School Board Meeting - October 11, 2021

001school board we need to order if everyone could join me and stand and we'll see the pledges i pledge allegiance one national i'll give toby a second to get settled in and we'll do the uh thank you peter turk here marlo brown yeah taylor shaw kevin bird here roseanne path here susan kessler thank you next is approval of the minutes i've entertained a motion to approve the minutes of two board meetings in the last month okay emotions made in incentive any discussion hearing none all in favor say aye aye opposed name all right the minutes from both means are approved next we have uh citizen comments and we received over the last month uh seven uh comments to our board comments and tonight we have also seven people who have signed up to speak so

002um when you when i call you there's a microphone up front please come up uh one rule i just want to emphasize is the three minute time limit and uh barry schmalian here my colleague will raise his hand when you're at you know 15 seconds to go and then you'll hear an alarm when it goes off we just want to make sure we adhere to that and uh whenever you're ready-minded thanks for adjusting yeah all right all right mueller good evening board i want to address the lack of transparency in the classrooms and curriculum of the burlington area school district it was recently brought to my attention that a teacher of an 11th grade english class was reading a book titled bang along to the students while they followed along in their own copy the

003class was instructed to not bring the book home until the final assignment was to be done now why was that what is being hidden here one can only stand to reason that this book is controversial and would have sparked questions from parents directed at the teacher as to why this book was being read in class if there's nothing to hide people don't keep things a secret they are open and honest and forthright with information students aren't told they cannot take learning materials home so i ask again what was being hidden here what agenda was being pushed that needed to be fed to students before parents found out the actual contents of the book if there isn't an agenda then there would be no reason to instruct students not to take home the book now having

004read a few chapters of the book myself i would indeed categorize this as a book parents would have a right to ask questions about it models and glorifies abuse and violence the book opens with the murder of the main character's seven-year-old brother the father of the book is emotionally abusive towards his wife and son what literary purpose does this book serve in terms of preparing students to read and comprehend at a high level it might be none it only serves to push an agenda i'm calling on this board to implement a curriculum transparency policy parents should not have to request the materials their children are being presented with in class nor should parents get the runaround when they ask for them for their own review parents should not be finding out from their children that

005they were told not to bring home a particular book now we parents fund the purchase of these materials through our taxes we have the right to view what our money purchased if we so choose to do so without needing a special request the communication of the learning plan can be modeled after a college syllabus it can be constructed at a high level and must include these following things topics that are covered weekly the materials to be used in class and any links to web-based material the students will be using this syllabus needs to be posted to the district website transparency isn't providing information when it's asked for it's proactively supplying it before being questioned i'll close this in with this would you just blindly sign a contract to build a house with a contractor without

006sampling any of their work or would you first tour their model and inspect the quality and workmanship of workmanship and the materials used it's the same principle here we parents are investing in the building materials and craftsmanship of our students education we have the right to inspect the materials and workmanship without impediment and those things that are being used to build their house of knowledge thank you next up adrian melvin good evening can you guys hear me okay oh i have several items on the agenda tonight that raise questions for me but i'm hoping that they'll be addressed during the meeting i just want to focus on two things and then reiterate the email that i sent earlier this week at the bottom of policy 5330 it says that the use of essential oils are

007prohibited that seems a little arbitrary and out of place to me perfume and body spray has all kinds of artificial fragrant fragrances and yet that's allowed so i'm just wondering what the reasoning behind the prohibit prohibition of essential oils is also on the agenda under board operations neola recommended revisions to bylaws and policies the first reading and i know you cannot respond during the meeting but i would like to see the old or current wording of the neola policies and the updated or recommended wording for all of the neola revisions to buy laws and policies as well as to technical updates so if somebody could get that to me at some point i would appreciate it for my email earlier this week i'm hoping that each of you are staying abreast of what ics is

008and what they're doing in our district and what they hope to do in our district as the equity audit wraps up um let me tell you what likely will happen next ics will find basd systemically racist it's their mo i've heard that that's what um it's been 100 of their of the time is their track record then they'll recommend that bas enter bsc entered into a five-year plan with them can we even begin to imagine what the cost and time demand will be and since our superintendent has worked with ics before in middleton and crossplane i mean middleton crossplanes he will most likely make the recommendation to the school board that we enter into a five-year contract with ics and this is where things get scary for parents if a five-year contract gets signed our

009kids my kids would be asked to do the work and become covert activists in partnership with teachers against their parents in order to influence parents to get on board with their work if there was ever a time to ask yourself where you want to be in shaping the future of our district and also how you want to influence relationships between students and parents now is that time how will you vote when ics and our superintendent recommend a five-year equity contract in order that our community can do the work what even is the work if they can't clearly define it how can they adequately implement it thank you for your time thank you uh aaron melton okay seeing as there's still nothing on the agenda about curriculum transparency or a curriculum on it i thought i

010should address it again much of the headaches over the last year might have very well been avoided if there had been a platform for parents and community members to see what their what children are and are not being taught in usd i believe in order to build confidence in our schools and perhaps locate potential ways to improve our education system we need to implement a curriculum transparency platform available to the public i'm asking that you add this to the agenda for next month on the same subject i've been made aware of some books available in our school libraries as have you that i and many other parents consider disturbing and frankly disgusting the resources available to children in our schools should be age appropriate and should be screened with the philosophy in mind than they

011are to build positive character and encourage positive behavior many of the resources i've seen are antithetical to positive academic and social growth therefore i also ask that a full curriculum and school resource audit be done so that we know what is and is not being offered to our kids in their schools in regard to communication with the public i support the idea of a separate listening session dedicated to hearing from concerned community members however i would also like to see some level of two-way communication so that we can have questions answered instead of just talking at the board thank you thanks jacob mursberg hi i'm just here to say [Music] regarding the work of anti-racism i'm sorry it falls on you but it does i said back in november to you that in 20 years

012we'll begin to see the fruit of your work will we have a more just more inclusive community school district i think it's important for all of you to keep your eye on the long view we tout in the history of burlington our abolitionist roots our abolitionist race uh history well this is a very logical next step we are creating the world as we go you are creating to the best of your ability a school district that will be fair and equitable and inclusive and not one student the dream would be that not one student has ever asked in the hallway for any reason that's the dream that's what your work is about take the long view it gets messy down here months to months but please look to the long view we want a better

013world we really do thank you uh laura beerfelt all right hello again happy indigenous peoples day and happy coming out today i can't help but wonder what did burlington area school district teach within their classroom today did you did you allow the truth to be taught or did you instead focus on christopher columbus with no mention of the white house issue of a proclamation declaring today october 11 2021 indigenous people's day did we focus on the fairy tale of a newly discovered land or did we teach the truth that this land beneath our feet was lived on that families tribes and nations had been cultivating and respecting the land for decades did you acknowledge national coming out day or did schools simply carry on as usual do teachers and faculty acknowledge students who are openly

014out did you let those who don't feel safe being out within the walls of burlington area school district know they are welcome that they belong and most importantly that they are beautiful and worthy of all things or did you comply with the status quo if we had a little bit more transparency in our school's curriculum we wouldn't be left to wonder and ask these questions the work as it has been referred to this evening is unity and inclusivity within our schools and our community the work is preparing every one of our students for the future they will inherit it will not look as our present does you burlington area school district have that job to do so tonight i leave you with this brilliant canary school district today and every day did you teach the

015truth thank you thank you misty gilbert good evening i'm pretty sure you all know exactly what i'm going to talk about because i sent you some pretty interesting emails but then i stopped um i love books and i love that my children love books my son will read all day long i have to stop him but the books that i've been reading they're not appropriate um let's see i realized i was getting nowhere by emailing one book at a time i was unsure if they were going to be addressed if i kept with the third and fourth of the fifth so i just went on a deep dive i found books on transsexuals starting in elementary school like read a crayon story and when aidy became a brother those are books that should probably be

016in the guidance office and if a guidance counselor hears from a teacher concerns maybe the guidance counselor should talk to the parents and include the parents in the conversation not leave them there for the children to pick up i found books on police shootings and violence from something happened in our town in elementary school basically saying the white people shot the black man for no reason to dear martin an all-american boys which made a stream the n-word um i found sex books lots and lots and lots of books with sex in karcher and in the high school and i found a ridiculous amount of racial slurs and so much cursing one book encourager good behavior 261 pages and there's 257 uses of the effort in some way shape or form and that's only the beginning

017of what that one happens i have to ask what's the thought process here who's responsible for putting these books in our libraries and who will be held accountable we've trusted you your administrators and the teachers with our children and you've provided them with violence racist rhetoric extreme language content that could be extremely confusing or detrimental to young children and what can be best described as pornography you're providing our kids with corn the solution that was provided after my email about sex a book for teens was that you're planning to help mr heck work with the librarians on the content libraries well i appreciate this plan my faith in the judgment of the administration and the librarians leaves a whole hell of a lot to desire sorry every day i dig a little and every day

018i find more i won't stop stay-at-home mom i've got nothing but time i'm frustrated and i'm sad i'm not sad for my kids because they're at home safe where i can teach them and i can still morals but i'm sad for the kids who are still being used in the sick agenda-driven destruction of morality in our schools maybe the parents elected you and we'll remove you if you don't start working with us have a great evening [Music] [Applause] thank you gene good higher thank you for your service i also love books i read copiously my children love books it was the routine in our house for many years while they were attending basd to read and read and read i like books because they expose my children to a bigger world and a different one

019than my home they carry my children beyond my own limited vision um i didn't think of it and when we had to make a decision that children went to catholic school and grade school and then we had to make a decision where they were going to go to high school and we made that decision largely on the part of basd representing a much bigger world to my children they would be rubbing elbows with all kinds of different people and we welcomed that i expected my teacher this my children's teachers to do the work i expected them to expect my children to do the work i expected my children to do the work and together we figured out what some of that work was my children didn't need to read a book in order to be

020exposed to the n-word they saw it in their everyday they didn't need to and preventing them from reading in a book would not have prevented them from experiencing racism they saw that when we took my children of color nieces of color to a grocery store into coals so my children were exposed to those things and the things that they came home from school with that were different than what we thought about we talked [Music] we talked about what did you think about that they knew what was going on they knew much more than we gave them credit for they knew what was going on in the news they knew what their their cousins were experiencing and we talked so i won't ask you to narrow that vision i want you and i expect you to

021widen it and to have conversations our kids are out in a very complicated world the adults are having trouble with what's going on in the world right now kids have to learn how to navigate it and they will navigate it just like you learn how to read a river and in a canoe you don't do it by standing on the shoulder um and you do it in the in the context of teachers who care and maybe who all don't think the same thing because guess what that's the world i knew sending my kids to that there would be teachers who taught very different things than what i personally or my husband agreed with and that was okay that was the whole point because those are the conversations we needed to have and that's the work

022that we need to do and we can't do it by living in a bubble and putting waters up so thank you for the work thank you next we have forward communication anyone on the board have anything doors like yes [Music] i just wanted to talk a little bit about some of the kids in our district how they participated in these city-wide activity two weeks ago they had the cemetery walk and i don't if any of you were there it was wonderful talked a lot about the history of burlington the fact that we have people buried under cooper's school there's a stone there which i found to be interesting but anyway we had a teacher that was there taking the part of helen or florence patterson who was a nurse and she is identified in the

023scene museum as well as one of the most important women in the same county but our person was stephanie rumler who backed at the part of her and she is one of our instructors one of our teachers and she just did a wonderful job and then quite a few students were there and they've been directing the groups they had a group of the slower walkers and then those that could go a little faster and so forth and they were the most wonderful kids i talked to them as i was walking around and they were so happy to be there and do something for the community i think i just wanted to say i was very proud of that teacher and i was very proud of the kids that were there yeah thanks rosanna any other

024board members i'd just like to thank all the staff that contributed to the homecoming this weekend so the kids enjoy a good time kept the world safe so thank you very much thank you anybody else okay next week the superintendent's reporting [Music] yes thank you just a couple of updates and i'll follow with gary's comments about homecoming uh kudos to the high school staff and i know our students were really quite thrilled to be able to have the homecoming experience and it's been a couple of years and so that was a nice opportunity i also want to thank both julie thomas and toby green for helping to recognize school board member week which was officially last week in wisconsin with just a little applause to you and an appreciation and the jam that goes with

025it that's in front of you tonight just to be able to say thank you for your service as well uh two upcoming dates one is tomorrow we'll be doing a an official ribbon cutting ceremony i believe report president peter turk here will actually have the scissors in his hand as we now officially dedicate the opening of karcher middle school that's tomorrow four o'clock and certainly you know we've wanted to communicate to the community as well that that's open for walking through and then we'll do a much more kind of big splash if you will in the spring when the site is a little bit more complete the school's you know actually finished as well also coming up next week is the wisconsin association of school boards region 13 meeting so i know some of you

026are planning to attend that in elkhorn or virtually and so i want to make note that the position that roseanne holds as region 13 director will be voted on as well next week wednesday so kind of stay tuned for that and then also uh two weeks from tonight will be the fourth monday of october that is a date that is always set aside uh for the approval of our tax money so that is october 25th and so that will be our special meeting other for that nothing thank you [Music] thanks steve um next uh taylor if you'll take us through the bank statement sure uh the september 2021 bank statement bills total beginning cash on hand is 376 dollars and eight cents under revenues and deposits total deposits is 13 million 900 961 thousand seven

027hundred thirty four dollars and sixty two cents which leaves us total available cash on hand at fourteen million five hundred and twenty seven thousand one hundred one dollars and seventy cents expenditures and withdrawals uh the total withdrawals is thirteen million six hundred twenty two thousand seven hundred and forty seven dollars and six cents leaves us with total ending cash on hand nine hundred and four thousand three hundred and fifty four dollars and sixty in the course that uh there's no experience i put that informed promotion to accept the september 2021 bank statement reconciliation report as presented all right emotions are made and separated inviting [Music] september bills although his name all right emotions approved moving on to personnel in the matters earlier this evening the personnel committee of the board met and i guess steve

028i'll have you go through the reservations retirements and terminations [Music] we had four resignations termination retirements that included two substitute temperatures i'm sorry that included are just the two folks uh julie chappelle from cooper elementary whose special education ate with us and summer markup who was attendance secretary and vhs was just those two and our personnel committee had recommended approval of those two resolutions so i'd entertain a motion to report for certified and non-certified staff [Music] yeah as we fill out some of our open positions for the semester we are bringing forward four certified staff appointments that's two substitute teachers emily and colleen as substitute teachers for the district and then we also had occupational therapist deb jerome and kristen suter as an increase from 0.84 to 100 at lions and bhs those are our

029certified staff appointments those four then we had eight physicians non-certified staff positions we had three of those are custodians we have part-time custodian jeffrey delp at dyer illinois tree ashley dorrington at waller elementary's part-time custodian and margaret rice part-time custodian at bhs he also had three special education aides that is stephan eckert at bhs jennifer shepherd at karcher and jennifer whiskey's at dyer those are special education needs and then finally we also had megan stafford attendant secretary of bhs and making wise and born substitute aid at the basd thanks steve again the earlier this evening the personnel committee recommended and approve all of these appointments entertain a motion to approve second motions made and seconded a discussion hearing none all in favor say aye aye opposed name all right the appointments are approved uh next

030we're working on consent items we have two donations in student travel and we have a long list of donations i think it looks like a lot for the high school center mr burling wants to join into your time did you want to sure come on okay he doesn't need him [Music] all right pause here for brilliant high school and come back and mention that at cooper elementary school we had some a couple of generous donations of both daily bars for students and staff from dairy queen kind of at approximately 518 there was also by denise klatt of wheaton some supplies for uh recess for the students and then also denise clatt for lions and waller the same supplies and kind of hard to put a number to those but we still wanted to offer our

031appreciation to denise for those donations awesome so one uh let's give a nice hand for the wolfback motorcycle club out of kenosha they donated 40 backpacks full of school supplies to our district along with uh community member denise wheaton also donated school supplies for districts so thank you for that as we thought things are getting back to normal boys volleyball hosted a fairly large invitational few weekends ago uh sarah governor contributed 250 to help fund some of the food for the concession stand offset and to allow the members more profit off their concessions dance team was tracy a really uh wonderful event uh unfortunately the 20 year anniversary of 9 11 to commemorate the first responders who gave their lives and their energies to get us through those events we want to celebrate our first

032responders in our community community and we recognize the city and the surrounding townships police fire empty squads at the football game and uh flight for life actually came and delivered the flag and then we did a flight racing with our city ladder truck i believe that's the 12 story ladder truck that we have encountered 20 stories i remember but they raised the play with that but the helicopter actually landed at the middle of the field guys got off delivered to flank the chief um it was the chief bait chief bait and uh helicopter got up to the 360 and flew off and we presented all of the first responders from all the townships in the city with a really nice uh being sweatshirt or even t-shirt with a b but the inside of the b

033was uh flight was a star construction it was pretty cool so i'll set the cost of the t-shirts we had wonderful donations from scott walker's got to save it all miller ford uh chris miller obviously anderson chiropractic mike anderson and bear really joe bush donated uh so we can give those t-shirts straight to the first responders just kind of commemoration of that event so it was a really wonderful night our ffa has been busy as all get out especially october it's a really busy month but uh forty dollars from beth morgan for that and then as we all know ps uh wbsd is back up and running and it's really exciting they actually have gotten the first three student meetings again so that a whole other group of students that can connect to our high

034school but uh as you know the sponsorships continue to roll in so please accept the sponsorships for wbsd for you state faith 500 music college and joel draven for 250 greenwood state 8250 shooty daniels funeral home 250 fresh cartoon 500 driller center 500 vdq llc steven julie nelson 250 performance tire 500 chest wine llc 500 bsd merchant uh morton's automotive 500 and perfection auto body that's played improves uh for 500 so again we have a very generous community i appreciate that you all send letters out to youtube um because again a lot of support from the community they really help boston so much it's wonderful thank you thanks steve and eric next we have a student uh trip for our discussions oh [Music] now let's move on to student travel yes thank you we do

035bring overnight field trips to the board for approval and this ask is coming uh from one act to attend the uh one act theater contest in november on the 19th and 20th in stevens point and so we just asked for your approval for that too i made the motion that we accepted ocean maiden second any discussion hearing none i'll call for a vote all in favor say aye aye opposed name all right just a point of information on thursday at 3 45 they're doing a keeping submissions but if anybody's interested in seeing a green game with a one-act play uh remember welcome to 3.45 yes thanks for sharing that moving on we have four items for information or discussion tonight the first to our teaching and learning i guess is curriculum and then jobs what's

036going on i don't know if i really need a microphone either um do you think i do or no okay i was in a uh musical back in the day when i was in high school and i remember them telling me that everyone else needs to speak up jill you're good so hopefully you can hear me just fine um on the livestream [Music] hmm oh these trees um there you go okay all right so um it is a pleasure to be able to speak in front of the board um tonight with regard to teaching and learning specifically when it comes to grading and reporting and just wanting to give some updates on the work that our staff has been doing um over the last couple of years so the first thing uh to remind everyone

037of is we our strategic focus over over time we've been kind of focusing on these now for the last three to five years they are sometimes told in the district as our big three but our essential skills really focuses around our standards and clearly articulated learning goals ensuring that we're working towards proficiency best instructional practices relates to how we are instructing in the classroom really focused on what that instruction looks like and then universal access really ensures that we are providing and ensuring there's a sense of belonging for all students and our practices policies and procedures also echo that so those are the three um basic uh strategic focuses throughout the district that work that we are always uh at the basis of all of our decisions and planning today i really wanted to focus

038around the essential skill framework so that top one that referenced the clearly articulated learning goals um the three things that we'll talk about today is some conversation behind curriculum assessment and then also grading and reporting these are again three things that our teachers and our communities have been working on over the last few years the the this goes back to just uh what is really essential skills uh it is a term that we use frequently within the school district that you probably will hear teachers reference and be able to speak to and really essential skills is basing everything off of proficiency of state standards so really ensuring that we have a clear understanding of what proficiency really is and then studying that as the benchmark to ensure we're doing everything we can to have every

039student reach proficiency on all grade level standards throughout all k-12 classrooms sometimes uh essential skills can be called different things in different school districts so just wanted to be able to reference this as some in the audience and or on board if you've gone to some conferences or or spoken to other people in other districts sometimes essential skills could be termed something different like power standards essential learnings learning targets they all really are referencing the exact same thing so they're all focusing back on trying to ensure that all students reach grade level proficiency so all of these words same thing not just different terms depending on the school district so the first one i really want to touch on relates to curriculum so as i shared we adopted the wisconsin academic standards as a board

040you approved these back in august every year that we bring those to you so based on those academic standards our teachers have been working on something that we call advanced documents so this is an example of one here on the right so this is seventh grade english language arts and what in advanced document really is showing is it will talk about what our overarching essential skills are so for english language it would be writing reading and then speaking and listening again those stem back from the state standards and then within those areas we call them sub skills so what are the skills within each of the essential skills that are important for our students to be able to reach proficiency on so you can see in writing the sub skills there are when a student

041is putting together a piece of writing it is important for them to be able to have the piece be organized that they have a liberation strong craft their conventions are there and then also vocabulary again these all stem from the state standards and these are aligned to seventh grade grade level standards as well so this does evan flow of course to a learning progression k-12 so that as you progress through the grade levels the proficiency of the at-a-glance documents also progresses you're seeing a simplified version of what our teachers utilize this over time the goal would be once we have all of these completed um and ready this is probably what we would want to be utilizing on the website in order for us to show what we're doing k-12 when it comes to all

042of our course work with each of these at-a-glance documents our staff are also putting together what we're calling frequently utilized resources so that we also can supply a list of resource items that are going along with the curriculum i do think sometimes there is confusion on the difference of what we mean by the word curriculum versus resources and instruction so curriculum to us is really the state standards so that is what what is proficiency what are the students trying to work towards so our curriculum is always based off of the adopted wisconsin state standards the frequently utilized resources are the things that our teachers utilize within the classroom in order to instruct our students and provide activities and tasks for them to do in order for them to practice and demonstrate proficiency in the classroom

043so just wanting you to know the difference between those terms and also be on the lookout for what our staff are starting to work on or have been working out this is uh another example so we have this especially at the middle school level we have these fairly uh ready and we're utilizing them uh currently this school year with the santa space grade but you can see that there's alignment from the left is the adopted state standard so you it's it might be a little tricky to see in the audience but it does see ratios and proportional relationships up there that i circled there on the left and then you can see ratios and proportions over on the right within our essential skill language so there is this correlation is our staff really taking the

044academic standards putting them into our language here within the school district and then they're working on rubrics that are much more detailed in order for them to be able to assess where students at if they're beginning developing proficient or exceeding the standard here's just that another example of that in english so you can see key ideas and details is over on the left and that's again from the state standards and then you can see how that correlates over to reading on the right for our essential skill work our glance documents as i as i mentioned are uh in the finished stage at the middle school level and we are in in the implementation now utilizing them with our standards-based gradebook our 4k through five and then our high school staff are all are still in

045the developmental stage of putting theirs together so we really first wanted our staff to work on developing their rubrics so that detailed language that they're utilizing within the classroom then once they have that done their at-a-glance document is put together and then we utilize that to correlate it to skyward and also for us to utilize for our grading practices what's really nice about this is it ensures that we're aligned uh 4k through 12 across the school district it also is a really good way to benchmark and ensure that we are progressing through our grade levels and ensuring that proficiency in third grade uh jumps up a level when you get to fourth grade right and jumps at the level of fifth grade are we interpreting the standards correctly and ensuring that we really are pushing

046our students towards proficiency that alignment is there k-12 then and then it also defines the success criteria which is also very important for students to be able to see so that they can see that rubric right away and they'll know in order for me to see proficiency this is what i need to do so that rubric language is there and provided for students it also really guides our teaching and learning as it really allows our teachers to be able to assess quickly to determine which students are proficient and which ones are still needing some assistance then once we have our rubrics developed our teachers moved on to working on having some common formative incoming summative assessment across the classrooms so that's the part two that i'm going to move into here is in relation to

047assessment really to us is all about feedback and ensuring that we're giving timely feedback to our students so that they have a strong understanding of where they are at in their learning progression as they progress through the grade levels two things that two types of assessment that you probably hear being kicked around a lot in education is formative and summative the easiest way to remember the difference is that formative really is for learning so this is like um if you were to take a if you're working on driving right i'm 15 years old and i'm starting to to want to get my driver's license when i'm driving around with the um the driver that's you know has the extra pedal in the car and is assisting you and he's giving you a lot he or

048she's giving you a lot of feedback and uh hey you took your turn really wide right there make sure that at the stop sign you didn't take a full stop those kind of things that's that formative learning and that formative feedback to the student right away so it's very timely and it is taking place when practice is still going up so formative is always taking place when it is focused around ensuring that we're providing practice and feedback around that practice before we get to the summative so the summative is really of learning so think of it more at the end right the sum of everything now i'm at the dmv and i have to take my driver's test right so that's a summative assessment at that time so i am now having to show my

049my skills i'm not really getting much feedback on that as much i wanted to see how well you can now drive in order to determine if you get to have your driver's license right so big difference there on formative versus summative our teachers spend most of their time on formative assessments with students because of course our focus is more on ensuring that we're practicing and seeing that growth with students then at the end the students would then be demonstrating their their level of proficiency and understanding on a summative when we work on the formative assessments with with our students usually we're focused on one sub skill at a time so we tend to not focus on multiple self skills at the same time so if i went back to an at a glance document and

050i was focused on writing instead of talking about hey kevin you need to work on your organization elaboration craft and conventions a formative would be collecting some data from the students in order to just be giving them timely feedback on organization and how they're doing with their organization of writing at that moment a summative then would be a collection of multiple sub skills at the same time where i am wanting that essay back from the students where i'm going to be assessing them on multiple sub skills for all of those proficiencies at the same time the the intent really is to move towards ensuring that when you move when you start to shift into a model like we are doing we're really wanting to be much more intentional about that feedback that we give to

051students if we go back to a traditional mindset of grading and learning it is difficult to give timely and specific feedback to students because we used to teach from a lens of very topic based so we might have an entire unit on cells for example in science and we have 50 questions and they're all they're all just mixed up questions if you will where it's very difficult to tell which skill is being assessed so at the very end i get eighty percent on the assessment and hey nice job you know eighty percent on your knowledge on cells we have shifted um as not just burlington but the shift as a state is really towards and as a nation is really to shift more towards focusing on skills and being able to be much more intentional

052about providing students with practice and working towards proficiency and skills while using content so we use the content to teach the skills but it's the skill that is being assessed so it's much more intentional um and another good way to think about it too when you start thinking about why the shift is kind of if we were to go in for glaucoma surgery right uh i don't know about you but i don't i don't want to necessarily go to a doctor who is wanting to use practices that are five even ten year old practices i want to go to a doctor who is up to par working on current research when it comes to that glaucoma surgery so that i can ensure that my eye is going to get the best services and best chances

053of moving forward right so we too have shifted into that mindset of ensuring we are moving forward with best practices when it comes to those changes with grading and learning as a school district when i was speaking of the uh rubric at four our teachers worked through a rubric first to get to that at a glance document this is just an example of a bit more of an overarching thought process behind those rubrics so this helps our teachers think through what is a beginning level question um or how do i assess a student at a beginning level versus developing versus proficient and then what does something that is exceeding really look like so this is not the rubric that everyone uses this rubric language just helps them be able to then transpose this over to

054the content area and the skills that they are working with students on for proficiency so now that we have our rubrics developed or at a glance documents our teachers are using formative and summative assessments in order to inform instruction and students of their learning we really get to that third part which is grading and reporting so how does this then end up in the gradebook and how do we report things out for parents and students so again this really to me is hopefully you see this and in the slides up here when we show a traditional uh gradebook from a couple years ago here in burlington to now uh great our grading practices have shifted where if i was wanting to give you some feedback around cooking our former tests that we would have taken

055in biology class on the cells right here's your 80 on cells overall um this would be the top paragraph saying you need to work on your cooking skills um now we're wanting to give much more specific feedback and instead of just talking about your cooking skills we want students to know it's actually the needing that is your meeting skills behind working with bread that you really need to improve on when it comes to your cooking skills much more specific and then it even gets even more specific than that but you can see that the level of feedback for students is much more specific than it would have been in the past essential skill thought process is that we focus on proficiency which is that grade level standard and it's very specific around that skill development

056um and students would demonstrate their level of proficiency at different moments in time potentially so we would have also all taken an assessment on the same day so tuesday is when we're going to take the assessment for cells that would have been what we maybe traditionally have done in the past what we focus on more so now is when the teachers feel the students are ready to take a summative right i'm ready to go to the dmv to take that driver's test that's when the student then would take that summative so not all students necessarily would take a summative at the same time the teacher and the students will work together to determine when is the right moment for them to be able to take that summative and demonstrate their level of proficiency in the

057past the traditional thought process would have been just accumulation of the entire unit all of us are going to take that assessment and we're moving on if we if we have students that don't perform that well on a summative uh in an essential skill mindset which is where we are now if i don't perform that well on that summative and i'm not proficient a student does have the ability to do a redo retake to be able to show their level of proficiency at another time because it's really not about trying to ensure that on tuesday is when we're gonna make sure that you know how to uh drive a car right if i if i don't pass at the dmv i go back i practice and then i get to come back to the dmv

058and take the assessment again same concept we're wanting students to be able to reach proficiency and ensure that we get them to that proficiency and it doesn't necessarily have to all take place always at the same time so when we put it all together the evidence piece at the very bottom there that is what the teachers reflect again that's that formative and summative data it then is data being collected for a specific sub-skill those sub-skills then make up our essential skills our essential skills then make up the overall class grade now you can see that in the the grade book we use numbers one two three and four those are the numbers that you would see in a gradebook at percher middle school right now so there is no eighty percent twenty percent uh any

059number anything that relates to percentages anymore it is just a proficiency is a three and that relates to the rubric language uh and proficiency is that grade level standard so that's always the goal if you're exceeding proficiency then a student really scores four and then if you're still working on getting to grade level proficiency you would be scoring a one or two um insufficient evidence is an ie that to us is we don't have enough evidence right now in order to determine where you're at with a specific standard or with a specific sub-skill now overall we want to keep letter grades at the middle school and high school so we are doing that right now at the middle school we do have a committee that is a k-12 committee that split off then into k-5

060and 6-12 that committee develops what we feel would be the best plan of action when it comes to what rates we assign to this work at the very end of a grading period so what we came up with as a team is this grading scale i.e then would of course convert over into a failing score at the end of a grading period so when there isn't enough evidence then that the student wouldn't pass the class otherwise we're going with the um eight plus is students who are exceeding that grade level standard proficient would be a developing as a b and beginning as a c this might be tweaked a bit as we progress through this school year as the middle school is a bit of a pilot this year prior to implementing this at the

061high school level this is an example of the difference between an essential skill uh gradebook that you would see on the parent side so the one on the left is showing what an essential skill grades would look like um for your student this really is um real time for us that's why you'll see that the little book is showing up where um some of those skills and proficiencies haven't been assessed yet and then over on the right is a traditional report card or or great book that you would see so when you look at the gradebook in the orange right the traditional report card or grading piece that you see in skyward what would you say that that student needs to work on the most this is a question filling in wrapping any other thoughts

062homework fw 3.1 ws right i know what that is right any other thoughts there on the right guided notes what about on the left remember proficiency is grade level standards so that's a three and then beginning developing would be a one or two and exceeding the gradle standard would be a four what would you say a student needs to work on that's on the left number lines absolute value absolute value ratios ratios and proportions yep blank good question barry asked if the blanks are unassessed and the answer is yes so it we're you know we're just a few weeks into school still so not all standards have been assessed yet but you can see that on the left is much more specific towards actual proficiency of skills where on the right it um involves everything

063from participation is in the academic grade you could you see class participation there in the middle there's a participation of five percent at the top um a lot of homework is playing into the student's grade so when we shift over to this essential skills work we also separated out behaviors from academics so in the past our traditional report card would have included all of those behaviors into the gradebook so when we really say oh your student is you know got to be in math um that b in math really was computed up of everything under the sun when it comes to my my homework which is really my work ethic of getting my my the responsibility of getting things done participation in class did i do my notes all of those things are playing into

064the grade on the left the only thing that's being assessed on the left is actual academic standards so we have taken out the behaviors from the um academic side now we are not reporting those we are simply saying that every time that you put something in the gradebook it really should be representing one thing it can't be everything under the sun because otherwise it's not very specific feedback so when we do any grading here in burlington everything is very specific and focused on one skill at a time and that way we as teachers are able to inform our instruction students are able to understand where they're at in their growth process in learning and parents also have a stronger understanding of what their students need to work on and or what they are reaching proficiency

065on at that time so i just referenced if you're separating behaviors from academics this is something that our k-12 essential skill committee put together last year this is called our past work and learning habits as a team we narrowed it down to be respectable be responsible be ready so those are the three essential skills for the behavior side and then the sub skills underneath are the ones in grade so you can see be respectful as be respectful when it comes to our interactions and our attitude so in the grade book we do have a class that is called basd work and learning habits so you can see here we have taken out those behaviors from the academic side but we're still wanting to report them out so that students know what they need to work

066on when it comes to working learning habits but also that their families can also see that as well so here you could also gather what what is the student proficient in versus what do they need to work on efforts what they would need to work on right where their interactions and their respect towards staff and classmates is right on par what we're hoping for they just need to work on their effort when it comes to completing all necessary tasks within the school and then the ones where you see blanks they have not been assessed yet but overall just wanting to be able to hit on those three topics so again what our curriculum is what we're working on with that what it is that we do when it comes to assessment with formative and summative

067assessments and then what our writing then looks like on the side of skyward on how we ensure that we're providing feedback and information to families and students when it comes to to the final grade any questions i have one so when you have the one two three four or is it always going to be a whole number evaluation of this substance yep so uh this was this was a strong debate for a while among our teacher team as well wanting to be able to have more levels of increments research would say otherwise that when we really need to decide if if a student is proficient they're proficient if they're not they're not quite there right so if they're not quite there it's a two and that doesn't that's a two right now right so i'm

068still developing um but i always have a chance to reach that proficiency um either in my practice leading up to a summative and or on the summative if i'm not proficient i have the ability to demonstrate again by doing a redo retake after some additional practice took place so there are not any half increments but when you do see it in the gradebook you'll probably see you see number system says a 2.3 there that's because it is taking that the additive inverse and the absolute value and then using the number line those are three different sub skills that are all components of the number system so it's going to take all of these subscales for number system and let you know what your overall score would be for number system so that's where you would

069see a number that is not a whole number [Music] um good question so he asked if skyward supports this uh level of the gradebook yes and yes and no um so there's still some tweaks that is on skyward side of things that skyward wants it to be traditional still in some ways so we just have to work around those tweets but we've been um ironing those out as we go so again this year is really implementation at the middle school and throughout this school year we'll see if you know the implementation is is ensuring that it's doing everything that we wanted to do and if it isn't we'll make some tweets to it this year you're learning about next year but it is much more user-friendly for the students the staff and families when it

070comes to really showing you what it is the student can and cannot do or knows and still needs to work on when it comes to proficiency of grade level standards what's the feedback been this far with staff parents i know it's early um so there was yep so there was some there was some confusion from parents a little bit with uh formatives being in the grade book because formatives are really no count because it's for learning so a formative should not penalize the student's overall grade the only thing that would play into a student's grade are summative assessments so when they see a formative in the gradebook those are showing up as no count so the team had a conversation of do we just put summatives in the grade book so there's not confusion of

071oh wait a minute why did why are you saying this doesn't count does that mean my student didn't turn something in it's like no they it's just we're not coming practice towards students overall proficiency so we're making tweaks like that right now um and really um taking taking feedback from from families our staff it is an adjustment for them you know it's a very different way of grading uh kircher especially does something eighth grade teachers they've had a behind the scenes practice gradebook um for the last two years because the plan was to roll this out last year but with cobin we decided to wait a year so they have had a behind the scenes gradebook to to play around with in the last few years but now it's really rubber to the road and

072we're utilizing it now they do see huge benefit in it because it has really helped them understand where individual students are at in their learning in the classroom compared to a traditional way of assessing i guess from an accountability standpoint [Music] what do you mean by that i guess so student fails [Music] i know we're only focused correct so we have um we have some overarching procedures and practices that are set in place when it comes to reuse retakes so i can't just come in and take an assessment not have uh really put any effort into it and then tomorrow can i just take it again now that i got to see what was on the assessment i don't know if that's what you're getting at um so that is that is not how we're

073going about things when it comes to that what is our goal is that a student doesn't take that assessment until they're ready right um and our staffer are giving summatives when they feel like the class is ready right uh and then if i don't score very well on the summative i can share that there's multiple sub skills that are being assessed on a summative i might have been proficient in three of them but two of them i was not so if i wanted to bring up my score on those two and be able to show you that i can do proficient on the work i have to first do practice probably meet with you um it's up to each each teacher on how they want to support the student to do go back to formative

074again so obviously i want to learning i have to do so i have to show that i'm putting in the effort there to continue to put in some practice just like if i went to the dmv i failed the driver's test i got to go home and practice some more with family members or something like that right before i take the driver's test again so same kind of a concept here for us so that's where i would say that accountability comes in for students so they're doing a really great job of ensuring that we really analyze what proficiency really means and then ultimately at the very end which will be a different topic of presentation at some time but what's going to be really awesome is that our book language are diagnostics like iready and

075not pre-act and then all of our seed assessments so the ect ect aspire forward exam all of those are going to be able to talk to each other so if i'm looking at kevin burt for example if i'm proficient in all of my essential skills within the classroom work but i'm not proficient on the board exam or my diagnostics then we need to make some adjustments to our understanding of proficiency in the classroom um and or we're able to really see if 80 of our students are underperforming on key ideas and details we know exactly where that is within our curriculum in order to make some adjustments to that to hopefully bring up that skill for all students then jill i can say one of their thoughts and i'm sure we have more after the

076meeting so board members will probably revisit this at some points you know you know you don't get all your questions answered tonight this is a major shift and a lot of work but my question is other districts using this kind of uh assessment methodology we're not out there no we no if we if we didn't start uh making this shift we would we would start to um fall behind in the sense of what is best practice so this is very common across school districts the only differences i would say are more so are if school districts decide to keep letter grades not keep letter grades those kind of things at the high school level some school districts have decided to move away from letter grades and then they met a lot of resistance from families

077because families don't really understand what what a p is or you know they get nervous on transcripts things like that we didn't want to have that worry on students or families part so we are staying with the letter grades at the upper grade levels we're also infusing letter grades starting in the middle school wouldn't necessarily need to do that but wanting to ensure that families start to understand how it all works prior to going into the high school where grades do matter towards graduation for for high school etc you know if you want to take the acp all parts oh oh do i anticipate that happening with right you just have to work on that area yeah um that's a really good question kevin um something for us to pay attention to and when we

078have conversations with people in dpi to kind of push on that um it is not my understanding that is that that's a route that they're going right now um but that that is something that would be really interesting to be able to hopefully go down you know in years to come kevin if i made this interesting though act about five years back did change their retake policy to allow to create a super score so in effect from that i could go and take an a-c-t you know five or six times and then use my highest score i export each yeah and now they're allowing it in each area so it's an interesting journey that i think actually has been on and i agree with johnny right we haven't heard that yet but i wouldn't be

079surprised it's it's an interesting question i think different colleges recognize the super sports right it's kind of a hodgepodge of assessment some colleges don't really use it uh right now that is the model that we have at the middle school we want to see if it um ends up being what we do want to move forward with at the high school it potentially will see exactly as i showed it potentially would shift a little bit based on what you feel like is is best for students but right now yes it would be this model and then the ie would turn into a an f if it's there's no not enough evidence for us to give you a grade so a plus middle school yes right does it so so if you're so a c c

080is not what i think of as a traditional c which is average that's not what c that you're just is to show some great modelling is that correct so that's how i think of it completely all different yes that'd be a correct way to think about it yep if you only pay attention to a student's overall grade hopefully they understand that b is you know i i'm i'm not quite there um but b is is pretty pretty solid right so that's the developing right because that's what we would equate um our essential skill work too so we're wanting to ensure that the way that it all computes out at the very end is what one would assume without having to worry so much about weight so what's the 3.2 um so as a parent you

081just can focus still on that overall grade and feel like you understand what a seed would mean to you in the traditional sense would still carry over to now so we're really wanting to ensure that that kind of a thought process remains the same so it's not confusing for families because really realistically to us we don't want the conversation to be worried about a grade the whole basis of moving into a essential skill mindset is that our hope and goal is that students are focused on growth and learning and ensuring that they're working towards grade level proficiency that's how our teachers talk to students um we are we have moved away from you got a c on that or you only got a 60 on that right like that is not what our focus is

082on our focus is on hey we still need to work on the ratios and proportions like let me pull you into a strategy group so we can really understand your thinking so i can kind of diagnose where the issue is when it comes to number sense we're pretty solid there so our conversations behind the scenes is more so focused on ensuring we're getting students to grade level proficiency while wanting to ensure parents aren't worried about at the very end what grade the student would get that makes a lot of sense but what about when it comes time colleges are only going to see those letter grades so everything that is in the darkest grade there where it says the proficiency scale that's just on our end in skyward so on a transcript a student would

083still have a letter grade because that is what we don't want families to have to worry about and get anxious about letter grades are letter grades they're still there in the transcript just like they are now it will not look different the traditional letter grades are not traditional when you say traditional f those are traditional that the college should look at or are you are they going to see so a b c but then thinking a c is um is an average score when it's not english in i would say colleges understand this but i also think that that's a hard one um susan to really want to try to compute this over because for example if you were to go to pewaukee right now their letter grades are a b b c c d

084you know like at the high school and then you'll go to another high school that has a a a plus a a minus b right and then you go to another high school that is using something totally different so it's colleges don't put that much weight in bearing on a student's transcript it's one element um and we just simply want to ensure that we don't set our students up to be in a position where our grading scale hinders their ability and or doesn't show their true level of understanding of the standards yeah so one of the biggest barriers to change is here and here i'm surviving the same things parents especially in those early years they grew up with abcd you know et cetera what are we doing proactively to explain this to them rather

085than before our time comes up because in their minds i will one shot this i screw this up my kids room for life what are we doing to explain this appearance so they understand how this is supposed to change well our hope is that the the change they'll vary is more in internal where at the very end you still have letter grades um they're i mean they're not what they're what they're just unsure about is when they see something in the grade book they're assuming it impacts the grade right because that's what i always used to before so we're just saying okay maybe we we don't need to put in the formative assessments into the gradebook if that's confusing appearance that's really easy to make an adjustment on we want to ensure that when they

086look in the gradebook they're like oh i understand that all of this stuff that you put in here as teachers is impacting my students what are great which is information out with families and then nick um ryan principal at the middle school has shared information with families and as they come up through the elementary school the elementary schools are also going to be modeling using the same language same numbers same you know so that understanding is going to flow through k 12. so our hope is that it really is something that is easy for families to wrap their heads around um which again to me i the the scene informative in the grade book that was a no count um isn't like that didn't happen before there were things teachers would have put in last

087year that they would say it was no count because um at culture homework wasn't created um towards towards the overall grade but some some staff still put homework into the great book right we're just trying to simplify things as much as possible um and if we decide to performatives then families and and student and uh students can always reach back up to the teacher to understand they're the best ones to reach back out to and say hey can you explain her you know how this piece of evidence really plays into my student's overall score um and then the teachers are going to be very articulate on being able to explain that we may have had some branding physicians in my own home yeah yeah is it fair to say gel to that a typical progression

088for a student during the semester might be starting at one for for example and then move upward as they gain those sub skills towards a two and then potentially a three and a four right and they wouldn't necessarily start with a three and go back to one because once they've gained the sub skill it'd be very unusual or impossible to go back to them um not necessarily so the biggest the biggest thing that we're trying to ensure also is that a student has the ability for that skill to transfer over from one concept or thought to another so what our staff are tending to also focus on is ensuring that we spiral standards back in throughout the school year so our sub skills so it might be a sub skill that we focus on a

089lot in september and i'm proficient in september right um i like to refer to it as like packing a parachute right like so super important that i kept it correctly right because if i jump out of the airplane it's not going to go so well if i didn't pack it very well so great so two shots that's good so um so i'm gonna i'm gonna ensure that i'm proficient at packing my parachute before i go get on the claim right to go three months later i'm going to want to reassess and make sure that i can still pack the parachute correctly right before i go jump off the plane again so that's that spirulina standards back in ensuring that over time a student can maintain being proficient so i might be one in september and

090then i might be proficient to three in november and then i might be a one again in january it just means i need to practice again right so that i can hopefully hold that standard and be able to be have that transfer skill no matter what time of year it is that's the ultimate goal is that that that skill transfers and i i'm simply proficient because i can do it no matter what hope that makes sense yeah i've taught a long time creating has always been something that people have talked about and changed and talked about change and i remember think you should um things to try so um any other questions [Music] any other board members questions again we can just re-circle back on this major shift just for a while yeah i wouldn't

091say i i would say all you know as a school district and as a team our staff have done a great job really analyzing the standards and ensuring they have a strong understanding of the curriculum that's the ultimate goal is that it really is ensuring that students feel um supported and that we are able to really grow students in the learning progression and that they have a stronger understanding of where they're at in their learning no i gotchas the third item on the information discussion agenda is a special education project i understand okay mine will be much shorter than jill because i don't have as much detail and i don't have anything to present so um yes project win is what i need and you all receive just a brief handout this is just kind

092of an annual recap of where the program's at now where it's what's going down and as always i want to thank the administration and the board for the continued support for this program since it's been established because it is a program that supports the students in our district that traditionally cannot have not been able to be for one reason or another integrated in the building of their with their classmates um but over the years since it's been in existence we've had a very varied group of students come through and i can share with you tonight some of the success and the continued progress that's going on but the program obviously was in the third floor of karcher that no longer exists so thanks to your support it has been relocated to the lower level of

093the 209 building the large classroom that is there the activity lunchroom setting that's there along with the sensory room two calm rooms and the office space is very inviting very enriched once they're just starting to take their own ownership of the space so as the students that are there are claiming it i would hope to get some pictures shared with you so that as they take that ownership and kind of make it their own it's really becoming a nice learning environment for all of the students that are there as far as the win students right now we have one fourth grader one sixth grader who is currently being integrated for a couple classes over at carter two eighth graders one of those are also being integrated to culture so the location of the 209 building

094is doing well to foster that relocation of those students back with their classmates and peers when they are able to for the classes that they're able to so right now staff are kind of taking a hike around the construction and through things once that site is finished that will definitely make a easier access to the other buildings but that's it's a work in progress and then we also have one ninth grader there um the cloud the program still runs from 9am to 245 daily and the goals for those students that are there are to you know get the content the core classes that they need but eventually to increase over time their participation back with their typical peers in their home school and that integration is constantly talked about between the staff and the parents

095and the students themselves so we never want them to say they've closed the door on going back to you know the high school or going back to wherever they may have been performing before that also simultaneously this year to the wynn students being in that program and that building we now have what was room one at kircher which was another type of alternative program for students that were either still credit deficient as a senior or needed a few things credit recovery kind of episodes or that for one reason or another they weren't quite quite ready for they didn't meet the criteria or didn't need the intensity of win but they also needed something more than what's in the building and they weren't quite fox river consortium students they just kind of had that gray area

096in the middle right now we have those former room one students from karcher utilizing the activity room at wynn and their classroom they meet from 7 30 to 10 30 daily and we have two 10th graders there right now one 11th grader and three 12th graders and these students some of them also return to burlington high school here to get more classes throughout their afternoon some of them are on more of a remote or a virtual component and some are doing you know they're doing direct instruction from the teacher they're doing credit recovery the two seniors are very close to being done and will be hopefully receiving their diplomas within the course of this year possibly by the semester um and there are two two teachers and one assistant that are supporting the all of

097the students that are over there and then one of those teachers also goes over now to the fox river consortium at the old district office and works with the students with ieps in that setting as well two afternoons a week which for other students have left the building just to kind of give you a recap i didn't put this in your original document because i kind of thought about it last night actually about former students that were part of the original kind of the original win classes that they were there one of our original students um from the first years of win successfully completed his at the age of 21 and went to the pack house for his final year of programming and graduated last year in may with a great celebration of family and

098staff that supported him all the way from three to twenty one so that was nice to see that he made it to that point and did very well leaving us four of our former win students are currently successful here at burlington high school integrated with their age mates in this environment and then one of our other students just for informational only has been parentally and company placed outside of our area but we still maintain contact with orderly meetings with her facility but that's a residential placement that the parents have chosen to take on at this point so but otherwise the program is i feel knock on wood being very successful in its new location and the building and the room and the space that you guys afforded to put there in the basement of the

099lower level the 209 building kids working very very well questions for me let's start right we're in the lower level the lower level is completely done in that respect um there's been maybe occasionally you know the students will say oh it's raining outside no they're just watching the brick on the outside you know it's one of those things the noise hasn't seemed to impede them the locks aren't all working with the sensors and things like that so sometimes there's you know getting get access to the building some of the itinerant staff that come and go from the building are kind of knocking on the doors or making phone calls to staff to say come let us in because you know we still can't do that until the system is all up and running but that's

100the only interruption that we've seen of any sort very very minor i think they like the activity around the building board members any other questions okay thank you thank you thank you our last item for discussion is health policy 5310. review and explanation hey for our students everybody do appreciate that um so i was asked to come and speak and just kind of review with them the forward policy 5310 health services so this policy um was adapted november of 2020 and replaces our former board policy which was number 333 called parent rights and district programs activities that policy 333 was adopted in november of 07 and reviewed again in o8 which is exactly the same language so this policy has been around been around for a while [Music] i want us i want to point

101out part of that also talks about staff trainings and making sure that staff are trained so that they can observe students for conditions that indicate signs of physical health conditions that may be pertinent to their ability to fully access the district's programming and again every year our health aides undergo training in seizures diabetics um all kinds of health issues asthmatics we do bloodborne pathogens we do cpr aed first aid diastat glucagon all kinds of trainings to help our students with health issues here in school so so that part is something that that we definitely do um i know you received the packet that did have some information um from the attorney for neola and i just wanted to point out you know a few of these things point four this this policy does not authorize

102any school district examinations at all it nearly requires notification parents if any examinations are to be planned so so there it doesn't allow anything um and it prohibits the implementation of any exams without notice so this policy much like the federal statute prohibits the type of examinations described without parental notification so this is intended to protect parental rights conserving their children while they're at school this policy language is consistent with and mandated by by the federal law and um and again originally it um came apart right here and from o2 was the original statutory language um january of o2 and then it was revised in middleton so this policy and its requirements predates coded has nothing to do with uh with anything related to koved this was this was done pre-coveted it started in o2

103so i just wanted to um address some of those questions and make sure again remind you of the packing and the information that you have some of the palettes some of the things that we programming that we do in school health services is only with parent consent um we you know have our steel smile program parents have to opt into that program so it's only done once parent-centered permission slip for that um there was some talk about the high school doing blood drives whether that would fit in this policy um something like that again meeting parent consent you know there are certain other um sometimes special education students who need cares where we are you know toileting and delivering and caring for caring for those students and those parents are well aware of what we're

104doing we have a plan um and usually orders from physicians um to go forward and care for those students so um so that's really the just of this plan the best policy and the reasoning for it and that it is you know federally mandated that we have it in place i mean feedback any questions [Music] yes i'll specifically say to paul on kevin's comment um just members of the public notes we've had a number of inquiries about this specific policy and frankly i'm when i read it i was a little confused so i think but i understand too that's not a reflection on jail or neola we're following federal law here so we're just trying to make sure we're complied with what the federal law is we want all right we're going to move on

105to uh item 11 in our agenda tonight items for action there's nine of these um but i think they're actually they're overwhelmed pretty quickly it seems like a lot but they're some of these we can get through pretty quickly but we'll see i shouldn't say that uh the first one is um special education seclusion restraint report and we do this every year so kathy merlo our director of special special education um would you present again on this number again you have um you received this report i believe in your packet and the major difference that i really wanted to point out or notify you of regarding the difference in the years i put the comparison of the last two years in because last year the total number of seclusions was 15 total number of number

106of physical restraints was 13 and it involved six different students with throughout the district the following the year prior to that we looked at you know 75 seclusions 66 restraints and nine different students involved um i i really feel in talking with staff and talking with area districts that are the policy of how they were for performing our whole instructional system last year with coven everyone was social distance everyone was spaced out we were in smaller groups we had much more and more staff supervising smaller groups of students i think that's what contributes to the drastic difference um i would love to say that we're going to maintain that you know going forward and that's how it's going to be from here on out that we're going to have smaller numbers but i can tell

107you unfortunately i think we've already surpassed this number for as far as we are in the school year just because we're back to and kids are back in social groups and larger groups and things like that but um as we follow always we follow the same procedure that was put into place as of march of 2020 and that's how our staff have continued even reporting this last year's numbers i mean they followed the same policy and the same things that are written by the state of wisconsin and put into law as far as how we report and the reporting documents have not changed they are continued there so parents still get that information and staff communicate and re-affirm every time there is any kind of incident that involves a seclusion or a restraint of a

108student any questions kathy you can stay there because you're on the next agenda before you move on board members that entertain a motion to approve this report okay emotions are made in second any discussion hearing none all in favor say aye aye opposed okay all right please yeah and the next one is that regarding the dpi special education policies and for cheap procedures and as they are written we propose that we support them and follow them on an annual basis and we continue to do that i hope we get out the wisconsin department of public instruction standards for special education okay emotions that may even seconded any discussion hearing nunn all in favor please say aye aye opposed me all right um emotions approved um thanks kathy i think that's all we have thank you

109i think we're moving on to uh ruth shetty and we're gonna talk about this is really exciting no seriously um so every year we have to do um some short-term cash flow burn because there are um periods of the year because of the timing of our funding where we [Music] need additional cash to be able to pay our bills so for example our state aid we get quarterly september december march and june and then the tax money we don't get until um like the levy for this school year first payment isn't due until january 20th february and then the coming august so typically november through until we get those tax payments in january we have to start term by every year to be able to operate this year we are borrowing two million dollars which

110is less than half of what we borrowed this past year so a couple reasons last year was just a really uncertain year so we in hindsight maybe borrowed a little more than we needed to but also because we've been able to build our fund balance up that is allowing us to borrow less now i want to give a caution fund balance is not cash so don't equate those two okay cash is a part of what contributes to our fund balance level but they are not one in the same if you remember from the annual meeting fund balance is the difference between our assets and our liabilities or the accumulation of revenue and expenses from year years so cash is a part of fund balance but they are not one and the same so again it's

111contributing toward us to us to be able to levy less sorry borrow less we did use corals and brady to help us with this process like we do every year there was a summary of the bids in in the board box but we received six bids typically we've always gone with the low bid so this year the low bid was from rw beard with an effective interest rate of 0.33 like that is the lowest i've ever encountered um the highest was two percent so that interest cost is sixty two hundred dollars so i would ask the board to approve that final resolution which we were able to get in orders now to approve that borrowing unless you have any additional questions and then we would need a role club precise language in the phrasal verb

112um yeah that title of what was it yeah i'm yes please i move we go ahead with resolution authorizing temporary borrowing and so on a discussion hearing none i guess i understand we're going to do a roll call wrote some topic peter yes barry yes yes yes kevin yes roseanne yes susan yes thank you yeah i think you're uh are you okay i should i should have known apparent transportation contracts yes thank you so this is for the families that attend parochial schools by statute we have to provide transportation to our parochial school families that islam is the prokio school is located within five miles of our school district boundaries so the ones that are in town we transport them on the same yellow school buses that we do the students that attend our basd

113schools there is one school mount zion over by lake geneva where it does not make sense to do that so another option is for us to enter into parent transportation contracts to pay the families to transport themselves because it's much less expensive so this is just a formality approving those contracts there's two options for the um the amount spelled out in the statute and it's the greater of one is five dollars times the number of miles the family moves from to school which is always a really low number or it's based on the per pupil cost from the previous year which is the case here so we have students in 15 families um the per pupil or per student amount is 737.45 um so the grand total would be 17 271 and 40 cents for

114the year asking you to approve those contracts please we approve the appropriate school parent transportation contracts [Music] okay emotions be made in second any discussion is this number this year greater than it was over last year it is because the previous year we had a few number of students running during copen so that did bring that per pupil amount up okay i want to emphasize i think you've seen this before but this is a state statute it is we have no discretion on this one i mean we could send a regular bus drop and it's obviously going to be a lot more money than this yeah we have a choice between a and b yes uh any other discussion board members are hearing none i'll call for a vote on favor say hi all right

115thank you ruth yeah thank you uh food service man from buildings and grounds and i'm guessing dan boccock's here well thank you folks for having me tonight um i first wanted to give a brief uh background on the food service bands uh basd routinely replaces its fans every five years for the food service uh the food service bands have bought through fund 50 which is not through the general fund that's why it would not show up on our capital improvements plan um so then generally after the food service ban is bought the food service ban that is in place is then not recycled but cycled through our district maintenance fans and that's why in board docs you saw the band that ultimately would be being replaced in the district which is a 2001 florida econoline

116with roughly 215 000 miles and probably has more holes in it than a block of swiss cheese we've been having lots of issues with it this past year with breakdowns and currently our district electrician jess warren is the one that drives it around the district with our routine replacement i went off to bid which was provided to you on board docs with the rfp as you all know the chip shortages that we've been going through everything else in the chain of distributing distributions throughout everywhere in the global industries it's been difficult to get anybody to bid i reached out to several different folks to see if they even had the opportunity to bid or if they had a vehicle on their lot that they could give us a proposal for luckily i was able to

117get chris miller who actually had one coming in and the motors to give us a bid and give us a price with a discount for um government purchases um i did reach out to lynch uh and they were not able to bid at this moment um they weren't able to give any pricings for 2022 and they told me that we probably wouldn't see the van until 2023 regardless if we placed it today i also then did some research to see if there was used fans out there um i did find some used bands that were 2019's with 20 000 miles on them that were more expensive than what was bid out to us brand new so with after going out to rfp and with the routine replacement that the district goes through it would be

118my recommendation to the board that we approve the bid for miller motors for the new 2021 ford transit for the sum of 697.50 do you guys have any questions yes so going forward can we put something in these sorts of rfps that they've been providing and they're going to alternate like we settled into 2024 because that's what i asked them as if they had anything on the lawn and then from my understanding is that the floor transit uh production line has been shut down for the last seven months so i understand that i just want to make sure that yeah i i talk to each individual then i talked to martin and union grove that's why because i couldn't get anybody sometimes just started calling people to see if the other folks had either something

119on their lot that they could practice bid for or if they could provide us one for one that we could have built so yeah i have a question about should we rotate the band every five years is this part of the service contract bear mark is that built into the contract we have to provide the vehicle so it's not we only pay them for the meals themselves we are responsible for providing the the vehicle so the vehicle is not further and vehicles correct distribution so the food comes into high school and then it's distributed by units yes they use it to distribute our meals for like project quinn for uh fox river consortium that's at uh 100 north king street they could get their large bulk supplies in at the high school there is small

120refrigerations at the other schools but their large majority of their bulk materials come into the high school and then they deliver it out yeah the 150 is a fund that operates in a surplus and we have to use that money specifically for board members need a discussion hearing none i'll call for a vote all in favor say aye aye opposed nay all right uh motion passes thanks dan we have made four items on for action our board operations the first one is our first reading of policy zero one six seven point three public comment and orbeez this is following our discussion at our last special club meeting was that september 27th um i guess i'll draw it out if there's any discussion on this i think we can go through it pretty thoroughly at our

121special working um i guess [Music] if there is [Music] section members of the public to give their address when they speak they can be we're asking them to put it if you look at the top of the agenda it says when they fill out the sheet they'll put their address there but that's not distributed to the public so well it's called the conference so yes right right they wouldn't have to publicly state their address but i think it's desirable so i think we have to amend the motion if we're going to make that an amendment to the motions of making second any discussion on that amendment okay hearing none um all in favor of the amendment opposed to the amendment the amendment is passed uh any further discussion on the motion itself as amended hearing

122none all in favor of motion say hi opposed name okay thank you so emotions that's the first reading of that public comment uh our policies require two readings so we're gonna vote again in a future meeting before it becomes an official change to our policy um let's make sure i got this covered here oh we need to do the public comment form also which is part was that part of the policy yes okay so i don't think we need to take action on that but i just want to make sure everyone's aware of that we have a new public comment form that's attached and the members of the public can do it too they just technically i would potentially like to see but this might be a technical order i'd i mean like so the

123public could type it up beforehand or you'd like to see we'll just have someone at the entrance absolutely we had talked about our special meeting that we're no longer going to take board comments using more comments at basd.k12ws um i guess i'd entertain a motion to discontinue use of that using individual board email addresses for communication purposes and just continue the courthouse email address to reduce second okay motion's invading seconded uh to discontinue using word comments email and you use individual board members emails or corresponds with the board through by people oppose me uh next up next item for action is board listening sessions and we had talked about again at our special meeting that we were going to use a process change where we were going to hold a special meeting the first thursday

124of the month so that'd be four days before our regular monthly board meeting and during that time we'll hold a public comment section or listening section for members of the public and one key criteria is that we would work to make sure that the agenda is out so members of the public would be aware of what's going to be discussed at the following monday's meeting although i'll disclaim that it's possible that for the other agenda i would say could pop up between the thursday monday but we'll do our best to make sure that members of the public are applied to agenda and entertain a motion to make that change and i guess it's really more of a standing practice for our board how much we go forward with the board listing sessions on the first

125thursday of the month preceding regular monthly school board game okay okay emotions any discussion i'll make a comment i just wanted to emphasize that this is something we're going to try and we're trying to improve our ability to solicit comments from the public and give opportunity board members to consider that before we hear items and we'll see how it goes we're working on it so we may consider something in the future if it doesn't work so that if we do listing sessions yeah thanks susan for that clarification so like tonight we had public comments as part of our agenda that would be the thursday before but again um let me emphasize this too we're going to work to have that agenda out so folks will know what's going to be discussed monday and it's possible

126we may have administrative um presentations so people can know what's going to be discussed or what's what's part of this any other discussion hearing none i'll take a vote uh all in favor say that all right opposed name excellent that fast um the final item for action uh there's a lot here but this is uh mostly uh technical revisions to our policies that are recommended by nova um being policy changes this is our first reading and i so very wisely pointed out that we're not taking promotion but we should do the reading on this [Music] i'm not sure if i'm going to read all of these do we need to read no i just announced again i guess one thing i'd like to clear my um technical updates are almost always scripted from obviously legal

127corrections that are made and they're not changes to policy per se unless required so we're not tweaking anything in here except as we're required yeah thanks for that clarification too other board members have questions or comments on this first reading all right that concludes the items for action um future meeting dates steve would take us through what's going on well i guess i can do it we had a steve already mentioned before october 25 a special school board meeting and i forgot the topic that came up earlier tonight and then uh our uh november 8th would be our next monthly board meeting but i assume before that we're having a thursday because we just changed our policies keeping me on the on the straight and narrow very appreciated november 4. would be the next public

128comments section or whatever our first inaugural board listening public comment sessions um okay just you know i just uh steve just informed me it won't be here in the auditorium but we'll be informed there's an nhs ceremony that night here so we're going to find another location for the public comment section but we'll give notice as much ahead as possible that being said i entertain a motion to return we typically i mean the monthly meeting will be at seven o'clock like normal and we haven't set the time for the forward listening session that i've assumed but please check the uh notices before uh yeah motion main second any discussion hearing that all in favor say yeah opposed name we're adjourned thanks everyone for coming tonight