04/28/2025 School Board Meeting

001want to send me the link so I can just click on [Music] So I was talking to an old old old mentor and friend today. He was a first sergeant in in my battalion uh that went to Desert Storm and he was a uh um he became a superintendent in Florida which is a completely different structure than than up here. Um there yeah they do it by county and uh we were talking about school board positions and all that kind of stuff and what's important and uh he said he would be happy uh if we were to do any kind of a like a guest speaker or anything Exit platform. Okay. So, I'm sitting at my computer. I can see that you logged on. Oh, I just talked. Yeah. Do you want to open up

002a word document and just start typing? Yeah. [Music] Yes. They can actually see me, I guess. So, you've been typing? Yeah. So, I can hear but I also heard that door like slam. You can hear my typing. Yeah. I wouldn't think up there you could hear you can't tell where I'm talking from change to the other one. Is he excited for those? [Music] Are you a law? [Music] How's it going? Hello. So, let's just congratulations. You gentlemen have any questions about anything? [Music] You're all set up and running. Okay, good question. [Music] One of those things don't know the question and then you realize that the question like at the intro meeting they didn't give you any homework or anything especially with all the acronyms and all the balance of unbalanc my first two years

003when I didn't understand what an acronym was I say I still do it sometimes but I What is DAC? Yeah. Yeah. We all all businesses online have those acronyms. There's ton of them in farming. They like the joke at least when you get overwhelmed with acronyms. It's like that's exactly what you need is another TLA. Three letter across. [Music] I thought maybe you might make a Jordy with the way the weather was. Yeah, they took away my spot when I got here. I like it. Extra spot. I didn't even think to message you guys because I was like, "Oh, they know that they canled my babysitters." [Music] That's funny. Is there a cushion anywhere? You want a blanket? I just need something to sit. I just don't like I feel like a little tiny child

004here. You want another chair? Well, I just They sit so so low. [Applause] It's a couple inches higher, too. I am 530. All right. All right. Good evening, everyone. Uh first and foremost, let's get some business out of the way. It seems like uh we are in a new era when it comes to weather and we have to shut everything down uh because a storm's coming. So, um I'll give you the uh details. We're going to get hit right around 6:20. Uh right down the hallway here is our uh room for this area for tornado. So, if we do hear the sirens, we will vacate and we'll go down there. Um, and then do what we need to do and then wait from there. Uh, my last check, I got a tornado watch. Um, but

005we did end up cancing events tonight just because it was supposed to hit at the heart of everything. Plus, we didn't want 300 middle schoolers running every which way in the middle of a storm. Um, and actually Chetch cancelled uh parent teacher conferences and concerts tonight because of the storm. It's the first time I've ever heard that in my career. So, um, anyway, we should be set. Is there any questions on what to do? All right. So, we're going to jump right in. Um, the we'd like to welcome the three new board members. uh Jordan, Scott, and Derek. And uh this is our official welcome. Uh because of where the Monday fell, we already did the oaths. And if you saw my update uh based on WSB recommendation, if any one of those three would

006have not been able to make it, uh we would had to uh vacate their seat and appoint. And we didn't want to go through any of that rig roll. Um, so we ended up already having so we're just going to uh publicly um again welcome them and they're all official and ready to go. So you really welcome to uh the board of education. We're looking forward to working with you. Welcome. All right. Uh the next one is I just wanted to kind of talk through um I had individual meetings with each one of them and I thought this would be a good time. Uh this is the official document and we we had a lot of good conversations. Um but a lot of it in terms of as I I've heard Jordan say it many

007times, you just don't know until you're actually riding the bike. Um and that's very true. But um I thought Steve and Doc and u Mr. Draxler and Jody could all just if there's anything that you wanted to as far as advice the new board members if you have any questions um now is a good time this this part of the meeting is very informal I'll have an agenda of course but it's uh again very informal and discussion so we'll start with the um sitting incumbent um board members any advice for our new board members I'd say go all in on anything you can get learning wise. CISA does some wonderful trainings. My first year I did a lot of them and I learned a lot from other school districts. Um and don't be afraid to

008ask any questions because you don't know what you don't know. So you'll learn it. I I would say if we're d they're in a meeting maybe etiquette wise uh somebody is joining us uh give them your attention. Um, you know, I I've had it said before like we come in there and it somebody needs tap on their computer and doesn't feel like they're we're engaged at all. Be an engaged listener the best your ability, you know, and I guess that applies to during an admin report or anything. Um, you know, I I think the appearance of of of being an active listener goes a long way with uh community members and uh your fellow board members. Also, um I'm sure you went over at the time of u the open forum. Uh no. Oh, so

009we're going to have that open forum procedure tonight and at every meeting. Don't say it's not a it's not a back and forth. It's not a conversation time. It's not a time to uh uh engage in a dialogue. Uh that that is for them to have time to say something to the board and that's when you listen respectfully. Sometimes I make some notes about what they're talking about and I will come back and talk to them about it later maybe or um but I I don't I think that's the the best advice that I could give. Okay. ditto and ditto both of those because those are very important. The other thing too is anytime you know don't hesitate to contact us. Just make sure that we're not you're you're talking to you can't have more

010than four because then you're in a quorum. Okay? So we can't have a walk-in quorum. So if you have questions um make sure that you direct to a certain person or you can send something out and then just say reply to me individually so that you're not dealing with an open court. So let you want to talk ask all of us but say re reply back to me individually. That way we avoid a walking horn. Um again don't afraid don't be afraid to ask questions. There's never a dumb question. It's you'll find all kinds of enlightenment. And I think that's pretty much what I have to say. And I don't know that I have a whole lot more than what's already been said. But I will say that don't be afraid to ask if you

011don't understand something. ask in detail. Yeah. And I'm sure that any one of us sitting at this table would be more than happy to help you. Uh there's one more when if you're done, there's one more thing I wanted to add. Um we've always operated under the we respect dissenting opinions and that's 100% okay. We move on and there's no, you know, it's it's okay. No, nobody's got to gonna hold a grudge or anything like that. If you you're here, you were elected to to have a standard and you you'll voice your opinion and if it's different, if it's six to one and you're the one, nobody's going to hold it against you and and think any less of you. And don't be afraid. But, you know, once the decision is made, we are going

012to move on. If that makes sense. you know, we're not going to I would I would hope that we wouldn't be bogged down in any differences, you know, among us as board members, you know, because I think we're all here for the right reason, all pulling in the same direction, you know, for our kids here in the district. We agree to disagree and we respect each other. We respect we respect each other for that. And um we don't go around and say, "Why did you do that?" We don't we don't have those dialogues. Never have had those dialogues. that I've been on for quite a long time. We have not never done that. So, I'm very happy with how people usually dialect here. New board members, do you have any questions that uh you would

013like some feedback on direction? Any questions that have come up since our meeting? I don't have any. Um, I really, you know, like like Justin's been saying or D's been saying, you know, it's um we'll find out as we ride this bike and see what direction it takes us. Well, a couple highlights I just wanted to get it from you first. Um, that I want to point out. Um, so when I got here, um, when decide it has I don't know Glenn, but this is a live video, so it is being streamed as I think you three and all. Um but it is again um being streamed. It also is archived to um the YouTube channel. So everything you say is going to be on record which is what should happen because it's a public

014opening. Um the other thing I would say is make sure that your phones are silenced. Um kind of the other piece that Mr. Draxer was talking about, you know, sending text messages, things like that is just kind of an interruption. Um, so, um, like I had mine here just emergency cases, but I'm not going to be sitting here on it. Um, and so forth. Um, the other part is open form and I kind of, uh, I waited on that because this seems like a a larger topic in all districts, but when it comes to um, this part, um, we always have the procedures right here in the attachment. And so when it comes to this policy, and I think uh, Mr. tracks are hit on the head. Um because I have seen it here and

015that was a huge mistake on previous board members um that are no longer here. Your job is not to interact. You don't answer. Um the board president runs the meeting and that is you know I don't even run the meeting. The board president does and they outline the policy and there'll be probably something in you that wants to respond. You don't. your job is to sit there and listen. Um, and again, if there's followup, I can follow up with them or you can follow up with them, but typically it's you send me the or I'll look up the information, I'll send it to the individual, CCU on it and so forth. So again, we met for a number of hours each of you just uh asking had great questions. Um the open forum part is

016again always uh the opportunity for the public to speak and um you'll see different policies throughout each um district. Um so far you know again and I I know some of you have been to some of those meetings uh based on the prior administration. Um, you know, again, just being respectful and we'll hold the the audience to that same um courtesy of you guys. Um, so I don't uh anticipate any problems there. Um, going back to this document, uh, we talked about um, one right here that I wanted to point out. Um, we are still, um, again, now that this board is set, we're going to be talking in the future here about how our board meetings are set. We have made some changes and the board has taken some of my suggestions in that

017respect. Um they used to have committee uh like they would call this committee. We change it to board work session just because we don't have committees. We're not a committee board. Um but um we don't have a budget committee. We don't have buildings and grounds committee. Um but they still called it that. So that's the only change. We actually are kind of working more because we had all these separate committees. we kind of kind of changed more to a committee of a whole. So it it it encompasses everything instead of having like so many members would be on buildings and grounds, so many people would be on negotiations when we had negotiations or financial or whatever. So gets to the point where respecting your time too, not regurgitating the same information. Um I was never

018a fan of committees. the first district we had committees and when you had three board members in a committee and you come back and they weren't part of the initial discussion and it just again you were a a seven person board and you make decisions based on that seven person not isolation in high um if you look at this um I think it's I'm going to say it anyway but obviously we're in a situation where we're trying to build um trust with the community um there's a lot of trust that was broken um because of the Tim and Johnson situation and uh you will see in my year and a half here um the only closed sessions that we've had is um out of basic statutory requirement. Um I am not a fan of close

019session. Um it just gives off a different um persona um than everything we do as public. Now, when it gets to individual um identities, whether it's uh non-renewal things like that, obviously we'll go into close session, legal, etc. But, uh make it a priority to not go into close session uh for the reason that we're in um right now. Um Jody did a nice job. Again, uh we're going to be talking I have it on the agenda um talk about some WSB trainings. Um, but there's always other meetings that are there and we just had one which you guys saw in your email. Um, there's always different opportunities that you can attend through CISA or WSB. Um, and then if you attend WSB, they have this point system and so you'll see recognition on board

020levels um, categories and the more meetings they attend and so forth. And then every January, you have the ability to attend the state convention, the WSB. Um and uh I had not gone here uh just because I'm coaching at the time. Uh this coming season as my last year of coaching. I've been very upfront about that. Um and uh after that then I'll be able to attend. So I've actually had uh my admin team um take us or take you guys to the end this year um hopefully to work around Jamie's schedule if she's interested in going. Um but it's a good opportunity to get yourself accustomed to um a nice conference. There's a lot of breakout sessions to learn from and so forth. So do we do much with other school districts in the

021area conferences and stuff like that? Because one thing at the new introduction that they said was if you go with other district members, you can have more detailed conversation than you can because of open meeting laws. So like if Darren and I went to a convention, we couldn't talk about how it impacts our district. So, if I were to go with somebody from Boyceville or Spring Valley, we could talk a little bit more about how it affects our districts without breaking open open meeting laws. Like Doug said, uh you can um even if you go down there and you know on the the ride down the ride back is usually all business. You know, you're talking about scenarios. Um you can actually again talk up to three people and you're not breaking the the walking

022memor. Yes. And if we do go so we if we did go to the state board convention um and there was more than there was four of us we actually post it as a meeting for those days that we're gone. Gotcha. So and CISA would be Jordan your best opportunity where that's where you get to work with other districts where CISA and I know um Chuck went to WS1 this last fall. Yeah they have a meeting in the fall but I'm going to go to on a yearly basis. Yeah. But you're you're right to be able to sit and talk to other districts gives you another point of view and another perspective that's very valuable. Yeah, that new onboarding meeting is just good overall. Absolutely. Yeah. Um, one of the things that we're going to

023spend a lot of uh time and making some changes is the school finance part. We've already instituted some changes already. Um, and the one I'll point out is right here. If you saw Doc Kaiser um here early and then um Chuck was here too and I sent it out via email to schedule. Uh this is something we did in New Richmond um and we instituted here um some months ago. Um but it's the board audit and the board audit allows you to uh you can do it remotely in terms of email debt um what um payroll expense vouchers anything financial that you want to see. And what it does is just another layer. I can tell you that uh and again in my other district, anything that was purchased by me, whether it was reimbursement,

024that type of thing, it was always pulled. That was just their preference. Um and then my finance director, the same thing. But you have the ability to go through. Now during the meeting, um the president, Doug Kaiser, is going to say, "Did you review the items?" And your answer is yes. Did you find anything wrong? that is your opportunity to say, "Nope, yep, this is what I saw. Everything checked out or no, I do have a question here." And then we can address it. Um Deb is not sitting here, but again, in this um district, you know, her and I work so closely together, I'll be able to answer it. And if I can't answer it, I'll definitely follow up with the entire board and say, you know, Derek had this question, here's the documentation,

025etc. But it's just another layer of checks and balances. Um, so that's just one example. The other part of from a finance standpoint, we're going to have a different structure that we're working through. Uh, Deb and I have yet to institute that through um just the other HR processes that we're trying to get in intact. Um, but we'll have uh again some changes when it comes to what reports you actually see. Um, you're going to see more than what you see currently in the board. So, we're working through those. Um, yes, you do get paid. Um, I know that's not why you're here. Um, but you have, I believe all of you, me of debt, uh, to take that on. And then it talks about the different uh, responsibilities. And again, the the meeting itself

026is act not run by me or the administrators. It's run by the board president. And so, um, from a standpoint of um, you know, asking questions, I'm here to answer those questions. Um and again there is no bad question. Um and then again I'm not going to go through all of this but uh we talked about some of these things. So um any questions that I can answer? There is a section in that uh policy that we need to update. It references that we'd elect the uh executive committee in May. We should probably change that over May since it's April tonight. Okay. I will make that change. Page two. Okay. All right. Okay. Um if you go back to and so this is our second meeting with this layout and what you're going to see

027is the agenda is always on the left hand side and obviously you have it in front of you. um as I talked about um whatever uh machine or computerized technology you're using is um accessible to open records. So, um I said this in the meeting um with you three individuals, but I'll re um state it to everybody. Even if you check, so if we get into a situation where you check school email on your phone, that is um basically allowed for open records law, your text messages, things like that. So again, um I would caution you uh to make sure that all your business is done um on one machine. Um, if you have questions, don't use personal email, use your school email, um, and so forth. I have found success with um, texting. So,

028we have already had one. Miss Burch had a uh, health um, emergency assessment with a student texted you because there was a multiple law enforcement agencies out here. I live by the rule of no surprises. I don't want you to be approached in the um you know in the grocery store and say, "Hey, did you see the 25 cop cars that are outside the building?" No. What was going on? That's not Now, again, I will update you in a timely fashion. Um but I will always do that through text message unless you guys would like another avenue to uh communicate. Um but other than that, again, email, call. Um the other thing that uh I've talked to all of you um the the new members um but I want to extend an invitation to all

029of you. Um you do not have to text me. You do not have to call me. You do not have to do anything if you want to come to the campus. It's not um you're welcome here anytime you want. Um I want you to see the real day-to-day things that go on here. Now, you can't go walking into a classroom and then um basically disrupt the the flow of education, but to walk around. Um I think our staff would actually appreciate that. Um we have some members here that read books. Um you're always welcome. And again, don't feel obligated that you have to take I got to let Patrick know because I guess that was a um an understanding before. That's not how I operate. You can come here anytime you want. walk around, take

030a look at things. Um, and again, just as long as we don't disrupt the the flow of education on a daily basis, more than welcome to come here. So, all right. Um, any questions on the orientation? If you do, um, feel free to again, if you want an individual meeting, don't ever hesitate. Hey, when we meet and we'll talk through whatever questions you have. Um and again you've seen my my updates etc. So it was very helpful. Okay good. So the next one is uh we are not necessarily um named in the lawsuit um but I think we all know that we are the victim in this lawsuit. So, I wanted toh provide an update and uh there are the exact text and this is the first time that the public has actually seen uh

031the 17 felony counts and how they came to the 17 felony counts. Um I was headed to um I was at a conference last Wednesday because I didn't make it down to the I went to the WASA convention and I was planning to go to the trial um last Tuesday. I got a phone call um and uh it was um from Pam um she is the victim witness coordinator and they said that uh Tim is foregoing his pre-trial um obligations and basically going to trial. So now Glenwood City School District is under um basically in trial mode for this uh situation. And so um just wanted to update you on that and answer any questions. The next formal date is June 5th. Um I do anticipate that I will be subpoenaed. Any one of you

032uh especially existing board members, I would anticipate you probably being subpoenaed at maybe one given time. administrators um and even staff. But there is an order out there right now that Tim Johnson um and Ron Johnson are no more not able to contact you. So um I would definitely um be under um making sure that that is not the case because now that is going to jury. Now that doesn't mean that the jury um trial could not happen. um they could take the plea uh which the DA is working on. I've met with the DA a number of times in this case. Um so again uh instead of me rambling on, I'll just open it up to any questions that you guys may have as terms of timeline. Uh what else is going on? Those

033types of things. Is there any questions that I can answer? What's the trial look like after June 5th? I mean, I'm assuming it's not done at that date, right? Because there's, you know, that portion of the trial and then it continues, right? This uh so the the one on on June 5th is where he's going to plea. And so, um basically I was told and I checked in and for our new members, um his name is Trevor Helmer's. Trevor, uh when I got here, the uh board had um Boardman Clark as their attorney. and uh Trevor and uh Wsberger um Squireers out of the Twin Cities who I've worked with. Knowing of what we were getting into, I needed somebody that I really trusted. Uh the board went with my recommendation. Um I've worked with

034Trevor basically my entire 13 years as a superintendent. And so Trevor Helmers is a name that you're going to hear. Um he's a very uh he just presented at SESAT. He's a very wellrespected attorney for a number of schools even in our region. Um his comment was the next trial date is going to be the plea and then from there they'll start to acknowledge the setup and how it goes. Could a plea deal be taken prior to that or even at that meeting? The answer is yes. And so um you know the plea deal itself is I'll let the DA um he's working on that. Um I can tell you that there are discussions uh taking place from the DA about charging Ron Johnson also. Okay be two separate trials if it goes to that

035point. Um, but those are two separate, you know, um, I would say individuals, but that hasn't been determined. Um, and I don't know if it will be. Any other questions? Um, one of the things that you'll see is I always send you guys the PL update. So, we are done with PLDs or professional learning days. It's another acronym you'll get to know. Um, but the PLLD um is where usually the first hour is where I update the board or excuse me update the staff and uh I will always sell send you I always blind copy you on those agendas. Um I talk about my my agendas are pretty lengthy and I just hit on those pieces to make sure that we're communicating with our staff of what's going on um and what they need to

036be prepared for. Obviously, in this situation, you're going to be a staff member and you see your employment um or area business on the Fox 9 News and uh you need to be prepared for that. So, um and then if I have to meet with staff, I'll call the meeting, etc. Um if I do call an all staff meeting, you guys are always more than welcome to attend. In the past, we've had board members attend. Um again, so you're this is definitely not a just a one day a month or two day a month type of obligation. Uh you're more than welcome on campus at any given point. Okay. Uh I'm going to move on to the next one. [Music] Um I'm going to X out because Mir is watching the weather very closely. I'll

037let you know. Okay. Uh this next one is an overview of our strategic plan. And again, this is the very um beginning parts of our strategic plan. And uh you're going to hear some things tonight as we go through. Um unfortunately, I just have not been in the situation. I get asked a lot, how much time do you actually spend on these other things? Uh the Tim Johnson situation. And last year I think it was pretty easy to say at least 70% of my job was that and I was not able to um really go through and and I I can use the example in New Richmond my first year I was able through community groups through staff through board um and all those pieces be able to create as a group as a team

038the foundation of our strategic plan and I did not wasn't able accomplish that last year. This year it kind of started in the same cycle. We are so far behind on policy. We're far behind on so many HR process, procedures, etc. that that is the majority of our time, especially so the foundation of a a school district is truly what we're what we're trying to accomplish and build upon right now. Uh with that said, we have come up with just the baseline and the baseline is is this document and I just wanted to briefly go through um this is kind of an overview that uh we plan um say if a new family comes to town and you're wondering because typically in most communities uh the school district is probably the largest employer. It's the

039case here in Glenwood. It was the case in New Richmond. um most communities that is the case. So, but that also is we've often talked with families and said what are the things that you look for on why you would want to come to a community and number one typically what's the school like because of the education they want for their children. The second question um or answer that we typically get is what is there to do? So um taking those things into account this is a basic framework that we were going to have a overall brochure created uh this summer and talks about everything kind of broking down. If you look at these are kind of the pillars of what our strategic direction is because if you think of a topic within the school

040setting um I have yet to find one so I would love for you to challenge me on it but if there's a topic that exists that doesn't fall under one of those categories and basically when this um train boat whatever you want to call it gets rolling like um I would like to recommend to the board you know We would have once a month meetings like we're having tonight where we get the business items out and then the um second time in a month every other month instead of work sessions like this where sometimes we just regurgitate the same information we'd actually dive into each one of these. For example, um if you look at the data driven instruction um this is where we would basically dive into our data and that is the only

041focus of that meeting. Um, and who would be in attendance? It would be our curriculum director. Um, which is basically myself. Um, but then our administrators would be there because they're the boots on the ground. If you look at uh the parents and community engagement, that's the survey that's going out. So, in June, I will have um feedback from that survey and I will present to you. If you look at uh the budget, that's where Deb and I will attend the meeting and we'll go through everything about school finance that you guys have questions on, talk about it. Uh if it has facilities and infrastructure, again, I would have Ryan, our supervisor, buildings and grounds, sitting next to me, and we talk through all those things. We take a tour. Um we just again, that's

042our main focus. uh technology, we would have Frank, our IT director in sitting here and we talk everything and answer those questions. The deep dives in my experiences is where the board members really appreciate because it's not 30 different topics. It's just one and I can come to the meeting ready to go and answer get any question answered when it comes to technology. Um and my experiences with ports, they've appreciated that focus. Would we be able to tune our agenda to to the actual board meeting to kind of align with what some of those deep types are. I noticed even today it's kind of a smattering of issues. You know, is is it feasible to do that or do we need to kind of capture all of that on a cadence? Here's how I can

043answer that. Um the fact that we are Do you want to go down Christa to our consent? Um I will tell you this is not normal. It just isn't. I think uh there hasn't been a time um where when we went to consent that we didn't use most of the alphabet and this one we actually went into the next set of the double digits. Um there's two reasons for that. Number one again as this ship becomes writed and we get into a situation where I feel I'll give you another example. Um, we don't have policy on what type of uh monetary value I should bring to the board. In my previous district, it was 15 grand. Anything under 15 grand was my job as the superintendent and I just went forward with it. If it

044was over 15 grand, we required this, you know, X, Y, and Z. We don't have policy that states that. Um, and we still have we're haven't even asked that to the board yet. Now, what I had used since I started was five grand. I went very small because of the circumstances that we're in. Um, the other part of this is there's stuff on here that I typically in my career have not brought to the board. That's just my job as the superintendent. But, as I stated, what I'm trying to do is build trust through transparency. And so the the agendas are a little bit longer than I think what they need to be. But that is my goal because as you're going to see tonight, uh we're going to have to go to referendum here

045uh sooner rather than later um just to make ends meet. And I need the public to understand and trust what we're doing and how we're doing it. So does it correlate? Yep. We're actually going to come to that topic, Jordan, uh when it comes to our dashboard and I will get into that uh later on. Good question though. Any other question? Okay. So, if you look at uh this one, I want to give uh the proper um if you haven't seen this or watched this six minute video, I would highly encourage you. Uh there's a couple reasons that we put this together and kudos to Christa. Um Christa has a a phenomenal job when it comes to, you know, part of her title isn't necessarily on her title. Um but she does a great job

046when it comes to our communications. Um usually communications come from either myself or administrators, but if it's district, you know, celebration because it takes roughly and actually the uh research has changed on this. It used to be 12:1. Now it's more 8 7 to 1. It takes one negative to erase seven positives. And so, um, what we try to do, and Christa does a nice job with Facebook, uh, we're trying to expand our communication when it comes to, uh, social media tools, Instagram. Part of it is just the overall function. Uh because there is software out there that when we post it to if I send out a message to all families, it can go to Facebook, it can go to Instagram, it can go to our web page, all in one click. Uh we're

047just not there yet. Um but if you've seen this video, I think it's a great culmination of things that have happened over the last two years. Um especially professional pictures by Wol. It didn't cost us anything. Uh but it talked about our um expansions and the ideas that uh basically again from administrations to the board to the community of some of the things that we heard that we need to make some changes. Um and again this video is out there um just one of the things that we're trying to turn we have 120 open enrolled students that leave here. We have 60 that come in. that is to the tune of roughly $800,000 and you're going to see that number tonight. Um, that's a big deal in a small district. And so, um, yes, I

048know one of the the new board members asked the question, you know, have you asked them why? Not yet. We will. In my other district, we did that in Prairie Farm because open enrollment in a smaller district um, is a lifine. And um sometimes it's hey the daycare is in this community that's why I do it. Other times it's I just don't like the school. You haven't done a good job for XYZ. You don't offer an online component which uh we're working on right now. So there's just a lot of reasons behind it. But we at least have to get it out there because we have made a lot of changes in the last year and a half. Um, and we should be very proud. I know I'm proud to work with these ladies. Um,

049and the board because when you watch this video, I think it speaks volumes of some of the changes that we've made. Um, and then to hear former graduates come in and make the comment. I leave and this is what you do. Yep. Just trying to again uh be a little bit more pro proactive. So, if you haven't watched the video, I would encourage you to do that. Uh but we plan to make more of these um as we go. Can I say something about the open enrollment? Yep. We have we have surveyed in the past and like Patrick said a lot of it is um where they work closer for daycare type situations. Um sometimes the the class offerings were a big thing. Um you know type of thing but we have asked but we

050haven't probably asked that we asked. Weren't you? Yeah, it's been 5 years or so. Yeah. Is is any of that trend data as far as the the delta of open enrollment out there? I mean, I'm sure CO did a lot of wonky stuff, but you know, where where are we historically as far as open enrollment? Yeah. Yeah, we have that data. Um I don't have it um prior to me. Um but I do that at the uh annual meeting every year. Okay. Um, I've always taken, you know, here's the data, here's what we're looking at, but we can certainly get that information. I would say the ratios, you know, 2:1 or 2.5 to one, and it it is like Doc said, it is something that we've known about and wanted to do something about, but

051it's I mean, it's a big it's a big thing, big muscle. Well, and bringing in our tiny tots and he'll try for hang time and all the infants. What's the infants called again? Tiny tappers tiny tappers and hay. Okay. So I mean I think that's made some that was a that was part of the from the hearing that people were going to places where there was in school daycare was a common theme why people were open and rolling out and that was one of the driving forces behind why we started the daycare program. I hear they've got great teachers at Tiny Tots. The lady in charge of it is exceptional right indeed. Yeah, absolutely. Actually, that brings up another point. Obviously, uh we have some relationships here with other people within the the building. So,

052when it comes to those types of uh votes, you make sure that you abstain uh for obvious reasons. Um the concept of turning the page um basically that's a term that we came up with as an admin team just to move on um and try to again do our jobs and try to you know I every job I've been in I just want to leave it leave it better than I found it and I think again um what we have dealt with um is rather big it's rather um I would say from a media sensation standoint point is out there and we got our work cut out. But we're trying to turn that page because um there is a level of pride here that when I got here in 2001 to marry my wife who

053graduated from here, I I mean the chests were held out very uh stoutly. Um there was so much pride. Um we're trying to get back to that point. Um and that's my opinion. Um, but from a standpoint of turning the page, uh, that's what we're trying to do. Any questions or has anybody seen the video and have any feedback? Yeah, Chris, nice job. That was I just have to say Pat, I graduated in 2001, so just I was just coming out of college. Not far. Graduated high school. Patrick, the one slide towards the end, I think it says, you know, like somebody else is in town and it says post office and we've got a bar and they've got this and a couple things. It seems meager a little bit for what offerings the city

054might have. I wonder if that's something I might change is, you know, here's the top 10 employers and here's the industries they're in or and we've got two technical college within a half hour from us, right? or some type of here's other bright spots that might interest parents or others to come here. So the the one thing that I um actually it's on the next one I'll to show you where the feedback the hand performance survey but that's the type of feedback we want. Um when we were sitting there thinking because one of my goals is um you know I've attended a number of city council meetings. I've attended um the fire and safety. I mean, we especially Aaron and I, we sit down with the chief of um fire. Um, all of us sit

055down with the chief of police, probably not for the reason that we necessarily want to. Um, but it's those connections uh with local businesses and so on, but those are really good things. Yeah, we're only 20 miles from South. We're only, you know, from Northwoods, we're only 20 minutes. there's a lot of so any of those types of things when you see something come out marketing wise absolutely give us feedback because we I know when Kristen and I were looking at this um and it was driving her nuts and she's a type A just like I am and we probably looked at it 50 times and it's like writing a thesis at some point it just becomes so blurry that you just don't even know what you're looking at so any feedback would be awesome

056so uh the final one I wanted to uh outline is um this was actually an idea that came from um my board president um in another district and uh the purpose of it is really when you look at those um pillars all the the positive things because sometimes you just lose sight of the changes that are made to make an impact on our students lives. And so when you look at this, it's also a good summary to say, okay, these are the things that we've accomplished. And so if you're sitting out there having conversations with individuals in the community, uh when we're talking about students and staff or when we're talking about data or parents or budget, things like that, I think what you'll see though is that the two columns that really outweigh the

057others is the finance and the um facility. And that is because we had to spend uh close to 900,000 last year just to get our building not uh with fluff but just up to code. And so from those standpoints these this is something that uh when I started to do it in my other district I would reference it all the time because a question would come up from a community member. What about this? Have you done this? Actually yeah. Um so uh feel free again um all this stuff is accessible to you um it will be on the web page and it's under the strategic direction component. Uh the other part of this is um finance-wise um if you look at um the number of grants that our staff write or administration write um it's

058kind of the the new trend um and rightfully so from a budgetary standpoint. Um I had to skip the JFC hearing today which was in Hayward because we had interviews and then we had the board meeting today. But um that's just from the federal government to the state um and even local funds. They want red tape. And the red tape is give us an explanation of why you want these funds. And so from a grant standpoint, we have staff that are constantly writing grants. And I think it's number one, we acknowledge any given. So, if you donate in the community um or regardless of monetary value could be $5, we're going to recognize it because every amount um helps. But in the same I think it it's goes without saying that the number of grants

059out there to help support what we do here um beyond the regular budget um is important to know and there's effort behind it. Um so that's what this section is. And then finally um these are some of the priorities and this is actually the next step. The next step is where we'll talk with the board. We'll talk with the community. We'll talk about um but we need to survey baseline data first. And so that annual performance survey and I thought it was it was on my other document but um if you've seen those questions that's going to go out at the beginning of May and we're going to get feedback um to see where we're at in these categories. It's it's going to be about a 4m minute survey. Um so it's going to be

060rather short but pretty impactful. Um and then from there we're going to start talking about where our priorities are. And again that's not administration sitting in our offices. It's not the board sitting at a board meeting. It's the community getting them here, getting face to face, talking through what do we want our school district to look like. Um, so we'll more to come on that. Um, covered a lot of things, but I wanted to give kind of a brief overview of of what this topic was. Is there any questions? That makes good sense. I see that kind of as a funnel where we're getting inputs for different things then fitting them into there as part of that. I'm thinking do we do like a facility audit and then have like an IT person on it

061because we've got the people that are closest to it here that understand it, right? But they might not have seen maybe best practices or other things or have the knowledge of what others or experts in the field might have seen that know like hey you guys might want to think about this. Yep. You're going to get a chance tonight uh because that is on the business section to go forward with an a facility audit. Um and again, it's another opinion besides me or besides Ryan. Um it wise that's a it's an interesting uh world. Um but I will say um out of my I've been in administration for 15 years now. Um we have the best out of all my years. Frank is the best that I've worked with and I'm confident and he's just

062constantly doing things that are just but in terms of an audit we work closely with CIC 10 uh not an audit per se but at least process cyber security etc. So there's a lot that goes into that, but we'll talk more. You just see that voice actually had a really cool ranking of kind of benefit cost and severity kind of things where they ran prioritized really cleanly. It was kind of cool. And we we do partner with season 10 on our technology um because it it is a a partner with the um those grants and then that state funds. Okay, I don't have a lot of time so I'm going to fast forward. I do encourage you to look at this one. Um I did want to point out so there's two pages here and

063again um if you look at them side by side which later on in my presentation you'll see them. Um but our student enrollment um if you see right off the bat when you see 299 in our elementary you're going to be like gosh that's not good that's low and it is. Um, one of the things as I started to put, um, speaking kind of like Jordan, trend data is very important to me. Uh, I think you can make a lot of quality decisions when it comes to trend data. Um, if you look at these numbers, um, and Aaron runs staff or excuse me, on child development, but if you look at other than CO, uh, our numbers going to jump and these numbers are not taken into account. So, right now we're at 35 with

0644K. And again, if you look at this trend data right here, we're probably going to add another, you know, roughly 20 kids. Um, and this is very typical um in in my previous district because you have transate families, you have people that hadn't even thought about school and usually or August one is like, "Oh, I better think about enrolling my kids somewhere." And then you get those. So, I will be um you know, if that trend data completes itself um we'll be back up where we need to be um and have a consistent enrollment. If you look at what's in the middle school um and then that we're going to take a dip in the high school. Um the second page is actually elementary um or excuse me, last year's number. So we were at

0656:45 at the high school projected and we're at 611 and that's because we have a a smaller class coming through or me that's total sorry 182 and uh 195. Um the one thing that I will talk about later on today is that Miss Burch and I are working through an online component. So when we look at the open enrollment, how do we flip some of those numbers? We're actually starting to flip some of those numbers already. Um, but the one thing that we don't offer here is an online component. ever since uh co 19 online is a different beast that um and I think it's a positive that came out of co because any of those um former graduates or anybody that has gone postsecary um my son's a junior in Madison thanks to the

066staff here um it's they don't have to even go to class everything's remotely everything's he's sitting in his apartment um he has to go because he's an engineering um and he has to do labs and so on. But um especially your gens, you don't have to sit in the 500 um student um lecture hall. You can sit in your basement or you can wherever. So there is a place to that which is why we've moved even to the high school with parent teacher conferences etc. Um but the online is we just have learned that there are students where the typical four walls don't work for him or her and it's because of family um makeup. It could be a variety of reasons. Um so that is one thing that we're um actually going to be

067bringing to the board this summer. Um, from a financial standpoint, it basically um, I'll let the budget when I get to the budget, we'll talk about it. But those are just some examples. So, when you look at the enrollment, you can kind of do some comparison, which again I'll cover in uh, a little bit later in our budget presentation. A question about that, Patrick. If a if a student's in our district and we have the option for virtual, then can they not they can still open enroll to another virtual but how does that work? No, they would you offer it we would offer a fullblown experience here. We just don't have the the ability right now. Uh number one, we don't have policy. We just don't have the structure. I'm just that's what you're talking

068about flipping those numbers because then it would be an option here. So if if the family chooses uh they would also be able to play sports here if they went did the online version. Um you know right now if you're uh we we have some flexibility. Miss Bur does take some flexibility in that. But um anybody that is homeschooled um or does some of those things they can take up to two classes within district. Typically they take like a fire and a band things that you can't necessarily do online. So those are the types of things where we're looking for a program package that allows that online component. And so um we haven't uh we have a structure somewhat in place. Um but you'll be seeing that in the next couple months. Okay. Um titles

069title six uh I know I've inundated your inbox with some of these things. Uh bottom line is is that uh last Friday when I was at WAZDA and I put I sent uh this to both DPI and the DOE. Um and you saw those responses hopefully. Um long story short, I talked with Trevor this morning. Um now Wisconsin the uh or the attorney general has now um gone to court and is suing the federal government. Um I do encourage the previous or the uh new board members at last month's meeting I talked about what would happen if this um department of education would go down and there are some things that um yeah I think probably could uh go away um but from fiscally u or financially it's over 500,000 and that is our title

070um it's our lower socioeconomic students it's our lower achieve feeding students, it's food, it's uh title support, it's special education, and all those things are tied to the federal government. And so from a standpoint of what title six is, that's what they're talking about and what that looks like. Um the federal government was asking us, and they gave us 10 days to sign this document. The um the argument was um number one, it was vague. Number two, uh the Department of Ed had a roughly 60 employees two years ago or even a year ago. They're down to 20 at the federal level. So what does that mean? Well, that's again not only the financial burden. If Glenwood City is going to lose 500,000, what does that mean for some of the others? And I was

071sitting next to some other schools and we're talking millions for some bigger schools. Uh will it happen that way? I don't know. But we have to be prepared for that which is why we haven't dove into the compensation for our staff until next because preliminary wise budget for the state which is a new bianual. We don't know where that's going to come into into play. Now it's going to be tied up in court. Um July 1 we will get a new number and again I'll talk about that. But I I just wanted to update you and again you can do some free reading when it comes to these. Um, I chose not to sign it because from a legal standpoint, Trevor and I talked a lot, uh, there was a possibility that the federal government

072could use that signed document for other purposes and I was not willing to put the district in that um, type of box. Um, we already do this assurance. It's called an assurance and I have to sign off on it already. We already do it. So, we're following federal law and by signing this there was no real advantage to doing that other than you're going to be in a box and they might say when would city sign this now you have to do this. I wasn't willing to do it. Now, if the board gives me a different direction, I can put it on the agenda and we can talk about it, but um I wanted to give you an update on that. Um Jay is uh doing her first year of summer school and uh I

073wanted her to comment briefly, very briefly because I've taken up most of the time if you want to just talk about summer school and kind of where you're at. Yeah. So um wrapping things up. So I put out to staff as far as um who was interested in teaching courses. I plan to keep it the same um two weeks like it ran last year. So, for the first two weeks in June, half days um is what we're going to go with. Um we have increased the pay to $35 an hour um which is I think very extremely fair for staff and every staff will get the same amount. Um with that courses we have um I did split them up this year where I have my um try to do like a K3 or K2

074course K3 and then three five and then 78. the older ones. We don't typically have courses unless through mediation at the high school. So, looking to get that kicked out um for signups hopefully shortly here. Jamie's made some good changes. Um a couple things. Yeah, we increased the pay. We did uh um I would say informally taught to staff because the number of students that attend summer school, we get an FTE count in the fall. It's not a full kind of equivalent. Um, but if you the the point that Jamie just made, uh, typically Glenwood has had a very small summer school. Um, and one of the reasons, um, was if you were a teacher, you were actually you could have a, let's say, I'm I'm doing a fun class of dice, I don't know,

075whatever. You would have a student that could be a kindergarter all the way up to an eighth grader. Most educators would not like that span. And so Jamie's done a nice job of splitting that up that it's first, second, and third or um I think it's K1. It depends on the class. Yeah. Um so there that's a a really positive change. Increasing the pay. Yeah. Let's And there was this longevity pay which I again I don't want to say it's disagreed with, but in the same regard you're doing the job. So if you were here 3 years, who cares? If you're teaching summer school, you get $35. um because in the end it does help the district with our total FTE or um in the fall. So those are some of the acronyms that we'll

076get to uh to talk about. Um and finally uh we went through um and we went through our fleet last year. We had two vehicles that were illegal. Uh so we got rid of those. And then we also have two buses that are um not in circulation. we're selling them. Um, and so again, they wanted to make sure that you were aware. Uh, buses don't go for a lot. You purchase them um, for a high price. I think a typical bus right now, you're easily spending probably 90 to 120,000 depending on um, but when it comes to recycling them after um, bottom of the barrel, but they're an eyesore and we don't need them parked on our district property. Um, so we're selling them. So, if you're interested, let us know. All right. I got

077a minute. I will say that was the best school board working session I've ever been a part of. got a whole lot. I have yet to uh hear the siren. So I think a little bit it's still coming. So, for the audience, before the meeting gets started, if we hear the siren, we're going to go right down the hall into a classroom, which is one of our safety areas for tornadoes. So, uh we'll show you, we'll guide you down there. Um but just be prepared if it's still coming. Okay. Well, at this time, I'd like to call the school board meeting for the school district to order. Uh roll call. All members are present. and welcoming our new individuals on the board. Uh, next up is the uh, board financial audit. That was Chuck and

078myself. Um, I did contact Deb today, asked a bit about our fund 39. Um, which basically is our bond payments and things of that sort. Um, looked at some of the vouchers, the payments. Um what caught my eye was uh it said associated bank and I was like I don't recall an associated bank. Um so I went through with Deb on those types of things and um pretty very systematic and showed how everything gets done and what goes to Hayawa for the wiring and and those types of things. And a lot of the bond money come uh came from 2016 referendum. I believe it was 15 uh you know type thing. So everything was checked in and balance um as far as I could see. Very well. I chose three accounts payable invoices at random.

079Um one of them was uh Countryside Co-op. What is it now? Is it still countryside co-op? Well, consumer consumers. Yeah. So, it was just gas and gas for the complete bus and diesel for the buses. Gas. Um, that was good. All in order. The other one was Rolling Hills Ecoin who does some therapy here. That was all in order. The other one was for U. It was a big number over $20,000 for the uh CNC plasma table. um that is in the the tech head room now. It's just three different things that all looked square to me. So yeah, nothing else. Okay. Now, who's on the next rotation then? Stephen. No, me and me and Chuck. Chuck. So, how we do this is so Doc and Chuck went today and then if you're the second

080name, you'll go again. So, we'll always have you back to back. So, for next month, we'll have Chuck and Jody and Jod and Steve and so forth. And this will always be on the agenda as a reminder. Um, so just reference that, keep it, uh, keep looking at that. Sure. Any of you have any questions? Okay. Uh, next up is the approval of the agenda. So, I will entertain a motion to approve the agenda. Motion is made by Jod. Do I have a second? Second. I have Derek. Okay. Second by Derek. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say I. I. Oppose say no. Motion carried. All right. Next up is our uh open forum uh time. This is for our community members uh to u um state anything they may have. Just

081make sure that if you wish to speak that you um state your name and address and those types of things and then we just have a threem minute time frame. So is there anybody that wishes to speak? I would like to. Okay. Go ahead. Stand. You can sit but just make sure you state your name and address. Yes. I'm Cindy Crowley. My address is 1088 Highway 128 Lwood City. 3 miles out on 128. Um, for those of you who don't know me, I'm a retired employee here at Leonard City. I served 24 years and at the special ed department. Loved it. Absolutely loved it. Um, I'm here tonight because after the election of the three men, and by the way, welcome to our school board. Thank you for running and appreciate that. Um, after speaking

082with several community members, um, I asked them to come, but I guess the star may have scared them out. Um, but it is it is a real good consensus of the people in the community that we would like the new board members to consider putting their names in for officers of our board. Um, I know that there's been a lot of riff raff and I don't want to go through all that, but I think this community needs to heal and I think if we could have some new officers along with our new board members in position, I think there would be a much happier community. And so I am just strongly encouraging you to consider the three new members consider taking the position and the rest of the board considering offering that position to them.

083I I just think this is something that our community needs to experience. So there I am less than three minutes. Thank you. Thanks Cindy. Al, do you have anything? Says it better than I do. So I'll leave it at that. All right, anybody else? All right, next up we do go to the nominations. So, first up is the nomination for board president. So, I'll at this time entertain a motion uh for board president. I nominate Lisa Kaiser for board president. There's a motion on the table to nominate Lisa Kaiser. Is there a second to that? I second that. All right. There is a motion by Chuck and a second by Jody on the table. Any further discussion? Or wait, I have to say something else. That's wrong. Are there any other nominations? I would like

084to selfnominate. So there is a nomination on the table for Derek and second. Well, Okay. But I should Yeah, go ahead. Um, all right. Are there any other nomin Jordan? So, are there any other nominations? Any other nominations? Okay. So the first nomination um we have to go through that process for the eyes and knees. Yep. You can vote now. You can choose to vote verbally or we do have paper if you would like to use that system instead. But you have two nominations and then you have to go through a vote which is the the action part. Um, we'll get to where the recommendation comes, but you need to to vote. Do is everybody okay with verbals or are they wanting paper? And for the record, I think the paper one is still public.

085It is. Are we good with verbals? All right. Rays or verbal? I would say verbal then there's no interpretation. Correct. Got okay. Or you go to written and then it's stated but hand raised gets a little bit. Gotcha. All right. So um for board president um for myself um all those in favor say I. I opposed. Nay. So we have four I's and three nays. The nays are Scott, Derek, and Jordan. Eyes are Jody, Chuck, Lisa, Steve. That's majority. So therefore, that passes. All right. Therefore, the second uh nomination is dead. All right. Next up is nominations for vice president. I nominate Chef Draxler. Is there a second to that? I'll second that. Second vice. Is there Okay. Are there any other nominations? Are there any other nominations? I'll self nominate. Who is the second?

086The second is Derek. Okay. So, so Scott himself nominated. Derek has seconded that. Are there any other nominations? Any other nominations? All right. So we'll do the same process as before. So the first one is uh Chuck for vice president. Um all those in favor say I. I. I. I. Post say no. No. No. As before the names are Scott, Derek, Jordan. Eyes are Jody, Chuck, myself, and [Music] Steve. Motion pass. All right. Next up is for nominations for board treasurer. I nominate Derekley. I'll second that. Okay. Do you have that, uh, Christa? Okay. Are there any other nominations? Any other nominations? Okay. I move to close nominations and cast a unanimous ballot for Derek Overberly. Second that. Is there a second to that unan closing of the ballots? And um I'll second that. Okay,

087Jody, do you got that, Christa? Are you going too fast? No, I'm good so far. I'll All right. Thank you. So, this basically just closing the nominations, which we all on. And all those in favor say I. I I post say no. Motion carried unanimously. All right. Next up, I'll entertain a motion from uh board treasur. Board clerk. Oh, clerk. Sorry. I nominate Jody M for board clerk. I'll second that. Okay. So, there's a motion on the table for Jodie from Chuck and Steve. Okay. Are there any other nominations? Any other nominations? Hearing none. All those in favor say I. I. Oppose say no. Motion carries. All right. Thank you everybody. Does anybody have any questions on how that process went? Okay. All right. Next is the con consent agenda. One thing I have a

088question on the consent agenda with is rolling a little bit. Okay. Is with the um the the hires and things like that. Generally in the past because we are dealing you never know where the budget is and sometimes in in the past we've kind of looked at um who would I hired at what time first, second, third. So if we've had multiples, do we are we do we keep that in consideration in the event of Yeah. If if it's a new position, that has to be approved by the board. If it's just a replacement, it doesn't have to be approved by the board unless you want to. I mean, we can put these in business area, but um I would never bring to you a recommendation to hire unless it was an existing position. I

089understand that. But in I guess maybe I did not say that clearly. My my thought is in the past we have had to have cuts. We've had to have to and usually low sen this low seniority that has occurred to that person. Okay. So do it shouldn't even come to you if that's the case. I would not even have it on the agenda. Okay. If it gets to that point. But I again this is your agenda. I can do whatever the board wishes. I just put it in consent because that's my job as a superintendent to make that recommendation. you still have the ability to and again that's one thing I want to explain to the board members is when we go through the agenda uh the consent you can pull something out and say

090I got a question on def consent does not mean it's just this rubber stamp um you can pull it out um and we can have further discussion we can table it we can do all those things if you would prefer that all HR hires um would go into business certainly can do that. You would just have to let me know. I'm It's I guess I'm not questioning putting it in into uh personal actions or individual actions. Okay. It my my thought process is like from past history and have when people have been here and then we've had to let people go there's always been a senior. Somebody might have a certification and the lowest person gets bumped and then somebody else can, you know, take over. I just Yeah. Uh we don't number one, we

091don't have policy on that. Number two, act 10 is gone. So that actually doesn't even it's not part of the process. That's just what I want to make sure just due to the fact that we have so many hires. Yeah. Um are you talking about the the rank that they're in? It it was kind of like this person was hired first for this and then this and then you know mo like if there was five people that we hired. Yeah. Um and like everybody was really good delay like this. They then we turn around and say well number five was our last hire. So we kind of have to look at our last hire. Okay. Yeah. Act 10's gone so it really doesn't mean anything. Number two, you know, if we get to the point

092of let's say an operated rent referendum doesn't pass and we have to make cuts, the board is going to be able to make those decisions prior to this and what C, you know, what process or procedure you use that still has to be developed because we don't have anything. Okay. I just wanted to make certain just in the event of knowing what's happened in the past because we've had problems in the past where someone says, "How come I got let go?" blah blah blah blah blah. Well, if we had a true handbook, that wouldn't be an issue, but and that's what we're working for. Um, but yeah, for this safe, when it comes to cuts, the board is going to be able to determine who's first, who's second, and because these are all in different

093areas. So, again, I can easily put them from here on out. Um, no, that's not what we're asking. That's not what I'm ask. That's not what I'm saying. Um, I'm fine with this. I just was concerned about what we've dealt with in the past and some individuals being very upset or hurt or not understanding why things happened to them. That was a big deal. Oh, it was. But even even afterwards, we've had Yeah. in the past. And that's where the board just has to speak up and say, you know, here's here's what our recommendation is. Okay. All right. Okay. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to read the consent agendas along. I just go through the process. I read it. In the event that you have questions, turn around and say, "Hey,

094I would like to ask a question about whatever item it is." Okay. Understand? Okay. All right. Item A is the minutes of the March 24, 2025 meeting. B is approval of February 2025 financial statement. C is approval of March 2025 accounts payable. D is approval of class advisor resignation. E is the approval of a support staff hire. F is the approval of sub custodian resignation. G is approval of child care resignation. H is the approval of professional staff resignation. I is the approval of professional staff reg resignation. J is approval of professional staff resignation. And K is approval of professional staff resignation. L is the approval of a long-term substitute in the music education department. M is the approval of professional staff hire. N is the approval of professional staff hire. O is the approval

095of a professional staff hire. P is the approval of a professional staff hire. Q is the approval of the 202425 GCSD mentor mentee contract. R is the approval of professional speech pathologists or speech therapist 2526 contract. S is the approval of GCHS athletic fiad credit for 202526 school year. T is the approval of Renaissance FastBridge 202526 renewal. U is the approval of menu software for GCSD nutrition um or school nutrition department. E is the approval of middle school track coach. W is the uh approval of Memorial Day holiday practice for baseball. X is approval of GCHS baseball field road recommendation. Y is the approval of donations from the pump house for DECA. Z is approval of donations to prom. Double A is approval of bleach bleacher inspection by PBR bleachers. Double B approval of summer

096student worker positions custodian grounds IT and childcare. Double C is a donation of the angel fund from Holy Cross. Double D is approval of donation from Stout Buckets or egg. Uh E is the approval of Dun County Barberhop's grant for choir. Double F is approval donation of memory of Jack Braxford A. Double G is approval of St. Croy electric operations roundup grant for egg and double H is the approval of FFA state convention attendance. Is there any questions that any individuals have since that's quite a light item of a lot of things that are I was just going to ask what item are what the speech therapists what that signifies as a change or whatever that one is the contract. So the same existing 40 student count contract that we have this year it's next

097year's contract for that same virtual service. Got I think we also need to outline that um this is not the service and output of education that we would prefer. Yeah. Unfortunately, we are in a situation where this post position has been posted for numerous months uh with no um errands gone through and we've done interviews dating back to December. Uh January is when we first posted it and I interviewed as soon as they I think as soon as they applied, I interviewed that same week. So, these individuals really don't exist. And so, uh, we didn't even put a dollar amount on this, uh, type of, um, offer. Um, unfortunately, these programs, um, and individuals going into these programs, uh, just few and far between. Um, but again, Aaron's basically looked at every avenue and I

098think most of us would look at and say, especially during co, you know, teaching online, how effective is that? um this year uh if you want to briefly talk Erin you know how did it go because this year we had to do this based on the lack of um individuals that applied. So if you wanted to give the board just an update on how this last year went. So their platform is very engaging. They do a great job providing service to a majority of our students. The ones that I would love, love, love to be able to get an in-person for and have reached out to a lot of people for are my high need students that may have an AAC device or our very little students that have a hard time attending to a

099computer screen um for longer than maybe a five minute period um no matter how engaging the platform that they use or even the SLPA so a speech language pathologist ologist assistant right next to them um doing other activities while they are engaged or maybe being observed by that SLP. Um, the way it folds right now though, there are not many. Um, I actually talked to W Oaklair who is opening their program up to more um, students going into this field, but they are opening it online to other states. So, it's not helping us right here locally to bring those um, professionals then into our area for these things. Um, we do have one that would be locally coming to us, but she just started school last year, so we have a while to wait. Um,

100but you know, I've reached out to our some of the retired friends of mine that are in this field and they're looking at maybe doing one day a week. Um, and they want to work with, you know, what they can because they know that they have that opportunity. Um, so we are still looking. So that is still open. We are looking at contracting right now with them for 40 because they are actually in the market looking for more people to help them for that virtual um and they're even having a hard time finding someone that they want to see for them and we have a speech in a couple days a week right now. We we do um unfortunately who we so we have a 6603 contract with Boyceville for that person. um she has

101now um been hired full-time through Boyceville because they had someone that got hired out um through a um through our CES 11 provider um to um that was able to offer you know something different for them. So we won't have any inerson as of right now. No, that is that is why again Patrick said I've been reaching out everywhere. Um, I called CISA because they do contract those services, which is why she went there. Um, and he didn't laugh, but he said, "You are the ninth district. We have four on staff and they're able to offer different things at a high price." Um, and so I inquire about several different items and that's kind of where we're at. So still trying which is why it's open and why we signed one contract right now for

102our 40 students but that is not fulfilling the need for everything but they are o they still are able to service our other students if that's what it comes to because I would rather stay with someone that we have had for this last year that knows our students and that way we can expand if needed. Aaron, how many total students do we have? Let's spend or excuse me, this speech speech and language we are at. Hold on, let me do a quick I have kind of a roughly Yep. roughly we 17 and 17. Yeah, we got a big number of we looking at 77 roughly right now and that's always a growing need. Um, I will say that one mom did re revoke um services recently because they had a little So, I'm looking at

103a three-year-old um going into 4K, so just turning four. Um, and she's like, I this the speech and language the your pathologist is great. The SLPA is great. It's looking at a screen, you know, at that age. Completely get it. I noticed the it was total cost and and maybe that's what they're going for. It sounds like we don't have a whole lot of leverage, but I noticed we had June in there, but maybe they were really just splitting out the total cost. Yes. And they put they look at August to they or start date to end date and they go that whole the whole wrap around. Okay. Anybody else have any questions? On the on the hires, I did have just a question. I noticed one was at a different rate. I'm assuming that's

104because they have a certificate of some form or that changes what they're going to be paid. Which which one? Uh so this would fall under the M through PS. So uh currently um let me just give a summary on that. We have a uh compensation scale and Let me just pull this up. This is a good conversation for the new members to uh so here is the recommendation uh that I brought to the board as of last November. We had to do a variety of back pay. um and so forth and I can send this to the new members that's also in board talks. Um this is the support staff um basic um outline when it comes to years of experience. Um this was prior to me uh this was the teacher program. Um I

105still don't get it. Um it's a very confusing comprehension or compensation model. uh the board did informally vote to dissolve it and have it go away just because these positions which then led to the backay issue where we had to back pay over 148,000 to staff members that went backwards um with that the it's just a very I won't go into detail it's just a very confusing model that doesn't make a lot of sense um so basically the way that I and I haven't changed changed it yet um or made a recommendation. Um but if a teacher uh comes and they have four years of experience, I take it simply count down four. This is the number. Okay. They just had a different year. And so the old steps and lanes process is kind of

106what especially since act 10 because prior to act 10 that was the typical piece that districts went by. Now, um, some went kind of very outside the box like this one, and they incorporated different things. Um, we're going to get back to a basic model, uh, where years of experience, master degree, things like that. Um, these jumps, as you'll see, um, I mean, there's literally $5,000 jumps, and I'm not saying they're not worth it, but just it makes things a little bit harder, especially from a budgetary standpoint. um how did and and they had to go through this process of um what was it called? Yeah, the model teacher program where they had to present to the board and do this. Some met it, some did not. Personnel files didn't include any documentation. There was

107just a lot of unknowns. So to your point, yes. Um it's basically uh if a teacher has five years we give them this number and then they get the increase based on when it is brought to Makes perfect sense. I know you guys did a lot of work on it so that no those are good questions. So I don't see a contract for Maze. Does he stay on the same page? Yeah. So um we had a choice and again I'm very much by the book um a cleaner version is just to have him resign. So he's an existing employee. Um, so we don't I didn't rewrite a new contract because we know what his amount is. The other individuals, um, it was twofold. I wanted them to see our contract, but I also wanted to

108hold on to them, so they didn't move on. If they break the contract, we still can charge them um kind of a restitution component. But, uh, with Jacob, we know the role in because he's an existing staff member. Ideally, um, we wouldn't have, uh, even had him resign. We could have transferred hidden, but I wanted and that's what again Tim did a a very poor job as far as documentation. You'll see every time there's agenda item I'm going to have and then these guys know it already. Um there better be a um existing um attachment, something that explains it. So in 10 years when I'm gone, five years, next year, whatever, they can go back and you can see exactly what we did. Um, so in Jacob's case, we didn't need need a contract, nor

109did we have to have him resign. We chose to just to make it clean. I just, for some reason, I thought Shel had more days in her year than a teacher does being a counselor, but she has a extended contract. Okay. So, you get that same thing then? Yeah, but that's an ex it's under the co-curricular part. It's not going to be in her normal contract. Perfect. Thank you. All right. Does anybody else need any clarifications on any of the items on the consent agenda? I did have one question about the Memorial Day baseball practice. Okay. Is that uh is that mandatory or volunteer? It's voluntary. That's actually Yeah. When we have Sunday practices and things of that sort. Um it's they're not mandatory based on highly recommended. Sometimes they are. Yeah. Based on practices.

110Um so what the board decided uh prior to me is the superintendent can make the decision based on Sunday practices. But when it comes to uh that is one of the things in the uh athletic handbook that if it is over a holiday um then it is brought to the board. Okay. Any other clarifications or understandings? All right. We don't have questions now. As we get through the consent agenda, we're still able to ask questions, right? You can as long as we haven't made the motions, you can still ask about certif. Yes. All right. Has to be approved to go through and ask questions. Okay. I will entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented. So move. Motion is made by Chuck. Do I have a second? Second. Second by Derek. Any further

111discussion or questions? Hearing none. All those in favor say I. I. Oppose say no. Motion carried. Next up is our administrative reports. Aaron, you are first. All right. So, the first attachment that you will see there, Miss Bonnie Barker, our school psychologist, has had created to share. Um, and it really truly speaks um May is mental health awareness month. Um he has recognized as this month accord and according to mental health America nearly one in five American adults experience a diagnosible mental health condition each year with half of all conditions being beginning by age 14. Early identification and support are critical yet only half of children and ad adolescence with mental health conditions receive the needed treatment. This is one of the reasons that we've taken steps to try to bring in some mental health

112support here at school. Um, some of these key facts that you will notice on this document, mental health issues can affect anyone, including our very youngest children here at school. if they've had any trauma in their life, even if they haven't, if they've have if they have any mental health in their family that runs in their family. Um, major depressive episodes impact one in six young people annually annually and suicide is the second leading cause of death among ages 10 to 24. Mental health conditions are not a result of personal weakness, but are influenced by biological, psychological, and social factors. Friends and loved ones play an essential role by encouraging treatment, offering support, and promoting self-care practices like regular exercise, healthy eating, prior prioritizing sleep, and maintaining social connections. Promoting our mental health here at

113school and even early intervention improves educational outcomes, productivity, and overall quality of life while reducing crime rates and boosting community well-being. Schools, especially our school, we want to help by supporting our mental health initiatives, encouraging open conversations, and providing resources for students and families. So, our school district's philosophy is every student every day. Our goal, we want it to be to empower all and every student to take ownership of and actively participate in their own learning. To make this a reality, the mental health of our students is important. Our counseling team works with teachers, staff, and administration to assist our students not only academically, but also show socially and emotionally. You've seen this year we implemented character strong middle school and high school. Um they implement it during their character strong. Miss Miller, she does

114the rotations in elementary school, which I've been um lucky enough to see her um utilize this during observations, but also just within our day, we see many times where some of those strategies come out um while working with students, but also um just in the kids. I mean, I know we all wish we could see some of those strategies and those core um learning skills come out even more during the day um because I think we see some of the other things um throughout our hallways. But I do see some of those characteristics and those key learning skills come out um that they are learning from Character Strong. But our school counselors are such a vital part of our school community. Um they're supporting students emotional and mental health through individual and group. Um I

115know Miss Miller, she has lunch bunches. She has small groups throughout. Miss Laughen is meeting one on one during any moment during the day. I know I can call her throughout just to touch base with her and I'll be like, "Are you with someone?" Sometimes she'll answer just be like, "I'll call you back." or she'll have to stop me with a, you know, at any time and be like, I have a student in my doorway. I'll give you a call back. Um, I know throughout the days, we all have students in our offices touching base. Um, it is a regular thing. Mental health is a constant for us throughout the day of our students and even staff coming in just to chat when they need a moment. Um they're constantly giving strategies to these students

116and teaching that is part of everything. Um Miss Miller actually gave us something because their job is not to be a clinician, a therapist, a psychologist. If something is not resolved and is not able to be resolved at school, I think it was six weeks. six weeks and they are referring on because that is not a portion of it. Um we also brought in rolling hills. Currently um they are seeing 21 students here on site but I can tell you there has been referrals that have not finished going through because one of the things that I said students resources and families if a family does not give permission for that next step we can't go further than what we're able to provide here at school with our teachers with our counselors with anything like that.

117So, we can do what we can, but we're not going to take the next step and give something else from uh Rolling Hills Equin Services because you can call and talk to parents, but if they aren't in agreement with us, that's something that maybe they want to refer out somewhere else on their own. But I can also tell you that um I've made a couple of phone calls and it's we're on the waiting list still that we have if you remember um about two years ago I started actually over two years ago almost three years ago started calling and trying to get more help in the schools for mental health and I just called four just the other day and one of them as soon as they heard my name actually the name Glenwood City

118School District they said you're still on our waiting list I said I've been on the waiting list for over two years now to have more people and more help in the school and that's I think a shortage everywhere could you touch or I think we've done trauma sensitive schools does that how does that relate to uh mental health or you know who who gets that training for that trauma sensitive schools. And the last time we had it was four years ago I think and we did training for staff during the day. Was that all staff? It was all um professional staff. It was professional staff and I'm not sure if I think par professionals were here that day. I do not think bus drivers um and some of our other support staff were here but

119I believe pair of professionals were here that day. I was part of the grant that was probably part of the grant for yeah a lot of schools got a grant from the state that which required that training school. Okay. Here here's what I can say. Um, we knew obviously you've known for months that Shel was resigning or retiring and so there's been opportunities and we have not done a good job around here with professional development. That's why we went to a P model PLC's etc. And so knowing that we have to get a baseline um of mental health toolbox and your counselors are kind of the key components of that. um with Jacob now um which you just approved um and then also um Peyton they're the kind of the the frontliners along with with

120Aaron but from a standpoint of administration and those two we have to develop a bigger and more robust toolbox in terms of how do we address these things there's a shortage of work similar to SLAs's um the we just had a another one of those phone calls we just learned through an interview um a person liv down and she does private uh let or excuse me private um counseling sessions reached out to her no and they don't do the school component because it's through magicare or whatever the case so there's a growing need and so for us as an administrative team we have to do a better job of bringing in those um professional development opportunities and making sure that every staff member is ready to go um in those situations to have those conversations.

121So, so trauma sensitive schools might be one of those tools or there might be something else that would be a professional development dealing with mental health. So, there was that specific mental health first aid is another tool kit. Yeah, sure. So, when those uh what was it probably four years ago? Yeah. Four years ago, there was quite a few suicides. There was the school shootings. Um there was a the safety grants under that and you had to go in and most schools got that grant and you were required to um provide professional development. You could isolate your own schools um we chose to do all of our staff um in New Richmond at the time um just because every person needs to understand it. But um we now that we have staffing I would say

122um in place now we have the individuals that are going to essentially develop that toolbox if that makes sense. Absolutely. And Chuck it it helps our it helps our teaching staff to identify those students that are struggling and have more strategies to try to keep them in class. um our students that are really significant, they might have staff that they feel comfortable with, but they may not be able to stay in that room anyway. Um you know, the incident that Patrick texted you about on the evening of the concert directly related to a mental health issue. Um to you know, the I was on the phone twice this morning with Shelley with two different students. Now, those students are both receiving outside services, too. So, there are these multiple layers. Um, so there's there's kind

123of a two-pronged approach where we need to get them we need to get them some outside counseling, we need to get them some help, but we also need to help the staff be more aware and try to be more inclusive and more even more welcoming. what they are. I know they are our staff works really hard and especially so small we know them but it is a it's a very very significant issue. Well and and obviously like you said Aaron the the biggest goal is to I mean they need to be in the right frame of mind in order to learn. I mean that cuz that's all of this is geared towards making sure that they can learn. So, if they're not there yet, we need to fix this thing first before we can get

124Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um the final thing on that is in front of you in that white little package um is a present from Bonnie Parker. Bonnie is our school psychologist. Uh she's retiring this year. Um and uh going to do some training with our new psychologist which the recommendation will come to you next month. Um, but she took and she's very um strongheaded and she would not let us reimburse her for it, but she wanted to give you each a present as a reminder of the mental health component um that we are viewing in our school on a daily basis and she's the one that actually put this together. Um she does a tremendous job. She's uh has a passion for mental health and she's the one that reminds us each year in terms

125of this date or this month, excuse me. Um and then others organizations piggy back off that. Um late today was sticker day or something. So students are observing mental health. They're doing to recognize anything else. I do. Yes, he's bringing up the rest of the story. I finished up with the counselor a little bit on that. Um the backpack program um in partnership with Westcap. I just wanted to give an update on that. Um so we have continued this program. Um we had been at 23 backpacks. Um and we are now at 21. Two families do not no longer have the need for that. Um and actually one family moved, but we are servicing and fe or feeding 56 children within those 21 backpacks. I believe one family is getting two backpacks. Um, in recent

126years, we have not started these backpacks until probably um, October, even I believe mid October. Um, I have started conversations with West that we would like to be able to start those within get the a little bit of the chaos of that beginning end of August, beginning of September out of the way, but start them a lot quicker this year. um and get the signup sheet out um mid August so that we could get it started up because we have families that continue to sign up throughout depending um on their situation and obviously move in come um also with that. So sometimes we get more um but it's going very well. So we like to just see that happen a little more quickly for next year. Um, and then each year, um, and you'll notice

127the numbers that or the years that I have up there. These are the documented years that I know of. Um, Miss Coler did a wonderful job um, started keeping track. I do know that at least in the year 2020, we had some um, families. I'm just not sure on the exact number of families. Um, St. Craig County does um shop with a cop where they ask local schools to nominate low lowincome families and just maybe families that need a strong presence and a good support um system um with a authority figure. So each year we have nominated and it goes all the way from our three-year-olds all the way up to grade 12. Um so each year we have nominated quite a few families. So and this can be their whole family, all the siblings

128um in that family and they meet at the New Richmond in Walmart and they go and go shopping for basic essential essentials. One of my favorite things coming back from this is the stories that we hear from the students. So this year um it came out a little bit early. So we have um some success to nominate some good families there and they will be um going August 12th. So they go at that beginning of this um beginning of August so that they have time to fill their backpacks um and it should be really good. So between nine and 23 families. It does not mean that they all get chosen, but you can always hear the good stories from the families and from the kids each year. Um the last thing on there is uh

129Miss Angela Humphrey, our school nurse, is scheduled to complete her adult and pediatric pediatric HSI trainers training. Right, Jody? Is that how you do it all? training course on May 17th um in Minneapolis. So, this will provide so many opportunities um in many ways coaches, staff, students, and community members. Jod has been wonderful to be able to bring in and do our CPR and first aid training. Um once um Miss Humphrey is trained, she will be able to open the floor up to what Jod's been doing for us in the past by coaching or by training our coaches um so that they are certified um and able to um make sure that they have everything that they need when they're coaching, but also we have many paras teachers that are trained and to be able

130to offer it for our health class um when when it's needed. Um I would like to talk to you though cuz I know we'd like to be able to have you there for her first time doing it. Um but then also be able to open it up for our community. Um and be able to invite people from our community and to be able to do it and having her on site all the time is a blessing to be able to open this opportunity up. So be able to catch everybody up once she's got it in. So can run that through community in Mhm. that one once we open it up and even when um Patrick you and I did it through Baldwin um we had quite the student group but being able to have Angela

131in for that will be really nice to be able to do it through community ed because I know I've had um nurses that go all around that have asked me when we're able to start that and if they could get in on one of yours and I think we were had already been full. So you'll to just reup their certification and I don't think they match with yours the last time. What is HSI? Health and Safety Institute. They Okay. They're the Yeah, they do all the medics and all the stuff like that. Different trainers. Yeah. Top training facility now. You're only allowed so many students per instructor which gets to be really hard to fit that many classes in them and coaches that pairs and stuff like that. So be a for her to be

132able to offer it more often will be huge. My time is limited. Yeah. Really good. Super. Yes. I will say thank you. All right. Let's see. All right. So, just a few updates. So, since the last board meeting, um you'll see that I have I put out two in the nose for my parent communication. We don't have as much going on as the high school middle school. So, I'm not able to put out weekly like I had kind of originally thought. So, it's been going about every week, every other week, excuse me. Um because when I do put them out, I don't I want it to be new stuff and not typically the same stuff. So, it's been about every other week, but I've still continued with that. Um I again still continue to see

133an increase of parent communication back that I wasn't seeing before. I think it's really easy now for them to hit reply because all the emails come right back to me and say, "Hey, by the way, what about this or whatever?" So, that line of communication's been great to keep that open. Um, another new thing that I've implemented at the elementary school, there's another new thing for you, Chuck. Um, that I've implemented at the elementary school is this year I tried for um I purchased a software program called Class Creator, which is a program that we're going to be using to start the process of placing students into classrooms for next year. So, what that does is it gives us a balanced approach. Um, elementary teachers are very creative with post-it notes, um, ranking systems, ranking

134systems for behaviors, gender, um, academics, lots of different factors. Um, but this just puts it all into one system digitally and, um, it's pretty slick. So, what it does is we have all the students uploaded in there and teachers right now are working on filling out surveys as far as academic needs, um, behavior services, peer relationships, different optional learning environments that work well for them or not. And then the system kind of kicks out like a whole class building process and it gives us kind of our first round draft and that we're able to kind of go through administratively then and also as staff that we'll be working through this month to kind of go, hey, yep, let's exchange these students. let's make this work. So, what it gives us is a more balanced approach

135um than kind of just sometimes sticking, you know, shots up at the dart board of, hey, is this going to work or not? So, I'm very excited about that. Staff has had a lot of good feedback um with that process so far. And again, keep in mind that we have final say. We're not going to let the computer system, you know, draw the end result, but it gives us a great starting point um for those kiddos. Uh down at the elementary school, we recently celebrated Earth Day. So, um, Holly Olsen is in charge of our student council. She leads our student council. So, they have a lot of great ideas of what to implement down for us at the elementary school. Wasn't the best day for weather. Um, I think it was last Tuesday if

136you remember. So, a little bit of rain and stuff, but um, the students did a great job when Tiny Toppers was on their way out. It was so cute. They had their little garbage bags um because everybody kind of had a section of the campus to take care of. One of the little girls, she probably was, I don't know, three or four, she walks by me and she goes, "We're going to clean up the earth." I'm like, "Good job, that is a great lofty goal." It was precious. We're going to clean up the earth. Um, so that was fun to see. And the kids did lots of um chalk drawings, which really brightened up the campus. So, I'm going to continue to encourage that because that's that's been nice to see those outside, but now

137they've kind of washed away. You'll see we've got lots of upcoming field trips. May is the time in the elementary school where we do lots of different field trips. So you see have all those kind of listed of field trips upcoming. Um staffing update. Um we had a field trip last Oh yes, in 4K. See, I really looked forward. Um yes, our four our 4K D visit the Draxo farm. Um which I'm very disappointed I missed out on that. I need to I need to get on this year. I love having them come. It's awesome. Yeah. And they they really enjoy that. So you've been doing that for a long time cuz my kids when they were 4K did you Mhm. Yeah. They're 16 now. I know we're getting old doing it. So um staffing

138changes. Um as you guys all know you did um just approved from Morgan Colinbeck. She's the new um hire that we have for a first grade teaching position which I'm extremely excited about. I did also do some internal movements within of teachers that were at grade levels. Um, administratively, we kind of looked at um, good fits, best fits as far as where we need the strengths of some of our staff members. So, I'm moving Jordan Halverson down to first grade. I'm moving Isabelle up to fifth grade. And then Christine Vickers is currently in kindergarten. She'll be moving to fourth grade. So, we've got some internal movements with there. The big question is is room placement. So, staff is eagerly awaiting who's going to what rooms. So, that will be uh, next on the docket for

139them. We also had Pete Miller and the fifth grade teachers collaborated and had our fifth grade students do some research projects on um professions that our fifth graders wanted to go into. And so they did a wax museum and that was a good time. We invited the parents to come in and family members to come in and um see the students presentations for that. I will say we as staff members were did not do a good job taking pictures. I kept asking, "Hey, did anybody grab any pictures?" and we we kind of all dropped the ball with that because we were trying to go around and visit everybody. So then it was like quick trying to go make sure we saw every student and all that. So we didn't get a lot of pictures. So

140next year that's definitely um on our docket to make sure we do a better job with pictures with that. Also something fun is our fourth and fifth graders got to do a roller skating unit. So they spent um two weeks where we had um a company come in um that Holly Olsen organized for us for roller skating. So it was fun for me to go in if I um had some breaks in the day. I would try to buzz in there, put strap some skates on and roller skate around with the kids. Um and they really enjoyed that and it was fun to see the progress that those carols made. So other than that, uh we're extremely excited for the warmer weather. Get those kids back outside at recess um on a consistent basis for

141us. So, does anybody have any questions for me? No. All right. Thank you. Great. Next. There is a lot going on at the high school um all all the time. I did have a few pictures from She and these were just mine, so they're not even the best. But it's um senior class trip is always one of those things that is it is a lot of work to plan and make sure that it goes off without a hitch. But it is so much fun. It really is to get the kids out and laughing together and just spending just spending time. You know, they their days are so right now so full of go and we've got to do this and what's the next thing? And to have them as a captive audience just for a

142little bit um and spend that time is always nice. Um I don't stay overnight usually with them um because there's always things here. So it's a day trip to the Dells and doing all the things and then they're so sweet. I'm leaving at 10:00 at night. They're like first should you is it's pretty late. Should you drive? Are you is this going to be okay? And they're um they're just they're sweet. So we have a really great time. They liked the water slides and food and they were a good bunch. It was a lot of fun. So, we went to the Dells. Um, the next thing you see is a prom just happened. Um, again, another thing to be really proud of, we had 101 students and we went to Whitey Hill in Hudson and

143Prom was open grades 9 to 12. Um, we had I think there was probably six, seven adults there throughout the evening. And as most of the times we take them out and about, we are complimented on how our kids are in the community. Um, you know, they they help clean up, they help set up if need be, they are respectful and their neat. And it again, always taking a big bunch anywhere. You never know. And it it's it could be a roll of the dice, but every time we we go somewhere, I've been so proud of them. So, the kids had a blast. It's another time where, you know, um that first picture it's it's bright pink and it is difficult to see, but when you look at a whole group of, you know, 100

144kids all dancing um to the same music and they're all out doing the cha slide or whatever they're doing, it's it's fun. You can't I I was Yeah, I smiled the whole night. It really was. It was great. And they did a a great job of organizing it. Shaina Hoffman was our prom coordinator. She did a a fantastic job. So we took three buses. Three buses came back. All the kids went. All the kids came back. No issues. So it was it was good. You forgot to thank the most important person. You Marcy Mercy. Marcy isn't you. She did a lot. My husband. My husband. He's my eternal foundate. He gets drug to these things. spouses always get drugged to these things as an administrator and just u I was able to come and see

145that Miss Burge and and Miss Hoffman did a fantastic job. You just it it's one of those that these pictures don't do it justice. The time and commitment that goes behind this um with our um the bus drivers to the volunteers um who don't get paid uh don't get compensated, give up their weekend and then they're late. I mean, they get home at 4 in the morning. So, it was fun. And you know, when you do this job, I think we all your family comes along. They really do. Um, my husband, you can thank him, but he gets in a pair of shoes and the kids want to know what the shoes are every year. Um, but it's true this year. Um, but it is it's a lot of fun and and it is the

146we bring our families along sometimes and and it's it's a great way to have the kids see us as um as yeah as people too. um our spring athletics. I just wanted to point this out as you can see this evening. Um things are changing every single day based on the weather in the spring. And I, you know, we know this, but when you're in the middle of it and things are changing and you're hearing it on the announcements, you don't know how significant it is. So I just did a I ran the numbers real quick and this was before things were changed. 43% of our events in the spring are canled, rescheduled, pushed back, times changed. And so that's if we seem frantic in the spring, it is because we are frantic. The teachers

147are trying to get everything done. The students are trying to do everything and then everything is changing each day. So um you know, hats off to the the coaches who are flexible, our athletic director who's making calls. I'm doing interviews today and making calls and trying to find um prompts for games and it it's just a when you're not in the middle of it, you don't always know all the things that have to go into rescheduling. And so it is a it's a really big it's a really big undertaking. And so patience is the key in the spring. Um, kind of piggybacking off of that, in the fall, we started a started a survey. We've talked each year about a survey for our athletes. Um, we made a draft in the fall and have it

148ready to because our our winter sports have just finalized their banquetss. Our spring sports are obviously underway, but we have a an athlete survey for our athletes as well as parents to get some feedback on our athletics, how our students are feeling about things um things like, you know, playing time, which of course was a hot button issue, but um coaches, their gear, practices, how they felt as development of themselves as athletes and sportsmanship. So, those are some of the questions and then I put the just a real quick screen grab of some of the questions that are there for parents. Um, you know that anytime you open up a survey, you will get all sorts of responses. And so, what we're really looking for, and this is going to be sent out through Survey

149Monkey, which means that the students and parents will be able to answer that anonymously because there's always a fear of, you know, what's going to happen if I say this? Can I actually tell my real answers and my real feelings? It'll be pushed out through Survey Monkey. And then you look for trends. You look for trends in different sports. You look for trends over time to see what those kind of what those themes are that you see. So that's going to be going out within the next two weeks to our parents and um and our athletes as well. So more to report on that as we're finished. Um course selection right now is taking place. I put a couple of things in there for you to see. We have added a little bit more um

150a little bit more a little bit more options for our students in terms of what we would call electives and work experience opportunities. We have a district that is ripe with career opportunities, pre-career opportunities. I put two of them on there. We have a a child care program and right in the building um we have teachers assistant options for students that that want a little bit more specialized training. I mean I had a teacher reach out and say I could really help with um I could really use some help with fluency and um having a student come in get some training on how to work with a small group and working with kids in the elementary um kitchen assistant as well. We had a student who tried it this year, had a student that goes

151into the kitchen and and works for an hour a day for an elective credit. We we know that our students are not are not all going toward the college track, but what are those things that if they don't have the opportunity to get off campus, what can we provide them in terms of ski job skills? And so these are just a couple of the things that our students will have opportunities to sign up for. now that administratively and through the counseling department and for the teachers that are taking them on, we make those decisions. It's not as if we go, "Oh, we've got eight kids that sign up and willy-nilly we just put them there." You know, that it takes it's going to take some time and some thoughtful placement and might not be, you

152know, the best. We we're purposeful about making good matches. And so some students may not be able to do this if we know that, you know, we the information that we have leads us to believe that wouldn't be a good fit. But I wanted you to see a couple of these things and let you know that we're just trying to we're always looking for more experiences for our students. How does this differ from TA? What do we tap? Is it called TAP? No, TAP. Is it different from it or is it the same or is it just an extension? Um, it differs in it's similar in the way that it is an elective credit. It is different in the way that it's more specialized. Um, our TAP students in the office may have errands to

153run and and things to do to help us, but it's not necessarily although some of them might say it's a skill. Um, we these are more specialized in teaching skills. For instance, in the kitchen, you um Tori takes them through a training program and then she does food safety with them and then they're learning about food preparation. And it's more specific skills that are taught. Um teaching assistant in the elementary, they're learning a specific skill. Um they're learning about reading fluency or math fluency. So it's more targeted training and more specific jobs that we need students to do. So do we will we still have the tap? cuz I know students go in basically to assist the teachers and you know and there's still going to be like an elementary art cap. We're just going

154to kind of define or have description a little more. It's just adding a little more um a little more specialized areas. I guess I can speak to when my when I was teaching business here, I had a tap student and I said, "Yeah, you're not a tap student. you're taking this class cuz you have no background in marketing. And so he just he was in the class um and he went through the marketing point too. And so I think what Miss Burch said it well it it's more specialized. It's not their job should not be to be an extra hand in the high school office. They're actually learning the skill that will and when it comes to their um transcript now you're actually going to be able to see what skills they work on. you're

155not just an extra hand that hey, you know, go run some errands, go make some copies. What is the skill that they're actually learning? So, um I'm looking forward to the change the tab um was just it needed it needed to be rebuilt. Well, it makes better it makes more sense to turn around and give it have description and and not only in the title itself, but also the tasks at hand. Yeah. and those are more laid out as well. So students know what their options are. Um some students aren't a good match for certain things and you do still have that need in a classroom, especially um like a an elementary specialist. They they do need another set of hands a lot of times. You know, you've got a bunch of little people running

156around and we've had some absolutely fantastic placements with our high school students um helping the elementary classes. It's been heartwarming um to say the least. So there's been some great parents, but sometimes kids think that they want to do that because they don't have another option for electives and they're not interested. So you put them in a classroom and then they go, "Yeah, this isn't really what I want to do." So being more specific and then again more targeted with those job skills, I think it'll um yeah, just provide some more opportunities for the kids. That's great. I don't know if there's any confidentiality, but what about kids wanting to go into nursing? If there's any sort of way to follow Angela, you know, that came up. Yeah, it's a little bit hard because of

157that, but yeah, it came up in our principal group like even on the vision screening days or clinic days, you know, something. It's the same concept with special education. Yeah. You I mean, there's information you can't share. So, you have to have some strength. Um, one of the things we we did in another district was they had to sign a document. And again, it's a you had a parent sign because they're not 18, but they have to understand there's a level of confidentiality. Yeah. I suppose you need the the right candidate for that. Yeah. I mean, a lot of my parental care workers could really benefit the ARC room and helping you guys out because they do that daily with us, too. But the piece of that is is that the parents of the ARC

158students have to sign off. Sure. It can't just be a one-sided thing. It has to be, you know, if I have an ARC student, um, I got to be okay with a student in with mine that are there. So, it's it's a two-way street. Right now, I can tell you in the Dun St. conference, there aren't any um student assistants in with the nurses. I could see those specific like a screening dates or something like that. that would give race kind of a hybrid, but there aren't any right now nearly. That's the end of it. Thank you. Okay. Now, we move into our action items. First action up is the approval of Case 11 annual delegate. So, this is the the opportunity for an individual by state statute. you we the board has to name

159an individual to this. So we'll take any um nominations or anybody volunteering uh that would like to be this delegate. It talks about you know what your priorities are but based on statute we have to identify one and then have it approved and tradition holds that this will be the most beautiful night of the summer. Yes, this is held in Turtle Lake. It's one of those ones that I was talking about telling you about that I did my first year. is really good information. And I think I did it last year. I did it a few years ago, too. Yeah. Yep. So, June 2nd at 7 p.m. is what it is. So, anybody want to be a delegate? I'm just Well, it's such a new thing. It's such a It's a Monday night. No, if

160one of these guys doesn't want to do I didn't have a problem. I was I was going to say I'd open it up to you, Derek, since you're an officer. Um, state track should be over that prior weekend or maybe the weekend after. So, I think state is the weekend after. Yeah. Yeah, I nominate that. [Music] You get paired up with different school districts and they just, you know, get really good at you just get paired up and then there's a protocol of placements. So, are you um okay with doing that? All right. So, um I'll entertain a motion to approve Derek. So, moved. They did it already. All right. Well, we have that you just nominated. You're right. You're right. All right. Um is there a second to that? I'll second. Okay. Second by

161Jordan. All right. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say I. I. Post say no. Motion carried. Next is the approval of WSB governance services for GCSD board of education. So this is a contract uh that I would like the board to consider. Um this is a recommendation for myself. Um I would highly encourage uh for a couple reasons. Number one, um professional development is always a great opportunity, but very few opportunities do you get to do it as a full board. And uh there's an individual um Bruce Quinton. Bruce is a longtime superintendent in Pepin um who just retired. He now is a consultant for WSB which is your organization. And I talked to Bruce and uh talked about just a governance service and uh I think this is money well spent

162service and uh I think this is money well spent. You're not listening to me. You're listening to a veteran superintendent. Um I have a lot of respect for him. Um and he just kind of takes you through the processes roles of the board. I would echo um some of Robie said tonight that there is a lack of trust in our community and these are the opportunities that we need to take advantage of not only in house as staff but also as a board. Um there's things that were not followed procedure. There was things that were not done correctly. Um and again for you to have a voice other than myself um is is good. Um and so I had them draw up a contract uh you can pick and choose. You can try choose not

163to do it at all. Um but I wanted to give the board an opportunity uh if professional development. I spent uh Wednesday through uh Friday. Um and you're busy from sun up to sun down. Um you're away from your families, things like that. Um we need to follow through with it both as administrators and also as a board. So um it's open gets to choose whether you want to move forward and in what way. What's the administrative content pertinent to? Which one? Where it says this the week of June 16th would be tougher. It's my daughter's wedding. Oh, that is uh Bruce. His daughter is getting married. That's not um I have daughter. No. So, um so just and I've covered this with our new board members. So, I'm logged in and so the administrative

164content um and I'm fine showing this. Um but anybody in the public can't see this. The admin team can see it. You can see it. If the newspaper wants it, they can request it through opens records. But for me, that's my notes that Bruce's daughter has. Uh, and I want to be respectful of that. But he was just giving dates that he was not available. So, he comes to us here. He comes here. Okay. Yeah. We don't have to travel. Um, but again, it's wide open on how much and what level you guys would like to have professional development. Um so again um my job is to provide the opportunity and then you guys get to decide to what level if at all you would like to pursue it. I guess when from a like

165a strategy standpoint and kind of alignment of like the district goals would it be that would not be but would it be helpful to do this you know after all of that where we kind of have really good aligned direction and then do a team building to really understand how we can maybe more effectively execute to that direction in my opinion yes um I think there's just a lot that has transpired that um whether it's statute changes law changes and just overall governments um that it it's always great to get refreshers. Uh sometimes when you go to WSB down at the convention, you can go to these uh breakout sessions, but it's not everybody, you know, you're hearing the same thing. Um so to your original question, in my opinion, yes. So, am I understanding

166this correctly that it's it's all like all like bullet 1 2 3 4 5 6 or five pick and choose. Is that what you're saying? Yep. It's like a buffet. You can pick and choose to what every board's different. And again, this is not WASDA is the superintendent association. OSAW is the um principal association. Um, yours is WSB. This is an affiliation. Um, and I know Jody has spoke to WSB individuals uh that she has referenced in what we get. So, what you feel and tailor it however you just need to tell me and then I can get it put together. [Music] We only want two hours on one night and then he'll pick out because it's an overall governance series. Gotcha. But you could also tell me, hey, I want to learn more about

167this. And you can tailor it based on, you know, his. And that's why this is good because it's not just somebody isolated or a different, you know, individual from another district. This is WSB, your organization that has a template that they use throughout the state. Um, Bruce is the one that I requested just because Bruce gets it. Um, he's a very wellrespected individual. He was on numerous state boards. Um longtime soup but on a small community in Pepin and so he gets our makeup because Pepin used to be in this conference. So um from that standpoint that's why I look to seek him out. Um but then you can build it however you would want. Um, I see the development presentation of a 90minute workshop for the board and superintendent uh presented by Bruce. I

168don't but I don't understand what the next phase of that is. Well, and you can add to it after that. I um you could just again we want a basic one. So if we wanted to say, "Hey, Bruce, we really need to refresh on finance." Could you explain that to us? Okay. I Yeah, you could have an idea of what like all of the options are. So kind of again like if we understand what some of those strategic vision items are and which he's he's more of the 30,000 foot view. So he's going to come in. Um, and then again, it's it it's going to be organic as far as where the conversation goes because you might go off in a 45 minute discussion about finance. Um, so again, it's and then you can add

169on and say, you know what, we want to do this again except on this topic. this is just the the starting point or the ending point whatever you feel um is needed but especially with three new board members because as I talked with uh Deb today um and I said it to one of you I can't recall if you're on a board um Derrick's been on a board um you know the public sector versus the private sector is very different the public sector versus a school sector is completely different. So it it's just one of those where again professional development so you guys are informed as you're making these large level decisions. Now would that help like Jordan said to lead into the strategic planning process? Absolutely. Because you have a better understanding of the

170governance and of the the baseline to what a strategic plan u would look like and then build from there. So, even if you just chose, hey, I want we want one session, two hours on this date, that's all. And you could also um you could you know if you knew that hey uh because we obviously have a board meeting in June or June if you want to say hey let's let's start early then it's just one night uh we get rid of board report so we just do the the basic minimum of consent and business items keep the agenda light and then we're going to go through this you go it's a truly a work session is Is there a topic that you knew about this thing or an area that you think would be

171beneficial? That third one would be fitting norms and building trust. I mean, tell you that there's there's some um I've been to or read about of of you know, how to be an effective board. Yeah, that's on their website. I feel like there's a video or something on there about roles, responsibilities, and all that, but you know, I I feel like um you know, something along that lines that how how how do we all hopefully will, you know, be on the same page of a vision we want for Glenwood City, but how do we make that happen? You know, how do we how are we going to be effective? Um, you know, how do we work together to to flip that open enrollment number? You know, um, you know, I think that what do they

172call it? habits of highly effective school boards or something like that. You know, something in that realm appeals to me. Um, all three of these, I mean, they're all worthwhile. Yeah. I think it's open the door to the conversation too to your point of, yeah, how do we work? How do we continue to work? And what are the things that we want to continue to develop? you know, even as a board, you know, personally, that was one of the things in the introduction to like the the WB is there there's such a broad spectrum of they're not all going to be experts in school finance, right? But how do we kind of understand who has an act for what so that we can say, you know, I'm as an engineering background probably more likely to

173go look at what we're doing in the tech ed departments, right? uh and maybe not, you know, be so nervy in the account and we can table this to give you, you know, till next month. So again, as a reminder, next month, our meeting is one week sooner because of Memorial Day. Um we can table it and allow you to think um of topics and then we can go from there and have it in July. I mean it the June part it it can happen at any point. It can happen next fall. I again I just think there is a opportunity here for two reasons. Um we have new board members. Uh but we also um we need to do better um as a district and if the board functions as a strong bond um

174we need that we need that to happen and I think even you know whether you want me there or if not um but we do it almost weekly at our admin meetings. We talk through things and you go, you don't get an opportunity to really do that. You know, even like the work session tonight, who was talking? It was me. And that's why I I personally don't like our setup because it's just regurgitation. I like the work sessions where here's the topic, I put a presentation together, and then it just then you roll with it. What you know, I want to see our lab. I want to see the technology that our kids are getting, and I want to see this. and Frank can sit here and answer all those questions. Um, and that's kind

175of what this is to better understand because to to Jordan's point, WSB and the boards, it's just it's a whole new world and the more information you have, the better. I maybe I misunderstood you, Jordan, about the timing of this. Um, in my mind, it seems better to do this before we embark on a big strategic plan so all kind of get together. Yeah, it seems like it's kind of both sides of it, right? Because to me is if we understand how, you know, with with some of the technical detail that we want to go into in some of the sessions is how do we as a board work to say is it a board le kind of introduction into what we're doing, right? If we want to dive into the tech and that's one

176of the pillars, right? How do we as a board go and facilitate kind of that understanding of what each of those pillars are, right? There's a I I I think I think there might be an opportunity to do it both before it's developed so we have a deeper understanding of those pillars and then afterwards what what once our plan is kind of honed in and we find and we know where we want to go and what what our plan is. Maybe we do this again. Yeah, that's what I and and and then it's like okay we we know what we're going to do. How are we how are we going to get it done? Yeah. get to point earlier, how do we execute on it? I know like the finance and we're doing, you know,

177the monthly rotations. Can we do that with some of those pillars? You know, if there's five pillars and we want to rotate through those by monthly, how do we rotate them and kind of do those those deeper dives? I can say that these community meetings um I've learned the hard way. Um in Richmond, I had some during the summer and they're just not attended. People are on vacations, people are enjoying the weather. Um, so we moved them to the fall when kids are in school and better attend. So, you know, we have some time this summer to be able to have these meetings to get to the point where we're going to have that community input um to where we want to do we want to get something on the schedule. Well, that's I was

178thinking, you know, this this these three items here would be a real good foundation for all of us. Yeah. to to to start and get the get things set up and get a level and understanding each other and anything and then go into whatever people's pizza or whatever, you know. So, I don't I think this is a good idea. I'll assume I Why Why wait? Yeah. My opinion. Well, that's what I'm thinking because with the newness I mean that's good. There's a lot of history that a lot of people know and don't know. Um, again, sometimes when you think of these dates, especially during summer, you know, um, I I think it would be not advantageous if not everybody's here and that's the hard part. During summers, people are doing vacations, etc. So if you

179look at our next board meeting, it is on the 23rd and in June. And again, if you I don't know, previous boards always felt different. Some people wanted two nights and they didn't care. One person, you know, a couple might have said, "No, I wanted one night." So it only disrupts because I got small kids, we're on vacation, whatever. So again, we can have a light agenda. Um if you wanted to do it on the 23rd, um I can throw that out there to them. And then you have uh the first whatever hour um 45 minutes is the true agenda items and then it goes into the board because then you know it's still an open session. Um but then you go into the whatever Bruce has planned and then it's it's one night in

180June. Um, otherwise you could go two nights, you know, where we do meet the 23rd as scheduled, then you pick another night. I I'm perfectly fine doing a different night of the board meeting, but that's just Yeah, I hear a lot of information. I just like it to be separate, too. I think I Yeah, I kind of am thinking the same thing because it would just be nice just to deal with this. Yeah. And not pull other things in, you know? Think of it. That's what I'm thinking because I know what's going to happen to you. Tough questions on other things that are going to happen. And you can uh again it it doesn't necessarily have to be approved tonight. If you want to go home, talk to your um spouses and say, "Hey, do

181we have anything planned?" Because I know I just roll with the punches and Holly dictates where I go, when I go. Um, and you have that information, then you throw in dates and then I can throw it out there. Yep, this works. This works. And I can do the the process of finding the date that works for everyone because again, even if one of you is gone. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's the team there. Yeah. It would go against the purpose. I would say sooner that it can be done better. um kind of concept. So maybe look at yeah look at calendars and then put out dates. Are there you know I will say are always good usually for me. So, but yeah, what's the time frame as far as you know, I know we mentioned

182June next summer gets too busy. I would say before things get too busy, I turn around maybe look at early June. That would be the suggestion is maybe look just not the seventh not the second not the most beautiful of the summer and it doesn't have to be a Monday you know it could be you know could be another night as well but I would say why don't you do this I will send an email out tomorrow and I want you to just respond to me with your top three dates and then I will put it together um and then communicate what time frame are thinking cuz early June. No, I mean evening I assume for everybody evening hours. Okay. Sound good? Is there a um I'm completely out until the night. So I'll be

183in Georgia until the 9th of June. So first week in June is pretty much out. And then he's not available from the 16th through the 21st. You're not back until the 9th. I'm not back until the 9th. So basically from the 10th of June on any day only like the 10th through the 13th then though because Brian's not available or whatever his name is, right? Bruce, thank you. Sure. So the last week in June, the last full week in June might be the best because of his schedule and ours. Tennessee that week. This is why bathroom. Yep. It's going to be busy. Does anybody Is there Is there a date between the 10th and 13th that anybody can think of until you check in with any of those dates? My wife's in Tennessee, so anything

184works for me. Is there a time that works better? 4:30 on for me. What's the earliest? Let's Let's go that route. What's the earliest people want? skateboard. Five skateboard for you. So the earliest I'm hearing is five. Yeah. Okay. And I will can have a meal for you. So you can come from. So five, let's just say 5 to 8. And it's not going to go that long. Um so we're going to focus on the 10th through the 13th. You verify. I send an email. You tell me which date and then I'll go from there. Does that work? Okay. Um, did I put approval? You do have Okay. So, what I need is someone to um table it so that I can move it to the next. So, Barry gives me a motion to table

185table item B of the action items. Do I have a second? Second. Second by Scott. Any further discussion? hearing. None. All those in favor say I. I. Say no. Motion carried. Next up is our GCS uh the employee handbook templates. So um I don't know that anymore. I had presented on this uh prior and actually during my evaluation with President Kaiser and Vice President Draxler um there was some unknown questions. Um there was board members that thought we have an existing handbook. We don't. Okay. So I'm going to walk you through what we have. Um if you go to U board docs which you're in and you can see the policies that I kicked me off. If you go to the policy there is right here board operations employee handbook. If you click on employee

186handbook, all you have is policies. And I don't know what sector I mean, I do know what sector most of you work in, but um I'm guessing especially the three that I've met with, you all have an employee handbook. This is not an employee handbook. So, you might be asking, well, what is an employee handbook? And again, um I'm not going to uh apologize. Um, I use New Richmond a lot and please know we did not have all the answers. Um, but I can say that uh we had our ducks in a row and you can see our employee handbook which actually is a WSA WB um template which means when a law or statute is changed, WSB sends us the update and then we tailor it towards what our district needs. So you can

187see every year we updated this. We don't even sign off on a handbook here because we don't have one. Um and this is not a handbook that is just a bunch of policies because even in these policies, number one, most of them are 2004 or 2011. Um and we're missing more than we even um have. So some of the board members that I met with like we have a handbook. No, we don't. We don't even have the semblance of a handbook. And if you look at this right here, you know, so what's in employee handbook? Well, it's acknowledged. Um there's a table of contents. Anything and everything that you want to know as an employee is in this document. And so that is a huge um red flag for us, but also in our governance

188of our employees. And just if you look at the number of pages just in our table of contents. So when you say is this our handbook? No. So with that said, uh we had two choices and again we can go about it two different ways. Um, Neiola offers a handbook template which I added and personally I think it's more instead of recreating the wheel um I wish I would take our WSB because it's up to date um it's part of your organization but at this point because we are starting from scratch with Neil it makes more sense to use those templates and then add in the rest of it. um he's watching tonight, but uh Mr. Popco is getting his uh old ed degree or extended degree. Um and he's going to actually help me

189with this um because he needs ours. And what I need from the board is approval of what direction you would like to go. Uh here's your choices. Number one, if you look at the recommendation, I had up um you know the purpose of the employee we went through uh this is why ours we don't have a handbook, we don't have welcome statement, we don't have strategic direction, we don't have clear expectations, uh legal protections of our staff, um onboarding training support. So even like uh if a somebody comes in um do we have those process and procedures in place? No. even the code of conduct comprehen or compensation benefits um the list can go on and the probably the most important part we don't have a signoff process and that signoff process um is so

190vital because if I'm making the decision um I can come back to the staff member you signed off on this this is your understanding and it's not a gotcha you moment it's just these are the rules and regulations and that's how you govern so with that um here's the pricing. So, the attachments that you see, and he gave me the attachments, these two right here, they're $250 and that is what you get. And basically, you build them based on all these concepts. And what I would do is just take bits and pieces because I went through, you know, here was our strategic plan. here was um at the end was our compensation model um our alt comp and there's non-renewal there's sections that are you know anything you can think of as an employee it's

191there so that's one choice as far as you could go with or you could go with the WSB. Now the WSB is $1,000 um for the district initial purchase and then it's $500 annually after that. Please don't get caught up in the pricing because the pricing is kind of a moot point. Um, and I went through this with uh some colleagues, too. And again, when you're when you're starting from scratch, you're almost better off going with the EOLA one instead of the um WSB one just because it's it's so much more robust and we have to build it from scratch. So, it better tie to our policies that we're implementing. So, I'm going to leave it up to the board on what direction you would like to go, but we have to have an employee

192handbook in place by the start of the 2526 school year for best practice. So, in your professional opinion and in your years of experience, do you believe that Neiola is the best way to go? For what? Scott, I would. Yeah, I would based on the current circumstance. Based on the current um if we had an existing WSB, yeah, I would go with WSB. I I that's what I'm familiar with. But because our policies really don't exist um so many of them and we're using Leola, which was one of the first recommendations we made, it just makes sense to build off of that because then we can tailor it however. And again, you guys would have the final say on what that looks like. But I would use the new Richmond one as a some of

193those other pieces. Um, you know, I would say at your workplaces, do you have to be reminded of what state statute is? I'm one with NEOA policy. If it's a state statute, do we really need a policy that supports that? You have it written out, but you don't have to go into detail. So, there's a variety of things. And if you look at my goal in New Richmond was pretty simple. It was one-stop shop. Some of my kids when I was hired as the business teacher here hated that. They're like, "What does that even mean?" This handbook is 178 pages. That's a lot of information. But if you were an employee in enrichment and you had a question, it 95% was located in this document. So yes, to your question, Scott, I would say based

194on our current circumstances, the better way to go. How far how far we are we in the Neola as far as our what what's 100 number series are we so uh what I have done through is um because I've done this in Prairie Farm and I've done it in New Richmond uh we've made some pretty good headway. Uh we are done with this thousand zeros which is board level. We've done one done with a th00and 2,000 3,000 and I just finished up 4,000. So right now the next one which is two weeks I believe we're going to dive into the 5,000 which is the biggest chunk is students and when you look at 5,000 then you got 6,000 7,000 8,000 9,000 and uh yeah uh New Richmond and Prairie Farm unfortunately were in the same

195boat. Um your Richmond had policies but they didn't have guidelines and we don't have policy which is the starting base. uh guidelines won't happen until the following year. So, we are it's a work in progress. I think if that's your your opinion, I I think that's perfectly I think that's great. We can easily go with that. I don't see any reason not to. So, I I I move that we go with the Neola template for the employee. Second. motion is made by Chuck S and by Scott. Any further discussion? I can't imagine not having one every even though I've been with the same company every location I go to has their employee handbook they they go over even if you've been with company 10 years. So I'm glad that we're able to have people here

196that are willing to stick it out with us. But this will be a huge step in the right direction just foundationally and be able to go here and search control last. I'm worried about my sick leave. How do I How do I calculate how much holiday? I mean, wow. This is close for anything else. Any other discussion? All right. Hearing none. All those in favor say I. I. Both say no. Motion carried. Next up is the approval of the GCSD strategic direction dashboard. Okay. Sorry, I was kicked out. Um, this is another uh choice by the board. Um, this is something that uh I think I think I've shared the story with you, but I'm just going to give you some context. Um, when we talk about the strategic plan, and I know we're getting

197a little bit ahead of ourselves, um, but the example that I want to show you is what is what's the what's the point of this dashboard piece? um when we have a strategic plan in place. Um if you look at the the public, um I will say that I was going down this road with my other district um before I left. And the reason being is because we had a an existing strategic plan that we were working towards as I was there seven years. And if you look at uh the examples that I provided, and I'm okay with what the board decides, if you think that this is a little ahead of the game, but it's going to take some time to actually build. Um, and I have them draw up agreement because again, it's

198never u information is powerful. Um, but what does this look like? If you click on the recommendation and then you click on and I'm going to walk into these, but this is probably the biggest one that I want to show you. Um, you can click on these links. The dashboard would be when we officially decide what is important to our district. Um, and I'll give you an example. In the beginning of last year, we had district votes. Now, it's not just for poster material. It's not to say, "Hey, Glenwood has goals. Great. We have a statement, you know, every student every day." And it's just poster material. We want it to mean something. Um, what is that and how do you get to that point? You get something like this that actually shows truly what

199Gordon was talking about, which is trend data. Can't I can't close the door. Just open it a little bit. Yeah. Fully shut there. It's got to be correct. That's all you got to do. Um, and so this was something that I was putting the final touches on uh before I left because we we had it down as far as where we wanted to go and what we wanted to do. Um, if you look at the student successes like what the board uh community admin staff and so on, what is the important to us? Do we care about student engagement? Do we care about how our kids are involved um in um you know when Miss Burch talks about activities? How many middle schoolers are in athletics? How many are in co-curriculars? Um you know some

200of these are these are you can quantify them. Student growth you're using the report card but it's a very easy clickable dashboard that's right in front of you. if you ask some of these questions, maybe not uh that we could find the answer right off the bat. And again, from a a a well-designed strategic plan that we can incorporate this down the road, graduation rate, college pathway, uh learning environment, you know, are we a blue ribbon school? Uh with this federal government going down, uh that has been actually taken away. student attendance, um, student ratio. Let's say you are looking at our school for open enrollment and you want some of these stats. This is where you would find it. The cost is pretty minimal. Um, and it uses data to decide these and it's

201not subjective. So, um, what I wanted to bring in front of the board is that I would love to get to the point of doing this. If we feel we're ready, fine. If we don't feel we're ready, that's fine, too. That's your decision. Um, but for me, this dashboards can be pretty powerful for the minimal cost that is so that we have and here's if you keep going down financial because I get these questions a lot based on the circumstances local property tax revenue and it's similar to that other document that I shared when you're looking at um, you know, what are the success stories of our district? Let's say I get my property tax bill. I get a phone call from a local taxpayer. Why are my taxes going up for the school district?

202This is just another resource that they can look at. Fund balance, uh expenditures, um you know, what are we spending in fund 10? What are we spending in fund uh 27? This is just a tool. Um district characteristics, here's our enrollment, here's our ethnicity, student mobility, low income. Uh we're up to 40ome percent. The question is for the board, is this something you would like to pursue now um to start building upon or do we wait scrap it all together? Does this data exist in some other format already? It's just not as user friendly a variety of them. Yes. So if you look at some of this um graduation rate, we go to the state report card. the state report card. Now, do you know where to find the state report card? Well, it's on

203our website. You could Google it, but again, it's and we know this. We're we're revamping our website this summer. I mean, it's literally if you have to click in more than three, research will show this more than three times, you're screwed. That people will just they'll X out. They don't want anything to do with it. So, for us, this was a dashboard because it's quick and easy. It's like here's here's where it is. And I can tell you whether it's the annual meeting or whether it's I'm a family coming into Glenwood or it's the board talking about um goals. This is what we would reference. Who would manage the information going into it? Would we have automatic reporting that it would automatically pull from the data source? uh what's the what's the background of that

204dashboard and how much time would be spent by staff on building that or maintaining it? This would be run by me. Um when I was making this recommendation um you know I I want it to be as accurate as possible. So it would be run by me because I want to make sure that the data is updated um in terms of where it's coming from. So when we get a new report card, I would be the one to link it. Now what this if you look at the very bottom this is uh this EC group it's a consulting firm that builds the framework and then your job is to put it in and um I don't know the deep like ultimately do you send them the links and they do it I think you manage

205it they set up the overall framework and then you update it but um overall I wouldn't put this on anybody but this is my How much time do you think it would say? I mean, you you guys got to get questions like this quite often from maybe people interested in the school district or others. I mean, I'm assuming there' be some time saved on the flip side of having it readily available, whether it's for maybe potential audit or people that want to come in and understand the information. Yeah, I think um we were in an interview today and we had an individual that they just moved into their house in Glenwood two days ago and they interviewed from one of our positions and um the proverbial last question, do you have any questions for us?

206I think we spent 35 minutes and she was asking from both a potential staff member but also as a parent and yeah this would be that one click that people can go to to say I'm wondering what is your stat ratio now could you go to the report card and find that yeah but do you know where to look but we can build this so these ideas these are just examples I'm not saying because the one student mobility I don't even know what that means. Um, we could build it to use Glennwood City slang. I don't know what that may be, but we could say, you know, the ratio of students that participate um in CTE versus other electives or whatever you would like. Uh, whatever the the community feels is important information to sit

207there and track and say, "Okay, school district, how are you doing? You're just throwing stuff out there and hope it sticks. No, here it is. This is what happened two years ago, three years ago. I mean, this is best practice when it comes to strategic planning. Yeah. I like when you click in the view data and it shows the trend, right? Because you can say, well, our fund 10 is at 38%. Well, today it is, but what was it last month? What was before that? Is it going down at 10% a month or is it going down at 1% a month? Yeah, I'm I'm sorry. I should have clicked into that. So, Derek's right. When you click in, this is just enrollment. You're going to be able to see now where if you're sitting here

208and saying, "Where would you find this?" Well, go to Patrick's annual meeting PowerPoint. Where the heck is that? It's in your email. Go find it. I'd rather have that here. Um, and again, when you're talking, I think Derek, you were about to say maybe not, you know, what is the cost of this? Um, and I put that in the recommendation. um when it came to it's $1,000 for remaining which we wouldn't do. We would start it for and it's 2,000 and we get a special price because it's W was and again 2,000 out of a $10 million budget. I think it's worth it but that's not my call. Um because you you are the ones in terms of the governing body of this. Um, I think this is a way to really put some data

209behind our strategic plan. I think it would be nice to get through our strategic plan so that we can kind of ideate what key performance indicators are because, you know, as we're creating that dashboard, put some thought into how we make that work for the strategy, right? Because I think if we're creating it, do it once that aligns with it. I think that's where making sure we're conscious of this place else. So, do we ask that we move forward with this plan and then ask Patrick to show us his KPI that he wants to put into the dashboard and that's what I would recommend because it's going to take time as you guys know it's going to take time to build it in the background. So, let's let's build it up this summer and have

210those discussions, but then when we have the community meetings, when in the fall, when we have those board meetings to where you know what, cuz I think we can all say, do we want to know our teacher ratio? Everybody wants I mean, there's certain questions that parents, if I'm asking, is Glennwood City the spot for me and my family, they're going to ask. What is your ratio? What is your soio economic? What is your free and reduced? Those are some basic things that I know we've helped us as administrators. Some of the other things the strategic plan will validate, you know, what that looks like. You know, if it's and again, um, tonight I'm going to speak just a little bit about our budget, you know, whether it's our fund 3839, which is our referendum,

211our fund balances. Well, if I'm a taxpayer, why are you sitting last year? Why are you sitting on $3 million in fund 80? What are you going to do with that? Well, um, one of our maybe not official goals is, uh, to create trust with community and this is a tool and Yeah, trust and transparency. Absolutely, Scott. So I I think it is um a really helpful tool. Exactly what you said about how do you find this? How does the lay person find this stuff? Where do you look? How do you dig down? It's no to give uh you and anybody interested in the district, anybody um decision makers or just stakeholders uh an easy to find. It's like here here it is. I see it also as a uh as a form of of

212community engagement. Absolutely. We can ask them what they want to see on the dashboard. Put that up and say this is the community section. These are the things that you're asking from us to put onto this dashboard so you can see it whenever you want to. If you look at our top uh our three goals for this current school year, so next month um not next month, but at the June meeting, I'll present our district goal. How did we do? Well, these last two are quantifiable. They're easy. We look at FastBridge. We can quantify it. And how did we do? Well, again, um that's a presentation that's going to be created. And where do you find that if you are the lay person? Um the top one is subjective. So, how do we quantify that?

213And those are the discussions. Well, I want to know, you know, however you want to set some data points, however that looks. So, I would agree and I think Scott said it well, community engagement. We need more engagement. Um, and and this is a tool to say, okay, let's pull it up and here, let's talk through this. [Music] So we're talking we don't need to do the rest of the year school year but definitely go into like are you looking for one year two year type of a thing or well to my point earlier I think a trend data is so powerful because that's that's how you define if somebody is being successful. these oneshot items, they just don't work because people can have a whatever. I mean, it's got to be overtime and how

214you're performing over time. So, for me, you know, I will not sign a five-year contract. I just it's too long. Rarely do I sign a one-year contract. It just depends. And I'm talking for contractual things. three years is like the the sweet milk because it gives you trend data and typically they give you like a break. So even like we uh apply for a Chromebook license, whatever. I mean there's many different examples. Yeah. Three years is like okay I can live with that. If it's not going well within two more years we can be done. Yeah. Because I'm thinking you know if you do one year you're not going to be two years of okay you see a little bit of change and then you just drop it. That's just kind of ridiculous to even

215go that route. So I would I would go with like a three-year data so that you have something to track or follow. How many years of back data did they do as well? I mean do you see kind of five years of historic and and few years of forward as we establish it? Yeah, I and that's another good question. And when you see me present, you're going to see I'm starting data with when I started. I number one, I don't trust the data of the previous person, right? Um, number two, I think it's jaded. Um, except you can look at the report card because, you know, unless you cheated the report card, which is very difficult to do, we can use that. Um, but financially, yeah, we would have to start for two years, but

216other, you know, you could go back however long DPI has tracked that data. So, are you planning to give them data since the time you started to build it or are we going to build it from when we say start building? Um, I think both. I think there's certain parts that we would build from when I started, especially the financial because I think we can look back at the audit to signify that things weren't done properly or correctly. And I think there's others like class ratios and racial information, ethnicity, things like that that can just be based on what DPI has and that can go back because I again there is a value in trend data and then we can always mix it up. But to sit in front of a community engagement meeting with

217that already built, I think is powerful and say, "Hey, what do you want these squares to actually say? Great idea. So, is the 2000 price then the threeear deal or is that the uh the or we have to go back and ask them for the Yeah, I get to have to go back. So, it's we get a price um multi-year quotes. So, it might be a little bit better than 2000 maybe. Yeah. So, most districts offer the three-year agreement which is built annually. And so, um I put I got to go back. I think I told them the agreement should be three years. Yeah. 2028. So, it's 25 through 28. So, what you the agreement is for three years. So 20,000 a year, right? Um 2,000. I think that's a wise investment. Yeah. to go

218forward with the ACS electronic data form for price through your contract as Scott. All right. Any further questions or discussions? Hearing none. All those in favor say I. I. Say no. Motion carries. Next was our uh 2025 and six budget. Okay. Um there's a couple things I can spend here and I don't want the gals to roll their eyes at me because I know they're going to um I could talk to you for hours on this. Um what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you a brief overview. I want you to go back. Um I'm not asking for a approval of this preliminary budget because we are not in position to do that. What I am going to tell you and show you is where we are at. Um, so just bear

219with me. This document is what we spent. We spent $4,000. Um, I would say threequarters of the state used this model. Glenwood has never used this model prior to me. And I don't know why because it's very I I just can't imagine. I've been a soup for 13 years and there hasn't been a year that I didn't use this model in including in prairie farm. Um it's a forecast model and again let me just show you the the tabs. It's a spreadsheet on steroids. So I uh again if you want set up individual meetings that type of thing and I think Derek and I probably will do that uh because he's our treasurer. Um, but let me just go through what does this spreadsheet do so I can look at everything from right here projection

220student enrollment what we think and Deb and I basically met with bear a number of times um and again built this model based on our data. So what we just spoke about is actually this except from a financial start or portion. So we are projecting um for uh student enrollment all the way out to 2029 and 30. Okay. And again these are projections but it allows us to make financial decisions going forward. Um that's just um again we could type in any number. This is fund 38 and 39. Does anybody uh well first of all what is fund 38 and 39? This is one of the major mistakes that the previous administrator made. Okay? And I'm not trying to make digs. Um, but I'm just going to be honest with you. Um, this is 138

221and 39 are your drivers when it comes to referendum. And the problem that Tim and Ron went into was they what is how does the board talk when it comes to finances? What is the one thing that boards typically focus? Milbury. That's what the public knows. How much do I spend per 100,000 of my house? The previous administration has used fund 80 as the tool to manipulate the mill rate which is completely wrong. And that has put the district back because quite honestly you're still paying for in fun 3839 you're still paying for the football field you built in 2011. shouldn't have happened. We should have that bond paid for instead of driving and using the mill rate component and building up a fund balance in fund 80 to $3 million. Now, you can argue

222that the upgrades that you see, whether it's the Hill Topper um hang time and some of the amenities they have, um you could the Hill Topper Wellness Center, um some of the other things that we use Funating money for like the playground. Those are all great things, but we could have been paying off debt. And we had two payments of debt. One is 560,000 and the other one is 65,000. We should not be paying for a football field that was built in 2011. That bond should be done. But they chose to mess with the mill rate as the indicator with fund 80 instead. So when you look at fund 80 and fund 39, these are debt. And again, I would say um a year ago I was going to say we were going to go

223to operating referendum this coming year. We because of our fund balance are now going to be able to push that off for two more years. And why is that a good thing? At least in my opinion. If you go to the public um and you say we need to go to an operating referendum and advance our operating referendum 500,000 for five years at least when I have said this to people they're like they're going to laugh at you. Why wouldn't they? What are you going to steal more money? What do you you know you can't even handle what you have. And that's has nothing to do with people sitting in this room right now. But to be able to push that down the road is an opportunity for us to build up that trust. So

224when you look at fund 38 and 39, we now are going to be able to use that to pay off that debt. And not and so this year um instead of a fund 30, excuse me, fund 80 which is our community ed which is levied separately for a couple years. it was 700,000 in New Richmond. We had 185,000 we levied in fund uh 80 and that was our community program. It was our tiger pack program similar to Hiller hanging time and we paid for an SRO and here we were doing it at $700,000. Well, what we were doing with those funds, we should have been putting those funds here and we would have got actually more bang for our buck with the state um formula. If you look at uh revenue cap, the revenue cap,

225again, we can talk I can go on and on, but where is the revenue cap? They just moved it to a 11,000, which we did as a district. They're talking right now that possibly pushing that even further because we don't have the ability to make money. Our revenue is at and it for the longest time was at 10,000. We were able to push it to 11,000 this past year. That is part of our discussion with legislators. Vouchers. Did you know that we're paying for Milwaukee vouchers for schools? Now, it's not significant. It's uh right around is it 15,000? 9,000 to 15,000. But you're paying right now, our local taxpayers are paying for a voucher program that is not in this district. Now 15,000 or or in that range, does that mean a lot within a

226$10 million budget? No. But why are tax money going to? And that's why I will sit here as far as a public um educated superintendent and say the voucher which groups are trying to push is going to hurt us because we will not have a voucher school in our district boundary. And why should our money if any should go outside of this district? It shouldn't. Uh we could go into equal lay aid. Um, this is one that, um, we live in Sbury County, the fastest growing county in the state of Wisconsin outside of the Madison area. Um, with that, we pay the price where we're at because the growth is not necessarily happening here. It's happening in New Richmond. Hudson, they're landlocked, but they're still growing up with retirement homes and so on. Um, Somerset

227is grown. You know, Hammond is grown, but we pay the price in our valuations. Now, the valuation of your homes and your property is what drives some of the um formulas that we have. So, this is a number the last couple years it's been crazy. You know, where is 15 um% um over and above, you know, it was. And again, I I have all this data. I'm not going to bore you with it, but if we want to have those discussions, we can. Um, fund 10, this is our general fund. Fund 27, special education. Fund 38,39 is our bonds, um, and referendum data. Fund 46, this was the fund that was started so that we could do capital projects down the road. Um, fund 50 is food service. Fund 80 is community ed. We have

228trend data that talks about what we're doing and how we are spending and if we are on budget, what the projection is for the next five, six, seven years. This is an awesome tool and it only costs us four grand. But unfortunately, Glenwood has been on a short end because unfortunately you guys have been presented with data that was guessing and we're going to pay for it. One of the things that I get to do when Tim Johnson is uh charged is I get to go and talk. He has heard this district that is going to happen for, you know, years to get out of this. And this this should tell you that this is not just a one-time thing. We have to dig out of this hole. Now, the one thing that I wanted

229to show you in this presentation, so I'm just going to um just again bear with me. The presentation is in your board documents. I try to take the highlights into showing. So again, when you really want to look at this down the road or outside. So let's just for the lay person, here's a preliminary budget, our fund revenue, and look at this. we start hitting red next year. Okay. 55,000 and that incorporates keeping staffing the same roughly a I think I put in a 3% which is CPI increase for staff. We don't have our number yet when it comes to um health insurance increases etc. This is with current enrollment as of last week. And then we start seeing more red. Right now, I'm predicting that the fall of 26 or the spring of 27

230is when we'll have to go to reference. Now, you might ask, well, how how are you going to, you know, build the bridge prior to that? Last year we spent under spent by a million dollars and that was a couple different reasons. But if you look at our fund balance and we look at fun 10 actually there's a slide here and it shows us percentage-wise of what our fund balance is. Our district goal or excuse me district right here. Here's our fund balance. Right now we are at roughly 30%. Board policy is very vague here. Most districts run at about 20%. We are at um our district policy states between 15 and 25. That's too much of a threshold. Um we need to narrow that down. But my um plan um if the board agrees

231is we are going to be able to push a operating referendum till the 2728 school year by using fund balance. Now is that best practice? Absolutely not. But to build this trust so that we can have a successful referendum. That's what we are going to have to do in my opinion. But we we have the excess fund balance anyway. We do. And so I think if you're a taxpayer and you're saying what are you doing with 30% fund balance, you're you're five more percent than your policy, you're 10 more% than what is the state average. That doesn't make any sense. Or what is your plan? Do we have a plan to build another school? Nope. Do we have another facility? No. Do we have things that we need to address? Yes, Scott. So going back

232to the question about um students who enroll elsewhere or students who enroll here, is there a an amount of money per student that leaves us? Yes. And what is that? So, if you look at [Music] uh I put it on one of these slides. Here's our referendum. Oh, right here. So, right now, uh this current school year, Scott, we have uh 555,000 that comes in. And for this year, we're at uh we sent a million 66,000 an hour. Now again, when it comes to open enrollment, that's the part where so we're looking at 500,000 and we're starting to this year's projection versus last year, we're actually closing that gap just a little bit. But that also means as far as the state, you know, how do you identify? Christa's our open enrollment um coordinator and

233she goes in. For example, Clear Lake found two individuals that for decades should have been our kids and they were in our district and they're in the Clear Lake school district. Um well, I think most of us, if you've ever known like the origination, most boundaries were drawn up in the local bar on a on a napkin because they're just all over the place. So there's there's pieces like that. But again, if you were to take this number um and if we start to flip that number because next year, you know, we're looking at 613,000 out it equates to roughly $9,000. It's 8,962. That's that GC math coming in handy because you you get if they're if they're open or rolled out or and again I'm all about parent choice. I mean I think parents

234should be able to decide where they're they go but we have to do a better job not only marketing ourselves and showing what we do but also getting to the root of it. Why is it? I mean we can respect people that drive and it's daycare. we can't respect the fact that if they don't want to come here because we don't offer XYZ you know tangentially there um it we always ask why are people leaving why are we leaving it would be good to ask why are people coming here you know we have 62 coming in I know there's a reason for a lot of them are just family that would be good information to know too both yeah it goes yeah exactly it goes both ways so are there other drivers of that budget.

235Say that again. Be beyond enrollment, what are the other kind of key drivers of that budget or that fund? Of what fund was it? Fund 10. So fund 10 is everything that we So I'll go back. So fund 10 is like when you think of everything that we typically do from you know 80% of our budget is actually um for the most part is salary benefits. So that leaves about 20%. Then you get food service, you get special ed. Here's the one part. If I was speaking um in front of the JFC, um what I don't want to quiz you, but this is what I was going to say to the legislators. Um so fun 10 is our overall fund. Fund 27 is special education. How much do we spend out of fund 10 to

236cover the expenses in front 27? But they think their number it's one million. It's 1 million. We have to transfer $1 million from fund 10 to fund 27 to cover our costs with special education students. That's because and we don't know this just yet here but in Richmond if you would have asked me and said what does it cost to educate McKinley Olsen in elementary school? I could tell you. If you asked me what does it ed cost to educate Brody Olsen at as a junior in this school I could tell you. We can't tell you that just yet that cost because again I don't want to use student names but they're not in special ed special ed there's additional costs transportation um the needs and we got to be able to cover that and

237provide those students with the same level of education but the cost is not you know 11,000 the cost is probably 50,000 for some students it's 100,000 because we have to transport or they have a need in terms of um a physical need, PT, OT, those types of things. So, we have to transfer a million dollars in Glenwood City out of a $10 million budget to cover those costs. And so, that's why we're going to the state saying, "Come on, we can't do this. You're giving us a reimbursement of 28%." Now, we're not going to get the 60% that, you know, DPI is hoping for, but a little nudge there would go a long ways, and that's what we're hoping for because we want the state to recognize that the costs are rising for everyone, but

238the cost, you know, we have kids that are coming in with higher needs, just special education in terms of speech. CO did a huge disfavor to society because of um speech and language. That's why we're seeing rising numbers. So just that part from the state would actually help everybody. So again, I I could spend time, but I wanted just to show you the revenue expenditures, and I just took snapshots. Here's a comparison of enrollment. Here's our existing debt from, you know, dating back um or dating forward, excuse me, and what our payoff is and when our bond is going to come off. Um we also have open enrollment here. We have um equalization aid which is a huge driver because in St. Croy County um you know is your house truly what the valuation says

239on your tax ticket. I I don't know that's individual but that drives how much aid we get as a state fund balance. Here's the education from the state. Here's what's aided and here's what's unated. And that will show you in dollars and millions from the state level. Here's our fund balance um and things that and again this is now with because of the shift. And again, unfortunately, we had over 400,000 that was misappropriated in in illegal funds. We districts don't go in the stock game. we should not have had Microsoft and Boeing. You know that those things shouldn't have happened. So we have shifted and now this is your this is directly from the DBI. So we fixed those pieces but again from a budgetary standpoint I I want to give you kind of the

240nuts and bolts. So, do I I just want to give clarification. Something's in my head and I'm just not I'm like do I not fully understand it or not? The revenue cap the revenue sheet that you do determines the mill rate ultimately. Yes, it does. And then with that with that sheet that sheet we punch punch in all the numbers punch in all those students punch all those things and that tells us what we what our cap is our revenue cap or what we can our revenue cap is set at the state level. Well what we can we can set the miller rate at it's it's the revenue sheet or whatever like that and it turns around and it determines what the mill range is. Yes. Yes. So when when we have um fund 80

241for example, my understanding was that was levying additional monies above what that revenue sheet was. Correct? No. No. Fund 80 is a separate le. Yes, it is. It's that's what I'm saying. But it does feed to the same bill rate. It does feed into the mill rate. Yes. You have one mill rate, but you have two levies. Correct. But the money that you you can't levy more than what that sheet says just I can't turn around and go, "Hey, I want to turn around and add another $200,000 and and so that we can pay additional bills." I don't think you can't do it. Exactly. That's my point is we can't just turn around and and and go, "Uh, hey, we need another $500,000. We need to levy this." Actually, you can. Well, you do it

242with operating reference with the rep operating referent that's that's a different story correct so yeah I think one one thing that that Tim and Ron were using was to to make the mill rate if you go look at right here well I remember what we what the concept was concept was not to tr because if you you paid off certain things then the mill rate would drop down and if we can kind of keep it st steady then we had the idea behind the fund 80 community thing was to build it so that we to do something with it. We just didn't Well, we were going to do a greenhouse concept is what we were going to do. And so we this this is where because I was like, "All right, did we did we

243not fund that money appropriately?" But but I'm like, I'm pretty sure we did. But the point was with the with that mill rate was to levy additional monies to go into pond 80 for community pro project or process. And then um when we had certain things dropped like our OPEC oped oped liability dropped off, you know. So you can't use funding monies to do that. No, no, we didn't. I'm saying is once we paid off certain things because we didn't have that debt any longer, then our revenue sheet dropped. And so then we're like, okay, if we can kind of keep community, okay, if you had Debbie or Brian or Maris from Bay, who's a multi-billion dollar consulting firm for businesses and schools, you ask them here, should you use Funadia as a driver for

244your bill? They laugh at you. They'll say like, that's not even a a best practice concept. And you would have known that. Um, you should know that as a superintendent. Um, and this would tell you that too because if you look at this number, this is the tax base of a $100,000 home. This is what you're going to pay for Glwood City and this is where it goes. But to use fund 80 and that's the part that was wrong where they would would tell you you should have been paying off this bond. How do we pay the bond off if we only have so many? We we can only do so much with our revenue. You weren't even you weren't even using that as a factor. So all that Tim and Ron were doing were

245using fund 80 to sit there and take this no rate and say it does it go up to six does it go up to seven goes up to eight. That's what they were using as an indicator. They weren't even taking 38 39 into I mean do you know how much interest you're paying? Well, that's I know. And that's why I was like, how how could we I'm sitting there going, how the heck could we have paid that off when we're we're we're are we're we're limited in our income. It was in the formula because it doesn't take the I mean, she gave me the numbers of a greenhouse. What was it? 25 grand. No, was 300. 300,000. Yeah. Okay. You had 3 million in there. We wasted 13,000 square feet that W identified that we

246were wasting in this building. It's just those those pieces to the puzzle that we should have been on top of. And again, when it comes to interest rates, when it comes to you just these people know so much more than me. And when you use these this this document itself, it will give us the trajectory of where we need to go um from the the revenue cap. Yep. That's a state piece. But you you just can't use two factors to manipulate the milk. You need multiple factors. And we weren't using those multiple factors. So, so now fund 46, you know, so when we were looking um let me let me back up. So, we spent under spent by a million. Okay. Why? We had to because that's how whack that's how chopped up the budget

247was. And we did not get aided on 1 million because the overall funding of a school happens over a 3 to 5 year average. The unspending by a million dollars. At the end of the year, you have choices. What do you want to do with your extra funds? Um, do you want to put it in fund balance? Do you want to put it in fund 46? If you put it in fund balance, um, it's it's there and that's what we did, but you don't get aided on that and it's not taken into the formula. If you put it in 46, that counts as an expense and now your um, your aid goes up. So technically, I screwed us by under spending a million last year, but I screwed us in a good way because we

248had nothing. We didn't even know we were doing three audits at the same time. So you could you couldn't factor in and I wasn't just going to waste that money. So now that build has built us our fund balance up to say okay can we creep by for the next couple years so that we can at least build some trust with this community and then go to them and say you know when the the number starts turning red that we can actually have a building part of the balance budget. So the idea to get some of those bubbles of funds down to a point like you know that 15 to 25 whatever that narrowed band that we decide we want it to be but by doing that we're we're consuming those funds so we're showing

249we don't need the support or the state aid right so that's kind of hurting us but it's giving us data to show where we will eventually need funds yes and no um I think you as a taxpayer if I said to you because you were all taxpayers if if we said we have $3 million in fund 8 that you can only use. You can't use it for salaries. You can't use it for capital, specific capital. Um, you can't use it to buy a um Glenwood did, but you can't you shouldn't and never uh should have, but you purchased a bus. You shouldn't have done that. Um, when you have $3 million in that fund, is the public not going to look at you and say, "What are you doing with my money?" Okay, you can

250have a greenhouse and that that's fine, but but is a greenhouse going to be a turning point for us? In my opinion, no. People are not going to open a roll to Glenwood because we have a greenhouse. People are going to come here for other reasons like even our learning comments now and some of that other spaces that we could kind of clean up. Well, right now we're going to go for the those of you that are fans of the NFL draft. Okay, what's the splash, the QBs, and so on, what we're going to be talking to you about um in the facility study, which is next, we're talking about our hydro system, the piping, the guts of our building that have basically they're old. Now, we didn't take good care of them because we

251never use filtration systems like we should have, but it's not the flashy stuff. We did spend some money on the flashy stuff to try and at least jumpst start the open enrollment. um you know our hydro system, our um the windows in the elementary that are wood, they're just old. That wasn't neglected. They're just old. So yes, I there's just a there's a process of how we need to chip away at this and this is such a huge decision maker for us. I know it's a lie and I I was told many times besides and I hate it when people say that, you know, this is what a lot of people are saying. I'm I'm legitimately saying that after the annual meeting like we've never been explained to this like you did and I'm not

252patting myself on the back, but it's those details that we have to be more transparent. We have to take this data and give it to the public so they know what are we spending our money on. Well, like Joey said, if you don't ask questions, you don't know what you don't know. Yeah. And it's hard. You know, anybody here sitting and they're in finance and sector of their business, school finance, I mean, I still have so much to learn and it's just one of those that it's such a different ball game. So like for us when we take a work session we'll spend two to three hours on this document alone and it's like well what are the moving factors so that when you're out in public you can actually answer these questions because you're

253going to have to because what 80% whatever I put it in there um how many schools are going to referendum Derek and I talked about that you know locally I mean we had how many Spring Valley Um, you know, these are just operating. Spring Valley was a boyfield. Um, you know, just to operate, keep the doors open and keep current programming at its current state. So, it's always fun to realize that that could just all change in two months, three months from the budget from the state. Absolutely. It will change. Absolutely. Yeah. And then you do all this work and then you start. Well, the one thing that I've talked to legislators is, you know, those of you that run your own businesses, you would never you would never run your businesses. You would never

254create a budget and then your numbers come in six months later. Nobody would do that. And that's where Rob Statchel and I certainly agree. We need to change those timelines from the state level. So, I can legitimately tell, you know, all three of these ladies, here's your staffing number and here's what you need to work with. Here's your building budget. Here's what you're going to work with. Right now, we are not going to get a budget until October. And that's not from me. That's from legislators. All right. I just gave you a lot of I know. I'm sorry asking. No, those are awesome questions. But but this is the detail that we have to discuss. And so again my purpose of this presentation is whatever how many slides um slides is I just try to

255take the main concepts because again my job is to know this your job is to take it in and then but you also asked to make some decisions based on this. So you have this in the Is it okay? You do have it under discussion. So, this is just more discussion. There's no action. There's no action. This is um it it's very good practice. If you would look at this, let me ask you this. So, here's my presentation from last Thursday and Friday at the state level. I know it's sideways. You know, have you talked about budget monitoring, maintenance, compliance, reporting, fund balance, and cash reconciliation? Those are the main parts that bear would tell you is you have to have this um figured out. We have a lot of work to do. If you

256look at these, these are the main pieces to where even cast reconciliation in our investigation. I walked into both offices and there was you open a door a drawer and there was hundreds of dollars in cash pettash like uh I don't know I know I have pett cash at my office but yeah but you're a private private business too this is public and there was there was this uh bucket of $400 coins except like where is that record Now, you know, it just that's where the process and procedures have to be in place. And so, I'm going to be recommending a variety of changes, Deb and I, so that you guys can answer questions intelligently for this because yeah, when we start talking that taxes, you know, will they go up? Well, there's a lot

257of factors into that. You know, where is your the equity in your home or the valuation of your home? I don't think we're going to see a continuing trend. What if we go into a recession? What if this federal government cuts up 500,000 from our budget? What does that look like? There's just a lot of moving parts right now that is really it's unprecedented. All right, I'm going to move on. Um I'd be more than happy to sit down individually. Um, I think it would be a good and I think to Jordan's point, um, you know, we have people in the room that love finance and I think, you know, the more we can learn, we sitting down, I would be happy to talk about it. Um, others of you, I'm not here for finance.

258I'm not here for finance. Don't ask me for that. We all have strengths and we all right. Is there any final questions before I move on? No. Okay. Um, this next one is the facility audit. And I think uh Derek said made a a comment about who are the who are the uh experts. And what I did was I'm going to try to be straight to the point. When we hired Wool, we did a facility study, but it did not go into the depth, excuse me, that Boyceville and Aliva Strong example did. Um, what the W concept was is we were wondering how much space um are we wasting, which was around 13,000. In what way could we repurpose those spaces? Um, and then thus the video that you saw and the things that we

259addressed. Um, I think one of the best was, you know, Miss Burch's idea of taking the library and expanding. We talked about where these kids have no place to sit. Let's look at this XYZ and so forth. A facility study talks um about the guts. So, if you look at my uh recommendation, um here's what I'm saying. And the recommendation is very long because these are the things that we have done. I constantly am talking about the 900,000 that we had to spend just to get our building up to date. So that's the list there. Well, then when you talk to Ryan and myself, these are the priorities. And I just put his comments first um or um in the middle. And if you were to take the top three priorities, we're talking the hydraulics

260um system, we're talking the wooden windows in the elementary, uh we're talking the broken pipes under the high school, um stairs over here, um electrical, um Brian and I went through the tunnel system ourselves on our hands and knees because you can't stand up. Um and the electrical system for our building, it's just a hodgepodge. Um, I don't know if you know, let's see if uh I'm not going to ask when you graduated from Glenwood, some of you, but when the CT area, which it was the CT when that was originally built, um, you know where you see in the, uh, rafters, um, the in and out when it comes to water and so forth, those were backwards. The stickers were backwards. So then contractors came in here and they started to peace and even

261Margaret and Johnson said there's you wonder why you can't control temperatures around here. Number one, again when I took over, we had four boilers. Three were working. Um the one was barely working. So we were down to two and they weren't certified since 2018, which is requirement by statute every single year. just that alone trying to um balance out our heating and cooling within our buildings was a job in itself. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. So when you look at the list that Ryan proposes there, those are some of the unlatchy items that we have to look at. Um I can tell you that Ryan can tell you that, but we're not experts. We're the managers. CISAT 10 is actually uh an expert in the state of Wisconsin. If you're looking at

262facility, um case in point, I don't know if Jamie knew this, but Cumberland hired CC10 as their project manager to build [Music] their new high school. Um I I mean, are they like a market and Johnson? No. Um I was surprised that they were the GM for that that project but um CISA 10 is very um good at this area. CIS 11 doesn't have anything like that where it's not their niche. CISA 10 is. So what I'm proposing is is that um again you can take Ryan and in my opinion um for whatever it's worth um we're not experts and I would highly recommend that we go with a facility study. Uh, with that, the other question I have for you is, um, if you live in Milwaukee, lead is a topic of conversation around

263here. I don't know if it is. So, I got pricing um because we did this in Richmond um because we did have conversations within the public about where is our lead or what is the lead volume in our water system. So I have pricing in front of you uh to do a facility study which I would highly recommend um and based on recommendation know these are the things that were basically lowhanging fruit because I'm not again um an expert. I've been an administrator for a while um but these were lowhanging fruit. These were things that we could do to kind of make our building look better, function a little bit better. Um but we got a long ways to go and CISA 10 is the answer to finding those things. So when I look at

264the cost um you're looking at Let me ask you this. Is lead testing important to any board member here? Is that something that you've had conversations with people about? Where do they where are they? Water or paint? Yeah, water. is the city tested or are we testing in addition to so if you look in I actually put it in just today because we got a notice um this is the city of Glenwood this is what they test but they don't test for lead now the cost of the lead testing is pretty substantial is 5500 just for lead but we're talking every faucet in the building um we're talking showers we're talking pots pans, you know, in the school nutrition, etc. I don't know. I'm not saying I I don't have an opinion on that. Um

265I'm guessing it's going to come up at some point. You're going to have some individual people that will talk. What is our lead bomb? I don't know. If that's important to you, we can go through that process. Here's here's the problem, though. You open that can of worms, then we got to be prepared to fix everything that shows up wet. Well, then we we should though. Not really. Do you know that the pots the stainless cups that you drink out of have lead in them? I'm literally talking you're going to Yeah, it's the same concept. We're not just talking about drinking water. Yeah, but it's the it's the same concept of this. Have you guys ever uh you've approved asbestous removal in this building? Okay. Do you know they sellus on the Menard's shelves right

266now? [Music] It makes no sense. But those are things that we have to now. Will you un cover a bunch of uh you know additional problems? I don't know. I'm asking you is that something that you want to test for? You just tell me yes or no. I certainly recommend the uh they threw it in there for a reduced rate when we got the studies for Uville and did they test? Uh I don't know the answer to that. I do know that uh we didn't test in Richmond until it was brought up because we couldn't answer the question and that was a topic I would say five years ago. Now again we had five six buildings and it was a question at the state level. He actually the state uses CISA 10 to test businesses

267throughout the state. That's how good they are at this. But again, my question is, is that something you want to go down? Do we have to do all of them or can we just sample, you know, high-risk water sources? You could you do it right. They have a process in place, Steve. I I'd like to know the potential dangers of testing of having lead in your system. Oh, there's huge. Just Google it. There's huge. Just Google it. Um, again, there's two thoughts. I mean, are you going to open up a can of words? Yep. Should you? No. Yeah. If you if you just Google Milwaukee and left, you'll get all kinds of good information. Is that like a a Detroit thing uh that many years ago? Yes. But that was a whole Is there a

268way What's the state's requirement? What's the regulation down? Because for my group home, we have to test for nitrates. We don't have to test for lead. Yeah, you don't have to. I don't feel it's worth going down that road right now. And I'm a big proponent on obviously my kids got major health concerns, but we got so many other things to fix right now. That's why I'm bringing it to your attention. I mean, there could be lead in the houses of of people around the city as well that, you know, like you talk about, you know, paint, lead paint and things like that. You know, there's definitely things that we have to be careful of because of lead paint and so, but lead is from the water source. That is a topic of conversation. And

269when we're talking facility in a study, I had to throw it in there. And we I mean, it's why you make the big bucks. You guys got to make decisions. Well, I think I think everybody's fine with the facility thing. Can we start with that and then think about it and then bring it up or do you need us it done said by a time frame? They're giving you a price break. They're giving us a price break if we add in the only building that's really susceptible to lead is the old high school building and the junior high. um because lead was banned after 1986 and a lot of the new construction was done after that. So, are they going to test all of the parts that definitely don't have lead in them in addition

270to the parts that might have lead? So, if you look at uh they're going to test everything right here. These are all in your attachments. Um, let me go to tell you what the cost. Yeah, but there's a I have Shoot. I thought I'd put it in there. There's one there's a document that talks about what they test the process. Now going back to the overall cost um it's 5500 alone the audit is roughly 13,000 so be again$185 if you were to do both of them separately um they're going to give you a price break um and say us 10,000 with lead testing 13,000 just It's either either 13 independently or 15 total. Yeah. Well, you mean it's 10,000 with the facility and the lid and 10,000 with trying they're really trying to entice you

271to do that. We'll give you a good break. $2500. $2,500 break. Yeah. 20 $2,500 check. Am I reading that right? Yeah. If it's 13 just by the facility and you add the 55 then isn't that no if you if you add on the lead it's 10,000 and then an additional 1300 they they frame it where so on a facility audit you know is it helpful to benchmark against the Tiffany school from like a electrical and therms usage just to see kind of where we are from a benchmark perspective on maybe what value we get out of doing the whole audit. It's the same with some of the feedback in the parking lot and everything. Can we internally audit based on what we're seeing Cat 10 auditing a neighbor school and start with that as a

272comparison? You can. We're having trouble right now. I'm actually working with Excel because they put in meters, new meters in a new system and I think they did with a variety of Glenwood residents and they got the meters mixed up. So, it's costing us only $158 to run our entire building per month. Except now our bills for and then it costs our football field. We're being charged 8 to $9,000. But now, so our meters are all screwed up. So to do an you know an audit, yes. But again, is that my skill set? It might be Mrs. Burb's skill set, but not mine. So, I'm hearing yes to the facility audit and I'm hearing no question maybe or no. It's a hard one. 2500 bucks. I don't I don't know. Seems like it's not a

273problem that the other neighboring schools didn't know. We'll say the Tiffany school that didn't do it was built in 199. I think if we have issues with blend, can't we just do our own samples and send them to Kofax? Copax has a water facility test. Okay. No. The content of water going to become an issue when we do our hydro piping? Yes. When you look at our hydro piping, uh, if you recall the pipe and the new board members haven't seen it, but the blockage, um, you would be embarrassed. We should wait to do the testing until we fix those because we're going to have lead before, but that's only on our heating system right now. Water potable water separate. Um, but from a lead standpoint, yeah, they encompass every single faucet on our campus.

274And that's why it's more expensive because you have hundreds and hundreds of faucets. But yes, to Jordan's point, there's a potable and you know, just regular hydro system are are different components. Would it be helpful for us? oftentimes you and I reach out to other our our groups either your superintendent group or our principal groups to see how many buildings actually have or districts have tested for lead. I hear that you were trying to find some comparisons. You know, who has done this, who has not, what were the results? I mean, it's is there a potential for us to reach out and say what districts have done this? So, you know, to me, I mean, if it's of any concern, you do it. New Richmond, we did it. Why? We were actually told by the

275state because a local resident called and said, "I have concerns." And then the state contacted us and said, "Now, you got to test for that. And that's all it takes. So what I'm saying is that I could open a big can of worms with that. We probably already did. We're on YouTube. No, I I mean there's there's a whole lot more concerns out there right now in the world of concerns for people that could go about. So if we if we want to go down that testing route, then we start now. We we will answer every parent's concern with that. So we can do it. I understand what you mean by can of worms. Now, I thought you were referring to the fact that they would we would find lead and then it would be

276a big problem that we have that too. That too. Yeah. And and my point of view on that is well, if I have something wrong with me, I would want to know it. Um but it's $2,500. H that's not that much in a $10 million budget, but you do that 20 times and it adds up. So I I say skip the lead for now. That's what I say. Have we had any concerns, complaints come through? Because I have not from any No, I've never even heard of it. Nobody's come to me. But if we had somebody complain, oh, by all means, let's let's go there. Okay. Well, I'm just curious if we're worried about the dollars and cents of lead testing. I'd almost be more inclined to do lead testing and not the audit and

277use the audit comparison, right? And use the benchmark of Tiffany's audit report. So doing testing, we don't have a capability to complete an audit like this. No, we thought we had things that were good and then find out people come in and it's like, well, that was wrong. And it wasn't our people that did it. We'd also have to have a really deep understanding of each structural system or system and and the age of it in order to properly assess it. And we aren't experts necessarily in every system of assessing. No, we don't have the the capability. I mean, there's no doubt if you're asking my recommendation to meet the law. We have to get to this baseline. I mean, when you look at the list above and you've done all this, like, is there

278more to find? Absolutely. Just in doing this was just to get our building up to cope. Now, did that fix all the issues? No. Um, and we need a professional opinion because I'm sorry, you know, if we go to a bond and the public says, "Well, where you're getting this recommendation from Patrick and Ryan?" Well, they don't know squat. I want a professional opinion. Okay, here it is. I think for me, it's it's the lead part. If you want to do the lead or you don't want to do the lead, I'm fine either way. I'm just again, my job is to bring it to you and say, "Is this a conversation?" It sounds like some of you never even had it. So then you just tell me what you would like to see. I guess

279the other thing and you can see this in here. The thing that's helpful and molded some of it for us before but not as asep. The prioritization helps with the strategic planning and your budgetary decisions going forward. So, not only are they going to assess all of the different systems, but they're going to tell you in what order you should I'll use this analogy. Um, let's say the board decided not to read the audit for Tim Johnson and they were just going off of the information that I uncovered. Now, if you ask Trevor, everything that's in that audit, we found as a district first. Nobody cares about my opinion. They care about a forensic auditor that has the credentials. Same thing here. They don't want to hear from me. They don't want to hear from

280Ryan. They don't even want to hear from the board. People are going to say, "What are the professionals?" And that audit is the crux of what built, you know, the the case. And we got to do the same with our building right now. We just don't there's so many unknowns and we we need to get to a a bottom level baseline and then go from there because you're going to have to prioritize. Do you want to do the hydro system? Do you want to do the the windows, the electrical, you know, things get old. There's a grant out there for lead testing. Okay, write it up. I was saying for schools will save us $5,500. I like I I'm fine either way. I'm just they do both of them. CES 10 is a expert in

281both of those fields. So that's why I'm saying if you want to consider it fine. If you don't that's okay too. Let's look into this. Okay. So I think we How are we as far as how are people so far with the audit itself? facilities on it. I got facilities on it. I think we don't Yeah, exactly. And like like Patrick is saying, this is kind of the stepping stones in order for us what we're going to have to be doing for years and asking people, hey, we need some things we have to fix and historically asking people for this fun and you got to have you got to have that data and that information there. Otherwise, how do you pass your record? Yeah. So everybody good on the audit? Yeah. Okay. Lead lead testing.

282Wait. Okay. I got to wait. I saw one. Okay. So what I would like um is just approval for the facility audit individually. All right. So a motion for the approval of CISA 10 facility audit. Motion's made by Sh. Do I have a second? Second. Second by Scott. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say I. I. Say no. Motion carries. And next up is approval of the playground childcare baseball facility upgrades. Okay. Uh so for the uh new board members uh this was approved to move forward to get an RFP or um let me go to the the recommendation here. So um Beth Davis has done a great job and I think um our uh daycare wraparound program has been a a very large success. Um when you look at some of

283the summer programming that goes on, the gist is um is putting a concrete slab here for uh a variety of things including water inflatables, outdoor tables, chalk in our play areas, instructional area, um an outdoor classroom, and then equipment storage so forth. The board approved to go forward with the RFP and get bids. So, I went and created an RFP and I have the bids. We actually got six bids and all the bids are there for this slab, but we also added in with the RFP um the baseball area um because basically we have a baseball field in a swamp area. Um so everything is in again that recommendation. What I'm asking the board uh is to approve the final. My recommendation is to move forward with um after talking with Ryan, you know, we

284have bids from a variety of contractors. Um again, if you're wondering what is our fund balance um for funding right now after this past year's construction, we're at 726,000. uh reasonable number. Um and what we're looking to do, if you look at these individual bids, um I'm recommending going with AC construction uh for a variety of reasons. Uh they are not the lowest bid. Uh we are not a school that has a policy about having to go to the lowest bid and I would never I would say we stay away from that type of policy anyway. Um, but when you talk to local contractors, um, when you talk to individuals like Jessie who do a lot of dirt work for a variety of cement, um, companies, Akran is one of the higher rated um, companies.

285And so when you base it uh on those topics, my recommendation um is to go with Acid for their bid. Um, you can click in, you can see the numbers. Um, and they vary. The only one that is really out of whack in terms of my, when I say out of whack, I I should use language, but um, he was way under bid, and that was Pac-Man, under 10,000, which just didn't seem 22,000 to do this work. Everybody else was right around the 30 mark, and then we had a couple that were in the 40. So um after Ryan and I sat down and went through every bit, our recommendation is to go to accurate um for this project. But again, you get the ultimate say a little bit about what that rebar option is.

286So rebar um we feel is not needed. Those of you that know with construction, you know, rebar is typically you're going to have weight like trucks and traffic and so forth. So from a standpoint of are you going to have equipment or chest within that make sense on the other side of the fence or is it on Jody I'm going to have one more 43 by 100. You'll be on the bottom. So, and so accurate, I heard you say accurate is my recommendation. Uh we do have a records request for this already. Um just because um you know, they want to see what how they did. We have some local contractors that um are interested. It's a bigger job. Um but we again we don't have policy that signifies we get to the local bit

287um and after the reasons I just outline why we recommend that is there anybody will make that motion to move forward after construction All right. So, Derek has made a motion to accept accurate construction for concrete work. Uh, got a second. Second. Second by Chuck. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say I. I. Say no. Motion carried. Okay. uh there are communications meetings or such and then we'll um possibly have um maybe something in June with last time WSV just uh sorry um um just a reminder the next board meeting is the third Monday Memorial Day so please make sure that that's on your yourh calendar it's the 19th Okay. Uh, next I'll entertain a motion to adjourn the meeting. Second. So move. Did you say second? Okay. So So would you,

288since you spoke first, would you like to make that motion? I'd like to make a motion to adjourn this meeting. Okay. All right. All right. All in favor say I. I. We are. So I got Okay. [Music] I'm one of the smaller ones. Know my oldest brother. He's more than 82. Yes, he was 91. Yeah, you'll see this Joe's kid and I'm up there on the So Mike, my brother Mike and I are um What does that even say Here.