else has to worry about the science and social studies but then together they can collaborate on everything um and then on top of that need at least two Paras or more per the severity of the kids and the number of kids because otherwise without it you're going to continue to see

042people leave in this fed program so I really need you to step up and be that leader in our nation to be like no these programs need more staff um also with that that I've also worked at another school district that a huge other issue is the physicalness of genad students um they're getting suspended but then they come back yes we have restorative circles yes they can mean it in that moment they are sorry they are these things but we don't have the follow-up one of the school districts that I worked at they had an actions program I'm sure it stood for something but what they basically did is if you got suspended then they talked to your parent your parent was then responsible for driving you to a different building and we have space

043at bla um which is already an alternative program so to work right with them that might be a good place to start and the students say they were suspended for three days or 5 days they would spend those three or 5 days in school at that school getting not only work from their teachers but then meeting with teachers to continually work on social skills social emotional help all day throughout the day and that's what our kids need our kids are mentally um we're just needing to provide a lot more mental help and so they're coming to us without these skills they need reinforcement throughout the day of which Pars in our schools can help with if we were again I know that money is tight but being able to say you know what of all

044the teaching positions we actually need more counselors we need more social workers because that's what we need not only for our kids but for us too because when I've had an extremely hard day I should be able to go and talk with someone to kind of talk me through the situation and make sure that my mental health is good um because otherwise we're just piling piling piling and then teachers are leaving on FMLA because they can't take it anymore and so we just need those areas and we really need you to be like this is a priority otherwise we're going to lose everything um so um if you are interested in hearing more about the program or where it comes from but just know also our teachers we have a lot of resources I'm not

045the only one who's worked in another District that has a program that worked in that school district um the other thing with that program those teachers Then followed those kids that were suspended throughout their school life for that year and routinely checked in with them so there was followup there was things put in place I'd be open to talking with people it'd be nice if we could have some committees where teacher input was truly valued not on the generic surveys that's not specific to what we know so if you were to say look we are looking to fix this problem this is where we want you to come talk that would be awesome so thank you all the last public comment I have is Manuel C and Maria C is donating um yielding her three

046[Music] minutes good evening can you hear me okay good evening want to start this very good to be here my name is Manel caceras I'm chapter leader to fair fair is the uh Foundation against intolerance and racism to nonprofit that has for many years stood up as a voice for diversity but without division uh Fair defends civil rights and Liberties and promotes a common culture based on fairness understanding and Humanity so I'm also a citizen of Rock County and I find that the diversity equity and inclusion program uh is at the heart of of bit school districts 2022 2025 strategic plan and new route is the implementation of that plan uh now we're looking to cut uh some programs to uh uh divert some some funding to other programs uh and I'd rather not point

047out the reasons for the failings in academic achievements the school district has seen but I will only mention that the current plan has not worked uh please dismiss the Strategic plan you have now consider fair and it's proven successes and I will go on to the successes now I'd rather not uh speak of of failures but I'd rather speak on successes at other schools uh that uh we have seen with Fair Now Fair offers learning standards towards a curriculum called Fair story that portrays an accurate view of our nation's racial history it emphasizes constructive principles that Inspire students Fair story learning standards and curriculum exposes students to the histories experiences struggles and accomplishments of Americans of diverse backgrounds ours is a fact-based approach fact-based approach teaching students about racism it's honest about the failures and

048shortcomings of our American past and present while recognizing the struggles and accomplishments of Americans as we continue to move to closer to our ideals these approaches have worked in bringing students of all diverse backgrounds races and genders to discuss history in the classroom in a productive way students learn to counter racism and intolerance with compassion and Humanity so it's really exciting to be part of this uh students demonstrate passion to learn more where this has uh been implemented the students are shown a future that is based on Humanity diversity understanding and fairness those are four terms that are the basics in Fair story uh learning standards the terms again are Humanity diversity understanding and fairness Fair story lessons are developed by experts and reviewed by high education faculty members affiliated with the race and the

049American story project Fair story aligns with State and National standards in the area of ethnic studies Fair story can be adapted to speak to experiences and our local Hispanic uh community and growing immigrant community and the lesson plans are also available in remote learning formats if needed uh teachers that use the fair story will notice students interact with understanding they'll see respectful dialogue students will develop literacy skills and critical thinking skills it teaches history and contemporary racism so that students heal as they learn uh Fair story learning standards um are lessons are available for every grade level from K to 12 a description of a few lesson plans follows one students will analyze American historical debates and issues from multiple perspectives cultivating a deep understanding of alternative arguments and respecting human Freedom that gives rise

050to disagreements two students will study a range of social justice movements assessing their impact and analyzing their positive contributions as well as their controversi and flaws uh several student comments follow a young seven-year-old said I didn't know that we all share the same ancestors and are part of the same human race you think about that a 12-year-old student hears other students talking at each at each other loudly and intervene saying you aren't even listening to each other this student saw the necessity for each student to hear what the other student had to say demonstrating respect and critical thinking skills and in a situation between a student and teacher the student says I hate it I mean the student said I hate it when I'm wrong the teacher replies uh would you rather stay wrong or

051feel the discomfort of realizing you're wrong the student replied I guess it's better to realize it but I still get upset now the beginning steps to implementing Fair story Into the blit school district is to schedule Fair training for administrators and staff Fair training for teachers is now available and ready to be used Fair trainers are ready and waiting uh much of fair training for staff and teachers will be conducted remotely for the convenience of scheduling and availability of staff so please contact me uh for implementation of the training and scheduling and I do hope you entertain Fair story in your future thank [Applause] you that's it for public comment is there anyone else who would like to make a public comment before we move on if you need to leave um you're more than

052welcome to if you'd like to stay for the rest of the board meeting we encourage that as well this brings us to thank you um appointment and approval of uh Catu representative we have this on the agenda tonight because each School Board is required to appoint a cisa representative are there any board members that would like to volunteer to serve as our representative for president um Johnson it may be helpful to to outline when the meetings occur so people will be able to check their availability at the last meeting I I did have some of that information and that this mean I did not bring it um board president board member Schneider uh just said the third Tuesday of the month which is when we do you know the time I'm totally putting you on

053the spot I think it's so unless we're willing to shift our meetings I'm not sure how we would participate unless someone's willing to miss a meeting thank you board member Levy um if um board member henkins wants to uh volunteer I I will allow that um we have to have somebody as a representative they don't have to attend but we have to have a representative can I get a motion for oh excuse me I'm sorry board me board President Johnson um this might be a helpful I'm sorry I didn't think you saw my my thingy just to clear no I'm sorry and I know there's like a delay too with the audio so I'm sure this is annoying so sorry um hey so just to clarify um you don't like if you become the ca

0542 rep you don't actually have to like join the board of control it it was the intention of my comments last time was just to say if you go and they say hey we need you to be the rep for the board of control that there will be a scheduling conflict but really the requirement basically is just to go to this one time a year meeting and I was just on their website trying to find the date it's usually like in June so anybody who wants to just go it's an awesome dinner it's a great talk I had a fabulous time being our cesu rep I don't want to see anything I'm just um the spirit of my comments last time were just to say hey there's a conflict if you choose then to participate

055on the board of control but minimally it's just the once a year thing and it's it's not that big of a deal point of clarification the information is attached to this item that has the date on it and the time thank you secretary SCH any other comments or discussion can I get a motion to approve the appointment of Tom henkins as the C2 representative so moved so moved second motion by board member Megan Miller seconded by uh Brian Nichols any discussion hearing none all in favor I i i i i i any oppose hearing none motion carries we are now at the CTE standards go ahead sh I did I'll kick us off if you don't mind let me show up this isn't sharing even though it shows on my screen that it's shared in

056the meeting I think you have to share it from the actual I am and then maybe click out and then try again there's an ER good evening uh Teresa mortek Here I Am the executive director of teaching learning and equity for the school district and I am here with uh Jeff stenus our director of CTE and alternative education uh we have a present that includes uh just an update on our CTE standards that's a newer roll out with the state but we will be asking for a motion um to take action to approve our academic career plan uh that's the second bullet on the slide that's highlighted when we're done with our presentation that is a DPI State requirement um that we come forward to the board and ask for approval of our academic career

057plan um in addition I just wanted to point out you might have noticed some large research poster boards in the boardroom in the back and then in the main hallway um we had our students uh that are participating in the globe Grant travel to Ohio um to present their research we also had a research Symposium at the public library about a month ago um and I wanted everyone to see the poster board so I asked uh for some of those to come down here so people that are in the boardroom um please take time to look at that work um say some ADV ADV learning opportunities that our students are participating in uh thank you go ahead Jeff good evening um Jeff CW director of CTE and alternative education and again have a slideshow uh

058to go through a couple of points one is just an overview of the career Readiness and CT standards that are put out by the DPI um there are a couple of different levels of Standards I'll go through that real quickly and then the formal ask is to for the Board of Education to approve our District academic and career plan and the e4e is part of education for employment and they are kind of like lump together um in um administrative rule Pi 26 and the academic career plan covers grades 6 through 12 so the Wisconsin Career Readiness standards really have three focuses career ready learning ready and life ready and again these are uh areas that align with our uh Ford NGL Academy model with our high school but they actually cover down through grade as

059well and then specific Career and Technical education standards now get to be content specific and so they have 2024 standards that they are redoing uh they are in working draft form yet they've done a soft roll out of them agricultural food Natural Sciences business Information Technology Health Science and then the marketing management entrepreneurship and they still have the 2013 standards for family consumer sciences and Technology and Engineering which they are working to update and they anticipate 2025 for for those ones so those are all find on found on the DPI website but these are things as we talk about College and Career Readiness that are coming along the state is working to update these um activities as well so I just wanted you to be aware that these are things that we follow both um

060on the career Readiness ones and the Career and Technical education standards and then each individual aspect gets down to their own content specific standards so there are many layers of standards that we cover within um CTE so um one of the things I do want to point out the formal ask said slides 5 through 15 this is actually going to be 7 through 15 slides 5 and six this is Slide Five and slide six give you an overview of what their uh requirements are so the requirements are labor market information post-secondary education and Workforce prep professional development family engagement Community Partners the activities are on the right are a list of some of the things that we do it's not a comprehensive list but some of the things that we do to address those areas

061um the next one is ACP curriculum support and access software and tools progress monitoring future goals again the activities on the right are um pieces that we have within um our our Academy structure you see freshman seminars in there um we have Zell which are uh is a an online platform about career exploration and then we do have an ACP team that I had last year and convened and did some work on this um so the next slides are the ones that are actually for the formal uh ask so one of them is regional career Pathways and Regional career pathways are um something that's recognized by the state of Wisconsin and there are nine geographical seven geographical areas in Wisconsin we are part of the Madison the Madre area um and we submit these to

062the state for review so there are four areas we're required this year to submit one we submitted four when the state actually finalizes and approves um two others for our area CU they're not they don't they don't open them all up to every area which is kind of strange they have some that are reserved for different parts of the state and they're working to open them all up we will have two more in the pipeline with this so you can see that there are um four that we submitted and the next slides given gives a picture of what this looks like the left side is the information that that um we provide and you can see this is one for advanced manufacturing so we list our courses welding one two and three um machine CNC

063operations one two and 3 um Tech math uh there are some other work-based learning programs that are listed here so the left side is what we do for the school district of blit what we offer there are some credentials there are some higher education opportunities on the right side of that there are some career exploration programs um we have uh skills USA as student organization and on the back side which is on the right it's only a snapshot of part of it that's the labor market information put out by the Department of Workforce Development for Rock County this is our local this is not or the sorry not count it's the Mad rep area I want to take that which is Madison and coming South so it's not Statewide it's not you know Regional it's

064not Global this is directly in our area and so they provide all that information and they update those I have to do the information on the left with my team and then submit these for approval so all four of them currently have been submitted to the DPI we're waiting for approval I've gotten some feedback from our cil1 folks that I work with on our Perkins Grant um and they said they they've looked pretty good but again the DPI is the one that needs to approve those so there are three others I just provided one example for you the links are in the slide deck to all of them uh this slide now starts with our actual academic and career experiences for grades 6 through 12 and this was uh came out of our Academy Master

065planning meeting um was also developed with our uh ACP team that I convened last year that included people from grades 6 through 12 um and we looked at what are the experiences that students would get at sixth grade seventh grade 8th grade um the next slide will give you 9th 10th and 11th and 12th grade one of the things you'll see is zel lesson which is our computer the the actual State selected um uh platform that does career exploration and we do those in grades 6 through 12 at varying levels but there are a lot of other things um that we do in e8th grade if you'll notice our bmhs Expo night exposing our uh eighth graders to our community and our high school offerings um we also have some Career Tech uh programming that's

066in there that we've done some um Outreach with and then as we go to 9th grade through 12th grade I want to highlight the ones in red at the top of each grade level those are our guaranteed experiences part of our for NGL program and we talked about experiences that students can get but what are we guaranteeing that every nth grader would get every 10th grader would get every 11th grader would get again and it's the opportunity for these it doesn't mean that they all participate if they happen to miss the day or something that's there but this is something that we put across for the entire grade level um one of the highlights is our practice interviews for grade 10 every student in grade 10 has those and so you can see it goes

067through they develop a foure plan in nth grade grade we have lots of uh work-based learning opportunities um field trips um you know they look at core classes in their Pathways and then the senior level um eventually going to a portfolio presentation that'll be a part of that but College um plans work plans and finally you know what what do they do on their ACP goals so these are the opportunities that we provide for grades 6 through 12 again it's not all-encompassing um these things happen at various levels but it's just a spattering of these are the things that are we operate with um for our academic and career plans we have course had our portrait of a graduate and the definitions of those um in our academic and career plan here's one of the

068pieces we have is our um our Academy Pathways and so these are our guarantee or sorry our Pathways of 14 of them that we have now as they choose courses throughout their high school so it leaves them with level one courses level two level three the next slide includes um enhancement coures courses so again it is not just those courses that we're looking at this one happens to be the education Early Childhood pathway and you see there is a top a top route and a bottom route one is this one happens to be for early childhood education the lower one happens to be for if you want to expand up through the upper grades moving into ninth grade um overview of classes so that all classes are important for a pathway and oops and then

069finally what are some postsecondary op um options that exist for that different certifications Who is the agency that certify these again these are all done for the BL Memorial High School um Deb proy Academy coach worked diligently on these and put these together um we have 14 of them and they mentioned you know credentials and dual credit opportunities that exist and then finally our actual dual credit opportunities this is a snapshot taken abely from our school web page this will be included in our academic career plan we're going to put this together so it shows what what are opportunities that you can take while you're in while you're in high school taking college credits um at different levels and then lastly we're going to continue to build it out I've worked um with Monica Copa

070to talk about what we need to do um for some DPI information to enhance our program so it'll be DPI links to web pages that they have on academic career plan they have the 16 career clusters they have other labor market information and so that'll be included but slides 7 through 15 seven they cover what we do at booe uh for the school district and that's part of our academic career plan and then it would need to be posted on our website once we get it approved and then formatted um appropriately lots of information questions thank you Mr senr are there any board members that have questions for Mr stenus or U Miss morch um just more of a comment um being on the um the academy uh committee the advisory committee um just hearing

071so much more of what is really taking place in the school district of booy than than what we've see here just for the CTE courses um uh it's just amazing as they looked at the number of students who um are leaving school this year with industry recognized credentials um and I believe it's over 200 um this year Alone um so that we have so many things where the students are leaving the school with the certifications and credentials they need to get into the workforce um and how much of the opportunity that students have in beloe um that takes Mo all of or most of what's going to be required elsewhere uh for some of the programs and it's just um great to see the amount of work that has been put into developing all of

072the programs and the opportunities that students have in Beloit um that they're not going to find anywhere else um so again just thank you so much for all of the work thank you board member henkins yeah just a quick question um how do we stack up against our local school districts I mean what I read and see here is outstanding but when we hear of people R enrolling into other districts to me this is second to none but are we Second To None or where do we sit where does the school dist of boit with our local immediate competition so to speak um I'm going to say Second To None outwardly to the community and what they know about it um that's where we're lacking we do have amazing things to do we outpace the

073state um 3 to one in work-based learning opportunities as uh board member Schneider said our work base our work-related credentials are up over 200 um we have students that participated in skills USA programs I know Connie was a part of you know presentation at Lambo field we do great things and we do stack up and do really really well compared to most other districts we have some programs that really Excel compared to other districts that word is not out there I would just add I was at a um state conference where they were talking about rolling out I actually went to a session where they were rolling out these CTE standards and I was sitting next to a person that's in a rural area um which honestly I've spent almost 25 years in urban education

074so um honestly I don't always think about rural communities like I should as an educator and they are stuck in trying to figure out how to satisfy and and fulfill some of these newer requirements simply because they don't have the Partnerships distance-wise you know the man I was sitting next to he said the closest thing we are is like 50 mies from a Walmart and so here we are in this in this space with so many resources and the amount of Partnerships that we've established um with the leadership through through the high school and at kek and um through the Ford NGL um has just been really heartwarming um we've grown so much I think in the last couple of years and it's really opening access to our kids um I will speak transparent the

075other way to look at this is is we are on the dawn of budget cuts these are the kinds of programs that we want right and it's heartbreaking for someone like me that's an educator for 25 years to have to consider that these are possibly some of the things that we could have to cut right and so that's the piece that I think we as a community need to really wrap our arms around and understand we want more of these kinds of things for our kids truly but it comes with a cost and if if we want this for our kids we have to support these programs and we have to support this academic career plan to move forward um and so thank you Greg uh Schneider for recognizing all of the uh increased uh

076opportunities that we've had in the last couple years I appreciate that Tom did you have any other questions just a followup and I I assumed we were there because when I went with uh Mrs pels and and and toured the school I was just overwhelmed on things going down in the basement that I had no idea and I do believe we do need to toot our own horn on what's going on there and what our students can get it's not just in the classroom which is very important the ABCs and but what is going on down there is really getting them ready for the next chapter thank you Tom just for clarification those are classrooms they're learn they're learning Labs yes um board member Miller you had your hand up yeah I just wanted to

077um Echo all of the positives um this is definitely a near andar to my heart um initiative um what I wanted to just point out explicitly is that um all of those kiddos who are graduating with industry recognized credentials um we get uh there's x59 from DPI which thens um we get funding to go back to those CTE programs from the state um it's a limited amount and it extends over other school districts but I just wanted to point out how like this is like such an asset in so many ways obviously for the amazing experiences that it gives to our kids but also because of that act 59 opportunity thank you any other comments or questions member Nichols just just a couple uh you you mentioned you mentioned the cost what is the cost

078of this program and is it is it Grant funded or is it funded is it off the budget that's a great question it's braided funds so we have a Perkins grant that helps to pay for some of the CTE programming we have what uh Megan Miller just spoke to act 59 which the more it what's cool about this almost like a payback so the more uh certifications you get help me if I miss speak je the more certifications you get then you can refund that on the back end because you get more finances the following year um and then also we have um District dollars that pay for our programs right we have teachers that teach in classrooms that we're paying for okay well so so how much what percentage of it is funded by

079the grant well first of all I want to say it's not just CT I want to be very careful about that this this covers everything in the school district that we do and that's why even the supporting courses are out there whether you're math I'm a math major and you know a science you know minor those are important and those supporting classes and academic and career planning is not just relegated to the CT programs um so first of all I just want to clear so that you know everybody plays a part in that so there are specific monies though just to CTE so we get money through Perkins um Perkins Grant which is a Federal Grant and our act 59 those are specifically tied to CTE and have some specifications to that but they all

080have their building budgets they all have their regular allotment you know it pays for the teacher salary so I can speak for the very small CTE funding that I get but there is a much larger cost of this because it's a wise swath sure and don't misunderstand me I think it's awesome uh because I came out of manufact managing manufacturing etc etc so I appreciate you know a good welder a good maintenance I mean they're they're good as gold so I just I just want you know want to know you you me you mentioned cost so that's why uh that's why I asked the question so I guess we can follow up with you and let you know what those grants are that would be great okay thank you any other questions or comments I

081move approval of the 2024 2025 academic career plan and education for employment for grades 6 through 12 I'll second motion by board member Levy seconded by board member Anderson any discussion hearing none all in favor I I I I I any oppose motion carries thank you thank you that brings us to the pre preliminary budget reduction discussion and is Mr chady yeah so let me first start off actually it to be my whole team will be presenting this conversation um one of the things that I want to first start off with is first letting the board um know very clearly that you know we are in a very tough situation here in the school district of booy where we have had two um failed opportunities or not passed opportunities in our referendums and and in

082our referendum conversation we've been very clear that you know these cuts and the conversations around reductions are impactful for the entire School District um that is not that does not exempt anyone um from having more difficult conversations as it pertains how we're going to get to these these cuts when I first walked into the conversation um and like I shared before um the board were we were at of $10 million so conversation or cuts that we need to make here in the school district we went through that swash last year and we were able to come back with a balanced budget with various things happening in order for us to get there I'm not going to go over last year's budget because I don't think that's the conversation for tonight but in tonight we have

083that same conversation with another 10 plus million doll worth of cuts that we have to make here in the school district these conversations are not easy cuz in the less than the less than 16 months we've had to make reductions of over one could AR argue 20 plus millions of dollarss and that's a hard conversation and that's not an easy conversation for any one of us in this room um to the teachers that are in this room of course I've stated this before of course you all hopefully you know this I appreciate all the work that you do for the school district of booy and the dedication that you all have displayed um even in these times has been you know duly noted and again I wanted to make sure that I put that into

084the conversation and I know that the school board ALS o feels that same um sentiment um that we appreciate the work that has went forth here in the school district over these past um 16 months since I've been here a little bit over 16 months at this point um but we still have a financial emergency one could argue um of of millions of dollars that we have to you know of course contend with prior to me coming um to the conversation there were budgets that we had to pass with deficits and and part with me being here now you know I've had to pass a budget that was balanced and I like I said it from the beginning I do not want to be a superintendent that brings negative budgets to the board I don't

085um and I've done everything as a district administrator that I possibly could have done um that we possibly could have done to to help address the conversations around our needs um in those two referendums no one person in this room is responsible for those referendum s I'm not passing and I paused there because I want everybody to truly understand my sentiment there no one person in this room is responsible for those referendums not passing we have a real funny board not not real funny um makeup here and funding in the state of Wisconsin and I know it's very difficult for one to try to explain in one setting and I'm not going to try to do that right now but there's not many ways we can get money I've say it all the time is

086e come come from the state was going to come from a conversation here with the public and unfortunately with these two referendums um were not successful um again the work that we put into the conversation again um with the support of many people in this room I want to say thank you um but now we're in a point where we have to start having conversations around where we are as a school district and how we have to continue to have these conversations with limited resources and that's kind of the way this this conversation is going to look is this is about limited resources this is about limited funding this is about a funding mechanism that sometimes is out of all of our control but we still have to work through it um I've said this

087before we are better together than we are apart and I know that there's conversations that you know we still need to have around you know kind of next steps as it pertains to kind of where we are right now and so I'm going to preface this first part this conversation from a finance perspective is that we've went down the ladder and we've identified some things that have gotten us to about 6.5 or so million dollar um reductions we still have about $4.4 or more million dollar to go okay um I want to start with the end in mind because again sometimes you know as you go through this presentation you know we forget all the things that that we're going to say here in the beginning then kind of focus in on the back end

088but again we've went down the ladder pretty much have captured about 6.5 6 6.2 or so million do and we have about $4.5 million to still go in our strategic plan it talks about three major areas and I wanted to start off with this thought because in our strategic plan it specifically talks about we need to have a stabilized budget we need to have equable resourcing and it talks about transparency and communication since I've walked into this room and since we've become a board together and since this administrative team and Bea have had countless conversations around our budget and money um I would hope that we've all kind of been listening to the to kind of where we are as a as a school district as it pertains to the amount of funding and and

089the lack thereof and so these three areas actually has uh three strategies that we actually have to look at as well from a stabilized budget the strategies are are there and I'm not going to read those um to to the board pretty sure we all have um viewed those um as as needed but I will take one bullet point out of each of the strategies so from a stabilized budget we want to adopt regular I'm sorry we want to identify and protect enhanced funding streams annually to reflect the benefits and District beliefs you know when you are squeezing the conversation down it's hard to reach some of these goals in a strategic plan and I think that goes without saying and objective b you have Equitable resourcing um we want to of course Monitor and

090review our enrollment data to adjust facilities and Personnel to align with our current and future needs of our district on an annual basis again when you are squeezing the conversation these conversations become much much more harder because we have done an enrollment study here in the school district and everyone that is here has probably heard that presentation about four months five or six months ago um when we had it as a pertains to our enrollment conversations and our projections um the school district of boo is not the same district 10 years ago where we had you know an extra 3,000 kids one could argue um now we are floating around that 5200 um number um and that number is projected to go different ways I always like to say that the more we do to

091promote how great we are the better um we will you know we will be um this year we were able to maintain our enrollment which is a very positive space um but every year is different and that's the hard part about you know this this this Equitable resourcing pieces because it fluctuates and then of course when we make this make the argument around us needing a referendum and of course um the our public votes because they have the choice um it just puts us back in that conversation where we have to again readjust how we are funding and actually being able to run our school districts and what's real hard is we still want High academic achievements we still want safe classrooms for all of our teachers we still want all the programming opportunities but

092when you're having budgetary constraints it's hard to have those side by side at times because where's the funding going to come when we still want everything naturally we should because we're a school district we're here to serice students and I if I was to ask the old school raise your hand if you believe this statement I'm pretty sure everybody in this room will say we need to keep the programming and the things that we have here in the school district um there's some things that we are going to talk about and there's adjustments that's going to be made but again there's a lot of things that we've had to constrict here in our school district that has made it much harder C is transparency and Communications and one of the strategies is develop clear and

093concise Communications channel to share the budget and school Finance with a broader Community we've had more conversations around finances and budgets in this school district um as a board I do believe and as a community I do believe because of our financial um emergency that we you know that we find ourselves in over these past 16 months and so I truly believe that we are we are meeting some of the the the Strategic plan conversations but again it's hard because we are having to constrict so much um and it's and it's it's just a tough conversation because we want to continue to do the great things that we want to do here in the school district of bloy but not having um you know the funding year over year right because it's not just one

094snapshot this is year over year it makes it harder and harder and harder on everyone in this room okay it makes it hard on everybody in this room that includes the students the parents the teachers and of course um the board and administration it just makes it harder when we have to keep constricting and constricting um the the the funding um to to try to meet the needs of of all because there there's endless needs in our school district one could argue that um but we also have to still work within the parameters in which we have and as the district administrator my goal is to um continue these conversations as needed um post referendum um naturally we've had to look at spending reductions we've already had this conversation it's about $10.8 million that we

095have to look at we had this bucket conversation as you can already tell um we had opportunities in which we wanted to enhance our conversations um and of course we monetize numbers with those opportun unities um the next slide we'll look at an overview of kind of where we are at the current time as we look at our buckets um we've had to look at staff compensation and benefits to maintain class sizes we've had to look at um of course maintaining our district facilities we have to look at programming um we have of course look at our maintaining current course offering and then of course there's this other bucket which brings us to again kind of how we've had to work through these conversations to about $6.2 million as as I've mentioned with a variance

096of about $4.5 million um again this slide and this slide pretty much runs together because again it we stated along the way that we would have to make these um conversations pretty much similar um as we work through our budget um and it's and it's and it's a lot and I know people may not understand the you know the the Dynamics in every one of these buckets but all of them if you ask me is still still impacting uh and touching people and those are hard conversations um this slide right here one of the things that I wanted to bring attention to is of course just some of the reductions that we've had to look at um in that staff compensation and benefits conversations um again this is one of two slides we've had to

097make four reductions in administrative staff um we've had to make two secretarial support um reductions we've had to make in school support uh insute support position reductions teacher reductions um as well attrition to school counselor position attrition to vac and B literacy coordinator attrition to aoda coordinator attrition to finance assistant and attrition to the data CK and those last four positions there are ke positions um I know there was there's thoughts around every area having to have cuts and again we've went down the ladder once and again we may have to come back up the ladder and it's going to capture different conversations but getting to 10 .8 million is no is no small fit it wasn't a small fit last year as I you know as we work through that conversation together as a

098team and it's not going to be any small fet this year as we work together as a team and so again those last four positions on the on the slide are uh K positions along with the administrative cuts at the in at the top up there um I'm going turn it over to Mr um um chady to tackle these next two slides for me please thank you Dr Garrison and so continuing on with regards to staff compensation and benefits um speaking specifically to benefits we tried to make a concerted effort to stay away from large wholescale changes to benefits because we knew the impact that that would have on our uh retained staff and um just climate and culture going forward however what we did do is we looked at how we would go about

099finding cost savings um with regard ards to benefits much like we would do in any other year so looking first and foremost at our health insurance premium share changes it's proposed that we increase the employee contribution from 2% of the monthly premium to 4% of the monthly premium that value or or that change in and of itself provides a savings so to speak to the district of about $257,000 but let's not uh let's not Overlook the fact that that's a cost shift so we're transferring the cost of that from the district to all the employees that participate in the plan uh just to put stuff in perspective here currently um a single individual within the school district of blit pays $18.92 a month for their health insurance The Proposal at 4% uh would be $408

100cents per month so it is a double uh essentially a little bit higher than that we uh we were anticipating a 10% increase in our health insurance and today literally late this morning we received um our premium equivalency rate for next year and it's going to be a 5.9% increase so less than we expected that's helpful uh but nonetheless uh on a family plan uh currently the employee pays $44.80 per month and that would increase to $948 per month I would would note that most districts throughout the state pay approximately 12% of the employee premium uh the employee does 88% is paid by the employer so we're going from two to four and I would be very transparent I would expect in future years we'll see increases in that 4% to five six 7 8

101Etc uh those that have been following the news the school district of Jamesville is going from 10 to 12 um in you know kind of falling in line so the the next item is the adjustments in the health savings account contribution schedule uh it was determined or identified throughout the course of this past year that the district is making contributions to our HSA plan we make those contributions upfront towards the beginning of the plan year so unfortunately as employees are onboarded become eligible for health um Insurance participate in the plan then they are funded in full to that amount up front and then unfortunately what we've seen here throughout this past year is that often times when employees then resign a few months later the whole value of the HSA is gone with them we

102can't recover any of that so the contribution schedule adjustment talks about making those contributions on a perpay period basis that way we're not out any resources um for employees that no longer work for the district is pro probably the best way to reflect that or or to state that that adjustment minor provides about $40,000 worth of savings probably enough to pay for um an aid over the course of a year and perhaps a portion of their benefits as well so those are the two adjustments that are made on the benefit side uh again we strive to stay away from massive changes to the benefit plan itself uh changing um premium share or I'm sorry the the co-pays any further um Etc so next up is maintaining District facilities and here we've identified a number of

103things um that provide savings the first off is an elimination of our Capital Improvement fund inter fund transfer in our current 2324 budget we have $550,000 uh designated to move from fund 10 General operations two fund 46 our Capital Improvement trust fund at the end of the year if the sufficient resources a are available to do that uh however in the 2425 school year sufficient resources just aren't going to be available so we're backing that out and that provides $550,000 in savings uh redu reducing the construction and remodeling improvements and in quite honestly the largest um such project that has been ongoing is at uh blit Memorial High School a $5 million um Improvement upgrade to the HVAC system and air conditioning uh for the majority of the building we wish that we could get

104to all of it but unfortunately the resources won't be there to to facilitate that um The Lion Share of that work is is done um The Chiller is in state yeah it's here the chiller will be lifted um on top of the high school here in the month of June and then it's just a matter of making all the connections necessary so air should be flowing uh air conditioning will be flowing in that building here hopefully by the time that staff arrive in mid August we have a facility supervisor position that has been vacant for boy about 51 50 51 weeks now um we've intentionally left that position vacant uh there was convers with Mr ricko and myself about uh our desire to wait and see how the referendum um ended up and with the

105referendum being defeated that's a position that we're just going to have to attrition we're not going to uh be able to um fill that position any longer likewise there are four current facility service staff positions that are vacant um have been vacant over the course of the past year as a result of various things U resignations for the most part people departing uh that role Andor the district and again we've not filled those positions and we will be attrition those positions as well for for cost savings and lastly is a reduction in our hes custodial Staffing and support um and actually we met early this morning um to talk about uh some proposed changes there uh we we will be doing some restructuring and shifting of our custodial um shifts uh morning custodians will be

106coming in earlier at the elementary school uh evening custodians will be getting out earlier we've had some midday custodial positions that we are going to be eliminating uh making some changes Here There and quite honestly everywhere there are five professional learning days District professional learning days that custodians will no longer be expected to work on those days because they would have clean the building the evening before there shouldn't be a need for them there on that evening so we're going to take uh take advantage of the opportunity to scale back Staffing there as well so um that is kind of the the big picture with regards to maintaining District facilities Miss mortek and I are going to speak in regards to maintaining programming and instructional resources um all buildings and departments were um asked to

107take a look at their budgets and make a reduction of 10% I'll let you speak on integrated technology oh sure good evening um so what we did is we started to look at all of our integrated technology um and we began to consider what our reductions that we could do so some of these programs might not be getting high usage or some of them are not a program that is directly tied to interventions um we also um looked at like imagine math we look at that as a reduction we've actually seen benefits of that in the elementary school specifically so in this list we're looking at a reduction of taking it out of the middle schools and just offering it um in our elementary schools um and then uh my last bullet and then we'll

108Circle back with Missy because she has two on here as well uh Missy beavers uh pause expansion of dual language immersion so um when you add dual language immersion what we have done historically in this district is you start with the lower levels and then each year you're rolling over the next grade level Converse was the last school that we've added thus far that has DLI we have two remaining elementary schools Gaston and Merill that do not have DLI programming otherwise we are DLI across the district and um what is happening is we are um striving to fill vacancies and so coupled with costs and ways to reduce um um budgets and offering and programming we're also looking at how we're filling those vacancies um it has been a stress on the system um it

109is a wonderful program so I'm going to Echo that it is a wonderful program but how are we as a system going to be able to sustain it is the question um so we'll be looking further into that and more to come on that um but I will say because of the vacancies we did not have a going into next year we do not have a DLI um teacher that would be able to teach that fourth and fifth grade um in addition since then um and we're meeting I think this week Thursday we um have three other vacancies in the DLI programming specifically at Converse um and so uh that is another conversation that we will be having as we're making um decisions over these next few months with budget uh there are also some

110DPI changes that are being made about lyser um de's been looking into that so she certainly can speak on it more than I can but some of the people that we've recruited for example from Spain that have taught our DLI courses in the past based on new d uh DPI um requirements for alternative lure programs they will not be qualifying and so we're losing potentially uh teachers that we've had in our buildings that we've recruited from Spain as a result of a mandate coming down from the Department of Public Instruction um so as at this time that is why we um thought about pausing fourth and fifth grade because we're just not yet ready to add on another grade of expansion at at Converse given um some of those obstacles the other two um areas

111on this uh slide are the discon discontinuation of playworks which is a resource that we use for coordinated play at recess um to teach social emotional and behavioral skills um and then the discont continuation of Summer um addendum work to really focus on enhancing the social and emotional programming that we have in the buildings um and then for course offerings uh Dei and I can speak to that um we were looking at the Middle School choir 1 FTE do you want me to explain a little bit of the two sites okay so the way that we have band and Orchestra is we have um one teacher that is over those two middle schools so we have one band teacher one Orchestra teacher and then what happens in sixth grade is you need to have uh

112some form of General music based on DPI so we have kids in music uh Ed General Ed we have kids in band and we have kids in Orchestra we also offer choir so with that choir position we had a 1.0 at fren for choir and General Ed and a 1.0 at Aldridge for choir and General Ed we went all last year with a vacancy in chire we couldn't fill it at frusen we couldn't find somebody because you have to have that additional certification so we got to January and we um asked our choir teacher at Aldridge if she would be open to do what the band and Orchestra teacher do and share the two sites that meant a substitute was teaching the General Ed for the most part that's kind of how it shook out

113so going forward we currently um did not at the time we did not have any sixth graders signed up for um again enrollment right School uh student decisions Drive courses we did not have any sixth graders signed up and we had um I think it was 20 across the two sites for choir and 7th and eth grade it might be doubl that 20 and 20 7th and eighth grade at both grades so at this time as we're looking at programming those different buckets of courses in programming we often look at enrollment and sections and if we're going to run courses or not our rule of thumb in the high school is 15 to or 15 to 30 um and so at this point in time we felt like it was appropriate that we would lose

114the FTE for choir in middle school we will still offer Choir in the high school um and then our students in Middle School will have an option for General music um in the sixth grade and then they could do band or orchestra 6th 7eventh and eighth grade that means we're maintaining our fifth grade band and Orchestra uh programming and I will say we have more kids than a really long time in uh fifth grade band and Orchestra so that will continue to also um Thrive at this at this point in time uh in consideration for what we want to offer for courses and programming and I would just like to add that there is not an employee assigned to that f te so we are not losing a teacher in that reduction because of the

115vacancy that already existed that actually goes for the 20 vacant FTE that was on the slide that Dr Garrison addressed with teachers those those were reductions that were done based on um resizing and looking at course um sizes um and so I think that that's important to note because we can offer a teacher um a transfer within the district so it's not saying to a teacher you don't have a position next year um and that's why we have lur that expand several grades right um to allow flexibility um and then the last piece there is we're sunsetting the AVID program we brought that under Dan keizer's leadership uh it had been in the district prior and we relaunched it at the middle schools and the high school um and then after reconfiguration we mov down

116to the two middle schools and the high schools um participating going forward we thought that it would be appropriate um and considering the way in which the implementations are going that we could Sunset it in the middle schools so we will be reducing that contract to just the high schools um and that would be a reduction in the contract and it's also an embedded reduction would be because the staff often go to yearly conferences for Avid to be retrained so then there wouldn't be that cost of retraining staff uh for Avid in order to implement that framework in the building um this next slide um touches on other opportunities that we can actually look at as pertains to you know I hate to say but finding more money um reducing our legal um services and

117expenses is an area that you know we have had to really work hard here um under my leadership to you know find different ways to to answer our Legal Services need let's just say it like that one of the hardest things that you know we have to deal with is an enormous amount of open records request here in the school district of beloy and one of the things that I did when I came in is what I I really wanted to become a lawyer because that's kind of where I felt trying to answer so many questions without having to always lean in on our legal um Services um because you know every time you call them they of course actually it comes with a cost right and we've really worked hard to you look at

118ways in which we can can save money there um the board is very keenly aware of our legal expenses um um there's been open records requests on that as well um I think one of the hardest things that we've had to of course accomplish and looking at other ways to save money is again um still meeting the needs of all of our um constituents and of course meeting the needs of the things that we have to take care of here in the dis in here in the district um there's been conversations around the discontinuation of our Swiss contract Swiss contract is pretty much uh another bilingual opportunity in which we simultaneously um broadcast our um board meetings in Spanish and so as we're speaking someone else is speaking Spanish um it's it's a very it's

119not necessarily a very costly opportunity because one of the things that we've had to run into is not often times they may have people that they can send um and sometimes they don't and sometimes they do um sometimes we just have to you know look at you know possible ways to save money in this conversation and so that's another thing that um we will have to take a look at moving forward and of course we still have to review um staff additional pay addendums and of course overloads um there's you know one can argue thousands of dollars that sits in these different accounts and how do we you know look at our expenses and not try to you know move this on to one other person but look at things that we can directly take

120control contr over if we could and and possibly save money there so the next steps um is that we again like I've already mentioned we still have about $4.5 million to go um and I I mentioned this before and I've say it again and I've been been very clear about this nothing is off the table um I've made that statement multiple times in multiple conversations especially when you're having to do year over to year millions of dollars of cuts and again one could argue in the past 16 months we had to you know almost reduce our budget by almost $20 million which is a no small fit feat um by itself and so um these are some of the other areas that we have yet to look into but we will have to look at

121into these other buckets um to see if there's possibilities of of savings no one wants to do this work um there's other conversations that I'm having with other District administrators especially um those who find themselves in a deficit and it's hard work and um you know we're charged to we're charged to still move our district um finances forward in the best way that we know how um I know this is these conversations do impact again everybody that's in the room um I think that goes without saying these conversations impact everyone that's in the room um and just because you may not be here in this room it's impacting someone that you know um and so that's the presentation um and I'll take questions from the board any questions board member levia thank you um I

122have a couple the first is excuse me is there an opportunity to enhance the choir opportunities within General music class um to compensate for the potential elimination of Middle School choir do we have room within the curriculum to address that yes we do thank you for saying um asking that question that's a really great question of course um so in our general music offering our students and obviously in our 4K 5 buildings anyone ever go to a uh concert you will see how wonderful our music teachers are throughout our district um and so that offering we've also talked about because it's still at the high school um I believe we had 14 students signed up for the base choir um I can't remember off the top of my head right at the moment about I

123was looking at course offerings today um and there's an opportunity there for our high school students to come down to and work with ele with our middle schools or perhaps you know thinking about how we're embedding concerts and using um choir as as a way for kids to perform right so is there a possibility and again I haven't talk to the department about this but they are the experts and have lots of ideas but I could Envision like a band and orchestra concert and we have students singing there as well right and so I do see ways to work around it to offer um um that to our students um going forward without having the official 1.0 FTE thank you and then my other question um is there any type of proposed bridge for our

124students at convers um with the potential pause of the DLI program and I appreciate the creativity that seems to already be being stirred up around engaging students I don't know if we could get Duffy Scholars to come in as a part of before school or after school well language is such a dangerous thing to pause in that learning process um if we come to that um I would just hate to have there be nothing for the students that have participated in DLI for so long yeah so there is a continuation where they could go back you know when they go to middle school but we also can look across the district and see if there are openings in our other schools at those grade levels if parents want to switch their students to those build

125ings and then they could have a we would honor that transfer so that's something that we've talked about um and then the other thing to just really understand is we do have a growing population that are multilingual and when we think about who we are servicing that's critically important and so we have done some training with our biliteracy coaches and our um literacy coaches this year around English language um like embedding that into like strategies and embedding that into the classroom um so that's another piece that we're really thinking about to be Progressive and to change with our population that we serve as that's changing as well and so that's where I'm swimming tonight um but there's a lot of other conversations that we need to work through that include the principal um and the

126teachers and the individuals in HR um because filling those vacancies with this additional DP I uh barrier I'm going to call it that is is putting us in a position and I think my final question um and and I just want to acknowledge how challenging it can be just the thought of transferring your your student so the loss of that environment and friends or a program that they love can be a tough a tough ask um and it if I'm hearing you correctly it sounds like convers is in a unique position where they have been hit hard with Staffing at DLI um have conversations occurred um about shifting DLI professional that are licensed and meet the qualifications for DPI um so that no one school has to Bear kind of like an overwhelming burden of

127that uh limited I'll say um DLI staff yeah I'll have uh D kind of talk to that a little bit I think that's a good question for you thank you that is a good question the issue that we're having right now is that all of our buildings will that have DLI programming are going to be impacted we currently have one at the middle school and one at the elementary level um that because of their license status and dpi's uh diff new uh change to licensure um they may be impacted adversely they would have to invest a significant amount of money in go back to school and it's a lot to ask for someone to do so at this point Converse became um the focal point because at the time we were unable to staff that

128fourth and fifth but knowing that we don't have sufficient DLI staff to go around the likelihood of being able to move someone into it at this point unless we strike gold in finding some DLI teachers it it does not seem feasible I completely understand the ask about lure I I have personally been asked to do that so so you're preaching to the choir on that one so with the hit that we're hearing that comers is taking is also what I'm hearing is that they are not the only building that's going to take the same hit we were just talking about them this evening is that accurate we are speaking about them this evening because of the progression to fourth and fifth um we are anticipating that we will have additional vacancies in other schools that

129will not be impacted as adversely is converse but that will preclude us from being able to move staff into Converse if that makes sense it does thank you so much you're welcome I will just add we have uh we're working right now on looking at um an audit of our DLI programming and we'll be bringing that to the board so that we have an overview of of thinking about what are some you know almost an executive summary of recommendations about what we should do moving forward when we consider you know the offering the value um the Staffing and all of the pieces to run DLI programming any other board members have questions Brian Anderson yeah so I guess bear with me for a minute here I'm just I'm just a banker here but um and

130we're trying our new Cadence out tonight but I would tell you that this is something that I I think I want to see come to the finance committee for for just more detail um and it's part of the detail is on the spending not just the bottom line right so if we have a a budget number we kind of have a budget number and you start with cuts and we're going to get there because we have to right there's only a certain amount of money but just because you reach that number doesn't mean it's a good budget that's just telling us how much we're spending right and so what are we spending on and I I keep thinking through my head my own household that's how people relate right how does my household work and

131I say well if I get a $100 to spend and next next week I only got $88 to spend because I got a cut and my wife says it don't worry about it I made the cuts we had we're going to spend $88 I can't just say okay well that's great you made the cuts if 87 is being spent to go to the movie theater and we don't we're not spending the money where we need to spend it then that's that's not a good budget even if it's balanced right so the detail on the spending piece of it um I understand we got to start with cuts and it's hard work and I appreciate the work that's gone into it and and there's more to do but before there's a budget that's presented to the

132full board I think the detail in the spending um has to be transparent and I appreciate Objective C in this thing where you said hey we want transparency and communication we're going to have a structure for feedback um it says annual feedback to reflect the community's diversity to informed decision-making I think annual is great in the perfect world I think we got to have something now more often than that similar to what the Milton School District's doing where they're having public forum sessions and having open discussion how are we spending this you know um and let's if we think we ever have a chance ofay passing a referendum that's the level of Engagement we have to have um and and there's no there's no good answers here we and I think we all understand that

133you know it's it's we'd rather be doing other things we'd rather find more ways to add value and spend money and bring in more programs and uh but that's not where we're at so um I'll work with my committee on the finance committee to you know schedule some additional meetings to get some some more in-depth things um I'd love to see that public focus group input um and see those details so are you suggesting that the public focus groups happen through the finance committee committee rather than the entire board I think the focus group that involves the committee could be anybody that wants to show up I'd love to see a turnout like we've had tonight where people have spoken about discipline and and or how the budget affects uh you know staff I think

134the comments tonight have told told us all more than we've could have gotten out of our presentation right so um I don't think you can have too much of that discussion so um not not looking for a smaller group I'm looking for a higher frequency until we get through this budget process thank you I see uh board me board member mean Miller has her hand up thank you so much and um sorry for the alliteration there I really appreciate the conversation um so um board members ladyy and Anderson um sort of already commented on the things that I so I just want to Echo their sentiments both about DLI and one of the first things that came to mind when I saw this posted was wow we're really going to need to do some public

135budget workshops so I think um if I can expand for a moment on board member Anderson thoughts I think it would be productive to have some Community engagement in at least two different styles one being similar to our referendum presentations which I thought were fabulous where um our administration had a kind of a presentation prepared kind of led the discussion on like here's like the information and then facilitated kind of a Q&A I think that's something that needs to happen additionally I think we need to flip it flip it on the other way where in the past we've also done like a public hearing style where hey the information's out there we might make just a couple of comments like hey here are the facts and when we're just there as a listening body where

136it's not like so much back and forth we're just here very much like public comment just to receive because I think it's really important for us to create that space for people just to be able to voice um and not necessarily like engage in a back and forth and then we can take all of that information um and continue to work through committee and our board structure so that is something that's really important to me in this process um the other thing I just want to bring up because we didn't have a legislative update kind of piece on the on the agenda which is fine um I just want to draw everybody's attention to the fact also that I think there is some Statewide advocacy space here as we listen to the very important concerns

137that we've heard raised tonight certainly and other concerns that will be raised throughout the community I think it's important for us also to let the state know that um the 33.3% special education reimbursement that was in the budget that was approved for 20225 sorry I can't talk 20232 25 school year is completely inadequate as we heard tonight vo in public comment there is still a $ 1.5 billion annual funding Gap in special education across the state uh whereas schools um students who attend voucher schools get a 90% reimbursement voucher or up to a 90% reimbursement voucher um and I think also just um making sure that we braid all of that work together in a way that we can be good stewards of the voices of our community our teachers our students as well as

138good Advocates going forward because the problems are not going to go away until the funding is is changed so that's all I had to say thank you for the presentation to our administrators uh vice president Brian Nichols thank you board President Johnson yeah I just um board member Anderson I 100% concur with with all that you said I think uh you know we've got we got a lot of things to take care of you know a short amount of time and I think the more heads we have involved and the more detail that we can get the better off that we can we can do um something one of you said made me think of something I I was involved 100 years ago in a uh in a fiveyear strategic plan for the division that

139I worked for and it was a humongous effort and there were only two of us doing it but we had the access to the other people in in organization but it we didn't we didn't create this the 5-year plan and just set on it every year we updated it every single year we updated that strategic plan so it was it was a rolling Five-Year Plan so maybe that's something we we might want to consider going forward is that I know that takes more effort but so be it that might help us through some of these tough situations see them coming a little bit sooner than you know obviously after the referendum failed so um that's just a thought but I I 100% agree that we should you know bring back the bring back our committee

140and start meeting uh considerably more often thank you uh board member Greg Schneider I I just want to um thank uh Dr Garrison and all of the administrative staff for the hard work that they've had to put in to reduce the budget deficit to this point um and and just that we need to acknowledge that the last 42 million is going to be the toughest out of any of it because it's going to have to end up in a way impacting students um because between last year the $10 million uh that we had to cut and this year the 10.8 there's not much left that isn't going to start doing serious impact to the students um which which I find very unfortunate uh that we get that we're at this point um as the community

141has asked us to um reduce behavioral issues in the school and to increase academic achievement and everything that we've been doing has led to those two things um and now if we have to continue to start cutting programming um and at some point increasing class sizes it's going to make it even more difficult to do what the community is asking us to do um and I think the community needs to be aware that um well signs that were posted for the last referendum said money won't help well if you don't have the money you can't provide the programming you can't have the staff and and while I understand all of the talk talk tonight about needing more staff in the school and I agree we can't do that if we're cutting money and we continually

142have to do that um you know we are in a very difficult spot right now um and and I thought thank Dr Garrison and all of the administrative staff for their hard work at this point and and bringing us this preliminary look at at at the budget cuts um and knowing that they'll continue working on it until we get closer to that deadline but we need to get it so um I just want to thank them for all of their effort um and just you know to remind everybody that we're trying to do what the community is asking and what the students need um but we still do have to have the funds to be able to do that so board member henkins and then we'll cycle back around thank you um Mr T if

143I could just go back to you for a second when you talked about the shifting of the dollars spent or the teachers paying going from 2 to 4% and you mentioned 257,000 is that times is that per month 257 is that times 12 uh the 257,000 would be an approximate annual annual cost reduction to the district okay I don't want to say savings because again that's a cost shift right it's taking District expense and putting that on the burden of the insurance right yep okay I just want to uh mention what we're all talking about here and as I understand we are this is all for discussion tonight and uh we're not coming to any I I think that I thank the administration also for putting this information together for us to look at I

144do agree with Mr Anderson that uh it need to be it more in depth I would like to see a building by building we tonight we kind of laser focused on Converse and some of the things but all the other buildings have are going to have these shifts also to me as a board member I like to see building by building what's being proposed and uh the enrollment numbers comparatively to that school and the reductions and that would be most helpful to me thank you board member Levy thank you um with us testing out this new Cadence I just want to make sure that we understand the process for shifting information to committee work um board member Anderson what you described sounds wholly appropriate does the board need to make a motion to send something

145to that committee so that they know they need to schedule their meetings how is that being handled parliamentarian Levy I was hoping you had that answer well here's the thing we can make a motion to move things to committee and I thought that's how we would handle it um but it would make sense for me if that motion came from the committee chair because they have a relevant understanding of what they want their committee to review I think another side thought to that is we we set aside time of course before the meetings to to have some of these committee meetings as well as a part of the conversation and our last Cadence conversation and So based off of when the committee would like to meet we could also just with the with the board

146and this the chair's recommendation to have a committee meeting we can just post that way as well so there's two ways one could argue we could do that one we could have a conversation Mr Anderson as as pertains to when you would like to have that meeting and then we could post it and we have a committee conversation kind of go from there too yeah I'm fine with that um we can certainly work that up between us and and coordinate it before meetings like you said and and I think um the members that are on the committee I think are all pretty flexible so we can do that in in tandem before for other meetings that we already have scheduled Brian Nichols and then I will um request a motion okay wonderful can I get

147a motion I'm not sure if a motion a motion for what oh I thought I thought you were suggesting we needed a motion to move it back to committee no we don't oh I was just asking for clarification for how we want to shift information so if we want to have the board direct information information two committees that's fine if we want to agree by consensus that that'll be between the committee chair and Dr Garrison since it's not regularly scheduled if board members could get an email like we typically do on postings for committee meetings um that would be helpful yeah that's the that would be a great plan just pretty much do it like we would normally do in meet before the meeting thank you thanks and secretary show you do you mind taking

148care of that email and getting us all on the same page thank you okay let's move to restorative practices discussion this was on the uh agenda last meeting and I brought it back for a discussion tonight um because the um because well board member Levy had an excellent question last meeting and that was um if we were to can um cancel new the new root program would we have greater costs and in the interm uh the other bids came to light and I wanted to bring that to discussion so we can all um understand what the costs are are um the direct cost and indirect costs thank you board President Johnson and one of the things that we want to do is you know of course respond to those questions and um and so I'm

149not going to spend much time going back over the previous presentation as we had that last week and not necessarily due for time but we also want to be you know respectful to the time frame that we have um for all of our discussions um and so we want to answer those two questions and then of course see if there's any board questions beyond that so the first question um Senator self around um I want to start with the bids first is that okay Missy y um the bidding process um and I'll have Mr um we go into that question and then then we'll tackle the last question with Mrs beavers thank you you can explain the be process all right thank you thank you uh Eric we director of special education for the school

150district deoy um so the bidding process we really started in January of 2022 um once our plan um was approved by DPI in terms of kind of what we were looking at implementing to address some of our disproportionality uh we started to do research around organizations that can help support um our district in moving restorative practices forward um this also came around the the same time that uh some of our buildings were actually exploring the um possibility of moving forward with building trainings around this as well and they had kind of reached out to us and we were like actually perfect timing we're starting this process here um and we're going to you know look to do it districtwide instead of just a building here or a building there um in March of 2022 we

151had then identified three potential Partners uh that would potentially have the capacity to support our district in this work moving forward those three Partners were restorative justice education which is out of Fort Collins Colorado uh restore more which is out of Atlanta Georgia and then new route which is out of Chicago Illinois in April of 2022 we then set up individual meetings with each of those organizations to hear more about what they can provide in regards to supporting a school district in implementing restorative justice practices um and embedding it into the culture and routines within our buildings and gave us the opportunity to really explain to these organizations um what we need here in response to some of the information that we had been Gathering from our buildings um so we met with restorative justice

152ad on April 6 restore more on April 7th and new route on April 8th this slide really outlines the uh differences between those three organizations and what they could commit to in regards to supporting our district in the work moving forward uh restorative justice Ed was the one organization that was able to provide us the least amount of support they really embraced a train the trainer uh model with um access to online learning modules which coming out of the pandemic uh we had gotten a lot of feedback from staff that sitting in front of a computer for online learning not necessarily what they were most interested in at that time um and there was little to no opportunity for that organization to support us long term in regards to coaching and implementation in each of

153our sites uh restore more uh had limited availability they were willing to provide on-site services and you can see them listed in the um box on this slide as well um however they did disclose to us at the time that they had just um entered into a partnership with the New York State Department of Ed to support their large urban districts and so they really weren't sure longterm outside of this one uh year implementation what level of support they could provide as at that time they were a team of three individuals from that organization they didn't have a large uh staff capacity and then new rout you can see on the boxes there all the things that they were able and willing to support us with um as well and they were the only organization

154that was really able to commit to a three-year implementation uh timeline provided our first year was successful uh we had asked for that ability to have two additional years of support because the plans that we write to submit to the state um are three to fiveyear plans because implementation science shows us that we need that time for things to come to fr and for us to really start to see those results and so while the initial um bids we were asking for were just for that one initial year we needed to know that the partner was able uh if we decided to continue to move forward and got the approval of the board for the additional two years to meet those demands and new rout was able to do that I'll pause there and ask

155the very any questions about the bidding um process that we went through um with the selection um about three years ago go ahead uh board member Nichols so I you know I had notes on here so what were the what were the bids what were the bids restorative in terms of dollar amount yes restorative justice Ed uh gave us a quote for 14,000 again though that was only to train 10 people okay um with access to online learning modules to move forward and access to a Google Drive of resources restore Mo's bid was 91,500 they had that limited availability but that was uh priced to commit to six on-site professional development sessions one session just uh Administration and the ability to engage in one tuneup session or a parent Workshop if depending on what we

156had decided at that time new Roots uh bid what came in at 64,000 for that first year that was to implement districtwide Wellness checks that uh allowed us to have access guaranteed to a minimum of two dedicated staff from their team on site providing the professional learning and coaching and support with the work that we're doing as a district that quote was for four Administration professional development sessions 10 Administration community of practices 10 building team lead community of practices four District wide professional development sessions that were open to any staff member to choose to participate in during our professional learning days and an integration of the restorative justice work with our districtal resources so the so that was the first year the other two were that was the first year also yes the other two

157quotes for for one year yes correct sorry so year two cost for year two I we went to bid for year one okay yeah for we looked at year one only we came to the board with year one only okay so um so what happens when we lose uh administrators and teachers that are on these teams how does that affect the cost it do it doesn't affect the cost so they get retrained additional staff get retrained okay as part of the $164,000 correct right okay okay but um but seriously what so what what's the cost for year two and the year and cost for year three because you said it was a three-year deal right can you Dr Garrison that slide is towards the end that I presented at the last board meeting okay okay

158[Applause] okay okay so uh 2223 was 164,000 which you gave me 2023 I apologize 2023 24 was 367,000 not to exceed uh and that's Esser funded corre correct correct correct but the first year was Grant funded through what cceis which is uh a portion of our flow through grants okay and then next year is 180 not to exceed 189 ,000 Esra funded correct but the Esra funding has to be spent by the end of September correct okay so do we know what it is going forward from there we will pay year three at the start of year three okay okay and so total amount paid from July 22nd today 378 850 is that through April is that through March is that through today today okay okay thank you you're welcome any other board member questions

159oh go ahead board member henkins is there any data to support new rout and what they've accomplished in the district since it started two years I guess now so we did present um in slides 11 and 12 um kind of looks at some with that that data um of course like we mentioned in in the last presentation we can't necessarily say that everything that we've seen and in reduction of our um discipline opportunities here in the school district can't all say it points directly to just new route I'm sorry restorative practices my apologies um but we can say that here are some of the the changes that we've had to experience under these conversations around restorative practices here in our school district um um slides uh 11 10 11 12 13 um and probably into

16014 also speaks a little bit to that data um board member henkins so as as their contract M beavers have they fulfilled their contractual obligation to the district wouldn't they said they would Supply this and that have you they have done everything they they were required to do with their contract okay board member Levy thank you so much just to clarify Dr Garrison and I know we can't pinpoint because of this action we got this result so with that in mind um during the time that we've been using new rout as a district has the district gone from being identified as DP by DPI as disproportionate with respect to discipline um disaggregated by race to not being identified as disproportionate and if so I mean you are the ones that are on the ground in

161the day the day of this um do you believe that any of that is attributable to the restorative practices work that the district has engaged in okay so um to answer your first question yes so we initially were identified significant racial dis dis uh discrepancy uh in special education discipline for our students that are black African-American Hispanic and two or more races and we are significantly disproportionate in discipline practices as a district for our students who are black African-American we have since not been identified as disproportionate we have gone back to discrepant so essentially it's like a it's no identification a discrepant identification or disproportionate so we did we are moving in the right direction um it is unrealistic for any District to move completely from disproportionate right to zero identification without making that progress

162but we have been making progress um and we would contribute some of that again we don't want to say that it's 100% because of implementing restorative practices with the assistance and coaching with our partner new rout um but they're definitely we're seeing um preliminary results that we can say that it has had an impact in combination with other efforts that we've worked to implement as well thank you so much for that clarification and so the second part of the question question I'm sorry for um any other board member with members with questions right now that haven't asked questions yet regarding this topic um I have a question uh about the grant funding if if nobody else has a question then um and that is what else can that grant money be spent on or does

163it have to be spent on new route or comparable program like new route so the cceis funding which is mandated set aside of our special education flow through funds the stipulation is it needs to be spent on programs and supports at a universal level not for students with disabilities so it literally forced us to take money away from our students with disabilities and put it towards efforts that are supporting all of our students in our buildings could those efforts be something other than a new rout program such as more support staff in the specialed classrooms or something it cannot be for that and I it has to be for programs can we just finish the thought and then um so the way we wrote our plan was to support our social emotional behavioral programs and

164opportunities in our building we identified restored of justice as one kind of pillar under that framework and so we are obligated to spend those funds towards restorative justice and I do just want to clarify because I I do hear a lot new root is not a program restorative justice is the work that we're doing new root is merely a partner that we have entered into an agreement with to support us in that work they don't provide us curriculum they don't provide us like they help us develop common language they support through professional learning around what truly restorative practices are they've helped buildings identify all those proactive things uh that they can put in place through Community Building um building relationships to help keep kids from making choices that end up um resulting in Code of

165Conduct infractions the only piece I wanted to add and I wish I had said it the first so I'm just going to mention it because um board member Levy uh brought that up just now when she was asking about the improvements when you look up at the screen right now and you see idea that is a federal policy so when you have a federal civil rights Department of Civil Rights has a finding that we are disproportionately suspending another reframe of that is oh we are disciplining and what they are saying to us is what are you doing differently how are you changing practices because this is coming from the Department of Civil Rights and so the state in DPI is coming to them but that's because that came from a higher department and the state

166of Wisconsin had those findings we have some of the we had some of the largest educ educational gaps in the country and so you have to have a plan and you have to submit it and you have to reflect on how are we doing things differently cuz again if we're disproportionately suspending students that means we are using it and in fact their way of looking at that right another way to look at that is we are overusing that to correct Behavior right it's exclusionary and so that's what idea is saying if you read that policy thank you you're welcome go ahead B oh I'm Excuse me actually Bo president I'm sorry board President Johnson I just had my hand up for a while do you mind if I jump in yeah please go ahead sorry

167to interrupt um I just haven't spoken to the issue yet I appreciate it first of all I just want to say like wow like thank you so so much to the teachers and administrators that are doing this work because as Miss beavers just pointed out very eloquently um it is a very difficult thing to put yourself outside of your comfort zone as an educator and as an educational professional and engage in this work and I am so impressed with the amount of progress that we've made so I just really want to thank everybody who's been involved everybody who's sort of like had to have the courage to step into something unfamiliar and do this very necessary and important work for our children um I have two quick questions one um because based on um at

168least the beginning of an earlier public comment it sounds like there might be some misunderstanding about what restorative practices is so I just want to clarify to make sure that we're using this you know like you talked about common vocabulary so um what I'm referencing when I'm thinking about restorative practices is I pulled up um John Hattie's visible learning work which is a research synthesis um of findings from over, 1400 metaanalyses of 80,000 studies involving 300 million students in the United States about what works best for education and in the subset of classroom influences um the highest rated thing in a list of let me just count one two three four five six seven eight nine different types of classroom influences is a behavior intervention uh program so when we're talking about restorative practices we're

169talking about a proactive behavior intervention program um Dr Garrison or Miss beavers or Mr we is that right when we're talking about behavior intervention programming is it's not it's not that I'm sorry it's more restorative can you oops sorry do you want us to explain it Mrs um Miller well I guess what I'm what I'm getting I guess what I'm after is that it seems to me like all of the research that's available and maybe I'm I'm mischaracterizing it based like in my classroom experience um it's about proactive practices that Center like individual student well-being um in terms of instruction um proactive behavior intervention and then when there is an offense there is a restorative opportunity for both the offender and the offended and those who are impacted by it um which the purpose of

170that would then be to teach like compassion understanding and behavior Improvement I mean is that characterizing it or is there anything that I'm missing there you that's correct but that is different than a program you're talking about practices no absolutely and I think that like these practices I'm sure are in tandem with um you know I think we have some programs right like is it mindsets that we use for example like we do have programming yes we do have Behavior well I guess I just wanted okay I'm sorry we do have Behavior inter no I apologize because there's a delay oh okay okay okay then I I'll pause no no I apologize because I keep ending I I'm not intending to interrupt there's like a delay in the audio because I'm home and I apologize

171for inconveniencing you with that but in any case um I really appreciate the opportunity just to clarify that um and like the last comment I wanted to make earlier and Miss beavers also just brought up is that um year-over-year Wisconsin is um at least in terms of Education disproportionality ranked as if not the most among the most uh dangerous state for black and brown children to be educated because of our school to prison Pipeline and exclusionary discipline has been studied since the 70s and has never been shown ever been shown to produce positive outcomes for children and since we are in the business of centering on what is best for children I believe we all have little placards at some point in the boardroom uh reminding us that when we make decisions we make decisions

172based on what is in the best interest of children or we used to have them or something to that effect I just wanted to highlight that because um Miss beavers I really appreciate your comments um we're here for every child um and I really think that since exclusionary discipline has never ever been shown to British positive outcomes for children and while limited the research that exists around restorative practices and restorative justice is shown to yield positive results and to interrupt the school to prison pipeline I just really appreciate our willingness to put ourselves outside of our comfort zones since every day our students put themselves outside of their comfort zones in order to learn in our classrooms thank board member Brian Nichols um were we were we working with we were certainly working on restorative

173practices before two years ago right I'm assuming to the best of my knowledge there was a push in 2015 but there was a in District trainer and it wasn't mandated in buildings you volunteered and came to the training should you wish so was that with an organization or was that was that an employee of the district uh I can't answer I I I don't know the answer to that I I believe the person that was delivering the training as an optional training was a district employee I don't know where her training came from I don't know the answer answer to that I I can tell you from what I understand as well that the there was and again this is just a history digging in papers right and and trying to figure out what's what

174was in this conversation we there was training as I understand it as I understand it it was conducted by an employee as Mrs Bieber stated but also in that same vein the in our next conversation it was noted that because of the restorative practice conversation that was documented decreases in our discipline even when it was practiced back in 200 15 and 16 and so for thought right right right and I I appreciate that um we I I want us to keep uh restorative practices as aside because we are talking about the new rout partnership or or whatever whatever you want to call it partnership it's um that's um I I well I I believe all of the board members received an email um today from a former employee um administrator that posed some good questions

175why didn't we use PBIS why didn't we use a program we we previously had unfortunately I've not heard any positive feedback regarding new rout and its impact on Behavior or academic achievement in the schools other than from the people in this boardroom and we really have to consider the cost of new route not just the financial dollar amount but the cost to our learning environment for our students the security and safety of our teachers and retention of our Educators I would much rather spend money on retaining teachers and training them in a program they are program partnership whatever they are receptive to and feel comfortable using so just for point of clarity around PBIS so PBIS is quite an Antiquated framework the state itself has disbanded its PBIS Center they don't even support the old

176school PBIS mentality of token economies because the research has shown that it's ineffective in regards to maintaining positive behaviors in learning environments um have all board members who wanted to comment I um go ahead okay um Greg Schneider I don't think you've commented on this yet no okay um anytime you introduce a new program or strategy it's going to take 3 to 5 years before you begin to see any amount of results that are consistent especially when we take a look at restorative practices where the first year was really looking at training the teams training the administration it wasn't even getting strongly into training the teachers it takes time to get everybody trained to be able to to proceed with with the procedures um in a f you know in a in a way that's

177consistent so it does give us results to do that if we look at at new route or any group that comes in we also have to think of that we're getting experts people that really know what they're doing right off the bat if the district was going to pick it up and do that training how much would it cost us to send 10 or 20 trainers somewhere else for a week for three years in order to get the training to begin to do the training within the district if we want to approach programs and to improve things in a very systematic and consistent way we do sometimes have to pay for th that expertise who's going to be able to train us right away in in the correct way to move forward with that so

178if we start looking at what it would cost for us to train our own people it's going to probably come to as close to or more than what we're paying uh new route to come in and coming into our district to do those supports so that they're actually working with teachers and administrators as they're trying to go through the process not in a workshop somewhere else um that doesn't make any difference which group or what it is that you're trying to do it takes time to get results and you do have to look at what is the advantage you're getting of going with a consultant uh to come in and to train you with that um who's also available in the future if you need to have somebody come back in and do some quick

179retraining on somebody then what it would take to send a lot of people from the district out to get that training and then to come back and to have to work with to be able to Institute it here um once we now that we've gone through the training or will when we do the implementation we'll have people in the district who will be able to to train new teachers as they come in and to move forward with this um so you know we have to consider that too not just that we're we're spending this kind of money to to get something to happen but what are the advantages of a contract um over trying to do it ourselves so um board member Tom henkins you had your I'm just going to go back to a

180couple weeks ago and uh I think and I board member Levy asked me the question it wasn't the restorative justice that was being hashed out it was newo and newo just seemed to be the lightning rod that I kept hearing over when I was running for board get rid of it the teachers didn't buy into it the administration didn't buy into it they dug their heels in they didn't have any ownership to new rout it was not the restorative justice end of it and I don't know whether there's smoke there's fire and I know that kak has their viewpoint on it but if you asked the rank and file on the implementation of that it was a it was a common drum beat that I kept hearing and I still hear um I would like

181to know new rout has to have a track record by now and look at similar demos of of a different district and how they've how they've done in other areas that new route has been implemented at I know they're out of Chicago but uh I don't know they have to have they have to have the track where by now I would imagine I'm not sure when they were organized when they were formed um I just think it it needs to be rehashed that we're doing right now um because it was a lightning rod for me when I in January February March from I just kept hearing it over and over new route I didn't even know what it was but um I just think we're doing The Prudent thing in researching it right now I

182don't know if we're coming to decision maybe we are tonight to discontinue I don't know the side effect if we do discontinue that contract there's a penalty with that involved um and we pick up with someone else I just think we're doing the the right thing in hashing it out right now thank you thank that's a a good question you know are there penalties what are the penalties um and um just so you know uh board members can take action on any agenda items okay um Brian Nichols you were next with your hand up thank you um well um board president um Johnson alluded to some communication that we received and I can tell you that when I was running a year ago and all year this year I have been reached out by parents

183teachers former teachers administrators former administrators community members have reached out and they say it's not working and we had I don't we had six people to tonight you're one of them six people in this room who are teachers saying our discipline is not good you need to let me finish you need to stay in the one teacher said you need to stay in the school room more than 15 minutes you need to stay there all day to see what really happens in our schools so um I think we're we're we're doing a disservice if if assuming all these things are true we're doing a disservice to all the other students in the room and I agree I hear what you're saying Greg we we probably have enough people now that it's been two years right

184we're end of the second year with renew route right yes so we should have plenty of people trained that we can do it by ourselves now is but I I think the time is now is to cut off cut our losses and get rid of new route and do our own thing and find something better and and make sure that our classrooms are safe for everybody and I'll throw this one other example out Mrs pills bear with me what happened at the high school on May the 6th in the diversity the diversity uh meeting there was a fight correct so in a diversity meeting in a high school we have a fight that interrupted an assembly of the entire school is that fair to everybody else there no so I make a motion I move

185to discontinue services with new root effective immediately just a point of order you absolutely have the right to make a motion but I don't think discussion has ended and I think one of our board Norms is to hear each other out before a question is called and a motion is made so again just wanted you to keep that in mind okay well there's always room for discussion after the motion correct only on the motion not open discussion okay um board board member Megan Miller is your hand hand up yes my hands up let me unclick it thanks okay so it was pretty clear to me when I saw this agenda item posted on the agenda again after we had already had a robust discussion about it the week before that this is like the clear

186intention of this agenda item being posted which I believe to be very misleading and disingenuous since there is not a recommended action item listed number one number two two we are doing a disservice not only to our students by defunding a program and essentially discont I apologize a partnership by discontinuing a partnership in the middle of implementation that is intended to support every child that is research backed nationally over like the last like 20 plus years furthermore um we I I'm really failing to understand how we can sit here and bemoon school violence School discipline issues and in the same breath Advocate that we take funding away from programming that is intended I apologize partnership and work that is intended to help us better structure ourselves as Educators build capacity within buildings to better and

187more proactively address those concerns and as Mr Weir pointed out it takes a minute nobody goes from and I'm going to mess up this language so I'm not even going to try the worst rating from DPI to zero rating we need a minute and the fact that we are moving up on that Continuum and also having a discussion about interrupting the work that has assisted us moving up that Continuum seems in congruent and does not seem to be in the best interest of protecting our students our teachers or ensuring that we continue to address the disproportionality issue that we have thank you board member Miller I did bring this back to for a discussion when I was informed my neighbor informed me that the other bids had become public and the huge dis uh discrepancies

188between uh a 30,000 is Bid a 90,000 is Bid And A then almost $2 million bid um was was a little bit alarming to clarify that that one year was not a $2 million bid it was uh 64,000 164,000 for the first year okay um we have a huge um we we still have what over $4 million we need to cut if we can again spend the uh CIS money on other items to address this no one is saying get rid of of restorative practices what we're saying is new route from everything we are hearing from within the school districts and the School District staff is ineffective I don't personally I don't don't see why we would continue spending money on an ineffective program I I'd much rather spend the 30,000 go go to this

189RJ Ed ask them hey we we've got another year in this we'll give you your 14,000 whatever and um come and do do your training that that would be fine with me um I'm concerned that this was not as uh well thought out as what I would like to see for our school district of booy it um appears to me that under the allowable cost for idea coordinated early intervening Services um from the DPI it looks like there are a lot of other things we could be using this for um it's um so that is why we are having this conversation and to address the issue of not having a motion in the agenda I would prefer my the board meetings to have conversation and not have me put a motion out there but the

190board come and decide what they would like to do board member Amy Levy your hands next thank you than you so much um I I will be brief I think it is completely Reckless to end a partnership for pro practices that the majority of the board says that we are committed to and oh we'll figure out what to do about it at some later date again I think that's reckless to just say we'll go back to option three when thank you for laying out there was n just the difference in money it was the difference in services and to go back to board member Anderson's previous point about a balanced budget that does not serve us well isn't a good thing just to select something because it has a lower dollar amount if the support

191isn't there does not mean that that is the best option I think for the time that has been put into this this practice that the majority of the board says has said publicly that we are committed to without the the intermediate step of saying new rout there are some concerns how can we partner together to address these concerns it's like throwing the baby out with the bath water which I think is absolutely ridiculous board member Greg Schneider your hands up again we're sorry we're we're looking at a program and taking questions and concerns and saying it's not working when it isn't fully implemented yet um it's like you take your car in they have the engine rebuild they have it half half done you say no you're taking too long it costs too much we're

192done I'm driving it out of here you're you're giving up in the middle of the work um it's not completed we knew up front that it was going to take several years to implement the process and whether it was new route or in either of the other groups it would really be at the same point and to say yes okay there was a fight at the school and say well um the restorative justice didn't didn't prevent that well you're right and if we hadn't started it it still would have happened and this does not replace the code of conduct I mean that's what we've been saying all the along if there's a fight that's there that goes directly to the code of conduct it needs to be handled under the code of conduct it's what

193happens afterwards so that people begin to understand um the consequences of their actions um as a way to help reduce um behavioral issues in the future um you know it isn't going to solve every problem that comes up um it's and nor yeah nor should it be expected to it is a process to begin to work along with the social emotional learning to to increase understanding and appropriate behaviors on our students um and that comes after the code of conduct is put into place um you know you do have to look at what are the services you're getting for the money that you are spending um and and that is something that there is so much difference between new rout and either of the other companies that offered uh Services um and the fact that

194you know if we looked at the the amount that's here um the amount for the third year is is much less than it was for the second year and that's to work with the staff to get the program implemented and the process is working correctly things that the other two companies weren't able to do I mean so we have to look at the full services that we're getting from it just like you do with anything else if you're purchasing anything for your home you look at what it is you need to get but you need to look at what are the options you have what are the services you get and are those added Services worth the dollars that you're spending for it um and I think we're losing sight of what the advantages are

195um that are offer offered by new root over the other companies board member Brian Nichols thank thank you board member Schneider um I heard everything you said um however I'm I'm thinking about the children that are missing out on an education we have lost a lot of teachers this year we have lost a lot of Administrators and there's some more that are going before the end of this this count this school year and they're leaving for better opportunities at less pay because of the discipline issue and we heard it tonight from people who are still here and I've heard it from people who are not here who left because of that and and that's a disservice to all of our children you cannot replace a 10 or 15 or 20 year old teacher with a

196a brand new teacher out of college and and have the same continuity you know I went through public schools and I understand but um it's just it's it's it's not working it's not working well it's not a well old machine and again our kids are fa failing kids need to be taught boundaries and consequences and that's what the code of conduct is supposed to be doing but if we if we let them if we excuse me are please forgive me I said that's what parents are supposed to do as well that is correct that is exactly what parents are supposed to do and we can't be the parents we have to do the best job we can with in educating our children and making them respectable adults and what Mr stenus show tonight is amazing

197that's that's awesome stuff I'm so glad we're doing that because not everybody wants to be a lawyer or a or a you know business executive or whatever so they can you know we we can educate for the trades which is amazing I'm getting off the weed I'm getting off in the weeds I'm just saying I've been hearing it for over a year now Mr henkins has been hearing it for SE six months or five months or whatever it's been and and board member uh board President Johnson I think I think board member uh Anderson is is hearing it and you know and people he comes in contact with people are frustrated they're frustrated and then we wonder why they don't vote for the referendum because we're not we're not taking care of the discipline in

198the schools that's part of the reason it really is I think I I've had I had somebody let me finish Dr Garrison I still have the floor I had I had a person come into my driveway who was teaching at one of the elementary schools and she said Brian it's crazy it is absolutely crazy in the classroom and I'm only going that's all I'm going to tell you I'm going to go to another person who came into my driveway and said I pull my school kids out because because of the discipline in the schools was it was scary and I have another teacher who homeschools her kids because she doesn't feel comfortable in them in the school district so those are no that's not all 5200 kids and we I know we got a lot

199of bright kids in here in this in this school district and there I think there's I think there's room for a lot more we just have to be on top of our game and and teaching him boundaries and respect and that's part of restorative that can be part of restorative practice but not letting them go and you know uh 50% is not 50% is not passing 50% is failing we should be holding students back if if that's the case they got they got they got to get an education thank you uh vice president Nichols our student board representative would like to say a word so I think it's important that we hear from her being the voice of the students um so as you were saying Mr Nicholls board member Nicholls um yeah it is

200unfortunate that a lot of students lose educational opportunities because other students have dis behavior problems and it is easy to say well we're not the parents it is easy to say it it's taking time to implement uh a partnership as well and I understand new rout does have a wonderful aspect of restorative justice it's not us saying no to restorative justice it's us saying no to the current issues that are constantly happening and it's taking a while to implement the partnership but we have to do something in the meantime because students are losing so many hours not just minutes but hours of Education when fights break out and students are going out in the hallways cuz some of them would rather do go focus on that rather than focus on education and then you're just

201sitting there and the teacher has to go get the students and it's a it's a bigger issue and I also work along with younger kids and i' done this in the summer fulltime from early in the morning till the afternoon and I've taught them boundaries I've taught them multiple different aspects of restorative justice we've had circles where we had to talk and it was not just me but another staff and an admin in the building and it's important to implement restorative justice but it's also just as important to listen to not just one but multiple voices of students and teachers and admin and people who deal with the students every single day I'm not saying this program is not important I'm not saying this program will never work but I am saying there's something seriously

202wrong with the way our district is going and it doesn't just root from kids deciding one day let's be bad it's them seeing a pattern a pattern of them not getting in trouble or a pattern of them not receiving love at home so I think we need to be more open-minded about how we think about this program I also think that the disciplinary issues that have been occurring it's not going to take a partnership to fix this it's bigger than that and again board president you were saying how it's it's thousands of dollars and it's a lot of teachers and students and admin and parents who are saying this isn't working so I think instead of completely not listening we need to both be able to comprehend that let's say we do continue with new

203rout what are we doing in the meantime to make sure our students are not focusing on the wrong things because if new Ru is going to take a long time to implement we need to have something else going on so our students don't lose education and our parents don't have frustration CU they can't be parents all the time cuz unfortunately many of them are working a 9 to5 and they have their kids do extracurriculars because they can't be a parent but that's just a student input as I have multiple peers who don't have parents who can parent and some of them have had to go through alternative education or Challenge Academy and so on and so forth because they the restorative isn't res being restorative as it's supposed to and we we need to find

204a different way to do it in the meantime if we do continue that's all thank you thank you Connie um Megan Miller and then Brian Nichols and then let's wrap up with that oh thank you so much um I just wanted to um well thank you so much for those comments um oops I got a lower my hand here um thank you so much for those comments in that perspective I am also a teacher in classrooms I work with students who have uh reading difficulties and absolutely understand um the breath of you know we're we're the iceberg right we see the tip of the iceberg in each other and nobody really knows right what's below that water line and I think it's really important um that you brought that up so to that point I'm

205hearing a lot of um folks in our boardroom right now talk about our feelings about a partnership and I have strong feelings about a lot of issues that come before us and I try to make decisions based on data and not on my feelings because it's really unfair to the population that we're serving right like I have friends um who teach at the high school who have sung the Praises of new root who I'm sure will be sending some emails tomorrow but that's not important really because even though I value their opinions and perspectives they don't represent the totality of the population of the school district just like the people you're hearing from don't either so what I try to do as a board member is I try to look I try to listen and

206I try to look at the data and we know that we can do more than one thing at the same time right like we can teach all of these different subjects we have these fabulous Arts programs we have all of these things that we can celebrate with our CTE we're leading three to one um with our career Pathways program so much to be proud of in our district we can do all of those things at the same time so I don't see why we can't give due diligence to increasing our capacity further implementing a partnership that will help all of us because you know as a as a teacher and as a grownup right we don't always we don't always know what we don't know that's why it's important for us to be continuous Learners

207and that is the opportunity that a partnership with an organization like new root offers to us I don't want to set the work back um I absolutely wholeheartedly support what I'm hearing about making sure that we are diligently enforcing the code of conduct because of course that needs to happen and it sounds like there's room for improvement there I believe um based on the data that I'm seeing that we can continue to implement our partnership with new rout while being uh maybe more uh and I don't know because I haven't heard from administrators I just you know based on the couple of comments that we've heard tonight it sounds like again there's room for improvement in that enforcement of the code of conduct so I believe that our educational professionals particularly our classroom teachers are

208skilled enough to to um and our building administrators are skilled enough to do both things right to continue to deepen the work in restorative practices in partnership with the current trajectory that we're on and like it's nothing even about like new rout specifically it's like we're already on a track why would we Step Off The Track Set progress on hold uh while we know that this is such an important issue so I guess like those are just the points I wanted to raise and then um before and then I'm going to step off the mic here but I just wanted to ask um if Miss beavers or Mr Weir or Dr Garrison had anything to respond to um because we haven't heard from them in a while and I believe that since they're the ones

209doing this work their voices are very important as well so I do have a comment and um you know one of the things that I try to I try to do more listening I do talking and I know I don't sound like that always but I I do try to do more listening than I do talking um um in this conversation there's about one could argue a third of people who probably believe in in the restorative practice conversation a third of people who are on the fence about it and a third of people who may not agree with what we're doing okay I like to call it a third third third conversation I trust the the board when they brought this conversation and approv this conversation based off of your strategic plan um that we

210will continue to move in this direction as as such um I do I have heard from constituents as well Mr Nichols I've heard from M constitu as well Mrs Levy after everyone on the board and one of the things that I have to do a better job at as a district administrator is trying to figure out what's the best path forward what's the best path forward for all of us because clearly if if one person can talk to one board member and say that we don't like it and then all of a sudden we come back to the conversation and say let's get rid of it vers vice versa we love it and we let's keep it there's a level of what we all have to understand when we make decisions as a board that

211it's a it's a collective decision that was made prior to most of us being here okay um including me and I believe that this program has based off of the data has shown benefit for our school district now one could say they don't like it one could say we don't understand it one could say that we want to you know get rid of it but according to the data that's been presented not not me just the data that's been presented one could argue that these conversations have been working for our school district now again that's according to the data numbers on paper just like you have data and I have data we all get data information um and we can move that data to how we want to hear it but there's funds that's been

212allocated for this um SRA dollars has been allocated for this um in the last two years um the CCI CC I might mess up the acronym there but the CC the CC um funds CC say it again CCIS thank you thank you cceis thank you um funds was already allocated for this it's already paid for out of that money is gone I think sometimes we think there's new money coming to this conversation that money is gone that money is has been spent already it's been used you won't get that money back I think when people look at the budget they think okay well we can get this money back but in this case up until now that 358,000 umll or so um I don't have my numbers in front of me $378,000 has been you

213used that money is used and so there's a conversation that I think we're missing in that we can't get that money back yeah yeah I'm just want to make sure we're all on the same P that money is that money is used what we do have a conversation around is what we've allocated These funds based off of the the grant that we have it was approved prior to the to most of us out sitting on this board um including myself and I believe that we have demonstrated growth in an area in which a lot of people may still have disagreements around as it pertains to our overall raw discipline in our school district now again I'm not saying that people's conversations aren't valid or don't have a place in the in in this in this

214space but I am saying that there's two sides of that conversation and we are only hearing at times the one side in this community the the community that we work in says damaging things about us daily and it has not helped us it just hasn't and I wish it back when we were having 94 exposion hearings or 2,000 plus disciplinary conversations the conversations was we're going crazy the district is going crazy district is going crazy now that we making some changes it's like okay well there's still problems and the changes aren't good enough well I don't know it's just like you we make the changes right we start doing the work right and we want to see those changes continue to change the commentary that's that's what you want want to do as an and

215as a district administrator that's the space that we have to operate from I understand the board can based off of the rules can make a motion can move forward with how with how they how you want to you know do this I understand that but I also want you all to hear me when I say based off of the data that we've been able to show in this space we've we've gotten better that conversation needs to be priated through our through our district as well because one side of the coin is being heard more than the other and that's just not fair to the work that we have in front of us Mrs bers thank you for giving me an opportunity to speak I just wanted to add that um a lot of the conversations

216that you all may be having um are based on misinformation again um in year one we trained administrators and building leaders we haven't even infiltrated the schools yet so for staff to say new route is not working or restorative justice is is not working we haven't even gone into the buildings yet um if you recall last month we said we trained building teams which again is your building administrators your two building Champions and then in addition maybe four to six staff members so I would implore you to ask the people that you're speaking to have you sat through a new route training have you let me finish because we like we let you finish the other thing last month that we were the the other thing last month that we miss B we have spoken

217to people in our district who have attended the trainings I will quote them directly new rout is a joke thank you last month we were also tasked with um clearly communicating with people because of perhaps the misinformation we've have not been we will not be able to have that opportunity um should you make a motion to terminate the contract um this evening we also um um had a conversation about going back to our partners because we've been very um instrumental and meeting with them regularly and providing them with transparent feedback and we won't be given the opportunity to do that either so I just wanted to put that out there I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to talk are there any board members that would like to make a motion and so we can

218move on or if there's no motion we will move on to the next item I just had my hand raised briefly I'm not sure if you had a moment um just as the parliamentarian I just wanted to briefly speak to the decorum in the room and I'm very uncomfortable with us using our positions as a reason to talk over people so to say I'm the president I did not I did not yield the floor to miss beavers okay well I didn't yield the floor just now so if I could finish that would be amazing I don't think it's okay for us to say I'm the president I'm a board member so I can talk over you I just want us to be mindful when we have challenging conversations that we are cognizant of the decorum

219in which we have those conversations thank you so much thank you parliamentarian Levy I will note that in the future the board president yields the floor for speaking I did ask Mrs beavers and so let me let me jump in and say this as a team um I did ask Mrs Bieber to comment after I commented and so um that that's directed at me yes so thank you I just want to make sure that's not directed at my staff I did ask her to to comment cuz she was at the at the table at the time I just want to make sure that's that's noted in the conversation are there any motions regarding this [Music] issue vice president Brian Nichols well before that I just want to clarify a couple things uh first of all

220again if if I upset anybody that's not my intention my intention is to look out for our kids and I heard everything everybody says but it seemed like everybody kind of overlooked what we heard in this room tonight from teachers there was six of them that spoke Mrs beavers the misinformation I made a l i read a list of the people that I've talked to parents teachers former teachers administrators former administrators and community members community members is last and I understand where you're going with that and that's not that's the least amount of people I hear it from most of it is people who are intimately involved with this District so and again we you were here tonight and you heard it from in public comment um so it's not it's it's I'm not coming

221from a a standpoint of I just believe everything I hear it's not that I've I've had emails I've had comments I've had visits in the driveway and so I'm not against I too am not against restorative practices as long as it doesn't affect the other kids in the rooms we got to remember if there's 20 kids in the room they all got to be taken care of not not one and 19 are left to to to to flounder or whatever that's just an bad example so anyway I just think and and as far as somebody brought it up a while ago Chicago Chicago's been using that since 2001 they spent millions of dollars on it and I I don't know what the rating of Chicago school system Public Schools is but last I heard it

222wasn't very good but I don't know that to be a fact I'm not there so anyway but they've been they've been using it for since 2001 so and that's where new route's headquartered right is in Chicago yeah yes okay so and it's not it's not so much about new rout is is is as the kids it really is um can I continue so I will make a motion that I move to discontinu services with new route effective immediately due to budgetary constraints and the re and to re-evaluate the need for such a program at a later date I'll second [Music] we have a motion by Brian Nichols and a second by Tom Hanks Miss I'm sorry Tom henkins um Miss SCH can you read back the motion for me please I can only read most

223of it so what I have is move to discontinu services with new route immediately due to budgetary constraints and to re-evaluate and I didn't catch the tail end the need for such a program at a later date thank you we have a motion by Brian Nichols a second by Tom henkins any discussion on the motion board member Megan Miller thank you so much um I'm curious about um I just want to make sure I understand so it sounds like the board supports restorative practices however we're going to discontinue the contract with the partnership we have to implement these practices so I'm wondering if there's a date in mind or if our Administration could speak to the logistics how our children will go unharmed and with you know how are we going to address the unmet

224services that will occur based on this current motion so what's the date in mind if that question is to administration of course um the action is based off of board member Nicholls action I haven't had time to even think about that at the current time how we would continue this conversation differently um because this this is happening you know right now um thank you for asking the question Mrs um Miller we will have to figure out how we can still have the conversations in the district because it's in our strategic plan I mean it's it's in our strategic plan as it stands okay and then just a followup I mean I think this is like an example of that board Norm about no surprises so like maybe next time we can have some discussion ahead

225of time so we can be better prepared to fill the gaps thanks board member Amy Levy thank you so much I'm just I'm going to iterate this is reckless if we say that we are committed to restorative practices but we want to end a partnership that is assisting us with implementing restorative practices and and possibly pick up the conversation at some date and time uncertain and our children are not receiving restorative practice services in the meantime is reckless and and whenever there's a vote on the motion I would like a roll call vote please any other board members who have not spoken to the motion Michelle SCH may we have a roll call please yes Craig Schneider nay Amy ly nay Brian nich I Brian Anderson I Tom henkins I Megan Miller on behalf of

226my children nay and tia Johnson I the motion carried four to three thank you that brings us to the expulsion process uh no um Lori Medina um I have asked Lori Medina to speak tonight do we still have her on the line I'm here okay Lori Medina worked for the school district for 22 years she served as the board's expulsion hearing officer while I served on the board from 2009 to 2012 I asked her here tonight to share her p p perspective on the expulsion here hearing process because I remember her to be impartial and thoughtful she is now retired and is still willing to give her time tonight to support the school district of bloy Miss Medina thank you board President Johnson first I want to clarify something I was not the expulsion hearing

227officer I was the administrative hearing officer thank you that's right Bill Henderson was the expulsion hearing officer and when he left the position then um Mike Holland became the hearing officer and I I did the preh hearings the administrative hearings prior to expulsion uh I Miss Johnson asked me to present a little bit of background so I'm just going to give you a little bit of History here I started with the district in 1996 Contracting with them I was never an employee of the district and I took the place of an administrator who had been doing the administrative hearings prior to me because administrators just didn't want to get involved in the expulsion process at that time and a couple of years before that the board had decided they no longer wanted to do expulsions

228and that's when they appointed Bill Henderson as the expulsion hearing officer the State statutes allow for the board to hold expulsions themselves or they can appoint an independent hearing panel or they can appoint an independent hearing officer which is the way a lot of districts have gone over the years is to have an independent hearing officer so we ended up with a three-step process the administrative hearing and I got involved in that at the request of the building principal they would send a request to me for an administrative hearing I would do all the paperwork to get that process started and would hold the hearing within the student 5-day suspension if it went to expulsion then the expulsion hearing officer held the expulsion hearing and if the student was expelled then it would go to

229the board for final approval or denial or modification of the expulsion hearing order so I think we provided more due process than the statutes required and I think it worked effectively for a number of years many of the years when I was doing this we had no alternative programs so the student either got expelled or got sent back to school there weren't any other options so expulsions were higher then because we also had a code of conduct that mandated a number of offenses for expulsion and that was approved by the board the board decided what was in the code of conduct over time when we develop programs or the district developed programs as an alternative to expulsion I could place students alternatively rather than expelling them or sending them back to school um as far

230as who did the work I did all of it I did all of paperwork except for the expulsion order I prepared all the notices to the student and the parent prepared the expulsion packet if it went to expulsion um my hin prepared the expulsion order and then I sent everything to Michelle schope who then sent it to the board prior to their view so I'm not sure what else um you want to know about the process in the past we had about 20 25 years maybe of expulsion hearing officer doing the expulsions and the last couple of years I understand the board has been doing the expulsions so if you have questions or want to know any more about this I'd be happy to keep in mind I'm in the Eastern time zone so it's

231way past my bed time already thank you Miss Medina um what at at the time what was the reason for going to an administrative hearing officer and my apologies for mixing up your your um title and and can you describe um what the benefit was to the administration and um the the building administrators the administr an administrator for from Colac was doing the the administrative hearings and she left and the assistant superintendent at that time then took over doing the administrative hearings and they really wanted someone outside the district preferably an attorney and they sent out notices to a number of law firms in the bloy area asking for someone who might be interested in doing the administrative hearing M so that's how I ended up Contracting with the district um they just didn't want

232to do it internally anymore and felt that having two two attorneys hear the hearings prior to expulsion or prior to the board um making a decision on expulsion was a fair way to do it and it kept the district more limited in their involvement since a building administrator can't do do the administrative hearing for their own student by Statute it has to be somebody outside that building it really became tedious to get an administrator outside the building to keep doing these hearings so that's how I ended up getting involved until I retired and during those um expulsion hearings and administrative hearings what was the role of the board members and the superintendent the superintendent really had no role no active role at all in the expulsion process um the board came in at the end

233only if there was an expulsion if the hearing officer denied the expulsion then it didn't go to the board that was the end of it and the student returned to school if the expulsion hearing officer ordered an expulsion then it went to the board and they had the final say um um they could overturn the hearing officer's decision they could modify it or they could approve the decision of the hearing officer who notified the student Andor families of the board's decision if it did go to expulsion hearing I did I sent out a copy of the order and the letter explaining uh the board's decision with copies of course to the administration as well but I notified the parents and the students from the beginning to the end of the process thank you are there

234any board member questions for Miss Medina thank you thank you for your time Miss Medina I really appreciate the work and your dedication and your continued caring for the school District of booy um looks like uh Dr Garrison you have a presentation you want to present the information um that was shared um in board Doc's general information to our process before it goes to an exposion hearing um one of the things that I will share is as Mrs Medina just mentioned um the board can hear exposion hearings if it wants to or it can you know of course hire an attorney to do so um adding to my budgetary conversation of course we talked about the cost associated with someone doing those conversations over time um and I think Mrs Medina mentioned that was over

23525 years of service doing that work um as just a point of a thought here the administrative hearing officer independent hearing officer is one set of charges and then the exposion conversation is another set of charges um just want to make sure that's something that's also um understood um currently currently our current process is of course we follow the code of conduct and from the code of conduct if there's an administrative hearing required we have an administrative hearing from after the administrative hearing we decide since like Mrs Medina mentioned we do have different program that we can use Now versus what we had in the past and so the idea of that we're we just have to you know expel students and throw them out of booy um is not in play and that's why

236the board many years ago went to trying to implement different programs to to to help our students um that may fall into you know these types of conversations you know um Dr Herby talks about a net widening and a net um deepening effect and then in that widening effect is kids should get in trouble at times they will get in trouble right um and then naturally what we've done with the zero tolerance conversation is we've tightened the bottom of the basketball net and so that now every kid that gets in trouble or possibly gets in trouble is getting caught now I don't know about anyone on this board I don't think none of us was perfect whether we was in school or not um um we got in trouble sometimes and we F out lot

237of trouble right we got in trouble and sometimes we didn't and thank you know thank the man above thank God that I didn't get in trouble every single time I did something that I wasn't supposed to be doing um I would have been one of those students that you know possibly would have been you know disciplined differently had had that happened and so um in our conversations now we have different opportunities for our students to continue learning that's something that's in the Strategic plan as well um how we want to continue to engage the whole child and so that's something that you know the board has you know committed itself to and we have programs now that support students just by chance we do have um both of our um principles here that represents our

238high school conversation Mrs spells and Dr Schroeder um Dr Sher sorry sh I said it right okay sh sh right you didn't look up may me so I I had to make sure I got it right um we do have different opportunities where we we know work differently with students um and that's the process as it stands and so nothing has necessarily changed from the administrative perspective we still have an independent hearing officer that hears our conversations we still have conversations around what the code of conduct is stating we still meet the requirements that we have in our code of conduct and at times there's an exposion hearing and at times there's not there is one thing that has changed in the conversation I will say that upon my arrival one of the things I

239did ask the build an Administration to do is to let us know when we are having these types of problems these types of concerns because I'm not the administrator that want to sit on the sideline and just let anything happen in this District I do want to know what's going on I do want to know what situations had transpired I do want to know um when we have to have these Administrative Hearings because I want to know I mean that's that's part of my responsibili and in of my previous districts those are some of the things that we did do um and as it pertains to the exposion process that has changed over the past two years um well 2 and a half years I believe um the board now hears the exposion process um

240from my own time being here those processes have been regular we State our case just as Mrs Medina's probably did when she Mrs Medina when she was here sorry attorney attorney Medina did when she was here we have our position we set our case and then of course the board makes the final decision on the exposure um of course there's parent conversations in between there if they if they come but overall the process has been been smooth um from my own recollection and being here in the boardroom and so that's our process that's kind of what we doing and here in the school district and again the presentation is as follows thank you are there any board questions or comments for Dr Garrison or Miss Medina um I do have a one last question for

241you what would you say are the pros and cons of doing it the process each way well I haven't been i' I've been part of uh board held expulsion hearings in other districts to fill in for other attorneys occasionally um the process in beloy was there were just there were too many expulsions for the board to want to deal with it when I started and when I say too many I'm talking you know maybe 25 or 30 expulsions a year and the board just couldn't seem to find the time to want to continue doing that there were programs involved and no student was completely Left Behind the last number of years that I was involved um even an expelled student was able to go to the alternative program they won't just set home to sit

242and by themselves they were um provided Educational Services throughout the expulsion if they chose to take advantage of those the advantage of a hearing officer I think is one it saves time two I think it saves you money from seeing what I saw of the board expenses for attorneys to come in and from Milwaukee to come in and sit through expulsion hearings when Bill when Mike and I were doing the whole expulsion process we never charged the district more than 30 or $40,000 for the entire school year I think you're what I saw the payments made to the Milwaukee firm were a lot higher than that so cost is one um having having things done very quickly is another you have a 5day period in which to hold the administrative hearing and no more than

243another 10 days for the expulsion hearing um you're looking at some real time crunch for the board to get together and hold these hearings I I don't know how well the process has worked because I've not been involved in it in booy in the last couple of years thank you would anyone like to make a motion on this issue so sorry I I have things to say I just didn't have a question for for the person that you invited or for Dr Garrison okay are there any uh board member comments on this issue board member Amy Levy thank you so much um I have seen both sides of the coin I have served long enough to have that experience when we had an independent hearing officer to where we are now so I jotted down

244some notes please indulge me um when we had an indep endent hearing officer and the board was not hearing expulsions directly administrative packets were incomplete and we had no way to ask questions for example if we get a packet and we get a video of a meeting that we were not a part of it is the board's responsibility to determine whether a student will maintain or have severely altered their free and appropriate education so with that responsibility in mind mind I want more information and more clarification not less I think we owe that to our students so if I had a question for the independent hearing officer that person would tell me to refer to the packet well if the packet was incomplete or if that bit of information wasn't included I just don't have

245it it was unclear to me whether all of my colleagues watch the videos thoroughly judging from the conversation that was in the room I won't go into greater detail um to protect the privacy of closed session we did not have access to ask questions of students and families who were directly impacted by the potential expulsion expulsions while at time are necessary are not the best outcomes or the desired impact for any of our students um while the student so for the board to best understand what needs to happen for the student you need to be able to talk to that student to talk to the family to talk to the administrators to understand the situation before we make a determination it was my experience that the recommendations we got were boilerplate we saw a bunch

246of different situations and they all had the same stamped outcome I don't think that best serves our students who are up for expulsion or the school community that they are potentially being removed from so as a board we uncovered how the district could have better served our students in the process of hearing and understanding the situations that brought each student to the expulsion hearing these learnings made our buildings better for all of our students not just the student that was impacted since it's the board's responsibility whether or not we have an independent hearing officer to determine the final outcome and of an expulsion hearing I take that responsibility very seriously and I'm completely uncomfortable with the idea of making that determination without as much information and clarity as possible I'm completely fine with moving forward

247with our hearing practices without an attorney we've done this enough times there is a script available we do not need an attorney to come and sit at each expulsion hearing um if some board members are uncomfortable with that I would recommend we do one final training of all board members so we're all on the same page and then move forward without the attorney as an example this predates my service on the board we had an attorney at every policy meeting we remov the attorney from policy meetings and policy meetings still occur we've been fine we can check in with an attorney as we need but that was a savings to us so hopefully that expresses my concern again I I think to return to the way we had it is irresponsible and it does not

248serve our students well uh thank you Miss Levy uh board member Levy um your training can you um explain a little bit talk talked a little bit about the training that you had as a board member regarding expulsions absolutely so and again without divulging details we want to protect Clos session every expulsion has a script you start with introductions um you explain how the process is going to go you hear from the administration you hear from the student the family if they are present um board members are allowed to ask questions if that is removed and we have a third party doing that work for us if we have a question to help us understand the process unless they had magically had the same question the meeting is over there's no way to go back

249and get that information um so I I feel very comfortable with the training that we had um with the attorney before we well after we made the change before we did our first expulsion and again it's a script and for those of us who have served longer on the board um one of the thing that I'm really proud of is at the end of the expulsion hearing the room is cleared it's the board and we walk through that recommendation line by line is this appropriate can we meet this do we need to make adjustments um so again the board is still going to be responsible for that whether we have an independent hearing officer or not we would just potentially have far less information and again I don't think that best serves students so I'm

250I'm sorry uh uh Miss Levy um so how frequently did you have trainings from the attorney for your exposion if memory serves me correctly we had a two-part training and then we've had an attorney sit in on every expulsion I think at this point we can take the training wheels off if there are newer board members who want to do that I believe it was a two-part training correct me if I'm wrong I I would sit through that again I think it doesn't hurt and then we move forward with the script and we help each other through the process if questions come up I think that that is is fiduciary uh uh financially responsible to remove the the attorney from every expulsion hearing um we have a script but we get to hear firsthand what

251is going on in buildings because we are responsible for determining the outcome of that student and to put another person in between that it does not serve students well thank you uh Greg board member Greg Schneider uh thank you I AG I agree with um board member Levy had to say um you know a couple other pieces that go along with that is she was right that as we started um hearing the expulsion um we didn't find a lot of the information in the packet that was there which means that the independent hearing officer was not receiving all of the information that they needed either in order to make the best decision possible um you know through the meetings we have um sent requests back through the superintendent saying we really would like to see

252some more of this information that we have so that we can make a better decision um it does take the board time to go through it because we have to consider both what's in the best interest of this District but also what is in the best interest to the student um and there's been one case where um an individual was up for an expulsion and and the board agreed um that due to the situation that that was appropriate um but there were a lot of instances behind that um which were which also meant that this the individual needed some assistance in order to receive the their free and public education and so that we we could then take that and consider that and make a request going back saying okay the expulsion is is appropriate

253it is there but let's consider this other part because this I think is going to be in the best interest of the individual student but it also meant the best interest for the school District um so it's it's seeing those nuances that happened we have a better understanding of the hearings and what's happening in the schools um I think uh the the school district has a better understanding of the process and the information um that should be at at hearings um you know um we have never gone back and said okay this is a problem with this administrator is it their fault they didn't do it it's this is the process that's been used there there are some things that we need to tweak in the process in order to make sure that everything is

254is best for the district and best for that individual student as we move forward and I think we we lose that piece when we go to an independent hearing officer um that those are things that we as a board were able to help Define and to provide some leadership and some changes that we needed to do to the process to make it a better process for the students board member Megan Miller thank you so much for the opportunity to speak on this um since I get to be grma board and I've been here um I think longer than anybody right now I I'm GNA speak from some perspective um I was the board president when we made this decision decision um I was ambivalent to be honest I heard a lot of really good arguments

255both ways like when the decision came up I believe it was June of 2021 and um you know the board decided uh to give it a shot and I want to just say as somebody who was sort of unsure um about like what that outcome would be um I found the training and and it was um board member L I believe a two One Singular two-part training right that was delivered by um the attorneys um I found it to be extremely informative um it's somebody who um just I guess from my perspective as a teacher and as a parent and you know woven into my role as a board member I just think having that I guess that opportunity to exercise um I'm I'm saying this wrong so let me just start over right like

256every kid has a constitutional right right to a free and appropriate public education and the Wisconsin state constitution and I guess I didn't really know what I didn't know until I had the opportunity and I'm going to say even gift of being able to hear these expulsions um it's heartbreaking it's not something I look forward to but it's really informed my work um not only as a board member but also as a teacher and a parent really just to be a part of that process and I think that our district I will just Echo board member ly and board member Schneider's comments I believe that our district functions better because of it um I am so proud of and pleased of the work of um Everybody in the entire expulsion process because I believe like

257in the spirit of continuous Improvement I think everybody has risen to the occasion and I'm so much more pleased with the process now than I was um this is my sixth year on the board right then when we first started hearing them um so I would just uh I think like the only other thing I wanted to highlight that hasn't been said already is during that two-part process and I think I think I actually have my notes right here from it um Rob buuk was the one who gave us the training and he did point out like way back in 2021 like hey we'll be you know you can have the attorneys for a little while and then just go ahead and lift us right off because one of the reasons that we is actually

258one of the deciding reasons for me to go to that um change was uh the potential savings on our budget so I think it's um in the spirit of of many of the conversations that I've heard this evening um we're going to have to do some things that we're uncomfortable with uh for the benefit of keeping Direct Services to students as much as possible and I think it's a great idea to revise our expulsion process maybe just to kind of take the training wheels off like like board member leevy said and keep rolling on our own get a really good uh training maybe get something built in to new board member onboarding and uh you know just do it attorney free thank you uh board member Brian Anderson yeah thank you I think um I

259I couldn't agree I won't be longwinded I couldn't agree anymore with board member Levy I think hearing things firsthand is has been key for me in the expulsion hearings and being able to hear those questions and and capture information that if you're not in the live meeting might not get asked um also in the spirit of um if we're looking for you know ways to save funds I think we've got seven smart people and if we want to use what we know and the experience we have and and follow the script that we this work I think that's that's definitely worth a go um the only reason I I would consider wanting to go back is if it became administratively burdensome on us because we we're back to doing 25 and 30 expulsions right I

260mean that that's that that is a whole separate issue I think that would would cause us to want to reconsider but um at least on you I'm in my third year we can handle a couple expulsions a year which is what we've had the last few years thank you are there any other oh Brian Nichols board member Brian Nichols thank you board member board president um Johnson um I I do have I do have a question um well I'm I'm going to make a statement then I have a question the statement is we've I've I've been involved in four expulsion hearings since since being on the board and to date there's not been one employee I mean family member or student here for the expulsion hearings so that takes me to the question I'd like

261to ask Mrs Med Medina is how what percentage of the time did you actually get to talk to a student and parent in the process most of the time I mean there were occasions when no one would show up but most of the time people came to the administrative hearing and to the expulsion hearing there were there weren't a lot of occasions when no one showed up at all and I just want to add I was not the administrative hearing officer when any of you were on the board except for board President Johnson when she was on earlier so I I really don't know what happened after I left in terms of questions the other thing you need to be aware of and this is off your topic board member Nichols but at the expulsion

262review by the board no one can really talk about what happened outside of the hearing the administrative hearing was less formal and I acquired a lot more information than what often came forward at the expulsion hearing but you could only review what happened at the expulsion hearing I mean it's like an appeal process you can't hear things outside of that hearing and take that in into consideration so and I the districts I know of that I've worked with in the past who were the board hears the expulsions there's always been an attorney present I know Rob probably told you otherwise but every District in the whole area around beloy that I'm familiar with um if they had the board hear the expulsions and not a lot of districts do that anymore um there was always

263an attorney present except during the board deliberations thank you I appreciate the appreciate you answering that thank you you're welcome uh board member Tom Hankins I would just like to ask either the building administrators in the audience if they have a feeling in one way or the other on the present way that expulsions are handled in your building the administration um thank you for the question Mr henin the expulsion process is what the board hears the administrative hearing process is what we hear um if from the administrative hearing process we believe it should be escalated to an expulsion process that's when all of us get involved you know that's when all of us are you know in this in this space discussing the students um disciplinary behaviors so that's that's the administrator's position thank you

264uh board member Megan Miller did you have your hand up I I guess I did I just wanted to oh sorry I am so sorry I'm really not trying to be interruptive it's silly delay and try to be do more in the future sorry about that anyway no I just wanted to jump in and say you know I mean on the aggregate of the what two and a half or three years or so that we've done this um I'm not allow like sure what we're allowed to talk about since it's like we're not supposed to talk about it but I would say that we have heard from students and families um just wanted to weigh in on the very important point I think that Brian Nichols brought up any other board member comments or questions

265I do have one question are are we using this time time um to serve is our annual kind of decision making of whether or not we have an independent hearing officer for determining pupil expulsions or is this just a general discussion of the process and that official determination will come at a later date General discussion thank you Miss Medina for joining us tonight and your information um it's there would anyone like to make a motion or are we all good go ahead I just want to go back to I think board member Levy was getting around to I I don't I don't understand we were looking at this from a cost-saving analysis of not having an attorney present and going in the direction where we're we police ourselves is that are we deciding that tonight

266is that what we're here for this is a general discussion but if you that's the is that the the feeling as a cost-saving measure that we not do the attorney present at the expulsion hearing please move that way but it could be it sounds like and it looks like Megan Miller has her hand up again sure I mean I guess like you know if we can make a mo I mean if you're asking for a motion I mean I guess I would move um that we continue with our current practice of hearing our own expulsion hearings with the decision of the extent to which there is attorney participation to be determined after further discussion with the administration second thank you there's a motion by Megan Miller and a second by board member Amy Levy and

267I'm soor sorry just for clarification um I pulled up a previous order um and and the Cadence has been effective July 1st and then running through June 30th of the following year so if we are saying that we want to continue our current practice I think this is something that we have to revisit annually and again that time frame is July 1 through June 30th of the following year Okay so are you asking board member Megan Miller to make an amendment to at a time so I blew it because I came up with this brilliant revelation after I provided the second so I would like to make a motion to amend our main motion to include that the board would continue our current practice of hearing expulsion hearings a uh continuation from July 1 2024

268through June 30th 2025 and I'll second I would second that Amendment no go ahead Brian you got it okay I'm sorry so so now that I've thoroughly confused everyone we're just voting on amending to add a date so if we vote Yes to this then we'll go back to the main motion which would be for the board to continue our practice with this time time frame included and again my apologies everyone okay um and to add even more confusion to it um board member Megan Miller can you reread what your part of the motion was oh yeah my pleasure I hadn't had anything written so I'll do my best to replicate it um I would like to move that the board can so my original motion I would like to move that the board continue

269its current practice of hearing our own expulsion hearing um with whether or not attorneys or the extent to which attorneys will be involved um to be determined at a later date after Administration has had a chance to weigh in and then my motion is to amend the main motion to include a time frame of July 1 2024 to June 30th 20 okay thank you so we have a um a an amendment by Amy Levy a second by Brian Anderson all in favor I I I I I I any oppos motion carries excuse me and the original motion now which was so now the amended motion the amended motion by the amended motion that excuse me losing my throat you know that was originally by Megan Miller seconded by Amy Levy with the amendment right all

270in favor I I I I I I any oppose motion carries thank you Miss Medina we appreciate looks like we've already lost her um okay the that brings us to the consent agenda typically there is no separate discussion of the items unless a board member so requests in which the event in which event the items will be removed from the general order of business business and considered in their normal sequence on the agenda and we have already [Music] removed 6 6C and 6f can I get a motion for um orse 6 C and 6f removed I move approval of the conscent agenda minum minus items 6 C and 6f second a motion by Amy Levy and Greg Schneider was that you who seconded thank you is there any discussion all in favor say I I

271I I I any oppose motion carries okay um well I was going to ask if we wanted to go into close session for any we are at the employment recommendations we do have an approval of closed session minutes um 7B and we have the HR committee employment recommendations exhibit a um are there any public session questions or comments about uh item C um I I did have one and I'm wondering if um Miss D darz has the um salary range for the uh athletic director okay thank you thank you um okay does anyone have a need to go into close session okay before we vote on this we will have to remove um the individual uh uh Ivory car I Ivory Carol um from that sure um there's a appeal in process for Ivory Carol

272um and we need to pull that um from the requisition at the current time can I get a motion to approve recommend uh employment recommendation exhibit a as a ended by Dr Garrison with the removal of that individual so moved second motion by Greg Schneider seconded by was that Amy ly that second okay thank you any discussion hearing none all favor I I I I any oppose motion carries pardon me point of clarification Greg uh Schneider moved and Amy Levy seconded thank you future board meeting meeting dates our next board meeting date is um June the 4th followed by June 18th and there's a potential um committee meeting um for the the business services and finance committee conversation that board chair Anderson and I will have can I get a motion to adjourn so move

273second motion by board member Amy Levy seconded by Brian Nichols any discussion all in favor I I I I any oppose motion carries we are adjourned have a great night thank you