001oh wait we need to go are you 100 . the future hope are you ready welcome to the April meeting of the Burlington area school district if everyone joined me in saying the Pledge of Allegiance Justice thanks uh Toby would you do a roll call please sure Peter Turk here Barry schmaling here Susan Kessler here Taylor Wishaw here Marlo Brown here Paige Caribou here Roseanne Han here thank you yeah thanks Toby at this point we have a couple of agenda items that might make sense to have go earlier in the meeting than later so I'd entertain a motion to move forward on our agenda two items the transportation contract and also our insurance second any comments hearing none all in favor say aye aye aye opposed nay okay so that being said we're going to
002move forward right now the let's do the transportation contract um this is Thomas bus our provider and Ruth I think are you going to present something on the contract I'm sorry the what yeah right now okay yeah sorry for catching [Music] uh complexibility right okay um so our people transportation for regular education is through Thomas bus company um I have had a wonderful partnership with them for I think forever since I was a little girl um so really appreciate their commitment to um just providing excellent service to the our community families the school district um have had a great working relationship with them um every year this time we usually get a proposal to review pricing and adjust um that annual contract amount so this year is no exception and based on who you know
003what all the um the price increases that we have all been experienced being whether it's your personal life School everywhere um their proposal for this year well for next year is a five percent increase so their costs are going up much more than that as you can imagine like all of us last year was a three percent and two years ago was of zero so if we look at like a three-year average I certainly think five percent is reasonable and ask for that to be approved okay the proposal that their proposals um attached and then I did a kind of a costing comparison in history I'd entertain a motion to approve the Thomas bus contract I mean we accept Texas bus company okay motions made in seconded any comments or other questions for Ruth they're
004always so good yeah okay uh that's it then um all in favor say aye please aye opposed name good uh Ruth I think you want to stay with I think is Jamie going to talk about Brown and Brown with the uh our insurance um okay so if you recall last um fall we switched our um consulting firms that we use for our employee benefits um consultant so we now have Brown and Brown another partnership that we are thankful for and grateful it's been a great experience so far so with Humana they have decided to get out of the Group Employee Insurance Market so have been looking at options for we have a July 1st renewal we've also been Jamie Rooker Director of Human Resources we've all been kind of working on a long-term plan so
005that's kind of behind the scenes you'll see some of that tonight um so we have a proposal for um July 1st with a new carrier and some plan design changes just to try to control costs and especially after the operating referendum results from last week so we have the Brown and Brown team here to explain our proposal okay Lorenzo I'm probably not going to try last names I'll let them do that Chris and Archie um no this is perfect thank you um no I think they're fine yeah I'm good I'll be right there thanks good evening good evening everyone so Lorenzo di Matteo is the last name uh consultant with brown and brown I've been with and I've met a lot of you uh a few months ago I think it was but um we've
006been with brown and brown just over three years but in employment benefits Consulting for close to nine now with me I have Team lead Chris semester and benefits specialist or analyst Sarah RJ um RJ Lang So today we're going to walk through just provide some high-level history of District Health Insurance can I set a baseline for we're going to talk about moving forward give an update on the health insurance just how the plan has been running overall talk about the marketing process we went through as Ruth mentioned for health insurance and then ultimately talk through the recommendations for July 1st of 2023 um the recommendations from the administration and just overall uh talk about open enrollment at a high level so with that as Ruth mentioned the district one and what ultimately being fully insured
007in health insurance means is that the district today pays a health insurance just premium and then ultimately Humana is responsible for any risks associated with the claim so in years where the premiums are more than the claims that Administration costs that they have you know we'd call that a loss ratio that would be under 100 or positive you know for Humana and years where the loss ratio what we'd call uh loss ratios over 100 now that would mean that the claims that they paid out were actually greater than the premiums that they received um overall So the plan year runs July through June so that means this renewal is up for July 1 but the benefits of the deductibles the out-of-pockets those actually accumulate January through December so that can kind of get a little
008confusing over time because again those premiums are changing July 1st but from a staff perspective um you know their deductibles accumulators are running again January through December the premiums are based on two tiers single and family so what that ultimately means is what the premiums are from the district standpoint someone is only enrolled on their end there's one premium for that which is single if there is a staff member enrolled and has any other family member whether that be you know just one spouse uh or if that's a spouse and multiple children or just children that automatically moves it into a family tier so the premiums are set up based on that two-tier uh single and family enrollment and then with Humana the district has a broad uh national network of providers so providers ultimately
009means the doctors that you can see that are in networks so with Humana today it is a very broad Network there are a lot of providers here in this area that are considered a network um as well as outside of the state and then open enrollment generally takes place in May for those July first changes currently there are no staff contributions for health insurance meaning that someone is enrolled they have nothing coming out of their paycheck to pay for health insurance that is I would say a little bit more unique uh overall from our benchmarking we work with a number of school districts typically it's between 11 and 12 from a contribution percentage of the premium today staff receive a thousand dollars um or two thousand dollars single and family and in HSA contributions from
010the district so just by enrolling any of those single or family coverage staffers receiving that an HSA contributions and they also have the opportunity to earn an additional 125 or 250 depending on single or family based on participation in the wellness program overall and just one other comment as well there is a cash and loop benefit of 3864 dollars if a staff member were to waive health insurance today so that's what they would receive for waiving health insurance or not electing it and as Ruth alluded to uh Humana did announce earlier this year that they are exiting the group health insurance Marketplace they did provide a renewal that we will talk through for July 1st through June 30th of 2024 however with that in mind though you know after that date they would not provide
011any type of renewal to the district at that point would need to make a change uh if you were to renew with Humana this just provides a high level summary again of of that loss ratio I talked about or how the medical plan has run so on the bullet points on the left side uh this is focused on um the current plan year or July 2022 which would and then through what we have December of 2022. um the loss ratio during that period was 136 percent so again anywhere over a hundred that's just the claims expense that the insurance company is paying out above what they actually received in premium so in this plan year total paid claims is about three point almost 3.4 million for that period and total premium received was about 2.5
012million so in addition to the paid claims obviously the insurance carrier has administrative expenses right that aren't actually included in those claim Pages paid claims as well to give a reference into kind of what's driving costs and unfortunately this is not unique among any client um a very I'd say small percentage of members generally drive a large percentage of costs so in this case 13 members are 1.7 percent have about fifty thousand dollars or more in paid claims meaning that the insurance carrier is paid out at a minimum fifty thousand or more in Combined medical prescription drug claims those 13 members are 1.7 percent are driving about 46.4 percent of the overall cost of the plan and again that is not unfortunately uncommon for what we're seeing in the marketplace uh as more specialty medications
013coming to the market we all see the commercials for them as you know new technology comes out as new cancer treatment comes out all fantastic things but unfortunately today they come at a higher cost and are continuing to come at a higher cost so some of those more um not common conditions are just continuing to to cost more excuse me and then since the start of the relationship you know the the loss ratio has been about 112 um almost 7 million in premiums uh paid it was about 7.8 million in paid claims overall so over the term of the relationship with Humana they have been paying out more than what they've been receiving premiums I will just say generally when we look at a fully insured renewal and loss ratio in the low to mid
01480 percent you're going to see generally from the market proposals or renewal in the low to mid single digits so obviously just setting the tone here for when we get to the renewal as to how the plan's been running and that will help us better understand why we're making some of the changes we are in both the carrier as well as other few other components any questions related to what I've talked about so far what are we to do with this information about the members and what percentage of the costs are you said that's common across pretty much every location so what what do we do with that so there's a few things and we'll talk about you know as we talked about planning over a long term of what what we're focusing focusing on
015so one of the things we're going to talk about is just getting this contractor the renewable to be on January 1. so we're going to talk about 18-month contract that's offered from insurance carrier and by doing that we've already had discussions and evaluations regarding being self-funded which in that case the liability of paying claims should be on the district however you'd purchase additional insurance to cover it at least on this high cost risk and the reason I bring that up is because this is your question in a fully insured environment there is some limitations on what control you have to manage cost and these high cost claimants there are things that we can do in a self-funded environment that get more creative uh in a positive way in a positive way for members solutions that
016can help mitigate some of those costs overall so the the district as well as in some cases even to staff in addition to that part of it is developing wellness and plant design focused around members getting care not just when it's too late to receive it so when I say too late I mean you're building a relationship with a primary care physician so you're going to them and you're building that relationship instead of not having that relationship and by the time you are seeing a doctor whatever you have has progressed to a point where it's turned into being one of these higher costs overall and the plan that we're going to walk through as an opportunity or recommendation for the the District excuse me is going to be focused on building that Primary Care relationship
017overall and um people you know I'll talk to that a little bit more but that's a key component to better managing some of these high cost claimants is just individuals that are managing their their own health wonderful Wellness perspective but also again having that relationship with their physician thank you yeah sorry that was a long-winded answer well it's important to know the details can I ask a question also absolutely you mentioned on your previous slide that The Benchmark for School District staff is 11 12 like what would that be in terms of dollars per person if you were like I know we have that um or just say 10 like what was it any idea oh sorry we're asking for a mic because the people at home won't hear you um even though you're speaking
018loudly that's okay I'm wow so again uh the 11 to 12 is what we see on average but every District's plan is different so the dollar amounts necessarily because I know what we're trying to do right want to compare and it's really indicative of the plan design so we can follow up on that information but every plan will be priced at 10 or 11 or 12 could be very different depending on the plan design depending on the experience associated with that individual plan right so that's why it's it's seems like a simple question but it's a complex answer that was fair is the 112 loss ratio typical for school districts or are we unusual that we have a high loss ratio I would tell you that based on our experience we generally see school districts
019with higher utilization I think historically plans have been very rich I think members have utilized the plans quite extensively So based on our experience our school districts generally have larger contracts more bodies per individual enrolled on a health plan and their utilization is higher and I would just say as well just as it relates to school districts and fully insured cures I think part of it too is historically there have been full insured carriers in the market that have been aggressive in quoting and providing proposals for school districts because of just the membership is generally essentially located in one area and that helps with their provider Contracting overall I'd say that over time that has been changing um we're fully insured carriers have maybe taken losses over time and they've been less willing to get
020as aggressive and if some districts that move health insurance carriers maybe more frequently may have benefited from you know some more aggressive buyers in that case and as you move because of the premium is ultimately indicative of right what the insurance carrier is charging you overall and if they are now say buying your business but if a health insurance carrier is more interested in your business to make it more aggressive and maybe the premium isn't necessarily quoted appropriately a price of Court accordingly and that can sometimes lead to a larger you know some of these higher loss ratios but I think over time now that um I talked about the higher the higher costs related to certain medications related to care there's maybe less interest in some fully insured carriers to take on that additional
021risk and part of what will be talked about tonight and certainly as part of the consideration is with a more limited marketplace now that's certainly has an impact on Leverage and ability to go out in price right because now we've got a smaller carrier pool they likely have a little bit more leverage but what we're seeing now to the questions that I'm hearing here about loss ratios how do we compare or how do we address high cost claimants we've seen a much more significant interest in self-funding on the school district side of things so they have more flexibility they have more ability to control clinical type programming that's put in place pbms that will allow them to address high cost medications much more easily so that's where the market has gone because these numbers these
022loss ratios a Limited Marketplace or shopping maybe not as advantageous school districts can't handle them right much more financially sensitive than maybe some of our private sector friends that we work with So speaking of health insurance marketing so we did Market the health insurance for the July 1 effective date as Chris mentioned you know the health insurance fully insured Market is getting to be but more limited in this in this area so WEA trusses a lot of us know when out of business um starting this year so that was an option that a lot of school districts in the past have partnered with that is no longer an option in the market you know Humana on the future near future is coming out of the market so that's another option that will be gone and
023fully insured Market space so um with that said we did go to four health insurance carriers um we did ask them to match the current plan designs that are offered today as well as just provide a few alternative options we did ask if possible to provide multi-year guarantees and in addition to that we asked if they if carriers could provide an 18-month contract so that means the premiums in that and that contract are guaranteed for 18 months and not 12 that ultimately would move the renewal to a January 1 2025 renewal date so what that means instead of holding open enrollment in the future and in may we would have it closer to October November for benefits changing on January 1. that is more in line with you know outside of outside of the school
024districts other Industries so when your staff are looking to make changes you know it's more along the same lines of the time you have one maybe they have a spouse that is employed when they're employed maybe making changes rather than having those line up at two different periods of time so that's one of the the reasons uh why looking at the 18 month contract is appealing but we'll get into some others in a little bit um through the analysis of the bids we go into a lot of detail uh but in general we're looking at implementation communication support that's provided to District administration as well as staff you look at provider disruption and access so doctors and hospitals I mentioned providers are really the doctors the hospitals that are in network disruption would mean looking
025at what of what doctors are in network which doctors are out of network access is looking at for the in-network doctors and where your staff lives how close are they to those in-network doctors so we go into detail in that analysis we look at to the extent we can in a fully insured environment prescription uh drug disruption so what drugs for example may be covered under one formulary with a carrier reverse a different carrier maybe they're not covered they're covered under a different tier and fully in certain environment we don't get specific claims a claims file so that analysis is a little bit tougher but we do have some information that we can use for that analysis we also asked and looked at Pro Wellness programming available through the health insurance carriers look at the
026support customer support that can be provided to District staff and then it provided we look at multi-year guarantees um so for the marketing summary looks like the slide did not catch up to the presentation anything I need to do here Ruth or just give a second okay uh well there are some numbers on this slide that are a little can that do you guys have the presentation we do you do okay all right so I'm on slide six which is the idea okay so yeah I'll keep talking here just for a second time um so this slide is looking at the summary of we went to to Market to so we did receive a renewal as I mentioned with Humana um we also received a quote from United Healthcare a very reputable health insurance carrier
027in Wisconsin as well as you know really the rest of the country uh we received declines uh from Anthem as well as uh from Network Health Plan and WPS they both noted that they were uncompetitive so they were coming in 30 plus percent over um your current rates uh and then the chart what we're looking at is the total annual premium currently based on the enrollment we have is about 4.9 almost 5 million dollars the initial renewal from Humana was about almost 30 percent increase based on the loss ratio that we have which is about a 1.48 million dollar increase overall to premiums um based on the marketing results that we received from UHC um you know we there was some negotiation done there they were able to come down to about a 20 overall
028increase which is um about 975 000 increase in annual premiums so as I mentioned we did ask United Healthcare and in the rest of the market to quote your current plans the current plan offering was about from UHC The Proposal was about an 18.5 percent increase they did provide an 18-month uh renewal offer after some negotiations for the current plan design which is about a 25.2 percent increase overall or about 1.3 million and then what they did provide as well is um a product called their Nexus ACO and we'll get into what that is it's a newer program or let's say product offering that UHC has rolled out here really a majority of their groups started uh January 1 of this year from uh effective date and they've been continuing to quote and offer this
029to other other employers so you can see on a 12-month contract again we'll get into the details but that was about a point three percent increase so almost a flat uh for 12 months and then 18 months was about 6.3 percent um or about 313 000 overall so you know the Nexus ACO will get into it again in a second but as you can see financially just in the premiums obviously you know very attractive offer on that end but we'll get into what what that what the Nexus ACO product is so moving to slide seven well I guess I should first ask any questions on just that summary page hearing no questions um so United Healthcare just very quick summary what they have done is in this in southeastern Wisconsin is created a network within
030really four main provider systems and those main four providers are Advocate Aurora children's Wisconsin freighter and the Medical College of Wisconsin and those four provider systems have come together and working with United Healthcare and have said now we do things there's a certain number of things some of them on the right side you can see but we think we can really help curve the cost of Health Care in this part of the state part of that is focused on building a relationship with a primary care physician but part of it is better sharing information between each other as a system something that isn't necessarily always done very well or at all between provider systems and coming together to better share data between each other with each other feel that they can better control costs overall
031so this network traditionally right we're used to in network and out of network benefits this product would really have three networks so tier one which the tier one benefit is based on these four provider systems as well as when we get outside of these uh this area we'll talk about what that axis looks like tier two which is the choice plus a very broad Network and then tier three would be anything outside of that Network um again very high level on what it is but I'll get into the overall disruption on the next slide so as I mentioned you know the the Nexus ACO product is focused on really southeastern Wisconsin you can see all the counties listed on the left so Milwaukee can now show Ozaki Racine Sheboygan Walworth Washington and Waukesha counties that
032is what's called a Nexus ACO service area um if someone is utilizing care outside of that service area they would fall under what's called United healthcare's premium designated providers which is a list of really providers that they have determined to provide the quality and cost efficient care based on a number of metrics that they're utilized and basically so you'd fall under that tier one benefit if you are again getting cure outside of this part of the state as noted on this slide we did look at the utilization over the past and the I say in the past plan year for the district in terms of where claims have been paid as it relates to the provider systems in Nexus ACO and that's shown on slide 8 on the bottom right you can see that a
033majority of these providers are Aurora children's or freighter so 91 of these of these top Chargers when we're looking at your top top providers um are falling under tier one so when we talk about disruption from a membership perspective for tier one benefit overall for the district oh what I would Define as you know minimal disruption um compared to you know uh what I've seen for some other clients in this part of the state and then there are again UW you know some of these other providers freighter South is considered outside of tier one now they're still considered a tier two benefit level so not out of network um so overall great access to care in terms of utilization for these tier one providers any questions on that slide so I'm just going to walk
034through recommendations for minute from Administration for July 1 of 2023 and then on the next slide we get into a little bit more detail on the overall plan design um the recommendation is to move forward with the United Healthcare uh 18-month contract offer um that would then move the next renewal to January 1 of 2025. there would be uh 11 premium increase over current which is about 546 000 annually um we're also recommending moving from tier two to single from oh it's a single and family to a four-tier benefit or four-tier premiums which should mean then there would be a single or employee only employee plus spouse employee plus one child or multiple children and then a family rate for premium so those rates are better aligned with the estimated overall cost related to those
035different tiers again today if someone just has a spouse the premiums are based on the overall family so that it better aligns the premium with risk and then we are recommending I'll get into a second but also a staff contribution with the opportunity to receive a reduction in premium based on participation and the wellness program with that contribution percentage from staff and if everyone were to participate in that incentive program then that impact the district is about a 7.6 percent increase overall in in total cost from current today 365 retirees and staff do have two different benefits so the deductible today for and we'll get the next slide but deductible today I'll just jump to it for the actives is five thousand ten thousand and for staff it's four thousand eight thousand that's single family
036we're recommending or the administration is recommending moving to four thousand eight thousand um a deductible plan so that would be a thousand dollar reduction in the deductible for uh active staff and then active staff and 365 retirees would have the same benefit um 365 uh I'll focus on the staff so staff beginning January 1 of 2024 so not July uh July 1 of 23 but January 1 of 2024 to have a 10 premium contribution um again there'd be no premium still from July 2023 through December of 2023. and there would be no contributions applicable to that 365 group so this would be focused on the active active staff as I mentioned there would be the opportunity for active staff and any enrolled spouses to receive a premium reduction in um their health insurance premiums so
037fifty dollars per uh active staff enrolled then fifty dollars per spouse enrolled so if you have a spouse enrolled at maximum of a hundred dollars total those premium incentives would be based on participation in the program from July 1 through December 15th and the program would not be applicable to the 365 retiree group um we got districts Administration is recommending uh changing the cash and loop benefit to three thousand dollars annually for waiving medical and dental insurance and then for the HSA contributions for active staff be matching dollar for dollar based on the staff contribution on the amounts noted here so for example employee only have a staff uh were to be enroll employee only contribute 750 to their HSA they would receive 750 from the district if for example they were to contribute 500
038they would then in turn receive 500 from the district so really getting their staff's engagement as well in in the HSA rather than you know today um I feel there's not as active engagement from a contribution uh perspective in addition to that you know this is increasing the family to 2250 uh from the 2000 that it's at today any questions so as I mentioned um just going back to the slide the medical plan for the active and 365 retirees would be the same it's the plan and the overall blue on the right there are three tiers and benefits as I reference so tier one tier two and tier three you'll notice tier one and tier two have the same deductibles um tier one has 100 co-insurance after the deductible has been met um but there
039then is a 6500 out of pocket maximum the out-of-pocket maximum and tier one really only applies to prescription drugs so um there are prescription drug co-pays then after the deductible has been met for tier one and those tiers are outlined here so tier one would be ten dollars if you're 235 and so on um there are zero dollar drug options available through United Healthcare most of them are focused on more chronic condition management so in giving giving the opportunity for members with chronic conditions to manage their care if they needed prescriptions associated with them at no cost to them um and then tier two as well where you'll see that 80 co-insurance and then 70 for out of out of network um generally very low out of network utilization that we'd see um with the
040network like United healthcare's broad Network offering and then um what would happen as I mentioned at the first slide is that the accumulators mean the deductibles today again Run January through December so because we're making a change in health insurance carriers for July 1 any out-of-pocket uh cost that members have paid up until that point would then be transferred over to UHC so say you had three thousand dollars in paid claims through up to up through June 30th that's what you paid out of pocket UHC would then take on those three thousand dollars to track towards the five the four thousand dollar deductible here so that would be part of the transition so there wouldn't be an overall impact to staff from their out of pocket and then moving forward when we worked through renewals
041and changes when it renews January 1 the accumulators are then renewing at the same time so if there's ever a change in health insurance carriers or change in plan design it makes that uh change a lot simpler than what it's set up today and then I will walk through just a high level summary of the wellness program so today the wellness program is administered through Health Source solutions that would continue for the second half of the Year July through December 15th again the incentive would be paid out January through December of 2024 it'd be fifty dollars production per month for each enrolled active staff and spouse enrolled in the medical plan um for staff in order to receive that incentive you know starting on July 1 they'd have through December 15th to do this but
042I would be asked to complete a health assessment um if a staff member did not participate in the biometric screenings that were held earlier this year they could provide a piece a PCP form really noting that um that they had a PCP visit between December 15th of 2022 up until December 15th of 2023 and then there are just a few additional challenges to complete for staff and then for spouses enrolled for that same period just being asked to provide a form to Health Source Solutions noting that you had a PCP visit so um one thing that I I should note going back to the Nexus ACO as well I mentioned the importance of PCP visits and and um how that can relate to managing Health overall so part of the Nexus ACO as well is
043going to ask staff to designate a primary care physician they do not need to have referrals it's not a referral based PCP by any means all it is is that you are designating that you have a PCP if you do not designate that PCP United Healthcare will ultimately basically designate one for you and the reason I'll do that is they'll put your PCP your primary care physician on your ID card so say you don't designate your primary care physician United Healthcare does it on your behalf at any point you have the opportunity to change who that PCP is in the system and get an update ID card with that PCP so not only are we trying to incentivize that primary care physician relationship in the wellness program but also you know through United Healthcare as
044part of the Nexus ACL model any questions on those pieces yes yes so and I know you've participated in and some of them to participate in the wellness program you do have to be on our health insurance so it's not all employees but all employees that are on our health plan um we have different types of challenges um try to hit all the facets of wellness it's not always physical activity we've done some stuff challenges we've done some Financial things like the financial planner develop a budget set up an emergency fund right now we're kind of focusing on some of the um social emotional health could be some university courses like an education online video so all different options any other questions before we move on to the last slide here there we go I
045think most people's eyes glaze over every year at this topic can we talk a little bit more about these deductibles you've got a tier one deductible of four thousand dollars a tier two deductible four thousand dollars are those individual deductibles so great question so the way the think of tier one and tier two as just installing a bit like in or out of network so today right the deductible is 5 000 for a network and it's ten thousand for out of network so tier one is um associated with uh those four provider systems that I referenced earlier or premium designated providers if you're outside of the those counties that we look at on the prior slide so if you're staying Within uh say tier one that four thousand dollars that is really as an individual
046that is the max you would pay is dollars to be your deductible and then if you stay in outside of prescription drugs that would be your Maps if they're Max they could have is four thousand dollars up to a combined family maximum of eight thousand that's if you're staying within tier one okay so that's what the tier one deductible tier two is looking at it's the same thing but it's the difference there is the co-insurance so it's the four thousand eight thousand but if you go to tier two once you've met your four thousand dollars if you're going to your physician still or you're having a procedure uh as a staff member you'd pay 20 of the cost up to a maximum of sixty five hundred dollars total between the deductible and what you paid
047in co-insurance and then out of network is the same way so um just to hire uh higher deductible and out of pocket maximum so the main difference between the two really is just if you're staying in tier one outside of prescription drugs uh co-pays the most you'll pay for medical care is four thousand dollars as an individual Okay so forgive me we've got for a family an eight thousand dollar tier one deductible they may also see tier two providers so potentially sixteen thousand dollars in deductible um I can confirm I don't know if that's the case that there may be some cross accumulation between the two okay that's that's important there is no yeah yeah so that's not agency that's not sixteen thousand it's if you're going to tier tier two it's an account towards
048those out of pocket classes okay so eight thousand dollar maximum family deductible and then we've got a maximum family out of pocket of Thirteen thousand correct yep and that's for three thousand over our current correct again that's if you're if you're going to tier two um in tier one which like we said 91 percent of your claims that we looked at were tier one there you wouldn't there'd be 100 co-insurance there for medical care so your max is eight thousand and then you would If you're receiving prescription drug code if you have if you're on prescription drugs and you have the co-pays up to that sixty five hundred dollars which would be difficult to do with those copay levels okay how does the tier one and tier two compare to our current in network coverage
049through Humana yeah so in terms of uh so are you talking about just the out-of-pocket exposure for members no I'm talking about providers so like if yeah so that was the 91 percent of your providers were tier one correct okay I've paid claims that you had in the past in your prior plan year majority Aurora is a the district is a heavy utilizer of Aurora which is one of the Ford providers which is why you know obviously this is that disruption piece is an important important key to this type of plant structure right in terms of um understanding the impact overall and again if you're going outside of those four counties you know there are a number of UAC as designated as premium designation providers which would still fall under that tier one benefit but
050given your the utilization that you've had as a district that would be not as common to see so it's fair to say it's pretty similar to right now the tier one plus tier two would be similar to our current in network I would say tier one tier would be similar or or better right so UHC choice plus is the tier two Network here here in the state of Wisconsin choice plus basically is almost a majority of of major provider systems are all of them yeah today the Humana network is a broad national network and there's a significant overlap between that and the United Healthcare choice plus Network so generally speaking all major systems are in both networks today usually when you're comparing networks like this there are some one-offs here and there that are different
051between the networks but tier one and tier two United Healthcare would be probably 99 of the utilization um of Humana right very limited out of network utilization so then just a few additional benefits from a recommendation standpoint as it relates to the dental plan oh it Trails up again well we're on Slide 12. um as it relates to the dental plan that is administered by Delta Dental today um recommending no changes there to the plan design or the overall budget rates as well as continuing now staff premiums for the dental plan the vision is voluntary with Delta Vision no changes to plan design or rates there and then for the flexible spaying account like to move those renewals to be to January 1 as well to align with the medical moving forward so the FSA
052elections would basically just be prorated for the six-month amount and then for January 1 staff to make it another election for the FSA for you know like 2024 calendar year and then moving forward their elections could all be based for January 1. and that is what I have today any other questions or comments from the board thank you so I think we're looking for a motion right now this is uh we've got a couple more questions okay Fairway um obviously we're our hands are tied not only fiscally but providers are there apologize I'm going wrong you're good okay so looking through this it feels like we're doing a fairly significant cost cost shift to employees with this program and I'm not saying there's any way around it but this is fairly significantly different from what
053we've done in the past well I would say for your actives for majority we looked at the the members of the staff that have met there at a pocket max at the current five thousand ten thousand it goes around between 10 and 12 at the most but we're actually lowering the deductible to that 4 000 amount which is in you know if you can stay in tier one which is the majority of where people are and I mean that is you know overall a lower out-of-pocket cost to them um I know there's the pharmacy copay piece of it obviously as well but that would still probably get them close to somewhere five thousand dollar uh out of pocket max as to what they're paying today at that five thousand two thousand so it really comes
054into the play if you're going outside of Aurora uh children's freighter Medical College okay but the four thousand of those are single I believe the majority of our covered employees are family coverage which is ten thousand today so it's actually going down um by two thousand dollars and then they'll have the 10 premium which we don't have a number of don't have it on this one um with the incentive BuyBacks it would be about another five percent if they took advantage of everything for the employee contribution I think the um you don't have it on there 228 for a family would be the 10 percent and 65 for single in between there but then you that so that's that 10 percent so it'd be about half of that for the net effect um and United
055Healthcare also offers a but um a buyback percentage so for participating in their wellness program on top of anything we do yeah so United Healthcare offered a wellness incentive so for each staff um or um their spouse enrolled in the plan a thousand dollars up to a thousand dollars in gift cards for each for the first 12 months and then another thousand dollars for the next remaining six months of the 18-month contract so um by participation in their wellness program this is kind of separate from Outsource Solutions but not an opportunity to earn in an 18-month period two thousand dollars each um for for their participation so trying to do what we can to well I I understand but I just want everyone to understand that yes it is a cost shift correct yeah but
056that actually sounds like a benefit though if I'm doing the numbers right right that's you said about 110 a month or per family because it was 220 and we're gonna have that if they go if they participate in all the programs like and throw another two grand on top of the incentives from United Healthcare yeah so just trying to get oh so a couple years ago it was around a 98 loss ratio then it went up to 112 an hour right around 100 and I think Lorenzo said 140 6 was the latest um and so it's trending in the wrong direction and so what we're looking for is more engagement by our staff um to be more of a participative member and recognize that if we need them to to focus on preventive care I
057think it was about seven or eight months ago I talked with the board about preventive care services if we're able to look at that as well as prescription drugs and start reducing those overall costs that's going to help impact our district and then we're in a better position to go to self-funding which will also benefit the district so we have a long-term trajectory we're trying to get on like a two to three year plan ideally it would be great to go self-funded in January of 2025 we're going to need everyone's help to get to that I think that's an aggressive Target but that would be ideal but we need people that's why part of the wellness program to earn the credit back it's incentivizing the behaviors to earn that premium back which is going to
058see a primary care physician and if someone sees that now they're looking at preventive care instead of not talking to a doctor not building that relationship and then ending up three four five years later with a very high cost specialty drug or surgery and so those are the things that we're trying to prevent in the future and those are the things that are going to reduce our overall health care coverage for costs that's at least what we're hoping I don't know if I missed anything there Chris or Lorenzo uh I don't think I just have the contributions uh to share um but go ahead Chris I just want to add to that so that's that's great we have work closely with Ruth and Jamie to really set that longer term plan as part of this
059too what we really like about UHC ACO is that because it is designed where it is a three-tier system really it's going to encourage education consumerism and engagement by individuals to understand the plan and providers they're using that coupled with the wellness incentive engagement Etc is really trying to lay the foundation to get this self-funding so the district can take much more control ultimately of Health Plan and its spend so I can just share the contributions based on Wellness participation so for an employee only this is these are monthly rates the 18.62 cents um for employee plus spouse with both participating to be monthly sixty six dollars and six cents for employee with one child or multiple children to be 74.20 cents and then for family be 128.50 plus right you say 800 a month
060no I don't know which the family rate I just heard you 128 okay thank you 800 doesn't play its own right now there's a lot of numbers but that's helpful to know that's because that's really important to our employees true we're increasing the we're increasing our HSA matches we're trying to look at like total costs um it was less to the employee overall like the the deductible um and the net um premium contribution but then you have that um additional out of pocket over the deductible that then makes it a little bit more if you're somebody that has to utilize the whole plan so again the tier one after the four thousand or eight thousand is only going to be the prescription co-pays so that would be a slow accumulator and if you're the tier
061two also outside of Aurora children's or freighter after after the deductible you're paying 20 percent of every so it's a slower accumulator than the direct dollar for Dollar on the deductible and then some co-pays with the prescription correct saying that again no Ruth did a great job but I do think it is very important to underscore that when we look at the deductible then the out-of-pocket max if you actually look at those co-pays they're very Market competitive but it would take a lot of prescription activity to actually track and reach your out-of-pocket maximum so again if you're tier one it's a hundred percent post-deductible absent the pharmacy copay right and again those copays like 10 and 10 35 70. correct so even if I have three on a monthly basis of those individual scripts we're
062talking a little over a hundred dollars a month if I'm assuming that I'm doing that monthly for the course of a year let's say twelve hundred dollars four thousand plus twelve hundred dollars here at 52 100 out of pocket max and that's assuming three scripts a month for a full year so it takes a lot to get that out of to that out of pocket maximum so what I'm hearing is it sounds like we're working on changing our health Insurance system to be more incentivized to encourage better behaviors this may be a precursor to setting up self-insured starting January 1 to 25. is that kind of what the potential goal is seeing how this goes over the next 18 months correct yeah since we're looking in that direction are we going to be able to
063afford to be self-insured in 2025 at our current budget well there's kind of two um all right Chris's Point earlier there are a number of um things that can be done in a self-insurance and a self-funded plan that you're restricted from being fully insured that can really help mitigate costs overall some Alternatives and finding other solutions for specialty meds uh alternative funding of those for example that can save significant dollars to a plan overall that you're not really getting access to in a fully insured environment I'll just stay up here but to be clear so when we are looking at the self-funding as a possibility it's not simply hey let's go self-funded what we do from a consultant perspective is work closely with our underwriting an Actuarial teams to develop a comparison of projection of
064what we would project your self-funded cost to be compared to what they are today in a fully insured environment just to see are we Apples to Apples you know it's all in the same dollars or if we want to move to self-funding is it going to cost us an extra half a million bucks if so but we want to move self-funded what are strategies we can deploy to close or eliminate that Gap so that's part of the analysis that we will do leading up to 1125 more conversations become uncertain thank you absolutely any other questions or comments or Ruth um I just want to point out with the cash and Lou currently to be eligible to receive cash and though you only have to waive health we're proposing for our next year that you'd have
065to waive health and dental to get that cash into amount so I just want to make sure you understand that that um that change anybody else questions comments I will just come up that I'm going to abstain honest vote okay potential conflict all right sounds good that being said I'd entertain a motion to approve the move to United Healthcare 18 months I forgot the acronym Nexus ACO plan so moved any other comments or questions hearing none I'll call for a vote all in favor say aye aye aye opposed nay okay it passes I'm sorry buried abstained so thanks for coming tonight and giving us Springtime means Insurance talk usually but that that would change then right it would be fall potentially thank you every day needs Insurance talk yeah you love it okay so those
066are the two items that we move forward now we're going to resume our regular agenda um next up would be Communications citizen comments I have a few the ones that are for the book policy I'm going to ask those folks you'll have a chance to do your public comments but we're going to put those um with the uh discussion about our policy changes to the books um the one I do have that is not related to books is Matt snork so if you want to um Mr snork you want to come up because I think you you have something else to talk about is that fair yeah okay why don't you come to the microphone so everyone can hear you at home yeah thanks you can comment on the books later if you'd like to
067well should I stay here or out there what do you prefer that's good okay so I'll skip the book part for now we'll cover it later uh first I want to congratulate everybody that participated in the most recent School Board elections and all the folks that campaigned hard and the folks that won and even the folks that didn't win um it was great to see another election process take place uh uh maybe something else I was going to mention and kind of mine through all the insurance talk um I was disappointed to see the referendum not go I mean I'm going to be honest I wasn't super supportive of it um because nobody wants to see the kids suffer um my child goes to a different school and they had the same thing and they
068missed it by 15 votes so for folks that you know say elections don't matter or you know I'm not going to get by my spouse because they work second shift the third shift not gonna wake them up or your neighbor doesn't get involved in politics you know just participating in democracy and voting because his school missed it by 15 votes they were really close to this school you know and I know four or five parents that just couldn't make election day matter in that community um but hopefully we'll use it as a springboard moving forward to listen to the voices of the the parents and the voters in the community um and we can find ways to improve the performance so we talk so much about um and the enrollment and make this uh school
069that folks want to come to and want to engage and want to bring their children to because I know for a fact if we can get students wanting to come back to Burlington instead of uh school choicing out to other districts and can see an improve in the test scores um in a few years I have no problem supporting that uh referendum and I know a lot of other parents really would it was really really hard to do that because nobody wants to not get that money to a school when the children need it but it's also very hard too when it's been there for a while and some people feel like it was mismanaged um that was that and then real quickly and just on the touch on the insurance issue um there's a
070lot of information for sure and I don't know much about finances or insurance but um it sounds like there's gonna be some rough times ahead and I don't know how much that corresponds with or uh relates to um some of the budgetary issues and this referendum from some State money coming in to help ease some of the pains and burdens for teachers but you know I was married to a teacher lots of friends that are teaching in the districts it is a pretty commonplace for them to pay a big chunk of their insurance um you know I know somebody 10 15 years ago in this industry where their insurance was completely covered and now they're for a school they got to pay the first like 10 grand and they don't get any assistance until after
071and that's really harsh and we don't want to get there for these teachers so hopefully we'll make some really good you know hard budgetary decisions get the enrollment back up get the performance back up and get this on a financial track so the teachers don't have to feel that Pinch at the house like the rest of us do in the private sector and that's basically it thank you board members does anyone have a report on workshops or meetings I think Roseanne okay first of all I went to one here in Burlington I don't know how many of you know Dr Mervin Langley he's a wonderful man and he works with a lot of children and I went to a helping children and adolescents develop executive functioning skills and this was held over at the wellness
072center and it was wonderful and he talked about how to encourage kids that have learning problems or if they have certain challenges how to get to them and how to make them happy and more accepted it was just great and good my neighbor here said that she even did a paper on this one so I was glad to um to talk to her a little bit about it but what made me feel good too is when I was there there were a lot of our teachers there and this was not a paid they didn't get paid for that but they went because they wanted to do what's best for kids okay then at the end of March March 30th through April 2nd I represented the state of Wisconsin at a convention in Tampa now I
073was thinking wow 85 degrees but I never got outside because everything was inside and all the things but we ate lunch outside but anyway it was exciting it was called causba a Consortium of State School Board associations and we have left the national one and we've joined this one with 27 other states and it was very exciting to meet so many people from other states and I'd never met somebody from the southern states and sometimes we think oh those Southern schools don't do as well as the northern school yes they do uh it was fascinating to find out some of their ideas and the things that they did uh I think one of the most exciting things I went to was a panel of 12 high school kids from the Dallas area and they just
074bluntly said what are some things that in your high schools that really need to be improved and boy they just came right out with what they thought and I thought wow so it was very good I think the networking is the best you just get so many good ideas from going to these things and no it did not cost Burlington accept for me to go it was wonderful and um I think I did a good job representing Wisconsin at least I tried my best and um there's good things coming up for board members and I hope I will tell them all about it and I hope that we will do a few more things to improve our School Board people ability to be a good school board member thank you thanks Roseanne anyone else on
075the board okay oh oh yeah I uh I had oh it was board selection process I read book oh but then again Eric your handwriting's not perfect it's like mine oh that was my haste so thank you for interrupting me apologies sorry I'll be I'll be submitted from Burlington I just wanted to say that um last time I was here I participated in the selection process and I can't always make these meetings but I do watch them online and I think there was some criticism last time about the selection of Ms caribou and I just wanted to say I think that that process was deliberate it was contemplative and it was serious and I think that we ended up with the best result so I wish you all the best luck all of you I
076think are doing an outstanding job and I just wanted to say that we got the right choice so thank you thank you thank you uh next superintendence report yes thank you just a couple of highlights from the month uh and and certainly I would be remiss to not mention that April 4th as we've heard a couple of times was election day the operational referendum did not pass and so yes indeed as we've heard there will be some significant budgetary challenges that will face us going forward and we will hear more about that actually tonight as Ruth presents some very preliminary discussion and information about the budget as it stands today and going into the next year plus also that election meant changes to the Board of Education sitting next to me Susan just want to
077also publicly thank you for your now 12 years of service over a couple of different stints so thank you very much also congratulations to both Peter and Roseanne for their re-election and next month we'll see uh Noah Strom who is elected to the board and hopefully you will wish him many prosperous years on the board going forward as well uh today was an in-service day in the district and I think sometimes people wonder yeah what all happens on those days for most of us here it's a blur and there's lots of stuff that that happens it's a day of collaboration and training just to highlight a couple of things you may recall not too long ago there was discussion of new math curriculum at the high school so that began today in Earnest for folks
078there's been conversation about handwriting and work around health education that happens this time of year certainly you know we've had a lot of conversation about the shifts between Cooper who are you going to hear from and Dyer and where Montessori is going to live and they were working out feverishly today on that transition and what that's going to look like going forward and so no shortage of activity and so for a lot of folks feels like a blur but a great day of learning here internally for the school district and as always like to highlight just a couple of student recognition components as a district just fun to celebrate and specifically BHS Trinity ludford who is named a herb call student initiative scholar so many of you may recall the the herb cold program and
079it's been around for a long time and so congratulations to Trinity also if you're out and about in the community and specifically at the Burlington Public Library or at our very own BHS you'll see some of the amazing artwork from the annual Kiwanis art show and so congratulations to all those students as well and then two just quick upcoming notes of events or other things going on one is that yes we are in the home stretch of the school year which means summer will be here soon and our Community Education Program will be in full swing those of you that know Becky Segal she puts together an amazing program and that brochure is going to be out here very very soon so watch for that and then also coming up on May 2nd the school
080district is collaborating with Racine County districts and the Aging and Disability Resource Center can be holding their special education resource Fair which has really gotten to be a pretty amazing event and then finally I'll just offer that it is no shortage ever of wonderful things going on to celebrate so hopefully you can get out there and check out some of the amazing things going on in our schools there's even a little thing called prom coming up here in just a couple of weeks so thank you all right thanks dude next up is our consent agenda items um this is earlier or our board is uh handles these in one motion so I'd entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda so moved second okay motions made in second any comments underneathing in the consent agenda
081hey hearing none I'll call for a vote all in favor say aye aye opposed nay okay uh we do have two items for information discussion the first one and uh thank you staff members for staying uh I know it's been a long day with your in-service uh tonight we have Cooper Elementary School here who's going to give us an update on their school Improvement plan and earlier this evening members of the staff at Cooper met with board members to talk about various things so those were this is part of an ongoing series that we do with all the schools in our district and Coopers are second to last school so that we've gone through so Jackie yeah just want to make sure the technology works so I want to welcome Kaylin Lawton Sally Nye Teresa
082for Seth and Jen badjorek all our teachers at Cooper I I had to bribe them you know it was a wonderful day could you and service day so forth so um I am not going to talk about health insurance for sure I don't know anything about that but I will talk about Cooper it's up there Cooper is a wonderful place I've been at Cooper now this is my fifth year um at Cooper started in 2018. and Cooper has a history which you know I'm not going to talk about is it sad that Cooper is we're not going to be a Cooper we're going to Dyer but Cooper is still going to be a school it's still going to be a wonderful school Montessori is going to come to cooper cooper has been around for the
083ages and I do have a slide once it comes up um there was always a school on that promises way way way back and it was called the Conti Street school and so if you ever come into Cooper you can look at some of the old pictures and it's they're beautiful the it's a it was a gorgeous I always say it looked like the Titanic um gorgeous building and then um about 1940 they wanted to change it to be called the Cooper school and was after a gentleman who was born and raised around this area and became a lawyer a very famous prominent lawyer and then um I believe I I am going yeah a congressman and um he is someone who then as I said was prevalent in the community and so hence then
084we became the Cooper School and so Cooper as I said has been around taught what was schools grade levels from kindergarten all the way through sixth grade came back and we have had a Montessori at Cooper we've had um various daycares and so forth at um Cooper we've had the Kathy Center those of you that been around the Kathy Center we had um Montessori Kathy Center there we are a two section currently now we are two section school early childhood through fifth grade we have a population of about 335 students and about 58 staff members that we share and um we're really proud of of our school and our know our staff member if all of them could be here if it wasn't so late and after our beautiful day and after a wonderful end
085service they'd be here um but we you know we have we're title one as I said and we have something that's really kind of unique to Cooper we have something called Speech impact and those of students that receive speech services this is a very special program it's a very intense program for students who have um multiple needs and Gene debink has is a speech teacher she has run this program it is highly intense using various Therapies and these little ones they're they're coming in about two and a half two years old they come in um and they're about three days three three or four days a week and it's an intense half day program three days they're like it's like a preschool but and they're playing but it is you know Johnny in the spot
086I'm hoping you get to see some pictures no I was going to say I'll turn my computer around yes that might be a good idea you guys have it so I'll go like this I'm used to winging things I've been in this business for 32 years and if you haven't heard I'm gonna retire soon so here's here's me here's Mrs science I am the mother to or the wife to Peter my husband I'm the a mother to three adult children and I'm I was a teacher for 19 years got into Administration been Administration for 15 years around that something like that here I'm kissing a snake um Teresa forcef makes me do all these reading challenges yep the one thing she says and I hate reptiles um my family I am a recent grandmother of
087two wonderful children but my children are adults and I have a great dog and supportive families so why is Cooper so super because it's a great place to learn great place to work in it we work in a great community so we know we have to do academics because it is school so we make learning really really fun we do all of the things we work collaboratively with all of our schools so we have a dedicated literacy block teaching that phonics and phonemic awareness writing and strategies we have our dedicated 30 minutes skill time every day focused on reading we are data driven so we have our data meetings throughout the year we we also have weekly data meetings at our plc's our school counselor Mrs ninham who is going to be here she is
088highly involved every day every morning working with our kids every day at lunch bunches every day working with um students in small groups she does weekly lessons so highly involved and then we have a great student support so I'm talking about a school psych our interventionists our reading Specialists our special ed Team all of all make a great School tool to learn and to be yourself and to be the best that you can be where we got some great great pictures of our older kids helping our little ones and our learning fair that we just had in April and our little ones doing just some fun dancing so we know school is not just the academics because kids love to have fun and not all kids come to school ready to learn but they want
089to also learn other things so we provide a lot of extracurricular activities and I'm going to have Mrs farthest come up in a little bit just to share some of those a lot of enriching experiences so our PTO between our PTO our Kohl's care assemblies I prefer the young our Cooper Way assemblies that I'll talk a lot a little bit about our holiday events and just a number of other things that really make our school Cooper School a very warm and welcoming place to be so Mrs Force us is going to share a little bit about she just finished are they the kids are literally sewing with sewing machines um so she is a sewing club and she had croquet or not croquet crochet cloth that would be Sally is here so she could she's
090talked about Battle of the books I think before but if she hasn't she can come up Mac 24th um safety patrol so many different things we just encourage our our staff to offer things that students want so go ahead well I have the joy of having worked at Cooper for 24 years and um a little sad that I'm gonna be moving but I'm okay um we are quite the family over there the staff and I just needed to say that because it really has made well the majority of my life I guess really interesting and fun so um I also have the pleasure of um being a co-advisor for our student leadership team I don't know what event is supposed to be talking here or here so I'll go back and forth our student leadership
091team um it has um it has turned into kind of a it's a Civic group yes we um we raise a lot of money and we give it all away and we've we've bought um uh presence for the loving families at Christmas time we sent some animals recently to heifer International to help you know worldwide and um they just voted at our meeting on Thursday that we are doing a fundraiser to send money to um children's hospital and the American Cancer Society so they're um they're like really so excited about doing all of this stuff and uh and we encourage it as much as much as possible um I also am the advisor for um two sewing clubs and the crochet Club at Cooper um I only wanted one sewing Club but I ended up
092with like 34 kids signed up and uh third fourth and fifth graders and so I had to divide them into two and um they are just super super excited with that um she sought out how yes I have I belong to a sewing group and I made them come and they they love it as much as the kids do so it's wonderful um so we started out we started out with these cute little stuffies where they it was just felt and we taught them how to thread needles and do the hand sewing and they got to sew on buttons and so they are getting some life skills there too and then we moved on to these fantastic pillows and we're just now getting done it's taken like six months to do these pillows I got
093out we got out I um the ladies that I um made come uh each brought their sewing machines and so we had five or six sewing machines and we had to take turns on them so it's all been really fun and the kids their eyes got big when they saw the machines anyway um so we're doing this is called a Cathedral Square pillow for anyone who's in there um yep and so I had they wanted me to bring as many as I could so I'm just setting these down I'll leave them on the chair you guys can look and then we all we are also doing some more hand sewing and so they are while they're waiting for the machines we made um some keychains so with their hand sewing um the crochet Club um
094it takes a lot longer to do a scarf or something with the crochet hook um because their hands aren't as ready to do it as ours would be so uh that's taking a little bit longer but um and so I don't have anything finished for those but um they have been begging me to meet over the summer and so we'll see how that goes right you're welcome it's just great to see I love it when the teachers come up and like I got this idea what about this and one of them is this so weird Club Jackie Hernandez who couldn't come she was going to come she did this I'm like what is that she was oh we're going to learn about Loch Ness monster and Sasquatch and all the aliens and all these other
095things and that was there were like 30 some kids in that so we offer a lot of enriching and and wonderful experiences for the kids besides just academic um we as I'm going to talk a little bit more about one away we form relationships and have clubs and so forth but we do have a theme every year um we call it a learning theme and it just it helps us decorate it helps us decide on what t-shirts we want and also when we do what we call our positive um Behavior interventions it is it's kind of a theme and so this year it was we're wild about learning so we have a jungle theme so we have various pictures up here that you'll see of just fun learning we do goal setting um our wonderful
096library that Sally has created and helped build and so forth and then a picture of the Opera for the young that comes it's a professional Opera group that comes in and they go to all of our schools and our third graders get a wonderful experience sorry working with an opera group so building we really feel and I really feel strongly about building relationships is the key especially in elementary but it's in every every school so we do a number of things at Cooper as I said we have a theme a learning theme every year um we also just like all our other schools we have devoted time of community circles where every morning we devote about 10 15 minutes of really it's a it's a systematic approach to answering questions and listening and just sharing
097and the kids that's one of their favorite times of the day but as I said goal setting is very important our we do lunch bunches between a teacher and our myself and our school counselor we have birthday lunch with the principal which they love every year every month um our Cooper cultural team and our Cooper cares closet and our buddy classes and our new student lunch all of those are just a few examples of how we build relationship and keep relationships going um Cooper is an awesome place to work and I didn't get to fit all the pictures and I would love to fit more but it is just as you know having all of these committees and the teachers coming together to decide and the students deciding them um how to celebrate and what
098we can do and so these are just some pictures of some um in class work and assemblies and just having fun and that having fun at work makes coming to work fun oh God I see your picture oh no yay very good okay and then um we of course are serving an awesome community and Teresa got to share a little bit about some of the student leadership opportunities giving money back and we have a great Community here in Burlington this is just going to be some highlights but um on our the next slide at the beginning of the so it should be this slide right there yep so that first picture is this was a this was a blast in the beginning of the year we go we had got on a bus all our
099staff members and we went out to different spots and our community and our number of our students and families met us there we handed out school supplies and just got to meet with the families that was a great way to just you know introduce ourselves and meet the new kids and new families but then our our police officers and also the fire department they come in and walk through this is just one picture of the fire department some of the guys having lunch with our kids this is I believe in October during fire prevention week and then this is actually the third picture is a picture of our student leadership giving it I think this was the donation of the check to love incorporated but we also give money as I said to a lot
100of different organizations um our PTO puts on a great um they call it a playground a playground mixer in the beginning of the year just getting all the families before school starts um just out and about and just having fun we Culver's night we there's also the lucky star nights a lot of fun things out at our restaurants and then a number of different family opportunities in the evening and this is just one picture of our our learning fair but we do it a number of we had a reading night a math night just just fun events in the evening just some fun pictures of the kids this is through our our PTO so our PTO did a glow night they the some other that little cute elf that's a picture of at the um
101it was Halloween when we did drunken treats then just our 4K 4K um parent opportunities another picture of some kids I think we were on the on the cruise oh the 100th day okay there's just just a lot of fun pictures of all the great things that we get to do you want it do we want to take questions right now I have more we can wait till the end okay okay so I have the privilege to talk a little bit about 4K because I have um been working in that capacity since the Inception of our 4K and basd so 4K has been part of basd since 2014. nine years going strong and when we first started out I'll just give you a little history we were school-based and Community Based so we started off
102in just some of our our Public Schools so Waller and Cooper and then we were also in our communities so we were at Plymouth we were also at Noah's Ark and then we also were at the Kathy Center um so which is no more right now we were there for one year and um it has evolved throughout the years and it's as I said it started off with half day so we had morning and afternoon and our teachers actually moved actually one of our teachers who taught at the Kathy Center 4K she then was also our five 5K teacher of Montessori so then she'd have to hustle her her buns back to um Cooper so it was um and then we just did a lot of tweaking the first year was just crazy and we
103just did a lot of tweaking um and then but it's changed over the years and it's expanded we've expanded to now all of our our elementary schools we've now most recently expanded to full day started last year and it's just and I know it's always going to be expanding and just growing but one of the things that we don't always tell people about what we really need to is that our teachers all of our 4K teachers do above and beyond and all of our teachers do but they really have to because um our four-year-olds because they are not uh considered a full student I hate to say that even though they are a full student but they're not considered for funding and so in order to get a little extra funding our teachers had to
104have to provide extra opportunities for we call them parent Outreach and and this is through the state and so we do little workshops we do home visits we do obviously parent-teacher conferences but a lot of just extensions to bring families and parents into our building or outside to other learning opportunities so these are some pictures of some of our learning opportunities for our our students they went on all of our 4K went out to Sino um for a great 4K outdoorsy day we have monthly opportunities where parents come in and this is a parent reading or grandparent reading and then um just some other fun activities and games is that other picture do you want to say anything else about 4K Teresa she's one of our 4K teachers and then I'm just going to share
105a little bit about our school Improvement and our first goal was is culture and relationships is so important so that's building a positive culture in your building and so if we know if we focus on community building restorative practices and the PBIS and if we work collaboratively to provide a safe and welcoming environment then all of our students will feel a part of our school Community this is actually a picture of the seniors last year when they came back to Cooper and oh bummer bummer okay so I'm just gonna turn so a big thing is I'm very goal oriented and um I want our students to be in our and we work a lot in focus on community building using restorative practices and PBIS and so we use um positive incentives a lot of our
106school counselor is highly involved and we use problem solving and so this is these are Kelso's wheel and problem solving um they pick a couple choices if they to help them solve some some of those choices are um let's do rock paper scissors to decide on who's whose turn it's going to be that sort of thing and then um so all the kids are they can earn these Cooper Paws for a positive incentive in their classroom earning towards a goal in their classroom and then when the classroom reaches their goal then they can come and take down a puzzle piece off of our our school bulletin board and when our when all the puzzle pieces are off we have a whole school celebration and this one happens to be I think game day that we're
107working towards so we will take a cultural survey coming up this spring we took one to follow them I'll take another one in the spring and I'm hoping that we have a hundred percent of our students going to feel safe and accepted at Cooper and just some great pictures of our students and even a lamp one of our um peras she brought in one of the baby lambs they were the students were talking about animals and so forth so it's always fun to have little animals there and I'm just going to go on to my next goal which is literacy so staff over this year and you've heard a little bit more about we have becoming more and more informed about the science of reading research and best practice so if we know we learn
108about that and we utilize best practice with um hegarty and Benchmark phonics which are some of our resources and we provide a clearly articulated learning goals that align with our 4K with our kindergarten through 12 curriculum then students are going to be engaged and Achieve grade level proficiencies so we do our diagnostic testing using I ready we take it in the fall we take it in the winter and then we take it in the spring so I'm going to show you some data so in the fall our phonics scores were pretty low which is not typical and so my goal or our goal is that 75 percent of our students in kindergarten through fifth grade are going to be at or achieve their Benchmark in phonics and so in our winter we were at and
109we have a really this chart over here on the right hand side that you'll see our students um work on their i-Ready lessons every single day and so that's a really that means they're working at what they need and we have about 86 percent of students who are already at their targeted um growth which is what we want because by the end of the year we want 100 and so this is this was in January so we know we're probably gonna achieve that and so we're hoping that we get 75 or greater and that is it so if any questions thank you yes great working very very hard working staff anybody else it's nice to see the staff here too yeah thank you for coming especially at 28 nine tonight I really appreciate that foreign
110okay we have one other item for information discussion only would be the preliminary budget so Ruth a reminder the Cooper staff you you're welcome to stay if you want but you don't have to thanks Barry come back thank you this is attached in four ducks if you want to try to follow along I'll try to tell you which slide I'm on so whether you're at home or here we can um oh okay I'm sorry thank you okay um so our budget discussion tonight is going to take a little bit different turn based on the operating referendum results so um but before that so this isn't going to be the best of news tonight unfortunately but I just wanna want us not to lose sight of all the phenomenal work that's going on as we just
111saw it right there's great staff there's great opportunities going on and we need to focus on that and we need to just continue on that mission so um this is a necessary discussion we have to have but let's not lose sight of all the great things that are happening um so remember that just overall budgets are based on assumptions at any given point in time right we make our best educated guess with the information that we have at the time and we know that things change so just keep that in mind as we have these discussions so first of all let's start with looking at 2223 when we started the year um almost a year ago and then at the annual meeting we were projecting a deficit of about two million dollars and we got
112to October and where when we set our original budget for the year and the tax levy then we were closer to a deficit of 1.5 so better but still not great um now as we approach the end of the year here now we're thinking that's maybe a little higher like 1.6 um again things change that's what we know right now if you recall what we've kind of always said since that initial projection that we would use some of the federal Esser covid grant money and a combination of fund balance to balance this deficit but now we also need to talk about 2324 so we'll kind of talk about how this might change so let's just talk about um Esther a little bit so essers Elementary and secondary school emergency relief fund it was the Federal
113covid um money that started like three years ago so we had three rounds of this one and two by the end of this school year we'll be totally spot so those are done and gone off the table Esser three now we've between um that's about three and a half million dollars so we have between this year and projected what we have allocated for next year there's um about five hundred thousand dollars of costs we would have about two million that's not allocated to help us balance 22 23 23 24 or a combination um I just want to point out that using one-time monies for ongoing operating costs is not in any way a good Financial practice but that's what the state is asking us to do and that's kind of the corner backed in to
114here so this has to be a part of a part of the solution here for a year or two um once this is gone it's gone it's not here to help us for 24.25 okay so I just want to make that clear that this is this is it um also as we talk about any budget there's always some variables and assumptions that we have to make so kind of divided these into high level buckets at the state level we obviously have the revenue limit and one of the key pieces in there is that per pupil um amount that um sometimes we've gotten a change in from the state and sometimes we haven't lately the last two years have been zero so the last three years we've gotten no new Revenue Authority from the state so
115no new Revenue but expenses are going up um there's a per pupil Aid that's outside of the revenue limit that also has seen no increase the last two years um there's some State special ed Aid um for us it's well statewide right now it's around 30 percent so for us that's about 2.3 million um again Governors proposed to try to increase that but um who knows if that percentage um does play an impact into our financial situation at the local level we obviously know all of us um CPI the Consumer Price Index how much supplies and services has gone have gone up same for the school district whether it's um curricular materials we're buying or custodial supplies Services utilities that's also what we base our salary and wages off of you just heard us talk
116about employee benefits trying to adjust those as best we can to within the to try to keep the budget down but yes trying to be respectful to um and mindful of the out-of-pocket costume employees so that we can attract and retrain quality people and then the people account obviously plays into the whole all the formula oh okay now everybody wants to know okay now that the referendum passed what are we gonna how are we going to balance next year right this is a plan that we've shared before so it shouldn't be anything new um it's not yet a recommendation um we're just saying this is one way it could be done okay so still a work in progress but just kind of want to reiterate what we've shared previously there's still many unknowns because of
117the whole state budget and all those other variables that we've talked about so we've again tried to build in our best guess with what we know right now anything in blue those are kind of the still big unknowns so that first line so our deficit originally this year when we started talking way last fall when we were trying to decide on an operating referendum dollar was initially 5.4 million um again a deficit that Bill had built in there an eight percent increase for employees because that's what CPI was trending at and what it what it is for July 1st wages if we make those um wage increases four percent instead of eight percent that's a million dollars now wages still have to be negotiated so again that's not um necessarily recommendation we're just saying what
118if you just heard our health insurance proposal um we're guessing that we'll be able to reduce costs from what we had originally budgeted by at least a hundred thousand dollars and this is just pretty quick high level rounding so not to the dollar um there's our two million dollars from Esser that we just talked about again once if we use this for 23 24 we don't have it for our current year 22 23. and we don't have it for 24.25 I'll probably keep saying that buildings and grounds um we tried a budget about 500 000 a year for Capital Improvements and ongoing um bigger repairs if we reduce that by 200 000 that's can be part of this equation but obviously that's not a good practice to get into to keep deferring maintenance we have
119reduced Staffing for next year by 6.5 ft certified and non-certified for about six hundred forty thousand mostly through attrition but we have done some non-renewal notices and then this last one um the State per pupil Aid increase we've used 200 per pupil in that Revenue limit so that per pupil amount in the would increase by 200 in the revenue limit formula Governor's proposal is 350. so what if it is 350 that we could um would help us by 475 000. I don't know if it's anything less than that it will be a lower number so all of that um still means we would have to take 975 000 out of fund balance okay before we find more Revenue which are those resources are limited or we make more more reductions okay now we keep talking
120about fund balance so let's talk about that for a little bit fund balance is not cash I mean some people try to think that but it's not there are times of the year where we have very little cash flow that we have to borrow short-term borrow to make our payments because the timing of when we get our state aid and the tax Liberty Monies it's like we don't receive it in regular increments throughout the year and those are those two main Revenue sources um on this way to read this chart then that the column after the year is the beginning fund balance so where did we start any of those years the middle column is did it how much did it increase or decrease and then the last column is the ending so for example
12121 22 beginning fund balance was seven million ninety thousand that year we had revenues we're Higher by 351 000 so we ended the year at 7 441 000. um another way to look at fund balance sometimes we say it's a percentage of expenditures so that year was about 17 and a half percent we need to be close to about 25 percent to avoid short-term borrowing just to kind of give you that little perspective then so now 2223 you can see that ending I'm starting 7.4 million we're anticipating that 1.6 million deficit so that would leave us an ending fund balance this year 5.8 million or not quite 13 percent okay now we have two options for next year for 23.24 that green line scenario a is if we Implement that plan to balance that we
122just reviewed or something similar shows that we would reduce fund balance by 977 000. to bring us down to like four point eight million 4.9 million so that we're approaching now like 10 of our expenses which is kind of the um warning level raise the red flag like we probably don't want to go lower than that tan line that uh scenario B is that just saying okay we're not going to do plan B we're just going to take it all out of fund balance so then that only leaves us a million dollars or like two percent um and that's just next year we still have to talk about 24.25 so that's where it starts getting trickier difficult okay so now under for 24.25 if we assume we have plan a that the scenario a carries
123forward there's some other assumptions we assume still like the 350 per pupil four percent salary increases we did use 10 for health 30 state aid like some of those we kind of keep carrying forward the same numbers um anticipated deficit for 24.25 would be almost 4.8 million okay so we're we're one more year out now essers completely done we don't have that we just said fund balance is about 4.8 million okay so if you use the 4.8 million for your deficit of 4.8 million we're at zero like you can't do that like you have no fun balance you're closing your doors so again we'll have to make some some drastic decisions to make this work wage increases the last two years have been under inflation we've made changes to health insurance so passing more costs
124on to the employees potentially and then from 24 25 the the deficit just keeps getting larger so it's 6.1 for 25.26 7.8 9.7 like it just keeps growing so um kind of talking about the next steps or the timeline so usually in June we are approving a preliminary budget to start any given um fiscal year if we're lucky we will have a state budget by July might be August might be September typically we do the annual meeting in August so that's where the taxpayers have um they vote on the tax levy in September that's when we do that third Friday pupil count that is one of the main drivers in the revenue limit formula October's then when we set the original budget the tax levy we get the state aid calculation we get the equalized
125property values from the state but then throughout the year we are always looking for ways that we can make budget reductions um or searching out additional alternative Revenue sources the next opportunity if we were going to move forward with another operating referendum question would not be until a year from now so April of 24. and then I think Steve wanted to have some final closing comments but any questions for me before we we'll keep having more of these budget meetings where we'll actually get to the numbers like we normally do but just wanted to present it in this format for the the first go around for tonight I have a question when we're talking about the first student State funding and the um counts in September um it does that how does school choice impact
126that or is it more based on who lives in the district open enrollment is um always based on your residency so the students that open roll out they're still our resident District are yes and Resident students so we get to count them in our Revenue limit formula so we get the this year it's like 10 700 per student and then at the end of the year the state transfers um the tuition rate out to those individual schools which is I think this year it's like 8 300. put down the device the opposite is true is there's residents from other districts coming here then we get that 8 300 per student as Revenue any other questions or comments Steve you have some I'm just going to add that one of the reasons that we presented it
127in this way is because with the referendum pending for the past a number of months we've talked substantially about next school year the 23-24 school year and attempting to prepare for next school year without completely sort of blowing up the system and so the sort of offer of how would next year potentially get a balanced budget that has been in the works pending the referendum not passing knowing that we have to make some pretty drastic changes by Statute for example layoffs you've already approved non- preliminary layoff notices a month ago and now you know you can't necessarily go back on that right so we had to make some of those decisions before we knew the outcome of the referendum however for 24 25 as you see once we start to deplete fund balance as well
128as no longer having those one-time Ezra funds among other resources that we can't continue to tap it will require a significant restructuring to close that deficit and so I just wanted to sort of on a high level say that that's why we framed this this way so the board can begin to consider how you're going to want to direct us to move forward if that is you know asking us to look at something specific or if you want to have board workshops regarding funding and what the fall of 24 might look like and probably starting sooner than later anybody else have any questions or comments on the budget I have a couple comments I mean I just want to express that or emphasize a couple points you you hit Autumn Ruth last two years we've
129given our staff only a two percent cost of living increase which is below inflation and now we're looking at potentially four percent for the next year um I just want to make make that clear that our staff has taken a re you know inflation's been higher than that over the last couple years so that at least last year was much higher um and then we did go through this reduction of 6.5 FTE so it's frustrating when we hear that the school district's not being financially responsible because we have been working diligently to try to cut our costs knowing that this was a potential um issue coming up can you speak a little bit to to the I hear some people say well we solve our problems if we had more open enrollment in kids um
130I I believe us it may help in certain circumstances um but we have to staff more people don't we so it's not it's not a Panacea to have another 100 kids open and roll in because we'd have increased costs is that fair to say am I missing something correct we would get that same like 8 300 per student coming in um but yes at some point you're going to have to add staff to accommodate those students and it's more yeah or have higher class sizes yeah and then it's all the building um an instructional curricular materials that go with it it's you know the Chromebooks and the more space to take care of and um textbooks all those classical along with that besides the Staffing and then the ones that are like I said coming
131in we do get a benefit like we get more Revenue benefit than we pay out and then we don't have the cost with that so it's it's not all bad I would add the one one thing that I think doesn't seem to for whatever reason get nearly the air time as the school choice decisions that people make is that of special education funding and as you know you approve a transfer every year to the tune of now almost six million dollars that has to come from our general fund to fund by law which is required special education as you heard Ruth say earlier this year the state's paying out approximately 30 percent of those expenses and so we're locally covering the other 70 percent it's not a choice and that six million dollars represents every
132penny that gets spent on every child at Karcher middle school every year so it's a systemic problem and that gets and you can't both have school choice and complain about open enrollment at the same time as you can has there been any I know the federal government when this originally started special ed class and they never went above 30. is it ever more Governor's proposal is 60 okay well let's see what happens but so there this was Federal I mean uh uh because the federal government said they would they would cover 60 because we were talking about Bad Medicine no years ago and they've really come through it not even tons of federal special idea and my guess is to have anything they're going to look at with adjusting these special at age percentage just
133my guess they're going to balance that with being mindful of that per pupil Aid increase so if they're going to give you more on special ed then that purpial is going to be less they're going to they're going to play with those in conjunction with each other anybody else any questions or comments the preliminary budget all right Bruce thank you okay thank you we'll be talking soon all right uh moving on to items for Action uh there's four remaining on the agenda the first is uh Lillian grounds project win and I'm gonna guess this is Dan ocon excuse me and Chris how are we doing tonight live room yeah foreign it's rejecting me all right so we wanted to Dan and I uh come up here and speak a little bit about uh problem that
134we ran into the beginning of the school year before we were stuck so the school district funds an alternative special educations thank you School District runs an alternative special education School below district office right here called project win and with project win we service and support students with high needs those could be behavioral emotional mental health needs and with this school we have two special education teachers and one paraprofessional prior to the start of the school year we lost one of those special education teachers and what took place as a result was that we were unable to support two of the students that were younger Elementary age um at project win and so we had to place them through the IP process at an alternative educational sites and so that site ended uh that that
135site cost a a good deal of money and so I shared in the board doc that um that was prepared for you what the tuition and transportation for those two students was from October through June of this school year to remedy that problem we would like to expand project one and we would like to expand that by adding a classroom and it wouldn't be adding on to district office it would be utilizing space that we have already in the building there would be some construction fees and and Dan is going to speak a little bit about that as you have both the blueprints and some of the ideas about the costs associated with that expansion um so for those two students we're looking at about 250 000 to educate them outside of the district by
136adding on to project win with one classroom one special education teacher and one paraprofessional we [Music] would be over a two-year cycle be saving ourselves a great deal of money in the process this was one of those costs that Ruth had alluded to that was an unexpected cost to us this year that wasn't planned when we budgeted and those are costs that happen in special education because we can never predict the needs the supports the students that will enroll here in Burlington and so those are sometimes uh those are costs that that uh that we take on and can account for some of the borrowing that we have to do from the general fund so what we would propose for next year would be adding a classroom we would be adding a special education teacher
137a prayer professional and classroom supplies for for a new classroom now we have some existing pieces because we had been able to support these students previously but now we'd be adding a space that we can safely support programs so the cost would offset but as we move into the 24-25 school year our cost decreases significantly and so that's really where the focus of that is so next year's cost would offset even with construction moving into 24.25 we would then be looking at a decreased cost um thereby saving the district money moving into a year where we're still looking to balance that budget and so we just wanted to bring that up to you tonight and then walk through with Dan a little bit about the construction piece yeah so I think you guys are provided
138with um uh rendering a drawing from shear and along was a cost breakdown prior to even looking at this um you know I had discussions with Chris we talked about when we first initially uh built project win we built that and I worked with Kathy Merlot at the time and so we thought we had a classroom that was a designated classroom in the current layout we had a sensory room that was designated then we had kind of like a central which we kind of called a common slash classroom what we found out though is after moving in that that area did not work conducively for the students to be caught in because there was too much Interruption so at that time Kathy and I thought that the one dedicated classroom and the common slash classroom
139that they do like their art projects and some other items in that that would work well for a secondary classroom so instead we ended up shifting them to kind of the hallway where they were being taught and it wasn't a conducive spot for teaching and learning to go on so throughout the last year we also have noticed that we were trying when we originally designed this we were trying to keep the loading dock operational for our warehouse but what we noticed and what we found out was that we don't hardly ever use it so we normally only use our forklift and we just forklift it off the trucks outside of the building so the need of having a loading dock necessarily is not a hundred percent there so that's when we looked at the space
140if you see in that document it would have been where the loading dock is it would be a smaller classroom because of course it would be serving a whole lot smaller student base you know two to six children and then we would actually close off that loading dock we would add a window in there so the classroom would have a window like the other classroom does to the outside we would remove the loading dock and finish up the the outside cod as the same as the rest of the building and then with removing the loading dock as well we would limit any sort of Hazards for students that are entering or are or leaving that building because they do travel back and forth to Karcher a lot so it is kind of a it looks
141almost like a play play area somewhat because there's an area for you to jump off of and with the image of project wind having that removed would not have it look like you are approaching a warehouse as well so it would really kind of clean up that front entrance to what would we would basically our project win school so um just for budgetary reasons we you know we went out to share construction you know they're our partner um to get some you know just some initial uh budget for what that is would we necessarily utilize them for the management of the project because of small maybe or maybe not um but that was a number that they threw together it was roughly around 100 000 we'd essentially be putting a wall up um putting uh
142adding the window adding the brick to the outside removing the loading dock creating the classroom adding the you know the TV the great Kramer systems that we're trying to utilize tonight um and having it so that we would have another uh teaching and learning space for that area so um throughout them which Chris explained is basically that this would have a one-year return on investment so instead of you know continually having to have these students you know be relocated outside our district we can bring them back any questions how did the um are the students better served Chris do you think by being in District versus being serviced at the output District facility I think as long as we have the teaching staff in the space within our district we have staff that are qualified
143to support the students and I think that was the the greatest loss that I felt was that we you need a special person to be able to work with children with high needs and it was difficult to find the the week before school started and so once we entered into that space then it made sense for us to move quickly and to place the children outside of the district um and then to work on a plan for the next week and so I think that was the part that was hardest for myself and and the the staff working at project win was that students who had been there previously were were leaving that project when family and being placed elsewhere and I think that that's the part that makes us feel that this is a
144this is a project where when we looked at it and we looked at the cost that we felt that we could this could make sense for us moving forward in a a long term I have a question um you're Richardson right at school you're sending them so we have to have them driven there correct correct so we pay for that and um you know with roads and everything I think it's a much better idea to keep them here correct and transportation was added into the cost um that we had associated with that because that's definitely a high cost right and that's tiring on the children too to drive that far because the budget is not close it's a 45-minute drive each way what's the enrollment in the project plan so what we would be looking
145at is an anticipated enrollment at the beginning of next school year would be nine nine children so for two children with expenses what we were looking at paying for just this school year from October through June was 250 000 and so if we would be looking for all of our children and I guess I didn't I didn't put that out there but it would be closer to two million dollars that we'll be looking at with transportation and tuition because each of the add-ons that come with students with high needs with one-on-one Pairs and speech and OT and some of the other services those are all direct add-ons and tuition and so when you look at the graph you can see that there's a little difference in between the first student costs that we paid and
146that's just because of the specialized services that those students may require per their their IEP what's what is the timeline that you're thinking about for doing this project if approved we would start the project as soon as students were out for summer so we would start it right away in June with anticipation of finishing you know or August but it shouldn't even take that long it's relatively small so mainly it would be is just getting everything ordered now like Windows frames here in time if I recall there's a number of split systems for HVAC down here do we have the capacity to put more in this area yep yeah we have uh capacity downstairs yes yeah we checked that out prior to we had a couple different HVAC contractors coming so so that's in the
147estimated budget yeah thank you like I said entertain a motion unless there's other questions or comments to approve the project to win expansion I move we approve the project Win Second okay any other comments or questions since an item for Action I made a mistake earlier with the other two items for Action that we didn't open it up to anybody in the audience who has a question or a comment Rick wants to make a comment you're hearing none I'll call for a vote all in favor say aye aye opposing a all right thank you personally okay we have uh three more items for Action uh Amy Livonia next we'll present the start college now early credit college credit s good evening my name is Amy lavonian and I am the principal at BHS and I
148would like to introduce Stephanie idens here with me and Stephanie has been serving as interim assistant principal at BHS and she's going to give the summary tonight for our start college now and early college credit program VHS requests apologize I don't have a project to share like Cooper however this will go quicker than Insurance um so I wanted to take a moment to go over the data from this past fall to start so in your packets you can see that there are courses and grades for the students that completed the classes in their respective programs so in total we had 16 students who registered for 18 courses at four different colleges for this upcoming summer and school year our projected numbers are as follow so a total of four start college now at 126 credits
149with the cost being eighteen thousand sixty dollars and then some examples of courses that students will be taking that we do not offer at BHS include interior cosmetology intro to criminal justice CNA gas metal and Welding well thank you uh moving on to the early college credit program we're looking at 41 credits at the estimated cost of three thousand six hundred and twenty four dollars some of the courses that students will be taking include Public Relation principles intro to philosophy intro to criminal justice again these courses or a comparable course are not currently offered at BHS so looking all in all we are at looking at 167 credits with a total cost of 21 684 dollars for both programs so thank you for hearing our requests board members any questions or comments I should point
150out to the board just really quick so we we learned last fall if you if you remember with my ad and The Institute of Art and Design specifically with tuition and so we did include that language on page three this time around just as a reminder that it is the cost of a resident credit at UW Madison and it's one third of the cost of that credit and so when you look on what Stephanie was sharing whether it's Carol Marquette Milwaukee Parkside et cetera that estimated cost per credit is pretty much the same all the way down the board and so we will continue to break that out for you to be able to see it like that yeah thanks for pointing that out Steve I remember the mayad courses from last year Stephanie did
151I follow that correctly so was last year's 18 000 total and then we're projecting 20 did I I kind of missed that we're projecting 21. 18 for uh what the star college now would be for this summer yep summer and fall down here so I know this is a program that the state mandates we do selling in approval of it is but my question is do we have to prove summer school I know we have to do regular classes during their normal school year do we have to approve summer school as well yeah that came up um I believe so so there was a parent who inquired about that to miss bunker um and it yes yes we do anybody else have any questions or comments I'd entertain a motion to approve the start college
152now really college credit program so moved second if anybody in the audience have any questions or comments hearing none I'll call for a vote all in favor say aye aye opposed name all right uh Amy and Stephanie thank you all right uh second to last item for Action is a human resources and buried I'm going to ask you as the head of a Personnel committee to take this one sure so the Personnel committee met earlier this morning to discuss the final notices of non-renewal and the committee has approved the non-renewal notices as noted and I would put in the form of emotion that's the board accepts these notices second okay motions were made and seconded do I have any questions or comments from the board game hearing none anybody in the audience have any comments
153hey harry Nunn I'll call for a vote all in favor say aye hi Jose all right they pass a Barry thank you thank you Peter uh last item for Action is the second reading of our proposed changes to library or excuse me the policy 2522 which is our library policy um Jill here just so people know because I think some of you want to make comments on this item the uh the procedure we're going to use is I'm going to ask Jill to do a short presentation again and then we're gonna board members have a chance to make comments or ask questions and then we'll let people in the who've come and who are in the audience um make public comments if they want you're constrained by the rules we have for public comments three
154minutes Etc and then board members can decide if they want to take action or not right so um uh no no I'm not uh really necessarily going to go back over the policy again but if you did have any questions in relation to things that you feel we should make be making adjustments to within the policy happy to kind of talk through that um one thought that I do think would uh be a good idea on the side of the school district is in relation to book requests that have been coming forward there are uh a total of about 50 books I say 50 because it's between 49 and 51 depending on the list that you sometimes look at that are why a young adult texts that have been in question from community members and
155or parents you have seen through email we have had 19 different requests come forward and be submitted for that reconsideration it would be a suggestion on um on our behalf that we have a look at all 50 books have our English teachers first vet the text because perhaps they already know some of the content behind some of the books that are in question and would they classify any of them as mature content right off the bat without needing to go to a reconsideration committee and then those that would be left would be the books that would be up for reconsideration committees to look at this June and then anything that would come forward outside of that the 50 text would then be up at that next time that according to the policy two times a
156year and those would come up then in January the thought here on this is that um you know a lot of this has come forward in regard to sexually explicit content and as a school district why not take a look at the additional 50 texts that are are being questioned and see if we can um catch ourselves up if you will in regard to ensuring that the text that is um is being questioned is able to be looked at in a quicker fashion and then after those 50 then uh then people would follow through with the reconsideration forms and follow policy after that so that would be the only thing for the board to think about and or an FYI that we believe would be a good decision on the district side in order to
157just assist with catching ourselves up to then be able to uh facilitate the library policy if you were to approve everything tonight moving forward and all of our texts would have been looked at that's in question board members we haven't adopted the policy yet are they changes to that policy 25 22 yet does anyone have any thoughts on what just what Jill proposed I think you know we currently we don't have a reconsideration policy specifically for library books uh so I'd love to give people's feedback to make sure that that sits well with board members here so under the parental Library usage form we have the student would only be allowed to check out a book once a parent approval is given which is understood in itself what do we have the resources for parents
158to contact the district and question the book and get a full explanation from someone every time there's a request are you very help me understand where within that are you looking at the new purpose I'm looking at the new proposed policy under transparency of materials for Parental access it is on page four about the middle of the page says the student would only be allowed to check out a book once parent approval is given I'm presuming some parents are going to contact the district and ask about this book and want more information on this book given to them before they provide this permission so who are you referencing the permission slips then that's what you're referencing under the permission slips there it's the fourth item in blue yep so all four of those uh yeah
159so what what you're referencing Barry is um that is the um parental Library usage form so that is one of the um forms that a parent would be able to utilize in order to share which um text they would prefer their student not be able to engage in so that is a that was the all-encompassing um permission slip if you will that the committee came up with that if a parent if you recall the idea of um if my student is having troubles with uh eating disorder and I'm wanting to be in the know if my student is wanting to check out anything relating to eating disorders that I have that heads up before they were to check anything out from the library this also would um be the form that a parent could use
160if they were to not want their students reading about a specific topic then we would note that in Destiny and then anytime a student that student were to try to check something out on that topic then they would not be able to check that out because according to their parent their the parent is not wanting their student to check that out um what this what this uh form would not um hinder though is uh through some conversations with some parents a good example was um I don't I don't want to restrict my student from being able to check out a book though about Rockets so I'm only wanting to to restrict this one topic or or um specific genre and that would be the only thing that would be noted in Destiny is that one
161topic so they could still check out a book about Rockets it would just be not about eating disorders if that is what the request is from the parents does that clarify that somewhat I mean I understand the intention I'm talking more about the actual application student wants to check something out notice goes to the parent parent may have questions who are they contacting they would have contact our librarian okay and if they want an explanation about what the book is about and more information and stuff do our Librarians have the time to field those calls no there would be some expectation on the parents that if they really want to investigate into that text then then they can do so thank you having the English teachers do this is just solely because we don't have
162a policy currently in place no having the English teachers engage in that would honestly be just more so to help expedite the process so I as you have heard you know the the desire to ensure that more of the text that is of concern we're able to um kind of look at and review in a quicker fashion this is a suggested idea in regard to how we can Quicken up that process because I guarantee you that some of our English teachers have read quite a few of the texts and would already tell you um as a collective if they think one of the texts should be reclassified as mature content um then we we could take care of some of the 50 books that are in question and then those that the English teachers wouldn't
163be sure of all of those would then go to the Committees for to be read and discussed to determine if there's any reclassification it's simply trying to assist with instead of this initial set of books that are in question instead of having those go um through a slower process to get a reconsideration form from for all of them we are in the know about 50 texts that that are in question so we could just take care of those and and look at those as a lump sum together have some of those books been reclassified already by Librarians as butcher content um no uh any books that have recla been reclassified as mature content are all texts that follow it would classify as mature themes and then those are are already take that way with the
164call number oh gosh the only books that would be um that are still in question are all books that follow it does not currently have noted as mature themes and we're only using Paulette and Destiny as the benchmarks followed is the benchmarks if you will but fall it has multiple different um companies that assist with that Destiny is our platform where that houses our text within the district two different platforms there so then this would be um circumventing the committee process as a whole just in the interest of speeding up time sure yes and in the interest of um wanting to in some ways a catch catch up to what the desire is um out there when it comes to mature content text it would be taking care of that list that we have um
165and not I wouldn't say circumventing really but trying to go through the process quicker and then the text that is still in question would be the ones that we would form committees for in order to you know decide if there is a reconsideration um again just for these 50 books then any book given to us from here on out would go through the reconsideration committees and have to follow that process within the policy and just in case I missed it is there a reconsideration timeline so if a book is up for reconsideration in June when could it possibly come up again if it does um one-time reconsideration and we're good indefinitely yes that's how it's written right now Jill I have a question um is the thought process behind um having the English teachers not
166only that they are probably the most likely to be already familiar with the books in question but the proposal is that the Committees would be made up of basd staff and community and so the expedited process that you're talking about only if um basd staff agree with community so it's it's like a non-committee committee almost right because then you've heard from the public that they want that one reconsidered and then basd staff looks and I just want to make sure I have it clear and if they agree already yep that does have mature content then no committee needed mature content will be added to the call number or to the system to flag it and any that the English teachers do not flag would still go through the process because a Community member has emailed
167us about it is that correct um okay so I mean so I guess my question is do the English teachers um is it possible that any of the parent requests would just never move forward after the English teachers look at them if they don't think that they're mature um oh no because all of them would go then to committee correct so the suggestion at this moment in time right now is in regard to um the the desire to expedite the process right so one way that we can expedite the process so let's say you you decide as the board we're going to approve this policy right as like this is what you want to approve everything is is good we're good with the policy okay I'm talking outside of the policy because we've been given
168text um prior to this policy being approved right and we are in the know of 50 texts that are in question that are not currently listed as mature content my suggestion would be so step one have our English teachers take a look at all 50 texts and say would you would you automatically reclassify any of these as mature content okay perhaps they would say yes when I look at these I would say these 10 10 I would classify as mature content okay so now there's there's 40 books left right those 40 books then would go to reconsideration committees or review it simply is trying to expedite potentially some of the lists and not having a committee need to look at a book that our staff might say they would qualify as as mature content without
169the need for a committee okay that makes sense yes I just wanted to make sure that zero parent requests then fall through the cracks through the exclamation you would not right would not yes yes can I anybody else have questions I'd like to just make sure we let's discuss that portion of the before you get into the actual policy itself does anybody in the board have any objections to that because the way I view that too is like oh it's like a function that Librarians have been doing now right you're you're looking at Material well maybe the hair I shouldn't say that no because we're not wanting to be subjective right yeah that's true okay so it is a different thing but it's it's prior to the enactment of this policy it's kind of like
170a step one like look at it that way correct that's why it's being brought up in the sense of this would be an idea um and something that we can put in place in regard to The Fix 50 texting question take care of those 50 policy goes in place any any requests or or desire to have materials looked at moving forward then would fall under policy guidelines so going around the board table here does anyone have an objection to this first step I I think I'm good with it as long as nothing has fallen through the cracks I mean if we as a district can for the lack of a better word police ourselves in this then great and then the additional whatever ones we can't come to an agreement on makes it to the
171committee goes there so I think it's a win-win okay yes I agree Susan yes very sure so I think there's a yeah I don't think we need action on that but I think as a guidance for the admitting team that we could take that first step um is there anything you want to address on policy or you want to just let the board have the discussion Jill it's up to you if you have any clarifying questions in regard to the policy I I do have one I want to start with uh one thing when I look at the complaint process I thought it was maybe not quite crystal clear in that where I understand we're talking about reconsideration only right that we would be reclassified books to have mature content under this amended policy is
172it possible we can make that statement in there because I think the word reconsideration lends itself to potentially multiple interpretations I'm saying it's not in there I would love to see a statement in there that makes clear what we're talking about we're talking about reconsideration it's not removable books from the library I believe we're um where Peter is referring is if you look under formal complaint process um the fifth bullet down and then the inserted bullets the last one there it says uh the committee will take um she'll be guided by the following criteria and um make recommendations based on their findings that last bullet says whether the book remains labeled as is and or it is determined to be labeled in the library's electronic database system differently so um that is inferred that there
173can only be reclassification but what I hear you saying um Peter is should there be a statement that is connected to that that that says perhaps something like um text cannot be recommended for removal only reclassification or building location meaning uh it might currently be at Karcher but the the committee says um should it be shifted to the high school yeah and I'd suggest we put that after the first paragraph So it's Crystal Clear at what this reconsideration process really means um so for the the mature content label is there a reason why we don't want to have a subset so to speak as to what that mature content entails when you mean subset what are you referring to when to your when you're looking at a movie um TV show you've got the mature
174content label but behind that it gives you a definition of what that mature content would be whether it's violence adult content um sexual assault I mean there's just a bunch of different additional tags that it gives is there any particular reason or what the rationale is to why the district wouldn't want to do that just to give some additional context to what that mature contact labeling would be or entail uh the the why behind the use of mature content is more so because Follett has a new flag or tag within its system that is called mature themes and mature themes could Encompass more than one topic if you will right so um there are thousands of different tags that are assigned to a text and mature themes is one of them and felt like mature
175themes is a little bit more all-encompassing versus narrow narrowing the focus to only one potential topic that someone might can be can might think is mature yeah sure if you click on the record of that book you will see a description of what content is in that book so it is made clear in the books record okay so even though it's just labeled as mature content high level um when we click into it then if the parent on the permission form sat there and addressed what particular theme with under that label if they clicked on the catalog and found and that's in the destiny catalog yes and all parents have access to all of the books that we have in Destiny and I think there was talk that you all were going to make uh
176how to video parents to better be able to understand how to access that yep any other questions or comments for Jill on the policy I just have a couple things um we were all given a list of seven to ten sticking points for the folks I would assume most of them are out in the audience right now and at home but where's I guess the hang up and being able to come together on some of these last remaining issues some of these don't seem at least my view won't seem to have cumbersome so I guess I'm just kind of curious I mean because we have the list right here of what they're still asking for so unless I'm missing it because in my view this policy accomplishes at least 85 percent of what 85 whatever
177percentage you want to throw out there what is trying to be accomplished but there's obviously still some sticking points here whether it's the mature approval process um use of excerpts limiting book reclassification which I mean I think is a pretty easy way to get around that so I guess that's kind of where I'm at I mean because obviously I'm sure they'll be speaking to that shortly what some of their Hang-Ups are still so looking at this I'm assume you did where are we at here and coming together when you say coming together in regard to ex the use of excerpts I feel that was addressed last time in regard to um the committee felt the that it was important for the reconsideration committee that would pull together to review a text that is not already
178labeled according to our system that they felt like it was important to read the text if you recall what I also shared was anyone that submits a reconsideration form can include excerpts and we can't force anyone on a committee to read a whole text do we feel that's important yes um if a Committee Member were to decide not to read the whole text and only use excerpts that that is up to that Community member um that we're looking for amend the policies Republicans the excerpts usage is the limitations of a number of challenges brought up those things um I'm open to hearing from using this my challenge would be it may just make let me tell you my my issues that I have with some of these limitations I think a good policy has to
179have some rotation to it otherwise you could have somebody challenging housing books I think tonight's idea where we started off I think a good policy has some kind of evenness together use exercise I'm open to but I think I misunderstood interests what do you mature content on something as a form of censorship it's just soft censorship it's not like it's a type of censorships of access so I'm trying to balance those two and I think you're always looking for that you want to be efficient yes but um I went to the state school board professional in January they emphasized very clearly that but we're looking at reconsidered books or contact system is very important I even think you want to have a policy or no problem and that other communities and that's come up recently
180I mean I'm not sure I spoke is comments or questions time when certain magazines where on the shelves to question and we made that little change because it doesn't seem it doesn't seem like a frustration place where again I think the reality the sufficiency idea of some of these books that add extra set of it ugly they end up doing this I'm not talking about that I'm trying to figure out but anytime any kind of censorship evaluations on books I think that's a live out and I didn't Rochester's product as well I just wanted to bring up one thing I could I um community members about this which I really appreciate and I know we're going to hear from again and more of you um on the excerpts I think that there's a little bit
181of a disconnect as to why we're doing this right because if there's one swear word we stamp it mature or then then you're right we just need excerpts or are we looking at it as learning content right there's going to be hate speech in books that are meant to teach children about not to hate right um and I'm I'm not using any specific examples I'm just thinking about where a school and this is for education purposes um even the you know reading for pleasure it's a school it's you know it's not necessarily meant only to be exciting um also I've been able to look through some of the requests that have come in so far even though I'm not a Committee Member and it's not processed I I read through some um to kind of
182get a feel for what the community is feeling and I actually felt that some of the excerpts submitted weren't explicit in accordance with the definitions we've been asked to use because it's just like naming a body part the name of a body part isn't necessarily sexually explicit but if I read that book maybe that is a sexually explicit scene I don't know because I wasn't even you know I wasn't reading it I was only looking at excerpts so I guess for me that experience is yes I think some books like you said Peter it's going to be really obvious buy an excerpt but I think in other topics and other books it just won't right and I think that's what the beauty of the committee would be addressing as a balanced group of people so
183that input in those trade-offs but there's some of the stuff that's being brought out that's darn near equivalent to a porno Max sitting on on a shelf so and when you're talking about tender age students um young adults there's just some stuff that they probably should not have access to without parental permission and speaking to the censorship part I can guarantee you that if Little Johnny comes over to my house and wants to read you know something that is not age appropriate yeah I'm going to censor him because it's not age appropriate so in some instances some form of censorship is okay what we're what we're talking about doing is not a total censorship this is just saying hey maybe your parents need to weigh in on this and that's what we want them to
184do so I mean Marlo I I 100 agree with you that not all censorship is bad that word has a negative connotation we already censor in our libraries for example you will not find a high school book in an elementary school that is a form of censorship I'm talking about it is you're restricting censorship is suppression of materials and some of it's good right you if you have a inappropriate material at an elementary school that should be censored I'm talking about just being the again I'm not talking about what is right and what's wrong I'm talking about creating a policy that works for this situation works and I think when you're dealing with repression of materials you have to be thoughtful careful and deliberate I don't think anybody that's going to speak to this tonight
185is looking to sensor refresh materials I think they're just looking to work collaborating with the district like they have been I don't know but according to what Peter just said that's exactly what we're doing right I mean if you don't like the definition I understand but that the definition is restricting access I think we're in agreement that restricting access on certain materials is necessary right trying to expedite the process and trying to agree on a process with feedback from the community I just think on the excerpts but we're not but as a district we you're saying censorship in the form of being blanket and bad when hold on hold on we're not saying we're not censoring we're just saying parent if you have a problem with these books then you need to be involved with
186what your children are reading and they're asking us to help them do that so censorship would be parent Johnny you can't read this book well my parents say I can well no you can't because we don't think you should and that's not what we're doing but I think there's a key difference there Marlo they're not asking for help with their own kids in some cases they're not asking on behalf of any kids they don't have any kids this isn't about their kids this is about everyone's access you have spoken multiple times in this boardroom about the great experience your kids had going through the school district this policy wasn't in place they had access to these materials this is my first year in 16 years without having a student in the district my kids turned
187out okay Peter's got students in the district Taylor went through this District these materials not these exact titles were available in the 80s because I was a library Aid in high school this is not new and people have made it through just fine but I'm willing to meet halfway on this because it's clear there's an issue with it it's clear the administration is willing to do something about it but to carte blanche just throw our hands up and say oh sure whatever we'll just ban whatever I no okay but we're not Banning anything and even but even so yes my my kids did go through the district but again I am pro-education but I am more parental involvement so my kids trying to check out something like that I would have known what they were
188reading and it would not have been allowed so exactly you would have been involved it's a parental issue and I think I addressed the parents as well to be involved it's a parental issue and what we're doing with this policy is passing off parental responsibility onto the school district we're just letting them check out whatever they want please so again we're going to beat this horse today my question is what does this conversation have to do with whether or not using eggs is appropriate like if we're gonna attack each point so that we can come to a decision I guess Marlo I didn't fully understand how your response of well parents just want to be more informed I I agree with you I'm a parent of really young children in the district who will be
189going through from the very beginning um and so of course I want to say um in their education and there are different parents who are going to be able to be at every PTO meeting and volunteering in the library and checking out the books and there are parents who aren't going to be able to do that we have to serve them equally I think I think all of that is fair I guess my point is I don't know what that has to do with excerpts how are we not serving them equally if we're not removing the books and we're just asking for the books to be labeled in such a way that gives the parents more of an opportunity to I want the books labeled also I guess the idea of excerpts versus full book
190is how we go about the labeling process and so I guess that's that's where I don't I would think based on the stuff that's been presented to the board as already the majority of it has been rather graphic so why why would I've heard the same book you know the same two books read to me they do very graphic content read you know to us I fully get the point so so the excerpts aren't enough but don't you think that the you're taking part that's those books we're talking about all books any parent s but can we cross that bridge when we get to it though apparently not everything is being submitted that way though Marlo we can't though because we're creating a policy tonight again I'm trying to keep this focused on we're trying
191to draft a good policy and you could point to a book that you find and that maybe all seven of us find objectionable right based on excerpts that's one example tonight we're trying to figure out what's a reasonable policy what about those ones that fall in a gray area and that's where I have I really struggle with the use of excerpts writing that into our policy I think the policy as drafted is really well done and I think I think uh people on this committee should I'd encourage them to read the books I can't force them to read the books they can rely on excerpts if that's all they're going to do but the Committees will do better work if they're reading their books ask any librarian out there no one's going to say use
192excerpts to make decisions on reconsideration of books their Librarians are experts on this it's all I have okay anybody else here on the board have any other comments before we invite folks from the public to come up and I think it's kind of we hear from the public on this yep I'm going to remind folks I'm going to limit three minutes like we have burial to the timer if you could when you make your comments it's not a time for speeches to the public so please address the board with your comments um so yeah I think that's a good idea too 18 months ago we gained visibility to a range of sexual content in in books at BSD through thebooklooks.org excerpts and rating system based on the law the law definition needs to be used
193there are over 200 books rated three four and five on book looks and I've confirmed that only 91 of them are here at BSD 50 are not are rated young adult there are three important points to address sexual content and represent All Views one don't ban books don't censor them and don't take away access to use the law to enforce a local decision a local decision to trigger a parent approval for sexual content three give an option for parents to never go through the parent approval of any book I've spent over eight hours with three of you on the board and one on one-on-ones and meeting with Jill and Angie in the last couple of weeks last week Jill acknowledged that the policy was missing direction for book reviews in regards to sexual content here
194we are in the second reading and action to vote with a policy that does not address the root problem no reference to the law on the topic of harmful printed sexual content for minors instead we only have ala cut and paste training language for book review committees throttle back book reviews to twice a year and limit classifications to two times a year and a parent approval process for all 2500 adult books which is approximately 20 percent of the entire BSD Library 13 000 physical books and when those one in five books are triggered for parent approval it's a generic mature reference six additional categories two sexual content were added through the committee and this is only diluted the solution a responsible School Board would not vote tonight and would address the gaps in the committee
195proposal and demonstrate that they understand what the intent of the policy is it does not address sexual content and it does not show concerned citizens they are represented a Community member removes herself from the committee and I need to read her words that were sent in February I felt chastised for not putting in the hard work to overcome my childhood and young adult experiences of abuse rape and incest I was in fact told to take our children out of the school district and homeschool or private school I said that I pay my taxes and I looked at Jill for feedback and was met with a blank stare in Silence from that response I can only assume that it is the consensus of the committee there were many instances that were clear text against myself or
196Lori by other committee members that were left unchecked a committee that was clearly stacked to meet an agenda of anything but a diverse Community for these reasons I asked not to be considered a member of the committee I suggest that I'd be replaced with not one but three or four community members that represent a more diverse representation of our community the scenario that was put forth in the summer when Lori and myself met with both Jill and Steve I was surprised to see the actual representation in its one agenda comprisal I'm asking you to please address the gaps and use data the data that Jill's referencing is what I provided I did the hard work after February identified the 91 books that are rated three four and five for book looks use the law represent
197All Views and simply start with a local decision to just tank the 991 books don't go with the 2500 adult books just start with the 91. Mr kober Nick I know you've had signed up also so I do agree that the policy is a good start but the main thing that the parents here have brought about is the sexually explicit material we haven't mentioned any of the other material that you bring up and I think that the policy could be amended just for sexually explicit material because that is the main concern of the parents out here and I had attended one of the committee meetings not the original committee but a secondary committee and none of our ideas were taken and put into account so the representation of the whole Community is not there it
198is half so what I'm saying is basically you have a good start and I appreciate that but that's just what it is it doesn't actually protect the kids that we want to protect from sexually explicit material now if my kids were to bring home one of those books and check it out it'd be a great starting point for a conversation and why are you looking at this stuff and how do you feel and it opens up conversation I don't want to stop them from reading it but I would sure like to know that they checked it out or they're trying to check it out and that's where the label comes in if we're watching a movie on TV and it says language sex violence all that stuff maybe in this video then at least I
199know what to expect I can say hey don't watch this because it has sexual content and you're only four years old or I could say well maybe we'll have a conversation about that I don't know but at this point they could bring home a book and I have no idea what's in it until they start talking about it and then how do I take care of that problem when they've already read it you know they're not going to unsee it it's like if they're watching TV and a porno came on they're not going to unsee that what if it terrifies them my job as a parent is to make sure that my kids get a good education and they're taken care of I don't think some of the sexually explicit material takes care of that
200kind of emotional because I have a brother going through issues where he's transitioning and he doesn't have the support he needs because he's afraid of his family so I am dealing with this on a personal level as well and it's an emotional thing but to not have my side of the story listen to through the policy when I could just cut and paste the Ala policy right and what you got I mean that tells me I don't have a voice so that's how I feel thank you thank you does anybody else want to speak right I won't get emotional I just want to let you know I think that you're rushing this this policy is important it's important to more than just me it's important to over 200 parents that have voiced their opinions by
201joining my little Facebook group I just I see that you know everybody's saying no don't you know don't just rely on the experts we're not asking that you just rely on the excerpts some of these excerpts are disgusting and those right there mature content some of them they're I see a problem with them maybe we should look into the book further but if they're brought up for consideration it's not to be banned I had a woman approach me in Walmart the other day and say you're that book girl I said okay she said do you want to see fire right here on the floor and I said well I really don't have time for that you know but this I get approached in the public saying that I want to burn books and I don't
202if somebody wants their kids to read that filth go ahead I don't care my kids are not going to so that's all I got thank you yeah thank you thank you I'll try to fit to sit here in my three minutes as best I can um I I don't believe to say librarians are experts because if they were we wouldn't be here right now because these books would have been caught before we got to here how did we get here um you're right censorship is definitely a big deal sir absolutely absolutely um as far as the the Marlo's idea on the sub categories completely agree mature content that's a one-size catch-all that's using a sledgehammer for flyswatter to take those mature content you can also then add pornography bestiality rate prostitution drugs murder um gang
203uh crime you can give a subcategory to it as well so if parents like well it's mature content it might just be because it's a really um intense issue with um family term problems and tribulations during divorce or the loss of a grandparent in its mature content because of something in there about a child contemplating suicide and that leads to another thing this is meant to these books are not going to stop anybody from committing suicide um being anorexic um you know changing their genders these books by taking them gets the parents in school and possibly counselors involved in the kids lives they'd reach out these books for a reason so by having these contents and having the parents say they want to get this book based on mature content and eating Source mature content
204and um you know drugs it gets somebody involved in their life this could be a good thing it could be a really good thing um as far as you could could you possibly consider doing digital sex or digital books where they don't get the actual books because what it keeps from Johnny from getting the book and showing Jimmy maybe Jimmy's parents don't want to see it if they can get that book and they can take their library with the digital version they can watch on their Chromebooks they can do that you can restricted access and turn it off and that book is done you said censorship is a big deal I completely agree it's a big deal you know I mean and experts do matter when you've got experts you can sometimes look at them
205and say this doesn't belong here you know she pulls the condom out and sits straight up she looks down and licks her lips as she slides the condom over me and I moan because her hands are Mr Stark we've been through this before again are you still are you stopping me because you're uncomfortable no I'm stop stopping you because as the board president I have a duty to it what am I what am I violating because this is our public comment section has a uh provision on obscenity but these books are in our school sir again I'm not here to argue with you as you're saying I have a duty I just I just read this right here are you saying that when I read here this is obscene yes you were headed down that
206road I'm not sure if you got to the point of obscenity but I obscenity I can't judge that without reading the context of the entire text of what you're reading excerpts matter so yeah so you stopping from speaking I can't continue you can see a question or what I only got 15 seconds oh so you stopped me early I couldn't feel I'm giving you a warning right now okay so you want me to leave that's up to you can you finish this or not I don't know what the rest of the text says it should be the same stuff all right just checking [Music] does anyone else have any comments yep young kids in the district I was a kid who spent a ton of time in my school libraries and definitely read some things
207probably a little bit too early and I just wanted to say that I appreciate the effort and consideration that the board is putting in to this discussion and I appreciate the effort of the Librarians and the school staff that have already put work into this and I do think we should value their opinions as experts because that's literally what we have hired them to be and to perform for our districts and I think given all of the challenges our district is facing we heard it earlier today in two years we may not have a district if we don't fix our funding concerns this seems like a distraction from the bigger work absolutely we need to be aware of what our children are reading absolutely we need to make sure that we're not having books like
208what was just read in an elementary school that already is the case I feel very confident that that book is not in an elementary school and we don't want to distract from the important work that our district needs to do and already we cannot fund we cannot properly pay our staff and yet we want to ask them to do more to be exposed to things like this on a regular basis where they're being read excerpts of books that they don't want to be exposed to in the middle of their work day while they're trying to do their jobs of facilitating learning and yet they're having to cater to parents who want to direct their frustrations at the libraries who they don't value as they should I I want to I would appreciate if the policy
209that comes out of this does not add more work to our already Under Paid and overworked School District staff and does not give the parents the ability to generate that work as they so fit by making a thousand recommendations for reconsideration I support a lot of the language that is in the policy there's some of it that I don't support and you know I'm happy to speak more on that but I there are things that I do agree with the two book limit the the limits for reconsideration because our our District staff our school board staff our Librarians have other jobs to do other than cater to the frustrations of people who may or may not even have children in the district potentially even exposed to this information thank you all right thank you anybody
210else want to make a comment please I mean I'm Sandra vendon um sent an email to all of you I received a response from you thank you I want to read a few things from it foreign my concern that I expressed in the email was how the committee functioned and that was um what it appeared to be was that the majority of the members had one Viewpoint represented and um two initially then one had another Viewpoint represented if the committee had functioned in a healthy manner what would have happened is that each one of those viewpoints would have had equal standing but that doesn't seem to be what happened on what seems to have happened is that um the Viewpoint that had more people holding that Viewpoint became the right Viewpoint and that became the
211majority rules and I think that that is a problem um when in February 13th two months ago when I was at the school board meeting that majority rules perspective was verbalized by Committee Member who said in front of everybody who was here during public comments that if Lori Hewitt did not agree with what the majority felt that she should leave the district and homeschool her daughter are we a district that wants to be known as a district that only supports the majority rules or do we want to be a district that also takes into consideration viewpoints that are different if we want to Value diversity and inclusion diversity goes all directions it does not only go the directions that we want to choose and pick and I think that's what's happening here and I'm not
212saying that the Viewpoint of the seven others was wrong but I want to say please pay attention to the Viewpoint of the minority perhaps that is also saying we want to avoid also and I think I agree with what Paul said is that I feel like my voice doesn't matter and there are many people probably many times that you have also been in the minority and in those cases I'm sure you wanted to have your voice heard too and so I think that is the key thing I know you want to vote on this policy but what happened is in the making of the policy other viewpoints were not heard and so that's why I don't think it's a appropriate time to vote on the policy you will do what you will but I think
213that it's flawed to vote on a policy where the other Viewpoint that was part of the committee was really not represented in how the policy was written thank you all right thank you does anybody else want to make a comment a little bit on that last comment I think that's that's the reality that you've all seen right uh one person has been emailing and showing up and putting together a huge pack spending lots of time to show you that the voice that she had to bring to this community to help build this policy wasn't heard and she's trying to have you join her in that fight to say hey I didn't get to say like I should have in this and there was a question at one week I've been here a few weeks now
214there's a question one of the weeks how do we know that the committee we put together is going to be a a fair committee as it is well the committee we started with wasn't how do we as a community have any trust that the committee that goes to judge these books is going to be balanced and fair and you had made a response that we're going to just trust people well well that's again the comment made earlier how we got into this mess we we trusted people that obviously didn't have the best judgment let's say and I think it's it's telling when we can't read and I I don't want to I don't want to hear that stuff to be honest I couldn't read the packet that I was given uh that going into my
215head is sinful it's harmful it does me harm as an adult it really doesn't belong in schools and it doesn't take a book as a whole to see that this passage is pornographic it is uh not amen not appropriate for an adult definitely not appropriate for a kid and as a school board you will have a job to censor you have a job to protect these kids from harmful things that's what you're elected to do and I think that what you're seeing a little bit in this conversation in in the broader picture with the idea of the funding right this is a side note we need to be focusing on funding well one of the reasons you're having problems with funding is because you're going to be losing more and more students and and uh
216just your point I don't have a kid in this District I wouldn't put a kid in this District I may or may not have influence on other people and my influence would go to no do not put your kid in the public schools it's not a healthy place it's it's not a place where you should uh expect that they are going to be given any moral guidance and value along with their education they believe they're providing that and I've heard that from you a couple of times in the idea that we can add where the parents are neglecting we can fill in where the parents aren't providing but what you're filling in has to have a standard and whose standard gets picked mine are yours and if we're going to bring in everybody's standard we're
217going to have a hot mess real real quick we need a standard outside of ourselves that can tell us what is right what is wrong what is true what is good and and you miss uh I think you make a mistake when you say well these people don't have kids in the district it doesn't matter but we have influence for people who have kids who may or may not be in the district all right thank you does anyone else want to make comments okay hearing none anybody on the board have any additional comments yeah I'd like to clarify I've never stated that this District should supplement parenting for students ever parents parent their children I'm a very firm believer in that I've never stated the district should step in and start parenting students as far
218as the other insinuations that have been made it's disappointing to say the least I am surprised the Medical College of Wisconsin has thrown the resources behind us that they have that I haven't seen approach any other districts I I don't know where that's coming from I am surprised that we're being told we're not doing anything about the subject this entire policy rewrite exists solely because of the concerns brought forward to assist to suggest we're not doing anything I don't get it and sometimes when a committee is formed naturally people lead to wherever the common belief is that doesn't mean it's stacked it doesn't mean it's biased it means that's where the majority of those people came to so to insinuate that this was somehow a plot by the district to undermine parents responsibility or to
219not help parents in their quest to know what their kids are doing it's falsehoods this whole thing is about political internet points this is this is not benefiting students in any way shape or form and you can sit there and chuckle yeah please please control yourself again this is not benefiting students when I talk in public and people hear Burlington the first thing they do is come over and rip us about what a joke we are and I can tell you they're not talking about what a joke the board is they talk about the nonsense they keep seeing going on and going through we're trying to help parents get the best education they can for their students and there seems to be an agenda to throw any roadblock we can in doing that let the
220district do their work I trust the administration they have put this policy together with the input of many people including the person who requested it primarily let us do the work I don't agree with this policy I think the whole thing is unnecessary however I will support this policy because people clearly want it and the Administration has supported it and we don't always get the thing we want but that doesn't mean it's not supportable okay if I if I may clarify a few things based on comments being made um I do think that a few things that are important to be aware of and or mindful about is the following things that um I'll discuss here are all things that we never had in place had we not had this committee so there are two
221additional permission slips both the one at the high school for mature content an adult um text we never had any permission slips at the high school for any of that text so there's about 2 300 books in total at the high school of the Thirteen thousand that are labeled either adult and or mature content now that all fall underneath that um High School permission slip that never would have without the policy um the other permission slip of the all-encompassing one if there's a topic as a parent you don't want your student to engage in that is another component that was never part of the policy prior that is now in it um because of the committee um also the addition of the labeling of MC text right and adding that to the call number so
222that kids and parents are aware of which YA books do have mature content that was never there prior either um we also are adding an additional component to registration out of concern that how are we ensuring all students parents are in the know of all the different types of texts that are in our libraries that too is something that was never in policy prior to this um and the desire to reclassify versus remove right is was also something that has been brought up I do think what's really important here to be paying attention to is um even as Lori shared that it was down to looking at the 91 books right that are still in question some of those are already labeled as mature content some of them have been removed from our library because
223they've been weeded out of the process of no no students have been checking them out so that's where we're we're having a conversation about 50 right that 49 to 51 books that's what we're having a conversation about right now is we're down to 50 books right and that's where the suggestion is to have us as a school district we will have our English teachers take a look at those 50 books and see yep I would classify this one as mature content how many can we narrow down and those that are left in that list would go to that reclassification and committees would form then moving forward it is my assumption that any new text coming in if it has a mature theme it's not my assumption is what would happen if it's a mature if
224it's already labeled as mature theme it's going to get an MC tied to its call label that never happened prior to the committee so any any text that is labeled and followed as MC moving forward would have that and it would it would um already move to that need for the permission slip the only thing that potentially is going to come forward in regard to sexually explicit content would be a why a book that is not classified as a mature theme and then that would fall into that reclassification form and my guess is that will be minimal books over time because we can catch ourselves up to the ones that we actually have in our system and then anything new moving forward would fall under that process so I do think that's also really important
225to be mindful of is when we're talking about lots and lots of books it sounds like um you know we're we're really we're down to 50. and then once we have that 50 taken care of in regard to which way should they be labeled um then the policy would move forward after that so just wanting to clarify that is any other board members have any comments or questions I do um I wanted to speak to a couple of the things that I I'm hearing from the public and and I don't think that they were the first time we heard them tonight but what I am hearing is they still don't feel that um it's being addressed um and also I just wanted to say that I think Barry if we're extending the benefit of the
226doubt to our Administration and staff which I agree that we should I think we should also extend that too the parents at the community that when they say that they care about something it's because they do care about it and when they say it's because of the kids I you know I hear you on the internet points but being able to speak to people face to face about issues that they're passionate about I just wanted to say I believe that you're passionate about it um and want what's best for your community and your kids um one thing that I heard about the policy and I've heard this several times from parents and in the emails we only care about sexually explicit content I hear you uh as a parent I worry about that myself I
227understand why excerpts might be appropriate in those specific cases and I hear your frustration that well if we were only attacking the thing we're asking you or re re-looking at the thing we're asking you to then we wouldn't need this but because we're here to potentially make a new policy policy is typically broad it has to encompass everything about the library books moving forward um and I think saying we should write a special policy for sexually explicit content I think that I'd have 15 parents at the next meeting saying how dare you not care about racism and violence and other mature themes so I think at least from my perspective that's part of the reason that the district is trying to tackle mature themes um and yeah I just appreciated everyone's feedback and I think
228that's all I have to say thank you anyone else in the board have any comments I I just I'm not going to make another comment I just want to Circle back to what I said before initially the I I'd like to see the policy that or the amended policy that we're looking to adopt tonight amended to include a statement to clarify what reclassification means so I'd make a motion to add a paragraph in the formal complaint process of the amendment mended policy to State the following and I'd like to insert it after the first paragraph in that formal complaint process section reconsideration under this policy shall be limited to reclassification or labeling of materials and shown that re include removal of materials from a library where was that again I'm adding that as a would
229be a it'd be a sentence added into the formal complaint process on page four of the policy so moved okay would you read it one more time Peter certainly so the the sentence would read as follows reconsideration under this policy shall be limited to reclassification or labeling of materials and shall not include removal of materials from a library so emotions of made and seconded are there any comments we're a little emotional I didn't hear you a second I thought you said I thought you said second I second oh okay I I but I know you made the motion I thought you're asking for motion so gotcha I think we have it either way any comments or questions on the motion this is really you're just we're voting to approve the entire policy plus no just
230the amendment first you have to approve the amendment then you do the policy any comments on the on the amendment itself not the whole policy again I'll just clarify I'm just trying I'll state I'm just trying to clarify what reclassification means that there's no ambiguity later because frankly five years from now we may not know or whoever's sitting at this table may not know what reclassification exactly means okay hearing that I'll call for a vote all in favor say aye aye opposed nay okay so now I'd entertain a motion to approve the amendments to policy 25-22 as amended per the statement that we just approved um and including the other amendments that I'm entertaining I'm not making one just to be clear so moved do we have a second second okay emotions were made and
231seconded to approve the amended policy 2522 with the amendment just approved any comments questions hearing none I'll call for a vote all in favor say aye no okay um I believe Marlon Taylor just been cleared five to two on the vote that anyone else was named I want to make sure I'm clear okay so the amended policy um is approved all right and that concludes our items for Action tonight the last thing is the future of meeting dates uh we have the school board reorganization meeting which is April 24th at 6 30. and our next monthly meeting will be Monday May 8th at seven o'clock that being said I'd entertain a motion to adjourn adjourn any comments hearing none all in favor say aye aye opposed name all right thanks everybody for coming out