School Board Meeting - April 11, 2022

001thanks toby i'd like to call the april monthly school board meeting to order if everyone could stand and join me we're going to say the pledge of allegiance i pledge states of allegiance and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thanks toby will you do the roll call and while she's doing that board members don't forget to speak into your microphones otherwise the people at home cannot hear us peter turk here barry schmaling here marlo brown here taylor with shaw here kevin bird here rosie han here susan kessler here thank you next we're going to review the minutes of previous meetings um i'd entertain a motion to approve the minutes from our march meeting i move we approve the minutes second okay motion's been

002made and seconded any discussion hearing none i'll call for a vote all in favor say aye aye oppose me all right approved all right uh next we're going to have citizen comments so just to remind you a few months ago we made a switch to where we're doing we're allowing public citizens to make comments during action items for the board so if you have an i uh a comment during that period you don't have to say it now this portion of the meeting though is for general board comments and um looks like we have three people who want to make comments for items that are not on the agenda tonight um keep in mind that the um time limit the rules are in place and i think most people know what they are it's three

003minutes uh barry schmailing will give you a hand up when you get you know 2 45 so you know that your time is almost up so that being said aaron melby you're up first if you could come up to this table and there's a microphone there and again the people at home won't hear you if you don't speak into the mic so thank you um first i wanted to congratulate um kevin and barry for the for the victory and uh and keeping their seats on the school board um i'm just gonna ask that you guys uh continue to listen to parents and again and i've emailed both of you but saying it publicly i i ask that you both make a concern all of you making it's concerted effort to keep um ics out of

004our schools to that i will um we we recognize that colleen capper is is one of the the people involved in ics which is the integrated comprehensive systems for equity and they're they're wanting to to we're going to hear from steve i think about his recommendations on on their um on their report for us about equity in basd so i wanted to point out a couple of things that i've that i know about colleen um just just quotes from books of hers so that you have some kind of reference on on what we'd get into if we allowed them to start making changes for us she wrote a book called from the field a proposal for educating leaders for social justice quote in addition to a non-essentialized definition of social justice we also distinguish our

005definition of social justice from critical theorists and we've already stated that the critical race theory is not being taught or not in our schools the field of educational administration was strongly influenced by a series of works on school leadership grounded in critical theory and then just one more here or a couple more i guess toward a framework of um for preparing leaders for social justice was another book we are quote we argue that school leaders need to embody a social justice consciousness within their belief systems or values this includes needing to possess a deep understanding of power relations and social construction including white privilege heterosexism poverty misogyny and ethnocentrism and colin capper mentions critical theory 97 times in her book organized organizational theory for equity and diversity the theory referenced in the title of of

006this work is neo-marxist critical theory as she writes that book critical theory quote critical theory was formed within the frankfurt school of thought in germany out of marxism and colleen capper mentions critical race theory 133 times in the same book thank you all right thanks erin next up ryan good evening again i'd like to extend congratulations to barry and kevin both on a good race and what i'd like to do is issue a call it a couple challenges to the board to the administration first i think we've got a lot good going on in our district let's keep celebrating that i think we've been doing better and better at that as a district let's make sure we keep getting the word out there i think the open houses we had a couple weeks almost a

007week ago a couple weeks ago now going on was really good i think i know i went through a lot of schools i know i saw roseanne out i'm sure she made it through every one of them i didn't get up early enough to do that but um i think it was really good to have that open to the community i personally was disappointed that i didn't see more community members out there to see what their investment was in our in our buildings and in our schools and i know i i truly appreciated going through and the kids had notes of thanks on their their lockers and their hooks that they hang their coats on or what have you i thought that was really good too it just goes to show the character of our

008district and our our students and teachers here in the district the second challenge i would issue to you is let's start thinking outside the box on how we make our district better i know when i was all campaigning i heard several comments just to the effect of i'm not going to put my kids in the school and i'm not comfortable with it i had a couple that said i pay eight thousand dollars in taxes my return on the educational investments terrible we're seriously thinking about putting our house up for sale and moving as a district we have to address that and i think it requires some outside the box thinking what can we do differently some of it i think is messaging some of it is what are we doing in inside our schools right

009we know that our open enrollments continue to grow i hope that we're at a minimum flat on our open enrollments out next year by the feedback i've got i'm not confident that will be i think it's going to increase um we know we have a lot of folks that enroll in the the catholic schools which i don't think are counted in our open enroll numbers out someone can correct me on that if i'm wrong on that but i don't think it is so how many more is that my understanding also is there's a waiting list for the catholic school and if they could open their other building they'd fill that too what can we do differently i think we've got a couple of of good things going on we have continuity on the board right

010i think you all work together fairly well so that can be uh a positive but i think what we have to guard against is getting too complacent about it because we've been here because we've worked together i think you know my my challenge is to fight against that let's think outside the box on what else we could do to make sure our district is the district of choice again thanks thanks ryan next matt snork ah thank you and you're gonna have to bear with me my voice is gone from allergies so i'm gonna try to talk softly because if i try to talk louder my voice is gone um i want to say first and foremost thank you to everybody that ran for the recent races and elections i'm a firm believer that when the

011voters have choices democracy is at its best so to the gentleman that ran and did not the ones that ran one as well as other races in the area thank you um i'd like to see a conservative effort if anything this election um going out and talking to people and engaging people i became more aware of behind the scenes numbers some of which some of the winning board members had on their their flyers material and some you can find on the state's dpi website a lot of people in the community are very concerned over the declining performance numbers of our students and overall declining enrollment unless i read those numbers wrong both of those were going in a downward trajectory all the while the cost per student has been going up i'd like to see

012more emphasis and focus on getting back to the core basics of education and putting more emphasis on that than some of these other since the extracurriculars but the the wish list of things that sometimes comes before you and get back to the basics because i've got a child myself and every year he says dad i'd like to go school in burlington there's just a few things i'd like to improve here before i can in good faith good conscience bringing into the school district because he's in one right now where the dpi performance scores are amazing um any needs that any kids need no matter where they fall on any part of the educational spectrum are always met and he's doing really well there and i honestly think if i brought my son to this school

013it'd be a bit of a learning curve and i don't know if he can maintain his current performance level coming here because i feel some of those areas are deficient thank you very much all right thank you last tom coleman hi congratulations kevin barry great job my my concern is still the iep kids at the school why why can't we get it uh this on the school board they have a meeting and invite the ip kids parents so we that you could all understand what we go through with iep kids and how we feel they are not being taught at the level they need to be taught at we're constantly teaching them over their head these kids aren't going to thrive if they're always under water i i don't know how many times i need

014to come here and preach this but we are teaching these kids stuff they are never going to learn but yet we won't teach them how to read we won't teach them how to do basic math my son next year is going to be a senior and i'm going to put him in the easiest math program you have just so he's fresh on adding subtracting multiplying and dividing for his senior year on a class that he doesn't even need but it's essential for him to have i mean these kids need to learn how to use money i i don't understand why everybody here can't see why we have 500 iep kids here that's that makes up 22 percent of your budget 16 year kids why we don't go the extra mile and teach these kids these

015kids need to i was just with a classmate of mine that i went to grade school with before i came here we me and him both from from first grade to fourth grade went and seen a special teacher in a library but by the time we were in fourth grade we could make it through all the rest of it these kids need effort why they're young first grade through fourth grade um we we have esser funds to spend on this why not try it and see how much it helps i mean these kids need to be taught how to read and how to do basic math in order to thrive throughout the school i i don't know my son is done after next year i mean this is not going to benefit my kids but

016it just discourages me that we have 500 kids that we're willing to throw at a curb and tell them to go sign up for social security as soon as they graduate this place this disturbing is it not disturbing to any of you i the iep kids their parents call me looking for advice the only advice i can tell them is pursuit of school there is nothing more you can do because their ips were not met during covet so that's that's what the recourse could be thank you all right thank you all right uh next we have correspondence and board communication roseanne i have something uh this last weekend i spent in madison with wasb the wisconsin association of school boards i represent district 13 which is part of burlington racine kenosha wilmot and 24 others

017so it's kind of fun to get together and the whole state is represented during this weekend and i just wanted to go over some of the things that were discussed i'm just going to pick a few of them but one was quite disturbing again the shortage of teachers and right now we're having a real problem getting superintendents we have superintendents that are just walking off the job and going into something other than education and teachers are doing the same and they're trying to come up with ideas kind of like grow your own trying to get people interested in high school in becoming teachers i know when i was in high school we had future teachers of america they don't have any more but there are some other things to try to get kids interested in

018teaching and the main thing is to have teachers when the child comes to them and says i think i want to be a teacher don't say don't do it you know because it's a lot of work and not a lot of money but that was one of the things we talked about asisa is helping with that and the district administrators group is trying to work with that too trying to get maybe some principals maybe some assisted superintendents more ready to be superintendents and practice teachers trying to get i think the idea of the old normal school was where people learned to teach the first two years and found out if they like teaching or not rather than wait till four years or five years before they find out what it's like to be in a

019classroom so we talked about things like that another thing they gave us a big warning because of the problems in the ukraine a lot of some of the districts have been um having problem with their computers people have been getting into it so it's something that we should watch for here uh be be aware of internet safety is how they put it and i want all of our boards we know here but boards to be aware of a lot of the good complementary webinars that are offered through wasb there's some good ones coming up and convention proposals burlington has been represented um kathy i think you remember we did the pack house one year very very highly oh people were just thought it was wonderful we've had the driven kids in there we had the

020chorus sing the national anthem one day but i'd like to see some more things so um it's going to be january 18th through 20th and 23 and um i'm going to see if we can't get some more people trying and smart work and things like that sent in too um we discussed the dues and we're going to be raising our the was dues by about five percent part of it is value-added the convention itself they're adding a great big on to the if you know where the wisconsin center is on wisconsin avenue and milwaukee they're adding on to the whole end of that and attaching again to one of the hotels so it's uh it's going to cost us more to have everything there and another serious problem they're having and we should be aware

021of it too is they're 30 down again this year of referees people don't want to be referees uh officials they've had have taken a lot from the audiences and i think burlington is doing this fact i know they are because one of my piano students does it but um if we have some high school kids that are really good in soccer and so forth they kind of teach them to be a referee and then they can referee the junior high level and so forth and i know we're doing that here so they're trying to get more people interested in doing that and you know we all had a survey quest the survey came out to all board members and so we're going to have four discussion groups one was just superintendents one with board presidents

022one with board members and the whips the university of wisconsin will help find out just how as wasb can help all the boards in what we want i was fortunate enough to get to talk to tom mccarthy for quite a while and he's the executive director of the office of the state superintendent and um that was quite an interesting conversation uh jill dr jill underley who is the head of the dpi will be visiting with us in june so anyway that was my weekend i learned a lot i was able to brag a lot about burlington because we do have wonderful programs here so hopefully we can do something with the convention and so that's my and i want to say too how much i love the open house on that saturday even though it

023snowed they had one man at the pack house and he said my daughter goes here and she's just loves it i'm gonna shovel so we gotta shovel out and shovel the walk and everything up so that because it got kind of slippery toward the end so but anyway it was wonderful met a lot of good people and i really didn't hear early anything negative everybody was so positive about all the schools and all the work that was done so it was a wonderful day thank you well thank you anybody else on the board have comments or anything you want to add i'll ask i mean for those who don't know um roseanne is a uh vice president right now of las vegas i appreciate her giving us the um uh inside scoop of what's going

024on uh with with wazba that's the wisconsin association of school boards when's the election for presidency because you're you'd be up further i'll i'll be up for president in january i'll be president okay excellent i mean usually january 23. okay then i'll take over so very good nervous yes excited yes well it's a good thing for our school district to have somebody in the leadership role at that state level um for school boards i'll just add um i in case you heard uh last week we dealt with a challenge with one of our um classrooms it came out must have come out of the open house though with the picture of abe lincoln it was all over social media it was something that was on uh talk radio last monday and i would just say

025i was just disappointed with how events unfolded not necessarily with our community but i just think in general with people jumping to conclusions too quickly without getting this the whole story and you know the sad part for me is i think i realized you know talk radio people use that as a news source i don't think it's news it's entertainment because no journalist would ever report something like that without getting a chance to fully vet the story because once the district was able to give an explanation you know the the whole thing was cleared up and the context behind what happened there was made clear to people and it really wasn't much to do about nothing but for a while there unfortunately we were pulled into a distraction so again i just want to express

026our my you know my disappointment that that happened and uh hopefully better times ahead i guess i'll say that anyone else in the board of correspondents or any communications all right uh let's move on uh superintendent's report yes thank you i would like to reiterate as as a number of our speakers did this evening just congratulations to all of those uh that were part of the elections this past week and really just thank to all the candidates appreciation for the effort it is awful awfully impressive when there's that kind of interest in serving the community so just appreciation all around and i'd be remiss to also just not mention the open doors event we had hundreds of people it was it was hard to really count uh spread across the ten different sites uh but

027certainly one of the highlights was the fact that it was coupled with the easter egg hunt that driven does each year at brookton high school so if you got the chance to see that it's it's barely controlled chaos and and it really is a good time and there was a lot of positive feedback but really deep down in addition to just allowing people you know really just unfettered access to the schools it was also an opportunity for the school district to just express appreciation and thank the community for the investment that they made in all of the buildings and so it really was a great day i would also like to take this opportunity to congratulate and announce that two staff from burlington high school are being recognized as coal teacher fellows and they are

028matt and i and penny anki and this is an award that is designated for teachers throughout the state of wisconsin about a hundred each year and it's to recognize excellence and innovation in the classroom and so each recipient receives a six thousand dollar grant and then that's matched for the school and so it's a phenomenal program and we should be really proud of both matt and penny and just as i'm announcing those things i see mr brewing and thinking maybe i'm stealing that thunder once again i don't know and and if that's not enough i i think a tribute to penny yankee is that just over spring break she and some of her colleagues took one of our coral group among others to a trip out east and if you didn't catch how difficult that

029became when the bus company literally shut their service down closed their doors the day before they left and so it became it became just a constant all-night problem-solving endeavor half the kids flew we did get a bus for the other half it all ended well but that's the kind of educator that penny is kind of the sleepless nights to make sure those things get done so very cool uh also uh this past saturday was prom we'd like to i think say kind of a more traditional prom uh because it's been a couple of years and with our students having dinner and uh dancing out at vets terrace is always a special occasion uh perhaps a highlight on the staff side of things however this year is that after 24 years this is the final prom

030for kathy rubach and actually her husband who's always there as well as she's announced her retirement we talked about that i think a month or two ago but certainly all the appreciation that it should go to kathy for her years of supporting that event and making that possible for our kids also i would be remiss to not mention the kiwanis art show and the contest that they recently had hopefully you've seen some of those images perhaps either on social media and or at burlington high school or the burlington public library tons of amazing art on display so if you haven't yet i do believe it's still up you might want to check that out and then a couple of highlights from our elementary schools there's no shortage of good happening there either cooper just ended

031up placing eighth in the state in their battle of the books competition which is fairly exciting we also had a visit from uw-whitewater's wheelchair basketball and their athletes if you've never seen that they're i mean they're an inspirational group and then when they come and talk to young kids it's it's even more powerful so very very exciting there and you may be on the receiving end of the community education summer activity guide that just hit the mail and there's no shortage of amazing summer opportunities happening there so please do check that out and then just a couple of updates we do not have school on friday in service is on monday for staff but our our young ones will be off for a four-day weekend so either way to go parents or sorry parents it

032depends on your perspective and during that time on monday we'll actually be doing some 4k screening as well we added a second date for that you'll hear more about that a little bit later from dr olshlager and then it's also with excitement that we start thinking about the now the star stuff theaters this is the the middle school and elementary theater program they'll be doing the little mermaid that will open at dyer on april 29th and at the high school they'll be doing their spring play death by chocolate that will open on may 13th and so that just kind of barely scratches the surface also for the board specifically two weeks from tonight will be the reorganizational meeting by statute gotta squeeze it in and monday the 25th is when it happens so that for

033the audience that's when you know board president and different positions to reorganize the board and make sure everybody's seated also some discussion has been had about potentially looking at may 7th as a workshop day for the board so we can talk more about that later but if you if you don't maybe have that on your calendar that's something i know that president turk was going to try to chat with each of you about just in terms of availability and then finally i would also ask you put may 11th on your calendars and this is good for folks in the audience too if you know people but that will be the burlington area school district celebration of retirees and that happens at vets terrace as well so lots to lots to celebrate and be keeping track

034of all right thanks steve um next we'll do the uh bank statements and bills so taylor will you take us through it sure uh the march uh 2022 bank statement totally getting cash on hand is 4 million 291 292.31 total deposits was 6 million 413 956 dollars and 21 cents which gave us total available cash on hand of 10 million 705 000 two forty eight fifty two and then under withdrawals we did ten million one hundred and six thousand eight forty seven nine cents which left us a total ending cash on hand five hundred ninety eight thousand 401 dollars and 43 cents and of course that adjusts with the bank statement and i put in the form of motion to approve the march 2022 bank reconciliation statement we have a second second okay emotions made

035and seconded to approve the bank statement any comments hearing none i'll call for a vote all in favor say aye aye aye opposed nay thank you make a motion that we approved the march 2022 ap check register as presented to pay the bills second okay emotions been made and seconded to approve paying of the march uh bills uh any comments hearing none i'll call for a vote all in favor say aye aye aye opposed nay all right they're approved thanks taylor um next we have personnel so earlier this evening the personnel committee of the board met to go through the resignations retirements terminations and appointments and steve you take us through the let's do the resignations retirements and terminations it's not a long list this month there were four in total one certified staff member

036that's quentin slater from burlington high school from the science department is resigning and three non-certified and that is audrey davis from cartridge special education aid patty ferkis special education aid at karcher and jennifer larmay at burlington high school special education age just those four okay and it was the recommendation of the personnel committee to approve these resignations retirements and terminations i entertain a motion to approve that so moved second okay emotions are made and seconded any comments hearing none i'll call for a vote all in favor say aye aye opposed nay all right passes uh steve will you do the appointments please yes in this category we have nine in total i'm going to start uh kind of in reverse order with our extracurricular staff appointment there is just one and that is logan bedalic

037who worked for the musical at burlington high school this year with some behind the scenes tech support we had we have five non-certified staff appointments and they are custodians stacy wagner at waller as well as dennis pierce at winkler we have a driver specifically for a single student melissa rothering for the district and then a substitute aide chase herokinac and a special education aide at waller colleen hebein so those are the the five non-certified staff appointments and then we have four certified staff we have as a nurse joining the district laura sabek and working in project win as a special education instructor is derrick strait there are two also administrative hires like to speak about chris wines as director of pupil services chris began his career as a school psychologist in cudahy 16 years ago

038in 2006 and never really looked back he's been promoted internally there three times to positions including english language learner coordinator district assessment coordinator and associate principal chris's background in trauma and grief counseling and special education as well as crisis management and school safety make him uniquely qualified to join the burlington area school district team in this role and that is chris wines as director of pupil services and then finally jason sadowski as principal of burlington high school jason was a math teacher and baseball coach and a results oriented leader and these are just a few of the words that one might use to describe jason jason comes to the burlington area school district with 21 years of experience in education the last 10 as principal of butler middle school in waukesha throughout the interview process

039jason became a clear front runner by demonstrating his authentic leadership to both students and staff he's an analytical thinker a collaborative leader and one who is able to problem-solve with others while seeking high standards for all his focus on every student every day impressed everyone on the committee both students and staff as did his knowledge of the requirements of the modern day principalship so i'd ask you to please approve and welcome both chris and jason to the basd team as well as the other seven certified staff appointments all right thanks steve again it was the recommendation of the personnel committee earlier this evening to um accept all these appointments but i'd entertain a motion to accept the appointments second okay emotions have made and seconded any comments i'll comment that i uh i had the

040privilege at last year's graduation to speak um before or at right after eric burling spoke so i don't envy jason zadowski having to step into the shoes of eric burling he's been a great leader and but that being said i'm excited that we've hired a new new principal and new director of pupil services uh our administrative staff is working hard right now because there's a lot of positions to fill this spring so jill and steve thank you thank you for your hard work on this it takes a lot of time to hire folks so anybody else with comments all right uh that being said all in favor say aye aye aye aye opposed nay all right appointments are um approved uh donations and it looks like eric we have a long list of high school

041ones so yeah please please use the mic and uh yeah i'm going to start on the bottom and work my way up and i'm assuming it's the ryan mueller that's over my left shoulder but you know we're all aware of the karcher cupboard in the demon closet providing opportunities for food clothing and hygiene type supplies for students and families in need and a freezer was donated to karcher and that's very generous and nick has a class tonight so he asked if i would get that approved by the board so you want to take care of that one or you want to do them all in one big lump let's let's all right let's do them all right so then hundred dollars to the track program from hank hartsell hank had a number of students go

042through burlington area school district and they were very active in our track program our ffa program and those of you that are present here today they're plant sales coming up so pay attention if you're out by the facility take a peek in they have they're going to have all kinds of amazing annuals perennials excuse me available as well as they're growing our plants for graduation since you talked about that mr turk that you know normally we get the potted plants from gateway greenhouse but they wanted to take a whack at it so our ffa is very active every month we see donations so um compyer financial as well as the burlington qantas youth and family assistance foundation 250 and 200 respectively you spoke about miss yankee and her choral club as activist as they've been

043a number of these donations help support the choral club program as well as students that might need some help with some of the opportunities that are available uh for them with some of their field trip experiences so we had a 500 anonymous one uh we had 200 dollars from after the dash thank you for that and then a 400 and another 100 anonymous donation to the choral club for they wanted to remain anonymous so and then lucky star who works with us uh with our meal nice every once in a while us that be in the district but they donated 50 wbsd um mary gilding's been very busy this is kind of the busy sponsorship time of the year um they have various levels of sponsorship so 350 for burlington auto clinic 250 for bar

044and cadillac ltd that's an accounting firm 350 from bubba's brickyard 500 cnn drywall and painting from georgia moussard 350 from subway 500 from scott herbin over at thrive 250 from ck crews incorporated 250 from perfection auto body 500 from burlington area chamber of commerce 250 from the burlington community pool so that was wonderful uh as steve mentioned prom complete tree service donated 250 to help with some of the brown decorations and festivities last week or last month i talked quite a bit about mental health a number of people 80 uh julie geslin 250 griezmann's excavating 250 for main gold insurance 300 from uh jnc bush enterprises llc and 500 from again uh weiss complete tree service and those went to help provide some of the prizes and awards as well as the t-shirts the students

045wore on friday the easter egg hunt driven helps sponsor that obviously but rotary gives a pretty nice donation for the 40 help with the 40 000 eggs that they pack and they give a thousand so thank you burlington rotary um and then property management mpc gave 100 to driven and burlington united methodist church 500 to driven uh barb del fava two books to the library valued at approximately forty five dollars and then uh ron call and barb call they always enjoy coming to the musicals in the spring play and whatnot and they gave a 500 donation to put towards our drama program so again unbelievable generosity and support from our community i know the people that work hard with these programs really uh appreciate their support so please accept those donations all right well thank

046you very much eric and i'd entertain a motion to approve the donations so moved second okay motion's made and seconded any comments just a thank you to the community i mean really outstanding support for the students and what they're doing so thank you yeah it's quite a list uh this month it's uh i know as board members we're all very grateful for you know the generosity of our community we don't get to say it to our people's faces orion i'll say i'll repeat what eric just said too because it's uh thank you for donating that to the karcher cover that's that's wonderful um any other comments hearing none i'll call for a vote all in favor say aye aye opposed nay all right uh donations are approved uh student travel um steve you want this

047rip okay yes we anytime there's overnight travel they come to the board and what makes this special is when you hear these destinations so the first one is the trip to denmark which you're used to hearing and was not able to happen recently so this is december of 2022 so it's a ways off yet or february and you might be wondering about that that's really just trying to coordinate the international travel and some still cold related procedures and things in denmark so the advisor there is josh dalbot you can see the dates for the trip to denmark and then this is bhs choir is the second one and everybody out there is going to be jealous when you find out that they're going to be headed to hawaii and that that is for a music

048festival over spring break of 2023 so you can see those dates march 19 to 26. you might have a chaperone down there is that what i'm hearing well oh chaperone so yes we've got uh josh dao on the students with the denmark host program and then pinayaki with vhs choir to hawaii all right um i'd entertain a motion to approve those two trips second okay motions made in second any comments i i told josh if he wasn't here to present this that we wouldn't approve it so [Laughter] i can tell you i've had my two oldest went to the on the danish trip to denmark and we've hosted danish students and it's a pretty remarkable thing so i hope any kids who can take advantage of it it's a really reasonable trip because essentially you

049just pay your airfare and you're living with a host family over there so it's a wonderful opportunity to immerse yourself in the culture for a week and a reasonable cost i'd say but we'll see if airfare is still reasonable but who knows i know the wasak family that went devin she still is in close contact with a matter of fact just got back from denmark over spring break to visit her host family that's wonderful yeah made the connection that last year they continue to do it again oh they are okay yeah let's cross our fingers and we keep on this path that we can get these opportunities going again yeah thanks for sharing that any opportunity for students to get out and expand it's fantastic so i really appreciate the chaperones that put the stuff

050together the sponsors and the parents that make it happen so thank you and i don't think we went voted to approve that all in favor say aye aye opposed nay all right those trips are approved wonderful okay we have uh five items for information and discussion tonight uh so the first is uh 4k programming so jill yep uh just brief conversation uh wanting to just make you aware that we are looking into seeing if we can um facilitate full all-day 4k starting this fall um here in september so we did send out a survey to our families who have already enrolled in 4k um right now we have half day 4k right within all of our schools and we also partner with plymouth and ozark as well so reached out to the families who have

051already enrolled asking them if we were to offer a full day program would they want to continue with a half day program or a full day program right now we have a little over half of uh the respondents have shared that they would prefer to to shift to full day so i would anticipate that we would have some sections that will be a full day 4k while other sections would remain a half day 4k part of our goal with this is to assist with some open enrollment numbers we are noticing that within 4k 5k that we have some neighboring school districts who are offering full-day 4k programming so we're wanting to ensure that we also are starting to address that need and um just wanted to inform you of of that that that is something

052that we're looking into and again we'll really be based off of family needs in in regard to how many sections we would offer that are full-time versus half-time and as we continue to gain more information from our families we can update you later as in regard to how many sections we needed of each um as we progress in the in the year i think i heard over the weekend that more than 60 percent of the school districts in wisconsin offer full day 4k yeah it is definitely a direction we want to go but we still at the same time want to provide choice to families as well because we do see that some families don't want all-day 4k so we're wanting to be mindful of that as well and as jill said one of the

053drivers does become the open enrollment piece are 4k numbers well not mandatory they do hover around 120 and then if you follow that cohort through kindergarten into first grade then then the number gets about 200. so if if that is part of the decision making and when we've surveyed families we hear that that if if you need the entire day to be in 4k then you're looking for that if your local community is not providing that so another piece that kind of will couple with that a little bit um is our before and after school care so we'll also be reaching out to families to enlist and understand who all is needing before and after school care services and potentially then expanding where we have before and after school care for families so right now

054we have it at dyer and then we also have it at waller and cooper but based on what families need would potentially expand that to all of our schools again dependent on what families let us know the need is but that is another area where we are losing some open enrollment due to the need for before and after school care any questions yeah any other questions yeah more to come no thanks jill all right next uh communication and branding so julie thomas he's got a presentation on strategies and just on district banding our communication strategies and district branding okay thank you for an opportunity to share a brief update there are several ways that the burlington area school district works on communication and the community and some of the primaries the primary ways that we

055share news about our schools is press releases media releases special events we've had three special events in the last year including allowing folks to say goodbye to the old high school the dedication of karcher middle school and our open doors event we have a website and we have an app but a lot of people don't know about the app so i'm going to get on promoting that even more and we have social media both a facebook page that has about 300 followers and an instagram page that has about a thousand followers but um i'm actually going to be working on some strategies to try to boost that up too so that's just kind of just an overview but one of the roles that i also have as i work on various print pieces or digital

056pieces is utilizing our logo and um so we um as a district we're always trying to improve and ensure that we have a consistent message but we also want to make sure that we have a consistent look so um we ran into some questions which i'll bring up in a few minutes and we did a bid process with six different vendors four people did submit bids to ask them to help us with our brand the person who helped us er that we chose is donovan group and they had a good price they have experience with schools and they're a local firm they're in milwaukee so we gave in the bid process this charge which is to make sure that the brand reflects the compassion commitment and comprehensive our offerings of the district and we just

057want something that's crisp and clean and to really understand how to represent our demon mass god so you can read those ultimately we want to have clarity on how to use our different logo marks what do we use for athletics what do we use for academics and when do we use the demon and through the process i've definitely learned a lot about the history of our various marks that we have now which i'm not going to share but i have that in my back pocket the current district branding you can see the marks that we use most frequently here and we've been gravitating gravitating toward using that bd which is in the lower right hand corner the academic crest which is the lower left corner is uh one that's mostly used at the high school

058i think it's exclusively used at the high school and then the demon is used at the high school and at the middle school so um i think one of the objectives is to potentially replace that mortarboard logo that we have that i think the district's been using for about 10 years but even with that said that we have the four primary logos we do have a lot of other marks that are being used throughout the district and they don't look bad when you're looking at them as an individual but you can see on this slide that when you see them all together it kind of seems a little bit confusing so we just want to pause to understand how we use the various marks and create some guidelines to make sure that whatever we present

059is consistent so the conversation around brand really started with some simple questions because we wanted to update our letterhead and phase out the mortarboard and try to use that bd logo but this led to questions like well what orange do we use and what font does basd use and even though brand goes beyond colors and the logos we realized that sometimes you see our orange is more red sometimes it's more tan sometimes it's a bright orange you can see there's a lot of different orange so just saying orange wasn't working and so when we tell the basd story we just want to be able to stand out so we aren't doing this in a vacuum we have a committee of folks that are helping us and um it's an advisory committee that are just considering

060some of the questions a little bit more carefully and so on that committee there's a couple people who use the logo marks very frequently that is uh becky becky sagedahl in the athletics office with the community ed too toby green with a lot of forms and letterhead is on the committee we have community and board representation marlo brown is on the committee which is helpful and we have stephen quist who's the burleigh is all the signs burlington's chamber of commerce president right now we have three students because we think having the student voice is very important and we have three people from the teaching staff as well but even though it's a small committee we were very intentional to make sure that we had people who represented a lot of the different areas across the

061district alumni parents people who do graphic design are local businesses and uh we had our first meeting um in march and in that meeting we talked a little bit about like what is unique about the district and uh what are we proud of and how do we represent the demon what does the demon mean to us and joe donovan from the donovan group comes out for these meetings which is again handy that he's local and facilitates them he's also on wednesday going to be facilitating a student group and that's a student focus group with about 20 22 students at burlington high school because again that voice is very important we're going to be doing a brief survey that's going to go out to the community teachers families just to get input on a few of

062the questions that we may run into as we're going through this process but um really i think our thought is it's not going to be like this huge thing it's a refrain or refinement of what we have um and will help us just answer some tricky questions and also understand how best to um present ourselves visually not the greatest with the one-handed thing okay so um yeah there's going to be a lot of feedback that goes into this as i said the student focus groups in the community survey and then we hope to have some final decisions made by may and then we'll have a guidebook that we can use that will allow us to work on letterhead forms update the local where we need it over the summer and for some of the other

063places there could be a replacement schedule because replacing some of the logo marks is more expensive than others but um we'll just do that as we can we'll at least know where we're going are there any questions hearing none no julie thank you thanks good job i think marlo might have been involved in the slides i actually had nothing to do with it but i am happy that the the longhorn showed up well i just noticed too taylor's got connections to the university of oklahoma and i saw two of his main rivals were listed as uh uh all right uh the third item for action this evening is our what we do this every april right uh budget discussion so uh bruce here this is now we're looking at the preliminary budget for the next

064school year 22-23 good evening um so i'm guessing as julie's talking probably one of the things she would do is have a certain color format for powerpoint um this is obviously not the demon orange but um okay so that's what worked out well done tying that in just making it flow naturally trying to make a point um so as we said with time of the time of the year we need to start talking about the budgets um so keep in mind this is the first time we've talked about this this year i mean we've had little hints here and there but we'll keep talking about it so just tonight's high level kind of introduction um as you know we're in the second year of the state biennial budget so we know more at this time

065of year than we did last year still some unknowns but we know some um the other thing with with budgeting this year is we work with baird as our rw baird as our financial consultants and they have a massive spreadsheet with a budget model so that's new for us this year we're trying to incorporate some of their pieces so like this is one example um hopefully that will help tell the story a little bit or just in different ways so if something doesn't make sense one way it might a different way so one big driver behind like our state aid formula and the revenue limit formula is pupil enrollment so just kind of wanted to talk through that formula so here's one visual we'll talk about numbers in a minute so when you think about

066people enrollment it's all based on resident students so who lives in our district okay so we start with the head count who's sitting in our seats okay then with the open enrollment program you're going to subtract the open enrollment students that come here they're not our residents they're from another district coming here so we subtract those and we add in the ones that are going out so there are residents going somewhere else and then you get that gray box the resident student count then to take a little bit further there's a proration for the early childhood and the 4k so early child is 0.5 and 4k currently as 0.6 and then that gets the fte that we use for the revenue limit formula and the state aid so now just to put some numbers to

067this i have um last year this year and then uh projection for next year um the projection for next year that that's one of the unknowns right we do our best to estimate what we think it's going to be but just know that that will change um so i will just kind of concentrate on the 22 23 column so head count 2008 93 predicted open enrollments in um so that's where we're subtracting the one the residents um sorry the non-residents that are coming here so minus 96 open enrollments out and then we get that resident student count i guess one little comment on the open enrollment so here's where dr urslager was talking about 4k if we try to look at that as a full day program we're hoping that that might help with that

068number so residents do then here you can see the proration so now 4k currently is only a 0.6 so even if we have a full day program it still currently is only 0.6 we're hoping the state will change that someday but currently is only 0.6 and then that of september fte so 3167 is what we use for again the revenue limit in the stated formula so obviously you can see that's declining over time but i guess one thing i want to to say on that is that's not unique to burlington that's pretty consistent statewide and nationwide so just know that that's not unique to us the declining enrollment does indicate it's a pretty strong indicator that our revenues will go down over time again not unique to us so now we take that this is

069another visual and from the baird model we used to go go through that revenue limit sheet that had a lot of numbers and kind of makes your eyes swirl so try to just talk about it this way to see if that helps so we start with that resonant um fte now you'll notice 3200 is not the 3167 from the previous slide so the revenue limit is based on a three-year average so it's not one year it's the previous three years and then we do get to add in um a small factor for summer school so that's there's a little little math going on behind the scenes then you take that the student the three year average times a per pupil amount so here's one of the knowns that we know about per pupil there's no

070increase for 22.23 there was no increase for 21.22 so we have two years in a row where that per pupil amount under the formula is not increasing okay so we'll talk about that in a little more but that's an important piece to know then you add in there's always exceptions right um so one time or in the formula it's called a non-recurring um exemptions so some examples are declining enrollment so if your enrollment is declining they give you a one-year ad back to try to plan for the following year when that amount will drop off the private school vouchers so that's a one-year ad to cover that cost now that one is an every year ad so far but the amount is different every year one thing you're probably going to start hearing more about

071if you haven't already is operating referendums so there's two different kinds there's a non-recurring so that's just a one-time ad or perhaps over a series of three four five years but it's not a permanent ad then there's ongoing or recurring exemptions you could also have a recurring operating referendum and that's a permanent ad and there's also some transfer of service costs that sometimes we have if there's a student that carries a high cost with them that they give us the ability to add that to the formula to cover the cost for that student so then that gives us the total revenue limit authority so in this case 36 million 368 000 then carry that down to the bottom line so here's where we talk about the revenue limit the two main pieces are the state

072equalization aid and the property tax levy so that middle circle the equalization aid if we subtract that there's a couple other pieces in there though some personal property tax and computer aid but then that following blue circle is the property tax okay hope that makes sense so this is a visual that we've we've used a couple times before and i think it's an important one to understand but i think it tells the story well so we just talked about revenue limits so that very right hand bar is the revenue limit the two pieces state aid and the property tax so if no none of the other variables change that revenue line isn't going to move okay so what we do know for 2223 is that state aid appropriation will go up they've told us that

073they have that in the budget like 3.7 percent um for basd that's about one it'll for us it will mean about 1.2 percent i do have some dollars above that just if that's meaningful to you so you can see that increasing there so obviously we're grateful for getting additional state aid but all that's going to do is move that plus sign to the right and give us some property tax relief it is not new money for the school district that revenue line limit isn't going to move so it changes the makeup of those two things but it's not new money so that that's the key takeaway i want people to understand so again looking at the numbers you can see the property tax going down and the revenue limit going down the revenue limit there

074with the numbers is going down because of the declining enrollment so that's where you can see over time that will just continue to decrease there is also um what's called per pupil aid i don't have a slide on it but that is outside of the revenue limit formula but the per pupil amount is set in statute so this year and next year it's 742 dollars a pupil so it's about 2.3 million so that will be going down slightly because of the declining enrollment okay now if we talk about the expenditure side a little bit there's a couple of big key pieces or key expenses i don't think they're going to be surprises salaries and benefits that's the majority of our our costs we do know for wage increases every year the state sets a cpi

075limit the wisconsin department of revenue for july 1st it is uh 4.7 knowing that we are probably entering a challenge of a year for budgets the negotiations we've agreed with for two percent we've settled on that um and then so we have two groups the teachers and the custodians are union that we negotiated but then all groups will get that same percent i do want to point out also that for this current year that we're in the cpi was 1.23 percent but the board did approve 2.2 as well for that year to try to offset the um the lesser amount for next year kind of a two-year plan um so that we're thankful for that um so that two percent wage increase for all employees is approximately 420 000. um for certified staff they have

076a salary schedule um the board is committed to giving them a step movements it's an every other year advancement on that pay scale so that is 268 000 and then our health insurance last year we did negotiate a rate cap of 9.9 percent for next year um we did have um through that provider there's a wellness platform that employees can participate in so we did earn a a credit of 1.1 the read so the renewal that was released was 8.8 which is approximately 400 000. so those are the the bigger pieces of the expense cost that will be going up and then if we kind of just try to pull this together um so we have the couple of revenues we talked about um so we actually have a revenue reduction of 867 000. again

077these are estimated numbers and this is before we've made any adjustments so this is assuming everything we have this year the costs are going to continue so we know there's work to do this is just a very preliminary if nothing were to change this is what it would look like um the expenditures that we just talked about 1.5 million there's some other expenditures that besides those three main like utilities and transportation costs other employee benefits that are a percentage of wages to get to that number so combined 2.4 million is a general starting point i think the other piece we need to talk about here um is that the state funding system kind of sets up us up for there's some key phrases we always use right for what we call a structural deficit okay

078so you have no new money coming in they're telling us our two main revenue sources there's no additional money zero per pupil but then we have all these other costs that continue to go up salaries and benefits and utilities and all these other things so i'd kind of budgeting 101 right you need to match the revenues and the expenses so now you're asking okay well what are we going to do with that that chunk of money how are we going to work on that so again a couple things budgets are fluid they will change pretty much every day we get a new piece of information that will will change the picture attrition so as staff resign or retire we do review all of those positions to see can we get by without filling it obviously

079we will consider staff to student ratios so that we still want those to be reasonable but that we do look at that um we've reviewed our budget process for next year to try to look at more needs versus want some intentional spending trying to streamline so we're trying to review those processes um as we said salaries and benefits are a big piece so we will try to look at employee benefits with a longer term of focus or intention one example might be for health insurance there's a um a plan approach that you can use called it captive so exploring other ways to structure those benefits that in the long term might be more cost beneficial to us fund balance we talk about that so every year revenues and expenses whatever that difference is accumulates into

080this pot that we call fund balance so some years we add some years we take up so we could use some of that balance that's built up over time we want to be cautious because it does affect our bond rating so we want to make sure that that's still a reasonable percent um we've also talked about the esser funds oh i always forget what that stands for elementary and secondary emergency education relief so that's the federal federal covet money so that that we've received in three different ways over the last couple years the first wave is already done that was like 300 and some thousand the second wave we've probably spent two-thirds of that that was like 1.5 million and then this third wave is the plan that we just reviewed in december um so

081that is the the wave three is what you've often heard probably a lot of state legislators say that we should use that to for our operating expenses to balance our budget that is that's just fiscally irresponsible you don't use one-time money to balance your ongoing operations moving forward it's like winning the lottery and you're using it for your everyday living expenses what happens when that money is gone so we have we do have a a placeholder in our plan if we need to use it for our budget but we will do so as cautiously and as sparingly as we can but recognizing that that is an option that we might need to do so i guess that's all that we wanted to share with you tonight just as an introduction know that it's an ongoing

082process that we will be working on our plan is to um every month try to keep bringing this back as this process unfolds with more detail we do have to have a budget approved in june for our july preliminary to start our next school year the final budget will not be approved until october when we set the tax levy so again our plan is to keep bringing back budgets more of an intentional monthly whether it's part of the process or just a topic or something to talk about so questions i i have a question so i'm looking at the the other document not the slides that you attach to the board docs not the public has the two i'm looking at the anticipated deficit portion and i know you touched on in the slides but

083the i'm a little puzzler i don't fully understand the decrease in revenues so there's three buckets the revenue limit formula and that's 404 000. is that can you help explain what each of these are is that just because we're having fewer students or fewer ftes next year fewer students and the revenue stays flat the revenue limit for each student correct people aid states so the there's a couple ways revenue limits can go up or down so one would be um that per pupil amount so right now ours is like 10 700 per student so if the state increases that amount then we have a higher amount to multiply by our number of students so we know that's not happening another way it can go up or down is your number of students so for us

084because we're in a declining enrollment situation over time that revenue limit is going to go down they're saying you have different a smaller number of students to fund so the 404 000 is because we're in a declining enrollment we have fewer ftes for next year correct that's right yes i get the acronyms mixed up i think that's what fte the student enrollment yeah that's why we're anticipating that 404 000. then the second bucket was per pupillate do you want to explain the three-year rolling average just real quick too oh is that part of this too yeah it's never easy with budgeting i know yeah so let's go back to so um like on here on this slide so that september fte would be you average those three years together which is the basis for the

085the revenue limit formula from the pupil count side so if you had a little blip in one year it went down or up it might not make a difference you know it would stay more steady which is the intention of the three year average so to get rid of the the hiccups or to even out the hiccups it's just when there's a trend that that continues um so we briefly talked about it on the the way this goes um here on this slide that middle box on the top the one-time non-recurring exemptions so because this the first the main pupil count happens in september which is obviously after we start school um so when you get to that point and realize oh our enrollment is declining um the state will say okay well now that

086you've started your we don't expect you to operate under with say 400 000 less because you didn't know that then they they let you add that amount back for one year but then it drops off the next year so you get to add back that 400 000 nix this year but then the following school year 2223 you're going to have 400 000 less if that helped or that made it more confusing no i think it did i mean i think you're saying the 404 thousand though that must be from prior years then that we're not getting this whole harmless that's being added back so it's that that trend of the declining enrollment all right how about the other two buckets and i mean this is a small one the per pupillade what does that refer

087to so that's that's 742 uh per pupil that's set in statute uh that started back in 2012-13 so that was the state's way of trying to i think add additional money outside of the revenue limit formula but so it's dollars per 742.00 that that amount hasn't changed from this year to next year oh but it's just we have fewer students but it's because there's fewer students so that's probably uh approximately 30 000 less all right and what's the esser the one time esther aide pass through state that's negative 433 so we did get a one-time payment this year from the state that they had federal estr money that they allocated to schools so for us that was like 430 000 but that was again a one-time payment okay so when you use that for your

088budget you don't have that revenue there the following year to cover your costs just i'm clear this is not esther money that was allocated to burlington specifically this is the state of wisconsin and then passed through to districts absolutely yes correct gotcha anybody else have questions or comments this was great i like the uh flow charts and yeah i thought we'd again just mix it up with different things that might yeah easier to understand and i i'll reiterate what you just said i mean this is an ongoing process so we're going to be back in the summer and then back in the fall too as budgets that's how we do our budgeting yeah yeah and ruth and i really felt too that it probably just is something that we should have every month just some

089kind of update particularly as the numbers become more clear and when we look at you know the essentially the freeze that came from the state legislature for two years if you think about that number of almost 3 200 students in the district and oftentimes you'll see maybe a 200 to 250 increase per pupil that for us that's about 800 000 and so to go two years without that while other expenses are increasing that's where you hear ruth say that that becomes very difficult to to manage and over time you get really lean and then it's very very difficult to make that we're just going to talk about the changes each month we're not going to go through this whole presentation every month right correct just just kind of a little bit each month so that

090it's an ongoing as opposed to one big marathon discussion yeah anybody else ruth just to reiterate what peter said earlier this i saw a lot of waving arms and bobbing heads this presentation is on the website for anyone to get so if you missed anything you can get up there yeah the other document i think does there's more detail in there so i'd highly recommend people yeah there was another document that had more like more of a narrative yes that's the word all right well thanks ruth okay thank you thanks ruth uh our fourth item for information discussion is uh steve's gonna present uh audit recommendations and next steps thank you yes so back in january when you heard from ics and since that time the board in various different settings and places has just

091wondered kind of what's next and so i've been working internally here to just try to understand all that was included in that report i know we've had a lot of folks in the audience doing the same thing kind of reading through that that very lengthy report and so not really knowing maybe what the best approach might be to try to make some sense out of what was there um most people that that took a look at the full report i mean it gets a little daunting after a while because there are recommendations sort of scattered throughout the whole thing so really what i tried to do for the board so that you could have some conversation was to just sort and select and try to categorize and put into themes what all those recommendations were

092and so this is a very rough document it's nothing pretty to look at but really for the viewing public there were essentially nine themes that seemed to surface in in looking through that report over and over and over so one i'll just read them off it was policy data professional development mission vision staffing students curriculum community and funding so these were just if you read the recommendations of which there were 35 throughout the entire report and you tried to put it into a bucket those would be kind of the nine buckets and so listing them that way really you do start to see some redundancy if you look through you know from page 10 to page 80 you start to see that there's some redundancy so really there's i would assert there's more like 25

093recommendations and so to try to provide some greater focus and some ability to have you be able to look at what those were as opposed to being scattered all over the environment that's that's what i've attempted to do for you for a conversation i wouldn't say that you know there's that this is my recommendation it's really just a summary of what was in the document and some of what has gone on uh relative to some of those recommendations so just as a for example the very first one that is policy related talked about an essential next step and immediately adopting policy and this was actually a question that president turk issued in january when we were hearing from ics and that is that the board has done quite a bit of work in this area

094of policy in particular and so those are just listed there as as items that you have taken action on the other kind of inventory pieces there's an example if i look a little bit in it starts talking about coal plan co-serve and co-learn and this is really work that we do it's listed in the section on professional development because that's how they frame it but the idea is this is a shift in our pupil services model and is actually something that even prior to working with ics was was something that was being talked about and specifically this addresses the idea of when you have a classroom a special education teacher and a general education working together this is just sort of a newer version of what that planning process looks like and how we serve

095kids and so depending on how you might interpret some of these recommendations there may be things you feel like are happening already or things that you may want to take a look at going forward and there may be some other things that you don't think you want to take a look at going forward so what i was hoping again with this document is it would help for planning purposes just by having categories i do think there are a handful of areas where we are taking on quite a bit that is spelled out one is in just staffing and there's a section regarding the realignment of students and one of the things that we had really been working on particularly when we did the elementary school attendance boundaries was to try to ensure that each of

096the elementary schools was both staffed equitably but had also proportional representation of students whether that was students living in poverty whether those were english language learner students students with disabilities those were strong considerations when those boundaries were being mapped when we went through that process and that's one of the items i believe it's item number 14 that is listed under staffing and so the numbers don't look like they're linear they're the number that matches what it was in the report another one is the way that we're posting positions through human resources you you'll find that in addition to having jamie join the team as someone who works specifically in human resources there's quite a bit in the section on community where they listed how we actually go about uh posting four positions and recruiting staff

097and so you can see that there are things that that we are doing and have been doing that existed even prior to the proposal just or prior to the recommendations from ics just as it bears out in the way that we try to recruit talent there are also other things i think listed in here um one of the things that i would say you know as a is a win is that we are using esser funds as as the border proof back in february for a bilingual engagement coordinator that is one of the recommendations in here just translation for students or families that don't speak english at home and so really whether it's this document or just your own perusal of the of the report is more of a question as to how you may

098want to proceed going forward with anything relative to these recommendations or if you want to use this as kind of a tracking document any board members have questions or comments well i think you've laid it out pretty well here it sounds like you guys are taking more ownership which is great and i think with that said we could probably look to not continue with ics because it seems like you guys are willing to take on the challenge yourself here so obviously considering i was one of the more vocal people against this i think it's time that we sever that chord with ics any other comments questions i guess what would that look like would that look like seven of course with ics yeah we don't have any obligation at this point the audit was something

099that was a requirement and there is a great deal of research and again the information that is included here are things that we can use as sort of a you know a goal post if you will to maintain a focus and to keep work uh focused and at hand but there's no it really is a question i think there was some wonderment after the january meeting did were there more questions for ics did you want to meet with them again anything like that and so to at least be able to come back and after having had time to digest because it was a lot that came at all of us that night and so to just have an opportunity to kind of think about well here here was how they laid things out in the

100report and try to condense that and synthesize that and and then just to make a decision how you might want to move forward i think this document's really uh here i'll speak in the mic this document's helpful i mean because it's kind of breaking down the report that was a pretty long and um challenging report to read through and kind of helps me organize the thoughts and discusses what we're doing as a district already on different topics and then with some ideas or thoughts on what we could potentially do in the future so i could see this as a guide for going forward that's how i look at it i think the the piece that kind of sticks out to me is you know attract educators with diverse backgrounds so this is probably more of

101a question for you how do you attract a person that probably will make more money in madison or green bay milwaukee to either a leave that job or not go into that position and come here for probably significantly less than what they would make in milwaukee so i guess how obviously with the teacher shortage coming up and the fact that there isn't probably a high pool of candidates with diverse backgrounds how do how does burlington capitalize on that i think you know go ahead although if you're gonna speak jamie you gotta come up with a mic i know it's my it's the rule otherwise people at home won't hear you yeah you don't have to i mean that's it could be a rhetorical question because i think oh no i think it's a vote he

102was asking for an answer yeah i mean because well i shouldn't say rhetorical it could be a question oh i mean you come back it's a valid question because everybody keeps saying that we need to hire more staff with diverse backgrounds whether that's black hispanic whatever how are we going to be able to do that how can we compete against other school districts that can probably pay more sure the people at home are just you're a senior mouth move i think that's the challenge for those that don't know as she walks up this is jamie rook she is our director of human resources is this sign it is um great question taylor and i think that we have a compensation committee um that i've delayed briefly but there's we have to look at not just

103pay alone we have to look at a broader scope of the benefits that we provide to all of our teachers and not only just to recruit but also to retain yeah and um i think one of the greatest benefits we have as our school district is just the culture that we have here um listening to all of our teachers our staff hearing their voices and understanding what they're looking for and that's going to help us not only retain who we have here but also how we can then expand on that and reach out i also think that it's about our community as well because when we bring somebody with a diverse background they're coming into our community and we need to welcome them with open arms and recognize that we all come from different backgrounds

104and we all have something to share so it's not just the school it's also the new community i guess that's it steve yeah i would just add because i i'm with you taylor it's incredibly difficult and and i think there are some some things that are at least front of mind whether or not they will be quick to make a difference or if it's more of a long-term strategy but one is you know we're posting positions on one of the sites we're using now is called handshake and that site is specifically reaches into more urban communities that have teacher ed programs close by and so you can hope that reaching into those college spaces might make a difference we've also participated in a webinar series that the american association for colleges for teachers education did

105and that series was about specifically recruiting and retaining black and hispanic or latino male teachers in particular and so just interesting and you know kind of frame of reference for how our others may be finding success with that work as well we're always seeking bilingual candidates for for sure roughly 16 of our of our kids are now coming to us with spanish being the primary language at home as well and then i think it will be important that we are conscious of having affinity groups to support people when they come here so if they're moving to burlington for the first time or if they're you know an underrepresented group certainly they're going to be looking to us for some network of support and i would like to say too that's a problem all over the

106state there just aren't a lot of people in the minorities going into teaching they've been trying to recruit but they're just you want to go into something else this has been and this isn't just an issue just recently this has been something oh yeah you know for the last four years and probably longer than that oh yeah so i mean that's just the main thing you got school districts with declining enrollment in the northwestern part of the state which probably i bet you within 10 years you're going to see some of those school districts go away or consolidate because of that lack of enrollment their staff and everything's going to shift down here which is fine but again i'm just trying to wrap my head around how do you attract someone from waukesha or milwaukee

107or madison wherever some of those larger districts to come here and that i think would in some cases may mean a pay cut possibly by doing that but we have we have the packet tonight who are going to make less money here and have chosen to come here just so which is good thanks for pushing the question too that was good no it's good to get jamie and steve's input and roseanne thank you roseanne you've talked about this in the past as part of your you work with wasp it's a problem yeah anyone else have questions or comments i'll just know too i just see that you know in in this document there's a number of things that the administration is working on or continue to work on and there's also items in here that

108are talked about could be part of a strategic plan for the board and administration to work on so this is not like the end of the road i think this is just a update if you will or organization of some of the thoughts in this document anybody else okay steve thanks for the uh presentation oh marlo so um are we having public comment for discussion items or just action items just action items uh the fourth item for information discussion is the school board uh neola policy update yes this is policy update 31.1 and this was the december update with neola and so this is the first reading which is not action this is for for your feedback i know that the way that they're listed can be hard to read the attachment is as much

109cleaner as a summary document so this is a first reading there were 24 revisions and most of the revisions are are relatively perfunctory or they're related to statute i do think there are maybe four that i should highlight for you that just have some slight uh nuance to them and one is uh it starts with policy 1421 but then it goes to 3121 and 4121 and this is actually something that we would look at the title is criminal history record check and so employee self-reporting requirement it's a combination between a revision and a new new policy this is something that we would work on in terms of our employee handbook and really what it's talking about is an employee's self-reporting requirement so if you're involved criminally in something this is not uncommon and in some

110places it's required we would typically find out anyway and so this is a shift to saying well it really isn't the employee's best interest is to come forward to the employer and say well this is what happened and so it's a it's a highly recommended edit but it is not required but that that is in the packet as a recommendation the second one is policy 221 and this is a revision and it's talking about wisconsin act 30 which uh was a 2021 piece of legislation and it requires that the holocaust be taught at least once between grades five through eight and once in nine through twelve this is a topic in the middle school social studies curriculum as well as the high school so it's not anything that is going to change for burlington it's

111a topic that is currently discussed but that requirement does go into effect in the fall for the entire state so this just highlights that the third one is policy 5461 and the real language here that's revised um it talks about um children the title children at risk of not graduating from high school and there there was essentially some misunderstanding about the language that was requiring a plan for each individual student rather than a district plan and so you may recall dr olshlager earlier in the year put up an image of the mlss the multi-level systems of support flowchart and that in essence that is the district plan for how you're providing programs or services for students that may be at risk of not graduating and what's the protocol that you follow so that's the language

112that's being clarified here but again it's just it's kind of a tweak albeit subtle it it's a significant change and then the last one the fourth one is policy 6152 and this is in reference to the waiver of school fees and and or fines and the reason that i would just highlight this is because it has evolved tremendously through covid and in particular you may remember that the school the federal school nutrition program waivers that came out allowed us to feed anyone for free for really almost last couple of years and still so this is essentially now saying that going forward the blanket eligibility to provide that waiver of a of a school fee which is even being determined to be a lunch fee that that is not acceptable in terms of blanket eligibility that

113it would require income eligibility information for the waiver of the fee or the school lunch so just so that you're aware specifically of those because i know there can be lots here to try to take in when you look through these policies all right thanks anybody any questions or comments this is first reading so if we could just go through fine tooth helmet and clean it up a little bit there are a couple typos some things that should have been deleted that weren't there's a reference in one of the communicable diseases ones speaking about contacting the kenosha health department as opposed to the racine health department so we just button up those loose ends i'd appreciate it what does it say i can find an exact one okay we'll find it any other comments or

114questions all right hearing none let's move on items for action tonight we have five the first is the start college now and early college credit program and i see mr burlings coming up to present you all have this but i thought for the people in attendance would be helpful for them to see again get to go back to my my roots a while back as activities director and associate principal this used to be kind of my area for those in the audience that aren't familiar start college now program and the early college prep credit program are sponsored by the state and uh all students in our state have the opportunity to take advantage star college now is available for 11th and 12th graders and it's allowing them to take classes that we don't offer at

115burlington high school to take those at the technical colleges within our state and then the early college prep credit is 9 through 12 students are open for that program and again that's uw system schools wisconsin private schools of post-secondary education where students have the opportunity this is part of the the state law that we need to come and uh just make sure that we request requests we request the proper funding um for each of the semesters um you take a look we're down a little bit from normal i just wanted to share the fall data if you recall back in october first we were requesting classes for the spring and currently the students were taking the fall but this past fall the reason it was down is obviously last year we were going to school

116in a pandemic and colleges were probably even more uncertain sometimes in their direction than the the public high schools private schools in the state so kids were a little leery about signing up but you can see that we had 13 students this past fall registered for 23 different courses taken at six different colleges and again the list of the colleges are there again a few students dropped some classes overall they're very successful students that don't pass as you're aware we do ask for reimbursement again it's depending though sometimes you know there's some other uh situations that cause students to struggle and again i hope you trust that we're we're making good judgment on those too um the current spring data at the time when this was sent in we didn't kind of have that but

117roughly right now currently we have this semester uh 26 different classes being taken at gateway 2 at waukesha county technical college two at uw milwaukee and two at uw parkside and again you'll see that data next fall what i'm here today though as part of our requirement is to request for this recently our students were meeting in february and signing up for classes for this upcoming summer and fall you can see numbers are are up you know and that's a good sign i think kids are a little more confident on what next year is going to look like so right now we have approximate well we have projected number of a hundred um credits at gateway uh waukesha county technical eight so for the start college now program we're seeking uh 408 credits and then

11849 early college credit programs concordia marquette uw milwaukee and uw parkside so again and we're excited to have this as you know we're really proud of this is one of the many parts of the dual credit opportunities that we offer students to be able to take post-secondary classes while they're still in college so um i would hope that we'd be able to approve those um and again as you recall this is all based on this would be an ideal situation if every student was able to get the class because again they're just projecting that they want to take the class now they got to go and check the course guide make sure that it's available it fits into their schedule here at the high school et cetera so not every student unfortunately is able to

119get it sometimes the class they see in the booklet aren't isn't going to be offered in the fall too so again not every student is able to access those but that's why we require our juniors and seniors or anybody that's taken planning on doing one of these programs to take a full schedule it's easier for us to drop a class out of their schedule than to try to find a class because obviously right now we're in the process of building our high school schedule for next year as well any questions board members any questions or comments then hang on a second at this part of the meeting we're going to open it up to the public so if you have any questions or comments now is your chance to ask same rules apply though it's

120three minutes we've done this now four meetings it's gone really well just limit it though to you have to be either a burlington district resident or a parent of children enrolled in the district anything from the public no this is specifically with this yeah thank you for asking that clarifying question so anything specific to this agenda item right now yeah no problem anybody okay but that's all so we're looking for a motion to approve the uh our start college now and early college credit courses for next year yeah some move second uh motion made and seconded any comments marlo i think you had something yes what bucket or fun does this come out of general fund i'm pretty sure okay thank you yeah oh all in favor say aye aye aye aye jose all right

121you anticipated the vote mr burling yes all right uh our second item for action is uh ruth's going to present on our copy releases this should go pretty quickly so there's two separate leases i will ask you to approve please the i'm going to start with the central duplicating center so downstairs in this building we do have two 95 page per minute copies that we try to have people send the big jobs to bid this out historically every three to four years last time we did a four year which went well so currently we have um canon sent this out to four vendors um received bids back from all four of them um canning continues to be the lowest bid um so i would recommend that we move forward with just replacing those same two

122units with two more like units and continue on our merry way so the low bid from canon for both machines for a four year cost would be seventy thousand two hundred and thirty six dollars and fifty eight cents let's have any questions i do have a question um on these leases as we as we look at the proposals for the leases they'll almost always have an escalator clause in them for um increasing usually is maintenance there's no one those we've asked for that to stay constant through the whole lease term all right so there's no increase no in the lease or the for the per cost correct the the lease payment and the maintenance cost the only thing will vary is the volume but the cost per copy is constant through the whole turn good

123sounds like you know from experience i do well done any other questions or comments for ruth look i think we're looking for a motion then to approve the copy release yes so moved okay motion's made and seconded any further questions or comments anything from the public all right hearing none uh all in favor say aye aye aye aye opposed nay all right passes okay so the second one then um is for 16 units and they are pretty much the main school offices um there's a couple we have here but throughout the district historically we've had um rico so we're just finishing a four year lease prior to that each building kind of just handled their own and everything was all hodge podge and not on the same timing so four years ago we got that

124all rained in and on the same schedule and same machines so that lease is coming due again sent it to the same four vendors we only received three back um so the um on this one actually canon was lowest this time so that would be my recommendation we obviously have experience working with them from the basement i did call references machines are similar so i don't have any reason to believe that they would not be satisfactory so all things being equal i would default to cost so canon would be the lowest oh i didn't do a four-year cost the annual cost would be twenty six thousand eight hundred and eighty three dollars uh for and then times four for a four year car and paper these are direct with the manufacturer right or they have

125they have a vendor that they go through well it's canon direct canon direct but they're able to tap into some cooperative purchasing so sometimes it's the state bid price this is their program is a different i think it's called omnia it's a nationwide cooperative program that we're able to to tap into awesome any other questions or comments all right i'll entertain a motion uh to approve the canon copier bit so moved second okay motion's made and seconded any further comments public anybody copiers okay hearing none i'll call for a vote all in favor say aye aye aye opposed nay all right that passes ruth thank you thank you yeah our third item of five for action is uh building ground so i think i saw dan oak here oh you're hiding i didn't see you

126there um we're gonna talk about track so yeah we're going to have a discussion here on burlington high school basically the athletic complex we some background um the athletic complex was actually built four years after the high school was built it was a separate uh referendum and project so it was built in 2005. um in 2011 the district had the track resurfaced at that point and then in 2018 with the referendum passing we included funding for the tennis courts and for a track replacement because at that time we were told that the track was in need of having the asphalt which is underneath the surfa the surface that rubber membrane that's on top that that's failing starting to crack so we were spending a lot of money each year filling the cracks and uh working

127on that on that project as well so that was included in the referendum so in 2019 um that summer i did the tennis court expansion and resurfacing and then in 2019 and 2020 there was discussion around the district with the possibility of tying in synthetic turf at that time too with the track replacement because if the track was being torn out it would be a perfect opportunity if we did want to play put synthetic turf down at the same time first time okay and the lifestyle cycle of asphalt is generally in our area 15 to 20 years so it's it's lived you know the life that it should have um so then after some discussion uh throughout the district in 2021 we contracted with point of beginning um they're a contractor that works with school

128districts on getting your site surveys done looking at your entire sports complex and then kind of coming up with a master plan at the same time so throughout the last few months uh myself eric eric burling our bhs principal eric pitowitz our athletic director and steve breswitz our school counselor at karcher middle school met as a team and sat with point of beginning and gone over what may be other needs that are needed in the athletic complex as well to try to look at it as a larger picture so not not only this summer but in years to come what we should be either looking to budget for or be replacing at the same time so after uh having all these different discussions and meetings we started generating some 3d imagery which i will show

129you um and then kind of associating some different costs with that so um this of course is the aerial image of what we kind of came up with um at this time the tennis courts as you can see that's what our current configuration is with center um seating um and they are blue and green this would show if we did do a synthetic turf uh just kind of what it would look like uh this shows a new running track it shows um updating to asphalt and adding a parking lot for folks that are coming to watch like jv softball or or softball or baseball there is a lot of elderly that have to walk quite a long ways to get back to some of the games so that's been a concern from people in the

130district and it just shows kind of you know kind of sprucing up everything back there some plazas and a new entry gate and just different views of that this is actually a storage complex um we've looked at different things uh right now what we currently have is about seven or eight different little storage sheds that look different out there so as part of if as part of the master plan if you really want to clean up the site you'd make everything consistent and look as it belongs so i don't know if any of you guys have been back there between the varsity baseball field and the varsity softball field there's kind of a green green space in the middle it's all breaking apart this would be if we wanted to truly you know update it

131would be a concrete plaza a different um we currently have chain link fencing this would be the netting which is down at like at ball mount field it allows for better better viewing and so on then this kind of shows a new gate where we could have folks coming in from by the concessions area as well because generally if it's a baseball or a softball game you know people aren't coming in through that main gate by the by the dalton stadium and this would allow them for us to charge for attendance back in that area as well so these are different project cost estimates that point of beginning sheer construction and myself went over and this is just kind of just for you guys to know what we've been kind of doing in the background

132here the if we were to do just the track and the turf um this at this point um it's projected to cost about 1.7 million um that has gone up significantly the last couple of years because if you all know oil if with oil prices and everything else synthetic turf is a byproduct of oil um so that's up about 30 same with asphalt so those these costs maybe two years ago probably would have been you know two to three hundred thousand dollars less um just to do the track which is what was part of the referendum to mill and overlay and resurface would be roughly around 437 to do that emit what showed in that imagery for the baseball softball with the netting that's approximately 321 000. the storage building is approximately 388 000 to

133add a new uh parking lot back there would be around 226 000 and to redo all the entryways and those plazas with all that concrete was budgeted around 562 000. um just to go over what funding we currently have in place um fund 49 the referendum had 450 000 slated for the track um as part of capital projects this summer i did slate for the rest of the parking lot at the high school to be resurfaced because we've been doing that over the last couple of years and then to redo all the black talk that's back in the sports complex at the same time so that's why that's there because part of that work that's being done back there is being done with uh fun 10 and then the burlington athletics association in 2019 pledged

134a hundred thousand dollars towards the project and then there was a fifty thousand dollars upfront lump sum and then ten thousand dollars over the next five years and then we've also had several different discussions about either getting sponsorships or donations um we had uh back in 2019 uh we were talking about that and then 2020 with covet hit we couldn't really hold any large gatherings or you know groups together to really see what uh what wants or what people would be willing to donate or sponsor so the reason why i wanted to present to you is of course to get approval that i continue moving forward with the track but also to have a discussion if i should still continue to move forward with turf and then what your ideas may be of any sort

135of sponsorships and donations out there so as you may know i was part of a group probably since in this district to do things like this and um we we built a sponsorship and naming rights uh platform policy that could be used effectively and there's plenty of models out there that have done very well well that oconomowoc has won obviously fort atkinson there's another one wisconsin lutheran just did one um i think delavan was all referendum i think we need to look at that real seriously before we um proceed with spending community dollars on it and i think we need to stop giving away naming rights to large areas so that they can provide naming rights for companies or individuals that would want to donate to that thank you yeah and one other thing that

136i did want to add is part of the referendum with how it has to be spent we have up until this uh i believe it's november january so january of 2023 to spend the last of the referendum dollars otherwise i would hold off for another summer and see if we could get a large donor or somebody that did want to do a major naming rights but we have to at least spend that 450 000 that's for the track well and they can preserve we've we've done our company has done projects where we didn't destroy the track and just redid the field there's there's several of them that where they just redo the field at a later date they can protect that area yeah and i would put uh any infrastructure that would be needed underneath

137the track uh just in case we were to move forward with turf um that's the only thing to make sure is that we have a storm sewer if we want any electrical anything like that we can always stub that in and so we're not having to rip up that portion of the track yeah they can drill that into any other board members have questions or comments for dan everything's a trade-off obviously and turf is a huge expense is there any payback on that at all with reduced mowing or does it really come out to a wash because of the increased cost of the turf there it actually is more expensive to have turf to to replace it um over the long term the thing that the turf allows you to do is it allows your

138community and any sort of group to use it essentially 24 7. so um even like school programs um having your re you know you could have uh your gym classes and everything else out there and it won't affect you know and you're not all of a sudden fighting rain if you're gonna be trying to you know paint lines yes it does save on some maintenance of not having the mole or stripe but the actual replacement cost of the turf when you have to replace it in 10 to 15 years is much higher and right now i believe we're the last district in our conference that doesn't have turf in their sports complex so any other board members have questions or comments how about anybody in the public do you have questions or yeah um yeah

139matt when we're gonna ask you to come up to the podium with the microphone because the people at home won't hear you so thank you yeah so um i guess you probably can't answer these questions or maybe you can but we can is there a huge difference in the long-term spending between turf and natural grass and also uh injury-wise when you talk about the rubber on the surfaces of the track back when i was in high school and college it made a big difference in how long it lasted based on the water management for it rain runoff as far as you said as fault last 10 to 15 years can you do something to make that last longer by controlling the rate or the elements or something different we spend a different amount of money

140up now up front and not need to revisit this in a decade or so well when when we do tear off the old track we will do a proof roll and we've already done uh borings so we have done two different borings on the track to look at the subgrade material um to see if that's uh of today's standards um and as of now there's about 12 inches of tb and then it goes to a say a sand clay like material so their recommendation still is always to rip everything out and put six inches of three inch stone and then 12 inches of subgrade but that's at a high high cost so what i was going to be recommending is that we tear out the track and then we do what's called a proof roll

141and they will drive a large piece of equipment that's heavy and see if there's any soft spots and we may find some of those and those we will just fix at that time which will then improve the life of that um basically roadway essentially what it is um but wisconsin is basically one of the worst states for blacktop with how our changing conditions are from freezing to you know we it's just all over the place like the spring um so we'll it's it's just a hard battle um we do have we will we will be taking a look at how the field um drains um and make sure that you know we don't have any standing water or anything like that but we already do have a pretty substantial sewer system around it so that

142it does drain off um essentially towards lake rocklin lake um i i don't know if that answers your question well it's it's kind of all over the board there's some that swear by turf that that's the safest and there are some that swear by natural you know grass that that's the safest um the there it all depends on what sort of a membrane you put underneath the turf as well you can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on having a it's a basically a pad that'll go underneath it as well as along with the um basically rubber that goes in yes concussions yes yes the one i've seen it anywhere from 80 000 to 320 000 depending on what grade you would want for that um but we do a fairly uh good job at

143keeping that field watered too when we do have natural grass so that's the key is to keep um the watering up on it to keep the surface soft and then we do um aeration on it too so we will basically take plugs out to make sure that it's not being too compacted anybody else in the public have questions yeah i'll i'll repeat the question for those at home so i think forgive me if i get this wrong but if that's all right i'll i'll summarize it was a quick question uh the price difference over a 10-year life span between a grass and a turf field is that europe okay um i don't have that slide with me but generally over 10 years if you say would have to replace the sod if you do for

144annual increases in pr costs you're going to have roughly for turf you're going to have probably about 1.2 million again in 10 years to replace the the surface material you won't have to replace anything underneath it so everything that's in place but we do spend roughly around 50 or 60 thousand dollars a year maintaining the fields as well and that's in time paint seed um fertilizer so it's about double the cost still for to have uh synthetic you said lifespan of a turf field is 10 to 15 is that reason 10 to 15. yes and it depends on how well you are at keeping it because you still have to groom it as well so there's special equipment that goes along with that as well anybody else in the public have questions let me summarize

145the question first and then we can jump in and eric may want to answer this one because so i think the question was is there any um if burlington's the only school in the district without a turf field is there any challenges with not being a yeah or s i say division a conference without a turf field is there any issues with us not being a preferred site for events um like union grove had that issue with the track yeah so what i'll no obviously with with the track it's a wonderful facility that where we get the only one we're limited on for the wia and that's who obviously runs our tournaments is because in the fall our field is utilized for football and then men's soccer boys soccer since that's being played on by

146both sports you're not allowed you're not able to host sectional type events so if your boys were qualifying we'd have to go to an alternative site does not affect us in the spring because we don't have girls women's soccer is the only event going on in there right now and then if you're saying well i i drive my badger and i see their football field is grass that's by choice those of you that know you know that's the coach's choice but they do have a turf soccer field and they also have turf baseball and softball fields so but that's choice on their football program and it's that's more of the offense they run and the coach and you know that kind of thing too so yeah lambo stills grass oh yeah i know if you

147caught that yeah lambo still has grass jen do you want to have a comment eric real quick for eric before you start changing with the new field at karcher that full-size soccer field will that change our eligibility for sectionals for the high school uh thanks look at yeah i know you'd hit me uh yeah as long as that field would not because that's a dedicated soccer field we would be able to list that because you just have to list your tournament sites uh mr plitzwhite has to turn those in and early september type thing so if that field was up the plane and it meets the minimum size requirements that could be listed as an alternative site very good point very soon for those you don't know if you look out that window you'd probably

148see the soccer field if it was laid out all right my question is do we have the equipment to maintain the turf should we go that route or would that be an additional expense that we would need to incur good question when you bid this out all the bids include having the equipment when you buy the turf and then it includes trainings for your staff as well okay anybody else have any questions or comments i'll audience okay how about board members barry you got no one i see we try to maintain some items for the track at the end of the field are we maintaining or increasing track capabilities like it looks like there's pole vault or potentially high jump pits at the end we are maintaining what we have um because it currently i

149believe we have a 10 10 lane 100 meter and then an eight lane full track and point of beginning was actually fairly impressed with how it was already laid out and what we did have so we'd be maintaining the capabilities that we already have so that's the actual track itself but past the end zones on each end we also have stuff for track and field yeah we have that currently now too this was asking so we're going to maintain what we have we're not increasing that at all no okay the uh currently our full boat lunge up the triple jump are or just wanted to add to um the question with the soccer field here next to karcher we did um ensure that the specs for that is the right size in order for it

150to qualify for an um wiaa soccer field so it's pitched correctly and all of that um for soccer when would the work happen dan i'm a parent of a track kid we are planning this summer because the referendum dollars have to be spent and so we would have to start as soon as uh basically track is out this year get would be ready for the school then school so full-fledged ignorance on the construction of tracks either dan or kevin maybe you can speak to this is there any benefits to making a section of this track a high load area where we could run heavy equipment across it so put extra reinforcement off just a specific section of the track that would compensate for if we ever put turf in or if we're putting some big

151events in the middle of the field where we can get equipment across the track without damaging it i mean we've already ran fire i mean primarily just go with a plywood or something over the top they make membranes that go over the cross okay so you wouldn't you wouldn't build the tractor i'm sorry yeah essentially you'd bridge over it it's training okay i just didn't know if it made sense to reinforce that area to prevent settling or cracks thank you anybody else on the board have questions or comments for dan uh so i think we're looking for a motion then tonight to approve the track uh renovation well to prove that we i i move forward with the track um so that we can go out to bid um and then yeah so i think

152the right internet i move we go ahead with the track renovations as proposed in the original referendum second okay motions made and seconded any further comments here on the board hearing none i'll call for a vote all in favor say aye aye aye opposed nay all right dan thanks i guess it's given some food for thought too on what potentially could be out at our athletics work complex and i would just add as a follow-up for the board just to be clear to you so part of part of what happens with this type of planning is there's a certain amount of research and homework that has to get done and we know that the minute that we're out kind of asking questions or getting bids people are kind of chit-chatting and talking about things and

153so part of this was kind of this presentation in particular was so that you're aware that for us to do the reasonable amount of homework we need to be able to bring you accurate information sometimes that that gets people kind of going a little bit and that may be the case actually even with turf even though it doesn't appear to be the intent it's very likely dan may still try to get some bids and so people might say well you're doing turf no we're just just trying to collect and gather the data so that you have the information in front of you we're not guessing and it may be that when we when time is of the essence that group of donors come forward sure exactly let's do turf but we don't we have a

154window this is the window we have to spend the money by the yes and i wanted you folks like i i was going to add that that if you guys were aware there's going to be people in the community that will see these photos as well so i wanted you folks to to know all right thanks dan dan i think you have the next item too the fourth item on our agenda for action yes um so this is a item it's a siemens software and server upgrade um currently uh our building automation system was installed in 2008 um i believe at that point you guys did a short term or some uh sort of borrowing to to pay for that project um and so it's been since 2008 since the server or any of the

155software that actually runs the building automation has been upgraded um as of this last year uh siemens had told us that our current operation operating system is no longer supported so they're no longer doing any sort of updates for that system and cannot essentially support it so if something goes wrong or it goes down that would cause us to not have control over our building automation which then could cause us our indoor air quality to go down so they are looking at a basically a siemens software and server upgrade what is nice is we currently in our buildings we have mecs and mbcs which are modular equipment controllers or modular building controllers although these are dated these can be flashed and can be upgraded with the new software that would be installed into our siemens

156system there is recommendations from them as well to replace them but those are expensive as well the upgrade would provide us with new graphics and have the ability to have more control over our systems and support and would allow us to do it mobile with our our phones as well so we currently you know control of our lighting we control our air hvac systems um so we control it so that we're only using them during while uh building usage so when the buildings are occupied and as part of our covet plan we had increased our outside air we also increased our run time so this is kind of a key essential to maintaining our air quality for the building so i received the proposal from uh siemens and the proposal would actually include which they

157suggest at this time is there it's called um rcx and rcx is a pro uh folks that they work with that prior to us doing the upgrade they will come into our buildings and audit all of our current settings all of our current run times and look for any areas that we can have more efficiencies so when they installed the new uh desegle software and new server at that point we could have a the opportunity then to correct or make more efficiencies throughout the district so the actual uh um software upgrade is 88 um for the rcx study of all of our buildings which is around seven hundred fifty thousand square feet is fifty seven thousand and twenty five dollars but the focus on energy rebate would cover that completely and it would they would

158siemens would run that a hundred percent through them so we wouldn't even be applying for the rebate we just will work with them so that they'll get the rebate back to them and they'll be charging us only the 88 920. um they did also budget out for us just so if we wanted to at this time replace all the different mecs or nbc's in our buildings so there's a list for the different schools and what those would currently cost and i don't know if ruth wants to step in right now right now on how we could possibly fund this i'll just add really quick before we go with i i will just add to part of the timing of this proposal is that uh the sr3 funds that the federal government allocated when the board

159following the community survey and the board approval in february one of the items that we had was some facilities and wellness type item and the merv 13 filters for example those aren't going to go away we're going to need those but this is a spot where dan and our team here felt like we could recommend to the board that instead of one of the autonomous floor cleaners that we had talked about to potentially we do this project instead with these one-time dollars and so it would be a swap with those federal dollars and we would be able to run this through the esser program which we've already vetted essentially with siemens and dpi so we're feeling pretty good about that and look at ruth she's not so confident i'm more confident as you can say

160the only thing with um if we aren't able to fully [Music] swap operational dollars for us or dollars this would be considered a construction project that has a whole lot of regulatory oversight that we would have to comply with so it would be a lot of record keeping and chasing so that's the only caution there that we would want to watch for i don't understand what do you mean what's the challenge the the federal um law that's the davis bacon act so there's um a whole slew of items um as far as watching like prevailing wages and checking payroll records like of the construction company um posting all this information that we would be responsible at the school district level because it's federal dollars because it's federal dollars oh so if we're running through the

161ussr program that's what you're saying yes gotcha well senate would be seaman would be the general contractor though right yes yes and they've done the data yeah and they've done several projects with the ester funds yeah so problem solved that's my confidence yes we this is the checks and balances right here yes it just means i'm gonna have a lot more files for this uh project than others so on these currently we on the units or the the thermostats i'll use a simple term they are not controlled by wi-fi remotely today we can remote in through our laptop um and so if i'm at home and there's some there's an issue i can remote into the district and control it through that server but will this allow us to do is not have to actually

162have remote access to our servers in the district that we can do it mobile so we don't have as many people breaking when we talked about security of our you know our computer systems in our buildings because of all the hacking going on this will actually allow us not to have to actually vpn in to our district servers yeah because i mean when i was doing a lot of coaching there's several times that we would be in the gym and couldn't turn the lights on yeah now they're all programmed on and on motion sensors [Laughter] so your bid here says it was good for 30 days from august 17th of last year what's that price gonna look like now he must have had a mistake we just got this last week it must have been

163a type as long as they fix it i'm fine with it i just want to make sure we're not going to get a huge increase no we just uh met with them and this is the one we went over so i didn't actually catch that we've just been talking about it since we found out this past year that we weren't going to be able to be up you know any more upgrades or anything so anybody else on the board have questions or comments for dan or ruth this is somewhat sideways to this project with the increase in outside air and run times to compensate for all that additional fresh air that puts a lot more wear on the heat exchangers and everything else have we looked at the lifespan and the maintenance schedules that we're

164gonna have to look at for those increases to compensate for that yes there's uh i'll actually be coming to you folks again we're looking at uh facilities planning yes all right i like that teasing something for the future all right uh anybody else on the board questions or comments anybody in the audience public any questions or comments for dan all right hearing none i guess i'd uh entertain a motion to approve the siemens contract so moved second understand we're using ester funds correct uh yeah part of the motion correct we could make you want to amend the motion i would like to amend a motion to say that these maintenance items through siemens is being paid for by us or funds yeah i'll second that so any discussion on kevin's amendment my only concern on

165that is the last time we did this they ended up stripping the maintenance budget for about 10 years to pay for the controls because they let go out so far so if we've got to do it it's got to be done but i would much rather see it go through the esser funds than anything right so i think that's what we're saying the sr funds right but even if we don't get the user phones this needs to be done oh we have the sr phones this is part of the sr3 i believe that we're using himself right can i just double check kevin is the inference that the bottom dollar is that it comes from esther because to ruth's point there may be some we'll move this over here and then right but the money

166will come from esser correct got it okay is that what you're concerned with okay fair enough any other comments on the amendment all right let's vote on the amendment then um all in favor say aye aye aye opposed nay all right now we need to um any other comments on the main motion as amended so just to restate then the motion is that we're going to approve the siemens contract using escrow funds any other comments hearing none i'll call for a vote all in favor say aye aye aye opposed nay all right that passes thank you thanks all right one final item for action tonight that's another uh school board policy and this is our final reading so steve you want to take us and this is a singular policy and partly because uh this

167was done in july of 2021 you already adopted this uh but this is the very lengthy um non-discrim policy and part of the reason this has come back is because the federal government has made a couple of pretty long tweaks to this as you can see it's pages long but nothing is changing for you there's a little bit of added language about section 504 and ada compliance but that's it otherwise this is the exact same policy that you already have but because it's got updated legal references just seemed that it should be formally adopted by the board of education okay make a motion second okay emotions made and seconded any comments questions on the board level anyone in the audience have any questions or comments do you want to see anything good hearing none i'll

168call for a vote all in favor say aye aye aye aye opposed name all right passes all right thanks all right future meeting dates um next two weeks from tonight we're gonna have our annual school reorganization meeting we do this every year after the election uh we'll elect new board officers and uh swear in the board members who were elected and may monthly meeting may 9 so put that on your calendars and then as steve met reference before board members i'm going to reach out to you just to find out availability for a work session day um we tentatively looked at may 7 but nothing set in stone so if that doesn't work for a board member we're going to try to find a saturday it'll be like a saturday work session probably where we

169get together and talk about um strategic planning mainly like you know kind of thinking positively what we can do for improvements over the next five years or so uh that being said i'll entertain a motion to adjourn so moved second okay motion to being seconded any comments hearing none i'll call for a vote all in favor say aye aye aye opposed nay everyone thanks for coming out and uh being part of the meeting viewing it and appreciate you guys coming thank you