001All right, it is six o'clock. We will call the Monday, March 23rd board meeting to order. We will start with the pledge of allegiance. So, please stand. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right, we have two items on the consent agenda. Um, approval of the minutes of the February 23rd, 2026 board meeting as well as a statement receipts and expenditures for February of 2026. Do we have a motion after consulting with Toeer on a few items on the bills? I would make a motion to approve those two items first. Do we have a second? Second. Any additional discussion? All in favor say I. I. I opposed. And that passes.
002Um, next, this brings us to a thank you for Carrie Walls as this is her final meeting after 12 years. Yes. So, we want to take an opportunity to thank Carrie for her um time on the board um both as a board member and then um from 2017 till currently um as our vice president. I think it was just over a year ago that she was recognized as a level three WASBA member recognition for attending a lot of meetings and doing a lot of things on behalf of our board. Um, which we greatly appreciate. Um, Carrie has been integral in a lot of different areas, but especially on our policy and our curriculum committee. Um, chairing our curriculum committee. Um, and as I look back on our data over the years, um, when we look
003back to when our, um, ACT began when all students were required, I think it was your second year on the board and we, the state required all students, um, to get on the board in Kerry with the work through the curriculum committee and looking at the classes that we offer for all students um, whether it's AP or honors or getting rid of low-level classes and accelerating those classes and and having support classes for students instead and providing interventions for students. and to today um we have the highest ACT score we've had. So in that time um as on her tenure of course it's all year committee um being positive here. Um and then but also looking at AP scores um which is a big push for us as well. We look at the number of
004students that we had back in 1415 whether it's AP students AP exams AP scores 3 plus AP students with scores of three plus and the percentage of kids and a reminder three is considered typically passing. Um, and we fast forward to today and you'll see we have 50% more students taking the AP. We have more students taking it 50%, we have about 50% more student more exams being taken. Um, we have almost 50% many more AP scores of three plus and we have 10% more um, students getting that three. So, um, typically you're going to have the more students you have take something, maybe the the less your pass percentage is. And it's actually been the opposite for our district. Um, and the work that you've done with our curriculum committee and and the opportunity
005that we've had to offer additional courses has led to having more students being able to take those exams. Um, but I think some of your initiative and support of of um, high school administration and leadership of bringing in teachers, bringing ideas forward um, has been invaluable across our district. So, on behalf of the district, we want to thank you for all your efforts. The the I don't know how many countless hours of time you've spent um whether it's getting ready for a board meeting. A lot of times we just see the time that board members spend at board meetings, but you're someone who comes to curriculum committee, policy committees, regular board meetings um having read up on topics and asking good questions. and um you have been invaluable as a member of our community and
006we want to thank you for that and wish you the best as you leave Grafton and as you leave the high school with your kids as your kids graduate um this year as well. So we want to thank you for all your um your efforts and I know Mr. Nata has some words or some a gift he wants to give you as well. Yep. Yes. Thank you for your your 12 years. uh 2017, nine years ago. Um that was the first opportunity that I had to work with uh Carrie when myself and Jerry and Carrie all came onto the board. Obviously, a lot of things have transpired over the last at least nine years that we've been on the board from referendums to a pandemic to um all kinds of curriculum changes in our district
007as Jeff has mentioned, you know, has changed and has improved and obviously your commitment and dedication and knowledge and leadership has been a big part of that. So, thank you very much. enjoy your every fourth Monday doing something else uh going forward. But uh on behalf of the board, thank you very much. We'd like to give you a token of our appreciation. Thank you. Sorry. Take two. Take two. Staged. Thank you. Yes. Lovely. Very nice. Thank you very much. Sure. I'd love a picture. Look at it. Every fourth Monday. That's it. 10 seconds. Yeah, only congratulations. THANKS. AT least and Carrie did confirm she'll be at the curriculum meeting in two weeks. So, her term actually doesn't end till 27. All right. Next, that brings us to the Grafton High School presentation. All right. Good
008evening, everyone. Uh, it's my pleasure to be here this evening giving our uh, the final school presentation, having you back at Graflin High School after taking the tour of the three buildings um, in the district. Uh we have a great presentation planned for you this evening. Um and you'll hear from a lot of our students this evening about some of the great things uh that are currently happening here at at GHS. So one of the things I always do is give you a little recap of what we've covered in our presentations over the last few years. So uh last year we had our LEO volunteer club here and heard a little bit from our robotics team. We've heard from our CTE department and their celebrations, our Hawks program, some of our world language opportunities, career
009internship course, our fab lab, our herb scholarship winner. We've done all of those things over the course of the last four years. And this evening, uh, here is our agenda. So, I'm going to go ahead and and kick things off, uh, with a little bit of an introduction for you. And then we're going to talk about our student wellness opportunities available, uh, here at Grafton High School. So, we have a couple of our of our school counselors who will walk through that with you and then some students here that will talk about some of the things that we have going on. So, that's going to be great. You'll get a couple of program updates this evening from Graphonics and from robotics. And then I'm going to walk you through a few of our vision 2030
010updates of the high school brief and then we're going to close with a few celebrations from the school year so far. So, that's what the evening will look like uh for our presentation. All right. So, uh, basically we're going to focus on the student engagement and growth part of vision 2030, uh, this evening, college, career, and life ready. So, we'll be in that student engagement and growth area. And with the student wellness opportunities, really looking at one of our key performance indicators, LR2 is the main focus of this, which is trying to get to that 100% connection rate for students at Grafton High School. But the other thing with that is there certainly are indirect connections to a lot of our other key performance indicators just based on students feeling connected to school and then
011how they're able to perform academically as well. So there's a lot of those indirect connections that exist with this as well. Okay. So um we are going to start with a little bit of survey data to set the stage for this first presentation. So if you go back to last year's parent and student survey, we tried to pull some questions that really on both surveys were related and give you some information. So on this first slide here, we have some great information to share. So on our parent survey with the question, my child feels accepted by students at their school. Um 90% of our parents strongly agreed or agreed with that sentiment. And then when you went to the student survey and found the related questions, uh, one, I have friends that help me when
012I need help. 95% or higher said yes at every grade level. So it was 95% or higher there. And then the other question, I have friends to sit with at lunch or hang out with at school. That was 96% or higher at each grade level. So you feel good about the connection um of that. Here when you look at our second one to share um and this was related to our adults. It says my child feels accepted by adults in their school. Our parents said 92% strongly agree or agree which is a strong number. Interestingly there was a little bit of a disconnect when it came to our students. So our students on two separate questions if I have a big problem there's an adult at school I can talk to about it. It was
01380% or higher at every grade level. Okay. And the interesting thing about this is and that kind of maybe as you would expect the longer you were here the more that number went up. So really our freshman were indicating 80 plus 80% and our other grade levels increased. And the same thing was true with the next one the 83%. I know my teachers care about me 83% at all grade levels but certainly it went up the longer that we had to meet with and get to know our students. Okay. But that's a little bit of a disconnect for us here in terms of what our parents felt, what our students felt. So we want to talk to you a little bit about what we're doing with student wellness opportunities to try to ensure that connectedness
014rate uh here this evening. Um so in order to do that, we have a wonderful group uh of teachers and students who are going to help with this this evening. Uh led by Mr. Johnson and Miss May. And then you're going to hear from Rook, Ellie, Lee, and Alex with some of the great things that are going on here. So, at this time, we're going to turn it over to them and you go to their presentation here. That would be awesome. All right. All right. Well, thank you. Uh, thank you, Mr. Manti, and thank you, board, for having us. Um, as, uh, Mr. Manti said, my name is Greg Johnson. I'm a school counselor here, and I've been in Grafton for nine years, nine and a half years. And I'm Emily May, one of the
015other school counselors. This is my fourth year in Grafton. So tonight we just want to go over a few different things we have going on at Grafton High School regarding uh wellness. So the topics we're going to talk about are wellness week, Raise Your Boys Club, Green Bandana Project, Yoga Club, and then the United Way Empowering Minds Grant. So um we'll start with wellness week. So um wellness week has been going on about over I think over 10 years. I had to ask our historian Mike Lina, right? Um where did this start and how did it start? So he said, "Oh, well over 10 years." Um, it started out as a a faculty initiative, a wellness initiative, and then they the faculty decide or thought, let's get students involved and start doing things for them.
016So, um, that's a I guess a little bit of a history and it's evolved ever since then. So, um, it's really a our wellness week. We used to have it in November or early December. We moved it to February. We thought that was a good time of the year to do it. Um and it really is an opportunity for us to highlight uh all the different wellness um mental health wellness resources that we have in our community and in our school. Um this year we had over 17 uh different agencies come in throughout the week uh throughout wellness week in February. Um and you can see on the screens one example is Cerona Recovery. Uh they are a partner of ours in other uh ways as well but they were here and they always have
017a fun time. Um and then we also had advocates of Oakakei County. Um just a slew of different places or different organizations which has been great. Um if you're not familiar with wellness week, we do this over the lunch. Most of the activities are uh during lunch. So we uh all students are exposed to what we have going on. So you can see up here um again on the screen the five different squares. these we had a different theme for each day and we tried um having activities that uh evolved uh revolved around that those topics. Um so a couple things to highlight uh this year uh we had a you can see there's a bingo card up there. So one way to get students involved they had to go around and uh see one
018of the counselors or something after they did something. They had to fist pump Mr. Kina which was fine I'm sure. um he's a good sport about it, of course. Um and so then uh when students finished it, if they completed it, they we put their name in for a drawing for Amazon gift cards. So um and also another new highlight we had were the bounce houses. Um uh awesome. Awesome. I mean, they're they're kids, right? And so they uh appreciated it. They were well well used. So, this also was an opportunity for us to survey our students to see what kind of activities do they want to see. I mean, we're adults planning things. We do have some student input, but uh we got some great ideas. Um, and you'll see some of the other
019examples of things uh that we did on the next slide. All right. So, I would like to introduce Ellie Girky, a junior here at Grafton High School, and she is going to talk about uh her views of Wellness Week um over the past three years. Hi, I'm Ellie and I'm a junior here. And when I was asked to reflect upon my wellness week, I was brought back to all the different activities we were able to do at lunches and throughout the day. And I was just kind of amazed about how many people from our community came out to support mental wellness and support the students here. And I think even in my three years, I've seen the amount of tables around lunch grow every single year. And also the activities we were able to do.
020So, there were so many more activities I think that were more hands-on and were like a better incentive for us to do because more people want to get up. Obviously, people want to go talk to members of the community. But, I think when you're getting a little something, you get to take with you, take to your classes, and you get to release some stress. The bounce houses were a great incentive. So, I think that's a great way that it's grown over these years is that the incentives have gotten a lot more fun, I think, for the students. I think mental wellness week in as a whole is really really good at raising awareness and um ending the stigma around mental health. I think in this day and age, we are really normalized to mental health,
021which I think is amazing. But I think this week creates even more of a normalization of it. And I think it creates opportunities for students to see all the resources they have that they might be too afraid to reach out for and see all their classmates get up and go to all these tables, not knowing if they're struggling or not. And then they don't have the fear of going up there as well and asking for help on these resources. Um, I think wellness week overall is just a great opportunity for the administration and all of our faculty to reach out to students and see them as more as just academic students, but also people individually. And I'm really excited to see as the impact and the week itself grows over the years. Thank you. All
022right. You can also see on the screen we had a couple quotes. Um, when the students did their survey, we're like, "What else? Give us any of your comments." And again, bouncy castles were really fun. And one thing I forgot to highlight, too, are the uh wellness dogs that come in, and those are always a great great hit. All right. Next, I'd like to introduce uh Rook Lavine, one of our uh seniors. Um and he's going to talk about the Raise Your Boys Club. Hi, I'm Rook Lavine, a senior here at HHS, as Mr. Johnson said. Um and I am on the leadership board for our Raise Your Voice uh club here at Grafton. I started the club as a sophomore year justice project. Mrs. Brogman's was talking about what do you what problems do
023you see in the community around you? Um and it brought me brought me back to when my friend told me that they were scared to share what they were struggling with. They were afraid to come forward and afraid to talk about it. So I was like that's a problem. We got to fix that. So I started researching and I started uh coming up with ideas of what we could introduce to the school and I talked to the counselors and they uh showed me raise your voice. Uh we are through NAMI the National Association of Mental Illness. There it is. Um we are a chapter of them. Uh NAMI Ozaki down the road is super helpful. They've help out with a lot of things. Um and started the club. Our mission is to reduce the stigma
024around mental health throughout the school. Uh we do that through many different like activities. We have a monthly meeting. There's always donuts there to get students to show up. Um and we make signs for the school or like we've done bathroom messages. We've wrote written with like markers on the mirrors like you look great today or little little pickme up messages. Um as you can see um people holding up the signs and stuff like that. Um and then we also in this summer we have like a NAMI walk. NAMI hosts a big walk in Wisconsin um down in Kenosha and Shabboan. Shabboan, sorry. Down in Shbboen. Um and it's just a walk where everyone's there through NAMI. A bunch of other Raise your voice clubs at different schools show up and it's a super way
025to get people involved and talking about mental health and reducing that stigma. Another event we do is during finals week. Uh we have a study session down at the Casmaric Center by Capco and in the winter we have hot chocolate bars and in the summer we do a lemonade bar and usually students come with the idea of studying but end up just talking with friends more. But that's a great stress reliever and get gets people's minds off the stress of finals. So our that's our that's what we do and yeah thank you Uh, so related to Raise Your Voice is the Green Bandana Project and I'm going to invite up Alex Bergman to talk about that. Hello, I'm Alex Bergman. I'm a sophomore at Grafton High School. And as you can see from my backpack,
026um, students have been given green bandanas. And not only are they very stylish, they also carry a lot of meaning to them. So, as my uh Eagle Scout project um for my Troop 840, um I decided to do something a little different than just building a structure like a bench or something. I decide to introduce the Green Mad Nana project to the high school as um focus on mental health awareness in teens. And so, um, as Rook said, uh, Nami Ozaki is a great organization, and I met with the president, Dr. Michael Weber, and he suggested that for my project, I introduce the Green Bandana Project at the Grafton High School because that's something that he wanted to be seen. And so, I suggested it to Mr. Johnson and Mrs. May and they were totally
027on board with it. And so since then, uh, as you can see, we've done training. Uh, we've created posters around the school to help promote the first wave of training. And then our future goals for uh the Green Bandana project is we'd like to see uh more representation from all grade levels at the high school as well as just creating a more positive environment that empowers peers to seek um excuse me uh to seek support from peers that have been trained. And so if you can go to the next slide. So this is uh part of the slideshow that's in the training. So the bandanna um the green bandanna shows that students have been trained to listen without judgment to their peers and that they have uh access to resources um to help with any
028extreme cases of mental health struggles. So yeah, THANK YOU SO WE CAN SEE WE HAVE a lot of really studentdriven um and staff supported initiatives around um mental wellness and mental health. Uh another um great thing that Lee Wyn along with Ella Ellis are going to come talk with you about is yoga club. So I'm going to invite them up. Hi, I'm Lee. I'm a senior here and um I started yoga club. So, first um I started yoga club my junior year. So, last year and I'm very grateful to have Miss May as our advisor because she has past experience with yoga. So, she leads all of our sessions. And I started a yoga club because I realized that school can be a very stressful environment. And there's a lot of students who have academic
029stress or have very tight and busy schedules with, you know, extracurriculars and sports. And there wasn't really a dedicated space at school for students to just relax and unwind. So that's that was my motivation to start a club to pro provide that space for others. And for meetings, we have them during BHT. So, right in the morning, so students can start off their day refresh and unwind and hopefully carry out that energy throughout the school day. And then I'll have um Ella here who um contribute to the club as well um explain what we do in the meetings and the type of meetings that we have. So, we try to have a variety of unique meetings. And so we've reached out to Partners of Pause to have multiple puppy yoga meetings. And we've also partnered
030with Best Buddies here at the school to have Best Buddy meetings. And this kind of just encourages people to come for the first time if they're too afraid to show up to a yoga meeting. They're like, "Oh, there's puppies." So that's how we've gotten a lot of people to come. So Ka is going to talk about her experience. Yeah. So I'm a member of the yoga club and I've been a member since it started. And from like the member perspective, like I think it's a really good like club because like I'm someone that's like in sports all year round. And I'm also in other other clubs and like it can all be like very stressful and like being able to like go to school and like instead of going to like BHT and having to
031like think about like oh I got to get ready for this text test next class like I can go to yoga club and just kind of like get my mindset right or kind of just like unwind and like carry that into my next class knowing that like like oh I feel so much calmer now or like sometimes like I know I have a game and I'm like oh I'm kind of stressed like or like oh I'm sore. Like I have so much going on. But like going to yoga club and like having all these like different opportunities where it's like we did best buddies and like we got to do like all these different like group yoga activities or like with the puppies. It's like it's always exciting hearing the new stuff that it has.
032So yeah, I think it's a really good program and club. So, there's a lot of things going on at GHS, like I said, a lot of really studentdriven programs, student driven clubs, and one of the things behind this has been the empowering minds grant from the United Way that we've been so fortunate to be the recipients of. Uh, and that's allowed us to really like take some of these things to the next level. have the bouncy houses, have the dogs come in, things that are nice to do but cost some money. Um, the empowering minds grant has been a really great resource for us. Uh, it's also just from a more systems level perspective too helped us uh, you know, be really mindful and intentional about the things that we're planning uh, as well as
033even how our student services uh, department is physically organized. We used the money in the year one of the grant for a remodel of the student services suite. So now counselors and our school psychologist Katie Martinez Ortiz, we are all together in the same space. We weren't that far before, but you'd be amazed at how much difference just, you know, somebody being 8 feet away from you um really makes a difference on the collaboration, the ongoing collaboration during the day. And then for students too, there's just there is one place to come um for your needs. So you can see in the picture there, that's like a wall that was going up that has now become Katie's office and our conference room. Uh and then the other picture is now we also have a wellness
034bay or calming space for students too. So again, another way that we're just meeting the needs uh that students have here. Um we are also in the process of getting a mental health website launched uh that'll be launched fall 2026. So again, mental health resources for students and families. We uh sought their input about what types of resources would you need, how would you access these? And so we are really excited to be able to offer that very soon. Uh and this year we've been focused on expanding the wellness week programming out beyond just that week because it is really a big highlight for students. They like it a lot and the feedback always is we should do this more. It shouldn't just be one week during wellness week. So, that's been our intention this
035year. Uh, looking ahead throughout the spring, planning some more fun Fridays, going to bring the dogs back, some other games during lunch, and then being uh, intentional about the high stress times before finals, before AP exams, just winding up the school year. uh giving teachers also the opportunity to offer wellness focused BHTs during those times or other times. Uh so we are uh these are things that we're just really passionate about and are are really excited to be um continuing to build on. So to end um we will show you a video that United Way made. um they wanted to showcase some of the different high schools and schools that have received the grant and um they showcased Grafton High School in one of their videos. It uh they were here during wellness week so
036it ties into much of what you have heard about today. United Way's teen mental wellness empowering minds initiative is really focused on systems level change at high schools. We're working with high schools as they implement a comprehensive school mental health system. This means embedding mental wellness into their school culture so that this work is sustainable. One of our 16 high schools is Grafton High School in Ozaki County. This high school is really focused on providing additional opportunities for their students to engage in mental wellness activities. They host a mental wellness week every year and they also have a student focused group that is allowing students to talk to their peers and provide support to each other to better improve the mental wellness of students across the high school. What gives me hope is the resiliency
037I see in students to move through tough situations, the growth and development from their freshman year to their senior year, and their own self-awareness that we don't always give them credit for. Grafton High School knows that we want to support the mental health of our students, that their students who are struggling with lots of mental health issues, and that students learn better uh when they are feeling safe and supported uh and well. So, we also knew that there was so much more that we could be doing and uh with the empowering minds grant, we really found the structure and the support and of course the funding to bring our ideas into action. some of the challenges I think students face every day regarding um mental health and struggles regarding it. I think definitely in the
038school setting there's a lot of academic pressure I feel for all students cuz everybody wants to achieve and succeed in their academics. Um not only that there's there's also like friendships struggles obviously those can like add on to your mental health struggles. So I think there's like numerous things in a school setting but also in social settings that could affect that. So in my classroom, students will come in with mental health issues of maybe things happening outside of the class. Just want to go ahead and thank everybody that certainly a different approach is something that we haven't done but we know it's very important to share uh with the board. With that being said, we have two quick program updates for you with some exciting things happening and this would be a uh career ready
039uh indicator of participating in core extracurricular activities. So, let's bring our first program update, the the graphonics. Shaunak and Juna are going to come up and give a little update. Hi everybody, my name is Sha Chri. I'm a junior. And I'm Juna Eberman and I'm a senior. We're both members of Graphonics, which is uh Grafton High School's premier ac capella group. Um over the past since the beginning of the school year and a little bit before, we've had camps, rehearsals constantly with Miss Klepic, our amazing director. She's very good at what she does. And we've been working really hard to compete in this year's ICSA. ICHSA is the International Competitive High School AC Cappella. And I think that's right. And and so what we do is every year we prepare a 10-minute set which consists
040of three songs with really cool solos and student taught choreography which we are a part of. And um so this year we competed at our quarterfinals on February 21st at Port Washington High School and we placed in second place which is something we haven't done in years or in any of our time in the group. So it was very exciting for us to finally have this like really big success that you know now we have a certificate that shows how good we are. And so it was super exciting. We have great reaction photos of all of us when we found out that we won. Such as that. You can see that there was a lot of range of emotions from very happy to shocked and very emotional. So that was a great night for all
041of us. We had celebratory culvers afterwards as well. And so we spent the month after that preparing for semi-finals which includes the nine other best a capella groups in the Great Lakes region which is three states I believe Wisconsin, Minnesota and Illinois. And that was just surreal to like be preparing for performing at the Paps Theater which we did this past weekend. Um, another big topic for us especially is right now we have I think nine seniors in the group. So sustainability is a real really important thing. We succeeded we did our one of we did one of our best performances at in February at the quarterfinal and got to perform at the semi-finals. But we want to make sure that's sustainable. So we integrated Miss Klepic this year at the middle school is hosting
042an a capella group called Fly Harmony. She's directing that entirely. But at the high school, we also restarted Hak Capella, which is our underclassman acappella group before graphonics to prepare students for that. Uh we started hak capella this year. Jun is one of the directors of that along with me, Nella Goodwin, and Franchesco Graasso. Um it's been a very fun time and the few Saturdays ago at Soul Ensemble, they did a really hard piece and got a one on that, which is the best you can do. It was really fun seeing all these underassman grow and hopefully audition for Graphonics next year. Thank you. MISS PLEPIK SAID THAT you performed in front of nearly a thousand people at the Paps Theater this weekend. So in front of a thousand people that's that's pretty awesome. So
043we wanted to give them that quick update for the board. And then the second update we want to give is one year ago almost to the date the robot you got a very specific detailed robotics uh explanation but one year later u Matthew and Jacob are going to provide you with an update and some pretty good news. Let's welcome them. Uh hello. I'm Matthew Wiper. I'm a junior and I'm the programming lead on the team. And I'm Jacob Nestler. I'm a junior and I'm the business team lead. Uh yeah. Um, we're part of the GHS FTC robotics team called the Random Engineers. Last year, we met with you all and gave you a showcase of our program. We answered questions and we let you drove our drive our robot. Since then, our team has grown
044exponentially. This year, we've met with 18 experts in the engineering, business, and programming fields. These experts taught us valuable skills that are valuable both to robotics right now and for future employment. Through robotics, me and all our teammates have been able to shadow professional industry. Oh my gosh. Professionals at Matrix, one of our main sponsors. Speaking of sponsors, we had eight sponsors this season and raised over $17,000 for our club. Our largest sponsor, Matrix, and its parent company, PMMI, have contributed nearly $6,000 to the program, as well as valuable mentorship and machine new parts for our robot. Matrix also invited us to an international pack expo in Chicago, where we will be one of six robotics teams renting. There will be over 2600 companies in attendance there. On the robot side, a robot is designed
045to pick up balls and shoot it, kind of like basketball. It can run autonomously using sensors at the start of match and then we control it using gamepad for the rest of the match. But FC is more than just a robotics competition. This year we reached over 1500 people spread across 21 events including a food drive, county fair, and community presentations. We're also recruiting new members right now and trying to get younger students involved. So the program continues to grow within our district. We've helped. We've expanded robots by mentoring middle school teams, hosting scrimmages, and running camps. We've started an extracurricular robotics team next year with $1,000 in funding set aside. And we also applied for a GF grant to improve our robotics room space. We attended three qualifiers this year, receiving the connect award
046twice or connecting with the engineering community, the reach award once or STEM outreach in the community, and we're part of a winning robot alliance once. At state, we finished six out of 32 teams and received a connect award yet again. We secured a spot at the Chicago Invitational this July. We will be very busy this summer summer with multiple outreach events already in the calendar and a large focus on mentoring incoming FTC andLL students at the middle school level. We appreciate your support and are excited for next year's season. Thank you. So, you know, this is this is why we do what we do is to allow students to do the things that they love to do and to do them so well. It's just great to see their passion in whether it's wellness or
047graphics um or our robotics program. Those are the three things we just wanted to highlight and provide you those two quick updates. So, I have a couple of things to update you on, and they're probably not going to be as exciting um as talking to our groups of students, but I still want to share a couple of items with you. So, my vision 2030 updates uh for you this year when it comes to our college ready, career ready, life ready indicators. I have three that I've chosen to share something briefly on. The first one being our ACT composite score. This is a celebratory slide in the fact that, you know, Jeff had mentioned this earlier. you know, achieving a 233 composite score as a school. You can see our last five years how we have
048trended up uh with our score overall and you can see that our composite score is over four full points above the state average. So, a reason for us to celebrate. Um really, we also had the opportunity to present some of our knowledge on a state and national basis over the course of the last 18 months. And really the the pride that I take and that Kim Yner takes and and Julia takes is really on behalf of the entire district with the great things that we're doing. So being able to present at an online webinar, then the ACT national national conference in Nashville this summer and then two regional conferences in Illinois that we presented at this December. We're taking the work that the whole Grafton school district is doing and expanding that far beyond our
049walls uh here. So we're super proud of that. Um couple of things that we're doing this year. We kicked off the fourth annual ACT Olympics which is a competitive preparation opportunity as we come uh to our all school testing day in April. And this year uh we also ensured that all of our students 9th, 10th and 11th grade in their commun communication arts classes received their personalized um scores from the fall along with simple QR codes that take them directly to the test so they can see question by question how they did in the fall as they prepare for the spring test. So, a couple of new resources that we presented as well. Um, culture of growth mindset. We have some quotes here from our students that uh increased their um their composite score by
050five or more points from uh one spring to the next. So, we shared those with our students um this year as well prior to the testing. So, that was something new that we did as well. Um, as far as our career readiness, um, indicator, looking at, uh, choosing a cluster by graduation, uh, one cool thing that's new this year is our partnership with the Grafton Chamber of Commerce and doing our career cafe at lunch. I'll highlight one that we just did on March 19th, which was focused on the cultivating resources area in both agriculture and then energy and natural resources. We found that our lunch periods are a really engaging time for students. They spend a few minutes eating and then they'll engage with the businesses and the organizations that are there. So we had
051cake comfort there, we energy's there uh just to name um a few. We'll continue this into the future and we'll get better with this next year as we go through this the first time. But that's something new we were doing with our career uh readiness indicator. And then our life readiness indicator really this year focusing on 21st century skills. We moved away from our electronic device focus because we have that in a really good spot and now we're focusing on AI and proper use of AI. Um, things that our teachers have done this year is have an AI policy on their syllabus and they may also include this language on some of their assignment sheets to provide direct direction and clarity for our students. We've pushed our students to evaluated uh to I'm sorry to
052monitored resources with Brisk and Gemini that are protective of their own personal information and data. So we've had them using those resources and we're excited about what the future holds for our students and um their use of AI. So those are the three things that I wanted to highlight as it comes to our plan. We have our all school testing day. Our testing dates coming up right after spring break, April 8th and April 9th. So that's what's ahead for us. Uh while we are also working on um a student connection document to vision 2030 that our our TLC group at the high school is working on as far as presenting some information uh that will help and support connect our students to our KPI. So we're looking forward to sharing that with uh with Jeff
053in the near future. Um as far as celebrations from the year, it's been a banner year. Like here we go. I'm just going to close with some images, right? two students earning a perfect 36 um on the ACT, Audrey and Josie. Um additional ACT celebrations. All of these are are wonderful um in terms of the achievement that we have been accomplishing. Um we had a teacher receive a $50,000 uh you know grant essentially uh from Harbor Freight Tools from schools. That was back in October. Then we get to November and our volleyball team goes to state, wins wins a match there, finishes second in the entire state. Uh then we go further along in November and we win a state championship in football. Um then we induct over 30 new members to our national honor
054society in a in November ceremony so that our students instead of inducting them in February, March, induct them in November so they can be a part of the organization for more time than they've been able to do in the past. Great change for us. Then our wrestling team qualifies for the sectional for the first time in 25 years at that level. Audrey Hansen's our first female in school history to place at a state meet. I think she was sixth and got on the podium. That's awesome. Uh we had a Snoop Super Smash Bros. Esports second place in the state. Over 200 uh individuals competing. So I just want just the variety here is pretty awesome. Uh National Merit semi finalists turn to national merit finalists. Um Josie and Alani, you know, there as well. So
055wonderful to see that. And then just recently, you know, a record number of white coat uh you earners at our at our ceremony that just occurred recently. So this the the accomplishments in this year are incredible. Not only is the class of 2026 incredible and a super accomplished group of individuals that are going to do awesome things, but in addition to that, what what's happened this year as part of our school year is atypical. Like it's wonderful to see all those things. It's hard to leave anything out that's been accomplished, but very proud of our students, very proud of our teachers and our staff, and I couldn't be any more honored to continue to be the principal of Grafton High School. You know, finishing my 11th year here. We're continuing to do great things, and
056we will into the future because of our students like this and our staff members like this. And, you know, I give them all the credit for the work that we're doing. So, we want to say thanks and then if there is any questions you have for any one of these groups, we'd be happy to answer them for you. So, thank you. Excellent presentation. Any comments or questions from the board? Um, well, of course, all great news and things to celebrate. So, nice job. Great presentation, informative. love the students like with the wellness there was a good amount of you know the counselors doing but then the students the amount of students that are doing things and starting groups and leading them is really great. So Shaunic I got a question for you in that in
057that photo at the Graftonics quarterfinals I see you had a little uh certificate in your hand. You mind explaining what that was for? Yeah. So out of the 10 groups I got I got an award for outstanding percussionist which means I I got I was good at it. They were they gave Yeah. Is this your first year doing This is my second year. Second year. And I was I sang in the group my freshman year. Oh but I mean doing the beatbox stuff. Yeah. It's my second year box. Oh, okay. Yeah. So that was they give out a special award and I wanted to make sure because he didn't say anything about it. So he does a fantastic job and was recognized. Very cool. I mean to to see all the wellness programs going and
058driven by the students is amazing to me to to see them pushing for things to help other their peers and their classmates. Just commend all of you for that. That's wonderful. Also, I I'm hearing a lot about sustainability from a lot of the groups, too. And so, you're not only thinking about today, but tomorrow and making sure things continue on. So, thank you for that and helping the future students and our and the programs continue to thrive and grow. I I had a question for Alex. With your green bandanas, how many uh Green Bandana students are there currently? for at least there's 16. And are you planning on running like a second training or Yes. I just So like you have the green bandanas and the what's the raise your voice. Raise your voice. Are
059they say that louder? Um raise your voice. So they're two separate groups but they're both under the NAMI umbrella. does that. Well, the Raise Your Raise Your Voice is a is the club um that Yeah, they're both Yes. Yes. and Okay. Um Green Bandana is a project the club is doing. So Oh, it's under Raise Your Voice. Gotcha. Yeah. So, we extended that first training to members of the Raise Your Voice Club or those who wanted to become members of Raise Your Voice. Uh so, that was a great a great first I was I was curious if you're allowed to have an a capella group without a pun for a name. I didn't know if that was legal and it's a good one. Um general wellness question. Maybe it applies to everyone because you're all
060part of the wellness program. Um how do we feel we're doing with freshmen? You all seem wonderful at engaging each other. I suspect it's pretty good. But, you know, now that you've kind of worked through your program, maybe there's some freshman in front of us here, but how do you feel that reaches down to to that starting group of folks? Uh, yeah, a big chunk of Raise Your Voic's members are underassmen, including freshmen. Um, that is our, uh, biggest demographic that shows up to meetings and is consistently a part of it. So, I mean, freshmen are getting ready and ready to fill our places as we leave. Yeah. And nine of our three bandana project inductees I guess were freshman. So great. Thank you. Excellent. Great presentation. It is so fun to see, you know,
061the passion that you guys have. You guys driving this. Um it's easier to get involvement when it's coming from you guys versus from an administration trying to get something going. So credit to all of you. Great job for what you're doing for, you know, your school, your peers. um and the entire learning community. So, thank you very much. So, so maybe before we dismiss everyone, can I skip to number two on the superintendence report? Would that be okay? Yes, sir. Let me recognize the students that are here because when I met Mr. meant on Friday and I knew they were speaking but we'd already had the the our agenda um set and so we wanted to make sure that this was mentioned but um it it wasn't specifically said but this is the first time
062the random engineers robotics has qualified for state. So they mentioned they came sixth out of out of 32 teams which is great but it's also the first time that they've qualified for state. So truly from the time we saw them last year through that year it's it's great to see them seeing that success. We have um and probably if you're here why don't you stand up. So Shanik Chhattahari who you've already heard, Libby Coleman, Emma Hypert, Matthew Ipert, Jacob Nestler, Jocelyn Okconor, Sam Parsi, Will Riley, Irene Shoemaker, and Chase Tendrup um are all the members on the team. So let's give them a round of applause. Yes. So why don't we get Can we get all of you that came here? Can you guys come up and take pictures for the board and then you
063can How is this going to work? Okay. So, make sure I can see your face. Awesome. Thanks, guys. Great job. I JUST HEARD ONE I KNEW for education. All right, we're back to not nearly as exciting, ironically, but we do want to continue with our um congratulatory tone by congratulating Director of Technology Rick Cyel um who's BACK HERE. hiding behind the screens. Um Rick was the recipient of the leader in excellence award from Skyward. Um he was one of only five individual national winners recognized at Skyward's 23rd annual inventors conf conference. Um he was quoted in Forbes magazine um by Skyward as well. Um, and I'm so we're very proud of Rick and wanted to make sure the board and our community um are aware of him receiving this national award. Um, which is great
064and you hopefully saw in the paper as well. Um, but congratulations to Rick. And then moving on to our JHS athletes, I'll have Mr. Moore um, share our accolades for our winter sports season. Feel like we should clap for Mr. MOORE. Thank you. I don't get that a lot. So, it's always appreciated. Um, hope uh this information isn't redundant, but it's still a pleasure as always to share the achievements of our student athletes and and our students uh overall over the winter sports season. Uh, as Mr. Manti mentioned, uh, wrestler Audrey Hansen uh, finished sixth place at state, first female wrestler ever in GHS history to uh, to to place at the state meet, finishing sixth on the podium. That's great. Competition cheer team finished uh, fifth place at state. Uh, esports team, the Fortnite
065division of Jack Nelson, Damian my and Kayn Wade qualified for state. Congratulations to them. Girls basketball allconerence honores included Cali Tagle Petra on the first team. Ava Dodson on the second team. Bley Hildebrand and Melanie Morgan were honorable mention. Uh wrestling allconerence honores uh meaning they finished top three at the conference meet. Ellie Federal and Audrey Hansen were first team members. Ryan Gartman and Caleb Burns were second team. Uh as well as Bowden Gartman, Nolan Murray, Eli Parker, Tom Shoemaker, and Parker Swenson were third team members. Uh the Wisconsin basketball coaches assoc Association academic all-state honores uh for girls basketball included Kendall Conrad, Ava Dodson, Melanie Morgan, Amber Ratkkey, Cali Tegel Pietra, Ava Vanloo, and Kayie Vansloose. And that includes uh a GPA of 3.5 or higher. Uh on the boys side, same thing. Uh
066academic all-state honores through the coaches association, Caleb Bjanich, Elen Cornelius, Adam Demi, Josiah Gonzalez, and Jack Marty. and the WACPC, which is our cheer and dance uh in um WI endorsed cheer and dance organization. Their scholar athlete recognition included Bailey Mazari, Sonia Skullman, and Taylor Skiby. Uh just a quick shout out as well to our dance team being a state qualifier in division 2 hiphop with with uh state solos Dvery Styles and our and our boys swim and dive state qualifiers of Aiden Wardin, Jacob Butler, Matt Sheihi, Sam Jacobe, and Sham and Shamab Ashikumar. So congratulations to all of our athletes. It was a great winter. Thank you. UM, AS A REMINDER, WE THIS is our final week um of the third quarter. Um, so Friday is the final day for quarter 3 and then
067we go on spring break. So, district spring break is from March 30th through April the 3rd and then we will come back from spring break and we will have our schoolboard election on Tuesday, April 7th. Um Bob Malin as an incumbent, Steve Natada as an incumbent, and Terry Vincvenius are running for the three open seats on the board. Um profiles on the candidates are posted on our district website. Um and then for our educational funding partners, I believe we have an educational funding partner here. Um but I'll read one from another um from the KESPTG who um shared that at the March um for the March meeting, they have once again our families showed up. Our restaurant give back night at Noodles & Company in Grafton on March 10th resulted in a $47 donation. And
068on March 11th, they provided a small food spread for teachers and staff to fuel up before parent teacher conferences that afternoon and evening. Coming up in May or excuse me, coming up in April is the third annual Clash of the Claws fundraising battle with Woodview Elementary will take place again this year courtesy of the Stillery on Monday and Tuesday, April 20th and the 21st. Woodview night is Monday and Kennedy night is Tuesday. And the Scholastic book fair is coming back to Kennedy this spring, Tuesday, April 28th through Thursday, April 30th, with an opportunity to shop the fair from 4 to 6 in conjunction with the KES student art exhibit taking place on April 30th. And I believe Miss Van Sloo is here um for the educational partner as well. Good evening. Good evening everybody. My
069name is Jessica Vans Sloo and I'm excited to share some recent insights and updates um and highlights from the Grafton Education Foundation, GEF. Uh this past Saturday we hosted a brand new event at Ember Social in Grafton and I'm pleased to report that it was a fantastic success. Uh the event sold out with 70 attendees and we raised $2,377. Thanks to Ember Social's ticket sales and a specialty drink offering, uh we saw great turnout um with this new initiative. A special part of the event involved a hundred of our third and fourth graders who participated by providing fun and insightful family feud style poll answers. Their responses were both hilarious and heartwarming. Some took a moment to decide how to answer, ponder, and think, but it was a joy to hear their unique perspectives. Here
070are just a few sample questions and their answers. What's something kids lose all the time? They said teeth and girlfriends. Something kids ask for at the store, they said a new sister. Something kids collect often is Easter eggs. I think they have Easter on their mind. And then something kids do when the teachers turn around is they do six seven with their hands. We thought that was pretty insightful. The interactive game created a family-friendly atmosphere, bringing together teachers, parents, children, and staff in a wonderful show of community spirit. Brian Nazinski um served as our MC, and he did an excellent job uh keeping everyone engaged throughout the evening. We're thrilled by the positive community response and look forward to continuing to uh try new activities that involve everyone. Looking ahead, here are some of the
071exciting upcoming events that GF has um on in the on deck. In May, we have an announcement um our announcement of our 2026 Golden Apple Teacher of the Year and our grant recipients. On May 10th, we will launch our online silent auction. On June 10th, we have our color blast run at John Long, which is another uh fun event for all ages. Beginning in um August, we will begin to sell our reverse raffle tickets. And as a reminder, only 250 tickets are sold. Um, on September 27th, we have our portraits in the park for an opportunity to snag your family photos with VIP. And then lastly, on October 17th, we have our casino night. This event is now at Sand Hill Tree um Farms, which is an adult-only event modeled after last year's successful night
072of giving. I want to note that Casino Night um has moved this year from the Ozaki nonprofit center which is closed for this year for renovations if you weren't aware and finding a venue in Grafton that accommodates a large crowd has been a challenge. So if any of you guys want to start up a new group um you know a new company or new place you know that can house a lot of people I I suggest it would be a good idea. Uh the event will also feature our raffle drawing and um the winners will be announced there as well. But thank you so much for your continued support of Grafton Education and we look forward to seeing you at any um all of our events soon and uh I really really appreciate you guys
073supporting us and we love that you guys have been coming to stuff. So thank you. Thank you Jessica. And that concludes my report. Excellent. All right. Any comments or questions for the report? Okay. Thank you very much. Um that brings us to public comment. Um there was one email that I had for poured on to the whole board um earlier right after the February meeting but uh that was only one. Is there anyone here that would like to address the board? Okay. Seeing none, we will go to item E, uh personnel report. Yes, we have four resignations that are occurring at the end of the school year that make we're ask for board approval for. Uh, Brena Casey, fifth grade teacher, John Long Middle School. Uh, Shelby Kimbro, special education teacher at Kennedy Elementary School.
074And Mensel, special education teacher at Woodview Elementary School. And Kelly Peterson, second grade teacher at Kennedy Elementary School. Any comments or questions on the personnel report as presented? All right. Seeing none, I would look for a motion to approve um the resignation of Brandon Casey, Shelby Kimbro, and Mensel, and Kelly Peterson. So moved. Second. First and second. Additional discussion. All in favor say I. I. Opposed. That passes. We thank everyone for their service and dedication to the district and we wish them the best in the future. Um F, student overnight trip requests. Yes. And if Mr. Jameson is reading closely, he will see that it's the LL challenge team 52435 with the slogan of I am up to no good. Um but is asking for board approval to go on an overnight request for the
075robotics area. Um and then also the HOSA um group host going to HOSA state at Kalahari Resorts and Conventions in Wisconsin Dells um coming up in April. Um, and the LL challenge is in um, June 5th through June 7th. So, we'd ask report approval for both the robotics overnight trip as well as the host overnight trip. Okay. Any comments, questions? We'll look forward to a motion to accept the student overnight trip requests as presented. Second. Additional discussion. All in favor say I. I. Opposed. And that passes as well. Um, gift reports. Yes. So, we have four different gift reports that we would ask for board approval for. Um, one from Michael Freeze for GHS softball. Um, for softball team T's quantity 30 is restricted gift of $610 for GHS softball. Um, for GHS golf, we
076have a restricted gift from Andy Wazardi in the amount of $800 going to the golf program. um Bigler Sports with the contact person of Ken Pigler making a restricted gift of $300 towards uh GHS baseball windscreen at 9th Avenue Field as well as um a restricted gift for GHS baseball from Port Washington State Bank, donation towards GHS baseball windscreen at 9inth Avenue Field in the amount of $1,000. Any comments or questions on the gift report? Seeing none, I would look for a motion to approve the gift report as presented. Second. Any additional discussion? All in favor say I. I. I. Opposed. That passes and we thank them for their generosity to the district and we will get them a letter of appreciation. Um, next board meeting will be back at the Grafton High School um
077for April 27th. So, that will be our next meeting. That brings us to adjournment. Um, the board of education will consider a motion to convene in close session pursuant to Wisconsin statute 19.85 85 section 1 subsection C considering employment promotion compensation or performance evaluation data of any public employee over which the government body has jurisdiction or exercise responsibility for the purpose of considering one preliminary notice of non-renewal of teaching contracts two teacher comp compensation and three performance related data of the superintendent quarterly review. Would you like to make a motion to go into closed? So moved. Do we have a second? Second. A second. With that, we'll go to a voice vote. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And yes.