School Board Meeting - February 13, 2023

001just really quick for not necessarily for folks in this room but for everybody who else is out there you should have noticed on the live stream front page that Toby had listed a statement that says our camera is not behaving tonight if you're in the room you see there's a camera on the wall up there it's spinning like crazy or it was just a moment ago so we don't have the video at home so anybody who's listening at home you hear my voice and you see the uh the Branded BD on the screen so you will hear us throughout the night you will also see if there's any presenting going on you will see those images so please do stay with us you just can't see our lovely faces as we go through the meeting

002excellent if everyone would join me and say the Pledge of Allegiance okay thanks everyone for coming tonight and I'd like to call the February monthly meeting to order Kobe would you do the roll call please Peter Turk here Barry schmaling here Susan Kessler here Taylor Wishaw here Kevin bird Marlo Brown here Roseanne Han here thank you okay as Toby mentioned before we're going to do uh citizen comments next but if you're here to talk about the book committee that's an item on the agenda that we're gonna we figured it would be best to take public comments at that point so please hold those comments for now um before we start with the regular public comments I thought it'd be helpful for us to just review our board policy on public comments to make sure that

003everyone understands our rules for how we handle public comments the board really feels it's valuable to get public input where your representatives and we want to provide a period um for people to give their input to the board so when you um you want to make a public comment we ask that you go to the microphone because the people at home cannot hear you unless you're speaking into that microphone right in front of the room you state your name public comments are listed are limited to people who either live in the district or have students enrolled if you're a parent or guardian of students enrolled in the district um the uh we asked that the all the public comments are directed to the board so it's not a time to give speeches to the public

004um in fact they're directed to the president it's not a time to ask it's not a question and answer session either it's just a chance for you to make uh and you have up to three minutes and my colleague Barry schmaling will um keep track of the time he always raises his hand when it's like 15 seconds to go so you know it's time to you know wrap up your comments um the portion of the meeting that's for public comments is limited to one hour in total so three minutes per speaker one hour in total but the board could decide to extend that if we if we if we vote to do so and then as the presiding officer of the meeting my job is to interrupt interrupt warn or terminate a participant statement when

005the same the statement is too lengthy personally directed abusive obscene or irrelevant so hopefully I won't have to do that but that's my role as the um you know the presiding officer the meeting is to do that so with that being said I have it looks like two public comments tonight that don't deal with uh books so it's uh Paul uh kobernik well kober Nick I live in Burlington I also have two kids that'll be attending grade school support preschool so I wanted to talk about the referendum um I kind of went through the website that was on there and I had a few items that I kind of would I don't know uh we want answers to in a future state um so right now BHS is rated at 55.8 according to the DPI

006what that means is we meet few expectations for our school and now we're asking for more money I've been to quite a few of these meetings and I haven't seen a whole lot about how we're going to make the schools better for the kids um I haven't seen anything where for instance um or is it the one one meeting I was at that I saw something it was the AP Math teachers and they were asking to make a new course which I thought was awesome but I haven't seen a whole lot of that going on so I was wondering if the render a referendum is just to keep it as status quo and not improve our kids education also I saw in the referendum website that they wanted to maintain wages increases above inflation and

007then it linked me to the CPI website that's an eight percent raise I I don't know many people in the public sector that get eight percent raises but if that's the true number then that's very concerning to me um also I was looking at the uh my taxes that I got this year because I have to pay those as well and between 2021 and 2022 I already had a 6.1 percent increase so I'm already paying about 500 more plus the above and beyond and then we want to raise that again so what I'm looking for is like a plan how we're going to improve our children's education because a 55.8 score from the DPI is terrible um so I want to plan on how we're going to improve everything not just well this will help

008us maintain the teachers we have and stuff like that the sports that we offer and we'll have to cut back on programs we'll I've had to cut back on my budgets at home too and I found ways to still provide my kids and stuff with educational values and stuff like that that we can still go on trips and and have fun but I'm just looking for some kind of plan is what I want to see and most of the time we're talking about controversial topics here this isn't a controversial topic it's I want to see some improvement for my kids to know that they're gonna be you know taken care of and it's going to be better for them thanks thank you next Matt snork foreign Burlington Wisconsin and a local taxpayer resident so here

009we are again a month later um not much has changed I want to touch on two things I won't I won't cover any books we'll stay there for later I want to talk about what that gentleman talked about with referendum if I can within three minutes and also public safety concerns and issues first and referendum again I don't know how you go when you take a failed business model but declining enrollment declining scores and put more money after it to try to improve it that's a failed business model at this weren't government any private sector business would not be successful going down that path you can argue our taxes aren't going to go up from this referendum because they're going to take it out of state funds and not directly from us here in Burlington

010that's okay but it's still our money overall from the state level we're so taxed there it's got to come from somewhere it's actually being printed it's not just hurting Wisconsin families these teachers in the school have to earn this money proving to us that our children are important that they are going to retain this information and we're going to make this a a culture of success instead of a culture of failure make parents want to bring their kids here and as far as Public Safety this most recent threat of violence at the school made me reflect on two or three other instances where I feel the schools failed well yes organizations come here and do some demonstrating and such and we were aware of that happening and so I called and tried to talk to

011an official to school and I got their administrator I won't say names he said we'd like to have four or five police officer at the school tonight because it's going to be a tumultuous and probably a kind of a testy situation we'd feel safer if we had more Public Safety there I was told we can't do this it's going to be bad bad objects bad image we don't want to have a lot of officers to look like a prison okay fine they have one Burlington Police Officer the sheriff's probably to come in here and had to basically save the school board and Save the citizens from unruly people then we had another issue where we have an assistant here that has been allegedly doing things with students and children over time and was expressed with

012the people inside the school probably principals and their teachers and possibly the board did not know and for some reason the school and the police couldn't do anything about it the sheriff had to come in and make an arrest and then just recently of course with the spread of violence that happened early in the morning and a lot of parents are really upset over it a lot of parents didn't even know until way in the end of the day the parents want to know what are these plans of action for situations like this why are our concerns not being addressed when I called and asked for four or five officers knowing full level's gonna be coming down in Burlington why was that ignored you are you're responsible for the most important parts of our Lives

013the only thing our lives that matter are kids and we'll discuss the books in a few minutes thank you okay thank you [Music] I have a Ryan Mueller but it looks like books Ryan is that right I'll let we'll wait till hold off Sofia thanks so much all right so the other part of our agenda on Communications is board member reports on workshops and meetings attended and I know in January our school board like almost all school boards in the state attends the state school board convention so I know we have reports on that and uh maybe Susan do you want to start sure yeah so hi everybody we did go to the school year in January it's a very nice convention it's down at the Wisconsin Center um and um there's a lot of

014different sessions that that we can take so we can choose kind of what is appropriate for our school district so to find out more information about it it's a very good learning experience for all of us board members to to go to so I went to a few we're going to kind of talk about a couple of the sessions that we went to so if a couple of the ones that I went to and one of the ones that I went to was public participation during school board meetings which is just what we've just been talking about um so I thought it was a really interesting one to talk to and you know basically what they said is that public comment is is like a designated forum and there are definitely um a substantial degree

015of protection under First Amendment rights you know so you can you know your freedom of speech um so basically what they said is things like before before the comment time Begins the board President should set the rules according to policy and that's exactly what Peter did he he read he even read you out the policy regarding public comment um the board president May interrupt or cut off a speaker who's threatening obscene or unduly according to policy and that is in our policy as we heard um and um the board president may help direct the nature of the board's response if we respond and we most boards do not respond this is your time to get up and talk to us and tell us what what you think and and we want to hear it we

016really want to hear it um boards maybe have we always have a lot of flexibility and we you build that into your policy um how much time we have our three minutes you know some boards have five minutes some boards have two minutes um what topics can you discuss can you just discuss topics that are on the agenda only some boards are like that or can you discuss anything that you want um registering before your public comments we do that um who may comment is it just citizens um in Burlington um is the people that's you know can sit that send their kids to this the to the public schools all that is very very flexible and that's put written out in our policy um there are complex issues that can arise if if a

017if a person talks about an individual student or a staff member and in cases like this um they just said to refer to the legal counsel about that because it can be very complicated um so public comment shouldn't be your first your first choice as to your conflict resolution if you have an issue with us probably I shouldn't be here first if you talk to the teacher you know it's kind of like that um the chain of command talk to the teacher talk to the principal you know talk to other administrators here and and then you can talk to us and honestly if you go through the chain of command usually and you you have a specific issue um things can get resolved re and that's usually what happens so that's what we kind of

018like to see so that was only my first one guys my next one we're talking about strategic planning and as one of the comment goes is where are we going you know what is all this what what's in the future for us that's what strategic planning is it's kind of like the North Star it kind of guides us as to our future um is continuous Improvement that's what we always want is continuous Improvement um how to achieve some mid to long-term goals long-range goals here so it went over the different steps as to how do we do a strategic plan and I thought this was very interesting um so first is just pre-planning and you create a team of stakeholders so people that are interested can be on on this committee very often you hire

019a consultant that can help take you through this process we survey the district to see hey what does the district really think about improvements that we need we establish our foundation we review we determine here's our mission what's our mission what's the vision statement what's current goals should we go over this should we change it that's very important about all of this yeah it's just it it's what we want it's what we want to do for our kids that's what it's all about understanding our current reality so you're going to look at data this this team of stakeholders will look at data and determine our strength or any areas of need we we all have that so so what it what what are these areas we'll write goals and objectives that would be the next

020step that's step four improve the goals that are drafted you go over that you go your objective statements the fifth is you get a final written plan um you get feedback from the stakeholders you put it out there let the stakeholders tell us because we're we we want to know um you make revisions to the plan and at the very end the the last one is you implement it and you monitor this plan so um they were saying in this session that very often you make this awesome plan and then it gets put on the Shelf you know no you you you don't do that you you you implement this plan and you monitor it every six months you're gonna look hey did we do this goal or what have we done here so that's

021what's really really important there so so those are our long-term goals and we are looking to do that in the near future this is strategic planning which is why I picked that one and the other one I picked another one I picked was um it we are going to referendum and so why are we going to referendum I mean why do we have to do this well it it the name of this was called a fiscal Clift ahead so it's like yeah it is a cliff that about where we are um so basically Wisconsin schools are drastically underfunded at this point getting money from the state to help us fund our school district okay so in 2002 Wisconsin was number 11 per number 11 in per pupil spending and that's 11 above the national average

022that was in 2002 but in 2020 we're number 25 in per per pupil spending and it's 5.6 below the national average we we've we just it's like a plummet as far as it um Wisconsin State's local tax burden fell in 2022 to its lowest level on record they're they're just not we're not getting the money in that we need and our expenses are going up but we're not getting the money in and that's kind of that's pretty much where we are so there's different Cliff factors so um the first one is about Esser funds we all know about the Esser funds you know the money that was given to us but it's going to expire in 2024. we've been very careful with our Esser funds as far as this goes because if you can only

023use it it's a one-time Revenue so you've got to be really careful so don't put that for something that like we're gonna need next year don't use Esser funds for that because it's going away but we've been good in that area really good in that area the factor uh Cliff Factor number two is a declining enrollment so there's been a 17 decline in the annual births since the peak year of of 2007. so 17 decline in birth just as 2007. um three quarters of the districts three quarters of the districts in Wisconsin are in declining enrollment right now and and that's compared to 59 about half 59 in 2007 were in declining enrollment but the costs don't fall in step with the enrollment declines the costs keep going up but the enrollment declines are going

024down and we're not getting the money in from the state I mean it's it's we're it's this is what's happening and it's not just here it's all over the state completely uh Cliff Factor number three is inflation we all know about the inflation Consumer Price Index 2022 was 4.7 2023 is 8.1 as we heard it is 8.1 so the inflationary that it that impacts everything everything you know you know it you go to buy eggs oh my gosh I mean come on I almost fainted when I saw the price of eggs um but it's also you know here for teachers uh the compensation facts construction facts how the cost of viral fund once everything's increasing that's part of this fiscal cliff that we're talking about I'm almost finished guys so um the cliff Factor number

025four is um a lack of stable predictable funding if we know what we're going to be getting it's it's easier to to predict you know where where we're going how where we need where we can put the money and all of that type of thing but it's been very hard to predict and it's been very weak since 2009 and more and more districts we're one of the few districts in Wisconsin that have not asked for for um for a referenda on this type of thing you know because everybody's in the same situation in Wisconsin so how do we cope with this well there's so they gave us one is to be aware about the Esther funds we are aware of that be patient in developing the 2324 budget because the local budget decisions are dependent

026on the 2023-2025 state budget so we have to you know kind of wait for that so be patient communicate with staff and parents about realistic timelines and expectations for con for Staffing that type of thing stay informed go to Regional for us got for us go to Regional meetings under just try to understand this and and you know there's it's complicated very complicated advocate for the school district with our legislators that's important and locally acting locally is is via the operational referendum which we are going to operational referendum so gosh I hope that all helped it kind of explain a few things um okay so also I did I I wrote up a thing about the keynote speakers I think Roseanne's going to talk about some of the Keynotes because and I want to say

027congratulations to Roseanne um it is the Wisconsin Association of school boards that that puts on the convention that really guides Us in every way and Roseanne has been inducted as to the president of the Wisconsin Association of school board so congratulations Roseanne [Applause] you can wrap up and then any other board members have anything to add but I'll give you just highlights these were all shared with our board members I did go to a seminar on school start times I've been interested in this for a few years uh awasa High School principal did a research study he interviewed over 100 superintendents around the state uh school start times for high schools range from 720 to 8 27 is the latest so we are the earliest high for the earliest in the state and there's if

028anyone who's researched this or you Google school start times for teens sees there's a lot of uh evidence out there that later start times are are beneficial for our teams their body clocks I'm a parent of two teens I know they don't get up early um in fact the American Pediatrics Academy recommended High School start times no earlier than 8 30. so that you know that's something I you know it's a challenge though for school districts and that was part of the survey that it is a big disrupter so superintendents have said we got other issues we got to deal with first that's the the biggest hesitation on changing start times um I did go to a um seminar on navigating book challenges but I think I'm going to save my points for later because

029we're all going to talk about that later um Financial oversight by the board as board members one of our key roles is financial oversight in the district every year we do an audit so that's one key thing as board members our responsibility is to read the audit understand it the audit's done for us it's not done for uh for Bruce benefit I guess although she's involved with the audit but it's uh it's our chance to um make sure that there's Financial oversight and they talked about you know um also making sure we understand our annual budget and we spend a lot of time as board members in meetings um throughout the year it's not just once a year but we review our budget um three or four times a year and you start with a

030preliminary budget then we review it and before we can get to um the final budget um last one was a short seminar put on by Trevor Wilmot they're a neighboring District a K-8 District so not like they're not K-12 like us but they talked about their their experiences with an operational referendum like we're involved with and they had an operation referendum that failed in 2021 it was three million dollars over over five years so 600 000 a year we're asking for eight million a year but understand we're about six times larger than Trevor Wilma they're a pretty small District and the board went back and they they and the administration and they looked at why it failed and some of the ideas were that if uh folks don't understand or unserve the information they're probably

031going to vote no so they really worked hard on the second goal round to inform people making sure they kept the information short because you can't get too far into the weeds unless people want to but you have to really hit them with the key points and they were able to pass the referendum the next year for more money so I think that was an interesting you know insight and then the second time around though too they were very clear about if it doesn't pass these are the things that we're going to have to cut back and then you know that's where Burlington is kind of at the edge um you know there's going to be programs and services we may have to really take a hard look at if we don't pass a referendum

032so uh that's all I've had um Roseanne do you want to okay sure document one of these well I love the convention I think the best part of it is seeing people from all over the state we have people that come from way up North your kids are on the bus sometimes two and a half hours to get to school and back uh and then you could then you come down and hear the people from Milwaukee to hear the problems that they're having so um these are just some of the observations and Inspirations I got there was a man named David horsager someday in your life I hope you get to hear him he was very very Dynamic and he is the CEO of trust Edge Leadership Institute it's a global Authority on helping leaders

033become the most trusted people in their industry or organization and for some reason I got to talk to him afterward he gave me his book and he's invited me to go to Texas to attend one of his sessions so I thought maybe I'll do that I'll see you it won't cost you anything though he's paying for it all anyway he spoke on the importance of trust and when I thought of it it was it was more for school boards and teachers and things like that but you know what it's in our daily lives too it affected that he talked about Clarity we have to trust somebody know where they stand he talked about compassion character a strong character is necessary competency uh Commitment if we're leaders and we've said we want to be then you'd

034be committed to doing that and keep your promises connection keep your connections a contribution about delivering results is an individual's value to the team so our board each individual has to work toward that and consistency in every conversation no matter what he was excellent the next lady was Sarita maben and she said I think I'm going to ask you a question did your mother ever say this to you if you don't if you don't have something nice to say don't you would have liked her he talked on that uh in dealing with each other if you don't have something nice to say think about what you say beforehand because it can really put people off on the wrong foot her new book talked about learn how to say things in a nice way she mastered

035making Fast Friends and kind of getting rid of stressful situations and she talked about getting cooperation with fellow board members you don't get anywhere if you don't have that and sometimes you just have to say no I have to learn that but anyway um so it was great there was another man maybe some of you know him even his name's uh even Ivan I'll get it right Ian tribado man was he Dynamic I sat next to him for breakfast and he was an inspiration I could hardly eat my breakfast because he was so exciting uh he talked about positive leadership in your homes in school boards everywhere you have to be enthusiastic and a good leader another one on Friday was Courtney Clark she describes herself as the luckiest and unluckiest person in the world

036and everybody on their chair got a sign about this big that said detour so in your life something happens in your life you have to detour when we deal with children and something happens in their life and we're teaching them as Educators and parents and everything we have to help those kids detour excellent excellent lady she went through a lot in her life a lot of cancers and things but she always detoured and came out ahead and then we also heard the governor uh he he gave about the same thing that he gave in his State of the State speech and uh I it was just kind of an exciting time for me I think as I said the best learning experiences are talking to people from other boards and Burlington is pretty well known

037in the state for being Innovative so it's kind of fun because they especially during covid we came up with some things very early and they still asked me about that but I wanted to say something personally to tonight um a friend sent me some emails that I think I need to straighten out first of all being on the state committee Burlington pays for nothing for me to drive to Madison and stay overnight and do the job that I do in Madison that is not covered by anybody in Burlington I give my time and I'd use my car but I don't I'm not paid for that the whole convention and everything was paid for it for me um but I wanted to set that straight because evidently some people think that I'm bilking the school district

038out of money and I'm not another thing I wanted to say is that in teachers and so forth and Educators we bring people in or we ask our teachers to go out to keep up with what's going on in education especially in our state and I think they appreciate that and we need to do that our administrators go to things we just came back from to see some meetings and so forth those are all very important for us the same thing for the board we need to do things too you're not going to learn a lot just sitting here you have to get out and see what's new in the state and what's new in the nation and what new things we can come up with I just want to and money has been set

039aside for us to do that I just wanted to kind of set that straight I'm not on Facebook because I have a little connection with the state department and I don't really want to get into that so I I've just been advised not to go on Facebook and I I'm not going to so but people show me and it's kind of disappointing sometimes but anyway um as Board of Education we need to encourage kids parents encourage kids and I think we have a great District thank you very much okay thanks Roseanne any other board members have any reports on workshops hey Steve let's do a superintendence report yeah thanks just a number of celebrations and a couple key dates to share with everybody who's with us tonight and first I would be remiss to also

040not uh congratulate Roseanne on starting or beginning her term as the Wisconsin Association of school boards president you've heard about that already so I won't I won't rehash that but certainly her position on that board is putting Burlington on the map and it certainly benefits Us in the sense that she has a seat at the table both at the state and National level for conversations about education so thank you for that service Roseanne um also we often talk about our compassion and commitment to all students within basd and that that equates to ensuring a sense of belonging for all kids as well and earlier this fall we administered a student climate survey asking just some really simple basic questions of our kids about how they're feeling in school and one of them was do you

041have a sense of Pride and it's exciting that 90 of our students talked about having a sense of pride in their schools and part of that is opportunities to develop as leaders and at the secondary level in the past few weeks we saw both Karcher middle schools student council had the opportunity to attend a leadership conference with the Milwaukee Bucks and then we also had a group of student athletes who participated in the Southern Lakes Conference Leadership Summit it was held right here at vets Terrace also just kind of for a moment talking about our high schoolers this time of year is always filled with a lot of accomplishments for our athletes and clubs and so just a few to highlight FBLA they put forth an excellent appearance at the regional competition recently we also

042had our female barbershop quartet hopefully you've heard of them the ytbn and they were named grand champion at The Barbershop Harmony society's mid-winter convention so of all of the folks that were there the grand champion that is not category specific at all so they performed just amazing so hopefully been able to catch it because it's there's a great recording out there also our boys wrestling team earned Regional Champs so they're still alive and going strong if you're in support of our wrestling program and then finally our our dance team at BHS placed fourth out of 20 teams at the state competition that is no small undertaking either uh and then we just had last week organized at the high school by our student services team an opportunity day a lot of folks might think of

043this as sort of like a job fair and if you've never seen it you got to put it on your calendar next time around because it's just the coolest event ever it's held in the field house and anything that you think that you might be interested in you know our kids get to go and talk to those folks so it's really a powerful event and it's also perhaps worth mentioning as we're talking about those career fields and post high school it's 2023 graduate Karen Kendall has been accepted to the U.S Naval Academy so if you are a friend or family of Kieran that is no small accomplishment as well on the elementary side of things uh this past month and we make lots of of noise about the 100th day of school and we celebrated

044100 days brighter this past week and some of you may know Siri Walby a PE teacher she was encouraging students to participate in our kids heart challenge which not only gets our kids up and moving around but also as a way that they raise funds for the American Heart Association so kudos to her and her students as well and we also had a group of fourth and fifth graders who were out showing off their math skills and strutting their stuff at the regional math 24 competition which happens this time each year also on the staff side of things this past week in the Wisconsin baseball coaches association they named Ryan Hoffman as assistant coach of the year so if you know Ryan he's a stem teacher over at Karcher middle school has been assisting with

045coaching baseball for 25 years so that quarter century mark and then finally just a couple of upcoming events the first being that on March 2nd the high school will be partnering with nami which is the National Alliance on Mental Health or mental illness excuse me to host an event called ending the silence and it's just going to be an hour-long presentation to provide some guidance on mental health and specifically on suicide prevention also at BHS coming up here in March the 9th through the 12th if you're in the land of theater you don't want to miss a Mamma Mia which will be the production this spring and again that's from March 9th through 12th at the high school so thanks yeah thank you Steve next up on our agenda is our consent agenda items and

046these would be approval last month's board meeting minutes approval our bank statement of bills appointments resignations retirements and terminations donations and school sponsored field trips and we take these all as a one item where we ask board members to make a motion uh they've all been read by board members and we've had a Personnel committee meeting last Friday to go through the Personnel matters that are in the consent agenda so I'd entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda items second okay motions made in seconded any comments board members hey hearing none I'll call for a vote all in favor say aye aye aye opposed nay all right yeah and then Steve you have something it's just really quick I wanted to uh tucked in that consent agenda under our our retirements I just want

047to highlight Jackie signs principal at Cooper Elementary School has put forth her intent to retire at the end of this school year Jackie's been with us since 2013 in the role of principles first out at Winkler and now at Cooper and just want to acknowledge that she's done done great things for the district thanks Steve okay so now we have two items for information discussion the first one is uh the book discussion committee and Jill's going to lead that just everyone's aware of the procedure we're going to ask our um Jill to start out the committee members then we'll also have a chance to present I believe and then we'll take public comments because I know a number of you probably are here for public comments on the on on the um book but I

048we thought it'd be useful and informative for everyone to hear our presentation from the committee who's been meeting for months and trying to work on this issue so Jill please take it away thank you um and thank you everyone for coming tonight to hear about uh the work of the committee um appreciate that uh wanting to first start out with just uh introducing myself for those that might not know who I am I am Jill oschlager and I serve as the assistant superintendent for the Burlington area school district and then um behind me is Sally Nye in Angie soul and they serve as our district Librarians and they too participated on the um committee with us so um we've been working through wanting to be able to develop uh and and really readjust our policy

049for the library given some information that has come forward from parents within the community and wanting to ensure that we really are being transparent um with everyone when it comes to our our services that we have in materials within our libraries so we put together a committee and that committee consisted of our two Librarians standing behind me one Community member five parents that have students in basd and then also myself and within that um committee the goal was really to First have the committee understand our full process of what happens with our materials within our libraries what what is it that is really behind the scenes taking place within the school district first and foremost and then what systems processes procedures um take place and how could we maybe be more transparent when it comes

050to the text that is available within our schools and then lastly how can we improve our communication and ensure that all parents feel supported when it comes to knowing what materials we have within our school district so um the first thing to to make sure that everyone in this room also is aware of is that there is a fair amount of discussion first about our collection right how do we develop our collection and ensuring that uh those on the committee were able to understand all of these bullet points in relation to what is our process currently so Sally is going to walk through that with everyone so that everyone else in the room and those listening would also be able to be informed yes there's quite oops let's see right now I'm short sorry so

051um yeah there was quite a few um processes to talk about as we were talking about Library selection um the first was um why we why we work for intellectual freedom in our libraries and um and I just went right back to the policy that is in place for our libraries which we do follow the American Library Association statements which say um through timely access to services and resources that both reflect the student body the cultural diversity and pluralistic nature of American society and represent perspectives held in the world more broadly so just trying to represent all of our students in our district um we went to the selection process so how do we select the books that do end up in our library um and looking once again at the policy that we do

052have um we are there to support and enrich the district standards and benchmarks and provides for personal in interests professional educational and recreational reading while promoting an appreciation of good literature and to find the best of that literature we do look at a lot of professional book reviews such as school library journal and the CCBC in Madison Publishers Weekly and many more professional resources and we also use a lot of teacher and student requests to make sure that we have materials of interest for our students um the next one how does the district weed materials so as we gain materials we do need to make more we need to make room for more materials and we do weed out the older materials the weeding process that we use is called the crew method which stands

053for continuous review evaluation and weeding and that comes directly from the Texas State Library commission and so it really has us looking at certain areas of our library so if I was looking in computers I'd obviously want to read that sooner in three years time because computers do you get outdated quickly if I'm looking in the History Section I'd give it 10 years or so most of our fiction if it hasn't been checked out in in five years or so we we think it's a good time to take it off the shelf and make room for books that that students will be interested in checking out um so going on to how our books are classified we do have several types of books in our district we have children's materials that are found at the

054elementary schools we have middle fiction which is for upper elementary and middle school and then why a which starts a young adult which comes in at about um seven of the eighth grade and up through high school um we did not have any labels at the high school and um or the elementary but at our Middle School we do have young adult tags for books that have more mature content and so um for checkout right now elementary and middle schoolers do come in weekly to check out high schoolers are more of a as needed process and if a child wants to check out a book from an upper level school they do need to have a permission slip from their parent um and and so they do give that permission but um um one thing

055that is interesting um to get the levels of our books we do follow what Publishers say and um we do use Follet tidal wave for most of our purchasing needs and um Fallout does take a lot of reviews and um kind of helps us find that good fit for where the book belongs and um okay okay and um what was I saying there we go I'm sorry as she's talking I'm just going to try to reboot this because she switched slides but it didn't switch up there so she'll keep talking we're good um so the program that we use does help us rate where the books do go and in um Follett started wanting to be a little more transparent and really figure out um in a more helpful way how for how to help

056us find where the y a line is and where the child line is and so they started adding more tags to help us out to help Define what is found within that book and they did introduce a new mature content tag that really helps us with our more mature content to know where that should fit in the library and we will be hitting more upon that as as the presentation continues at the time I'm sure that's gone just so everyone knows too all this information is posted on our district website you can you know in case you want you feel like you're missing something you can go back and review some of the information that these these slides will be on there I just looked on the website I do apologize because it's not syncing

057with what we're showing we're gonna we're gonna keep rolling though um and and maybe it'll catch up to what's actually on the computer um so we apologize for that how many books are actually in our libraries um I'm down in the elementary schools and so our bigger School Dyer um has about 16 000 resources in it and um Waller and Cooper both have about 15 000 and um lions and Winkler have about eight thousand Burlington High School can everyone hear me with my mask on uh so Carter's library has about 7 000 books in it it's a smaller collection because it's a really much newer collection because it was moved into a newer building Burlington High School's collection is a little over 13 000 books and then we had in parentheses what our monthly circulation

058is per per school um for elementary yeah so at my bigger schools um Dyer there's about 2 500 checkouts per month and um and Waller and Cooper have about 1 800 checkouts a month and Winkler and lions have about 800 checkouts a month air pressure we have about 1500 checkouts per month and remember that's kind of where it ends where the teachers are bringing classes in weekly and regularly so at the high school our checkouts are about two to three hundred per month versus the Elementary Middle School okay we're going to try resetting the TVs because we think that might be what it is um so one thing that I think is really important to share in relation to all the collections I mean you just heard at BHS alone there's 13 500 books and

059at Karcher there was 7 000 right each most schools have somewhere between eight to fifteen thousand books um and one thing that is interesting and important to always be thinking about is we have two Librarians and that's a lot of books um for two staff members to oversee and try to weed in in all of that so um I think that's important to also be mindful of um after uh going through all the information and sharing that with the committee one thing that we did discuss quite a bit about was all the different types of parents that we have within the community so um there was one parent that showed a really nice graphic that related to parent a versus parent B versus parent c um and within that graphic um we we talked a

060lot about uh all the differences that people have within the district and we had to have a lot of conversations that were about how do we ensure we serve 3 000 students how do we ensure that what we put in place policy wise serves that gamut of 3 000 students right some conversation was about some parents have no idea what's in our libraries some parents uh they shared that they didn't know that they could access Destiny which is where they could look to see that what their student is checking out that they have access to that all the time that they can they can go go in that was really helpful information to us as a school district because it lets us know okay we need to make some videos of how how two videos

061to help parents understand this is how you can log into Destiny this is how you can see what your students are checking out so that was really helpful when it came to the different conversations around parental views and different perspectives that we have within the school district I've been trying to unmir Toby like that's what I've been hitting is on mirror and it doesn't want to do it um so I apologize maybe I should shut the computer down um so next is uh the recommendations for the from the committee so after talking through like what is in place what what you know is happening how does reading work how does all of that um take place within the in the district we did talk through some um additions and things that we could improve on

062as a school district when it comes to our library materials um one thing that was really interesting was that um overall the committee was in agreement that the removal of text is not something we're interested in doing oh the number showed up um so removal of text is not something that the committee really wanted to do it was more about ensuring that the labeling was um correct for for the parents and so that it aligned correctly with the permission slip and things that we would put in place um so so that's one thing one additional item that was decided to be added was a high school permission slip we have never had a high school permission slip in place within the school district so Sally had shared one that she had talked about already so

063there is already two permission slips in place as a school district one is for any students that are sixth graders wanting to check out a why a book a young adult book that is at Karcher so as Sally shared there are ya books in the middle school and if I'm a sixth grader and I'm wanting to check out one of those books they already need a permission slip for that any student would need that we also have a permission slip in place already for any any student that is at the middle school that is requesting to read a book that is at the high school so there's YA books at the middle school there's YA books at the high school though the decision on which YA books are at the middle school versus the high

064school goes back to all of the research-based data that comes to us as a school district and suggests that this book is appropriate for a 12 year old versus this book is appropriate for a 14 15 16 year old so our librarians make the decision on where those Y.A books based on the data that they get from from Follett so um those two permission slips we have in place so seventh and eighth grader wanting to check out a book at the high school already have a permission slip in place as a school district for that what we realized through the conversation with the committee was that there was no permission slip once you got to the high school so freshmen through senior any book that was in the library you could check out and and

065have access to any of those texts there are books at the high school that are labeled as adult and really the biggest difference a lot of times between an adult versus a y a book is that the protagonist is an adult versus a teenager otherwise a lot of adult books are also formally usually Classics a lot of Classics are adults and or books that are simply older tend to be labeled as adult too we found one adult book at the high school is actually a cookbook but it's labeled as adult and again sometimes it just is because of the the time frame of when the author wrote the book thank you Steve he's going to work on that was categorized as adults sorry we have about 2 500 books at our at our BHS High

066School library that are listed as adult level interest and most of those are non-fiction or their books um written by authors like Stephen King or John Grisham where we don't have their entire collections but we do have some of them so like Jill said some of those adult books are cookbooks a lot of them are non-fiction it also includes our Classics section most of our poetry section and then some of our fiction so in the the committee decided you know an additional permission slip that was needed was to have a mature or adult level permission slip at the high school so that any student wanting to check out a book that is labeled as adult and or mature content would need a permission slip at the high school in order to check that out again

067as Angie said 13 500 books at the high school 2600 of them are labeled as adult or mature content those 2600 now will need a permission slip in order to check that out pre-committee that would not have taken place um so so that was the work of the committee um Angie will talk um briefly about the difference of mature content in adult labeling so all parents have access to our destiny catalog so you can see what we have in all of our schools you can see what your child is checking out and we want obviously to make sure that we're being as transparent as we can be so in our destiny catalog when you search a title it will show the parent the interest level if it's young adult versus adult if it has an

068interest level as adults it now requires a permission slip in addition to that Title Wave added a tag like Jill said a mature content tag some of our young adult books at the high school had that mature content tag so we as a committee looked at the list there was about 96 books that we had in our high school library that had a mature content tag about 51 of them were already cataloged as adult level interest so what we did is we changed the call numbers for the young adult books that had a mature content tag to add an MC so that parents know that that book is a mature content book even though it's still listed as a young adult interest level so parents can see in the catalog if a call number has

069an MC it would require a permission slip or if it has an adult level interest it would also require a permission slip again all part components that were added based on the work of the committee in addition to that within the conversation with the committee was the need for a potential overall permission slip so what if as apparent though I am I am concerned about certain texts that my I don't want my student to read one parent even brought up what if my student is going through um an eating disorder right now and I'm I'm just wanting to be in the know if my student is wanting is trying to check out a book about that because I want to be able to um support them in that conversation and and know about that so

070parents do have the ability um 4K through 12th grade to utilize a overall permission slip and that really gives a lot of local control to that family so what you would do is if you have a genre or a topic or anything that you're not wanting your students to engage in then you can have that conversation with our Librarians and they would note that within Destiny which is our location where they can see when a student wants to check out a book they can see that information in there and they would know that this family has uh has the desire to not engage their student in certain texts that are found in the library so that is in addition to um will you go to the uh yeah keep going right there can you stop

071at that one for a minute that's what parents will actually see on their side of things so if you go into Destiny discover um and you search for Ellen Hopkins book traffic you'll be able to see that it's fiction verse just means that it's a novel and verse we've genreified our high school library recently and then that MC denotes that it's a mature content title only books that are that are listed as young adult in our library would have an emcee tag associated with the call number so they would automatically prompt a permission slip because books that are labeled interest level adult they wouldn't need that MC because they would automatically generate a permission slip so this is what it looks like on the parent side and again that MC uh information there uh has

072not been something that has been in our system prior to the work of the committee so um that is something that is new and um Angie's been working hard at the high school level to to get all the books um categorized that way so that we do ensure that the text is being able to be seen that way um something that was always a little bit interesting too was that our Librarians have always been able to see the data behind the scenes but with the changeover of of librarians at the secondary level um Angie noticed that on the parent side parents couldn't see the same thing that the Librarians could see so she spent a lot of time having conversations with the companies in order to ensure that you know it what we're wanting parents

073to be able to see and making sure that we're really being transparent which we've always wanted to do but there's just the difference of what the school sees versus what the parents see and wanting to make sure that that's more symbiotics than it was before okay Steve you want to go to the next slide so this is uh that information on the overall permission slip so again that idea of being able to um if as a family there's a certain topic or topics that you're not wanting your students to be able to engage in um you are more than welcome to have a conversation with our Librarians and we would note that in the system I know some parents have brought up a concern that if they do that then my child is potentially being

074singled out and other students are going to notice that they're not able to check out a book I do think that that is something that um that I would hope parents realize that our staff deal with things on a daily basis that are are far more difficult than than that even right so um getting food to our our students who are homeless we have over 80 students in the district homeless and making sure that they have food over the weekends we're very good and being discreet on things that we um should be discreet on and trying to maintain that confidentiality so staff are really used to doing that and this would be no different from that um for those that might be concerned about something like that so um Angie we'll talk next you can

075go to the next slide Steve about what the notes look like in Destiny so when we say um if a parent were to want to submit a permission slip um where does that go what does it look like um on the staff side so we just wanted to be able to show you exactly what it looks like on the librarian side and for all of our aides who are helping us check out books so that top one that's a why a title it's a fictional book will Grayson will Grayson it now has an MC in its call number so when a student comes up and types in his or her student ID and the book is scanned that's the first thing that pops up at the top of the screen that this is a book

076that has been flagged mature content and that child needs a mature content permission slip in order to check out that material down here we just wanted to show you what it would look like to have notes about an individual child so at the middle school students sixth graders they need to have a Hawaii permission slip in order to check out those YA books so this is what that looks like so um in October this child handed in that permission slip so that's what we would see at the high school too but we can we can add as many notes as we want for books and children so like Jill said for parents who really feel like they don't want to pre-approve every book for their child they can reach out to us the Librarians and

077have a conversation and say this is what I'm worried about and we can make notes in that child's account to really partner with the family and make sure that they're feeling good about their children spending time in the library and checking out the right materials and the only reason there is a black um box right there is that it has a student's name in it so that is simply just protecting uh student information there behind that black box go ahead Steve the committee also talked about additional information when it comes to you know talking through some parents are aware some parents are unaware of all of the information and the types of different genres and topics that are within our libraries and how do we really ensure that all parents are in the null right

078so that was a conversation within the committee quite a bit was ensuring that everyone has the information that they need to at least be aware like oh I I do know this about the library and this is what I can do about it or here's the resources that I need so what the committee decided was the need for a blurb in our registration at the beginning of the school year so this is again something we don't currently have in place but we will be adding at registration in August so there's a message if you want to click on that Steve on that page um that the message here would be that entire text would be something that shows up when a parent goes to register in the fall and it is simply a check box

079that yep I read this information um they can't move on within the registration process without reading that information this ensures to us that every parent is aware of the text that we have within our schools within there will also be a link to the library website so that they will be able to go right to the place where they would be able to see information about the four different permission slips that are available that's where we would upload those videos on how to use apparent access Destiny yourself and be in the know about all of our library happenings thank you it's like Vanna White back here um then uh the next slide is in relation to the website information so we wanted to just ensure that um go ahead you can click on that Steve

080um we wanted to ensure that the same information that we talk about within registration is also talked about on our on our website and includes that there are different genres of texts that are found in our libraries and ensuring that people are aware of that um below that if you keep scrolling down there was uh some desire for the um parents to be able to where can I look in order to know more information about specific books so there are a few websites that the school district does endorse um as a system and then we also included other websites that people on the committee um it was a it was multiple people sharing what about this website what about this this could be something that parents could reference so we did include a list of

081websites parents could go to that the district does not endorse but as another spot where it's a really good place for parents to go if you're wanting to see information about specific books again something you did not have before then finally um this is uh just wanting to ensure everyone's aware of the reconsideration form this did not this was uh recreated as uh as a school district um it was more so worded in the past about removal and just wanting to make sure the conversation is about reconsideration of of the text and really um this is here to say and the committee talks through this as well in regards to how often does the committee meet when we get this information sent to the school district so there is a form that is part of

082policy if the policy if the board were to approve the policy this this reconsideration form is part of that policy there is um a few pages that someone would need to fill out uh that they would then get to this school district and it would include information on if you felt like a book is mislabeled or should be labeled mature content or whatever that as as a family member or Community member that you felt should be adjusted about a certain book you would fill out that reconsideration form we would collect any forms given to us and then we would put together committees to review the materials to make a determination on what happens with that material and we would do that twice a year an adjustment was made to that where in the past the

083policy read that we would as soon as we got a form we would form a committee within 10 days of receiving that form Our concern with that is if we were to get a form sent to us once a week we'd be potentially putting a committee together all year long yeah um which would be really difficult to sustain so an adjustment to the policy is that we would collect the forms and then review all those materials twice a year so once in January once in June so any form submitted to us between those time frames we would then be able to decide how many committees do we potentially need to form based on the number of materials that we're needing to review also I think it's important to share that with that reconsideration form we

084did have some conversation as a committee in regard to uh what does that committee use in order to make a recommendation to the school district so uh initially the thought was that the entire committee would have to read the text right the full text is something you would have to as we would put together a committee all committee members would get a copy of the text they would have time to review the text and then make a recommendation in regards to what they believe should happen with that text um there was some desire for the committee to be able to use excerpts instead of having to read the entire text as a committee that was decided that the need for the resource the the full book to be what is written in the policy um

085however if someone were to want to include excerpts and and just have that as part of their reconsideration form and include that with their form they are there's nothing stopping someone from doing that if they wanted to include it with the form that they submit forward so I feel like that's important to bring up because that was one thing that was um discussed a little bit as well within the committee um and then lastly go ahead um was this is something that is recommended recommended from a district point of view not from a committee so everything that I just discussed um up till now are all recommendations based out of that that committee right the five parents the one Community member and then the three District members so all of which we have not had

086in place prior as a school district and I'm thankful for the work of the committee because these are all great things that are going to assist with ensuring that we do communicate and parents do feel more confident and comfortable with the text that their students are able to access Within basd um there's one recommendation that uh is in addition to the committee so again this would be a district recommendation is in regards to you can go to the next slide um how many uh items can one individual submit forward for review um per school year and it would be uh that our recommendation uh to have a maximum of two materials per person that can be submitted per for review per school year the concern there is that uh in order to do the materials

087Justice it would be difficult in taxing on the system uh to review um hundreds and hundreds of of texts I I the hope is that everything that we have put in place are things that allow the community and parents to feel confident um and and again that local control is there for each individual parent to have a conversation with our staff about texts they're concerned about um and just hoping that this this is um something that will work for basd the next slide is uh taking you to the actual Library policy so all the text in black is text that has already been approved and was Prior uh policy in the past and all the text in the red that the board it has access to is all texts that would be recommendations from the

088committee um or the district in regards to that one topic College you can all access this on on our through our website it's all linked to the agenda tonight through board docs so if you want to see those documents afterwards and really all the text in red um pretty much covers all of the information we just talked about tonight so if you could synthesize the conversation here that's what's in red in the text within the policy and I think it's a good time just to make very clear that everyone understands tonight is Just for information and discussion the board is not taking action tonight if we decide to take action and change our policy that would be taken up at the next monthly meeting and every time we change a policy we always have two

089readings so there'd be a first reading in March and a second reading in April so just keep that in mind if you're concerned about what the actual policy reads we're going to have another um discussion about this next month potentially if we actually take action on this yeah and the the big things board members to Circle back on that would be big adjustments to be thinking about um as you move forward is in relation to the addition of a high school permission slip that we don't currently have in place the addition of the overall permission slip again not in place labeling of all of the text as mature content at the high school that is labeled that way the use of plagues within the system right behind the scenes in Destiny the addition of the

090registration information to confirm that everybody has read the policy the ad of the information on the website including to have that list of websites that the district does not endorse and then uh the reconsideration form is also you know some adjustments to that and then the um maximum number of books so those are kind of the bigger pieces in summary that would be things to be thinking about as as you decide on that now would be a time uh if anyone on the committee members if there's some additional information you'd like to say or share now is a good time for that and then questions from the board to the committee and then opening up to the public thank you let's see I'm limited as well these are committee members thank you very for asking

091all right I'll be referencing uh just a couple things in the handouts that you might have the signature summaries and then the what I call the obscene worksheet um as I go through so I support all the improvements presented to you um by the Jill and the Librarians and from the committee I've said clearly I've stated clearly starting in the April 2022 when this all started for me in terms of bringing light to um obscene excerpts and books to give grace to the library Librarians and that continues today and to focus on processing up people that's what I um that's important I have a great respect for what Angie has unsurfaced recently with the mature content label and the Title Wave system um that's allowing the automatic establishment of the putting the MC and the

092call numbers for where that contact label exists in the Title Wave but it's not enough I'd ask you to look to number seven in your obscene worksheet document about a father raping his two eight-year-old twins this book is not cut by relying on the title of mature content label again I support and love what she has found but it's just not enough and you'll hear that as I um finish my update uh that that book I'm under number seven with father raping his two eight-year-old twins it's not cut by by the totally mature content label and it's tagged as young adults in um solid I'm seeking the board's feedback at some point on these 14 short examples and if there's anything listed there that they would not see is obscene but Follett is going through

093a growth and Awakening to the need to move some young adult tags to adult and we've seen that over the last com couple months and that's encouraging it's really encouraging but they're not there yet in the spring of 2022 ala prevented fallot from implementing a system Improvement that would have brought transparency to parents regarding sexually explicit books they saw the need in the nation for it but ala stopped it so again there's improvements making but it's it's not there yet uh the law is black and white on the definition of what is harmful to Children See the first two pages of your pristine worksheet for that also psychologists also note the impact on the brains of minors who are exposed to obscene content See page three for that from the Epstein worksheet for more details

094please Jill spoke to the parents that the book committee represents also look to the second to the last page of that worksheet for more details on the differences that we discussed and how parents message to the miners the differences that we have and that's okay that we're different but the most important humans the book committee represents are the miners the students themselves the seventh comment and the signature summary is one of the critical reasons why mature um content approval must be taken seriously and I'm going to read that briefly I have been a teacher I have been teaching for 25 years I have great concern for what students have easy access to I have been there when students read books that had significant triggers leading to panic attacks negative intrusive thoughts and fears I am

095careful now to check with my students before they can read books with triggers the books that require a local decision for adding the call adding MC to the call number will be the Safeguard from minor students and for parents when a book is brought to the counter to be checked out the first thing is that the minor may make a decision to move on to another book when notified that it's mature that would be my daughter my daughter daughter doesn't want to get to page 10 and be triggered and so she really appreciates that this is coming that if she brings a book because we're not labeling the even labeling the books with mature right it's not on the outside of it not visible she would get triggered at that point to make a decision

096so that's awesome the second thing is the parent notification for uh for approval and that could lead to parent um minor dialogue that's important too with the approval the book is checked out extreme options to never approve or always approve are always available but it is the mature approval process where the school board provides the safe for the miners that's important tonight I'm asking the board to do what the unbalanced committee was unable to do represent the parents simply asking for a safeguard to trigger a parent approval for books that have mature content no Banning no centrally locating not even a visible label on the books on the shelves no impact to access and choice I'm almost done I'm asking for four specific needed policy improvements to make the mature approval process process actually provide

097the Safeguard it is intended to provide one number one explicitly State and policy in the formal complaint process that excerpts for obscene content can be utilized instead of reading an entire book Jill shared with me today and she also shared tonight um that and then the eight the reason we're here is because last June I submitted 18 books to 9130 with excerpts um that's why we're here tonight that's why book committee was formed so I'm asking that um School Board actually puts that in the policy saying that the excerpts can be used in the in for obscene books second explicitly state in the policy that there will be no limits to throttle or slow down the efforts to move obscene content reviews through the book Review Committee no limit of two per person per year

098for obscene content the BSD book solution cannot rely on solely unfollette they're getting there but they're not there yet the BSD book solution must not just allow the community but encourage the community to submit book reviews with obscene excerpts as they identified what are we afraid of what if I find 2 or 10 or 30 or 50 books of the zinc content that are not identified by Fallout yet let's get the emcee added to these books so that our process is a safeguard almost done make it clear that there is an alternative to requesting the removal of a book and to Simply trigger the mature process to communicate this um just three or just two more points number three explicitly State and policy in the formal complaint process that an outcome can be to add

099the emcee to the call number we want to go down the path of just adding MC to the call number and not be asking for book removal let's just make that explicitly clear in our policy same thing number four is is similar State the same thing in the request for reconsideration of material forms that the outcome can be to add an emcee to the call number if we you know people here tonight get it but if we don't put it in our policy they're not going to remember I mean let's really encourage our community to go down the path of let's just Market mature and not ask for it to be removed that's what I'm asking for if these policy improvements are included mature approval process process will succeed to meet objectives to State Fair

100Miners and set a path forward we can all support this is not complicated this book proposal should be a home run for this District I really believe that and one that can be taken to other districts as an Innovative approach to mature books thank you for listening I just wanted to clarify that when we decided which books would get an MC tag that tidal wave made that distinction for us and that books can have multiple tags they might have tags about friendship or Native American history and mature content but they have multiple tags and these are the books that tidal wave said in your in your library these are the books that that are mature content so the books that are still y a that do not have a mature content tag right now those

101are the ones that have not had the call numbers change so we just want an objective process and that's why we've I've done as many collection analysis as I can to really ensure that we're being objective and that we're using the data that we have to properly label books hi good evening Naomi Rock I was on the book committee thank you for letting us have time to say a few words um I understand that the concerned citizens group has been very vocal for quite a while and um you know contacting board members basd staff having meetings expressing concern but I do want you to know that there's there's a whole other group that that trusts our Librarians that trust the process that trust the staff um in choosing age-appropriate materials for our school libraries and

102we want our students to have access to these materials we are concerned about a small group of parents pushing to reclassify or label books as a compromise to removing them from our district um I went on the DPI website and one of the sources that they directed me to gave me a a topic that I think is really kind of summarized where I'm coming from um see it says that uh you know young people deserve to see themselves reflected in their library books whether they're exploring their this is I've added to this but whether they're exploring their gender identity their lgbtq concerns or sadly even the victim of sexual assault these books are hard to read if you if you look at excerpts alone they're difficult I'll admit that but there's more to these books

103than the excerpts it takes the whole book to get the picture of what the author is trying to convey and it's an author to reader message um you'll see you'll see the hardest to read materials I'm sure in the packet I'm sure you've seen them before but during discussions in our committee other books came up Jacob's new dress a k-3 picture book wanting to be reclassified as mature content gender identity books in k-3 picture books I understand that parents have the right to try to protect their children but in my opinion protecting your children is teaching your children and the community my daughter is transitioning right now she was a student at basd had more students knowing what gender identity is and how it relates to a person that it is a person it's not

104icky it's not disgusting it's not something that should be hid it's not something that should be put behind a curtain those are coming next so be careful I just I just caution the board to be careful of judging books based on excerpts of focusing on sensationalized wording such as you know we heard porn we heard of scene we heard damaging our kids ruining our children um failing our kids illegal addictive you know just be careful just think it through you will come to a good compromise thank you thank you very much so I I believe that is the um no one else within the committee is wanting to come forward to have you know share any additional information or or their own personal thoughts and opinions okay there yeah thanks I guess at this point

105then I'd ask the board members do you have any questions of Jill our Librarians or the or you know the committee members um and then we're going to open it up to public comments at that point um um one question for now um so as Miss Hewitt Mrs Hewitt mentioned she had submitted about 18 books for review based on excerpts um to date how many of those have been reconsidered yeah she's Angie has that I have the statistics for you right here so of the original 18 six of those books were were readed um again our weeding process includes books that have been in our library for five or more years that have had zero checkouts so those six were weeded three of them are now categorized as mature content per tidal wave and follow

106it and two of those are categorized as adults any other board members have questions or comments I guess the only comment I have is thank you sorry um limiting it I understand the rationale for limiting to just two per person I just wonder if that may potentially cause issues down the road I know there's an obvious work around due to that but again I'm just one one opinion on that I'm not sure if it's two per year is the route you want to go but but otherwise everything else that was presented I think has been Fair um I think it moves this process along is it going to be perfect absolutely not but I think that we need to allow this to and move forward and to try and to see where things shake out

107um I understand concerns of both sides of the issue I really do I'm obviously more on Miss Hewitt's side um but I'm at least willing to look at the work that you guys did and see how we move forward so thank you so I too have a concern with the two books per year issue um but completely opposite of what Taylor has we aren't staffed for this and this limited to two books per person is nonsense I mean this movement was driven in social media this is we're just going to feed this list to a group of people and they'll all come in we don't have time or resources to review 300 books in a year I would love to have more Library resources in our district we don't have them so two a year

108per person I think is going to be over the top we just don't have the means to do that I'm not sure if it was mentioned before but um yearly how often do you do the weeding of books um I every year I've had to move libraries every single year so obviously weeding comes into that um last year two years ago I moved three libraries so I we did three libraries so um now that we're a little more stable with their libraries we try to hit different sections every year so we can't get to our whole Library every year but different sections every year and where those sections referenced in your PowerPoint um no um maybe one year I'll hit non-fiction and the next year I'll hit fiction so try to rotate between the different

109sections anyone else have questions comments at this point you can Circle back too yeah through your public comments sure I I actually want to take a second to share a couple things um well first and foremost the committee members I referenced this before but you know thank you for your time I mean that was you know lots of meetings um not easy topic to tackle and our Librarians and Jill thank you for serving on this committee um I I want to share what I learned at the State School Board convention I think it's it's relevant now um and I think it's in line with a lot of the work our committee's been doing one key thing I learned was that to make certain that parents and Guardians are informed of their students choices and have

110mechanisms for consent of materials that may not be age-appropriate so that was emphasized you know what it was at the State School Board convention the seminar I heard was a panel of librarians and uh somebody from the DPI who's like the head librarian of the state um another key statement I thought was critical was parents and Guardians have a right to make choices for their children but not for the children of others and that's consistent with our policy um and I think it's consistent with what the what committee came up with but it's our policy 1930 States in part that no challenge material may be removed solely because it presents ideas that may be unpopular or offensive to some so we have that in our existing policy right now um one thing that was brought

111up in this committee though is that it was emphasized is a committee must read the entire book that is brought forward for reconsideration and you know excerpts are not reading the book context is important so that was you know the Librarians stressed that and if you Google it you look up book reconsideration you're going to find that's one thing that comes up right and Center is you have to read the book um other districts have very similar policies to what we're doing so we're not doing something that I would say is unique our policies are kind of in line the reclassification though may be unique and that's something that I've you know that's come since I went to the school board convention um so maybe we're doing something different there but other districts have formed

112committees like we have either here to reconsider books or to consider the philosophy on intellectual freedom and book reconsideration projects or procedures um and our committees are often teachers administrators parents community members librarians so again thank you for your work I also want to say thank you for your work that's a lot of time in consideration all of you put in why don't we open up to public comments then too so I guess if you have a public comment the rules are gonna yeah you can uh why don't you raise your hand and then if you can come yeah Mr and I will just add to thank you uh last before it gets turned over to everyone else in the committee um the conversation can be sometimes difficult because everyone comes from different lenses but

113I thought the committee did a really nice job of being able to hear each other and you know try to come to uh middle of the road kind of uh agreement okay and just keep in mind the rules we talked about at the beginning of the meeting with three minutes is going to apply here keep your comments directed at the board and if you don't mind state your name again I know you spoke earlier Nick so I may not agree with what's in the books but I don't support Banning because that would limit some of the other things I believe in like freedom and one's ability to choose for their own but what I don't agree with is the classification process now you say you know you need to read the whole book for context

114well if my son is reading the book and comes across the rate or the other stuff in that book he's just been exposed to mature content so at that point you're not solving the issue that many of the parents in this room want us to solve and that is we don't want our kids to be exposed to mature content without our knowledge or um blessing I guess if you will so my biggest issue right now is the policy stands is that if I find excerpts in a book that I believe are sexually explicit if I would rather refer to them as pornographic because that's what they are um I want that book reclassified and that doesn't stop anyone from checking it out or telling people they can't look at it or anything like that but

115if you allow these books to fall through the cracks then you're exposing my child to sexually explicit slash pornographic material that I don't want them to see unless they talk to me about it so yeah you have a good start on the policy but it's not doing the original task of protecting our children from what I believe is what I don't want them to see other parents they have a different opinion that's fine I believe that's 100 you raise your children however you want but the main issue is most of the parents or I won't even say most part of the parents want the material to be called out as mature so that our students can't check that out the other parents they either don't care or they just they want their kids to be

116able to read that stuff so I don't think we're solving the main issue with how the policy is now and secondly Barry said you know he thinks two is too much because of Staffing well you're silencing the parents from bringing their concerns if you're not even going to review their concerns so right there you're just making everyone who has taken the time to look at it and express their feelings you're just dumping that in the trash so right there that's not a transparency or trust or anything like that and the other thing you brought up trust Roseanne sorry to call you awkward I said Trust as soon as this material was found in our libraries there should have been an email to parents letting them know this material exists but I didn't see anything like

117that so that's that's not very trusting right there to begin with and it was brought up April of 2022. so thank you for your time yeah thank you Mr Colbert can I make just a point of clarification I think Jill correct me if I'm wrong on this but the process that the committee I believe is recommending is if you're a parent you come across an excerpt in a book or if you just find excerpts for where forever you find the x-service you have the right then to bring forward that book for reconsideration it's not you you're not required to read the book I was referring to when the book you know the book committee if one is Forum to consider you know to reconsider the classification books should be reading the entire book I want

118to make sure that's clear again so as a parent you're not limited um you don't have to read the whole book The Forum would allow you to use excerpts to trigger the reclassification project yeah correct no I'm gonna leave it there um someone else at the board I want to say something I would touch base on a couple of things I believe the policy is presented allows parents to have every book reviewed so if your concern is that they may come across something and you didn't know about it fill out the form every single book they want to check out you'll have to approve that's not ignoring your concerns that's making a very clear way for you to address what you want to address and for you to control what your children do or do

119not read foreign we'll get to everybody thank you yes Matthew sonarik Burlington Wisconsin so uh based on what very HS said I I agree that parents should be in control what their kids decide or are going to be exposed to so I say treat it like it's at a convenience store for tobacco or alcohol but those more graphic books in a special section anytime any child wants to get those books of the highest classification of toxic pornography the parent gets email phone call me to sign up in each book every child they're going put them there this command's not going to fix anything and I got to be honest I really don't have any faith in the board at all in correcting this I mean I read last one thing I got yelled at but

120what we want you guys to do is I want you to look at these since I can't read them this weekend I want you to write your name and phone number on these I want you to go to some place with show them their 1400 and hand them out in front of their parents at Walmart or parks and see what happens if I can't give these to somebody right now at a park or a Walmart or a playground or daycare center our kids should be getting in schools this is a failure at state level allowing our kids be exposed to this stuff parents want to have these kids read about you know kids being pimped out to 35 year old truckers in a trucking lot or the other thing that's in the books in school

121that's that's their choice but there's no educational value and whatsoever so since I can't read these I want you to look at them because a lot of people spend a lot of time researching these countless hours and so I can look on it across a couple I can't read them because you're gonna say it's obscene and there's people at home they're going to see us on YouTube it's going to live forever on the internet but the kids tomorrow can we get this in school we can't talk about a year as adults all adults don't see a man are 18 here at all but I can't discuss it but tomorrow they can get in school that's a that's a serious failure system so I'd like to hand these out make it a point of record them

122and I encourage you to reach an even phone number hand them out to a minor and see what happens anyone else have a public comment they win numbers yeah I have a clarification Peter there's a large difference between someone reading a book privately and protected libraries what was that well you may not feel the rare but legally there are well again you may feel that way but that is not how it works yes hi Bridget savaglia uh almost 22-year Burlington resident so still new to the area I just had two comments I wanted to share first I appreciate that the committee put the time and effort into identifying a process that would allow parents who have a differing opinion on what they feel their children or students should be able to access I appreciate that

123and endorse that the other thing I wanted to share is that in in I heard the words continuous Improvement earlier and in light of that in order to see that you can sustain your improvement you have to be able to support it um I have been in K-12 education and I've worked in two other districts that had Destiny had these policies already in place and also had Librarians at every single building we have to so I don't see without additional funding and additional resources that we could actually support a more deeper process that some people have talked about we don't really have the staff as very noted earlier so I do support the process that's been outlined here and I want us to think about all of you as your role in responsibility being fiscal

124oversight of the taxpayer funding we don't have the resources to do this type of system and I think what the committee has provided is more of insufficient thank you foreign Pat Hoffman 308 South Oakland Avenue Burlington Wisconsin and uh former assistant superintendent long time but I think we wrote the first reconsideration policy back in my day about 30 years ago and I do appreciate the work that was done by the committee I think that it's a very difficult and challenging subject to address especially in today's time I did wonder where the student voices were on the committee I think our middle and high school students are well able to speak for themselves their own needs about information and the needs that their peers may have for information certainly about difficult situation so that's just my

125editorial I was interested in the forms to keep children from material I wonder if as a parent I would have been able or I would be able to fill out a form that said my child is capable of making their own decision and I am happy with them making that decision because I see what comes home I spent many many years in my kitchen reading books aloud to my children talking about challenging books with them talking about challenging subjects and appreciating the fact that literature took my children places that they could never go themselves my white middle class kids in Burlington Wisconsin will never know what Maya Angelou experienced and Why the Caged Bird Sings and they needed to know that that was important they needed night John by Gary Paulson they needed The Giver

126by Lawrence by Lois Lowry they needed those books to be able to be fully engaged and informed they also needed though both those books to learn empathy and books are not just to entertain and they're not even just to educate there's so much more than that so I would hope that we'd be very very very careful about what we limit and how we limit books and information to our children and I would absolutely say that everyone on a committee that wants to reconsider a label has to read a book in its totality because an excerpt never will tell the story of what some of those books will tell you when read in their entirety and I encourage parents to read with their children not just to them but with them and to follow their lead

127more often thank you just quick clarification on at that point as well the form does have a section in it that allows approval going forward so you that was handled by the committee Mrs Roberson Roberta Roberts around 10. can you remember yeah that's fine um I do agree with what the community and everybody's putting in place I think it's great as far as excerpts I believe it's valid because they've already done it on TV and in movies if there's a part that's considered bad you don't get to see the whole movie it's rated by age you have to go with the parent you have to be a certain age and frankly I just think that's what we're doing here and a parent can sit down then and read that book with their child if they

128want so just kind of like a little bit thank you Ryan Mueller Burlington a couple things one I'd ask that the board considered quarterly reviews instead of the biannually reviews I think be waiting six months you're gonna accumulate way too much not get through it so I'd advocate for a quarterly review I think is probably the sweet spot we don't I know we it could get arduous to have every time the committee gets or a review request to have uh assembly of a committee so quarterly I think is good to limiting to two books a year is per parent per family whatever it was I think doesn't do any service to people doing their research it really limits and I think to Taylor's Point people will find workarounds of why even bother with it and

129the third thing is the excerpts I think the excerpts should be used no Miss Hoffman just spoke about some books and not using excerpts from that there's a difference between the books she listed and the books that are being brought forth to this committee Mr Turkey stopped our a speaker last month because he was just reading the excerpts now if the excerpts aren't viable to be read in here in public I get the point that Barry made on there's a difference right if they're not viable if they're obscene enough or we can't read them aloud here then we need to have a control in place and we need to be able to use those excerpts to put that control in place the context doesn't matter you could watch an entire movie the context of the

130movie could be good but if there's a graphic sex scene a graphic violent scene then the movie's getting rated R period you could just look at that excerpt you could just see okay let me show you this this uh video clip and it's you know someone getting their head blown off well that movie's getting rated R same thing with books why should that be any different so if if we are serious about this we have to allow the excerpts to be used as an evaluation Point context doesn't matter at that point I guess that's what I'm getting at so that's what I'd ask the sport to consider thank you yep so just a point on that I'm sorry my name is Rebecca Raleigh I'm from Burlington Wisconsin um I'm also a librarian by trade um

131so the last speaker mentioned that the books that they are using in excerpts aren't anything similar to what Miss Hoffman is talking about well the initial committee was formed because of these 18 books which has since grown and I have a list of 85 books that has since been given to the committee and up for reconsideration and some of the materials on that list are National award-winning books so I don't know that aristantle and Dante discover the secrets of the universe is any different than Lois Lowry's The Giver so what the committee is advocating for is objective criteria I don't think anybody would say that there's anything wrong with that but when we are using the tools at our disposal that Follett has given us that the Librarians are working with they're compromising um Librarians

132by trade don't believe in labels I think that we are already giving quite a bit in terms of the small group of parents who have concerns I strongly believe that our students our young people should be given the tools to make these decisions for themselves we are given this this opportunity to put some of these things in place but it just comes down to objective criteria who's going to create these additional labels with these additional methods for determining what these mature content materials look like I'm not equipped to do it I'm not working with these students I'm not working with these materials we put Professionals in these jobs in these positions and we need to trust their judgment Burlington I have a two-year-old a five-year-old a 14 year old and a 21 year old graduate

133of Burlington and my daughter came to me and said Mom I can't believe that there's some of these books in The District I'm 21. and I'm reading them and they're a little much for me and my daughter she has much different political views than I do we've butted heads and for her to come to me and tell me that you know she's had problems with her own you know deciding her sexuality and deciding where she fits in this world and for her to come to me and express these things you know it made me realize that this isn't just a conservative issue this isn't just a small group of parents and I see that it's not just a social media thing that this started I've had I had parents come to me before I started

134the Facebook group and in that Facebook group I've had people leave the group because of the excerpts they saw with warning labels on them because it traumatized them it brought up these traumas so if a kid comes up to another child and says hey check out this excerpt and it triggers something in that kid that kid is never the same there's there has to be warning labels if we're not going to remove them I've moved away from one of them all taken out put that mature tag on there use the experts because those excerpts just reading those excerpts content I'm sorry forget the whole content of the books it doesn't change the fact there's a little 12 year old girl getting raped on the floor by her father it doesn't change that for a 12

135year old girl that got raped to read that and that's all I ask is just use the excerpts don't recommend don't say that the whole book has to be read put a cut put a mature label on that book what is it going to hurt a child to read mature content then let them read mature content but at least the parents will know hey my kid probably shouldn't go anywhere near that book thank you some of this I'm going to read is going to be relevant because of the needing it or the committee you guys had you might even speak I'm sorry to interrupt you I could just speak into the mic because they can't hear you at home otherwise oh sure I'm Yolanda Hall and I live in the Burlington School District so what

136I'm going to read to you is going to be a little bit off because of the um this committee that you guys had so anyways I'd like to thank the school staff teachers and okay please I would like to thank the school staff and teachers who really care for our children and for all their hard work and commitment I want to make it clear that I care for all Humanity despite our differences I am not an expert and I can only tell you what I have read what I've been told and what I have experienced in my life what I can tell you is I know right from wrong and in the remaining good in this country is worth fighting for I have only attended a few school board meetings like most people I'm very

137busy but not too busy to stand up for our children at the last school board meeting you silence the gentleman who started to read one of the books that is in our Burlington's Public Schools what made it even worse was that he wasn't even allowed to get to some of the worst parts of what are in these books you stopped this gentleman immediately because you didn't want children to hear it on YouTube I totally agree with not allowing children to hear such things what I don't agree with is that you allow children in our public schools to have access to these books when you first shut down this gentleman the first thing I thought of is thought of is that you didn't want parents to be aware of what's really going on with such folks

138that are in our public schools because parents would awaken to what is it that what to what our children are being exposed to at home when something comes on the radio TV and or electronic devices and we don't want our children to hear or watch such things we can choose to change the station turn it off or take away the electronic device right now parents have no rights or say in what their children are being exposed to in the public school libraries that is why I'm here today to fight for what is good for our children I feel that's I feel that children are becoming victims of grooming due to such books first you introduce children to to all forms of devious sexual behavior encourage them to make to experiment with their sexual desires and

139the results could lead to increased in teen pregnancy sexually transmitic diseases in use of drugs underage drinking rape and sex trafficking with suicide among children growing sex trafficking and Drug overdoses at its all-time high in America how can you sit there and think that these books are okay like my granddaughter told me they're trying to normalize this Burlington school offers a lot of great things to our children then when you look deeper there is deception it's like looking at a delicious apple but once you bite into it it's rotten to the Core and anyone else have a comment they want to make Karen Melby Burlington um I think a point that hasn't really been focused on here is that this is a school these are schools it's not just public it's not we're not just

140talking about public we have we have the school library we also have a community Public Library and I think we can we can make sure that that those books that we're not we're not limiting the books in the in the community Public Library but it is the job of the board it's the job of the administration and the teachers to make sure that the content in our schools is age-appropriate and it's fitting for educating and based on the excerpts and the context and some of the Full books some of these books are not appropriate for school or education within our within our the school context if they want to be if they're going to be in the the public community community library that's fine but I think we need to to recognize some of the

141words in these books are not allowed to be spoken in the public school kids are getting kids get suspended or detentioned for saying something like this out loud and yet we're allowing it in our public in the public school library so we are being picky and choosy we are limiting speech in school it's school it isn't just out in public and so I think that that there's a there's a disconnect there we can be we can't limit what the kids are being exposed to we already are in other ways and we should can and should continue with that and be consistent throughout our library our school library thank you anybody else have I want to make a public comment s Laura bilafelt hear me good excellent Burlington Community member um James Baldwin once said you

142think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world but then you read it was books that taught me the things that torment me most were the very things that connected me with the people who were alive and who had been alive I've heard a lot of comments today about taking accidents taking excerpts out of books um and one of those books that everyone that people have chosen to use is genderqueer um it's actually the book that I believe was being read out of at our last school board meeting um gender queer is a memoir it's an individual's life story with their struggle these books help save students lives I heard someone mention that here tonight that suicide rates are up when we take away the material that our children have

143access to to help them feel that they belong that there are other people out there that understand them that get them that other people have been through the struggles that they have been through we're hindering them I understand that parents are concerned for what their children read I think the proposal from the from the Library committee is beautifully done it is giving parents the opportunity to say hey I don't want my child to read that book and that's fine you can do that but as members of the school board have mentioned tonight you don't have the right to dictate what other people's children read or learn about I understand that some of you in this room believe that there's no educational content in these books but for children that are struggling with identity again these

144books can save children's lives I think we need to talk about what's some of the comments that have really happened here tonight and that the focus isn't necessarily sexually explicit content if that's sexually explicit content was heterosexual the majority of the books that have been brought up for people to look at focus on lgbtq issues and that is a group demographic of students that has been crying out for help and support from school districts for years thank you anyone else have a public comment okay it's just a clarification on that last one the committee and as best I can tell all the participants involved aren't looking to ban or pull any books they just want to write them my name is Sandra vendon I'm a Berlin well actually Thomas spring Prairie resident but my children

145attend the Burlington School District I have a ninth grade or a seventh grader and a fourth grader um Lori Hewitt is a friend of mine and she has shared with me her ideas from her proposal I also attended a meeting on January 4th that Laurie invited me and other like-minded parents or Guardians to attend with umlager to talk more about our perspective because Lori felt like she was um one had one View and many in the committee maybe had other views and so we were able to discuss with her um just some of our perspective um that's just where I'm coming from um I do think there is quite a bit of misunderstanding about what Lori has put in her proposal at least my maybe not from you but from what I'm hearing so I

146do ask that if you would please be able to step back and think objectively about the facts because I do think when our emotions come into play it clouds our judgment and we are not able to make as rational of decisions as would be best and I think the thing is this does bring up emotions that that's for sure but I think we can acknowledge that and then still make rational decisions um we are not trying to take anything away just like um was clarified and I think the thing that is that really needs to be brought out is that for the parents that have no concerns or don't want anything to be different nothing would change from the way Lori Hewitt has written her proposal no books would be banned their children would be

147able to have access to everything they could sign that form as they um was presented and so nothing would change for those parents this is only an additional piece that to help meet the needs of parents who have a concern and that's an additional piece and it feels like we're being told that our concern isn't valid because we have a concern that doesn't go with how the process has won before also I do want to say I do support the excerpt piece for reviewing books I do understand why the whole book should be read and the understanding of the purpose that the author is trying to convey from my perspective I think you can find many other books that would address the same topics give you the same information that would not have some of

148that really clear sexually explicit content that you've seen some excerpts of that's what I would like to be able to teach my children is if that's uncomfortable let's find another author let's find another source where we can get that same information you would not need to read the entire book to make that determination so that's why so I do understand from a library and a reading perspective but I think for just from our perspective we just want to be able to say this isn't the best choice we'd like to find another piece of literature to be able to you is to get the information thank you anyone else have a public comment they want to make can you hear me okay okay um I'm Linda templin I'm um Burlington resident and I have two students

149I wasn't prepared to talk tonight I don't know what's going to come out of my mouth I'm not a public speaker so bear with me um I the only thing that I did want to add is I was also on the committee um for the the book committee and one of the things that was a point of contention was um when we were talking about mature content um some people consider mature content obviously like sexual issues okay but also in there's a lot of people in the community that don't want race talked about there's been book lists where it's like anything that has to do with race or politics or um sorry I'm nervous um gender um so it became a slippery slope that um mature content can you know everybody like again this is

150a community and every parent has we all have very different opinions but it became a slippery slope um and then the other issue on that mature content was sexual abuse came up and there's many kids in this District that are being sexually abused and they need to see and read stories that they can relate to so they can understand possibly that um that um that they're not alone and so um myself growing up I read books in our library that I could relate to what was happening at home and it was a real aha moment for me so I think kids need to be able to read things that we're not comfortable with but it is happening to these kids and so when you read these excerpts I I don't want to keep beating a

151dead horse my point is is that it's a slippery slope because you get a parent that doesn't want anything to do with sexual content and then you have parents that don't want to teach their kids about race or um don't expose my kid to um gender identity so um I know it's been said before but you know as a board you know please consider that this is a community um if you don't we're here to protect the children of all the communities and be a voice for all of them not just a selected group so um one more thing to say oh I'll just wrap this up is that I have brought this up in our committee that we are if you do not like what this is going on in school you can homeschool

152you can do private school this is a community for all children not just Georgia you can I think because you're on the committee before I was really quickly go ahead Lori so everybody knows that this I started this with the focus on obscene content I did not expand the list to all those mature topics the committee did Jill and and um The Librarians specifically in our second meeting or I don't think the first expanded the list I did not expand the list there's a list of books and the only thing the only books that have been submitted for reconsideration of the 18. I just made that clear because that was misrepresented thank you anyone else have a public comment they want to make all right um board members do you have anything you want to

153add or questions or comments again we're not taking action tonight we're just uh this is for information only um we may take action next month I appreciate the work of the entire committee um I do want to clarify and I before people groan I understand they're outliers under this policy that cookbook you talked about only the permission slip yeah correct because it's labeled as as adults and historical books will need any any books that are um labeled as adults or mature content would uh would cause that permission slip at the high school which will include history and yep any book that's labeled as as adult okay so if this labeling system triggers a conversation between parents and their students what's the problem if hold on if the cookbook is labeled as mature heck Mom Dad

154I want to check out this book it's a cookbook maybe that maybe that student is showing some interest in the culinary arts there's a conversation to be had so I I applaud the compromise again burning books Banning books probably not the best thing I could make the case for and the case against um but if it's going to spark a conversation that some teens are dealing with trying to transition um gender identity you know sexual assault if that's going to trigger a conversation between a parent and their child how can we not support that I mean it just it is what it is and if we're going to label if we're if this is going to if we're going to have to label historical books heck there was a time where we were trying to

155you know get rid of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn just because the time period you know we have a dark history if it's going to spark the conversation where is the problem so clear I applaud I applaud the work and I'm all for finding a compromise because we are all in this community and we all have to live together so find the common ground and work together and clear I'm not concerned with that at all I just want to clarify that right I'm not concerned with it my my personal take on it is I want parents to parent their children yep I don't want the school to hurt their children yep so have those discussions with your kids but you can't have that discussion with someone else's kids that's that's your discussion with your child

156so my big concern with this sort of thing is it has been mentioned before that this isn't enough we've we've heard this isn't enough and while we can say there are only X number of books submitted that list has expanded and it was not just a district that has expanded it so yeah we have to be very careful about what we're doing here my concern is for students and their education I I love the idea of conversation sparked I think you'll find that there's a population of students out there that can't talk to their parents and the only Avenues they have are books to learn to understand and that in itself can result in the suicides we're talking about because they've got nowhere else to go they've got no one else to relate to so

157I'm not against putting ratings on books but as has been stated throughout the night it has to be objective it can't just be I don't like it and we we need to balance that and we hire Professionals for this I am not a professional most of the community is not a professional I think that's the that um what Barry you just spoke to a little bit is a clarifier I want to ensure the board is aware of or everyone in the room is making sure that is understood is that the district never had any books at the high school that triggered any sort of permission of any sort prior to this committee so there's now 2 600 books that cannot be checked out without that permission that would be books that parents may have concerns

158about right so there are books that are triggered that way the books that are not triggered that way would have to go through that reconsideration form so that we can form a committee to make a decision about that labeling of the book as a district we don't feel like it is um right for us to just make that call our Librarians are not comfortable having to make that call individually about a specific book so any books that are of concern would go to reconsideration form goes to the committee committee would determine the labeling of that book just just to clarify I want to raise a point too and I think this is kind of though telling us when Barry said that what's the purpose of a school library does someone raise the point of well

159they could just go to the public library not every family takes their kids to public libraries so for some kids they're all in the ACT hold on this is not a time for debate some kids the only access is is through the school library it's a chance for our Librarians and to allow students to check out books this committee then has recommended some safeguards we put in place to allow parents to have input on the on that book selection I just want to make it clear again that you know the public library is not necessarily a substitute for for All Families as far as books being accessed and the Librarians in the room can correct me if I'm wrong but the laws for the public library are different than the loss of the school library

160is that true yeah so I mean we can't just make those plain concerns and while I appreciate that some people would like the law to be changed we can't change the law contact your state legislator anybody else on the board have comments or questions I guess let me hear some food for thought we still have another month to decide on what policy we're going to make the one thing I want us to be mindful about when we I because I think the what I'm hearing is the two big issues that are still um contentious or there's some debate around is the use of excerpts by the book committee and reconsideration and then the note the limit to two book challenges per individual per year I think we have to be mindful of when we talk

161about excerpts again we're talking about the book committee reading the entire book when they're doing a reconsideration that it's not the parents who are making the that's clear in the process a parent can look at excerpts make the make a request for reconsideration some books are going to be so mature that I think most people in this room would probably say that probably should be mature content and in fact I thought I heard Angie tholl already say that we've reclassified some books already our Librarians have done that I'm worried about the gray area the books that we're not sure and I think when we draft a policy as a board we have to be mindful of that we're not just talking about of obscene content we're also talking about other categories or categories of mature

162content which could be um race politics gender identity there's a there's a whole host so we have to be thoughtful and that's where I think I don't know why we'd write into our policy a restriction that we'd have to have only excerpts used the book committee should be free to use you know why would why would we put that limitation in there why wouldn't we just say the book committee should follow what you know they should well frankly they should read the book but to get the context of the book before they reclassify um but I don't understand the logic there but that's something we'll have to debate in our or consider with our next board meeting because this will come up in March for policy reading anyone else have any thoughts my last question

163um when forming this committee what's the process um are you set on a certain number of participants you mean further reconsideration form committee um it's written in the policy that it would involve um an administrator uh Ela teacher don't quote me on this um no I think uh multiple parents but it doesn't necessarily have to be that grade level um initially it did talk about the parents being from that grade level but sometimes you can reach out to families and not get responses um so being able to um you know just have any any parent on that committee um and I believe it was up to seven people give me one second I'll find it okay yes so the school committee um may include a school may include a school principal certified librarian classroom teacher

164and a minimum of two parents with students within the school district well it is optional that's correct yes you're right and it was a minimum of two parents too I mean I don't think it's not there's no hard and fast rule I I think other districts have also done this too there can be multiple committees it's not one committee making all decisions for all time foreign all right all right guys let's all right hey Mr snork let's let's keep it down we've already had our public comment section let's anybody else in the board have any more comments or questions the only other thing to clarify there too that I could see happening potentially um Marlo is that I think the word may is important in there because if there were to be a lot of

165text to review um that's part of thinking that we would if there's let's say 20 20 texts to review we we would most likely put together multiple committees so that there would be some books for this committee you know this group of people this group of people this group of people so I think that's what's um that's what some of the thought is there too that when that time comes um for a review it wouldn't necessarily be just one committee it'll be based on how many materials do we need to look at anything else I think I'm good yeah board members okay thanks Jill uh I think we could use a recess but then again we only have five more or three more things on our agenda and I think they're pretty quick if anyone

166wants to leave you won't offend anyone here too because I um it's already 9 20 and offended why don't we take why don't we take two minutes and let people leave and then we'll move on to the next uh agenda item thank you the gum's got to go foreign thank you appreciation thank you foreign we're good whatever from you why do we take 15 seconds no I didn't need separate stuff my stomach started crawling foreign all right I'd like to reconvene the meeting um Ruth next up is I I got one more item for information discussion the sr3 update and then Steve I think you want to say well I'm just gonna invite Ruth back up she I see she's all set to go and and just mentioned for anybody now who's watching this is

167a presentation on Asser funds from the federal government particularly to highlight Esser three and essentially there's two components of these federal dollars that we have to address on a six-month interval and this is our sixth month and one has to do with our safe return to in person that's a document it's part of board docs we're really not going to go through it right now it's on the website and it really actually feels a little bit odd to talk about a safe return in school because we are in school but it has been updated and it's been on the website so you are welcome to peruse that at your leisure the part that we are going to go through and that Ruth is going to highlight for us is just where we stand with our

168Esser buns because that also is to be public and reviewed at a board meeting so thanks Ruth foreign and just for the people that are listening um eser stands for elementary and secondary school emergency relief so there's all these acronyms out there but um are we Frozen again okay there we go maybe it's operator error okay thank you [Laughter] okay so there were three rounds of Esther funds that were issued to school districts so just briefly get them in order so one two three and each one has an additional year to spend so Esther one we fully spent in the 2021 school year mostly on cleaning and medical supplies and then for some virtual learning options um sr2 uh 1.5 million dollars we are um in the middle of that we have until September of

16923 anticipate by the end of the school year we will fully um claim those funds um again virtual learning um options mostly that first year um the program we used was Jedi so that kind of first year that covet broke out um also some technology related to that and then some additional Staffing to help try to combat the risk mitigation and the learning loss that occurred okay here's the big one now sr3 this is our main focus for tonight one more additional years to through September of 24. our portion is a 3.3 million four hundred and forty seven thousand dollars six hundred and fifty one dollars so get into a little detail here I won't go through all of these we did have a little bit in 2122 for some health services but the majority

170of these funds will be um this school year and next school year and then These funds are done and we won't have the Revenue to cover the cost so the intent is to try to use these for a one-time costs not for ongoing operational costs One requirement of azure three is that 20 of the funds are used to address learning loss by implementing what's called evidence-based Improvement strategies or ebis that's approximately seven hundred thousand dollars and you'll see on here a line item for instructional coordinators so that would satisfy that requirement foreign these positions are some of them don't require contracts some do but they are intended to be one-year contracts but then for two subsequent years um just to give us some flexibility based on how we need to use the funds um so

171I don't need to read the positions to you but those were the um the Staffing that was funded for 1.3 million dollars Okay purchase Services um these are estimates they're going to continue to change but our best guess at this point some professional development for Skyward training this language Essentials training that was a short um late add-on to this Esser funds 4 200 for some training for reading um and reading teachers um hot spots we had temporarily during early covid helped provide those to families um a really small need for that now but there's also a program for Racine County that we are directing people to um get that service through there instead of through the school and then the ongoing software for virtual instruction but also some data analytics to help with assessing our

172learning instructional practices non-capital objects non-capitalous means less than five thousand dollars for an individual item um so some classroom furniture and a social studies textbooks adoption that also helps meet that 20 percent okay so just pulling these three slides together um so you can see the three gears and then the Personnel the purchase services and then on Capital objects so what we have identified of the 3.4 million is approximately half 1.7 million okay so then you say okay what about the other half right okay so um of the the remaining 1.7 million or approximately half we have a little bit of a placeholder yet for still some like medical and cleaning supplies some Murph 13 filters some classroom furniture we previously had the anatomy table kind of on here as a placeholder but when you

173look at the um Grant online you have to pick certain combinations of like reasons and account numbers and it it just doesn't fit under any kind of risk mitigation or learning loss heading so I have taken that out of falling under the grant funding okay so if there's further discussion about that purchase it would just have to be outside of sr3 I just want to clarify that then that leaves us about 1.2 million dollars that's available for operating you'll hear from the state level that they want us to use it for operating we believe that's not good good fiscal management because as we said these are one-time funds so when those funds are gone we won't have the revenue to cover that cost we've tried to intentionally use them for other one-time costs but recognizing

174that we might be have to use them for operation So This 1.2 million either 22 23 school year or an ex school year 23 24 or some combination so still have that available as time unfolds that we see where the greatest need is okay um so I guess I just want to kind of close here to say like um we know we're talking about the operating referendum in April but that operating referendum doesn't isn't impacted by Esser like we would have still had to do the operating ref around them without us or even happening so they're they're not related so I don't want people to think that the reason for the operating reference is related to this okay so again these were one-time funds to cover generally one-time costs questions the you had mentioned there

175are two primary categories that these have to fall into one of them was learning recovery there's there's more than that there's well I know there's more but there were two big ones that you just mentioned I said like Risk mitigation or learning loss that they're like um I think it's like after school learning um something about long-term School closure I think there's like six of them okay so how does Furniture address that how does Furniture fall into those categories um some of it has to do with like how you yes depends on okay I mean it could be some technology kind of roughly falls under that heading too okay thank you hey they also any questions or comments just really quick I want to point out Ruth if you can go back like three or

176four slides to the Personnel expenses you'll notice on this one the total of that Personnel is 1.3 million roughly that is for two one-year contracts so one of the conversations we've had is if the referendum or not to be successful that we would potentially have to consider ending those positions after one year not two so you see that we capture essentially some of those dollars back and that's how we have a placeholder in there that is 2 million to potentially resuscitate ourselves through next year so you'll see when Ruth got to the end and the total unallocated onencumbered amount was closer to you know 1.3 1.4 million the balance to get up to two comes out of here if we have to go down that road so just in case there was anybody wondering like

177hey you know the backup plan for 23 24 showed two million dollars investor funds and that's how it that's how it that's how it comes out that's a good point good point thank you I also you know earlier tonight someone made the comment during public comments about the fact that we have a poor report card score at the high school and what are we doing to uh address learning loss and increase our uh student achievement scores well here's an example of using Esther funds for some of these positions to I know this is one of our initiatives but without the referendum like Steve just mentioned that second ear would fall off um and then potentially we wouldn't be able to fund these ongoing so um can I elaborate on that of course so um past

178history of basd has never had a teaching and learning team at all so when we talk about tier one instruction so that's all kids there hasn't been support for tier one instruction the first time that we've had support and had a team put together in places through the use of the Esther dollars and this is the first year we've had any support with teaching and learning coordinators to assist with really looking under the hood helping with ensuring we have alignment of mass standards Ela standards what are we going to do with professional development how do we onboard staff I mean they are working really really hard um in order to support our entire School District I do think that is one caveat to that a second one that I think is really important for for

179you to think about in null is that FRC um and pack house fall underneath the basd school report card so all of our students even if they're not at Burlington High School impact Burlington High School's report card um so I think that too is important to know we've had some conversations of trying to explore the ability to have FRC Standalone as its own School versus being tied to the Burlington High School but those are just two things that um we're looking into but it's interesting the the need and support for thinking about how we support tier one instruction is is huge and the first time we've been able to do it financially is with us or dollars anybody else have any questions or comments I guess you know to look at other high schools and

180see what their percentage is but you're right if we include everybody it's a lot different you know I'm just thinking of Waterford um you know they don't have some of the students that we have that that are affected by that so it's um it's interesting to see what some other districts percentages foreign anyone else okay Ruth thank you we have two items for Action tonight Ruth I guess you can stay there because we're going to talk about the uh other post-employment benefits so crying annual okay so part of one piece of that big Financial audit is we are required to get an Actuarial evaluation of our post-employment benefits um we have historically used key Benefit Concepts they're like V company in the state I think there might there aren't too many competitors there might be

181one out of Florida but um so every other year we do the big valuation where they look at the census and what our benefits are and then the opposite years they just do this they call it a table update so it's you're not looking at the whole population again they just kind of throw in the current um trends for like interest rates and stuff so like everybody else there um experiencing um inflation in impact of the high inflation and for the first time have offered a six-year proposal so that's like three rounds of the big census and then they off here table update so that's what I'm bringing to you tonight because it's just over twenty five thousand dollars the main year historically has been seventy five hundred dollars and then the off year has

182been around 500. this proposal has kept the first year at 7 500. um and then it goes 78.75 and 82.75 and then those off years are 840 885 and 9 30. so the six year total is 26 305. um one question I did ask them is what if our benefits change sometime in that um six years because that's a long time right and they just said that they would just re-evaluate at that time depending on what the the change would be um either they would continue with the pricing or issue us a new proposal with updated pricing whatever that may be so it's not lacking us into something that might change it's just trying to help them plan as well as us so pricing is still reasonable it's just trying to administratively reduce the chasing

183and uh yes and this is a state requirement we have to have an audit every year and this is part of an audit sure that part I knew I just wasn't sure I mean I guess I'm asking that question that was all right sorry I wasn't trying to make a statement this is a benefit on it yeah we have to do this right we do yeah we should do it I'm not saying I'm not kicking and screaming I want to say it started 10 to 15 years ago somewhere good anybody else have any questions or comments anybody in the gallery have any questions or comments okay have we used any other vendors in the past there aren't many that provide this service okay I like I said I think there's one out of Florida Maybe

184like they're kind of the go-to company okay and you've been happy with them absolutely so thank you you need emotions yeah we think we need a motion to thank you second okay motions made and seconded any further comments or questions hearing none I'll call for a vote all in favor say aye aye aye opposed name thank you Francis thank you thank you okay last item for action and last substantive item on the agenda is the the second reading of our change in the public comment policy at board meetings and it's it's very small um the change is um just to eliminate the prohibition that a participant may speak more than once at a meeting like tonight was a good example in our public comments section we are allowing people to do both the general comment

185and then talk on items on the agenda or tonight on the on the books so this is just a kind of a cleanup of our policy and I think that's been a good policy we had a bad board meeting um I think it's a good way to say it in August of 2021 because we had a a controversial Topic at that time we had the public comments go first before the administration made their presentation which I think would have answered a lot of questions or addressed some things so I think we're we're on the right track with our policies as far as public comment but um I guess entertain a motion to approve the policy as revised so moved second any comments or questions I would go back to as we approach 10 pm here

186again I would really like to see the sport move to a agenda only comment session we have email we have phones we can be contacted by other names for other topics but I would really like to see our Focus stay on the meeting agenda so that we can actually respond to people on things and operate in time and time with action I hear you Barry and I I um I think it's an ongoing process we're going to keep looking at this and we've had that discussion when we talked about Ford dorms that we're going to keep evaluating how our public comment is going valuing the input that we get from the public but also trying to manage our meetings so we can run efficiently I didn't understand what Barry was asking I'm sorry uh I

187think last meeting Barry can I paraphrase for you sure yeah he had brought up the idea instead of having a general public comment at the beginning of the meeting we would allow um only public comments on items for action and if you wanted to make a general comment you'd still have access to the board through email some districts do it that way as you know Rosanna districts do it a variety it's actually one of the recommendations from wasb is to just have it focused on the agenda items agree to Superior types is anyone in the in the audience this is an item for Action so it's your chance to comment if you'd like to if you want to come you don't have to though either yeah comments or questions at the board level minutes to

188burn here I have to get to 10. I know well here right now let's I'll call for votes all in favor say aye aye aye opposed nay all right it passes um future meetings are um next board meeting would be March 13th Monday and with that I'd be open to a motion to adjourn second okay any comments hearing none all in favor say aye proposed name we're adjourned thanks for coming out