Special School Board Meeting - July 25, 2022

001we don't have a whole lot on our agenda but let's uh do the uh roll call toby would all right i'm sorry call the order you're right we don't have to so we just have our agenda tonight um first one is the media services material management and uh jill or steve you want to leave this these are items for discussion only tonight we're not going to take any action on either one um steve you want to lead us off or jill i'm happy to um yeah for the sake of conversation and with the board uh as you know months back we had the librarians were here and we were presenting about uh really that the library media policy and how we would address challenges controversial material et cetera and in the interim been a number

002of conversations jill and i have had the pleasure to meet with a couple of constituents who've come forward and have had significant concerns these are folks who've been in contact with board members as well and wanted to take an opportunity in a in a forum where you could just have some conversation to help understand you know what might lie ahead and so in in a really high level summary of our conversation i'd expressed i guess my thought that we would pause on changing any policy while we were in the middle of doing work that can be really difficult if we're trying to address old policy new policy etc and then to also begin to think about the approach moving forward and that being that you know we were we've been trying to jill and i

003understand you know where exactly uh the concerns lie about material it it seems that it's pretty focused at least for folks that have spoken to the board around content that's very sexually explicit and i'm curious you know if that's a similar feeling among the board so that as jill and i then go to to work if you will we kind of understand the the lay of the land and the concerns that might be out there from the board's perspective and so it is our sense that that we would want to have a committee that would look at trying to really understand the best way to you know approach you know really making all parents and students feel comfortable with the content that is in the libraries so you know a discussion probably more focused on

004process than individual books and then from there to really assemble that committee and discuss you know what that process might look like whether that's the labeling of books or special sections or how we would communicate with students and or parents about content and so really kind of my question and just to kind of open the form for the board to discuss is you know what are any concerns that you might have what is you know the process that you might think if there's a kind of a line in this hand that you have about the approach i know i've shared with you and and others have notes from conversations that jill and i had and so you've got those as well but really this is an opportunity for the board to help uh me and

005our other leaders understand kind of just the general approach as we might move forward with this so board members anybody have any thoughts on that this is kind of just a chance to again we're not taking action but to give some guidance here any thoughts well i think that the main thought is we want to go through and inventory the best we can what's in the especially this the younger schools you know elementary and you know we are public schools so you know i don't understand all the laws that go into effect with what information is out there but i i think there are some concerns about some of the material that's in the libraries and i think a good review of it would be beneficial to everyone can can i ask kevin do you

006have a is there a specific so when we met with parents jill and i we asked what is it is it language is it race-based is it lgbtq plus is it sexual content like is there a bucket if you will that you think is most controversial that should be looked at or understood i think the age of the age-appropriateness of the content that's in the schools whether it's regardless of what bucket it fits in so to your point kevin age appropriateness by who because i got the impression from the library presentation that we're already sorted by age appropriateness i'm just asking you guys it's a great question but my feeling on it versus somebody else's feeling on it is completely different in most cases right right i think that's where i was going those i

007think we have to come to some sort of standard that they can work off of i don't know what that standard is oh i don't either i got the impression most schools nationwide have standards in place that are pretty universal but i mean i'm not an expert in libraries that's why we have those professionals jill do you have something well i would just add that i would i would agree that already we are fairly aligned when it comes to what's allowable within our elementary schools and then when it gets to the young adult books we have that set in place that if you're a sixth grader requesting to be able to read a young adult book that you'd have permission in order to do so and if you're a middle schooler wanting to read a

008book that's at the high school then you would have to have permission to do so there as well i think the question more so is coming into play from parents in regard to some of the texts that is at the high school that is considered adult level text that is very frequently seen in high school libraries so it's more so understanding from the board what where is the line on what the board feels is is appropriate versus versus not appropriate when it comes to what you would like us to to look at um and again going off of the different categories that's that steve had mentioned like really trying to understand where it is the board wants us to go in regard to that and we're happy to do so uh know that we already

009had planned of already doing a material audit with the esser position and that is angie soule who has been hired to do that and knowing that it's been a long time since we've audited all of our materials that are in the library so really wanting to be able to understand um what percentage of everything we do have in the libraries and and that would include all the categories that um steve had brought up then going from there you know one of the areas that the parents have the biggest concern about is with this sexually explicit content and where where would you like that line to be if there is a line jill can you clarify um you mentioned permission did you that a sixth grader would need permission to read in a young adult book

010potentially or a middle schooler to read high school who's permission not the librarians or the the parents the parents yeah so yep so any sixth grade student who wants to read a young adult book which is already at karcher so i'm a sixth grader karcher young adult book starts um to be to show up in the school libraries at the middle school if i'm a sixth grader and i want to check out a young adult book they'll be labeled that if i take that to the counter and i am a sixth grader there a permission slip is going to be given to the student and the student is not going to be able to check out that book until that permission slip is is signed by the parent in order to take that home same

011thing with an eighth grader in a book for a high school book i would advocate for something similar to that kind of approach for other you know specific content areas sexually explicit for example it would be one area that we could do something very similar that would also be at the high school but again wanting to kind of know where the board sits when it comes to your preferences on which direction we go i think i think you mentioned that when you gave your presentation in the librarian that they would have to have permission to read certain of the books in the high school library i think i'm correct on that i remember i took notes on that so right now any uh right now a high school student doesn't have to have any permission

012for any books that are in the library so once i once i become a ninth grader and i go into the library any book that is in the library i have the ability to check out without any parent permission right but the point was i think that was made was well maybe we should have that if there are certain books there that are you know the kind that maybe they don't want not everybody wants their child to read it they'd have to have permission to take that book out well i just don't see the educational value in some of these books that are there when you're depicting graphic rape scenes and pedophilia where is the educational value in that that's where i'm looking at this from standpoint i think the process that jill steve seems

013like lori has come up with with the committee i think that's great i think the process that you guys have put in place is great moving forward um but for me i think when you're talking about images and and graphic details like that that's i think i don't see the pull i don't see the rationale they have a book like that in our library but then again there might be there might be some rationale if you read the book and you saw the book as a whole and you saw the point that they're trying to make i mean i'm talking about this believe me i i don't i i i don't like that either i mean believe me i don't i don't i know i don't but we also have to look at what the

014author is trying to convey you know as a whole i for my point of view i really like it that maybe we would have a special section that would have books so we wouldn't have to we we wouldn't be censoring and we wouldn't be you know like removing first amendment rights but we could we could put them in a special section taylor you know that's what i'm kind of thinking about that and permission from the parents you know like there's a parent want the child to read a book like this uh you'd have to have some type of you know a little write-up about the book saying hey this has sexually explicit material in it and it does have rape scenes in it and things like that um so the parent would absolutely understand it

015what's going on and if they gave permission yeah i but i agree believe me i mean i don't like i i i don't like that like even bad language you know i mean i i don't even go there you know so yeah i don't know but yeah i i like the the idea of removing the books into a certain section and getting permission how much time do they have in the libraries to be able to review the books before they bring to the counter and kevin that would be hard to hard to put a number on that uh some students go in the library fairly quickly some students are in there for an entire class period so there's potential that i could be reading it before 45 49 minutes without needing to check it out

016without permission so um i think it really depends on the student and and how long they're holding onto that book before they go to the counter that'd be hard to put a number on it so i think in anything we do context matters um i've read very few of the books on this list so i can't speak to all of them i don't think we need to be endorsing things that are gratuitous that are there just for the sake of being there don't really have anything of value to them but i also believe that there are some horrible experiences that need to be understood and we can't just willy-nilly yank out anything that we find objectionable because what one person finds objectionable the next person may not um very poor admittedly analogy is they have

017found no way that you can have contact sports and eliminate potential for concussions there's none you can't eliminate it so do we say hey that's dangerous for kids and we don't allow any contact sports in burlington because that's dangerous we don't agree with that or do we inform people and let them make the decision as to what they want to do and provide as safe a manner of providing those experiences as we can i i hesitate to put books in a dedicated section i'm open to hearing more about it but that's kind of waving a red flag of here's the books i mean i guarantee the the biggest outcome of all of this so far is it's given the kids a great list of things to go looking for because now they know what people

018are fired up for it's just like when you have the whole rari anti-music thing in the 80s and 90s kids flocked to that stuff because oh it upset my parents let's have a rational look at what we've got let's get rid of stuff that's gratuitous and not not benefiting the general populace but to say we're just going to take everything out that's offensive i i've got a problem with that i don't think we're saying that anyone is saying just take out anything that's offensive though to your point it's the stuff that is just what is the point of the graphicness in some of these books in the libraries i am all for parent involvement and i will be the first one to champion that parents if you're upset about some of the stuff monitor what

019your kids are doing i'm not saying micromanage but at least know what your kids are up to but as a district as a public school system we shouldn't feed into or be an avenue for kids to you know come about stuff that just isn't beneficial at the moment the more the overexposure to certain things to most anything really desensitizes you so why would we be in the business of helping to desensitize that stuff i understand informational value i really do but there's a lot of stuff out there that is not realistic gives a false reality and i just think it does more harm than good yeah i i think we can weed that stuff out i i am like i said if it's gratuitous i don't see the benefit to students but i don't see

020what that this stage on the other hand to your point about parent involvement i absolutely agree i i i feel like a lot of this is the district parenting i don't want to have that discussion i don't want them exposed to this i don't want them to know about this i don't have to talk that's parenting that's not us should we be putting anything out there that is obviously just indulgent no that that doesn't benefit anyone however there are books out there that people are going to say that's horrific how can you possibly put that out there no there's books out there in the holocaust absolutely horrific things happen there that we don't stop things just because they're horrific we stop them because they aren't beneficial and all i'm saying is let's find our course

021to get stuff out there that is not gratuitous but allows people the freedom to choose what they want to read and as i think with the stops we've got proposed and in place that's pretty simple now can we stop every kid from sneaking in somewhere and reading something at some point no you can't ever stop that but again that's a parenting thing right that's a hey you know what we expect of you don't do that right so explain what this angie thoughts job would be you we're talking about um looking at the books or what what was what is her job for the esther funds exactly i kind of i don't remember well so much of her position is going to be to do a materials audit in general of everything that we have in

022our libraries and assist our librarians with understanding and us and assisting with weeding improving our collections and just having a having a better understanding of what is in our libraries we are really understaffed in a lot of ways when it comes to library services so this is assisting with with doing that and and having the time in order to conduct that uh when we start getting questioned on you know how many books do we have in the library on x y or z like that's a great question those are the kind of things that we would utilize angie to do in order for us to to understand um what is in our libraries where are we falling short when it comes to creating a sense of belonging for students but also at the same time

023it could be a component of that is assisting with with the sexually explicit content at the same time if that's an area the board wants us to focus on thank you i think it's it's it's a really positive thing for our community from what i'm hearing around this table tonight and from our administrators and from the parents who came forward i think we all have the same common goal what's best for our kids what's best for students and i i think what i'm hearing though is the middle ground here that we have to be thoughtful when we're looking at books and reading excerpts and making a judgment on that is is not the way to go i mean we need to have a thoughtful approach you know maybe we need experts we need our librarians

024to weigh in um we need to read the books frankly because that's kind of getting to your point is this book just gratuitous and or is there a underlying purpose of why some of these challenging you know you know more explicit passages are in the books and i think the board or maybe not the board but the administration may find okay this book crossed the line there's no redeeming value or the or the um the explicitness of the book outweighs the other values so i think that's something that we have to be thoughtful as a district on what books we're presenting um you know that's my first point the also you know kids can go to the burlington public library and pick out any book they want to so we're just talking about school library

025here they're not you know so just bear that in mind too i mean i want to bring up the point though about the creating a special section at the high school let's say um that may have unintended consequences like barry said you may be drawing kids to that section because they know this is the section that just restrict we may we may actually making things worse than better by doing that so i mean i appreciate the the thought that's the the uh um the intent behind that is to give parents a right to but it may be you know like like kevin said you could spend 49 minutes in the library and read you know half a young adult book in that time and uh you know it may not be the right approach it's

026probably better if we just had all our library materials were deemed to be age appropriate that would that'd be my guess on on the better approach on that but that's that's my two my two cents anybody else have comments or want to weigh in i mean because this is a tough issue but i think we're not i mean this is a really i think an administrative question right now to work i guess i do have one follow-up question you know we had um parents come forward and i know jill and steve you met with some parents uh recently are they comfortable with the idea that we're pausing the complaint process because we do have a policy on the complaint process to allow us time to go forward with you know getting a committee together and

027taking more of a holistic approach at cracking at this is that fair to say or am i i believe that's fair to say and i mean we we do have one of those parents here with us so i uh laurie's i i don't want to point you out and so you can you know i think you made it clear that it was okay to do that um so i if okay i think i i believe that laurie um as a sort of a representative of a voice is is in agreement that that we would perhaps be better served to kind of look at the system uh first and so if that is a true statement we did talk about you know having laurie's a parent perhaps a school psych a librarian if there was a

028board member willing to participate maybe an english language arts teacher from the secondary level i mean that that group right there is already five if even if you kind of double that to 10 i look at that after talking with one of our librarians just recently again and think that this is a smart group of people who will bring something forward for your consideration that addresses some of what you're talking about in terms of you know what what is that middle ground how do we communicate what a book's value might be if that's a summary of the book if that's a sample of the material that's deemed to be explicit for people to look at in advance of reading it it may help us have conversations about the weeding process i do know a number

029of these books are are old too i mean we go through a regular weeding process which we've not done in a number of years where you know books that are five seven ten years plus old that aren't being checked out we just start to weed them out of the collection anyway and a number of those books that we're talking about may even fall into that category to begin with so that's that's a simple version for us to kind of look at in terms of the relevance but i think as i was typing some of your commentary around sort of this notion of what is gratuitous material or what has maybe no redeeming value and i think those are some pretty poignant words to share with the committee hey this was part of the board's discussion

030and i think that that might really help to provide some direction i think your caution about what's kind of quote-unquote a restricted section that may also be helpful for a committee to consider as they sort of go back and forth and wrestle with how how do you you know make a recommendation for what in the best interest of a community and so those are just a couple things that i've grabbed here i think this would be something that we would look to put together uh here then relatively soon if there's not you know any other voiced objection to doing so i think i think the audit is a great idea i think i'm sure it's you know there's a lot of things that are always top of mind that we take care of and this

031is you know this is one of those things that have kind of lingered its way in and it's certainly something we need to look at i think i think their approach is perfect it seems to be in place to do that i would agree i think the audit is appropriate um i'd like to hear from other board members my personal take is i don't think we should have a board member on that committee i would like that committee to be comprised the majority of professionals librarians psychologists doctors professionals have some parents involved with it but the board's job is to take recommendations and approve or disprove of them i don't think there's a single board member up here that could speak for every other one of the board members in this situation i think it

032makes more sense for the professionals to give their input on it and for the board to review those recommendations that's my personal take you might have different ideas i was just thinking about a parent they're going to be parents on there and they can't speak for all parents either i mean so you know absolutely so we have some parents on there but i think the majority has to be professionals that can explain the positions and the reasons for or against these books because that's their job that's that's what they're trained in that's what they're educated in right it's just my thought i don't know susan taylor or marlow any other thoughts i like the idea of the committee yeah i think that would be a good approach too that we you know we should listen

033to the professionals and they do know what they're talking about so well and i want parents to have input and i want them to hear yes if if the recommendation comes and says you should get rid of this book i want them to hear why we should get rid of this book if they say no this is an important lesson or this is an important development point i want them to hear that and understand that so it's not a the board's pushing this through or steamrolling us through this is a this is what professionals have said situation that i think that's fair to everyone involved so then is it the responsibility of the committee to determine what books are question what books need to be considered and then it's a for a board majority vote

034that these books be removed is that is that really what the board would be doing considering that we leave it up to administration to handle those things i mean we're oversight but it was a great question yeah how you're bringing it back to the board too i guess where i was going is well i didn't phrase my my end point well you bring a good point up by mentioning it the board has already endorsed a policy or removal or not if the presentation comes to the board of this is what we think i think the board at that point can make action on policy on what should be done not individual yes gain day on books but okay this is the recommendation on what we should do this is how we'll adjust the policy administration

035will implement policy because that's for governance that's that's how it works i think it's a great question marlo because i think it's ultimately the administration's decision on if they're going to remove books under pursuing audit as opposed to our policy where a citizen can bring a complaint and then it goes to um jill and then it goes to a committee and then it could be appealed to the board at that point um i guess the board could be giving input but it's ultimately i think this is an administrative call on because we don't i mean if the administration or the librarians are purging books that certainly never goes to the board to say you know when i say purging books like an old book that's no longer been checked out for 20 years we don't

036weigh in as board members hold on don't you know throw away that book from 1950 you know that's not so i think that would this would be the same type of decision it'd be an administrative decision um i guess they're looking for us though tonight is there some guidance that they can take away when they talk to this committee i mean i do feel that you should definitely still have parental representation obviously i think everybody agrees with that um i'm torn on the board number issue being on the committee because i understand barry's point of that but i still feel that there might it might be beneficial if at least one of us is on there i'm not saying me whoever wants to volunteer that's fine but i think from a trust standpoint perhaps not

037a lack of trust in the administration i'm just saying from the community standpoint i feel maybe we should have at least you know one or two more members on there um think this issue is really hard because uh different people who are reasonable could end up with different opinions this is a very subjective thing at times when you're weighing the redeeming value of a book versus the explicit nature and i think two different reasonable people could come up with different conclusions that's what makes this a really tough issue it's not black and white i'll put it that way so we operate as a board right and i think if we're going to have board members on the committee it needs to be three like we had with committees personally but i i think i think

038that's overdue is we trust our administration absolutely we hired them we put them in place to do this work we trust them to do the work we don't need to hover over them no if they will do the right work if they don't we can check at them but we i cannot speak for the entire board but i feel that message is overdue we trust our administration that's important i think that's really important and as government governance what barry said our job as board members is to set policy correct and we need to get back to that we need to set policy and not micromanage all of this any other thoughts around the table before we move on well yeah i guess just from a committee standpoint you know are there going to be certain

039metrics that like does this book have any educational value i mean is this i guess i want to see that like in writing like the committee will answer maybe these three or four questions to use as metrics does this book fall within whatever is this a book given the content that's in that meet educate whatever educational standards that we our mission statement and things like that that we're trying to set forth as a district so perhaps it's already done or maybe that could be something this board decides or administration but i think there needs to be some standards out there which i'm sure you probably already have right we're working out i i do think that there are some in place that are already being used by librarians now having said that there's also books

040that are you know coming forward right now that are in question and so i think part of when i sort of reference back to are there any big rocks that the body wants to stand firm on that's helpful for guidance beyond that i would look at you know a committee of experts where you've got you know parents librarian i think a psychologist for social work makes a lot of a lot of sense a couple of teachers but you have this group together and and this is where i say we've got really smart people and who are very much experts in their and i i don't think we'll be disappointed in what they come back with and i think the helpful part uh taylor is if we say help us to understand what what is a

041metric what what are you using then what do you think we should use over time to make those decisions i my guess is they're going to come back with something where we look at and go yep that makes total sense and that's something we can execute because it's either partly in place now and or then more explicitly articulated going forward but that would be one of the things like as you're saying that that we would put as a task to the committee like hey as you start this here's one of the things we're going to need anything else from the table you'll be reading a lot of books the only clarification that i just would like to have based on your conversation is when you talk about gratuitous so i'm taking it that the committee

042that is developed together will define and come up with what they believe gratuitous would would be and then that would guide us in regard to the books that are in question i would think that leadership would come up with leadership and this committee of experts would come up with the matrix that each individual would grade the book by so to speak i could never come up with that matrix right if you if you want the matrix of how to understand a balance sheet i'm your guy but a book for adolescent middle age in high school that's not i couldn't do that and i think the experts come up with that matrix and maybe that gets presented to the as board example by which they grade the books just like this is not in the same

043category but when you're on a scholarship committee you have a list of guidelines that you follow as you read through a a scholarship application and you grade that right i would think that this group would have that same type of matrix based on their and their experience in education i would agree i i think the experts are going to be able to say this is this serves no value or yeah this is pretty overt but it's not developmentally detrimental or this is going to cause kids problems if they read this we can't have this that i think psychologists and librarians have probably got that undertow maybe not as much librarians but certainly psychologists thought well i would think already our experts in the district who are librarians they when they get a new book they

044have to make a decision on is that an elementary book is a middle school book or is it a high school book or is it a book that shouldn't be in our district because it's not age appropriate for kids i think you have a starting point that our librarians probably have a pretty good handle on how do they how do they classify books i would i would agree to it to an extent on that because i do think they have to be given a lot of grace at the same time because when students come forward so i think there's a difference taylor when you talk about books that are utilized in a classroom versus books that are in a library because they're there's a very different set of texts a lot of times students will

045come to the library and request a certain book that they have interest in reading our librarians then go into the fallet resource database if you will that school districts use and if that book is in there the librarian will will get it and get a copy for for our students to be able to read now can do librarians have the ability every book to ensure that there's not sexually explicit content in there that someone might think is um out of line i think that's unrealistic to expect that of our librarians to be able to do that do all of our when you when you read a book and you see the little descriptor about the text is it always sharing that information every time on how explicit a book is not no because that's how

046we have text of concern potentially in our libraries right so i also feel like that is a tricky spot um when you you know when trying to survey books coming in and out i think that some grace needs to be there but also when we have a conversation with the committee i do think that it is going to be tricky because i don't think it's realistic either to ask a committee to read a hundred books to determine if that book stays or not but jill i think the backstop that you have is the policies that you're going to put in place for parents to approve the reading material leaving the library correct i mean you're you're going to have this this committee of professionals is going to paint an envelope but if the backstop is

047if that child wants to take it out of the classroom to read it or out of the library the parent is going to be involved at some point before before it leaves the library correct so that's where what i hear you saying there is instead of instead of having potentially a different section for where the books are the committee could say these are texts that have to have parent permission in order for them to go home that's what i hear you saying outside of what we have in place with sixth grade and eighth grade already more so specifically talking towards high school students who that would also need permission for some of the books that are in the library yeah again we're just having a conversation right so the experts are going to make that

048final determination but that's just a thought process that's going through my head that go where is the backstop i mean because they're not all going to agree on all books all the time right so there's going to be a matrix and they'll decide that these are good these are not good and then the backstop inevitably is apparent but this committee is only targeting the books that have been submitted thus far yes that have been identified now this is not yeah the ones that were just identified this is no i don't think that's no i think they're doing a complete school audit yeah yeah this is something that's at least that's my understanding that's my understanding i'm glad you're clarifying that too we're not talking i think my understanding taylor when i hear uh what the

049board is saying is more so if if you would like us to put a committee together to look and have a conversation around what is sexually sexually explicit content and where is that line and use the committee in order to determine that and then that committee would say this is what we believe is the right thing to do for all students and then we would bring that forward back to the board and say this is our plan um that the committee came up with when it comes to sexually explicit content i i can't speak for the board please chime in if you have different opinions i'd like to see the committee also though what they think would be a good solution than to this concept of parent involvement i think parents have a right to

050review but what is a good process you know i'd like to hear from our librarians they're the ones who are implementing this directly you know so i i'd like that to be part of the committee's work that they you know we do have a section do we have a little red flag that goes up when you try to check it out um an alarm yeah so i guess i'd love to hear recommendations on that from our committee that's right because i don't think they're going to go through the library and read every book right obviously so i guess i've got two questions um first we've balanced our budget for literally decades by not replacing staff and just moving people around at this time how many professional library staff does the district have for all of

051our schools i feel like at this time is a little tricky because we have one librarian as the other resigned um in the last month correct as a school district i would say though we have two slotted ftes for librarian services right so this goes to your point earlier of trying to read and keep track of every single book we're not solved for that we're nowhere near stout for that here and then three with the esser right correct one one would be hired with the esther to assist in the third third in total yes three three total then for the next two years and then that position goes we have library aids we do have we do have library aids they do more so shelving of books and assisting students with checkout and things like

052that not so much when it comes to vetting books that would be that has to happen with a librarian and the second one and i want to make perfectly clear i'm not a fan of this but do parents have the option to just say my kid's not allowed in the library period i would say if a parent came forward and said they don't want their students to go in the library we would do everything we can to honor that request i don't believe we've ever had someone do that but we have had specific requests throughout the district where a parent is asking for something really specific and we do everything we can to always honor parent requests to the best we can again not an expert but i think to be highly detrimental to a

053child but if a parent were so inclined they can say i don't want them in there okay thank you anybody else at the table have any other comments i think it's been a good discussion so the discussion tonight is around the pro the pending process that we have going forward vetting current stock of books in some fashion based on a metric what do we do for incoming is it similar to a kid comes in looking for a specific book it's not there librarian hops on orders it in and now it's here that is what i would say is the tricky part because i think that's how books that are potentially out there end up in a library so that's where i think uh that that's a good question marlo and one that we can wrestle

054with when talking with our librarians about it and just trying to think of how we continually vet that so if we get to a place where we feel comfortable with what we currently have then what does that look like when new books come into the library and we can have that conversation as well so um like parental ratings on movies and tv shows there's i know that there's a database that you can go to and get that um do we know if there's a system that does that for books that we could take we could have an inventory of our books and just do a match up and see where we get a hit and that's what we are getting so that's where our librarians do use already their own software systems that are set

055up for k-12 school districts to use in order to determine if a book you know if they suggest this book for their the specific grade level and that is what we've been using um so so so and what i'm trying to get to so there is a way for incoming that we could do a quick look up to at least ascertain where it might fall so that if it does come in we know with the new process going forward what we need to label it as so that it is in compliance with the new policy procedure according to parent parental input based on enrollment how they want their their kids to be accessible to the books i do think what i hear you saying is we need to be looking outside of what the system

056is that we use in order to also see if there's a different data system we could be analyzing in order to also vet the texts that come in and i think i would leave that up to the committee to determine what that other vetting you know resource or platform might be in order for us to to help do that and that's what i want to make clear the system they use based on my discussions with librarians in the past is national recommendation lists etc and they go through the lists and they can tell the age appropriateness but it won't it won't say explicit sexually or violence or it doesn't list it doesn't categorize them like uh movies so we would have to find something else to do that if that's what you're after but the

057current system doesn't do that it just gives an age appropriate range right that's where we'd have to use some sort of outside source resource and i think letting the committee come up with what that is to help vet that would be important because barry's right there is no this is like a rated r book um within the system that we currently use anything else that's good information yeah a great discussion so thanks to everybody let's move on to our second topic tonight which is the potential operational referendum this is a follow-up again discussion only no action tonight so we're just having a talk but a follow-up to what was discussed at our monthly meeting a couple weeks ago and i i think it's time and there's a we felt it was a good idea to

058have a special meeting to talk about both these issues especially this one though because it's time sensitive because there's deadline there's an impending deadline about a month away if we decide as a board that we want to start moving in the direction of a referendum as early as this fall um but that's to be discussed when i'm not saying we're doing that i just this is a chance for the board to have a discussion about that um steve you want to lead off discussion i think that might be helpful and then we can talk about it as a board i will add just given that the board is uh been talking about the budget so actively the last few months and then the fact that baird was here last month do i just want to

059remind the board that there is a wasb two-part series on public school referenda and one is tomorrow at noon and then the second part of that happens next week wednesday at noon uh it was like i think a a very nominal fee maybe forty dollars for us to register for you to have access to that uh so if you can watch it great if you can't we can always get you the handouts i'm sure it will be recorded they've been recording all of their materials as well so um that's just from school board members you know at the state level to all of you if that's something that you're interested in because i know these are complex decisions also following the conversation with lisa and kevin from baird really just wanted to provide the board

060an opportunity to much like you just did with the lmc materials really just have a discussion and and perhaps i think you know the first question is is is it in the will of the board do you believe it's appropriate to ask the community at some point this coming year to talk about you know our budget realities as we sit here in 2022 and put that put a question in front of the taxpayers and that's in some level that's a conversation you make for sure and it's a yes no question uh to some degree and so i i tend to be a linear thinker you know this of me and so i think we get through that question and then it you get to a question about when you know given the cycle of elections

061and how how that works we have we have different opportunities got the november midterm there's a primary in february and there's a election in april so there's more opportunities this year if you get into the odd years you lose those primary opportunities and there's probably one shot in in the 23 cycle and then i think from there once you determine when then you could start talking about the different type of of referenda that you could uh look at and that's something that lisa and kevin talked about last month the recurring the non-recurring and then of course dollar amounts and and how that affects the mill rate and what the impact is on the taxpayer et cetera so really kind of thought this is your opportunity to openly discuss share your feelings and thoughts about the

062state of the budget uh to the extent that it's necessary ask ruth rai any questions you might have about our own forecasting uh why why we're having the conversation more now as you know the last few months we've been talking about those deficits getting larger and larger so really just kind of wanted to open the floor do some listening and see where your where your heads are at yeah thanks steve and um as a board i i kind of like how steve laid it out so that's there's like four steps i think we'll have a better discussion if we focus maybe literally or you know step by step you know so the first question is yes or no dude how do you how does everyone at this table feel um based on our you know

063you've had a couple weeks to digest what baird presented we've been we've been talking about this for longer than that um about having an operational referendum in the next nine months at some point i'd love to hear people's thoughts because this is a big question i was talking to some people that are in the township and in the city and we were talking about okay because we draw from different communities like the town of burlington you know the different places and they seem to think that the city of burlington is going to float some referendums so we're thinking okay then the school's going to have one and you know she was she and the man were both concerned that it wouldn't pass because of that of the city having the referendum in the fact that

064we we passed one three years ago um so i mean it's just a thought we discussed it and we talked about how much prices are going up so what we used to be able to get for the kids books and supplies and things is doubled now you know it's to go to the grocery store you know it's just rough so i was looking at both sides to be honest yeah the yes and the no i yeah i hear you and that kind of um gets into the second question a little bit when to go because i think that what i understand too it's very likely the city of burlington will have an advisory referendum in the fall on the dam issue um it won't be a binding uh referendum but yeah as i said an

065advisory but that will be on the ballot i'm pretty confident in the fall and it'll be a pretty big big price tag probably for either question um sure even if it is advisory there still is that price tag which could be anywhere from eight to ten million just for the city but let's back up for a second because i think we're kind of getting to that second question i mean let's just take a look globally do we feel like as a board we should be going for an operational referendum at some point in the future maybe it's not this fall maybe not even next spring just in general should we be talking about an advisory referendum let me not assume the operational referendum for me i i i'm obviously going to say no just because

066the timing for november i don't think there's an adequate time to properly survey or inform people in the public i mean inflation's obviously at 9.1 percent we'll have updated numbers in that on august uh 10th um i mean again i mentioned the city referendum granted it may be advisory but i mean that that cost that price tag isn't going to be an advisory no matter what decision they make um stock market issues obviously price of gas food transportation costs energy costs we energies is already looking to increase their electrical rates by five to six percent that could be an additional 60 to 72 dollars on a typical residence starting in 2023 so that's an added cost there for folks you know i think if you were to do an operational referendum in terms to cover

067like salary and benefits and things like that i think any type of increase that may that may be paid out to folks is going to be wiped out potentially by increasing taxes and um i mean just again food costs transportation energy costs um well i think the county-wide assessment going on right now in the in the town as well the town is going through an assessment so i think if you were for me if you were going to possibly explore this i think spring 2020 this coming spring would be appropriate um because then that would give adequate time to let people know survey them for their opinions on it um that way you're not just kind of shoving it down people right away obviously that's that's not the goal of what the reason why it's

068being asked but for me um i think it just is too short a time it allows us to absorb what's happening in our immediate environment as well correct so just to clarify though again getting back to that threshold question are you open to the idea of an operational referendum put aside the timing issue for a second exactly that's all i want to know is let's get by that first so i'm hearing yes taylor potentially i mean not not not committing you to like you're leading the charge on the referendum but just you would be open to that idea that's right i'm not going to put words in your mouth um again i think if the board is going to just going to explore this i think there needs to be adequate time to have not

069just you know taxpayers but your business owners sure i mean there's a whole slew of folks that probably should be consulted on this adequate time and trust me i'm not not disagreeing with your point i just want to make sure i understand you're open to the idea of a referendum let me put it that way an operational referendum in the near future well i mean i know the concern is that you know we continue to see decreased funding from the state well i mean one idea that i have is you know after the general election here in november is we get people like you know robin vos or ben wangard you know folks like that and have them come down here and meet with our department head and say this is the reason why we're

070asking for this money not what we've done in the past i was gonna say we called them down here once everyone gave them a hug no that's okay i understand that but when you can have ruth sit there and create a presentation and say this is what we're doing because of lack of funding coming from the state each year i think it'll be helpful to have you know steve jill again all of the apartment heads give a detailed impact as to how this is impacting their budget and their department year after year you know i don't think it's a bad idea it's fair i don't know if it's going to work but we'll see because right now it's more i think well we can get into that i mean i don't like it off target

071here but i just want to hear around the table though let's just get back to that threshold question we will never know the impact of a referendum budget or referendum operational referendum unless we go down the road to explore it we'll never know the impact that's true and maybe it may be as they explained last month there may be nearly a zero impact on the taxes you're saying right right um so i'm hearing you're interested too kevin and i hear roseanne is that fair to say too and how about you marla what do you think just as a threshold question like a non-starter or do you have you know some willingness to look at this i don't think we can afford it for it not to be a non-starter um ultimately if we don't try

072something then we we lose a lot more so i think we have to have that conversation and be willing to do it try and i think every school district in the state is running into this well that was more and more referendums being floated eighty percent have gone already right is that the number i heard that have tried at least right so we're we're in the 20 who hasn't tried yet how about you susan yes i'm definitely open to it okay i think we need to try to try and barry what do you think oh sorry i didn't mean to cut you off no i'm just gonna say i'm not so so sure you know how the community's gonna respond to it but i need it well that may depend on some of the variables

073too that we come up with now here as guidelines gary you have some thoughts i've said before it is our job as board members to tell the district what it takes to operate our facilities and it is our duty to provide that information to the public and let them decide if they want to support it or not so i think the should we do it or not question is right out the window that's not for us to decide it's our job to give the public that question to let them say we do support what you're doing we don't support what you're doing and to the point of holding off until spring i agree we're way behind the ball on this however if we wait till spring the very real reality of this is we will

074have to send layoff notices to almost two dozen teachers because the deadline for laying off teachers comes before the election so you're gonna send out almost two dozen layoff notices to teachers because we wanted to wait and let the public know more and then let's say the public approves this operational referendum now we got to try and get them back and say well you know we kind of had to it was a procedural thing you're never going to change that feeling of i'm disposable you just threw on those people and if the district citizens don't want to do an operational referendum then we've got to get to the very real real reality of we can't operate the way we're operating we're going to change what we're doing and that might mean closing schools busting more

075people because we can't staff at our current levels so that's the question the public has to answer not us and if the public decides to raise the tax rate or not raise the tax rate that's the public's choice not ours how about you susan you have thoughts on fall versus spring there are pros and cons well i think they in the presentation we saw the fall it's exceeded it it was more successful in the fall rather than in the spring but i'm not i don't think we're ready though it's how about this end of the table i would agree with that statement yeah they did mention that and stressed it that the fall is much more successful but i also don't think that we were prepared to run this thing information education is going to

076be critical to the masses i absolutely agree i know there is a cost for us to run a special ballot on something like this for instance if there were spring election and there were no there was nothing on the ballot we would have to pay to have that done what is the cost for us to put the question on the ballot in november oh you're saying like you know what's the downside of doing financially right yeah at the very least it puts it on people's radar but we do get bailed for every election a certain portion so like if it's like the november election it's just our s'more our small portion of the total cost but if it's a special election then you have to pay the whole cost what that difference is that i'm

077not sure i'm guessing maybe five to eight thousand okay so it'd be five to eight thousand i'm guessing i that's the difference or that's the and i'm not holding you to an exact number i want to know roughly now i think we pay roughly two to four thousand okay um like we i think we budget four to five thousand a year right now so if you were to add a special election on top of that i'm thinking that would probably be another five thousand dollars ish it's not insignificant but not insurmountable either i do think there is an election in february that would be an option that probably an issue barry if i understand in the fall of 23 there's likely not an election so that's where that might come up or potentially if there

078wasn't a primary in february of the spring i think that'd be the kind of two scenarios right but i was i just wanted to understand if there was a cost to put it on the ballot it sounds like there is a cost to put on the ballot which is not nothing but also not insurmountable how about you what do you think about timing if you had to choose between fall november this year or the spring next year i would much rather have two opportunities to make the shot than just the one but timing is just critical and it would not be fair for us to not be as transparent and give the community as a whole enough time to digest the implications and unfortunately wait until spring you know we go in knowing exactly you

079know what the possibilities are but that i think would play into the urgency and the severity of the situation um so i i would be i would be more willing to do it so do so in spring than in november but um no i'm with you i think the word digest was something i thought about too because i think that's been echoed here people need time to understand and we need to make our put the facts out there why we're why what this is and then you know the reasons why people would vote one way or the other on it so i think that's important time i am under the impression that you the administration could put together the presentation on this relatively quick because we already know how short we are and we can

080project how far we need to be how much time does administration need to get information together to inform the public i'll take a stab i'll take a stabbing but and then and then ruth will go i mean we i think really it is it's a question for the board in the sense that if you say it's november and it's go time we'll we'll get it done i think to the points you're making uh that it will give people less time to digest right it's it's just a shorter window of time you're at that three month mark so you're you're making a huge uh push to get a message out to share those facts to present at community meetings and you know any other type of request you might have so we we would do that

081i think we um kind of with a smile also say well we we can do anything for three months we can work you know 90 hours a week and just get it done that doesn't change people's ability to digest it's still a lot of very complex information trying to you know respond to the questions that might surface april absolutely gives you more time to get out to share the message to talk about the concerns and and it may be also that to your point barry april we're probably going to be here in january talking about layoffs and and that may both have um create a sense of urgency and a deep understanding of the consequences if it doesn't pass so that that could be i suppose argued both ways as well right there's just pros

082and cons to all of it um and i do think that uh if if april were to fail we would have an opportunity on next school year but it would perhaps prolong and and worsen the deficit before we're able to get it better i don't know if you want to add to that ruth in terms of the timing we we have a we have a shadow website in the works we have faqs in the works we have powerpoint presentations in the work for community meetings those are all going to be necessary if you say we're doing it at some point so we don't feel like it's it's work that's just going to get buried it's just a matter of when well i want to acknowledge do i i i heard taylor's points i think that's

083important to think about the public and how they people are it's tough right now with inflation and gas prices so i think to be sensitive to that and maybe to hold off until uh the spring might be a a smart movement timing wise barry you make good points about the layoffs that is hard i i get that too um all in all i probably lean forward spring though i think that's the well i was gonna say that i mean don't get me wrong i feel badly about layoffs as much as anyone else but it's what it means to the community in the district they need to understand what this means to their schools do we also have information ready reading these presentations for what we will have to do if we do not pass these

084referenda potentials of jogging schools or closing or whatever else we're going to need to do to close these windows there's a beginning list of that we recognize that it's probably a phased approach uh barry because what we're talking about right now as you know for this budget cycle is about two million dollars unfortunately though the way that that compounds then you go another year out and given what we don't know about the state budget we're guessing and we can guess different scenarios but that number for the 23-24 school year can easily exceed 5 million that's a it just becomes an exponentially more problematic and frightening reality and we can go there if if the board so desires but ruth has done some modeling with baird as well where we've looked at some scenarios of a

085no per pupil increase for the next biennium if property values stayed flat if cpi came in at a staggering eight and a quarter percent you know taylor you just said nine one they're averaging it out right now it sits at we think eight 8.24 we're using and assuming you know health insurance probably hits 10 which is perhaps conservative um if we just look at that scenario which is is kind of staggering by the 26 27 school year we're looking at a 17 million dollar deficit if those forecasting numbers were to stay i mean that's just jaw dropping and so part of it is what's 2 million today becomes 5 turns into 10 and 15 4 or 5 years out because of the way it compounds so even with a shift from you know joint finance

086and the state legislature just saying you know local communities are going to have to tax themselves for schools even with that we're we will still have to make other accordingly um appropriate adjustments because it's it's a it's a bigger problem so we would be looking at what programs could we not offer in terms of the value we place on comprehensive offerings and opportunities we would be looking at that 2 million does translate to 24 or 25 certified staff on average and what other sorts of things we would need to pinch and squeeze just to really push that backward we'll start looking what that does to average class sizes across the district it's probably not what people want because anytime you get over that mid 20 mark it starts to become controversial and this would probably

087push us into the low you know upper 20s low 30s across the board well the last thing i'll offer i promise kevin last thing i'll offer is the district has done this for 30 years we've been extremely responsible with our funds and we've not had to ask for funds in the past i don't think anyone on this board is looking to ask for money to not change anything we're looking to keep the schools and the education we provide at the level we have it as enrollment declines so will our staffing this is not a we're just grabbing money because we don't want to change anything there will constantly be efforts to refine what we do here to recruit more students in to increase our funding and to be as responsible as we've done for the

088last 30 years with our funds so this is not just a hey let's go grab some money we're not going to do anything and we're going to get fat off this it's not that type of situation this is what we need to keep the wheels rolling and to provide the best education we can for the students of the district we we're halfway through our four questions though so we still have a little work that that can't be the final word okay well then i'll skip over you on the next two but uh we still have work i'm sorry um so the last referendum what was the time frame for notification how long did we which time for this one but last time we went several times for that reference well no i think he's asking

089barry we i think we started planning marlow in the spring of 17 and we went fall of 18. so that was a long process um to get ready we did a survey you know we did a lot of community engagement okay is that what you're asking yeah we have school perceptions work with us to be fair i think a capital improvement or building referendum maybe it's a little more challenging because you're trying to explain what you're building as opposed to you know a pretty simple question here um at least i think it's kind of simple but anything else before we might because i think the next question is what type of referendum well before i get there i'm hearing the consensus on the board and correct me if i'm wrong is we're interested in referendum

090lines with spring would make more sense as opposed to fall fair to say okay good i think it's good we need to build the consensus here on the board um what type of referendum now we're talking we're doing a non-reoccurring or a reoccurring referendum and remember the difference reoccurring is where you ask for a set dollar amount that goes on forever you know and now i remember whatever don't say that no it's what it is well i understand that but if you're going to do that there needs to be a timeline on this no there's not but those are the two different types that's what you've seen yeah yeah non-reoccurring has a timeline yeah so a recurring referendum i think it's designed usually for a specific purpose like let's say you're you know you know

091um you need an extra staff person for you know three extra staff people you might end up with 500 000 non-reoccurring i think is you know again it's for a certain time period like three to five years um you may recall the i think the example that lisa and kevin gave was if you added a building so a second high school you know i suppose like sun prairie just added a high school with that they're gonna in perpetuity be staffing that heating that those utilities and so they might do a recurring question hey from here on out forever and ever ever we need to exceed the revenue limit because we've now added a school and so that's usually the reason people might go there but some districts have have used that for operations which is

092which is unique i'm not going to put words in your mouth but i'm going to i'm fairly confident you are more of a non-reoccurring um sure advocate yeah did i get little yeah i was going to say roseanne do you have thoughts same susan yeah barry i'm not going to ask you because you've already said you're done but you already gave his final one he did and uh no i i am i'm i i think in this situation a non-non-reoccurring is the appropriate referendum um any berries okay so we can we can kind of move on in this one it seems like barry did a great job i think explaining it too i appreciated their insights um so again this is the time limited referendum so now the question is uh how long is this

093kind of part b of this third question um barrett was recommending i think five years as a um timeline i think they were lisa mentioned three years might be too short uh an odd number of years put us in the middle of a biennium budget if i remember right so that was something they recommended if we went in fall or spring this year um thoughts on timeline it could be anything i mean you really can pick what you want i mean one year would probably not be smart but then you have to go back to the voters if you need that money again but so if you're in the middle of a biennium so if we go five from a budgeting standpoint you may have to go out one more time right are the end

094of five years well i think a lot of assumptions are frankly that you probably are going again in five years for most most school districts that pass these non-reoccurring referendums probably take another look at it in five years four years better than five years based on the lineup of the camera what was the rationale our rationale kevin is that if we were to end in the middle of the biennium as the as the referendum was expiring we would have almost well we would have a much better understanding of next year's budget from the state because it's in the middle of the biennium it's year two so we would i was going to say we'd have a concrete but maybe that's pushing nice but the reality is we would know the budget for next year versus

095where where you sit as the binium comes to an end you're in this spot where you're you're approving a budget you know you don't know what in july it's not even adopted until october you don't know what the state's doing so now you're like oh do we do we go back and ask do we do it like this just is a better spot because you'd know that next year so the real question is three five seven or or if you did five ended in the middle and the board said we need we need to now sustain this then i'd switch back to an even maybe four years because now you're still ending in the middle thereafter so this first time out probably three or five and three does by the time you get done and

096get going it ends fast and so the five years is kind of the conversations that ruth and i've had as well as baird and that just seemed like the spot that made the most sense and you could explain the metrics on that to the community better particularly if the dollar amounts changed over that time how about down on this end if you have thoughts on length i think before i make a decision before i make a decision on length i guess i'd like to see what these potential numbers are um what what the potential impact is you know from from a tax standpoint how much it'll increase per 100 000 you know things like that so i guess i would need that information before i can decide on three five or seven that's true those

097two are tied together but yeah how about anyway let's have initial thoughts on length i mean without being tied down i'll go down to this end of the table i kind of like the five because when they were explaining it at the meeting i i thought it made sense like he said it's three you're hardly in it and it's over so um you know i kind of like the five yeah and seven seems like a too long of a time right because we don't know what's going to happen in the future i think five makes sense too barry your thoughts yeah sorry kevin yeah it's still light outside you're good he hasn't finished speaking yet i'm not down here either yes or no answer i believe [Music] i believe five makes the most sense it

098gives some predictability as to what you're going to do and allows you to plan further out it allows us to readjust after five years to increase or decrease depending upon what the population is doing and when we did our study for the district for the addition over here of the new karcher they told us they can't predict past five years accurately well the simple reason for that is the kids that need us in five years are already born yeah so we can fairly barely accurately predict where we need to be for those five years and as to your concern taylor i know what you're talking about but it's not like that rate's going to increase it's going to be a set rate yeah right across the board so i think five is appropriate i think

099trying to go to seven is ridiculous i think three might be too short because just as you're finally getting your stride you have to go back and figure out what's gonna happen again i think five years gives you that window of okay here's what's coming next okay i think it's good to pause and just make sure this is clear too we're just having a discussion right now we're not making decisions so if anyone's listening to this or listens to it later on you know the board isn't saying we're locked in to do a non-reoccurring five-year referendum in the spring at this point and in fact now that we're going to spring we have a little more time to even think about it and tweak our plans and make up for something different so um well

100what is the what's the end date for like is it 70 days out right yeah so what would that be in january if we went through is when a decision would have to be maybe well no 70 days is a little over two months right so probably february okay and yes we have some time to come up with a plan right and and uh decide what makes sense i'm looking at you marlo potential compromise here we've got a primary and we've got a spring election can we still get two shots at this get more time to get the word out to the public and on the february ballot in the primary and then put it on again in april if it doesn't succeed i i don't think the math works on that because we we

101we looked at that or talked about it i we could look very i i anecdotally i'm going to say i don't think the math works well i also think that you have a smaller turnout for february primaries i don't think it'd be inaccurate i think that's why they recommend november usually because that's your largest turnouts and you get the best sampling of sure you're populous at that point well so in 23 there's going to be a i think what supreme court race so there probably will be a primary in february i think the only thing that would potentially be a hot button issue for april 23 would be that supreme court race so that's what you're kind of hanging your hat on in terms of voter turnout sounds like it's not practical i just wanted

102to no so thank you yeah we just said january 24 of 23 would be the spring deadline for us to pass a resolution yeah um marlo i don't know if i heard from you you five years i think i saw it nodding i mean just generally let's move on to dollar amount then i think that's that's probably the toughest part yeah didn't barrett have a um a scenario where there was no mill rate increase potentially but you can talk more about that yeah i think i think this is if you if you're interested in having at least some very preliminary talk about about dollars we can and i toby can you turn the tvs on because ruth has a doc if you want to kind of load that uh i'll i'll just chat a little

103bit about while ruth's doing that so a couple of things you were talking earlier about the being the fiscal stewards of the taxpayer dollars that you've been and one of the things that that ruth and i go back and look at is there was a decade between 2005 and 2015 where the district did not levy to the max and that was if you total up that 10 years at the end of that that was 21 million that was was not taxed and so if we carried that forward that number would be much larger in the last seven years it would have grown but i do think that's that's a piece that that boards um either those of you that were here or prior boards did it's also probably important to remember that we have to

104be very very explicit about the 2018 referendum being a capital referendum it was not for operational costs and we did not have an operational question at that time the third thing that i think comes perhaps to play is just the general notion of kind of the esser stuff that's gone on for the last maybe 12 18 months because i i think there's perceptions of well you're you're either adding staff or you have this money and that money is one shot federal dollars and it's gone we are not operating with those dollars and yet the board is still having to contend with well what do we do do we hold back some of those funds to operate because we know we're going to need them ruth does have and what she's zooming in on we can

105talk through just a little bit this is number crazy and will make your eyeballs pop out of your brains a little bit but this is just a very preliminary forecasting model that baird makes available that we that we work with as you know and just ran a couple scenarios we we will probably end up running a hundred of these for you you know you'll say we don't you know what about this or what about that so when i just for example described a few minutes ago if we ran a cpi for example at 8.24 assume 10 for insurance et cetera that those assumptions go into the model the model will spit out um here's what your mill rate is here's where you have deficits etc so it's a little easier for you to see you

106know where there's red on the screen and for ruth to highlight a couple comp columns but what we start to do is look at okay how could we borrow or shift our borrowing capacity so instead of maybe diffusing debt we could use that for operations that doesn't change the mill rate as an example so that's what peter was just referencing or what would it take if we had new money from the state so we laugh a little bit ruth and i that in in some circles we recognize there is no new money coming from the state in other places people say no the legislature might commit six hundred dollars per student don't think that's going to happen but we can show a scenario with that and what does that do so i'll pass the torch

107let ruth maybe describe one or two of these you can ask all the questions you want we played around with the cpi it was 8 in 23 4 then cuts down to six percent than four percent then two percent because we thought well maybe that's realistic we come you know down away from the inflated uh cliff that we're standing on so ruth do you want to just do an example or two of these for the board sure so i think right now i've got probably five scenarios there i gave you a handout that has all of them and i know there's a lot of numbers so we'll just focus on a few of the line items i'm going to have you start with the side that says um no per pupil on the revenue limit

108in the upper left hand corner it says base but there's there's two sides that say base so the one side that says no per pupil on the revenue limit if you're looking at beard you've got the wrong side correct um so this scenario is just going to talk about what um steve said so there's three scenarios on this page um the base one is before we start making any changes so it obviously there's a lot of assumptions that are behind the scenes um this is just a a summary um the couple of lines i'll have you point that we'll point out just kind of walking down here so the september membership that's our pupil count so you can see over the years that's slowly declining but nothing drastic the next line is the per pupil

109increase in the revenue limit so if you follow that line all the way across in this scenario we've assumed zero okay and we're mostly going to focus on 23 24 when we look at this is it going to be 0 is it going to be 200 is it going to be 600 we don't know um but if it were 0 this is what this scenario would look like if you keep going down i don't know 5 or so more lines then there's a surplus deficit line so if you look in the 22 23 column it's that first red number um that's our minus two million dollars that we've talked about then if you look at 2324 this is where steve mentioned before now it's jumping up to 5.7 million and you can kind of see

110where it just keeps growing some other assumptions that are in that number we have cpi in this scenario we assumed eight percent for 23.24 and then we kind of dropped that down to six percent 24.25 then four percent and 256 and two percent and 26 27 so again many different options we can throw out there we tried to pick something that we thought might be reasonable hopeful was a word we used um that that would slowly trend back down to i'm kind of where we are now and then kind of that next um set of numbers or the next line i guess is the fund balance so currently in the the blue um what we think we're going to end this year at about 7.5 million which is um a reasonable place to be but

111if you look now out to 23 24 to two more years out if we don't make any changes and if we don't add an operational referendum in two more years that's down to zero it's actually below zero we don't want that situation um so we do need to make changes however though whatever that looks like so that we don't go have a negative fund balance like you'll be closing your doors so 1996. oh yeah that well for the board that that was either here or is aware that that was the district's scenario in in roughly was a negative fund balance yes took a lot of work to get to get out of that but yes so then keep going down here's where the where it says non-recurring referendum a couple other scenarios down below we'll

112we'll show where that populates in um there's a line for recurring referendum we are not going to do that um referendum.levy so that's the um the debt that like the um 2018 referendum the capital debt like that we already have the taxing authority for that we will levy then near the end here you have this school-based levy so that's the total tax levy and then you can see the impact on the mill rate so right now if we don't do anything and just have those assumptions um you can see that so 2223 the middle the levy would go down and then it just kind of stays flat or slightly decreases just questions on just the generic setup of this before we jump into some options okay so then if we move down to this scenario

113one so same layout um what we changed here was i don't want adobe update sorry computer's thinking sorts out um so here on this per pupil increase line if you look out to 23 24 and then subsequent years there here's one assumption that we made that we would get some per pupil increase from the state is it 100 is it 200 is it 600 we just kind of picked a number we thought that was reasonable used 250 for two years so that that state biennium budget and then we dropped it to 150 for the two subsequent years after that kind of correlating with our assumption that cpi would be decreasing again just an assumption then if we drop down to the i'm gonna we'll come back to the surplus and the fund balance line so

114on this assumption then go down to that non-recurring referendum line if you look at 2324 kind of right in the middle of this whole section we put in 2.5 million for 23.24 2.2 million for 24.25 and then 2.9 into 3.3 how did we get that number if you look down here at the bottom at the school levy in the mill rate we we kind of just put in a number that kept the levy at about two and a half percent so no rhyme or reason other than targeting that mill rate um trend and the goal was just to show the board that essentially by maintaining the mill rate you're not changing the impact to the taxpayer right so this scenario allows you to see without change without having an impact to the taxpayer what what

115would then the trend if you went out three four or five years what would that look like so that was the goal of just this example above the line so that's where i was going to go let's just jump back up here now to 23 24. if we look at this surplus deficit line so even a 2.5 million operating referendum would still leave us a deficit in that year of 2.8 million and then our fund balance would drop to 2.3 so if you go over to 2425 deficit is still 5 million and the fund balance is negative so it got us one more year out and kevin to your point to to just reiterate something ruth said this is assuming no other changes right which we don't tend to operate that way and yet for

116just forecasting conversations that's how it gets built if that makes sense yes that is a critical understanding that when we make these assumptions it's assuming those assumptions hold true throughout the whole formula and nothing else changes right now if we go down to this scenario 2 so same assumptions here with the per pupil but this time if we look at the non-recurring referendum we put in dollars that would make the assumption we were trying to basically eliminate the deficit in any given year so pretty close to zero here so 5.3 million 7.3 9 million and 10.4 and if you drop down to the bottom to look at the impact on the tax levy and the mill rate you can see that's a pretty drastic change in that first year or the first two years so

117again not not making any recommendations just giving you the range of possible options of decisions that we would have to make this still factors and yeah the bottom says this still factors in steps and lanes we do correct for the the teachers uh certified staff we have on their pay scale alternating years with step in lane movements um we did assume health insurance at a 10 trend um that declining cpi yes so whenever we whenever we get to the point of deciding a dollar amount we'll have to decide what we want some of those variables to be can you email us this copy yes that generally makes sense i know like i said i know it's a lot of numbers but if you kind of focus on some of those key lines and just look

118at the the impact so ruth it does look like you account for enrollment trends with the students across the top but other factors included are not included here are things like staff retirements or turnover or anything like that right correct so if there's a teacher that is at the highest salary on the pay schedule that retires and we hire a new teacher replacement teacher at the beginning salary level or perhaps we don't replace them no we don't have any of those anything like that factored in but then those would be where like if you make an adjustment every any given year it would affect all those subsequent years i know it's a lot to digest what other questions so with the and this is just projection we don't know we could have a housing boom

119we could have a bust it's hard to tell but the projection of about 82 students lost what is that in ftes roughly is that about three about 30 yes but steve and i were talking about that like that's 82 students over 12 grades 13 grades 14 grades 13 grades you know what is that five in any given grade it's not going to be enough for a teacher in any grade most likely okay thank you um i know so it's easy to think of it in those terms but then when you break it down but that's where we try to have been very diligent about trying to when somebody leaves analyzing that for a situation is that some place where we could take advantage of attrition and not replace or planning for the subsequent year um

120really looking at the this uh staff to student ratios teacher to student ratios sure it's just one of those things that i think the public will want to know as a variable you know do we have to look at putting 35 kids in classroom instead of our current numbers do we know what are the different things we're looking at doing and what's that what's that value to the community so i know we can't ever know because i know just because your retirement age doesn't mean you're retiring and just because you're not retirement age doesn't mean you're not leaving so but it's too hard to tell but thank you mm-hmm yeah i don't think we can get i don't think we can pick a number right now yeah and i don't think that's necessarily the goal

121tonight no this is just to kind of give you an idea of in case you didn't hear because he's not talking to the microphone kevin just said we can't pick a number tonight i think it's going to be too hard but now you know we do have time though because i think if we were going to go in the fall we'd have a month and we'd be i feel like we'd be under a lot more pressure to have more plans so this gives us time to it gives ruth and the team time to come up with some scenarios for us to consider um perhaps there's some place in in between here yeah i think that was part of it right is to show you in some ways i think ruth and i see okay well

122what does it look like if we hold the levy steady that's just an interesting one to look at what does if we get the deficit to zero the reality is it's probably somewhere in the in there that you would say oh i'm comfortable with you know what you know and then you fill in the blanks or or if you don't think the assumptions make sense and we can change the assumptions kind of thing and don't we have information still coming in from the town the city and racine and what our mill rate is going to be because of the new assessments they have that number yet no we don't get those um property values until october 1st yeah so i mean we're we're in the dark so that will affect the mill rate for each

123individual tax bill but that doesn't affect our total tax levy no but if we're going to present this to the community they have to know what that means on a 200 000 house if we're going from current 8.7 cents to 11.42 as an example they didn't know what that means in them i think another point we need to be trying to get the message out is with the reassessments and i know in the town they're doing one um as property values go up it might you might assume you're going to pay that much more tax no but it's all relative to what everybody else's property value is it's just how that right you know is the pie still broken in the same way it's just a bigger pie right so an increase in property value

124doesn't necessarily mean that that the tax impact will be that same impact and one of the other things that peter said is we want to look at historical mill rates as they came down and the benefit of that as we make this presentation to the community yeah it wasn't too long ago the mill rate was ten twelve dollars now it's eight which is a good thing but it's it's also we have to keep that in mind yeah um remember last time you had a on the front page of the district website uh scenario where people could put programming their home values and if right and if this referendum or two rep whatever passed it would kind of give them an idea of how much of an increase their their tax levy would be right could

125we do this again for this i think that was a fairly easy um program to remember what was generated from but yes i think that would help make people yes we'll check into it the the decision making right yeah that's right so it's a great idea we want to make it incredibly easy for the lay person to look at it and not have to guess any other questions or comments from the board on kind of this last topic i know it's a little amorphous right we haven't really got anything it's premature but it's still good to have the discussion yeah yeah well i thought that was just interesting how we've used um we've been able to uh pay down our debt early in the past and that's another source that we could use as a

126basis or partial basis for the operating referendum the defeasance right of the right so right now the plan would probably be in october to recommend that again um just so that then 23 24 we could replace the operating referendum potential operating referendum um with that that division so it would continue on the trend it would just be the tax levy gore toward the operating reform instead of the division so perhaps one more year of duty fusions anybody else here on the board have any other questions comments before thank you for putting the numbers together for the scenarios yes this is the baird model the bare budget model that they have so we're trying to use that a little bit more okay thank you thank you before we get off this topic i think it's just

127important to reiterate a couple things about the uh referendum burlington we're one of we're in the last 20 of districts to even consider an operating referendum so we've held out a long time um so i think that's important that we're not we've been very fiscally responsible as a school district and i also i think schools financing right now operating referendums are a critical component in the state of wisconsin i think it's almost the system's design for school districts to consider them so i don't think it's a failure on our part of planning or being financially responsible to consider it but now it's the case the public gets to pure democracy yes or no we put out what we think is a good plan and let the public decide anyways anyone else any general comments except

128barry all right uh i think that's all we had in our agenda tonight so uh journey thank you so much do we have to we have to adjourn yeah so second second okay any comments hearing down i'll call for votes all in favor say aye aye aye opposed nay how are we everyone hey thanks for coming out tonight and uh taking part right at least listening yeah still light outside kevin