GBAPSD Board of Education Special Meeting and Work Session: November 10, 2025

001(upbeat music) (James) All right, welcome everybody. This is November 10th, 2025, special board meeting. And then after the special board meeting, we will reconvene immediately into our work session. So let's start with the roll call, please. (Kinsey) Becker. (Andrew) Here. (Kinsey) McCoy. (Laura) Here. (Kinsey) Lyerly (James) Here. (Kinsey) Gerlach. (Lynn) Here. (Kinsey) Mineau. (Alex) Here. (Kinsey) Knill. (Jeanette) Here. (Kinsey) Meister. (Samantha) Here. (James) All right, all board members are present and accounted for. We'll go to section two, action items employment of staff, Lynn. (Lynn) I move that the employment of staff as presented be approved. (James) Need a second. (Samantha) Second. (James) Discussion. Kinsey (Kinsey) Online voting is now open. - All votes have been entered and the motion is carried with all board members voting in favor. (James) Thank you. two b resignation of

002staff. (Lynn) I move that the resignation of staff as presented be approved. (James) Need a second. Thank you. Discussion. Kinsey (Kinsey) Online voting is now open. - All votes have been entered and the motion is carried with all board members voting in favor. (James) Thank you. And two c retirement of staff. (Lynn) I move that the retirement of staff as presented be approved. (Jeanette) Second. (James) Discussion. Kinsey. (Kinsey) Online voting is now open. - All votes have been entered and the motion is carried with all board members voting in favor. (James) Thank you. That's the end of the agenda for the special board meeting. I'd entertain a motion to adjourn. (Lynn) Move that we adjourn. (James) All in favor? I'm sorry. Need a second. (Laura) Second. (James) All in favor? - I. (James) Thank you.

003We'll move directly to the work session. - All right, Kinsey. I'm sorry. November 10th, 2025, Board of Education Work Session. Kinsey, can you call the 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, all members are present. And we have a member of the intra city student council with us this evening. Can you please introduce yourself? (Paige) Hi, my name is Paige. I'm a student at Preble. (James) Thank you. And there are items on the agenda tonight that would be in the interest of students. Please feel comfortable engaging in the conversation. All right, so we'll go to public forum. I have one registered speaker. Right? Any others? All right, so this

004is Ruth Schneider. Is Ruth with us? All right. Last call. All right, that is all I have. No one else has submitted forms. So that'll be the end of open forum. We'll go to the third portion of our agenda, strategic planning. And I think we're gonna invite David Johns to the table. - Welcome, David. Oh, sorry, David Johns and friends. (indistinct) (David) Good evening board. Good evening, student leaders. Appreciate the opportunity to be with you this evening and share our third strategic planning update, thriving student body. It's a good thing I won't be presenting as much as these folks because I keep calling it thriving workforce, which is our other priority. And I've been stumbling all month on this distinction. So we're gonna leave it in the hands of the pros. We're gonna explore a

005couple of goal areas this evening with you that are seemingly unrelated, but ultimately are two factors that are really important and contributing to a young person going out into the world and being successful. And that is this idea of being persistently present. So we'll talk about our work around attendance and some data and some steps that we're taking around attendance. We'll also be sharing with you tonight where we sit in regards to students having proficiency in multiple language. It's exciting and it's an honor to serve a district that values language proficiency in more than one language. And again, we have some experts tonight who are gonna be able to share where we sit in relation to that. And it's actually exciting because you're gonna learn that we have an opportunity to come back to you

006and actually stretch our five-year goal even further than it was. So that's a great place to be in with an update on this. So I'm gonna turn it over to the team here. We'll pause frequently for questions. Think about this as really being two segments. We'll first address language proficiency and pause for questions around that topic. And then we'll move into attendance and pause for questions around that topic. And of course, feel free at any time to weigh in. I'm joined tonight at the table by Kelly Votava, Curriculum Coordinator, Julie Seefeldt, Director of Multilingual Programming, Katie Sulzer, Director of Pupil Services, and Christina Gingle, Associate Director of Pupil Services. All deeply immersed in this work and excited to share with you where we sit. (Speaker 1) Thank you. - Yeah. - Can you hear me?

007Excellent. Thank you, Board, for giving us an opportunity to provide you with an update. Included on this slide is probably familiar to yourselves, but these are kind of our definition around our strategic priority areas, so the four areas. So a thriving student body is one in which all students are able to achieve academically, develop relationships with others in their community, and grow their sense of self. So I have to do both at the same time. I'm not good at that. - Do you want me to? - All right, so tonight-- (David) Point it here to Kinsey. - Point it over there? - Yeah. - Okay. So tonight we will update you on a thriving student body, talk about the strategic goals, benchmarks, and actions, and then go over next steps, and as David said, there

008would be opportunity for questions throughout. So we're highlighting tonight really the language proficiency goal and then student attendance. So quickly, at least 12% of students will graduate with proficiency in multiple languages, and we're gonna talk more about a potential revision, and then student attendance will meet or exceed state average for percent of students persistently present. It's kind of a mouthful. So one might ask, how does language proficiency fall under thriving student body? Well, while most of our goals intersect with other domain areas, we'll call out a little bit around kind of that multiple language proficiency, at least. So if a greater value is placed on learning more than one language, potentially a sense of belonging for those students whose home languages are different than English, could have an increased sense of belonging, and then really

009focusing on that holistic development of a student. And next, oh, no, you're good. So this slide brings us to Portrait of a Graduate. We will focus on making an intentional connection to our portrait whenever possible. And so we're gonna call out a few things around communicators and connectors, if you can read that on there. One is that global readiness piece for the multiple language proficiency. Really, in many other countries, it's very common to speak multiple languages. And so this really kind of calls that piece out. Career opportunities is another area. The increase in career opportunities will open doors for students when we are able to speak multiple languages. There is research around cognitive and social benefits as well, that individuals who speak two or more languages really have better executive functioning adaptability, as well as

010problem-solving skills. And then lastly, that academic planning piece. And of course, attendance fits also under a portrait of a graduate in all areas. Being persistently present is important to become really that portrait of a graduate. All right, moving on. So these are our year one benchmarks. And so we talked, so 12% or more of students will graduate with proficiency in multiple languages. So our baseline is at 10.25%. And initially when we started, we identified a lower percentage. And then after pulling the data, along with our technology department, it was determined that our baseline was 10.25. So we in essence have our year five goal, I'm sorry, our five year goal listed as our year one benchmark. So we adjusted that. So we would come to the table then in August to adjust it to have

011a loftier goal in the end. And then 73% of students will miss less than 18 days during the school year. And our baseline was 70.5%. And the 18 day mark, Christina will talk more about that, but that really is that definition or mark of chronic absenteeism. So 10% of the school year, which is equivalent to the 18 days. And next. There it goes. So our year one strategic actions. First is to identify students with an interest or past experience in learning another language to inform academic and career planning and kind of breaking down this step a little bit further. We are in the process of now we've identified those students through our collaboration with technology. But we first, before we even started to do this, we had to define what proficiency looks like. And both

012Kelly and Julie will talk about that. And then two revitalized school wide attendance plans to include universal approaches to improve attendance. All right, any questions so far? All right, we'll move, I'll pass it off to Kelly and Julie. - So I'm going, no, please do it. - Okay. (laughing) (Speaker 2) So I'm going to start with our year one benchmark and our dashboard. As Katie had referred to, we are currently at 10.25% of students as our baseline. So our goal in five years of 12% is lower than we want. So we will be bringing this back to the board over the summer to increase that goal. But our goal is that students will graduate with proficiency in multiple languages. So our strategic action in focus is one way we can determine proficiency is to identify

013students with an interest or past experience in learning another language. This gives us the information needed for academic and career planning. It also helps ensure we're capturing the full range of student experiences and their proficiencies. (silence) (Speaker 3) So I'm going to talk about language proficiency. So to be considered proficient in more than one language, students have to demonstrate proficiency in both English and the other than English category. And we call that the LOTE, but I'm going to call it other than English categories. So on the next slide, we're going to talk about some of the multiple criteria that we look at to determine proficiency. So I'll start first on the English language side. So we can start with American College testing. All of our 11th graders do take that. And we look at the

014English language arts score. We are very fortunate in this district that we offer advanced courses. We offer AP, Advanced Placement English Language and Composition. And then at West High School, we offer the International Baccalaureate, the IB Language and Literacy courses. So for those two courses, students can opt to take an exam. So we can look at the results of that exam to determine proficiency. Or we can look at completing those courses with an average grade of B or better. If we have students who are identified as a multilingual learner, if students had exited that program, so they have reached proficiency as determined by the WIDA Access English Assessment, that also can be looked at for English proficiency. So for the language other than English, we do offer the Apple Assessment in Spanish. For American Sign

015Language, we have an assessment called the Avante Stamp that students take. Also we have courses. So we have those Advanced Placement, Spanish and Language Culture course. And that also is taking the exam or completing that course with a grade of B or better. And then we also have some other languages. So for example, we have Chinese IV, Dual Credit. We have French IV, Spanish IV. We have American Sign Language IV. We have some IB courses at West in French and Spanish, the high level and the standard level. And then we have, Kelly's gonna be talking about the number of students we have at UWGB in early college credit classes. And if they complete those courses with a C or better. So those are all of the ways that we look at proficiency in both English

016and the language other than English. (James) And I just make, for my own application, this is, you're describing a Green Bay Public School Standard. This is not a state standard. This is not how the state assesses proficiency, it's just us, right? (Speaker 3) Correct. (James) Thank you. - Kelly's gonna talk about more about the Seal of Biliteracy. which is those state criteria. (James) Thank you. - Wait, now we broke it. (muffled speaking) (Katie) Okay, so I will talk about language proficiency and the Seal of Biliteracy. So Wisconsin is one of all 50 states now. We were in the middle of the group that decided to go with the Seal of Biliteracy, but we offer the Seal of Biliteracy. And in order for students to earn the Seal of Biliteracy, they have to meet cut scores

017from assessments that are approved by the state. Okay, so in both English language and the language other than English. Yes. (Lynn) What do you mean by cut scores? (Katie) So we have these different assessments that are approved. So for the ACT, the ELA composite score has to be an 18 or higher. That's one criteria they can meet in order to prove that they are proficient in English. On the AP English language and composition exam, they can score a three or higher. You'll notice that the grades are taken out of this piece. So the state requires that it's based on assessment results that are norm referenced. Or they could have exited ML status in grades six through 12. We have a whole bunch of kids who exit in grade five. That unfortunately does not count. It

018has to be grades six through 12. And then the language other than English, they have to prove their proficiency by scoring at an intermediate high or higher level on any of the assessments that are shown there. (Samantha) Does this limit the languages that are available for the seal of biliteracy through the state based on those assessments for the language other than English? (Katie) No, we have a partnership. So the state of Wisconsin has a partnership with Minnesota to open up some of the least or less commonly spoken like throughout the country languages, including Somali and Hmong. But we still are working out our pathways to determining which students would be taking those tests versus the ones we have coming from ML versus our world language pathways. So any questions? (James) Alex. (Alex) My first question

019is, what are we doing to, if anything, or what are your thoughts on making sure that we have bilingual programming kind of really put together at the middle school level? Because we have all of our different options of programs at the elementary, but the last time I was aware of the middle school stuff, we were in the infant stages, and I don't really know what the current status of it is. And there wasn't really at the time that I was informed a long-term plan. And I think that's a crucial part, especially for some of the parts you just mentioned where you have to test out in one way at the secondary level. So a secondary middle school piece in particular, I'm curious to what your thoughts are on that or where we are with bilingual

020programming. - Sure, I can take this. So for a bilingual program, it needs to be at least 50% in that, for our district, it's Spanish. And that would be for six years. So we do start our programming in kindergarten, and we go through fifth grade. Many districts who have middle school programs, when you get to middle school, it doesn't need to be the 50-50, it's just do they have coursework in Spanish? So right now we have continued for sixth grade. So at middle school, they have seven periods during the day. In middle school, our sixth graders do have three periods of their day. So three out of the seven are in bilingual coursework. When we get to seventh and eighth grade, for students who've been here in the country, more than four years, they will

021have social studies in Spanish. And as you know, there's a lot of reading and writing and social studies. So we're hitting a lot of those standards. And then for students who are newer to the country, so those zero to four years, they would also have bilingual language arts. So right now that is our program for middle school. (Alex) And is that still only available at Edison or one location? Or what is the status of how that is available for middle school? - It's available at both Washington and Edison, two schools. (Alex) And then my second part that goes with that is, one of the things I used to teach was middle school, Spanish, high school credit, whatever you wanna call it. And as one of the few licensed people in the state to do so,

022my other thought is when we talk about opportunities for all of our kids, even Latino kids, who are still working on Spanish skills in variety capacities, how and what are we doing to make sure that our world language teachers and all languages, even other ones too, are accessible and a viable option going forward. Because I know a lot of the ones in the district right now, some of them aren't that far from retiring and they're just a handful of people that are left. And I know there's less people than there's ever been. So I'm curious what your thoughts are and how we can maybe work on that natural change in the future. How we can maybe work on that natural challenge. - The natural challenge of having less teachers? That's the million dollar, yeah, that's

023the million dollar question. I think as we grow our own here in the district, we are seeing some of our former students come back and become teachers in our district. I can think of at least five right now We have a bilingual social worker that we have hired who have graduated from the Green Bay schools. who has gone through the Green Bay schools. And so we really do need to start growing our own. So they stay in the community, they invest in education here. That would be my number one priority. (Alex) Is there anything, or I guess I would say, think about if there's anything that you could ask of the board of the district that you think would help that, whether it's certain policies, contract offerings, et cetera, et cetera, because I think that's

024something that we have to really put a lot of time into. So I'll be done. (Vicki) They have another section. - Okay, can you hear me? We'll be now transitioning into the second strategic area of focus for our presentation for the strategic plan pertaining to attendance. And so you can see here on the slide, what our year one benchmark is, is that 73% or more of our students will miss less than 18 days during the school year. If you look at the gauge chart there on the right, that is depicting our current baseline data, which again, we discussed earlier is that 70.5. And then the small line there shows the current state rate, which is 80.2. That data is taken from our most recent report card. So, and again, just to kind of explain that

025data point a little bit, they rephrase it to persistently present, but for the, how that that's compiled on our report card is it's multiple years of chronic absenteeism. So that's the number of students that are subtracted from 100. So that gets us the presently persistent rate. So the higher the number, the better is how to interpret that data. So the two data sets below there, I just want to take a quick moment as it's an area of celebration. When you look at our 23, 24 report card data there, you can see that the gap was much more significant than the previous report data. So we are definitely making some progress in closing that gap. We have a lot more work to be done, but that is definitely an area of celebration that I wanted to

026bring to the board tonight. Attendance Works is widely recognized as a premier source of resources and technical support for districts. And so you're going to see some of those supports right into this presentation tonight. Before I get too far into talking about our strategic area of focus, I really wanted to take a moment in grounding in the definition of chronic absenteeism. Unlike habitual truancy, which is really those students who have unexcused absences, chronic absenteeism is a compilation of both unexcused and excused absences. So again, just like Katie mentioned at the start of the presentation, chronic absenteeism is if students miss 10% or more of the school year. And again, that that translates in today's of the school year is 18 or more, hence how we reached that benchmark component. Again, this graphic is taken from

027Attendance Works, but it really illustrates the interconnectedness between attendance and academic outcomes. Studies show that attendance rates are strongly correlated to our third grade readers proficiency scores. By sixth grade, chronic absenteeism starts to emerge as a top indicator for students being at risk for dropping out. And by ninth grade, chronic absenteeism is a stronger predictor of students not graduating than eighth grade test scores. So it is absolutely critical that our students have a persistent attendance rate in order to meet the five criteria established in our portrait of a graduate. Chronic absenteeism doubled nationwide from 2018-19 with a sharp increase evident post pandemic. More so what previously chronic absenteeism impacted students who maybe were more concentrated and had histories of sporadic attendance. It now impacts much broader range of students. Therefore, we need to really take

028a proactive approach in supporting students. As part of our data driven systemic efforts to reducing chronic absenteeism, the district started with development of school wide attendance plans. These plans are absolutely crucial to operationalizing and sustaining the multi-tier framework. But based on given the scope of chronic absenteeism, our goal for this year one is to ensure that every plan contains a strong universal component that will reach each and every one of our students. Chronic absenteeism is so incredibly complex and rarely requires a multifaceted approach. It starts with these positive conditions for learning and at the heart and of course the connecting point for all of these conditions are those positive relationships with our students and our families. and our families. Our strategic plan actually has measurable outcomes for two of these areas in the academics and

029the sense of belonging. So this slide shows some of those concrete things that when you're out doing your school visits that you would see within our buildings. But I wanna take a moment to share a story that I had the privilege and interaction I had a privilege of having with one of our families to bring this to life. I was out in one of our high schools meeting with the student services team along with a community partner who specializes in substance abuse. And our goal was to start creating some proactive preventative programming to support our students. We were exiting the building and I was surprised to encounter one of our elementary social workers with some parents. And so what I quickly learned was that our parents were there to access some of the facilities in

030the building as well as some of the resources in the care and closet. And they were beyond grateful for what that the district was doing to help them meet their basic needs and completely unprompted. The mom shares with me about that her child's attendance has significantly improved now that their basic needs were being met. This is really seeing those positive conditions and actions in our buildings. And this is just a high leverage overview of the sequence of actions that we have already initiated and will be embarking upon throughout the year. So it really is imperative to start with data. There's a number of data sources, but our initial step was to enhance data literacy to support buildings with identification of utilizing one of these data sets to best improve their attendance. That data served as

031the foundational cornerstone of development of those school-wide attendance plans I referenced earlier. Those attendance plans are also critical to moving forward and reducing their chronic absenteeism. And just as a reminder, where we're going to be starting this year is that universal component. Executing those attendance plans is gonna require a team approach and a community approach. To do this well, we are going to need the support of all. Of course, our district is always embarking on learning opportunities, both internally and externally. We recently convened a multidisciplinary team where we were able to really lean into the expertise of some of our professionals, such as our nurses, some of our teaching learning staff, all of them provide such critical input to guiding our action steps for our district. We were also able to participate in a statewide

032convening of district leads where we learned about best practices. And of course, always taking advantage of learning opportunities afforded through Attendance Works. And I'm really happy to share that we're actually gonna be entering a more formal partnership with Attendance Works. And we're going to be participating in their professional leadership attendance network or plan. And essentially what we are going to be able to receive as a part of participating in this is to embark in a learning journey with other districts throughout the nation, as well as receive one-to-one coaching that is going to ensure that we meet our goal of having a persistently attendance rate that meets or exceeds the state rate. So that concludes the presentation regarding Attendance and Thriving Student Body. Any questions regarding attendance? (James) Laura. (Laura) Christina, when will you be entering

033into that? I mean, you said you either have just, like when will that work start basically with that organization that you mentioned just now? (Christina) Attendance Works, very soon. - I believe it starts in November, so very soon. (James) Alex. (Alex) So I just wanna make sure I'm interpreting the data correctly. So currently at 70 and a half percent, am I understanding correctly that right now we have 30% that are missing 18 days or more in our district? (Christina) That is correct. (Alex) Thank you. And the first question I would have is, what is it in our attendance plans that is something that is considered one of our courses of action? (Christina) Well, so like I said, what we're gonna be starting with for this year is the universal practices. So this is talking about

034what are we doing to proactively communicate with our students, our parents, our community regarding the importance of attendance. Because as a result, and I had kind of mentioned what has been occurring since the pandemic is that we now have a new normal where attendance has not been deemed as important, where students are starting to miss now because they have a birthday and they don't wanna come to school. And so we need to start changing that narrative on a much wider scope. So we're gonna really start to do that at the building level, at the community level, and it might be going out and doing canvassing. And these are some of the things that I'm hoping that we're going to receive some assistance with from Attendance Works. (James) Vicki. (Vicki) Christina, can you talk a little

035bit about what the standard practices are for attendance at the schools? (Christina) Of universal or all of the tiers? (Vicki) The team monitors attendance. - At what point do we start making contact with parents or talking with the student? If you could talk through that, please. (Christina) Absolutely. And so again, that's really about their data. And so we wanna start with those universal approaches, but of course the statute dictates that we need to have a habitual truant letter, which is all or part of excused days. So our intervention looks a little bit different with those students. So that might be that they've missed phyed five days in a row, then our intervention would look different with those students. But what we really need to start moving towards is earlier and earlier interventions, because once the

036student hits that 18 day mark, no matter how many interventions that we perform, that student is gonna be identified as chronically absent. So the earlier the interventions, the better. And so each school building has established their own data parameters for what that those interventions would look like. At the tier two, it looks more so about really trying to identify what are those underlying issues that is impacting attendance, those root causes, and then really creating those tailored individual approaches to supporting those students. And that is where the complexity lies is because it's not merely a transportation issue, it's not merely a basic needs issue, it's really many times a multitude of issues that we really need to tailor and wrap our arms around that family and that student to support their attendance. And then at that

037tier three level, we're really talking about that high level of care. And then that's really where our community partners, we start to lean more into the support of our community partners to help us in supporting those attendance patterns. (James) David, then Alex. (David) I'll just add to that, Mr. Mineau, the being chronically absent is also the accumulation of missing a lot of class periods as well. And so our secondary teams have really reinforced and I would say doubled down on this notion of, if you're in the building, you're going to class. And so I will extend my appreciation to all of the school teams to ensure that our students, once they get into school, are getting to the classes that they need to be in. That is not always easy, but it is a shared

038focus that they have and we're providing support to them on that. (Alex) Thank you and I appreciate that. So just to kind of wrap, tie in my other question that I had and kind of finish that one. So you specifically mentioned improving the quality and quantity of communication, but we're still kind of vague. Like, is there anything that we have decided yet in different areas of the district, whether it's at elementary or middle school or this school or that school, that you can tell me that our concrete things that we have decided are this is a thing that we're going to do, this is a thing that we're going to try, this is a package of things. I'm curious what some of those specifics are that we haven't done or that we're going to leverage

039if we have determined those yet. (Christina) We really have not determined those because those have been building specific. So what we have done is buildings that are doing those very well. We've shared that out with other buildings. So it isn't that you need to do a family communication exactly this way. We've really given that latitude and to the autonomy to the buildings to determine what's a best fit for them. I can tell you some things that we've done at the district level is that we did a huge social media campaign as a way to really like communicate with our families. The other thing that we recently did, it was last year, is that we know the connection between mental health and attendance as well and particularly anxiety. And so we had a school avoidance training

040and as a part of that for our parents, we had three different presentations, kindergarten, sixth grade and ninth grade to really talk about the connection between those and about how, although it may feel like you're supporting your child by allowing them to stay home, that that exacerbates the cycle and that we need to interrupt that cycle sooner than later. One of the other things is that we're starting to reach out to partner along more with building teams. And in talking about with our ML families, Julie and I were just talking, is that what we heard from buildings is that we need to do more outreach to where our parents are. So we've been trying to really communicate with our community partners. How do we best engage with families? How do we reach them? And so

041one of the strategy, Julie said that they've been using talking points and they've gotten great traction and response through that. And so through that conversation, I'm going to be joining those parent presentations to talk about attendance. We're going to be reaching out to our community partners to see if it's viable option for us to come out to them to talk about this again, like maybe our JBSs and things like this. So we're really thinking about innovative, creative ways to best reach our students and families. But we are, this is, we're embarking on some of this to have some of those consistent pieces. (James) Jeanette. (Jeanette) Not a question, just merely a comment. I was at a conference on Saturday and they were talking quite a bit about this and the challenges that all schools across

042the entire country since COVID have had. And so they talked a lot about the strategies you're mentioning that these are working at some of the schools, but most schools are behind where they should be and everybody's having to work on it. So this looks really great, thanks. (James) Alex. (Alex) So I was at Washington when we had like our first student learning advocate position added to our district. And the thought that I have is it was first communicated to me that the primary goal of that position at the time was intended to be that direct link from the school to the parents and to really focus on that piece of bridging that gap to our families, especially ones who aren't as tied in with the school inherently. And it's been my experience that that really

043hasn't, for various reasons, hasn't been the emphasis or the utilization of that role across the district in many cases. And I'm just wondering if that's something that, that we can or should think about as far as how we use a role that we already have that is probably underutilized and something to think about, or also curious if you have any thoughts on that at this time. (Christina) Absolutely. - Absolutely. And like I said at the outset of this is that in order to change this, as you had mentioned, due to our chronic absenteeism rate, it's gonna take everybody. And so really what we are also doing is, as another initiative that we are looking at is how do we best leverage parent-teacher conferences? Because we know teachers are so incredibly busy, but they are so

044powerful in interacting with their families versus if I call a family from a social workers perspective and say, "Hey, I'm worried about your kid. "They haven't been here for a while." Versus that teacher having that communication with the parent, it goes so much further. It's so much more impactful and powerful. So our next step is really how do we empower our teachers to feel comfortable doing that, and having those conversations with parents. And they're already meeting with the parents during parent-teacher conferences, but how can we be more intentional with that? So that's another example of how we are trying to bolster and build the support of everybody in improving attendance. But SLAs are definitely a role that we look at as well. (James) I just have a quick question, and this is... I don't know

045the answer to that. This is not a challenge. But what is it about the district and the buildings that requires latitude of how different buildings handle attendance interventions? What is it about each building that makes the district say, "Hey, this building can do it differently"? If you have evidence that Building A has a set of interventions that are working, why isn't a push to other schools? (Christina) That's a great question. That is a great question. And more so what the latitude is, is about the data parameter of what would prompt those interventions. Same as behavior, same as academics. And what we are trying to do is start having those consistent interventions, starting at universal, and ensuring that all of the buildings have that. What Tier 2 is what I was talking about with that school

046avoidance. We've been trying to do more training around school avoidance. But when we're talking about interventions, a lot of times for attendance, it's meet with the student, determine the root causes, the underlying issues, create an attendance plan, conduct a home visit. So all of those interventions are occurring in all of our buildings. (James) Okay. (Christina) Absolutely. (James) Other questions or discussion? All right. Is that the end of the presentation? Great. So David, are you going to remain? Okay. Thank you very much for the information. Okay, we're gonna move to section four of our agenda, education. And David Johns is gonna walk us through the district report card updates. (silence) - And friend. (laughs) - Thank you, board. I'm inviting Jess Vandenheuvel, who will associate director of data and assessments to join for the 2425 district

047report card update. I'll share with the board and I'll share with the community that the purpose of this is to provide a high level overview of where our district is in relation to statewide expectations for performance as measured by all things last school year. So everything you're gonna see represented today and anything you'll see in any report card, whether it's a building report card or any district report card throughout the state is telling the story of last year. These report cards in their public form become live and available to the community starting tomorrow. So what we're sharing with you are some clips. The full story through our district report card and all of our associated schools will be live for the public tomorrow. You do have a version of this in your email if it

048helps you see it on your screens as we go through it. But we'll get started. So again, we begin with the portrait of a graduate and this is a really important opportunity to distinguish between what the state has determined is the story of progress in districts and what we as a community have determined is important as the story of progress. One is inclusive of the other, but it's not meant to replace the other. So when we look at some of the factors that are represented in the state report card, they absolutely connect with things like academic achievers. We're going to see data around high-stakes, high-level assessments statewide in reading and mathematics. Those aren't the only academics that our students pursue and we know those are important academics, but not the whole story. So again, important

049now that we have this portrait to always put reports and data in the context of the actual people that we're working to develop and serve and that's our students. If you've looked at report cards before, you know that one of the first things that your eyes is drawn to is a pie chart of some sort. And what is true about these pie charts is that they're almost never the same and they're also almost never the same from one year to the next. Your score as a district or your score as a school is a composite that's based on scoring across these four areas, achievement, growth, target group outcomes and on track to graduation. Our purpose tonight is to go a little bit into each four of these categories for you and share our district score

050and some rationale behind that, invite your questions, but ultimately really just to build your, or rebuild your understanding of how report cards are formed so that as you start to look at the public release of these, you'll have a little bit of a reference point. So achievement and growth representing in total 50% of the components of a score is very much a moving target. It's a determination that's based on free and reduced qualification within a school district at any given, over any given year. The others given the size of our district, they tend to stay pretty constant at 25% waiting for each, the target group outcomes and then the on track to graduation. So really what we look for each year is that balance between growth and achievement. The higher the free and reduced population

051in your school or your district, the larger value is given to growth, the smaller the larger value is given to achievement. That's a varying measurement and you'll see even over the course of two years, that's changed for us. Whoops. Okay. So this is the high level comparison of two years, 23, 24 and 24, 25. We really don't go back any further in making this comparison because the board might remember that over the last, probably 18 months, we've been having conversations about the renorming of student scores on state assessments, which really makes it harder to go back further than the two years where those norms were in place. So just to kind of shine a light on some of these components, a composite score is calculated for a district that is not to be confused with

052percentage. Anywhere you see a score for any of these categories, it is calculated through sometimes some very complex formulas that Jess helps me understand every once in a while, but they're just numbers. They don't actually have labels after. I guess the label could be points to simplify it. Those points then fall into a grading scale of sorts that determines how many stars you would earn, whether it ranges from fails to meet any expectations to exceeds all expectations. That would be the one to five star rating. And then over on the right there, again, you see that even in the course of two years, there's variance in how that upper 50% was determined. In this past year, 24, 25 school year, we have a little more weighting given to achievement and a little less weighting given

053to growth, which means that in a one year time span, our reported free and reduced lunch population for our third to 11th grade students went down slightly. I'll pause there because this is high level, and then just know that Jess and I are gonna go into each of the four categories and share some more detail. Any questions on the high level though? Yeah. (Lynn) Excuse my ignorance. I just cannot figure this out. What does the percentage of students who qualify for free or reduced price lunch have to do with growth and achievement? Help me. (David) We're gonna see it when we go in a little bit deeper and we talk about some of the weighting for some of the other categories as well. It is the one, I guess I'd say standardized measure that can

054be applied across all school districts in the state of Wisconsin, relative to historic performance based on those rates of free and reduced lunch. And so it's part of the process that allows a school with more versus less free and reduced lunch to draw some comparisons relative to the historic performance of those students. The caution for that is a mistaken takeaway that students who struggle economically cannot be successful in school. And I wanna say that out loud because this is not meant to lower the bar, lower expectations. This is just a way that the data has to be normed statewide because we have schools with nearly 100% students in poverty and other schools with zero students in poverty. So it is a leveling effect that follows what the data shows us. (James) Jeanette (Jeanette) I find

055it interesting that the two bottom categories are both equal. Can you explain that why those are exactly equal? (David) We're gonna go into each of those. And when I get there, if I don't make that point, remind me, okay, thank you. Jess is gonna walk us through the achievement category. This one again is weighted by, and I put the weighting on the top of each slide. So you'll know that whatever she's sharing, ultimately the score that comes out of this is contributes 9% of our district score. That's not 9% of a school's score in our district because each school has its own ratio on that, Jess. (Jess) Good evening. So the academic area of the report card gives students an opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge on our ELA and mathematics standards for their grade level

056relative to how their peers have done across the state. So when that reporting is shared out based on the scores that the student had on the forward exam, ACT, pre-ACT, or dynamic learning maps, which is the assessment our students on alternate curriculum take, they're reported out at four different scoring levels. And you'll see that there is developing, approaching, meeting, and advanced. And depending on where they fall on those levels, their scores end up contributing toward a point value for our achievement score. - Thank you. - Okay, so what you see here are bar graphs. We this year have two bar graphs to look at two years worth of data, where in the past, if you remember last year's report card, we had new standards. So the test was re-normed. We only had one year of

057data. This year we're up to two. And in this area of the report card, we can look across years to see the student performance following their tests. So we can see here that we have a pretty stable performance across these past two years with the questions and the test norm to the new academic standards. One of the points I'd like to make too about the two years worth of data is that the current year is weighted heaviest in the average toward both of these years contributing to our academic score. So it's not like a one and done scoring of the test by year. Typically there are three years of data contributing to our achievement scores because we have only these standards normed for the last two years, just the two years will contribute to this

058current year's academic score with the most recent year being the heaviest. (David) I'll also add that when you look at this representation of two years side by side, what we pull down below to call out is what's tied to our strategic plan goals. And so our focus is on eliminating that gap over five years between where the state average is for meeting or higher and where our district is. And so anytime we look at these, we're going to represent them by way of the gaps that exists. And as we move along, we celebrating the closure of those gaps. (Jess) Next up in that composite that we have of all the areas is growth. And the growth score acknowledges and awards the district for the rate at which their students are closing the gaps or growing

059from year to year between two test measures. And the way that growth is calculated is that it is, there's a very complex value added calculation behind the score that helps to stabilize for, like David was mentioning the economic status, the, if there's a disability status, a language status, all of those components have been studied with research for data outcomes for different student groups. And then that's put into their calculation. So it norms performance for those groups. Also like achieving students. So when we look at the scores that we're seeing here for growth, it's compared to students, similar student groups across the state. - So what this is, these points are showing is how rapidly students are gaining skills from year to year and giving us that recognition for that contributing to our overall score. (David)

060So those two academics achievement and growth represent 50% of our scoring. And I'm gonna move into the other two areas here. I will pause here for questions about achievement and growth if you have those. (James) Alex. (Alex) So to kind of maybe vear off a little bit from what she said. So I don't know how to word this, but I guess, how is it determined in, for example, achievement is only 9%, how is it determined that that's going to be, and then the 41, how is that 50? Is it because of certain percentage of low socioeconomic students? Or like how is that calculation actually determined that that's what's gonna be your percentage that goes towards that 50? Does that make sense? (Jess) Yeah, great question. So the weighting of that top half is determined, like

061David said, by your economics, the percentage of students in that free and reduced economic status. And once the percentage of a school or a district hits 35% or more students, then growth starts to become a larger slice of that pie. (Alex) And is there just like a scaling, is there a scale then that is just kind of, this is a set percentage for their set percentage compared to what you have of, so on and so forth? Okay. (DPI) The DPI has a public website where you can actually put in any demographic profile you have, and it will spit out what your pie chart will be based on that. So that is kind of predictive for us before we even get the results. (James) Before we go on, as we think about the strategic plan and

062academic achievers, when I look at these bar graphs, what am I using as the baseline, right? I think this is the baseline. Last year we've decided this is the baseline year. Is it the 2024 to 25, or is it the average of the two that we're looking at as baseline? (David) It'll be the 2024-25 as it's reported here because that single stacked bar graph is just that year's results. (James) Okay. Jeanette (Jeanette) So when I look at your slide where it starts growth, 41% wait, I think it was the next one. Yeah, so I'm looking at the graphs at the bottom, 23-24 that says 61.3 and 24-25 that says 59.4. And then I look at the math score, English language arts is equal. It looks like we went down 24-25 by four, not quite four

063points. And we definitely went down the overall points. Is that so close that it's not significant? That that's two points, or is that significant? (Jess) We have to treat this circle graph as a fresh start for 24-25. So although you see the changes in the mathematics specifically, ELA happened to report out at the same level two years ago being re-normed to new standards. And this year, or sorry, rescaled to new standards. This year, this circle graph was rescaled to a new reporting output. So we have to treat the 24-25 in this section as a fresh report. (David) I do look at these two numbers. And on a 100 point scale, there's not a lot of variance between 59.4 and 61.3. And then I go back to these, and you really do see that generally flat

064performance. And my brain tends to associate those two things. Okay, target group outcomes. This is one of the quadrants. It's 25% of the weight. Now here's really the best way to imagine what we're talking about when we talk about target group outcomes, either at a district level or within a school. What you're doing here is working with the profile of the students' scores that are in the lowest 25% in our district. And so our district has this profile of students scoring at the absolute highest and the absolute lowest. You identify the 25 of the lowest student scores. And in our district, that's about 2,700 students. And then you take that group like it's its own school. You take that group like it's its own school. And this is where we look at a fresh composite

065of math performance, ELA performance. And this now includes those students' attendance and graduation rates as applicable. So now you're actually getting more of a composite of a whole student. This is the academic performance. And then here also is the attendance and the graduation rates as well. The increases here are predictive of what Christina shared in the previous presentation. And that is we are noticing some things both about our graduation rates and our attendance rates that are improving. Not noticing them just by accident, but noticing them because we're putting a concerted effort into that work. And here you see that when you really peel back the layers to what is boosting our target group outcomes from one year to the next, we're noticing that improvement, especially in our lowest 25% students' academic performance and attendance and

066graduation. Here is where I like to say we look at the signals for the overall growth and the improvement of our district. Our students really who are struggling the most academically in looking at them over a two-year span, we're seeing a move in a positive direction for them. The other 25% tracks what's called on track to graduation. It's a phrase I've used often at the board table. It is that combination of various academic proficiency measurements as well as chronic absenteeism and graduation rates. What's important to note in any school DPI report card is the year that it's released, you're actually looking at attendance and graduation data that lags by one year. So very soon now, we'll be getting fresh data for just last school year, but that is not incorporated in the 2425 report. We

067will, however, use the 2425 report card as our baseline for things like attendance and graduation rates also measured in our strategic plan. So here's where we've seen chronic absenteeism improve. Christina shared that data with you in the previous presentation. Slight improvement in graduation rates. Our ELA proficiency and math has also gone up over a two-year span as well. Those are specific to grade levels. And then that results in another composite score that's weighted 25%. So getting back to your question about why the bottoms are 25%, they're actually more, I think, representative of different factors that all come together for those. So just coming back to the opening slide, it was our hope and expectation that we could share a little bit with you about what each of those components look like so that as these

068become public, as you have opportunities, and we very much encourage you as you go out and work with schools that you're associated with, have conversations with the principals. They're prepared to share their school report card, talk about steps that they're taking, talk about what they learned from the data. Like I said, you'll see a very different pie chart at each of the schools based on their profile in their building. But our hope was to get you prepared to be able to go out and reengage in those conversations. Couple other things versus by way of analysis. If I were to really focus in on one area that is really important for us and predictive of the efforts that are taking place in early elementary, it's that we are tackling that gap versus the statewide performance in

069third grade. The gap existed at 15.8, 23, 24 is now 11.1, much more work to go. And our strategic plan goal is for all grades to eliminate that gap, not just third grade. Middle school remaining flat, remaining unchanged, and at a 25 point difference, two years, one over the next. So that's an area where we'll be bringing some concerted focus and attention. In January, we'll come back with an academic excellence presentation and we'll be excited to share with you one of our important actions, which was the development of an instructional vision. That work is an important statement of our commitment to the whole child and a commitment to using instructional approaches and tools that help our students not only thrive academically, but really see themselves in the classes that they take and in the learning

070that takes place in our schools and also find meaning in that learning. We shared with you last time the use of our screeners and the data protocols and tools that will be in place. We'll be able to share with you in January, our first check-in on what is the growth from fall to winter. We'll need several reps as Jess reminds me and reminds the board, you can't just take one year and say, how did our screeners do it predicting how we did? But the more reps we get with those screeners, the more we'll be able to make some predictions about what the forward exam will look like. And this is important to be happening simultaneously and that's continuing to work on the culture, grounded in trust and a commitment to student success. This is what

071allows and encourages teachers to get into each other's classrooms, to make observations, to call out the things that are working really well, to not keep those things a secret or behind a closed door. These are things that contribute to open dialogue between administrators and teachers about serving our students the best way we absolutely can. That has to be said because it takes work and takes time to build that up. It's not automatic and it's not the default. But as we continue to work out in buildings, that collaborative culture, grounded in trust is shared by all. Questions as we conclude. (James) Alex. (Alex) I have a multi-part question. So, what do you think is contributing to the lack of the stagnation and the lack of improvement at the middle school level? And conversely, what do you

072know or what do you think we know that we've done at the elementary level that we've seen pretty significant growth in? And then the third part that is, sorry, this is a lot. The third part is what else do you think we can look at or I'm also open to a comment of saying, please think about what else we can do that is maybe unique or new to help improve this, whether it's anything from a staffing model to how we can be more collaboratives. I just want us to be creative and take initiative to try new things, especially if it's relating to middle school improvement or whatever. So I can repeat any of that if you need. (David) You don't have to because those are questions that go around in my head all the time.

073Thank you for lifting up the observation of what appears to be some traction in early elementary. I would say that our evidence is pointing to a real focus on structured literacy, foundational skills, and really what the ability to read unlocks for a student in their future, not just their future beyond school, but in each successive year of school is what's so important. I'm excited for what happens as we send more and more readers into middle school. I think right now in the area that is, that where our students are struggling in middle school is really in engaging with text and being able to work with grade level text and the complex ideas that are part of secondary classwork because of their struggles as readers. And so I think the two are linked together. I think

074that we have to continue to support our literacy coaches and the work they do to help our teachers be right on top of what we know about how people learn how to read and stay consistent with that. We need to invest in, continue to invest in high quality instructional materials, which we have. The board's made that commitment through eighth grade and beyond, but I think the two are linked. I think the success in third grade is predictive of the success in middle school and we have to keep working on that. (Jess) I would just say we're continuing to develop our practices using those high quality resources and the adaption of those newer curricular standards that these assessments are measuring. So in ELA, like David mentioned, there's a heavier focus on those foundational literacy pieces through

075higher grade levels and mathematics. There's a much heavier focus on the conceptual understanding of mathematics and those are the ways that students are being asked to work with that or show their knowledge and we're continuing to develop that and have been within our classrooms too. (James) Laura. (Laura) I've never been a big fan of the student report card or the district or statewide report cards. I just, they change a lot and I don't know if they're always, I think this is, I mean, don't get me wrong, this is very compelling work and data and I have enjoyed your presentation. I just generally, I have a kind of a, I don't know, the statewide report cards have always had a layer of politics and they change a lot. So that's kind of where I'm coming from

076but I know that a 1.3 point increase in our overall district score is significant. Like that's not easy and it's very rare to see a district jump like by a lot of points in one year, so that's good news. But then I had you have a question and it calls for you to speculate a little bit. How do you think the restrictions on phone usage in our schools? I mean, I don't know if you've heard from other districts. I know we've been out ahead on this as a district as far as restricting the access to phones for our students but I'm very interested to see in the coming years what that might look like in our district. And I don't know if you have any feedback on that at all. Again, I know it calls

077for some speculation. (David) I'd invite Ms. Miller to weigh in on the impact of phones and your ability to focus less or more on your learning in classes. (Paige) I think I noticed especially this year, with putting the phones up, it really helps people engage in class and have a reason to talk to the person next to you. And I feel like it really has helped a lot and it shows us that we don't need our phones and that we can work without it. And instead of just zoning everyone else out, it helps build community and be more collaborative. (Laura) That's just thrilling. I'm sorry, that's the best thing that was said tonight. (David) I agree. (James) Other discussion or questions? Alex. (Alex) I would just add on if it makes feel any better. And

078I don't know what kind of time or connections people have had the last month or two at the school year, but pretty much every middle school, I've had a number of teachers who have reached out and said, one, it's made a huge difference, especially when they paired that with the backpack policy that they already made a decision on prior. Those two things have significantly improved the learning environment. And a couple of teachers, both at two different schools that have some challenges, but two teachers who have been there for roughly 20 years a piece have said, this is the best start to a school year that they can remember. And they heavily contributed to phones and in part backpacks, but definitely a lot of positive early results from what I've been hearing. (James) Excellent. Others. Thank

079you. So as we move out of four into five, I'm going to put a motion on the table to reorder the agenda. Five A becoming five B and vice versa so that we can have the safety and security update conversation with the students present. Is that, can I get a second? (Alex) Second. (James) Discussion, all in favor? Aye. All right, thank you. So, Cale, are you going to walk us through the safety and security update? (Vicki) Just the RFI, ale. (muffled speaking) (Cale) Good evening. So the update tonight is for the RFI in regards to the weapons detection. This RFI closes tomorrow the 11th. After that, district staff will evaluate the RFI responses and intend to share that with the board. The board will have access to those responses as well during this time, but

080we will present kind of our findings in that at the, at a November 24th board meeting. - The closed session, correct. (James) So unlike the RFP for the superintendent search firm, the security and district administration will perform that initial grading of the RFIs and then present us with those aggregate scores. We will have access to the raw submissions in the event that you want to dive in, but there is no ask of the board to actually do the grading of the RFIs. So hopefully we'll get to a summarization of the responses and recommendations. And then we will have an opportunity to have that discussion at the 24th. Is that a fair assessment of the process? (Cale) Well said. (James) Okay. Right. So that will be coming and we'll have an opportunity to prepare in advance

081and see the materials so we can have that conversation on the 24th. So this is an RFI. So it's not a purchase, right? We'll have an opportunity to either accept the recommendations or if there are recommendations or responses that we feel need to advance, we'll have an opportunity to make some decisions about where we go with this at that point. All right. Okay. So under safety and security updates as well, we had included the backpack policy as part of the safety and security because that's how it was framed when we talked about it on, I think it was October 13th, if I remember correctly. One of the ask for of the district was to get student feedback. And there was a survey that was sent and we have 1,057 student responses from all four comprehensive

082high schools. So you were provided with just a summary of what those responses were, the questions that were asked and kind of an outline of the feedback. So hopefully everyone's had an opportunity to kind of look over it and review this. So I think in your, not as part of the agenda, but in, do we have it in email, the actual policy that was for adoption? Is it a prior board? Is it possible? I know that it was at surface during a meeting this morning. Can we have an email to the board? (Vicki) If you can't find it, I'm looking for it. (James) So what we're, the objective today is to continue to have a discussion and to field any questions about the data or about the policy. Tonight is not a night we will

083vote on anything. It will be brought to the board meeting next week, but I'm sorry, two weeks, sorry. So I'll open the floor for discussion or questions about the data. So you have this data as well. So if you have any commentary about the survey or about what you've experienced, please feel comfortable adding that to the discussion this evening, all right? Questions, Jeanette. (Jeanette) I'm wondering that 1,057 student responses, what's the total student population? (James) I don't know the N as to the number of students that would have received the survey. David, does that, yeah, I'll say it feels 25%ish, but. - Well, that's it. (David) Could be just a little bit below 5,500. (Jeanette) So it's around 20% kind of. So that's a good number. (James) When you're talking about an email, some sort

084of survey, 20%. (Jeanette) It's a good response, yes. (James) It's a good response, right, yeah. (Jeanette) Thank you. (James) Questions or discussion? Yeah, Alex. (Alex) One thing I wanna point out that I don't know that we focused on, and I would be curious to hear your feedback. Just to confirm, one of the things that I think is worth noting, and I understand that there's probably major points of contention on this, is whether or not students would be able to then use their own backpacks again, even though if they would be kept in their lockers. So the question to you, Paige, is perhaps, was that ever one of the questions? Were you able to be asked if you could still use your, if you could use your own backpacks, bring them to school, how you would

085feel about this policy? (Paige) Sorry, can I clarify? Are you asking if that was a question on the form or? (Alex) Were you asked at all about the opportunity to use your own backpacks again? (Paige) I don't believe so. - No. - No. (James) No, go ahead. (Vicki) The questions that were asked by the high school leaders are listed at the top of your document. The district required backpacks in the locker, how would you feel about that policy? And is there anything else you want school leaders to know about how this policy might affect students? (Alex) Sure, thank you, and yeah, and I just, I feel compelled to say, I think if students had that part of an option or that consideration, if that would be something that we would ever decide, I think that

086that would have a major impact and how they would feel about it to whatever extent. And I only bring that up because again, it was something that I brought up and the creation of this policy as something that we could consider and I think should consider for a variety of reasons if there were to be a change to the backpack policy, so. (James) Samantha (Samantha) I just think that it's interesting that comes out of here that obviously students are airing their frustration with the possibility of policy reversal, the very last bullet point on here, talking about if families have already gotten their backpacks and they are on the clear backpack pathway here that there's some frustration coming out about potentially reversing that. So I think it's coming through kind of loud and clear that we

087need to figure out a direction and go with it rather than kind of the back and forth, back and forth because I think it's frustrating our students and our parents and our families. (James) Others , Paige. (Paige) In my personal opinion, I think that at this point, no students are really no longer upset about the clear backpacks. And I think transitioning back to our own backpacks would bring more upset feelings than happy feelings because at this point, we're fine with the clear backpacks. And I think we, in my opinion, would not like to have to keep our backpacks in our lockers. I think we'd rather just stay how it is now. (James) I want to, before you, Laura, Alec, I'm sorry, Andrew, did you have a question? (Andrew) It's more procedural at this time. I'm

088glad we did this. I'd be interested in seeing us do this more. If this is something we're using advisory time more, I think it would be a good time to find out how a large cross-section of students feel about a 35-minute lunch and so forth. I think, I do think there's value in an open-ended question, but there's also value in asking more comprehensive questions, which I do think is important. In the end, based on, as it stands today, I probably would not be inclined to agree with backpacks in the locker, but I absolutely think there should be a, as comprehensive of questions as we can, and certainly if the proposal was to go back to their own backpacks, I think that would be a different student perspective we would need to hear. And I say

089if, because maybe it would evolve out of the board as being clear backpacks in the lockers. That's not where I'm at right now, but I think everything, I think any major change we need to work hard to get organized student input. (James) Sure. Alex. (Alex) And so I read through a lot of these and at the risk of sounding to people in the public or potentially some students like, I don't care, it's not the case, but the reality is, from my experience, these are a number of things that I've had conversations with students, including current and former students and not only do the questions lens themselves to emotional responses, especially when we're dealing with emotional times and the thing that kind of spawned looking at a lot of this stuff, some of those events. Some

090of these things are worries or concerns, but they're also not complete reality either. For example, some of these things with time and layout changes and crowded hallways and things like that, I just wanna reiterate some current realities and some answers to some of the questions that you guys asked that aren't on this sheet that I did get feedback from like from Cale and so on. For example, every school, all the schools, they have a locker for every kid. So that is not something that would be an issue. Again, we have a enrollment at some of our schools that is at such a point that there would also be plenty of opportunity. First of all, the hallways are nowhere near as crowded as they used to be in all of our schools, except for Preble, that

091hasn't changed a lot. The other ones have seen significant reductions. Plus with more locker availability, in some cases like West, half the lockers are used in the sense there's only half the population that used to be, there's a lot more flexibility and options to make a policy like this practical and to also alleviate some of the concerns that kids voiced, but that just wouldn't play out the way they are concerned about. So I just wanted to highlight a couple of those things. (James) And I'll add, and I agree with Alex in that, what I see on the page is a response to change. In any organization, even when the change is positive, there is an emotional change management aspect. And so it comes back to the question, that's why when I get down to the

092bottom of the document and you're just talking about, hey, that's students feeling betrayed or frustrated by potential policy reversal, that's an emotional change management response, right? I just went through change, now you're gonna change it again kind of thing. So when I look at this policy, in my personal opinion, I don't know how to implement it in the middle of a year. And so when I think about this policy, I think if we oriented any kind of change to a year start, I think some of the change management issues go away, right? You got a new student body, you have new environments. So that's how I kind of am interpreting what I'm reading on the page. Yeah, Jeanette. (Jeanette) I also think that would be good because different things could be worked out like hygiene

093and medical needs. I could see how kids could be really concerned about that because things happen and also there could be exceptions for somebody who needed something extra, let's say a diabetic kiddo who needed to have their hard candy available if they were having a sugar crisis, and they might need more than that. So I think there would also be exceptions to this rule for things. And that was not discussed here. So I think stretching it out and having it start at the beginning of a year would be a good idea. (James) Okay, Alex. (Alex) And I just wanna provide what I think is an important reminder for everybody too is that a couple of things. One, again, we've heard a lot of positive feedback, or at least I have from different staff at three

094out of our, well, three out of our five middle schools regarding backpacks. And not having them in the classrooms has a lot to do with reducing other distractions, other things that cause issues in the classroom that can also now help be at least in part alleviated. In addition to the fact that the bigger reason why this is even a topic of discussion is because of safety and security concerns. And I just wanna reiterate two quick things. One, there's a vast amount of other high schools in our area that also do this, and they don't do it for no reason. And I think what a lot of the public has also continued to ask for is for us to take initiative and to not be reactive. And so by doing something like this, I think it

095shows that not only one, we're taking safety and security serious, but we're also initiating something. And albeit maybe timing is an important factor that we haven't talked a lot about that obviously is negotiable. But again, the primary reason for this, from my perspective, obviously other districts and there's other ones, but the whole, our major protocol for dealing with active shooter situations changed a little more than 10 years ago. And one of the primary premises of that was to not be phishing a barrel. And that is part of the reasons why removing backpacks out of the classroom helps that overall protocol we have in a big way. And I just want, I think those couple of things are really important to remember. (James) Yeah, yeah, that's Samantha. (Samantha) Just out of curiosity for procedural wise, if

096this was going to go through, would there need to be any sort of accompanying policy or rule put into place for determining any, locker reassignments, changing lockers, et cetera. I'm just foreseeing the possibility that, especially in some of our lower enrollment high schools, you get assigned a locker that doesn't function for your schedule one semester, the next semester. Like I just anticipate potential, like overrunning our administrators with like a lot of tedious locker change requests. And I worry that that's something that if this policy was going to be passed and then implemented without something else behind it to support our administrators in handling potentially a high volume of locker change requests that were assigning a host of additional work to them without any support. So procedurally, I just, I don't know what next steps would

097look like. (James) And I don't know the answer to that either, at this point in time. So I think that would be something that we would ask the district to research and understand at that point. - Oh, and I have, you know, having a child at East De Pere, I will tell you that Alex is correct. East De Pere has a new backpack policy. And the impact on him is he doesn't have a backpack because that's a huge school. So I'd put it size wise with Preble and he, the passing time is just not long enough, right? So he just chooses not to have a backpack. So that's how they manage that policy at East De Pere. - All right, other questions? So go ahead, Alex. (Alex) Just one last thing too, I almost forgot.

098The other thing is don't, let's not get lost too. Like the student feedback is important. That's why we asked for it. But I also think it would be important as we factor its decision to what community and adults, parents, teachers, et cetera, think about this. I think that's as or more important as a collective than just the student feedback. You know, everybody has stake in this decision. And, you know, not that it's all encompassing, but, you know, when we first proposed this, I just did a quick little very informal poll myself. And at that time, you know, 70% of the adults that responded were in favor of it, you know, and roughly 25, 30% were not at that time. So again, I think, you know, if we were to consider something like this, whenever it

099may be, you know, those are things you have to factor into. (James) Thank you. Lynn (Lynn) I haven't said much about this tonight, but I will just say that I think the only thing that really matters in making this decision is whether it's going to make students any safer. I was, I'm so amazed that if we think back now at when students were suddenly told with a week's notice that they were all going to start carrying clear backpacks, and how now that we look back on it, how amazing that adaptation was, how they just simply did it. We didn't have any horror. I mean, sure there were some unhappy people, but we didn't have any horrible, you know, demonstrations or acting out or anything like that. Families just did it. I suspect they thought that

100just maybe it might be a little bit safer. Somebody, a group asked me the other day, "Do you think that, do you really think "that having clear backpacks means "you won't ever have to get a gun in the school?" I said, "Absolutely not." On the other hand, children and, I shouldn't say children, students in the hallway and at their lockers are also fishing a barrel. We are fishing a barrel right now. Anytime people come together, we don't know how many guns there are in this room right now. And so, we have to ask ourselves if having students keep their gun in their locker instead of in the classroom really makes it any safer. (James) Others. Okay. Oh, sorry Andrew. (Andrew) Um, so regardless of the decision on backpacks, I hope we do look at, you

101know, look at the reality, look at the statistics, look at what research is out there about whatever we're doing. I don't want to keep, I want to be careful because anytime you introduce something that, you know, feels safer and maybe it is and people, you know, accept it and move on, I don't want to make sure we don't just keep doing them because they sound good or some other places have tried them because you never, it's very hard to take them back and you never prove that they didn't work. And I don't want to just, there's a problem with taking things away because we assume, because people feel safer when we take things away. There has to be a balance with that. And I'm not saying the, maybe the clear, maybe the clear backpacks were,

102you know, on the other side of that balance. I have not heard much as far as complaints about them after, you know, a few days. But I do, I guess I would just throw out that caution with whatever we're doing, that where you don't just keep introducing, you know, there's a whole lot of things that I could rattle off that would probably make people feel a little bit safer and would really be, you know, burdensome in total, even though individually they don't seem like much. (james) Appreciate that. You'd agree. Others? Oh, Laura. (Laura) It's a little premature to, I think, to talk about the benefits of these clear backpacks. It's still pretty new. But I would like, as a board, to maybe make a commitment to revisiting this later in the year and getting feedback

103from principals and kids and just say, okay, you've got, had most of a school year now. Tell us what the impact is. Yeah, and is this helping and has it made a difference? And I don't know. I don't know if we can just calendar that, so. (James) So actually, let's just make that an agenda item in the spreadsheet so that we can follow up on that and make sure that that happens. I appreciate that. (Laura) I would like to know that information. (James) Okay, can we call the question on this? Are we good? All right. Thank you, everybody. We will now go back to 5A, membership number updates. Welcome, Cale. (silence) (Cale) Thank you again. So it's time for our annual updates to our membership report. This ties in with our Friday, our third Friday

104account. And the timing, at this time we update our membership historical data and then also kind of link that in with the financial information with our budget that has been approved. This, for those that have seen this in the past, it does look a little different. I'm hoping it's a little easier to follow and understand, but please just, if you want, during the presentation, feel free to jump in and ask any questions. So first, I just kind of, a moment to reestablish what membership is. So really, this is a student number. And you're gonna see here in a moment, student FTE or student membership FTE and student membership. Basically, that's a stat derived, our FTE of each enrolled student and then that, I should look at my note here. The number we use for reporting

105for state aid for each student. So what you're gonna see here is 4K and early childhood do not count as a full FTE, student FTE and that's gonna be the main difference here. The other number we're gonna look at is head count, which is a little different and I'll get into that in a moment as well. But the important piece here is, this membership FTE dictates our state aid and funding. So as I said, this membership count comes from our third Friday count in September. Here, I'm just noting that these numbers are based on the attendance on that third Friday. So these numbers are updated throughout the year. The historical data is updated on what you'll see here for the past historical data. But the numbers you see for September are the actual attendance data

106from our third Friday of this school year. And just a follow up on the attendance. So understanding that attendance can vary on that third Friday and as a result of that, that does get recounted throughout the year and then updated and revised noted here in January and June. So how do we come up again with that membership number, that head count? So that's the eligible students in actual attendance. So I like to say butts and seats, right? Open enrollment out, students enrolling into other districts, open enroll in, students coming in to the district, not in our membership area and then resident reduction. That's a very small amount, but noted homeschool and some other occurrences, but I believe this year it's right around four. So it's a very minor number, but goes into the equation of

107our membership count. So this again ties into our financial impact. So for each full-time FTE, you can see the dollar amounts for our students, for our FTE. And then this is a rolling average over three years. So as we look at this, it's not going to be an immediate year over year change. It's gonna take that average of that three year time. So here's the first look, let me catch up here on my computer, of our membership count and history back to 2018. Just some high level notes here again, head count, again, students and seats. And then I have some snapshots, you'll see the head count, the membership FTE, which we received the 0.5 for early childhood and the 0.644K students. So that's why you see that number drop from our membership to our membership

108FTE. So the three columns here, the head count. So as you look at actual students on that third Friday count, you see that 17,956. That is the number of students counted on our third Friday count. And then as you go to the right, that membership FTE is what our aid is based on. I had some high level notes here, just the reductions since 2018. So you don't have to do the math if you don't want, but any questions on this? Yep. (Lynn) So Cale, do I understand that the membership count includes our resident students who have enrolled out, but does not include non-resident students who have enrolled in, is that right? (Cale) It does. It subtracts the enroll out and adds the open enroll in. I can go actually. (Lynn) You had a plus in

109front of that opening and that kind of threw me off. Yeah. (James) Right. Right. - So. - Yeah. - So the, good. (Cale) That's an error. We did not catch that one, I apologize. Yeah, that should be flip-flop. We are subtracting out the open enroll out and we are adding in the open enroll in students. Darn it. (Lynn) So you know, Kale, with my wonderful mathematical ability, something as simple as a plus sign or a minus sign is really important to me. (Cale) I can't tell you how many times I've looked at this. (James) Can we verify that with Angie? Cause I understood it the other way around and I might absolutely be wrong, but the open enroll out and our students are people that live in our district. So that's the number. And then

110we subtract in, subtract the open enroll in, but can we just verify the number with Angie? Cause I think that it's important to get that right. - I'll make a note to be that. (Cale) Yeah, I feel like that should be, I apologize. I should be able to clarify that for you here. - (Vicki) Last year was the same. (James) So the open enroll in, they're butts and seats that we need to subtract, right? So that's why it's done this way. (Lynn) So we get aid we get aid, state aid for students who live in our district but are being educated in a Ahwaubenon or Howard or something. But then if they send their children to Washington, we're educating them here, we don't get aid for them. (James) We do, but it's, we just, they

111just increased it. There is a transfer of funds. It's not equal to the exact aid that we would get, but there is a transfer of funds that comes with that. (Cale) Yeah, the value is not the same. I don't have that value in front of me, but I can get that. (James) But it's a component of the increase in taxes this year. Yes, Jeanette. (Jeanette) So I have a question on, and this is a good, to have this up. So I understand head counts, that's butts and seat, membership FTE, those are the kiddos that have been, they've signed up to be in school and we're only counting the four Ks at 0.6 and the early childhood at 0.5. And then there's membership. So I'm just wondering, okay, what's the difference between head count and membership?

112(Cale) That could be our attendance variance there too as well, or I'm trying to think other factors into... (Jeanette) Well, what number, what, so I get that head count is virtually the kid that's in the seat, okay? And I get that membership FTE could be different because those are the kids that are enrolled, but maybe didn't come to school that day, so they didn't get counted. So how is membership then? (Cale) That's where the, oh, I'm sorry. That's where the open enroll comes into play then too. So we have a reduction of, so we have that reduction as, did I show open enrollment yet? I didn't. So I'll show you that open enrollment and you're gonna see that's where that number comes into play. And then that's why the, you see the membership as the

113highest number there. Obviously we take that FTE into reduction and then you take that open enrollment data and that's where we're getting the head count then. Just to graph, just for the visual effects of the FTE and the head count over, since September of 2018, you can see just as those numbers show, just the more visual effects of that reduction. So that's where the FTE is. One piece that we spoke about, we wanted to take a look at is head count projection. The highlighted numbers are future projections. In the top column, that's our 25, 26 projections. Account the most recent data in 25, 26. So that's 17,956 is our most recent number. And then the highlighted numbers beyond that are projections. And what we wanted to do is give you a snapshots from our projections

114in 22, 23. That's why those were all highlighted. So those aren't actual numbers. Those were the numbers projected in 22, 23. So you can see that we are following that trend line pretty close with those projections. (Alex) I have one quick question. (James) Yeah, go ahead, Alex. (Alex) So we're looking at the next two years of about 400 students or so projected, if I'm reading that correctly, but then slowing down to only 100 or so students, the next two years after that, is there any, just wondering what factors into a decreased reduction? If you could explain that at all. (James) Good luck. (Cale) Yeah. So we can share actually our projection, our new projection book should be ready here shortly. That explains the entire methodology behind that. I would say also a good resource. We

115can go back and reference our Wulpert's demographic survey that uses similar methodologies that explains it really well. And that's on our website. So we can see that, but also in our projection book, they lay out our annual projection method as well. (James) Yeah, Alex, it's very, very interesting and very complex, but it's really important to do this every once in a while because we made decisions around school consolidations based on those projections. And there was a counter narrative when we were doing that, that actually it was gonna go up and we were wrong. And to see this match the trend that was projected is confidence building. (Cale) So here's that number and apologize for the confusion with our plus and minus here, but you can make that connection right here. So if you see our

116open enroll, so our OEO is our open enroll out, that 2,254, that's gonna match up pretty close when you add in that 450 open enroll in those numbers we were discussing before. So you can see this trend data. I had a couple of notes starred there to the right with that increase of open enroll since 2018 of 134 students. So ideally we don't have that going up, but you can see that stayed fairly consistent since 2018. And the open enroll in, we've only seen that swing about six students since 2018. So that bottom again is the most recent open enroll in, open enroll out data. And again, a graph just to kind of show that trend line not being as drastic certainly as our enrollment. So one question commonly asked with that 2000 plus student

117number is where are these students going? This is not all inclusive. You can see there's a lot of additional schools, additional colors in there identifying students at a very small number, but this just gets you kind of that top look of where some of the larger segments of those students are going. Number one being a Schwab-Anon. I was trying to collect one request was our heat map. I was not able to get that together in time and updated version of that. But what was shown a few years back is a lot of the students are in close proximity to the districts that they're transferring out to. But something we're working on getting that of showing kind of a map of not specific addresses, but a heat map of kind of where those students are going

118and why they're going to those locations as well. - So just as a question, will we continue to see (James) McFarland on this pie chart? We will. (Cale) And that's really- (James) It's a virtual school. That's run out of McFarland school district, I understand, but I thought that there was a contest there. (Vicki) Only for their, if the board will recall, McFarland opened a physical building in our district, which is a violation of- (James) Okay. (Vicki) And that no longer is here. (James) Thank you. (Cale) The last portion of this is that tie into that financial piece. So here you can see the voucher and charter reimbursement rates. These are updated. Angie had updated these for us. As you can see here, if you weren't aware of what they were, just gonna grab one. So

119these are the reimbursement per students for their vouchers and charters. (silence) Some historical data on the vouchers and charters. This is broken out into, as you can see here, K-8, nine through 12, and then special needs since 2018. The graph on the right just breaks those columns down. So you can kind of see that reimbursement rate increase since 2018, 2019. (Alex) And Cale, and there's a number that we have that kind of shows that how much the voucher students individually impact our individual taxpayers on their tax bill, right? (Cale) Yeah. - Hold that thought for one second. I have that actual total levy amounts for these vouchers in like one slide here, and then that actual tax impact. I think it'll be a little more helpful to see that number. Actually, we can just do

120it right here. So the total number of students leveraging that voucher is in the red, you can see here. The cap number is the total number of students allowed for that levy, and then the yellow line itself is the actual levy amount. And you can see that increasing over time. I'll come back to this. But that number you're talking about is that total levy for our vouchers is just over 14 million. We have that translated kind of a little more easier to understand for our taxpayers. That's about $91 for every $100,000 in property value. So rather than just seeing it 14 million, it kind of breaks it down into an actual real number for people. And you can see that percentage based off of our district levy here. So these are historical district levy and

121our voucher levy. One note I think is important is with our district levy, there is an increase in that obviously. Not due to anything that we could do with that and we've talked about this. That's that reduction in state aid. Overall, about $3 million decrease in state aid going onto the tax levy. So that's why we see that just over 5% increase on the standard district levy is because of that state aid being put onto the levy now. (James) Also that increase in open enrollment out reimbursements as well, right? Because there was a sig, on top of the 3 million in lack of state aid, there was also an increase in open enrollment out that adds to that as well. But it's still only half of the increase in voucher levy, right? Alex. (Alex) Yeah,

122and I would just add that unless I'm wrong, the percentage because the open enrollment out has stayed the same, but our percentage of district students has decreased that percentage open rolling out is increasing first and foremost, so everybody needs to understand that. And then more poignantly, everyone who owns a 300, 400, $500 house, which isn't that much nowadays with what properties are being valued at, either way, it means you're paying $250, $450 or more per year because of this. (James) Yeah. (Cale) And I know we kind of reiterate this quite a bit, but to that point, it's the value of your house, not what the taxpayer paid for that. So that's a good point as that value increases, no matter what, even if you're not selling that, that's going up. (Cale) Yes, Jeanette. (Jeanette) So

123Alex, you mentioned tax bill. So that is going to be on the Green Bay residence tax bill. It is not going to be on the Allouez residence tax bill, nor will it be on the Bellevue tax bill is what my understanding is. (Cale) That's correct. (Jeanette) Or the Ledgeview tax bill. So I don't know how many different municipalities, Angie, I think, would you know? (James) Yes, Angie's right here. (Jeanette) She's, we have eight. - Yeah, so it's only going to be on the Green Bay. So do you know what that amount is going to be from the dollars that you have here? No, no. (Cale) Sorry, I don't, but I can, I'll note that here so we can have that to explain that in the future. (James) Okay, another questions. Oh, Laura, sorry. (Laura) Just

124to address what Jeanette just said, the other municipalities are, they're being worked on right now. Taking on the tax bill in Green Bay was the priority because it's by far the largest. And that will happen in a matter of weeks. And it'll be interesting to see what the impact is once people see what they are paying for essentially two different districts. Like it's private and yeah, and I don't know. We'll see, I guess we're going to find out. So thank you. (James) Okay, any other questions or discussion? Okay, Cale. Okay. I, go ahead. Yeah, I think so. (Vicki) There is no referendum update this month. It's consistent with what happened in October. (James) Thank you. (Vicki) Thanks. (James) Okay, so that'll take us in and we will go to the sixth section of our agenda

125policy and governance. And I'll turn the chair over to Samantha. (Samantha) All right, first up, we have a discussion about potential revisions to Board of Education Policy 170 related to meetings of the Board of Education. Also on here is, I guess we're tackling them separately for 170, the rule and the policy together. (James) Can we hold them together? (Andrew) Yeah, what I submitted would change a couple of words on the policy probably, but I focused on the rule because that's where they're at. (James) So did you email everyone? (Andrew) Well, I sent it to you and Kinsey so it wasn't, so we could put on screen. (James) Oh, okay. - It's gonna be on screen, thank you. (Andrew) And it wanted to be debate ahead of, yeah. (Samantha) All right, so let's go ahead and

126we can, both the policy and the rule up here. And it sounds like, is there any initial discussion related to the policy? (Lynn) Last time we talked about this several weeks ago, I proposed that, and I can't see how you can take these separately, I proposed that we repeal rule 170 and that we amend policy 170 to remove item 3C. That was the original proposal. (James) And 3C is the last statement. Yeah, the board shall appoint two board members to preside over discussion. - Okay, thank you. (Samantha) All right, so is there discussion related to Lynn's proposal out here, which would be repealing the rule entirely and amending the policy to remove 3C? James. (James) So as I remember the last couple of times, we had the proposal by Lynn and then we opted to

127table that amendment and Andrew, I think has presented a counter proposal. So for this meeting, since it's not a, I think that if we can have Andrew walk us through what he wants to propose. (Andrew) Yeah, okay. So I understand that there are some, there was some discussion around confusion about whether there is special authority in having people be co-chairs, having, and also if there's any extra work or something created by having, by tying together two people that have to meet with the same administrator if their schedules don't match up. So I would assume we're going to, whatever happens, we're going to continue because of some quorum rules and things to say within those, we will probably have pairs of board members meeting with the superintendent regular, that will happen. I don't think it is

128important since this role is, the role of the co-chairs has primarily been a facilitation and shared leadership at the board table. I don't, I would agree that I don't think those two need to be tied together necessarily as pairs. I removed, I removed, I think everything that would give an impression that we have a true committee structure. I wouldn't mind looking at a committee structure some day, but this isn't the day or the year for that. What this retains, which I think is very important, it retains the shared leadership aspect of rotating. You would still have, you would still have two people that would alternately do policies education. And I did specify those three, they're the historical ones. I didn't want to get too deep in the weeds of what, what if there's four? Right.

129I think it solves, I think it solves all the problems that have been, that I've heard mentioned, unless the problem is you want the board president running all of the meetings without shared leadership. If that's what someone wants, then this doesn't have it. It retains the shared rotation of leadership in the work session portion. And I do think it's, I do think it's very important. I'm willing to compromise to take out parts that people maybe thought confusing. It certainly would not force someone who doesn't want to be in the rotation. I would, that would be, but I'm sure it can be worked out easily enough, or you could have a pair of people and only one of the two does it all the time. So it says they could by mutual agreement. So I hope

130this would satisfy those who find there to be some confusion and don't want to look like it's committees that they're not, but still retain the value of each board member having a chance to have a small piece of leadership and facilitation on a regular basis. (James) Okay, is there any discussion or questions for Andrew? Go ahead, Alex. (Alex) I would just add that in reading through that, I feel like it does accomplish what I think is kind of a compromise goal. It maybe takes out the either legitimate or perceived restrictions or requirements, especially as you noted Lynn regards to like trying to coordinate meetings and things together, and ultimately allows that pair to kind of determine, hey, we're gonna do this 50-50 or hey, we're both responsible for this, but you guys work out on

131a continual basis, what works better for you two and I'm definitely in favor of it. (Samantha) Others? Lynn? (Lynn) I'm afraid I see no value in giving people at the table an opportunity to read words out loud from the agenda. I do favor having the president run the meeting. I remind you that for my first year on this board, that's the way we did it. I saw no problem with it. I just simply do not see reading words out loud from an agenda as facilitating a meeting or providing leadership. I don't understand what, I cannot understand what the perceived value of that is and I do not support it. (Samantha) James? (James) So I have a perspective on this and that this is not the common counsel and I was not elected to this role

132by a constituency, right? And I see my role as a facilitator and making sure that everyone has equal opportunities to speak and that is a cognitive load. And just from speaking of how I see these meetings, sometimes I enjoy being a part of the discussion versus the facilitator. So when you start talking about perceived value from a chair's perspective, when you're constantly scanning and making sure that other people are heard and trying to inject yourself into a conversation, that sometimes is cumbersome, right? So at a work session, I am absolutely comfortable with a shared responsibility for managing the discussion but that's me, right? And so that's where I stand on this. As long as the concept of there's a perceived ownership of the agenda block and a leadership and understanding and presenting and preparing, as

133long as we communicate clearly that that is not a part of this role, I'm okay. (Samantha) Others? Laura. (Laura) I had to smile a little bit. We'll go Jeanette and I in locked eyes because operations came and went and we didn't facilitate it. (Jeanette) And the sky didn't fall. (Laura) Same with education. In much like Lynn's reference to that year that we did it, no one really seemed to notice or care. So to me, that's indicative of the importance of this policy. So I guess that's all I really have to say about that. (Samantha) Do Jeanette and then Andrew, I saw your hand as well. We'll do Jeanette. (Jeanette) Okay, so the only value I see in this policy is if there was a board president who did not consider themselves as a facilitator, considered

134themselves more as a, for lack of a better word in my vocabulary, a dictator, and didn't wanna allow there to be any shared leadership here. I could see this being a good policy. So I think it really depends who sits in that seat. So I understand where Andrew is coming from by allowing this but if it's, and I wish I had this in front of me here because I could see it better. My eyes are not that good. So two board members shall ordinarily be appointed but that if there's a mutual agreement, then as Laura and I, no problem not doing the operations thing, it was not a big deal. So that could be, so I guess what I would like to ask you, Andrew, is your, what you want here is this isn't a

135hard and fast rule but it's an opportunity for other board members to say, hey, we have this rule. Could we follow it? (Andrew) So I don't really think there's anything that wrong with the rule that we have right now. I'm trying to be a team player and compromise because some board members raised some points that were thought to be potential confusion here. We have had for since, for almost the entirety of the time I've been on the board, which is a long time, we've had co-chairs, co-facilitators, whatever you call it. We had alternation of we have had this and what if you remove this rule, you are, those who would vote to take this away, okay, are would be presumably those who don't care about whether they are facilitating part of a meeting, which you

136wouldn't be required to in this. I would be surprised if we ran in a situation where we had so many not wanting to do it that we couldn't even find a pair of which one of them, but I don't think we need to split hairs about what the pair means. I tried to do the minimum things, I removed, I changed presiding to facilitating, I changed, I changed whatever seemed to fall from that that if they're not chairs, what we need to say to make them be not chairs, there's no, if you don't like it, you don't have to do it. I mean, you can just, you could just tell your partner, go ahead and do all of them. And yes, part of this is, yes, the importance of shared leadership at the table is greater

137if you were to have a board president who suppresses opposing viewpoints. We haven't had one of those in a while, but we have had them historically. So no one, and I'm not referring to anyone who's at this table, by the way. I'm trying to be a team player, come up with something that people can live with that takes out anything that suggests these are committees, that there's any special authority or that there's any specialization of knowledge in these. (Samantha) Alex? (Alex) I would just add that, when we exchanged a message earlier, I didn't cover the education part today in part because there wasn't much on there and that was run through by our board president. Hey, is that fine if we do that? It's like, yeah, so that was something that we have a person

138who is functioning at a high level and with their involvement as a board president right now. And I think we can't always take that for granted. Every year there's two plus new board members. And I think having something like this in place, not only allows a brand new board member like myself or Sam or anybody else an opportunity to get more comfortable being involved and growing in that even limited scope of shared leadership, but also again, keeps in term the long-term prospect that we don't know what the board president might be like or what the dynamic might be like. And this is just at least some small part that we can maintain some of the things that we're able to do right now. ( Samantha) James? (James) Just to counter the operating at a high

139level. I also exchanged emails between Laura and Jeanette and no, and absolutely failed to transition the chair over to Jeanette this evening. So I would question that to 100%. (Jeanette) No hard feelings. (James) Yeah, to the point, I do think that it is, it's just a desire. I don't think it negatively impacts the flow of the meeting, but it is something that I'm willing to do. (Samantha) Laura. (Laura) So if you just magically did turn into a dictator overnight, I feel completely empowered to take care of that. (Samantha) Lynn. (Lynn) I'll just mention that we elect our board, our president, the president doesn't elect himself, we choose that person. (Samantha) Any additional discussion? All right, so then I guess for procedural next steps, this would be offered as an amendment at the next meeting, I

140would assume, yes, okay. All right, thank you, Andrew, for bringing forward your work on this. Oh, yes. (James) So just so that we're clear, and that Kinsey has directions, because Lynn's amendment was the one that was discussed, can the motion for the next meeting be Lynn's amendment? And then he can amend the motion, just trying to navigate having two things out there. So I think the motion that we should be is Lynn's, and then we can have the discussion. (Samantha) All right, (Jeanette) can I ask one question? And could we please have Andrew's amendment so that I can make it bigger on the screen and read it better, thank you. (Andrew) Yeah, I'll share it to everyone now. I just sent it to only James and Kinsey to avoid any concerns about whether I was

141starting a walking quorum or something. So I will do that right now, because now it's been publicly on the screen. (Samantha) And I appreciate that, Andrew. (Samantha) All right, next up, thank you for joining us, Melissa. We've got revisions to Board of Education Policy 672 related to procurement and purchasing, and then the accompanying Rule 672 on procurement requirements and methods, and Exhibit 672 related to purchase thresholds for the Green Bay Public School District. (Melissa) Yeah, I think this one will be a quick one. We follow the Federal Government's Uniform Grant guidance that was revised on October 1st to change the micro-purchase threshold to 15,000. It previously was 10,000. And the simplified acquisition threshold to 350,000. It was previously 250,000. So we just need to update all of those documents. Any questions, Andrew? (Andrew) So that's

142saying that you don't have to unless it's a certain threshold, but a board might want to keep a stricter threshold for transparency, or is it more complicated than that? (Melissa) I'm not sure the answer on that, actually. - Yep. (Samantha) Any other questions? No? All right. After that, then, we have revisions to Board of Education Policy 443.5, Student Use of Wireless Communication Devices. (Melissa) Another short update. We did a really good job anticipating what the new legislation was going to be for restrictions on cell phones in schools. We have to make one minor change that eliminates that broad exemption to allowing students to have cell phones in class. That was not included in the legislation. So we need to strike that from our policy. (Samantha) Laura? (Laura) I'm just gonna take this opportunity to point

143out, once again, how our district is very, very often out ahead of these things that impact students and their learning. (Samantha) Any other questions? Andrew? (Andrew) So I understand this coming from the state. I might vote no on principle. I think we did it right. And it's a little strange to me that the state would say that the, essentially, that a teacher can say yes and the principal can't, kind of, sort of, is happening here. So I think we did it better than the state did, but the state, and it's, I guess I'll just say also that the, it matters that we looked at this before the state did and made our own considerations and didn't just, I mean, hundreds of, probably hundreds of districts will be copy-pasting things out of the statute and just

144taking model policies and adopting them and whipping through seven zero votes on them. So I'm glad we, I'm glad we considered this. It's probably one of the, some limitation, although I slightly differed maybe from some about around study halls and so forth, it's obviously important and it was doing something about the overuse of cell phones is actually probably one of the few things there's actually bipartisan, even, agreement on anymore. So if I vote no, it's not that I think we did it wrong here, but it's symbolic that we did it, I think covered it a little bit better than the state did. (Samantha) Alex. (Alex) Is there anything from the state level that has an enforcement component or an accountability component that we need to be aware of that's in this legislation? Like, hey, you're

145doing this, we all have this policy now, but if we see this or we're gonna check this or whatever, is there anything that we have to account for? You know what I'm saying? - Like the cell phone jail? - Just is there, I don't even have anything specific that I'm thinking of, I'm just wondering if this is just a blanket thing, like, hey, we all need to do this and it's just that simple or is there any kind of other piece with it that they're gonna want or verification on or that they can get us on or that we have to be accountable for? (Melissa) I think that we do have to submit our policy to DPI, but let me just let me check on that and see. I think that's a great question. (Samantha)

146And, oh, Jeanette, and then I had one more also. (Jeanette) So what was covered on Saturday was there is, it doesn't seem like there's anything retaliatory that's gonna happen. It's just submitting your policy and if you haven't done it, then you're gonna, it's almost like a wrist slap. There wasn't like a $100 fine or a million dollar fine or anything that was gonna go in it, but I didn't see the whole bill. It was just a discussion we were having. (Samantha) Just a quick question on that. On the section three on permitted possession and use, part F5 is the same exact language as above that was struck out, so I'm just curious if it has to be removed down there as well. Okay. Any other questions on that one? Okay, then our last one here

147is revisions to Board of Education Rule 345.6, procedures for meeting graduation requirements. (Melissa) With the adopted changes to the schedule at the last meeting, David needed to update Rule 345.6 regarding how graduation credits will be attained in those block scheduling and with the elimination of trimester. So those are just the changes reflected in that rule. (Samantha) Any questions on that one? Then that is it and I yield the chair back. (James) Thank you, Samantha. And with that, we've come to the end of the agenda for our work session and we will all be reading a motion to adjourn into closed session. Lynn, will you please read the motion? (mumbles) (Lynn) I move that the board convene into closed session pursuant to Wisconsin Statute 19.85, Section 1D to consider strategies for crime detection or prevention to

148review school safety analysis and discuss sensitive school safety protocols and revisions to same and Wisconsin Statute 19.85, Section 1A and F, considering financial, medical, social, or personal histories or disciplinary data of specific persons, preliminary consideration of specific personnel problems or the investigation of charges against specific persons except for paragraph B applies, which if discussed in public would likely have a substantial adverse effect upon the reputation of any person referred to in such histories or data or involved in such problems or investigations to it for the purpose of holding expulsion hearings under Wisconsin Statute 120.13, Section 1C and E and Wisconsin Statute 19.85, Section 1G conferring with legal counsel for the governmental body who is rendering oral or written advice concerning strategy to be adopted by the body with respect to litigation in which it is

149or is likely to become involved more specifically to let potential litigation matters regarding the district. (James) The second? (Laura) Second. (James) Before we go and adjourn and take the vote, I would like to read into the record that this is a three-part motion. The second part, the discussion about the expulsion hearings will not occur this evening. We just had some issues with some of the preparatory materials being provided. So we'll be doing the first part and the third part tonight. So, Kinsey. (Kinsey) Meister? (Samantha) Yes. (Kinsey) Knill? (Jeanette) Yes. (Kinsey) Mineau? (Alex) Yes. (Kinsey) Gerlach? (Lynn) Aye. (Kinsey) Lyerly? (James) Aye. (Kinsey) McCoy? (Laura) Aye. (Kinsey) Becker? (Andrew) Aye. (James) With that, we're adjourned in a closed session.