001[upbeat music] (James) Okay, we're gonna reconvene into open session. We have a couple of items still on our special board meeting before we move over to the work session. So the first item is 2A. Lynn, would you please read the motion? (Lynn) I move that Michael Hernandez be offered the contract to serve as the next superintendent of the Green Bay Area Public School District as presented be approved. (Samantha) Second. (James) Any discussion? Kinsey. (Kinsey) Online voting is now open. (Laura) I'm an aye. (Andrew) I am also aye. (Kinsey) All votes have been entered and the motion is carried with all board members voting in favor. (James) Thank you everybody. We'll move on to 2B, employment of staff. (Lynn) I move that the employment of staff as presented be approved. (Samantha) Second. (James) Any discussion? Kinsey.
002(Kinsey) Online voting is now open. (Laura) Kinsey, I'm an aye. (Andrew) I am also aye. (Kinsey) All votes have been entered and the motion is carried with all board members voting in favor. (James) Thank you. On 2C, resignation of staff. (Lynn) I move that the resignation of staff as presented be approved. (Samantha) Second. (James) Any discussion? Kinsey. (Kinsey) Online voting is now open. (Andrew) I'll vote aye. (Laura) I'll vote aye as well. (inaudible) (Kinsey) All votes have been entered and the motion is carried with the results of the individual board member votes as follows. Becker yes, McCoy yes, Lyerly yes, Gerlach yes, Mineau abstained, Knill yes, Meister yes. (James) All right, thank you everybody. And with that, we come to the end of the agenda. I would entertain a motion to adjourn. (Lynn) So moved.
003(Jeanette) Second. (James) All in favor? - Aye. (James) We are adjourned and we're gonna transition directly into our work session. So give everyone two minutes. Okay, if everyone's set. All right, it looks like we're good. I'm gonna call the April 13th, 2026 Board of Education work session to order. Kinsey, can you call roll please? (Kinsey) Meister (Samantha) here, (Kinsey) Knill (Jeanette) here, (Kinsey) Mineau (Alex) here, (Kinsey) Gerlach (Lynn) here, (Kinsey) Lyerly (James) here, (Kinsey) McCoy (Laura) here, (Kinsey) Becker (Andrew) here. (James) All right, before we start the agenda, I wanna just recognize the two individuals from our intra city student council. Would you please recognize yourself? [laughing] Introduce yourself. I'm sure that you recognize yourself. Wow, go ahead. (Miranda) I'm Miranda Newman. I'm a sophomore from John Dewey Academy of Learning. (Kendall) My name's Kendall
004Blahnik and I'm a sophomore from Preble High School. (James) Thank you and as always, please feel free to participate in any of the discussion. We're also joined by the superintendent of schools, Vicki Bayer. Right. And before we get into the main agenda, I'm gonna take a pause and we're going to recognize a member of our board. We wanna recognize Lynn Gerlach for her service to children, family and the community of Green Bay. For the past three years, Lynn has served as a trustee on this board and before that, she was on the Green Bay Common Council and even now she is on other community committees as well. Lynn has shown over and over again, a deep and lasting commitment to this community through her public service. It is a tradition of this board to recognize
005outgoing members with a piece of student created art. So I can think of no more fitting gift because it reflects the very purpose of our work and that the students are at the center of it. So Lynn, on behalf of the board of education, thank you for your time, your dedication and your care. We are pleased to present you with this piece of work. Now you had to stand up. - have to open it because I've been dying to see what it is. [applause] (James) It's beautiful and she's not even opened it yet. [laughing] (Lynn) There's something inside too. It's just gorgeous. Okay, let's see. You know, my house is full of leaf art, right? So this will be tough to find a place with this. Stand back, Samantha. [laughing] (Lynn) Oh, it's just cardboard,
006wait a minute. Oh my goodness, look at that, is there any way in? (inaudible) Look at that. (inaudible) (Lynn) Wow, that's heavy. [laughing] (James) So the best part of the night is I get to say speech. (Lynn) Do I get to talk? (James) If you wanna say something, absolutely. This is your last board meeting. [laughing] (Lynn) I wish there were more people here to hear my speech because I think I have something very important to tell you. First of all, I wanna say that it has been a privilege to serve with Vicki Bayer and David Johns. They have been, in my estimation, two of the most humble leaders that I have ever worked with. And they're both very good at their jobs, but they don't have to have any attention on themselves. They never have
007to be the center or have the spotlight on them. And I've been very inspired by that, both Vicki and David. I wish David were here to hear that. And I also wanna say that the people who usually sit at that table over there, the two that are there now, but all the others, I wanna say publicly, I trust those people. They are good at what they do, they know what they're doing. And here's another thing. I have discovered that they have integrity and character. I believe that you can trust the senior leadership of this district. Oh, and speaking of that, I would like to mention that the fact that we have a financial problem right now has nothing to do with the fact that we haven't managed our funds well. I don't know anyone who
008can stretch a dollar more than Angie Robley. We need to make sure our state legislature funds our public schools properly. Oh, one last thing. We have never, this board has never ever had on its agenda or discussed closing the Fine Arts Institute. Thank you. (James) Thank you, Lynn. [applause] All right, with that, we'll move on to the agenda and we are going into open forum. Has anyone registered to vote? Has anyone in the audience speak? - We were just talking about the campus. (James) This, that's three. That's three. They come in threes, that's it. If anyone in the audience would like to speak this evening and has filled out a pink sheet, now's the time. Anyone? Okay, we're gonna move on to section four of our agenda, strategic planning with an update from our strategic,
009ensure, well, go ahead. Words are hard tonight. (Vicki) Better safe than sorry. Come on up, ladies. - We are continuing the cadence of sharing a video ahead of time so that this strategic priority can be focused on and accessed multiple times at the leisure of the community. It is posted on the YouTube channel for our district. And tonight we have Amy Fish and Ingrid Parker-Hill here to respond and engage to any questions that the board might have regarding this strategic priority. (James) Anyone? Jeanette. (Jeanette) I was talking earlier to Ingrid and gave her a heads up that I was gonna ask this question. And maybe the question is more for Amy than Ingrid. But in your video, you talked about community partners. And my first question is about the survey. Who was that sent to?
010But then you explained that further on in the video. It was explained already with the partners you're working with now. Are those partners only businesses? Are there not-for-profits? And if there are other not-for-profits that feel that they could contribute even slightly to the school district, how do they go about being engaged? (James) There might be one that is not, yeah. (Amy) We'll get there. Well Ingrid also gave me a heads up to that question. So thank you for asking that. First of all, as far as the survey is concerned, we did have partners completed that are from nonprofit. And our department, that's more so our focus as our nonprofit partners. And we had three tiers of trying to get the survey out one was an email invitation. And then we had asked all of our
011administrators to also push it out to partners that I'm unaware of. And then we put it on social media. And for those that are interested in partnering with us, we love to learn about different opportunities out in the community. And you just need to connect with us. But like I said, in our department, I would say the majority of our partners are nonprofit. (Jeanette) So when you say connect with you, with you personally or, okay, great. (James) Others, Lynn. (Lynn) I just want to assure you that I know, I'm sure we all watched and listened to it all. I certainly did. And I want to thank you for putting the effort in to giving us such a comprehensive and clear report. That's why we don't have questions because you answered them, thank you. (James) Yeah,
012Sam. (Samantha) I would echo that I really, really appreciated this video. Miss Ingrid, if you could just narrate everything from now on, that'd be delightful. Your presence, your recorded voice even, if you could be my GPS, I think I'd be so much calmer when I'm going in the car. No, I just really, really wanted to highlight and elevate the fact that the explicit focus on intentionality through all of this work is so critical. And I liked the phrase that you used, the policy language discusses building capacity, but your discussion of it as growing together, I thought was really, really powerful throughout. So just thank you for the work that you and your team are doing. And that commitment to intentionality is seen. (James) Your voice holds up at 1.5X speed too? - It's great. -
013So, listen, listen. So I did have a question in reviewing the video. You spoke of inconsistencies in platforms and systems that are used for engagement across schools and grades. Can you describe some of that inconsistency for me, please? (Ingrid) Yes, thank you. So we have a lot of platforms that we have access to. And so when we are using those, and keep in mind when you have families that have more than one child, they're receiving lots of a plethora of messages. And so we have to look at the system that we have in order to get those messages out in order to not overwhelm our families. I'll give an example. You think about a middle schooler who might have six teachers. And so even the Talking Points platform that I really, really love, if all
014of those teachers message that family that day, and then you get a district office message, and then you get something else, that's a lot. And so how do we streamline it and utilize it best for our families, because they are the receiver. Another thing that we have, SORA-ILUS, which is another resource that we have. We are contracted with them right now, but what happens after the contract ends? And so looking at, are we utilizing them as best as we can? Do we need all that we have? So really just trying to gather all of that information. And we know that there's things that people are using that we don't necessarily know about. So just really trying to build a system that will work for us, but then will also work for our families as the
015end user. (James) So just so that we're not talking past each other, when you say build a system, you're looking at this holistically and saying, we really need to collapse a number of systems into one, and create that consistency system-wide. (Ingrid) Yes. (James) All right, thank you. Yes. (Miranda) So I didn't get the chance to read through the full thing, but I remember at the start, I'm simply looking at the video right now, it says that your plan by 2030 is to have 90% or more staff with fewer than 10 partial or full contact days. What are some plans you guys have in place for that? Like what are some things that you have to help raise that number? (Ingrid) I appreciate the question. That is not the domain. (laughing) It's okay, it is all
016right. Absolutely. We're family and community engagement. It's okay. (James) That's okay, yeah, absolutely. (Ingrid) Thank you. - Because you know what, everything is connected. And so the work that we're doing for family and community engagement really uplifts the other three domains. So no need to apologize, it is appreciated. (James) Yeah. (Amy) Can I add on that? There is work under the family community engagement partnership around that very goal. And we did present that goal to our partners because we want them to know that it's an important component of our work. And it's also something that we want them to also abide by. We want them to be present for our students because they're working with our kids in our schools. So it was a great question. (Ingrid) Absolutely. (James) Others. Thank you very much. (Ingrid)
017Thank you. (James) Appreciate it. All right, going into operations. There's nothing under education this evening, operations. The 2026, 27 budget discussion follow up. Last board meeting, we gave some direction to the districts and we'll turn it over to Superintendent Bayer to walk us through some responses. (Vicki) Thank you. Before I get into the steps that we've been taking over the last couple of weeks since the last board meeting, I do want to share that on Friday, we received some unfortunate news from the federal government specific to the 26, 27 school year. We will see a reduction in title funds by about 12%. This has nothing to do with the current administration in Washington. It does have to do with the way that title funds are distributed. At the state level, Wisconsin's poverty rate has stayed
018relatively the same, but other states have seen an increase. So that pool of funding is distributed at a higher rate to those states. At a local level in Wisconsin, funding is based on how a district's poverty rate compares to other districts in the state. Our poverty rate is actually declined. So a double whammy on the funding for us for title. The total loss in funding for our district for next school year will be $917,000. $917,000. In response to this reduction, revised title one allocations were shared out with principals Friday afternoon, specific to next year. In most cases, we expect to continue covering staffing needs. We'll do some shifting of title funds to make sure staff are covered. And we'll be able to use title one carryover to support for next school year. We won't be
019able to carry over for the 27, 28 school year. So we'll need to make some adjustments next year as we plan for that. Okay, I only have four slides for you in four different categories. I wanna review with you the items that we've ruled out, the items that we've completed, the items that are in progress, and the items still up for consideration in Board and Community. Please note that I'm talking specifically about the 26, 27 school year. So we've talked about other items that we could be making decisions about that will impact the 27, 28. We won't be discussing those tonight. I'll give you an example. Edison pool, it's not on the list. Even though the Board has given us permission to move forward with that, the financial impact won't be seen until the 27,
02028 school year, okay? So what's been ruled out thus far has been the reducing or eliminating IPP. That is a healthcare item. The Board has ruled out the stopping of recording or live streaming Board meetings. I know that was really important to the Board. Did anybody wanna speak on that item? Okay. Increasing student fees. I will be presenting to you tonight a fee schedule that we bring to the Board every April. The recommendation for the student fee schedule for 26, 27 is to not have any increases. Also eliminated is the implementation of reduction in force that would actually be layoffs. And at this point, I feel we're making extraordinary progress in reducing our FTE. So I think we can safely eliminate that as an option. Canceling the student summits, we heard clearly from the Board
021and our staff, quite frankly, that there's great value in the summits. So we will continue to look for other sources for funding these moving forward, and then reducing the number of school days. We're too far along right now in this school year to consider a reduction for next year, but that might be an option for 27, 28. The items that have been completed already are moving the flu and COVID vaccines back to pharmacy or clinic. We used to provide those options for vaccination here at district office as a matter of convenience, but we are able to save minimally about $50,000 in having our employees go directly to their pharmacy or clinic. Holding on steps, similar to what we did last year around this time. We've made health insurance modifications that will save over 700,000, I
022think we're at $775,000 in savings. Discontinuing credit card fees that will save the district about 18,000. And then reduction in FTE through attrition, not backfilling positions, and using the consolidation of schools for opportunity to reduce staff. We are over 100 FTE at this point for the 26, 27 school year. Over 100 FTE. In progress currently working on suspension of administrator tuition reimbursement, I'll be bringing forward to the board tonight a recommendation to pause that for the 26, 27 school year with the opportunity to revisit once we have a new budget. Stop posting board notices in newspaper. Melissa is gonna bring forward a policy recommendation that would still meet the law. Freeze or reduce summer professional development. David Johns is looking into a reduction of that coming for this summer with the potential of over $100,000
023in saving. We continue to reduce software contracts. We're looking at a reduction in custodial services that I'm trying to think of an example of what that would look like. We currently have some positions that haven't been filled for a while. What that would look like in practice is maybe an area doesn't get cleaned every day. The model would be every other day. Reduce contracted services, vendors, memberships. The district office team is again looking at reduction of their own budgets. This will be the third straight year. And then delaying technology purchases. And then up for consideration, Cale and his team are reviewing facility rental fees from local districts to see how we do in comparison. Right now it's looking like if we were to raise our fees we might actually price out some groups that we
024really want to have access to our buildings. So we'll see what the team comes up with as a final recommendation. Defer non referendum facilities projects. Every year Cale's budget has $3.5 million set aside for these types of activities. He was already looking at things that could potentially be delayed if needed. And then implementing some type of print restrictions. So that is the update. (James) Questions or discussion from the board? Lynn. (Lynn) I just want to ask for some clarification. A couple of slides back, the ones that are completed. You said 100 FTE. And I just want to make sure that we're all clear that that means, do I understand it correctly? We are 100 full-time employees fewer now than we were one year ago. Is that correct? (Vicki) Not at this moment, but we will
025be for the 26, 27 school year. That is correct. (James) Others? (Vicki) Thank you. (James) All right. And operations of 6B, 2026, 27 fee schedule. (Vicki) The recommendation for the 26, 27 fee schedule is no changes. (James) Any discussion? All right. And 6C, suspension of administrative tuition reimbursement. Thank you for already addressed that, but this is the actual memo. (Vicki) Correct. Recommendation is to pause on the reimbursement for tuition for administrators for the 26, 27 school year. And then to revisit that decision for the 27, 28 school year. (James) Any discussion? All right, we will move to seven policy and governance and Andrew, do you want to run? Yep. I'll pass the chair to Andrew Becker. (Andrew) All right, thank you. Just having a little trouble with the login still here one second. (mumbles) (Andrew)
026Okay, I am, in I think. Okay, thank you. So we begin with seven A revisions to board policies and rules 600 and 700 series fiscal management and support services. (Melissa) Thank you, Andrew. Tonight brings a close to the review of the 600 and 700 series policies. We should be all done after tonight with respect to all of the policies in those two series. So I want to thank everybody who did all the work, which just means that we get to move on to the next few series for the next year. But again, as you can see from this work, these are important updates and staying current in our policies is very important work. So with respect to the 600 series policies, we have policy and rule 640, which relate to our school funding sources. Those
027were some minor changes with respect to updating the cross references, putting in standard format and just a few minor updates to reflect current practice. Any questions on those two? Okay, and then we have policy and rule 657. Again, same changes, standard format and updating those cross references. Okay, we can move on to the 700s. With respect to the revisions, I can go through each policy and just let me know if you have any question and then we'll take the two new ones separately. Does that work? Okay, policy 724, indoor environmental quality management. Policy 733, energy management. Policy 742, use of district equipment by persons affiliated with the district. Policy 751, student transportation services. Policy 751.2, use of electronic surveillance or monitoring technology on school bus. Policy 751.4, transportation contracts. I'm sorry, contractors. Policy 751.5, use
028of alternative vehicles to transport students. Rule 751.5, procedures for authorizing use of alternative vehicles to transport students. Policy 751.7, transportation for co-curricular trips, field trips and other district sponsored trips. Okay, so those were the revisions. We had two, go ahead. (Samantha) Was there any substantive, sorry, the one on bus safety, the 751.1, there's just not a red line. There's one labeled red line. I just didn't know if there were any substantive changes at all, or if it was just cross references and stuff. (Melissa) It was just cross references. Okay, our two new policies in the 700 series. The first is Policy 734, recreational use of district playgrounds. As you know, the community has invested substantially over the years in our playgrounds by providing some really great opportunities for all of our students to access our
029playgrounds. And with the great playgrounds, of course there's expense with the turf that is put in those playgrounds, as well as the equipment. Cale had asked that this policy be drafted because we're running into some situations where we need to be able to address some inappropriate use of those playgrounds and some things on the playgrounds that are causing damages, particularly electronic scooters and bikes and those sorts of things. So that was the impetus of this policy. A number of school districts do have a policy regarding appropriate use of playgrounds and equipment. So I think this is a very appropriate policy for the board to adopt. (Laura) So you're saying that some of these scooters and stuff can damage that specialized turf so that, okay, all right, that's unfortunate. I'm sorry to hear that. I mean,
030that turf has been at great expense and yeah. (Andrew) James. (James) Yeah, I'm interested because we had a conversation about this and obviously this would not be for us to police. It would actually be police. What ordinance would one be charged with if they are on our property using it for an inappropriate purpose? So it would not be an ordinance like the city parks, but having it posted would allow us then to prohibit that use if it had to come to something of a no trespass order in order to prohibit the individual from improperly using it. (james) Okay, so it would be trespass. (Melissa) Correct. (James) Okay, thank you. (Laura) Do any of our playgrounds have camera surveillance? (Melissa) I am the wrong caller to ask that question. (Andrew) Other questions? I do have one.
031What about, there's a reference in here to personal assistive mobility devices. (Melissa) I just wanna make sure I'm looking at the right paragraph that you're looking. (Andrew) Vehicle prohibitions under D. (Melissa) Are you referring to exceptions or? (Andrew) No, D1, the use of vehicles, insurance safety and stuff, no individual shall operate or ride any motorized or non-motorized vehicle, including but not limited to, and then among them is some obvious ones like motorcycles on the playground, but then we have personal assistive mobility devices. I'm just wondering what that's about. (Melissa) Those would be scooters, like those electric scooters. If you look in exceptions, those exceptions include the use of mobility devices by individuals with disabilities as defined by the ADA. (Andrew) Okay, so we're, well, so there are probably people with difficulty and mobility that don't
032have a formal ADA related diagnosis or would they all, or if you need one, do you by default? I mean, I know you don't have to provide papers, but I mean, in reality, if someone has difficulty moving but doesn't have a defined disability, but they've been using a scooter to get around, that happens. (Melissa) Andrew, I don't think that, and I know you like to have clear language, and maybe we can take this offline and discuss how we can change that, that we're not looking for asking people whether they have a medical disability or not to allow that to be able to access. As we've said, those playgrounds were built for the purpose of access. We just don't want those other devices on the playground wrecking the turf and wrecking the equipment. (Andrew) Okay, and
033we can talk about it offline. Okay, Samantha. (Samantha) Yeah, up in the definitions above, it specifically lists example is like segues. I'm assuming like all the motorized hoverboards, that sort of stuff would fit in there. That's what that means would be my guess. Okay. (Melissa) And as we know, it's impossible to define this because things keep changing and new things keep appearing on our kids' Christmas list every year or so. Okay, the next new policy is waste management and recycling. Oh, go. (Jeanette) Just about the playground. So do we have an age limit on our playgrounds? That might cover some of the issues that, you know, if you say this playground can only be used by children under the age of 12 or something like that. I mean, how would you enforce it? Because there's
034no, you know, there's nobody there to do that, but we don't have anything like that, right? (Melissa) The only playgrounds I'm aware of that have age limits would be our Head Start playgrounds and those are fenced. And there's some areas in there that are not available to the public. (Andrew) Okay, anything else before we go to the next, the waste management one? Okay. (Melissa) Okay. - So again, waste management and recycling, I think we're ahead of the game on this policy. This just really codifies what we've been doing and our practices in ensuring that we are doing as much recycling as possible with respect to our waste. (Andrew) Okay, any questions on that? All right, I think that's then are ready for 171.1. (Melissa) Yep. - As Ms. Bayer gave you the heads up on,
035as part of the cost cutting strategies, we are already, we're double posting essentially for things that do not need to be a class one legal notice. So for these school board meetings, we are already posting the newspaper, but the other way to comply with those postings is to post in three public places, and those are already identified in our policies. And then we also post on our website. So the policy is simply being changed for those things that do not require posting in the newspaper. So things that are not those class one legal notices, we would stop posting in the newspaper and just post in the three public places and then on the website. (Andrew) Okay, any questions on that? All right, and then we have wellness policy. (Melissa) The policy and rule require a
036tri-annual evaluation of the district's wellness policy that was conducted. And when that was conducted, there were some minor revisions that were brought forward with respect to the policy and rule and a few title changes and just a few cross references for those policies and rules. (Andrew) Okay, any questions on that? No. - Okay, 458 rule. (Melissa) I covered that one too. Do you want me to cover it separately? (Andrew) Just titles, pronouns and wording. Okay, non-substantive wording changes. Okay, anything? All right, and then we'll go to 824. (Melissa) Okay, so 824 is one of our more commonly referred to policies with respect to electronic surveillance or monitoring technology. As we have had more and more cameras be put in our buildings for safety, we get more and more requests for that camera footage. When cameras
037started coming into schools, the Department of Education through the Family Privacy Compliance Office indicated that if it is a student record, meaning it refers to the student or relates to the student and it's maintained by the district, then if you cannot blur out the faces of every other student in that video, then parents don't have a right to see it because it violates that student's privacy. They have since had a number of challenges to that and they had a number of reinterpretations of that ruling. And currently, the FPCO says, if blurring that out or if you're not able to blur that out, then the parent has a right to see the video under limited circumstances. They can't record the video when they're seeing it. They can't get a copy of the video, but they do
038have a right to see it. So we're just asking with respect to our policy that we strike the language in C to C, which was the old language from the prior guidance. (Andrew) Okay, now questions on this? The effect is to make it be more visible sometimes to parents or impacted students following rulings that have gone that way already. (Melissa) That's correct. (Andrew) Anything else on A24? Okay, if there's none, then that concludes the policy and governance. I'll turn the chair back to James. (James) Thank you, Andrew. And for the last time, I'll request that Lynn read the motion to have us adjourn into closed session. (inaudible) (James) No, with you, maybe. (Andrew) Maybe. (James) Maybe, yeah. I said maybe. (Lynn) Oh God, I hope so. I move that the board convene into closed session
039pursuant to Wisconsin statute 19.85, section 1E, deliberating or negotiating the purchasing of public properties, the investing of public funds or conducting other specified public business. Whenever competitive or bargaining reasons require a closed session, more specifically to wit, negotiation strategy for collective bargaining agreements between the district and collective bargaining units. (Samantha) Second. (James) Discussion? Kinsey. (Kinsey) Becker. (Andrew) Aye. (Kinsey) McCoy. (Laura) Aye. (Kinsey) Lyerly. (James) Aye. (Kinsey) Gerlach. (Lynn) Aye. (Kinsey) Mineau. (Alex) Aye. (Kinsey) Knill. (Jeanette) Aye. (Kinsey) Meister. (Samantha) Aye. (James) Okay, we're adjourned at a closed session.