GBAPSD Board of Education Special Meeting & Work Session: September 8, 2025

001[Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Good evening everybody. Welcome to the special board meeting of September 8th, 2025. This evening, we will be hearing from two um RFP respondents um for the superintendent search. In advance of that, Kenzie, can we please call role? >> Meister here. Canel >> here. Mow >> here. >> Gerlac here. >> Larly >> here. >> McCoy here. Becker >> here. >> Right. All board members are present and accounted for. We'll move on to um our agenda. Item number two, interview of superintendent search consultants. The order of which first we'll hear from the Wisconsin Association Association of School Boards and then we'll hear from CISA7. The format has been communicated to both of the respondents. um we'll have um 30 minutes in which you have time to um provide a presentation and then we'll

002have 15 minutes um for Q&A um from the board pertaining to your your presentation. So Bosby, come on up. Let's get started. Just a quick um tutorial on how to use the mics. Um there is an uh icon that is a mouth or a person speaking. It turns the mic red. If we ask you a question, it's going to cut your mic off. If you interrupt us, you'll cut the board members mic off. So, we'll learn as we go. But the key is if it's red, you're you're live. All board members ready? All right, the floor is yours. >> Thank you. Um, appreciate the opportunity to be here on behalf of the WSB. Invite consideration. My name is Ben Ne House. I am the director of member services for those. >> Hang on a second,

003Ben. >> We've already had our first microphone violation. So, will you please Okay. Now, Patty, you can't touch >> that over. >> Okay. So, thank you. >> Uh, my name is Ben Nih House. I am the director of member services for the Wisconsin Association School Boards, Association of School Boards. Part of my role is overseeing our our search and governance uh uh services and offerings. So I have the pleasure of working with Patty Vickman along with five of our other governance or governance and search consultants that work specifically in search services. So uh happy to be here to co-present with Patty who is one of our lead consultants and would be leading this search if you do select WSB. So with that I'll turn it over to Patty. >> So welcome. It's a pleasure as

004well. Um >> okay >> you're gonna cut mine off. Okay. >> So, it's a pleasure to be here as well. Um, just a little bit about myself. Um, I have a fondness for Green Bay. I actually began my teaching career here quite a while ago, but began as a kindergarten teacher here in the district. Um, since then, I've served in public and parochial schools, large and small schools, rural and urban schools with the majority of my time being spent in Oshkosh around 27 years. uh where I served as a principal, a curriculum director, supervised principles, um did reading coordinating for the district, and also was a human resources director. That was prior to my last 10 years of my career where I served as superintendent in the Southern Door School District. So, that's just a

005little bit uh of my background. We really uh thank you for choosing us and we would like to just briefly go through some of our services that we will be providing. Our search is really intended to be responsive to what your aspirations are. You've done lots of work over the past couple of years um with your graduate profile with um some of the decisions that you've had to make in your community regarding school finances as well as your school buildings. but ultimately your mission statement of educating all students to be college, career, and community ready that are inspired to succeed in our diverse world. And so our goal is to find you the best leader that will enable you to continue that um journey that you are on. We are specialized in working uh with

006Wisconsin school districts and uh ceases. And I'm going to our search process. We have a standard process that we go through where we really want to engage your community, your staff to get insights that's done in a number of different ways. But it's really up to you as a board when we go through a planning meeting as to how you want to do that. This will be your search. you will get to see all the candidates and we are committed to partnering with you to make sure that your goals are set. And so when we have our planning meeting, that's a very important part that we do with our search process. I'm going to let Ben talk just a little bit about our postings when we do our searches of how that is handled and

007the extent to which we do that. >> Yeah. Uh again just to emphasize it is your search. So our our focus in this is facilitating the process so that you can stay focused on what's important which is focusing on the candidates the feedback from the the school community applying that to what you're seeing u with the candidates that are going to be before you. So, I I think we have a slide a little later that's going to hit on some of the posting pieces, but um we really our goal is to spread the word of this search as far and wide as we can. And we do this through a variety of uh networks and different channels that we have from here within the state to well beyond through our affiliation with the national affiliation

008of super state superintendent searchers which is 37 other uh schoolboard associations um that we partner with in consortium to market and share of our offerings. Um part of our search also is through the uh association of school administrators at the national level. So our postings are going to are going to be shown that way. So a big piece of what we continually improve on and and offer is a diverse spread of how we we get the word out. Uh we have a portal that has 500 plus actually it's closer to 600 applicants uh from searches that we've conducted in recent years. each of those individuals is going to receive an email of of this vacancy. So that that's an overview and I can share a few statistics a little bit later in the presentation too.

009So um again the biggest thing is networking in this day and age uh word of mouth the the more we get this dispersed and put out there we use so many avenues because there's people that know people. So, we know um there's a great network of candidates likely within Wisconsin. There's going to be a a great network or a great pool of candidates beyond the border of Wisconsin, too. So, our job is to get this out there to in a way make your decision hopefully somewhat difficult in bringing in a very large pool of candidates that you're all going to see with full transparency. Um, and we're going to take direction from you of how you want us to help, if you even do, in narrowing that down. But all the candidates that come in,

010regardless of that number, you you will have immediate access to them through our Revelis portal. Um, soon as it closes at 11:59 p.m., whatever date that is, at 12:00 a.m., that portal is going to open for each and every one of you to view all the candidates and all their uh submitted materials. >> So, basically, our search stages include the stages that you see. There's a planning and preparation stage which is really where uh the consultant where I would be working with you as the board to say what are the characteristics you're looking for in your next superintendent how do you want to engage uh your stakeholders your staff if you want to have focus groups if you want to have a communitywide survey that goes out. Some people do one or the other people

011do both. Some people do a listening session uh to get information in. So we really plan. We also plan even though our proposal had a draft timeline in of events, that's where we finalized that time because we know as individuals and board members that there are vacations planned and family things that are going on and you also have your own time schedule of h of board kinds of things. So, we want to make sure that we've got dates set up that work for everyone. Um, the engagement with stakeholders, like I said, that's going to be up to you to decide as a board how you would like that done and then it's my job to facilitate that for you. We also at our planning meeting will give you a resource guide and I'll have Ben

012just quickly pass this around. You will get this at the very first planning meeting. It gives you um some legal guidance, although I know you have your own attorneys, but some legal guidance just as far as the search goes. It also gives you examples of interview questions. It gives you examples if you're going to do a stakeholder interview. Here's some ways that it has been done. And there's a number of different things. As we move through the search, there will also be additional information that will come to you as a board to include in that binder. You will be able to get a salary and compensation schedule of superintendent in the area or of larger schools that you would be interested in. If you decide to do a stakeholder group or you decide to do

013a survey, you will get the survey results and the stakeholder results. So, all of that stuff is going to be in there for you to review. As Ben said, in all transparency with your community as far as the search goes, a lot of the interview task we will go through, you will decide, do you want one interview, two interviews, three interviews? Do you want um certain staff members involved at some level with the interview process? when you get down to your finalists, um, are you going to bring them in for a day and do a tour and have interviews or however you want to do it. We're really open to being flexible to what you feel the community needs and what you need as a board in order to make your decision. We do not

014hire your superintendent. You hire your superintendent. We just facilitate the process for you to do that. uh the candidate selection. You'll see when you go through the binder, there are a number of rubrics that we can share with you to help you facilitate how you select your candidates and you winnow down the pool that you have and then also in closing up the search. Um some guidance as far as looking at contract what you want to do for transition for goal setting. The last part is a complimentary services that we provide as WSB. We provide a transition meeting usually within the first four months that the superintendent is on board. And that transition meeting is with the board and with the new superintendent. And we go over relationship things. We go over roles and responsibilities

015because everybody's different in how they handle things. Yet there are some very significant statutes about what are things the board does, what are things the superintendent does. We also facilitate a goal setting process so that you can um be working. A lot of the superintendents might come in with 100 day plans or things like that, but this is usually within that first three to four months. It gives you both a chance to see how are things going, what kind of goals do we want to have for that first year. And then also complimentary you will get um the an annual subscription the first year to our new superintendent evaluation process and we have been seeing a huge amount of success with districts. really happy with that because not only do we help them plan out

016the goal setting and the evaluation cycle for the entire year, but we provide closeair support all the way through from getting the superintendent to do their self- evaluation to the board doing their evaluation to even providing templates to assist you when you are writing the final evaluation. So that's uh those are extra things that have been added just within the last couple of years. So this is just a slide a little bit more about the planning meeting. Of course, one of the most important things is the posting vacancy that Ben uh talked about. There are some optional uh levels like if you wanted to post to some specific national groups like uh Hispanic administrators or something like that. Um we can add that to the posting, but that's typically up to you. Otherwise, we do

017have a pretty broad range of um ones that we do. The one thing that you need to know is that we do not go out and recruit individuals from our member districts. Um, we feel that we are a service to our member districts and it's important to honor that. If a member district's superintendent decides to apply, that is totally on them. We do not go out and um recruit. The reason why we do focus groups and a community survey is they their comments along with what you want in a superintendent are used to create a leadership profile and that profile is put in a brochure that is put on our portal so that when applicants apply they can look at it and say this kind of matches my skills and my talents. This is something

018I feel that I could bring to the district. the brochure. I gave you a copy in your folder of the one we just recently did for Manitawalk. I know you have a public relations department and they may choose to to do their own in Manetwalk. It was a combined effort between their social media person and our offices, but we want whoever is applying to your district not only to know what you're looking for in a leadership profile, but also to know what the community has to offer. We're pretty sure most people know that they offer the the Green Bay Packers are here, but there's a lot of other very rich and very um interesting groups and organizations and educational institutions that you all work with as a board that would be highlighted in that brochure

019that we put out. So, that brochure is also an opportunity for you to sell your school district. What are the things that you feel are important to have in that school district? So we work side by side with you to make sure that the brochure is something that you are comfortable with. Um again the engagement with stakeholders a community survey basically we um ask individuals and you can choose to do this in a number of ways either with an email link that is sent out or something on your website. Some districts also send out a postcard with with the link on it. It's really up to you how you want to do that. Or you can do focus groups or both. Focus groups are typically you invite people in at different times of the day

020or evening and we have the same sort of questions that we might ask on the community survey. But some people just feel more comfortable coming into a meeting like that and being able to talk. So, planning and preparation, the application period once we decide it closes, like Ben said, you will get immediate access to our portal at 12:01 midnight uh to be able to look at everything that is there. And typically what we see is that people have their letter of interest, their application, their references, they have their transcripts, and then if you decide in our planning meeting you want some essay questions answered, we can do that. It's really up to you as a board what you want to see in your application process. Um, all of those materials are collected and then we

021meet together as a board and a consultant. We go through them. And again, the process that we use will be up to you as to what you think works best for you and your board. You will be identifying the candidates, the candidates that you want to bring in for your first look or to have some additional screening done on. Um, and you'll also be identifying the interview questions. Um, we have lots of samples that you can pull from in various themed areas, but we can also create our own and that's the advantage of having someone with an HR background. I can help you create some of your own if you would like to have those. Again, you will see all the applications and you are the ones who select the applicants for the first interview.

022We finalize the interview questions. I will schedule the interviews for you. I reach out to the interview things and I'll probably be working with Kinsey to make sure of where they arrive, what door they come to, all of those kinds of things so that when they come they feel just as welcome because nowadays they are interviewing districts as much as you are interviewing them. So we want them to have a really good experience as well. The final process. This would be typically after your final interview, which again is really up to you what that final interview process does. Maybe you feel you've had enough things along the way that the final interview is just with you as a board. Sometimes it's a visit to the community where they actually get to meet the community or

023they have a listening session. Sometimes there are some stakeholder interviews as well. So, we will craft what all of that looks like. and again what your final questions will be. Uh we conduct and maybe Ben you can talk a little bit about the background checks that we conduct and how that may fit into theirs with the reference checks. >> Yeah. So we use a third party vendor. It's called Absolute Background. That's uh who we've used for as long as I'm aware of. Um and that's going to conduct the the the state the county state national search criminal financial going to do educational background and verification with that. Um so that's a the third party that uh they're in the business of doing that. So that's who's doing those checks. Um the second to last bullet

024there schoolboard com school board completes the reference checks. We provide resources to assist. We can do the reference checks ourselves directly. our process. We highly encourage a member or two of the board to conduct them so that you're hearing it firsthand versus us kind of reiterating and bringing it back. So it's it's fellow board members who are hearing the full context of those conversations. But no, at the end of the day, if you are desiring us to do the reference checks, we certainly would do that. Um so I think that's pretty much the what I needed to share there, >> right? And then when it comes time for the final decision, you know, sometimes it's pretty clear with a board, but sometimes it's not. And so we do have protocols and strategies that we can

025use to facilitate you're having that discussion and really feeling that whoever you decide as your uh superintendent candidate to hire really does meet the qualifications and the characteristics that you initially sought to fill. Um in your folder you also have um the timeline. Again, it's typically a three to five months process uh from when we do our planning meeting to when the superintendent is hired. Um but that can vary depending on the schedule and what your goals are and that sort of thing. So we provide you with a draft just so you can kind of see the steps and the timing in there. We typically don't do less than four weeks for at least posting the position. Although we have in some cases when it's been May or June and they they need a quick

026turnaround, but typically you want to at least have it out there that long. Sometimes it's longer than that depending on what the board chooses. One thing is where you're at as a district right now, you you do have a first mover advantage where you've known you've needed to find a new superintendent for some time. So, you are on the front end of that. So, to the four-week posting um and probably, you know, we want to we want to offer the process with fidelity because of where you are in the school year or the calendar year versus we're having this conversation and starting it even in January. Um, and I think another thing that will dictate a bit of that three to five month window is how much engagement you plan to have with stakeholders on

027the front end. So if it's survey only, we open that up for a few weeks or you open that up for a few weeks, you get the return versus are you going to have three or more focus groups and what's you know your capacity or prerogative as a board of oh we want to do focus groups in one day but we got to start at 9:00 a.m. till 5 at night versus breaking it up depending upon the number of focus groups you have. The thing is is you are in a position right now um where again you have time on your side because of having this right now versus three four months from now. >> So you can see on the timeline we've already got things started >> we've already got things starting uh midocctober

028with you and again that can go as quickly as you would like depending on the steps you want to take but like Ben said you really are in the first round. I mean any superintendents who who might be looking to move from their district typically are starting to do that in December, January. So I think you know you're right with that. Uh Ben mentioned earlier uh going through some more statistics. That's your next slide. Ben, take it away. >> Yeah, this kind of comes back to where I started. So again, as Patty shared, we don't recruit in the sense of cold calling to our own members. And part of that too beyond that is we want to provide as diverse or uh candidate pool for you. So we're not committed to any one or more

029candidates to kind of let's try to get this done and move along. We want to get this out um well beyond the borders of Wisconsin, but we know there's going to be great talent here in Wisconsin, too. Um statistically um we we do we get some analysis back from our job uh our job board which the Wisconsin school leadership board we uses does then post to the uh American Association of School Administrators at the national level. So the searches we did last year on average had 28,000 exposures meaning IP address was seeing that posting. If you go a little further, 1,500 plus specific clicks on the posting. So if it was showing Wisconsin administrative openings, ours had 1,500 plus that actually clicked on it at least once to read a little deeper specific to the

030posting. Um, as I said, we have nearly 600 applicants in the WSB portal and some of them may not be active. They haven't removed themselves from there. Um, but at the same time, these are people that are have been are administrators, aspiring administrators. They get an individual email. They may see this and know of somebody that might have an interest in this area of the state, this size district. So, you're getting that pushed out there, too. Of course, we've got our own web page. We've got social media, the LinkedIn, all those social media accounts. I'd mentioned about the national affiliation of superintendent searchers. It is something very neat unique to state schoolboard associations that conduct searches. So 37 there's us and 37 additional state associations where we share um we have forum and our postings

031go out and in turn we bring awareness of all those postings in the other states within our own states. I can share I have a couple conversations each year with my counterparts throughout the nation that are involved in national affiliation of superintendent searchers. We actually had a search last year that uh pulled a candidate in from Wyoming. Um and so it it does it is something unique and more so because you're communicating with those other associations that are conducting searches also. Uh I believe it's in the proposal. It's not on the slide here, but going back to 2022, the the state schoolboard associations that are in NAS have conducted just over 500 searches that have pulled in 5,400 different applicants. So, it really gets a diverse pool out there. So, the the word of the

032Green Bay uh area school district is going to be out beyond Wisconsin. Um, another new addition with our our new um, national schoolboard association that WASB is part of, the consortium of state schoolboard associations, COSBA. The NAS members who are COSBA members actually have a dedicated site or dedicated landing page on the COSBA website that also has all of those postings for the 25 state schoolboard associations that participate in NAS. So we are always looking for more avenues to market promote uh the postings for the searches that uh we have the the opportunity to serve in. So, um, just wanted to emphasize that that there's a lot of there's going to be a lot of views and like I said, we hope to create somewhat of a difficult position with the candidate pool that comes

033before you. And um, if selected or if you have questions here in a little bit, those are conversations we can have as to how we can help narrow if you desire that. And so just uh again mentioning that there's no additional fee. It's complimentary for you to get our superintendent evaluation framework. Uh you get a two-year guarantee if you do the uh transition meeting and goal setting process with that. And you know we have a stake in this as well. We want your school board to be successful in your community working with your kids. We want to be able to work with superintendents in Wisconsin who are successful and so that is why it is important for us to continue that relationship if we would be chosen as your search firm. So this your selection

034as you well know is one of the most important activities that you have as a board of education and we understand that experience is important um in leading school districts like yours and we will work with you in a very supportive way to make sure that we meet your needs. You know, while we can provide counsel and we can provide advice, all the key decisions are being made by you as the board of education. Um, in full transparency with your community, you are the ones who will be putting the process in place. will be facilitating the process for you. But you will be going through the process and then selecting your superintendent and then ensuring that your superintendent is able to succeed when they come on board here in Green Bay. So with that, I

035believe we are right at a half an hour. So we'll entertain any questions that you have. >> Did a great job on timing. I appreciate that self-regulating. Once we got the >> the mics figured out. >> I'll give you a A minus on the bus. >> Okay. >> All right. >> So, Laura, >> thank you guys for your presentation. Um, I'm going to put you on the spot here a little bit and just ask you in your professional opinions because you you guys have been with your organization a long time. What is the general climate in Wisconsin right now with um hiring superintendent, public school superintendent? Um I mean it's pretty public education in general is having a pretty rough time right now. Um and I just I don't know. I'd be interested in hearing

036your your comments about that. It's interesting because you certainly are not seeing uh the pool of candidates that you may have seen 15 years ago, but it's very similar to your other fields of education. I do think that at least in the searches I've done, the people who are going into the superintendencies are going in with the right reasons. They're going in to make a difference for for children and for families and communities. When I said earlier they're interviewing you as well as you interviewing them, they have a range of access to lots of things now that typically 15 years ago they wouldn't have. You know, the media of course is covering meetings. You have your meetings online. Uh you have your community forums and things like that. So they are able to see how

037you function as a board, what the community is dealing with. um just in the past uh three years or so since the last time we were here. Um as I said to Vicki when we came in, I said I have been impressed because of course I'm local so I'm in the area with all of the things that the board and the district have done in the past three years. There were a lot of challenges back those three years ago. Not that there aren't still challenges that you're facing, but there were a lot of things that you have put in place that would make Green Bay a very attractive place for someone to be leading um to make a difference in the lives of children, families, and communities. I think something I'll add to that that

038we're seeing is with the applicant pools being down a little bit, which I can say I think have somewhat stabilized in the last few years, but they're down since pre- pandemic or even immediately after the percentage of the applicant pools that are, and I don't know that this is going to correlate to a district the size of Green Bay, but you'll see at least half to twothirds, they're looking for their first move going from principal ship or a director into the superintendency. Um I doesn't mean that some may not apply to this, but I think you're going to probably see more experienced administrators or what you may see are those that are in the assistant superintendent roles, you know, uh the COO or or assistant finance. So it is more challenging. Um, and again, that's

039typically what we're seeing in the pools versus 10 years ago where it was more you probably already had people with seat time or it might have been other administrators. They've been in the principal ship for 15 years or a director role for that. the the time that the applicants have in an administrative position seems to be a little bit lesser, but I'll be honest, that might not reflect in this just because of the sheer size of the school district compared to other school districts that we do in Wisconsin are obviously smaller. >> So, can I ask you to define what it means when you say the pools are down, right? Can you quantify that for me? Like what's the average number of respondents to a particular >> Yeah. So, in the Pre- pandemic we were

040averaging right around 20 applicants uh per search. Now one of the things I will say in that when we do searches in the Fox Valley down to the southeastern south central part we actually had a search that was over 20 last year. If I'm doing if we're doing searches in the far northwestern north central part of the state very rural much more spread out we might only get three to five applicants. So, uh, to your question, say it was 20ish back in the 19 or immediately before the pandemic, we actually dipped down into the upper single digits. Now, the last two years, we rebounded back to about 11 to 12. It's actually gone up. That's just with our searches, so I can't speak to others, but in uh just being honest on it, it's it's

041it that hopefully helps to quantify it a bit. but our numbers get skewed down when we're doing searches in the far northern rurals. Um, so hopefully that gives some context to it. >> Yeah, it does. I'm going to move on to Janette. >> Thank you. Um, so in your uh proposal that you sent us, you said that um three focus groups are covered in the cost. Um, and I really think that getting community input input is really important. And um, so can you speak a little bit about what do you what is a focus group? Is it just community? Is it teachers? Is it students? So when I think of all those Sorry, I am sorry. I'm trying to Sorry. there. I think I knocked you off. When I think of all those stakeholders, I

042think that that is a lot more than three focus groups. >> Okay. It really depends on you. I had one district where I started early in the morning and I did a staff before school for the moms who needed to get home or the dads that needed to get home right after school. I also did an afterchool staff group. I did a student group at lunchtime which was a selected group and then there was a community session later at night. So it really is up to you and your community and focus groups. Sometimes they you put them out there like I'm thinking of one of the larger districts we did in the valley and one group had 35 people that came and another group had seven based on when the timing was. So it really

043depends on what you're interested in. I think that's why some people are comfortable going with some focus groups and then they also want the community survey because people are really busy and if they can give feedback that way, they'll do the community survey as well. We've planned for all of those in. But if you decide you want extra focus groups, there may be some other things in our proposal that we won't be doing based on our planning with you that will offset that because the number you have is our maximum. And I was just I wasn't going to play on my phone, but I was going to ask did we build in an extra focus group or two in our pricing for them? >> We did. We did. It just the typical says three, but

044we did build into just that part of the proposal because so often >> when especially if we're doing smaller rurals, they'll they'll sometimes just do as few as two. They'll have a staff one, they'll have a community one. >> Um but I thought we did build in a few more. Um, if I could pull the spreadsheet up, I could tell you exactly what it is. >> I think it was six. >> Okay. >> Because we just put the time. We put extra time in our proposal because it may be extra time on, you know, the final end, too. So, we did put some extra time. >> I'll just add one other thing real quick. I know we only have a few minutes. Is on those focus groups too. Again, it's totally your discretion as Patty

045was alluding to because sometimes on the on the staff one and a district this size, maybe you are going to want to do that is we will see where we'll have a focus group that's the professional staff and a focus group that is your auxiliary staff because I think sometimes we see the professional staff um maybe they don't intend to but it can be a little intimidating for the auxiliary staff may not feel as they have as much of a voice as the professional staff. staff, but surely they should >> and deserve that. So that may be a decision you decide to do too is, you know, and you may have your your leadership team and you may want to keep them separate. And sometimes in districts we've got the admin and the teachers are

046together, but the auxiliary staff is a separate. So it just gives you an idea of what's before you for decisions in that. >> Other questions? Andrew, >> thank you. Um, so I understand because of who the organization is why you can't recruit a standing superintendent. So I I understand why you can't, but isn't that isn't that something that would be a kind of a significant weakness compared to another firm who can pick up the phone and reach out to superintendents? They know. My thoughts on that is I guess it it's going to be somewhat subjective and argumentative on that. My thoughts are with get the word getting out there, people are going to know that this is here. And when you put out the community profile and what the district is looking for, if a

047person is really interested in looking for a new opportunity, I don't know that the recruitment call is going to have the same impact if that person is really truly desiring to move on. The awareness is going to be out there. I can't say to your point that it won't be, but we want to bring in the most diverse uh pool of candidates for you. And we again, we don't want to focus on that piece of okay, we think it's this person, we instead of you as the school board. The other thing I can say with that is you do not have to worry about us coming back and recruiting your candidate away for another search. So something to counter, but it certainly understand your question. Um, and can't totally say that that would not play

048out. >> Yeah. Will we have candidates call us and ask us for some more information? I'm thinking about applying. What can you tell me about, you know, give me a little more information? So, we do have people seek out. When Ben was saying the number of candidates, that's the candidates who have completely uh complete applications that were submitted to the school district. Other questions? We have about five more minutes before we h have to kind of go to the next the next presentation. So when you're doing background checks and the um covering um arrest record, etc. Do you screen only one final candidate or if we say, "Oh, these three are really great. We'd like to check all." Do you do background checks on all three? We do background checks on all three. And in

049fact, in some situations, a board may say, "We actually would like the background checks done on the first round interview candidates." So, it's really up to you as a board. Typically, boards will do it on their final two or their final three, but if you are desiring it to be done on the first round, we can do that as well. It's it's flexible. other questions. Um, can I ask the background checks that you perform are standard, financial, criminal, educational? Um, how do you go about determining um outside of references that were provided by the candidate um any other um issues that the board may want to know? Um I'm thinking social media, media exposure, other issues that the candidate opted not to provide as referenceable um engagements. >> Yeah. So we we do conduct uh

050internet searches on the candidates. We use three specific platforms. We're going to use Google, Yahoo, and Bing. from that the consultant and conferring with me can vet is that information that the board may find relevant in their decision- makingaking process. Now, one of the things we all know, especially as it spills over in the social media, because oftentimes on the internet searches, you're going to see your television, your your media coverage of uh boards or wherever they're previously employed with. What happens is we don't specifically search social media. If the social media does come up in the internet search, we are going to look at it. You have to look at that source of the social media because if the social media is taking to for example the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and we know it's

051a vetted trusted source certainly we're going to share that versus you have to be careful that you don't have a situation where it's a a private group that has six followers and it's you know something anti with that administrator or that individual school. We got to be cautious that we don't pass that on and create some sort of a situation of implicit bias that's created for something that is not accurate and factual. But we will search the internet and if those internet searches hit on social media and those social media show, like I said, going to verified television media, we will pass that information on. But um in this day and age, you're all well aware you have to be very cautious on that. I know you have your own legal counsel that you'll be

052able to to confer with that on. So, those will be situations where Patty and or I may say, "Okay, this is one where we're not the attorneys. We're not the district's legal counsel should potentially you should confer with your legal counsel if we think there's one that's on the fence, if you will." Well, >> so Patty, um, we only have a couple of minutes left and I do have a final question if no one else does. Um, was expecting as part of your presentation, Miguel, to have a sheet kind of um detailing the pricing of your uh your engagement. I don't find it in here. I we did submit it with the RFP to Jake. >> Okay. But that's we don't have it here. Is it possible for you? Do you have it with you

053so that we can refresh without having to go back to the portal? >> I could probably access it through my email. >> Yeah. >> Forward it to somebody to Kinsey possibly. >> Yeah, please do. Um so that as we um we'll have it available as we deliberate later this. Yeah, I apologize we didn't put it in the folder. Um because I know there was some other documents and we did submit those. Um and just real quick um I know there's a lot of people listening. The not to exceed price is 24,550. >> Thank you. >> Um we bill as we go along. So to the question on focus groups, say decided not to do focus groups and you're only doing the community survey and we do have the six focus groups built in there. You're

054not going to be build for those. We're going to bill as we go along. Um, but if we misjudged our time and some the planning meeting runs over a half hour, this or that, you know, that's going to be on us not to exceed that amount. But I certainly as soon as we're done here, I'll look and see if I can get something to Kenzie so she can get that spreadsheet before you. >> Appreciate it. >> Yep. >> All right. I think that our time has expired. Appreciate you coming and and presenting and responding to the RFP. >> Thank you. We appreciate >> we look forward to maybe getting a chance to work with you. >> Yeah. Thank you. >> All right. So, let's move to the second presentation. CISA 7 join us at the

055table. you are privileged enough to have heard the >> the instructions around the microphone and you don't have as many people to share it with. So, >> I'm good. I should be okay on that. >> Okay. >> Should be good on that. >> The floor is yours. >> Well, welcome. Um well, thank you so much for having me and I am Erin Melchesky. I'm the agency administrator over at CIS7. pleased to be with you tonight and uh um looking forward to the opportunity to share a little bit more about our shirt search services tonight. Um Kenzie assured that the information we had shared and the presentation I put together was shared with you folks. So hopefully you have that packet with you tonight. Um and I'm also going to have her help me drive through

056some of the website too will allow me to highlight and click on links and she'll help me do some of that because I like to highlight a couple things tonight. So very likely as you read through the RFP process, much of what you saw in some of the proposals are going to be similar in terms of customization and things like that. What I want to talk about tonight too is part of the process that we'll take on and some of the unique pieces that has supported our searches that we've gotten some really good feedback um as well in the past. Uh so see these are some of the service highlights that were part of our RFP and that we'll address as we go through our system tonight here. Um, so part of one thing that

057makes us unique here is we're we're we're in it for the long haul with the district. You know, we have a long-standing and proud history of supporting the districts in our region here, including Green Bay Area school districts. Um, in the last several years since even I've been on with CISA 7, we supported such things. There were some efforts over at Washington Middle School a few years back. You wanted some support with community and staff. We helped we came in and helped support that process and identify some um some key findings for Washington Middle School. We did a school start time study with you folks a few years back as well. The pandemic um came in and sort of I think halted some of those plans and conversations for a short time. Uh but I

058understand there might be some recent traction and conversation about that again. And even more recently, we supported some of the uh budgetary considerations that were coming up in in terms of even school closures and things like that just a few years back. We helped facilitate some of those conversations. So CISA7 has been a great partner to our districts and our region here for the last several years. Um and and we really don't look at us as just a service provider. We're really a partner in education. Looking back at our mission, transforming education together. That's something we stand by with all of our districts of we're not here just to provide that service. We're coming alongside our districts in terms of providing providing that key resources that they need grounded in our purpose of transforming education

059together here. So you saw my qualifications as part of that slide deck. It's my first year as agency administrator at CISA 7, but my ninth year overall at CISA. Been supporting administrative activities at CISA for the last eight years. Um, and look forward to this opportunity in my new role to continue doing just that. But besides me at CISA, you don't get you get more than just myself as part of this process. You get the power of our team. So things like marketing, our marketing team can come alongside of yours and create some different things. And I'll share with you a few examples of that I put in here for tonight. Um it could be administrative assistance support in terms of logistical planning contact obviously we'll contact all the candidates throughout the process. Um facility

060planning as we get in towards the interview process. So we'll support all of those items as well. tech support as we do have an electronic process. I'll share with you a little bit and that'll highlight that support that we have as well as well as other experienced administrators that come alongside and help facilitate whether if it's a community summit, whether if it's survey work um or the interviews themselves. So, there's a power of a team that comes along with CIS7 as well just past myself. Some of which again like I mentioned you'll see as part of our presentation here tonight. So, a lot of what you're going to hear tonight is going to be centered around transparency and customization. Um, this process is is certainly customizable to meet the demands and needs that you guys

061are looking for. Right off the bat, our search um overall search timelines, if you wouldn't mind clicking on that for me, Kinsey. So, this is just a brief example of one of our first planning meetings that we'll set together. Packchuck full of details, right? We help you unpack this process beginning to end because to take a look at that all in and of itself could be really overwhelming. So, we'll unpack that with and for you. We'll start backwards with what's your desired hire date and when you want this contract signed and then we'll get into and start planning backwards in terms of when the meetings are, what we're going to accomplish at each meeting um to really round out the really inclusive process with that. So, if you'd go back, Kinsey, to the presentation, what

062that ends up getting narrowed down to is a simple important dates document. Um, so this will, um, be used as a great resource to highlight, be a one-stop shop for you as as a board to be able to identify here are the CL key planning meetings that we have. Some of the things that we'll accomplish are back on the detailed sheet, but we'll lay it out and map it all out from beginning to end. And again, it really starts with you establishing that timeline. Um, so if you go back to the slide deck, please continue. Thank you very much. So some of the key events that you would have saw in there, some of the important pieces with this is that transparency portion I talked about and how we gain that is through multiple different

063ways. Uh we talk about um activating community surveys so we can survey that information out the key elements that you're looking for in your search to the greater school community. We'll run community summits. It's been a pretty popular piece as well. And that gives you a chance to hear from your constituents in in your district and your school uh community firsthand of what are those key attributes you're looking for? What are those key things that we need to be considered of as we go search for our candidates here? And we facilitate all of those items for you. I'll show you how we help you unpack some of that information here in a second. But really what all that leads is to the key identifications and the key qualities that you want to see in your

064candidates. that allows us to help establish um a really clear and concise job posting so you can clearly articulate what you're looking for in your next leader and allows us to even do things like um customize interview questions. So we make sure we're pulling those key items from your candidates as we're asking those questions. Um we accomplish those in many different ways there. Um so if you go to the next slide please Kinsey. Um uh one of the other things we'll talk about too um is the facilitation of your interview committees. We talked about before about wanting to have really good transparency as we go through this process. This includes the interview process. A lot of times we'll see what that initial round of interviews will be really inclusive of the school community. It could

065be um your staff members, administration along with the board. Also, it could be key community leaders you might have or business leaders in your community that you want to make sure that you get their input on because this position, especially in a district like Green Bay, is key to the community, not just the schools. So, we are a key player in bringing forward that inclusive cross-section of your greater school community to make sure we get all of that information from those folks. So, transparency is one of the biggest pieces we're looking for. One thing that we could consider doing here and and Kelsey, if you or Kinsey, sorry. If you would click on that website link for one thing, um Oh, that's no good. One more time. Yep. No good at all. I apologize for

066that. That one thing is consideration is a dedicated website to be a one-stop shop for everything from recruitment and retention. So, it could highlight all the key elements about the greater Green Bay area and why somebody would want to come to the community. creates some key highlights about the district of why Green Bay is such a great district. People should consider coming here. So, it' be a great recruitment tool for us to bring people into the community and get excited about the position. Another element of that dedicated website would be a great item of transparency for your community. We could have on there the clear outline of the process steps that we're going through as we go throughout the process, including updates as we get to and through major decision making that the board comes

067to through that. along with all of that be a one-stop shop for our candidates. So, if they're interested in applying, we could have um access to the application pieces right at that website in and of itself. So, that would be a great opportunity to bring everything together, including access to confidential information just for the board. So, you wouldn't have to worry about how are we accessing this one and where. You can go to that website. We'll have everything consolidated in one space just for you folks there. So it's a great opportunity to consider of creating this multi-purpose tool for us as we go through that. So as we go through and engage our community in the different areas from surveys to summits and and I'll share with you how we compile all that data. The

068first thing that comes up is a sample survey here for us. So this is just an example a recent one and you can click on next here. Uh example of one that we've done recently for our districts in our region. It's a it's a real simple platform for the community to go through. We have built these to be done in three to five minutes. We've learned that's about the time and attention people will focus on a survey for us. Asking some of the key questions that we're looking for. What is some of the background information you're looking for in your candidate? Um what are the key qualities you're looking for in your candidate? And some other information that the district might deem important as they're going through some of that search process. Kinsey, if you

069could go back. Um another element that's been really successful as well as community summits. And I look at it this way too. It's an opportunity for you to get the voice from your community firsthand. Oftentimes with those, we encourage the board members to attend so they can hear directly from the community members. We of course facilitate those process beginning to end and we'll run through a series of questions that we feel is important for us as we start making some of these decisions like key qualities, what we're looking for in our candidates, so on and so forth. So what we do with all that information, and if you'd go back one more time to the slide deck, please. Thank you. Um, we'll compile a dashboard at the very end of all this that brings all

070this information together. And this dashboard is really responsive. So, you can start breaking down by demographic. What did our staff say? What did our community members say? What did our community parents say? What did administration say? What do we think as a board? And as you walk through that tool, I don't know, maybe click on that number three for us up on the lefth hand side. Thank you. As you click on the different teacher, student, school, support staff, that graph is going to start changing to clearly articulate what the data says to all the different surveys that we ran there. So, this dashboard has been a really great transport uh transparent tool for you as a board to consume that information as well as inform your community of here's what you said. We did all

071this research and and asked you to participate and we're going to share those results with you folks as there as well. So, we found that to be a really nice inclusive tool for us to bring all that information into one clear, concise location. So, at the end of that, like I mentioned, that's going to really inform us what we want that job posting to look like. What are those key attributes we're looking for in our candidates? Um, and what are those key qualities we're looking for? So the next piece with this um as I mentioned to support the the interview process or to support the applicant process is we'll create a a storage location that you guys can have full access to all of the applicant materials. And we do this in real time. So

072we'll share a folder structure with you um so you have all the applicant information from beginning to end with that. Now that's a lot to digest all at one time as well. another document that we're going to create and and uh you don't you can click on it but there's not a ton of data in there because you can't share a ton of data but applicant at at a glance and really what this does is we help dissect every applicant put their key information on there as far as experience or current job posting how long they've been in their position um when you're seeing the different colors in there green usually means good that matches the qualific qualifications you're looking for yellow will mean hey there's a warning red will mean hey there's a red

073flag that we came up with our search so this allows you to quickly as the board um read through here, review the candidates and get some uh basic information that we found during our back um background check process in that. Another element we can certainly consider doing would be a pre-screening tool. So, that's something we can decide to do as a team and you as a board can help determine some of those qualifications. Where this has been really helpful is to narrow down that large applicant pool that we'll hopefully get for your process and determine just who is the right fit for us to bring in to actually interview. Again, we can hone in on the various questions you're looking to see um and hear from your different candidates. We can do this in written

074responses. CIS7 can certainly help do some of the rating on the pre-screener. um the board can obviously do some screening as well and we can bring that information back and you can make a really informed decision of who we want to bring in for that first round of interviews. That's one way that we've saw that u pre-screener tool be a real effective area is to really kind of help narrow down that uh that target audience for us. So as we get to the interview process um like I mentioned we do run an electronic scoring process. So as you click on the electronic uh the score sheets there. Yep. So all of the um people that are helping to score. So whether it be yourself, community members, staff members, it's a super simple scoring sheet that

075comes down here. As they see, you're going to see the questions for each. There's going to be a drop-own score and a spot for score to take some comments and notes. Um not that the quantity means everything, but it's a great point to start the conversation as a board as we bring all of this data and information back. Um, it allows the voice of all of your interview committees to speak for themselves long after they leave the table. And you folks are wondering, well, how did they feel about this person and even this specific question, this allows us to drill into that instantly for us. So, if you'd go back, yep, and click on the cumulative score report. So at the very end of it when all those scores are coming into one centralized database

076for us it allows us to compare each candidate by question by score by demographic. So we can break out well how did the board rank our candidates? Who are our top candidates by the board? As you scroll down the next category be how did our our interview committee score our candidates? And the very bottom one is bringing everything together. What's the cumulative score say about our candidates between all of our groups? gives a really clear indication of how your teams again score those candidates throughout the process. Again, it's a great place to start our conversation as you're narrowing down after that first interview is who are the stronger candidates that are coming coming towards the surface with that. The last piece I put together here as far as an interview process would just be a

077draft interview schedule. Again, completely customizable to what you would like to see, but as I think about what would be great for the district is an opportunity for our candidates to see some of your different buildings. Maybe we're running a round of interviews with staff members um uh uh over at Prebble and then maybe they're coming together with the community over at Baird and then maybe they're coming to the district office area to run their interviews with you folks too. I would see that opportunity to give them many tours in those different locations. A great um a great opportunity for them to get a sense of the district and for the district to showcase some of the facilities and the cool things that you have going on in your areas. So it's an opportunity to

078see the uh facilities to u include various groups as part of that process um and really get a great bunch of information all in one in one sitting. Um again completely customizable just a thought I put together for you folks to consider as we look at that. So talk about um next is the recruitment because that's a really important part of this. Um along with the all the popular and premium spots that you that we that were customary to post those positions. One thing that uh that is successful for us to lean as our CISA statewide network as well. So there's 12 other C or just 12 CES all around the state. Um it's proven to be a really great network as we've gone out to searches and and sought different candidates to that are

079really good fits for specific districts. It allows us to also in the background um you know do a little background checks as well to see if there are things that aren't hitting the press or newspapers that would be important for us to understand and know um and be able to get you guys that information as well. So besides those premium spots again our CISA network is a great spot for us to gain some really good attraction uh to your position. Along with that would be our national network the associative association of educational service agencies AESA. um 40 plus states have um our members of that AESA and that's a great spot for us to get some national traction as well as we have strong partnership with them being able to get your position posted in

080multiple states. Um again there's some great talent I heard echoed before there's some excellent talent right here in the room or right here in their state um that would provide some really quality candidates but it would be really important for us to be inclusive to see if we can't catch some really good candidates from outside the state as well. So, we're fully prepared and able and capable to do a um a search outside of our state utilizing some of those different networks and frameworks that we have really allows us to be that local solution but really have a broad reach across our nation that way. Um again, some of the similarities I heard I know uh hearing from the last presentation a guaranteed placement with that. We offer that as well a two-year guar guaranteed

081placement with that. We offer some um executive coaching and support along with the board and the administrator. Our goal and focus is to make that a really successful transition for that person coming in. If it's from goal setting to strategic planning, whatever that looks like to make sure that superintendent and the board have a successful engagement together, that's our goal as we as we step into that work. So, all in all, we're not just here to facilitate this process with you. We're really truly looking to be a partner committed to your district's long-term success with that living our mission and purpose of transforming education together. That's really the focus behind um our opportunities to do that. And truly one of the joys that I've been able to gain over the last several years of doing

082searches has been that that development of relationships with our boards that last well after just that search period. Um frequently we get calls from some of the other searches that we've done even from across the state either looking for resources, ideas, whatever it might be. It's just proof that we've made a great connection with them and made a difference with them in their districts that way. And the very last slide I had in there, I put in there a letter of support that we had gotten from one of our recent searches from Coler um just as a reference to some of the um things that were capable of doing for our search process. And that so that's a real quick um rundown of our search process. Again, adding to the RFP that we added there

083and certainly welcome and open to questions. >> Thank you very much. So, I'll open it up to discussion from the board. Alex, >> of some of your recent searches, I think you said eight in the last three years. Um, how many of those were from Wisconsin? >> Yeah, you have to turn your mic on. >> We're streaming and they can't hear. >> There it is. Thank you. There. I did screw it up. I'm sorry about that. Um, all of them were in Wisconsin and uh, we had two of them that were in different corners of the state. Many of them were just right here in our local region. >> So, I'm going to ask the same question I asked of Wasby. What has your pool been like? You've you've done this eight times. What What's

084your candidate pool? >> Yeah, so it's been and and actually I was I was really surprised. So, I um ran a a search real recently this summer for an interim position. 12 applicants in three days. we were able to grab. Um that was a real quick turnaround in posting. Um you saw the colder posting we had for that. I believe we had close to 20 applicants for that one. Um we ran other ones that had a little bit longer time in that. We're hitting 20 21 22 somewhere in that region for various searches. What we're seeing is some really good qualified applicants coming through in that process and some other folks that are taking a stab to see if they can get noticed with their resume um looking for that first shot, you know, at

085that position. Other questions, Janette? >> So, how many community summits um are you willing to hold? And does this include community parent summits, staff summits, student summits? >> Excellent question. Um the answer is yes. All of the above there. So, willing to do the summits and break it down even if it's by regional portions of your district. I know um sometimes parents and community members might have a hard time getting to one centralized location. So if multiple summits are needed um in different regions, we certainly do that. There's really not going to be a limit to what we look to do here. Our goal is to make sure that you get all the information that you need uh to be able to make this decision wisely and grab that community information in. So multiple summits,

086multiple um demographic groups that we can bring together in that um our goal for specifically with the surveys as well. if you're interested in putting out a community survey, which is a um a great resource to effectively get some really good data, is to do so in the native languages that are within your district. So, we have, I believe, 30 plus languages that encompass your district, something like that, to be able to do our best to match those and get those to the right people and provide access to them so they can select the survey that that they're most most comfortable with and and fulfilling. We've just um it's our belief that that engagements could be more meaningful if they have a great level of comfort as they're navigating that process. >> Lynn, >> um

087I know that I saw the the cost of your service in your proposal, but I don't have it in front of me right now. Could you please remind us? >> Sure thing. 125 12,500 would be all inclusive with no additional costs that come with that. um that contradicts your RFP. Are are you sure you're quoting the right price or do you have you changed your RFP response? >> Um uh RFP was 145. Am I correct there? Sorry. Excuse me. >> Um and I appreciate you correcting me on that. 145 would be our all-inclusive price for that. >> Thank you. Other questions, Janette? Oh, sorry, Andre. >> Uh, thank you. So, do you um as far as recruiting, do you do you recruit sitting superintendents? Do you recruit super sitting superintendents, but only if they're not

088a CISA 7 member district? How does that work? >> Yeah, our recruitment our recruitment process wouldn't wouldn't be restrictive. And I could obviously privy to the previous conversation ours um and I can certainly appreciate that stance of needing to be careful of recruiting those other folks away. Um we really don't have those same limitations. So we're comfortable recruiting those folks who might be seated. Um perhaps even actively reaching out if we feel somebody might be a great fit for your district. Um especially if they've expressed interest in us and being able to reach out and call them. Um, one of the reasons we're able to get a number of great deal of candidates and that, like I said, a recent three-day search was being able to reach out to some folks and say, "Hey, you

089might be a great fit for this district to take a look at." >> You can do that even within, you're not prohibited from doing that even among CISA 7 districts. >> Oh, we would certainly do our marketing just the same as we would. Um, uh, probably much very similar to the response you had before. Folks would reach out. We'd certainly encourage them to learn more about your opportunity. Um, yeah, I think I I think our opportunity to reach even our districts inside of CISA 7 remains strong. >> Okay, I'm confused. You you could call another CISA 7 sitting superintendent if you thought they would be good for Green Bay or you could only call to other CISA regions to make that direct call to a sitting superintendent. >> Yep. I would say we wouldn't have

090conflicts recruiting CISA 7. >> Other questions? Oh, >> okay. So, when um we have finalists, let's say we have three finalists, are all of them vetted? And what how are you vetting those finalists? >> Yep. That's a great question. Um so, we've done this process in a couple different ways. Um one of way that I think was most effective was doing our background search um right off the bat. So whether it be our internet searches and and seeing through our through our network channels if we can find out some information about the candidates as they come through the application pool is a great way to start as we narrow down our candidate selection and run our first round of interviews. Um you know as we clear those interviews and you're considering bringing back um to

091a second round is a time where we would engage in the formal background checks or the formal excuse me um reference checks. Now whether the board wants to do that on their own or have us do that and make those calls to the references that they offered in both of which would be fine for the very same reasons you heard from the previous presentation. Sometimes it's helpful for you to get that direct information. Other boards that said Aaron you guys go ahead and make those calls and report that feedback to us. So we found after that first round is a good time to make that so you don't bring a candidate into your final round and now learn that's something you just kind of wasted some time. So we learned that's a good time to

092do that. Previous to that, as you get to that first round pool, we're going to run the formal background checks for the national state, all those local searches that we do ahead of time again to make sure that we're not going to um take time and bring a candidate in that has something of red flag in the background. They're not that we're not interested in seeing. So, it's really a multi-tered approach that would start as we get to that first round after their first round and then when you make your final selection. Sam, >> um, in terms of material support as far as developing interview questions, interview protocols, uh, reference check protocols, questioning, things like that. Can you just speak to some of the materials and resources you offer? >> Yeah, of course. So, we

093we put together a pretty expansive list of both first round interview questions, second round of interview questions that are like emotionally intelligent based that make um it be a practical question that they're answering. So they're putting forth both um philosophical and action to that. So we're looking for them to match a philosophical answer with a specific application or an example that they've done in a previous position or or that they've done before. Um part of that process again is sharing that complete list out with the board and narrowing down the questions that you really want to hone in on. A lot of that helps us um gets defined as we do the survey work and we get those key qualities you want to bring through your candidates. we can help polish and massage some of

094those interview questions to make sure we're truly hearing what that information looks like. So, we will spend quite a bit of time on the interview question selection to make sure that you hear what you're looking to hear both in the first and second rounds of those interviews you're looking for with your candidates. And Samantha, you had another part of that question, too. Not only just the interview question, >> but any sort of reference checks or conversations with references as well. >> Yeah, correct. So, we have a form that we've used and put together that has some of the key things you would want to see in a reference check. Um, and again, we can lead that part for you. We can facilitate the board and h and give all those forms to the board and

095allow them to help do that process as well, but we have those already set up and and packaged and ready to go. In your presentation this evening, you provided a screener um that looked obviously it was the first first time I've seen that um but it looked like a written screener where you would um send out and elicit um written responses. Have you in the um the searches that you have conducted um done that um via a telephone screen or something? My my interest is I'm very interested in support on the screening process. I'm not very interested in you screening out any candidates. Right. Um, so, um, if you have, but I also am very interested on in the thinking on your feet aspect of an interview or a phone screen versus being able to,

096you know, deliberately take time to respond to some sort of questionnaire. Have you considered potentially recording or doing Zoom calls and providing transcripts of the screeners like that? Yeah, we certainly could be completely flexible with that process beginning that I'd put a written screen in there as an example of an opportunity. We could put the same questions in front of them and and run a real-time virtual type screener for them as well or phone screener as well. Again, inclusive of whatever member of the board or cross-section of the district, you might be interested or if you wanted CIS 7 to uh facilitate pro facilitate that process beginning to end and bring that information back to you. again making sure that we find those key elements we're listening for in those answers, scoring that and bringing

097that back as well. So whether it be written, phone, video, real time, virtual, we can certainly facilitate those processes. And again, I I found a great fit for that before you do that first round of interview. Um after you kind of narrow down the candidate pool and say maybe we want to see let's screen 12 of these folks to see who we want to bring in. Maybe that gets narrowed down to six applicants we're going to run first round of interviews for. That's where we found that screener is a pretty helpful tool. >> Other Janette. >> So, looking over your RFP, um, a lot of small districts that you've helped. Um, we're a fairly large district. What do you see different and how are you going to um, deal with that difference? >> Yep. Great

098question. I'm glad you approached that question. And that's why I mentioned before when you're hiring CIS7, you get the power of our team behind this. There's way more than just me. Um I wish I' been able to highlight that website because it's pretty cool. We put together in like two days to um just kind of a shell in a framework. Just one example of what we'd be capable of doing with that. Um quite honestly, I would be excited and for the opportunity to do this with your district. Um the inclusiveness to bring your community along is one of the key elements I would highlight with that. So being able to do those summits, community surveys and those other eventments that are bringing all this information back to the board that would excite me um in

099being able to have that opportunity with you folks. Um besides myself, there are other administrators within our agency that would certainly step in and help will facilitate the summits, facilitate the interviews themselves. Um, so we certainly have capacity at the agency to to run a search for the bigger district and I think meet and exceed what you're looking for as far as expectations and getting the cross-sections of your district together to get that feedback and engagement. >> Other questions? Um, I don't think when um answering the question about vetting, you spoke specifically about your approach to social internet searches in advance. I think you spoke in general. Um can you just um articulate exactly what your process is there? >> Yeah, for sure. So, as applicants come in, a practice that we've always done is

100to start running the background like doing the searches like like you mentioned before, hitting some of the key that Google and the other sites that you've heard to try to see if there are news article that pops up for us and and um things of that nature. Vetting through um the source of those like you heard before is a really important piece as well. Um, we might stay away from the social media parts of that again for some of the reasons you heard before. It could be a community group that might be driving with an agenda. Um, the other item that helps us do some of that searching as well is using our CISA network because some of those items that may have stayed quiet out of the news but still may have been a

101pretty big deal in a district that caused some waves. When we reach out to our fellow CISA admins and uh just kind of check in, hey, this person was kind of interested. Um, any red flags that I should be concerned about bringing this person forward? Sometimes they'll point us in a really great direction. Um, other times they'll say, "Hey, you should do a do do a keyword keyword search like this and find some of that information out." So, we do our absolute best to that information back to you folks so you can make a really good I um make a really informed decision whether you want to bring them in um or that that's something that you should stay away from. >> Other questions? Thank you very much for your presentation and coming in and

102responding to the RFP. >> Yeah, for sure. Thank you so much for the opportunity. We really appreciate it. Yeah. Good luck with your search, folks. >> Thanks. >> Okay. Um board members, um I would suggest that we take just a a quick break and give everyone kind of an opportunity to synthesize what you've heard. Um it's 6:20. Can we just take five? Um and then we'll come back. What I'm going to do is I'm going to open the table um and go around and have everyone kind of articulate what they heard and and um potentially advocate for what they who they would like to see um assist us in the search, right? Um hopefully in that first round around the table, we get a sense of whether or not we have a consensus and then

103we'll put it to a vote if that's the case. Right? Let's take five. board members, we can get back around the table, please. It was with the last one, but not the one before. All right. Okay. What I'm going to do is I'm going to open the floor. Um, Alex, if you wouldn't mind if you want to start. >> Do you Do you want to? I was just going to go around the table. Okay. Laura, are you comfortable starting? >> Comments. >> Do you want >> microphone? >> Right. >> Um, I only have two comments and they're not they don't they're not decisive in any way, but um I'll just say them. First of all, I'm happy with the new direction we're taking in this search. I think I've made that clear in the past,

104but it's worth saying it again. Um, also I like that both of these um organizations have had close prior contact with our district um have helped us in other ways um in a lot of interesting ways actually. Um and they they they they both have a deep commitment to per to public education that is meaningful to me personally. Um, and I just really like that they both of them know us as a district and know our community and know our staff and know our students um, in a way that um, an outside company might not have the same the same level. So, those are my thoughts for now. >> Thank you, Andrew. Um, I I think um both firms offer the hands-on approach that I think was missing from previous searches. I think the board

105needs to not receive. Um, I don't want a slate to be prepicked by a by a third party for us. Um because then you're always left wondering, well, what if what if their number eight would have would have been one of our three finalists? We don't know because they only did seven. So, I was happy to see that with um with both um both firms. >> Lynn, >> I'm afraid you're going to find my observations are conclusive. Um I did carefully read all of the um proposals that were sent to us and um I will say that I was very impressed from the beginning with CISA 7. Um I note that the two organizations that presented to us tonight um showed a $10,000 difference in their price. I thought that was pretty important. But um

106so that's one of the reasons that I um lean toward CISA 7. Um, another one is I like the idea of the early vetting of candidates right at the beginning. Uh, so we don't waste our time or go down rabbit holes. And the other thing is I have this um personal um uh prejudice against lousy surveys and surveys that are just so open-ended that you get a million different pieces of input that really don't tell you anything. So, I was very very happy that CISA provided us sample surveys and I actually uh went in and took the time and not only did I look at the survey, but I took the survey for Coler Public Schools and because you couldn't go to page two unless you did page one. So, I did it. I did

107the whole survey and I said to myself that's the kind of survey I want to do where it has we have given meaningful choices and we'll get meaningful answers. Um I also went through their summit um uh that they were doing the what they laid out for the Coler public schools and pretended I was at one of their community summits and I went through the whole thing and I feel very confident that this is quality material. So, I will definitely be voting for CISA 7. >> Samantha, >> um I echo a lot of what's been said already. I also really appreciate that it was very clear that both organizations were very community focused and community facing. Um both led with uh statements of involving community across the entire process and I really did appreciate that.

108Um, I appreciate the scalability that WASBY offers. I feel like a lot of their processes and things seem very well in place. That's not to say that CISA7's materials aren't there. Um it just from some of the presentation I I got a sense of that those things were highly customizable to us but would need a bit more massaging to be at the scale that we required for the size of what we're looking to do. Um obviously cost is a factor in my mind. Um but that being said I I I'm going to be torn. >> Janette >> definitely hard decision. two very professional organizations that initially when I looked at CIS7's proposal, their RFP was so light. I thought, "Oh my gosh, this is not going to be good." And um I really took a

109lot of time which with each RFP. And um I like that CISA7 uh will do as many community engagement things that we need. And um I like that they're going to vet all our candidates as we see fit as well as WASBY does that. Um I think that my biggest concern about CISA7 is that they haven't done um the size school board the sky school district that um we are. They've been small school districts. So that's a reservation I have though this evening um the thought that they would be bringing in other administrators to assist is really good. I'm concerned WASBY has a a big umbrella where CISA I think is a smaller umbrella and maybe I'm wrong on that but I think um WASBY has a little bit more places to recruit from even

110though they won't recruit from their um members and I respect that because they don't want to be poaching um from somewhere else. So, it's going to be a hard decision, >> Alex. >> To me, it's very clear. To me, it's not a hard decision. In my opinion, it's it's cease to 7 um for a lot of reasons. When we reflect on where we've been and where we are now, where we want to go, we've changed um as in this board compared to previous boards with our focus being um more local, more strategic, more specific um and more cost- effective. There's not going to be a cheaper, better option that meets that than CISA 7. They are as local as it gets. Their search is going to be as local as it gets. They are not

111interested in being uh beyond the border um using so many avenues. The goal is to spread far and wide. That did not come out of CIS 7's mouth. Their goal and their expertise is our area. It is our state. It is people who know us and are committed to us in a district like ours. Um, you know, and I read through all the RFPs as well and all the data and we all know the majority of our school districts in our state are rural. Most of WASB's selections have al and searches have also been for rural districts. We only have so many big ones. So, I feel like, you know, they're both going to be adequate in um searching for any kind of size district. Um, and ultimately I don't have a problem with um

112with the price of CISA because it it I think the community who a portion has not wanted us to use a search firm at all can respect what they heard tonight and what they can provide us especially for such a nominal price. Um I I think most people will be okay with that. I don't think that they'll have a problem accepting that hey if you want to get so much in return sometimes you have to spend a dollar or two. um you know ultimately they are the clear winner. I definitely will be voting for them. That is the only one that I am interested in. Um and I think the thing that sticks out too is they truly know our district. when he was when Aaron was talking from CISA7 about some of the schools

113that he might engage in some of the sessions. I don't think it was an accident that he picked out Barrett and Prebble knowing that they're linked, knowing that those are the feeder schools, knowing that when you're talking about a superintendent learning school, those have some of the most recent upgrades and most to show to prospective candidates. So, really knowing our district is also going to really help us with the candidates that we can attract. Um, I think everything he said made it clear to me that that they are someone that we should definitely consider pairing with to help us find our next superintendent. And um, we'll see if I need to use my other piece of information or not, but I'll I'll wait. I'll leave it at that. >> Okay. I appreciate everyone's uh, comments.

114Um, I am not I'm on team CISA as well. Um, and the reason why I I take that position is the scope and scale of the work that we're calling on them to do does not um scale with the size of district. It scales with the size of candidate pool, right? So, we're regardless of how many students we have and how many buildings we have, we're hiring one person, right? and the the work is going to be sized by the number of candidates and um the activities around that. So I don't see a relationship between size of and complexity of district as much as potentially some of my colleagues um colleagues do. Um I I I appreciate the fact that one attribute of a um district of our size is that we have duplicative services

115of with this firm right we have seen large very capable firms try to help us in the past and it becomes confused as who's doing the marketing who's going to orchestrate and facilitate this because we have those same capabilities in house right What we are looking for is some very very pointed support at kind of the tip of spit spear. When the when the clock starts ticking, the the candidate window for applications closes and now we're in competition with other districts for the best candidates. That's where we need help, right? And that's where we need to flex our team up, handle the triage, and provide the support services that um we really need. So I appreciate that both of them are very um um community focused. Um uh but I I also know that at

116the point in time when I look at the price tag what I and I scope what we really need to the price tag it's more in line with what I see in CISA7's proposal because I could imagine doing most of this work with our potent uh with our capabilities on the front end. Um and we definitely are in a different situation than most firms find themselves in because we will have a superintendent here for a year with the previous superintendent in support. Right? So some of those postcontract support services I don't think that we'd leverage um um as much as we would have before um this this opportunity. So I'm um I'm on team CISA. So, um, everyone, anyone else have commentary questions? Alex, >> and I'll just, um, maybe add as well because nobody

117really touched on it, the specific materials that were provided in the presentation that we would be able to utilize and exactly what it looked like and knowing how it worked and what we would have access to, we got to see from CIS7. So, we got to kind of live how we would be going through that process with those materials in their dashboard. And I think that would be critical because again as he highlighted being able to see a huge timesaver of a process where we can sparse out this is how these people felt. This is how this part of the community felt is again it it's a service that saves so many other services that we don't have to do and allows us as board members too to really save our time knowing we have

118a lot of other things we have to focus on as a board as well. >> Right. Others. Okay. So, if that's the case, I'm going to close discussion and then we'll put this to a vote. When um Kenzie calls on you, just respond either CISA or WASBY and let's proceed. Is that >> I'm sorry. Apologies. >> All right. Let me go back. Does someone want to read the motion? Lynn. I move that CISA7 be contracted to assist the board of education in the superintendent search. >> Second. >> Okay. So, I'm going to re I'm going to retract what I said. It's a I or an A um vote. Um and if you want to um if it fails, we can amend the motion to the second. Can you vote online? Yeah, let's vote online. >>

119Online voting is now open. All votes have been entered and the motion is carried. Uh the individual board member votes are as follows. Becker yes. McCoy yes. Liarly yes. Gerlock yes. Mow yes. Canel yes. Meister no. Motion carries six to one. Everyone, I appreciate the time that was taken to review all of the materials submitted um and the discussion. Very very pleased to say that we are moving on to the next steps. Thank you everybody. So I will entertain a motion to adjourn if we are done with our agenda. >> So moved. All >> in favor? I >> Okay, switch meetings. Um, >> okay. Yes. So, we'll take a quick break. Um, how much time do you think we need? 10. Five. Yeah, we'll be back at five to reconvene and a special work session.

120Okay, we're coming back. So, welcome to the September 8th work session portion of the evening. Um, McKenzie, can you please call roll again? >> Becker >> here. >> McCoy >> here. Larly >> here. >> Gerlock >> here. >> Minnow >> here. Neil here. Meister here. >> Great. All board members are present in the counter. We also have superintendent buyer joining us at the table this evening. We have uh open forum next. Uh does anyone in the audience um desire to speak to the board? We don't think we have any um applications yet. If none, we will move on to agenda item number three, strategic planning. Um I would invite um Mike David up to the board to lead us through that presentation. So this is keeping in uh with a a new process um this

121year where associated with our strategic plan there will be on a monthly basis um some presentation some um uh section of that or pillar of that strategic plan will be discussed at the board table this this evening. We're going to start with thriving workforce. Who's going to take it? David, >> I'll get I'll get us started here briefly and then uh turn it over to my colleagues. Kinsey will have the uh slides on the screen that we'll scroll through as we present to you. Um President Larly and board, this is um this is a big moment for us to kick off our monthly conversations around our strategic plan. Continuous improvement is critical to a board and a district's success. And the strategic plan is the most valuable tool we have to name the areas that

122we're seeking to improve so that our children and their families can find even greater successes in our district. Monitoring a strategic plan isn't about assembling a scrapbook to show all the great things that are happening. It's about showing what's accurate, what's true, what's real, and what we know we can build upon to become even more successful. So, we'll kick that off today uh with a focus on thriving workforce. We'll begin first with a bit of a review around what our goals in this area are and where some of our actions have been focused. We'll share the data that is behind where these goals came from as as teams came together and looked at our reality related to the thriving workforce. um that was a data-informed conversation and we'll share some of that data and then

123most importantly we'll talk about what we've been engaged in since the summer um in this really exciting journey to improve things for all uh my colleagues Mike F and Chris Coller will take the conversation from here I'll be listening especially for ways that we can continue to improve these types of presentations to the boards thank you gentlemen >> thank you David and thank you board for the opportunity to uh connect with you tonight And um Mr. Chris Ker and I are here to to represent work that's being done across the district by a lot of people. So we're merely representing the work that that we all do. We all um prioritize in in this space. Uh we start with that visual of the portrait of a graduate. Um to set the stage for what we'd

124like to share. I appreciate this portrait of a graduate picture being up here because it it reminds us every day of the larger picture and what the board has committed to as far as our overall purpose and our vision within that five-year strategic plan. Without a thriving workforce, we'd be pretty hardressed to realize this vision for our students. So, we also appreciate the fact that this domain of thriving workforce has been called out and is viewed as so critical. on the next slide. Again, for these first few slides, just a recap and a reminder for everyone of where we've come from. We've got strategic priorities that include academic excellence, thriving student body, family and community engagement, and tonight we're focusing on the thriving workforce where a group of diverse um participants helped contribute to um

125our characterization of what a thriving workforce is. one where we are authentically engaged, have the ability to grow professionally, are embraced for our unique talents and gifts, and are passionately committed to student success. And so tonight, um, we'll be talking a little bit about how that strategic priority is being worked on, being updated within the overall strategic plan. Um, and we'll capture a few a few aspects of it. not not all of what we're doing in the thriving workforce domain, but certainly some key elements that we believe are timely based on this time of the year and where we are at the onset of this 5-year plan. So, uh the five goals on the next slide that were articulated um related to thriving workforce uh are reflected there for you. And we're going to pay

126particular attention tonight to the first two. um the idea that we are striving over the next five years to get to a place where 95% or more of our staff will be injury or accidentfree during the school year. Uh as well as 90% or more of our staff will be uh present uh on on student contact days. It's very important for our folks to be able if we're going to say that a thriving workforce is authentically engaged and and fully committed and passionate. Um we want to make sure that they are they are healthy and well and safe and injury-free and um are are present. Um and so that that's where we have these two over the five-year plan. Um and we are focusing in year one on a benchmark of getting to 90% um

127with regards to the injury or accident free during the school year and then 85% uh related to uh uh attendance. Okay, and being present on student contact days. Uh we'll be focusing also this year on those other three areas as well, but tonight we're focusing primarily on the top two. um and those are present in the the dashboard that I apologize before we get to that. The actions we'll be pursuing relative to this um include working on our attendance policy uh so that our staff understand um you know how our attendance policy is framed up uh working on elements related to staffing position control it's called tracking mechanisms for the professional learning but tonight we'll be primarily talking about some of the actions related to our staffwide deescalation training and some of the implementation of

128our recommendations that have come out of our district health and safety committee. So, that's kind of what we'll be getting into. Um, and again, one final reminder before we really jump in is that, uh, the the board dashboard, uh, the school board has a dashboard access that talks about some of these actions that are captured here, as well as some of the initial, um, numbers are being represented on the next slide where it shows you that we've got kind of where are we now and like kind of where are we headed relative to um, staff attendance um, missing less than 10 partial or full days, being accident or injury-free. um our years of experience, so our retention efforts, uh the fact that folks will be pursuing proflevant professional learning in alignment with our priorities and

129the percent of staff that are earning degrees, certifications or credentials as they continue to engage in that learning. or up. >> I just want to be really clear here when you talk about injury or accident free. Are you talking specifically about injuries and accidents that happen within our our school buildings >> or not just overall in a p in the life of a >> correct not Yeah. For example, I fell off my bike like four years ago, but it wasn't at work, right? We're talking about um Yes. So um Yes. So, so no, we're talking about um you know, we're we're a very large district uh both in terms of number of staff, thousands of staff, right? When we we also consider our substitute staff, our coaches, um more than four times that almost number

130of students and then number of buildings and the acreage of the district. Um it's very very important to emphasize the opportunity for us to, you know, understand all the ways we can stay safe and and not not get hurt at work. It doesn't doesn't feel good to pinch your fingers in a door or trip down the stairs, for example. And so we're working on all those aspects and we'll talk a little bit about what we're doing tonight related to that. Okay. So for starters, what you're seeing here on this slide is um we as an employer, we do um work in the category of workers compensation. So if you get injured um or have an accident um and and file a report uh we we are promoting we have been promoting a culture of reporting

131um which means if something happens you should you should document it fill out our accident report even if you think it's nothing you know like ah you know I'm fine I'm fine a lot of times people might feel like they're embarrassed maybe they tripped or they fell and they're like I'm fine I'm fine I'm fine and and sometimes in that rush of embarrassment they don't want to fill it out they just go on with their day but they may realize a little bit down the road that they aren't feeling so well. So, uh, we try to emphasize and support folks in filling out an accident report. Um, and so what you're seeing here is over the past eight full school years, which run, uh, July 1st through June 30th, and then, uh, the first, you

132know, couple months here in in 2526, uh, these are the number of reports that get submitted. Um and and really of the reports that are submitted, only approximately 20% actually end up having an injury that ends up um you know impacting someone in a manner where they receive medical treatment and and may or may have missed work. Is that a fair accurate statement, Chris? >> That's a very fair statement. The focus on getting this many uh reports filed was one that was brought to us by M3 through our work comp broker to create that culture of safety and encouraging staff that it's it's okay to submit an injury report even if it's you know something like you cut your finger and you needed a band-aid. But we just want to make sure that they feel

133comfortable enough that if something happens, they they don't feel guilty turning in an injury report or, you know, feel that uh the district is going to frown upon them for having some type of injury that might cause them some missed work. We want them to fill out the the paperwork um because you never know what something could turn into a week from now. And in the world of workers compensation, when there's delays in reports and then and then submissions of, oh, I guess my back does hurt and it's been a month or two, trying to tie it back to, well, there was never anything submitted and are you sure it happened at work? It becomes quite complicated. So, we want to make sure that folks um understand that we support them in in that part

134of the process. Um, sometimes, again, about 20% of the reports do result in um an employee having an injury that requires medical treatment. and that medical treatment. Um what happens is you fill out an injury report and uh so the employee fills out the accident report and then they they describe kind of what happened and their supervisor then um you know is has a conversation with them as part of completing the report that talks about hey what are some things that that maybe you know led to this you know are the things that we can understand that could have helped us avoid the circumstance. And so they they jot that information down and then that report gets submitted to our work comp carrier. they fill it out and then they have to categorize what type

135of an injury is it, right? Um and so you can see over um over the past three policy years, so the 22 23 23 24 and 24 25 school years um the there have been um you know a dollar value assigned to the types of injuries that have been experienced in in the workplace and they get categorized slips, trips, falls or disregulated student interactions, struck by or against an object that would be like walking into the door. um or something fell on you. Um not something thrown at you, you know, something fell on you. Um or maybe an unsafe uh lifting situation where you you strain something because you handled the material and perhaps you were maybe burned by something. Go ahead, Chris. >> Uh what I was going to say is the biggest thing

136is understanding that these numbers are pretty consistent with districts our size based on the information that we're getting from our work comp carrier and our work comp broker. and slip, strips, and falls are higher because body parts are expensive to fix, right? And the cost to repair things like knees, elbow, shoulders has only gone up over the last couple years. So something that might have been, um, you know, a $10,000, uh, claim now could be 20 to $25,000. So, um, as our costs have gone up, gone up, some of that can be attributed to the fact that the cost of everything has gone up. So again, in the introduction of the presentation tonight, we we oriented you to um the bigger picture and the strategic plan and the focus on thriving workforce. We've now drilled

137down a little bit into some examples of the why. Like why did that end up there? Well, it ended up there because we want to make sure our workplace is as safe as possible and some of the actions then that we're taking um with regards to training and support for our staff. And so Chris is going to talk a little bit about some of the things that we do and I'll share some of the things that we're doing and where we're headed next. Go ahead, Chris. >> So I'm sure all of you are aware of our our safe schools, our vector solutions platform that we use and you've probably gotten the email saying you've got a bunch of trainings due or you thought you did it, but um so mandatory uh trainings that are out

138there, our bloodborne pathogen exposure, something that we uh require uh our staff to do annually. We've got some other mandatory reporting uh type activities that are required through the DPI, but we use our safe schools platform not only for the courses that they provide to us, but we do a lot of uh using it uploading some of our own specific district uh trainings and then using this platform to get it out to our staff so that um we've got a way to get it to everyone easily and we can track uh who's completed it and who hasn't. Um, but the one big thing that we've done this year, if you want to go to the next slide, uh, oh, sorry, I'm jumped ahead a little bit. Go ahead, Lee. >> Yep. So, I'll I'll toss

139it back to Chris in just a minute. So, we have our mandatory trainings that are part of our platform. Um, we also when people start with us as new hires, they the f very first thing first day that they're working with us during new employee orientation, we let them know that we have a culture of safety expectation and we want to support them in staying safe and well um and avoiding interactions with hazardous materials and how to manage um their experience as an employee. And so right off the bat in their Google classroom and as part of new employee orientation, we do talk about that. And then depending on the employee group you're in, you may get some additional specialized training. So on the next slide, it shows some examples of how our new educators,

140for example, had two days this school year um in August. They spent two days at Edison Middle School and they had a variety of breakout sessions around, you know, prior to, you know, finding yourself in a situation where it might be escalated. What are the things that you do in establishing routines and procedures, the relationship with students, understanding social emotional learning needs of students? Um facilitated by our program support teachers and our directors. Uh our new pair of professionals, same thing. Had an opportunity for um professional learning training where opportunities to learn about how student behavior is a way of communication um and the communicating needs and helping pair professionals who are new uh to the role or to the district uh understand how to best understand what may be going on with the student

141um prior to anything possibly escalating. In fact, we also bring back our substitute staff. So, in August, right before school started, we had our substitute teachers and our substitute support staff had the opportunity to come together and review district policies and expectations. And part of that, uh, Chris was able to work with them on presenting information around deescalation. With regards to deescalation, Chris, so for the past several years, we've done some deescalation training with our staff and we've used a combination of um, the CPI institute is what we use for our non-violent crisis intervention. So we use part of their program along with a program that was uh in the safe schools vector solutions platform kind of did a hybrid and we would do a presentation to uh the the new staff. We do it

142to our pair professionals, our monitors. Um but we got to talking about what can we do more to get some more deescalation to all of our staff. Um so the crisis prevention institute created their own specific deescalation training. um we were able to preview it and all of us trainers determined that it was a really good course. Um we would like to um see if we could get it out to all of our staff for the year and then hopefully uh develop one of our own that we can continue using from that point on. So this school year we were able to um get this deescalation training from the CPI institute and we rolled it out um on the back to school days so that all of the schools um and the staff that were

143present in their back to school training uh went through this uh deescalation basics platform. It was about a 50-minute training. We had uh pre-developed some um places where they could stop and have discussions throughout the training so that we could get some interaction and get them kind of thinking about how it relates to things in their building. Um I did a presentation with the food service department and then um we've got this now loaded up into our vector solutions platform so that all the staff that were unable to um be present at the back to school training, it could be our substitutes, it could be our facilities, our um coaches, things like that. um they will get the the training assigned to them and they can take it online or we do have a couple

144of sessions uh ready to go um in uh October after school one day and then on our October 3rd which is a no student day we've got a couple training sessions for any monitors or or any other staff that uh support staff that want to come to the district office and and get it in in person so that there can be that interactive piece of it. But this training will be active throughout the school year. Um, all current staff, any new staff that get hired between now and the end of the year will get this training automatically assigned to them. So that it'll give them, you know, if they're young uh young teachers that haven't had a lot of time in the classroom, it will give them some some tools and some um things that

145they can hopefully use as strategies to, you know, recognize when students are, you know, potentially in crisis, recognize what that might look like and then give them some tips and tools on how to maybe come up with some um ways to handle those situations or maybe uh work with their students so that they can uh prov provide some kind of way for them to understand when they're getting in those situ situations and how they can work together to try to reduce the amount of of crisis situations they might be dealing with. >> Did you guys want any questions or thoughts now or later? Just so everybody just making sure we know. >> So, Alex, if you have a question, go ahead and ask. >> I was just curious in regards to, you know, deescalation and

146kind of conflicts. Um other than more staff training, are there other policies or um systems or actions or anything else that has been done on this particular front to help improve a thriving workforce? I think um if you could if you could scoot ahead, Kinsey, there's a concentric three circle one that has to do with uh towards the end here. If I'm understanding your question, Alex, I think that it's it's a combination of like I said at the beginning, Chris and I represent two people that support this work and lead some of it, but there's other departments that have, you know, work that goes on here, right? So when we talk about relationships, okay, that's a big part of the training that people get on the front end to prevent students from not having a

147positive rel getting to know your student getting to know your students, knowing how they tick, how they work. That's one thing that's a very very precursor to, you know, knowing knowing how how someone is behaving and what might cause them to be agitated or irritated or frustrated. When we get to the next slide, then what deescalation training do you have? If someone is escalated, if someone is stressed out, do you recognize it? What do you do? How do you recognize it? How do you position yourself physically? How do you know what's going on there? And for some of our staff, um all of our buildings uh have staff that have been trained at a um in something called non-violent crisis intervention. Not everybody has that, but all all um schools have aspect or have access

148to it. And there's a signup sheet and there's a budget that's affiliated with with that. Right. And then um Chris is also going to talk a little bit about uh the CIGICS um uh badge which is part of the process as well. And I'm not sure if that's getting at what you're asking or not. >> No, it is. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like basically asking the staff to do more training is the one and possibly only thing that's geared towards dealing with student escalation and behavior situations to help improve the thriving workforce. There aren't anything else in play that we're implementing or changing. >> I'm not quite sure what you mean by what else we'd be doing. I mean that there is a nonviolent crisis intervention training for those that need

149it and that the deescalation piece of this training is basically pulled from that nonviolent crisis. So you're training your staff minus the physical interventions. What's >> I'm sorry. So what I'm getting at is this is something that has been um communicated to me consistently uh for a long time by a lot of people and still is students you know being escalated and being verbally and physically abusive towards staff. It's a top priority. Um, and I guess what I'm seeing is like most of my career in education in our district, it's the basically one solution is to tell teachers or give teachers more training, more training for teachers and most of it's pretty much similar to be honest and a lot of teachers have already had a lot of the types of training. Um, so I'm

150just wondering if there's anything else that we are doing that I'm not aware of to address said situation. Well, I appreciate the question, Alex. I mean, I I I want to also articulate that um you're going to hear, I think, as the course of the year goes on and different groups that present about what does a thriving student body look like? Um what does academic excellence look like? And that includes how do we understand social emotional learning needs of students? And then if if there's data or patterns that emerge around um let's say a student right there's documentation and there are practices and processes involved for navigating that. So that that's that's the other layer that goes into that. It has to do with uh not the department that I specifically work in. And so

151I think the teams that work in those departments around what are the documentation processes, what are the ways that things are are navigated and I know you know that that we've got the you know federal and state laws related to you know least restrictive environment and free access to a free appropriate public education which I know you're not challenging but you know understanding what what may be students needs based on those laws as well. So I can't speak to that probably as best as maybe some others could. Um and and I I do understand the question though. Can I can I ask a a pointed question because I hear what Alex is is saying and I understand the problem set, right? It's it's not much you can do at a personnel level, right, to prepare

152for disregulated students um inside the the frameworks that we have. How has changed the environment? Right. One of the promises of Centix was faster response times, faster getting other people involved, knowing where that um event is has taken place. What have you seen over the last couple of years? Um the impact of that system be. >> So I would say that what you are hoping happened with it is what's happening. Um when staff are activating their their three-click badge alert, they're getting a response quickly. Now, I can't guarantee that it's going to be 30 second response, but they know that there's a staff member coming in. When I did some of this training with uh some of our substitute staff, one of them actually shared a story that they were like so happy because they

153knew someone was coming and they got there within a minute. Um, so that system works the way we anticipated it would work. We've uh had it now for a couple years, so I feel staff are more comfortable knowing that when they activate their badge for a three-click assistance, someone's coming, right? um might be an administrator, might be someone else in the building that's part of that that site responder team, but they know someone is coming to assist them um you know in a in a quick matter of time. I want to go back to Alex's point and I think I know where you're going with this. Um, we do have specialized staff that work out of the district office, the PSTs that do go to their schools and they do work with the staff in

154the buildings if they have situations where um, they've got students that, you know, are in crisis and they're struggling with finding ways to um, help them regulate themselves. So, they will go and they will assist them. We also encourage all of our people that go through our nonviolent crisis training to make sure that they practice what they've been taught, right? because you can come to the training every couple years and have a guy like me talk to you about it and have you practice it for a few hours, but it's important for them to go back to their buildings and work with their teams and practice the things that they're doing to make sure that they're competent in what they're doing, but also feel comfortable in with the people that they're working with. Um, is

155that kind of what you're getting at like on a on a building level? Like what are they doing to besides just getting um information whether it be online or you know someone talking to them? um kind of I mean at at the risk of sounding like a jerk or that this is directed towards you just quite frankly um pretty much the only main tact I've seen taken with us as a district towards dealing with significant student behavior is teachers do more training teachers do more training more training for teachers always towards the teachers when I've said this before I think teachers nowadays in many capacities are more trained than any teach teaching body has been in history because of all the required trainings and things that we now learn in pre-education training and you know

156as professional educators and there's many other ways to tackle the same problem other than just from one way. So I was kind of wondering and want to know and want to see us make sure that especially to attract and retain teachers and achieve our thriving uh um you know uh sorry our workforce. Thank you. um that we are making sure that we are hitting things on the other sides on other ends to diminish the amount of and the intensity of situations dealing with especially with student behavior. Um, you know, when I my last year in the district, you know, there was a student who struck 10 different adults and one of my co-workers was really, really, really hurt um after being hit in the face. And I thought that there's more that could have been

157done. And I want to make sure that in either case, we are doing more than just focusing on what we can train teachers to know or do to really make sure that this totality of this thriving workforce is better. Yeah. Yeah. I I appreciate that and and I don't know that I'm the person to speak to the things that are being done, you know, on a student services level. I mean, obviously, we've got a student services or people services department that work more intensely with the schools than I do when it comes to things of that nature. So, I don't want to speak on their behalf about some of the work that they're doing that I don't know about um beyond just the training that I'm there to provide. >> Can we have Laura? So,

158Alex, I'm just going to ask you. So, if if it's not teachers and teachers are trained, you guys are doing that work. Teachers are doing the work. It's not the students, their students or children. They're struggling in various ways and are sometimes violent. Are you talking about parents then? Parental involvement? Is that what you're trying to get at? I'm I'm I'm curious as to what would be the next step. >> So when people in and outside of our school district, society asks about how can we address some of this problem, which I think is a c a large enough concern concern for a large enough amount of people. Um I think it has to do with a lot of things. How are we setting up our school structure, our school day? How are we having

159our behavior policies um aligned? How are we doing cultural things? How are we addressing and working with our parents in different ways than we have? All of these different things need to be looked at. And I'm kind of concerned that the only thing I'm seeing or hearing is more training for the teachers. That's all I've heard my entire career. And again, at the risk of sounding like a sarcastic joke uh jerk, that's kind of all I'm hearing. That's all I've seen. And things aren't getting better because I think we need to at least consider what the other things are that we can or should be doing to help create a better thriving workforce. >> Okay. I I'm going to >> We don't need to be laboratory. >> Yeah. I'm going to I'm going to re

160redirect us or pivot us back to the presentation. It's a big subject and I I I know there's multiple variables um that go into striving thriving workforce. Um but yeah, let's continue with the presentation. >> Thank you. Chris was sharing some of the details related to um one of the resources that we've put in place and the only the only training affiliated with that was understanding how many how many clicks you do for the different mode, right? uh that's intended to be a resource that supports folks in a immediate situation. Um in addition, um Chris, as the summer came to an end, you had the opportunity to bring in the risk management folks. If we can slide ahead to the next slide, Kinsey, um uh talk a little bit about that experience and what what

161that involved. Yeah. So, we got together the four uh high school principles or ad or at least some of the principles and associate principles and we brought in uh Ted Hayes from M3 who is uh works for our our work comp broker and Ted does a lot of um risk management stuff with different districts across the state. So, we had Ted come in. We kind of had them give a conversation about or start a conversation related to work comp and how it affects things in their building, but more of it was about how we can have give the tools to the principles to work with their staff on, you know, how to, you know, minimize risks in the building related to uh could be a lot of different things from classroom setup to uh different

162things that they're doing. Um, you know, also doing with, you know, trying to reduce slips, trips, and falls. But um and then he provided some some checklists uh to the staff as far or for the administrators to share with staff about different things that they need to be aware of with uh relation to the way that they're uh doing their day-to-day operations and the way they're setting things up. So um we're going to continue to have Ted go and meet with some other principles. He's also uh part of our our health and safety committee and you know uh has a lot of knowledge and um does a lot of good things when it comes to being able to uh explain things to our staff and our administrators in a way to help them understand that

163it's not always about just reducing the risk. It's about creating that culture uh that you know safety is something that they think about instead of going in the hallway and grabbing a chair to put something up on the wall. they're consciously thinking about grabbing a step stool or a ladder to make sure that when they're doing it, they're doing it safely because, you know, we all know that we want our kids to succeed. But, you know, our our students are going to s succeed better if their classroom teacher is there more than if they're out with an injury and we have a substitute teacher in there. >> And that's really a a crucial point, Chris, which I appreciate. On that next slide, as we've we've learned what we've learned in in some of the early

164work over the course of this summer um as the school year got started, uh reflecting on um when when and where and how uh opportunities for staff to get together and share ideas and and learn about uh effective strategies. Um and and some of this is actually also learning about yourself, learning what sorts of things uh are triggers for you as an adult, right? um because a lot of times the same things that that might trigger a student to be um concerned are things that trigger us as adults as well. And so it's it's about the the human beings who work together um no matter what their age uh you know recognizing that the part of a a learning community making sure that learning community is positive. It's about us from a facility standpoint um

165ensuring that uh training around the facilities and and how we lift and carry and move with things um are done very safely. Um, and so, uh, as we've looked at what that looks like logistically, um, we have to figure out, you know, where in the employees core calendar, uh, are things best situated? Um, when when do we, um, when do we help people balance the fact that they just took a bite of something and they didn't finish chewing that, we gave them something else to take a bite out of to chew on, right? Um, and so navigating some of those things and then again, timing and relevance of the training. When's the best time to hit on certain things? So again, it comes together with kind of three, if I was going to summarize kind

166of like the three stances on this, um it has to do on the next slide with um being prepared. So how do we ensure that um we are as prepared as possible to have a safe uh environment for for all of our staff and that includes supporting their understanding of building relationships, um supporting their understanding of proper lifting and handling techniques and ensuring the facilities they work in are properly cared for, right? um and the materials are up to date and safe. Then if something does start to occur, the next slide, how are how are we prepared to be responsive? And so ensuring that folks have received the sort of training that they need so that they know how to respond when a situation um escalates. And so we're talking about that and then afterwards

167being reflective in our practices. And so uh looking at if we have an accident to review why did it occur, is there a pattern or trend affiliated with something? um understanding how the data is shaping up and then you know bringing the the minds together um around this topic so that we can keep working together as a as a priority. So we're just requesting that we continue to prioritize the maintenance of our facilities uh prioritize support for continued preventative training. Uh we're going to look at the summer data that's come in, the data that's going to come in as the early fall comes in related to opportunities we've created. And then as the calendar is created for next year, identifying which staff groups have opportunities for which um um engagements around this topic of of

168safety so that they can have great attendance and they can be present and they can be uh be as well as possible and serve our students. So thank you again for the time. Any other questions? >> Sam? Yeah, I just want to say thank you. Actually, I'm going to be the the one in terms of um a committed focus on deescalation training. I think it is really important. I've taken in my roles as a classroom teacher and my role as a teacher educator now, I probably take some of those trainings twice a year, every year, and have for a number of years. Um and I think that I do pull something. There's a nugget in that every single time I take it, no matter how many times I take it. Um, and I just appreciate

169that being a focus and a very intentional focus. I also can tell you that that's forcing conversations in my day job as well and how we can better prepare our pre-ervice teachers for deescalation situations and working those trainings in as well. So, thank you, >> Laura. >> Um, I don't have any questions. I agree. I have a lot of gratitude for the work you guys do in this particular area. Um, the Chamber of Commerce here in Green Bay just uh put out a report about our community and named our district as the second largest employer in this area. 3700 plus employees. That's a startling number. and managing them and making sure they're safe and making sure the surroundings whatever building they're in in whatever job they perform that they're safe and they're trained well is

170um is a heavy lift. So um you know it's important that we keep them keep them trained, keep them safe, keep them prepared for whatever job they hold. And um and then lastly um a lot of stuff goes on in our buildings. And I think people forget how physical the jobs are that um that not just teachers but a lot of the other people who work for us as a district, how physical those jobs are and how um the potential for injury is um always present. So that's just my observations. >> Thank you. And just a reminder to use the handrail on your way down the stairs tonight. >> So I I I also want to just recognize that as a teacher, your interface with these kind of programs is going to feel very training

171heavy, right? I am looking forward to as we navigate this year to see the impact to students around our cell phone policy and other things that are receiving national attention right now. as um global problems um and how these new cell phone policies are impacting the regulated student body within schools because I agree with um with um Alex it's it's not all training um as a teacher it feels like all training right because that's what you need to be is well trained but um I know that there are covering policies some new some old um that just you know we need to rely on to help the student body um navigate the school day um successfully because that it all rolls up, right? Um so appreciate the um conversation. Apprec appreciate the presentation. Do you

172have anything else? >> Just appreciate the opportunity um and the support behind us. So thank you. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. >> Okay, we'll continue down the agenda. Agenda item 4A. Alex, I think you're going to manage education today. I'll pass the chair to you. >> That is correct. Thank you. Um with our education update today, uh we're going to be going over course listings for 2627 school year. Um this is an annual process that we go through and reviewing any possible uh modifications to our course book and course selection option. Uh particularly for middle and high school. Uh we will have associate superintendent David John's also Eric Khan and I believe um we also have um some representatives from Tiny Earth as well as we are going to learn about um a

173new program opportunity. >> Thank you Mr. Mow. Thank you again board for this opportunity. Um I'll have uh Dr. Eric Khan and our guests are right behind. Um here here's what I wonder if we could do if we could field questions in general about the scope of the course uh book changes and updates and then uh would love to bring our guests forward to highlight again that exciting uh component of a new opportunity in our schools. >> Sounds like a great idea. >> Sorry. Go ahead, James. And so in reading through this memo, the only question I left that with is any changes to the delivery methodology, would they be listed in this? You know, over the course of the last couple of years, there's been a continued conversation about how Canvas could be leveraged

174to deliver some of these courses in an asynchronous or a a virtual format. I would I expect to see any changes, you know, communicated through this memo or is that a different topic? >> You wouldn't expect to see those changes communicated yet, but as we committed when we talked about the future of virtual learning um particularly as it uh related to KJ Academy, we are having those conversations. In fact, we're scheduled tomorrow to continue the conversation about virtual opportunities. um that would come to you as an amended uh update to which of these would be which of these or any others would be available um online. So yeah, thanks for bringing that up, >> Samantha. >> Just a quick clarification in looking at some of the course changes here. Um, I just noticed that it

175appears some of the EL intensive things for math are going to be happening only at Southwest, but that ELA for our newcomers and highintensive supports for our language learners are going to be happening at East. I just some clarification on kind of where and how those kids might be served. >> Sorry about that. Um, Julie Seafeld from our multilingual learner department is going to be able to answer those questions. >> Thanks for the question. So, we have uh different programs for the different types of students that we have. So, at Southwest High School, that's where we have programming for our students with limited or interrupted formal education, our SLI students. So, Southwest is the only school that offers those SLI math classes. So students who are new to the country who do not need Slife

176courses, those students are housed at East High. You're welcome. >> I want to ask my question right now as well since you're here because this would be for you as well most likely. Um kind of related. I was just noticing and I just realized this now um opposed to when I looked at it earlier that a removed course it looks like bilingual um LA 7 and 8 and then that would they would be enrolling then in English language development. Can you kind of teach me what that might be um and how that looks? So a few years ago, the bilingual program was under the teaching and learning department. And so they had courses created for newcomers who are in the bilingual department. And that's where that language arts bilingual seven and eight come. So it

177was a secondh hour class to their universal ELA class that focused on English language development. So our ESL students always had um English language development courses. Now that bilingual and ESL are back together under the multilingual learner umbrella, we're just going to be running the English language development class. And there will be students from the bilingual program and the ESL program in those courses. >> Okay. And is that a block then? Like a two-hour block or >> No, it's a onehour course and it is in addition to their universal grade level ELA class, English language arts class that they all take. Other questions? All right, then I think we can move to Tiny Earth. Fantastic. So, as they're kind of getting setting up uh set up here, if you did not notice, um what they're

178going to be presenting on and uh discussing is an additional uh new course offering in a way that not only did we not have before, but that is also extremely unique and I I might be wrong in saying this, but rather at least only one of two in the state or one of two in the country that are going to have the opportunity that our students will now have. So, Yeah, and I just wanted to join our guests uh this evening as well. We have uh Lisa Merkel and Bonnie Gonzalez from West High School and Professor Brian Merkel from WGB. So, um as you alluded to, we're uh very proud to be able to offer this program in our school and it's a partnership that W uh GB and West have been um together with

179for about the past five years and we're now formalizing this into a course offering for our students. So, Dr. Merkel, do you want to talk about the aspects of the program, please? >> Yes. Um, very nice to be with all of you tonight. So, this is something that uh we're very proud of. I you've alluded to this fact that unfortunately uh offering something like this uh in in the high school has been really uh restricted to the highly privileged uh a lot of money and private domain. So, uh, we decided, uh, a number of years ago that we really wanted to meet the students where they were through this innovative partnership. It doesn't exist anywhere else. So, uh, what we do know is that the curriculum is transformative. 60% of students that show up and

180that's across this country. 60 60% uh that show any interest in STEM switch majors before they graduate. And they cite high school preparation as the number one reason for why they're switching. So we decided that we were not happy with that trajectory and we thought we decided it would be a good idea to pull our resources and come up with the the approach that we currently have which breaks down the traditional brickandmortar instruction of STEM. And I think some of us think it's about time and we're just really grateful that this district in their wisdom and foresight is is willing to work with us this way. So um as a cancer survivor at a 10% chance of making it to year five post bone transplantation for acute myoid leukemia um personally I spent a lot

181of time as a professor and chair of uh human biology at W Green Bay and that miracle is never lost in me by the way either with that prognosis all the years later being able to do this. But what I tend to do and spend a lot of time doing is thinking about how I can eliminate barriers for any student that's interested in STEM. And so, uh, the approach that we take is that our students, uh, meet with us and have met with us over the past number of years that Eric talked about on the W Green Bay campus for two weeks to prepare them for 14 weeks of research at W Green Bay. and we don't put them on any research uh project. It is their own. It's an authentic research experience. Um it's

182addressing the world crisis of antimicrobial resistance and the students get that. So um one of the great features of this is there's a lot of mentoring that's a part of this too. I think that's that's part of the secret sauce to what we do with the students. not only uh do they feel a valued member of their community that they're actually contributing doing something about this world crisis. Um but the fact that they get to um present their data at Lambeau Field in December. Um this program is in 30 countries. It's in 47 states in this country for really good reasons, but it's been largely restricted to universities and privileged high schools. So the fact that we can do this and bring this transformative curriculum to these students and by the way uh when they

183attend the symposium at Lambo at this event that's free for the community. The students at Green Bay West High School uh typically are noticed as being the most prepared students relative to all the college students that are there from universities throughout the state of Wisconsin. students from universities as far as Florida and many of the students at West communicate their science in more than one language. How can we as a community not be more proud of that? And there is something transformative about I never would have believed it because I thought initially Lambo Field it's going to be expensive. It's we we have put together it's about $28,000 a year for that one day but it really does something extra. uh and when the family members attend uh at this free event and witness the

184power of science as communicated from the voices of their sons and daughters. It's not me communicating the power of science, they're doing it. It's the greatest thing that I've done. Uh and it's because I get to work with the people that are at my left and at my right. And to be able to find people like Eric uh and David Johns and Vicki, too, by the way. um uh to be supportive of this uh you know I will retire very happy person when I'm done that's for sure to be able to bring this and expand it further it's really uh tremendously exciting and gratifying happy to answer any questions >> Laura >> I'm thrilled about this um my I guess my question is Is this curriculum fixed or is it adaptable? Because I wonder if

185I wonder if this maybe not this year or the next year, but at some point if this could be linked in some way to our sustainability committee and our sustainability work. I I would love to see our students take an expanded role in that work and maybe it's not a good fit. So I'm asking you >> sorry I would say that the the very nature of this work is highly interdisciplinary. There's chemistry there's agg I mean students whether start with the soil sample that they believe based on the research that they do before they pick that soil sample. Soil contains the largest trove of bacteria that produce antibiotics that you can find in the world. Uh so there's a components to it. There's environmental science. There's chemistry. There's biology. There's so many ways that this

186can work in terms of collaboration and being multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary. So I'm not entirely sure that answers your question, but I would c certainly refer to and defer to my colleagues if they have something um that they think would be more applicable to to your question. But thank you. Uh I would say in addition it's the applicability to the sustainability piece. So it's tied to specifically to the um antibiotic resistance uh work that uh Dr. Merkel talked about, but the skills the students are learning are transferable to broader uh scientific inquiry. >> James, >> yeah, I echo Laura. This is fantastic. what's your current enrollment or you know how many students you do you are participate now and I know it's kind of odd because it's been an outside of school um activity what's your

187target um for the student count as you turn this into curriculum I love this but I'm sorry I'm yeah um I tend to really uh I'm a very big hurt big picture. I I love these kinds of things. I absolutely do. So, um my colleagues tend to want me to slow down a little bit. Um so, I think this is a a great step, but I really think this is a a blueprint uh to teach STEM wherever there are high schools and wherever there is a a local university. I just think it's time to change. I I so I'm thrilled that we're we're doing this, but for now maybe as I I try to slow my own role with this. Um it's it will be offered to every high school student uh throughout the district

188and we can accommodate um I think we're going to start uh and do this incrementally so that we we we make sure that we learn what we need to learn as we grow this and be careful. So I believe the estimate is um uh Bonnie and Lisa, can you help me with the exact number we talked about? So it should it let me just back up just for one second. Um well what we learned at part of the success um for this course is the fact that our students aren't paired with anybody else. They actually do all the work from start to finish on their own. This is what helps bridge the gap for the the depth of knowledge that they are lacking at at this point um in their background. So that is our

189concern to keep that in place that these students do all this work on their own so that they really take ownership of this and that's how they are able to present at the symposium with maybe some gaps in their background. Some of these kids that haven't even had a biology class yet. This is all doable. So that is what we're looking at. So if we're looking at 24 students and and uh Bonnie in my classroom to teach them these other pieces inside the capstone, we want to keep that lab experience. So it would have to be where they are 24 students so that each one of them could still do this work independently. That's what we think is more is most important. whether we can expand it to more labs afterwards is a uh another

190question. Does that make sense? >> Yeah, and that's that's where I always want to go immediately. So, I appreciate uh people trying to slow me down, which is appropriate. Yeah, >> Janette. >> Well, I'm really excited about this because I'm a research geek and um scientific research has saved my life. So, thank you. Um, and sustainability. Gosh, soil research. A lot of sustainability. What are we doing with our food waste? We're composting it. How does that affect the soil? That's would be my project. Okay. So, what are the grade levels um that we're talking about here? Is this a junior senior experience? Only a senior experience? And if there's only 24 students right now at West, there plans in the future to expand this to all our high schools or even go down to our

191more accelerated learners that are in eighth grade. Is this something that something could be very small? And thank you. So, uh, one of the the opportunities, many opportunities that students have that participate in this this project, um, and these are rising juniors, by the way, uh, that come to us in the summer as they go into into their, um, their junior year. um those students that complete the project in the past uh they are invited to be TAs for uh the future offerings and we've had many students do that. Uh we've had students that have participated in this project that now have been offered lab jobs to work in worldclass lab facilities because they're attending WMadison. And even though I'm jealous that they leave and they go to another university, we want them to be

192happy. I can't change that all even though I would like to. Um, but that's how great these opportunities are for these students and how much confidence that they give them and not to getting to your question about sustainability and I think I could have maybe handled your question a little bit better now too uh upon reflection but there how many more crises do we need unfortunately but the other one is soil erosion which the students become aware of that too as a part of this project as well. Uh we hope that in their senior year um uh well the plan is it's not a hope that we're going to have internship opportunities that are in place that are part of the curriculum um and outreach opportunities for these students and you mentioned middle school to

193go into middle schools and talk about the crisis of antibiotic resistance and the research that they did to do something about it. >> I do want to add on um to that point as well. One piece that we took to expand this into a year-long course instead of looking at just end of summer into first semester is to have that community engagement communic uh community uh communication portion of the course that we uh added on which can include uh what was discussed about uh working with middle school students or others in the community about uh their work. And so if I heard you right, this is something they do going through their junior year then, um, if that's correct, then how does that set them up or what does it look like for their senior

194year? >> Sure. It can be junior or senior year. Uh, currently the majority of students that are in the program are juniors. Um, if the students are looking at a two-year, that's where we're looking at the course in their junior year and then a youth apprentichip internship opportunity their senior year. Um, if they do it their senior year, it's still preparing them for uh, post-secary education work. And I'm not sure uh what more you had left too, but I want to make sure you at least also have an opportunity. Were there other people um and groups involved that are helping make this um something accessible to more students um as well? >> Uh right now we're just working uh with the four of us to develop the capstone as the curriculum for it. Um, we're

195starting to engage uh with uh not only partners at WGB from the uh dual credit perspective, but we're also um initiating conversations with some of our business and industry partners about those internship uh opportunities. >> Oh, actually I'm sorry. There is also leadership pieces for our students that Eric alluded to that they get to bring this information back to the elementary or middle schools, but we also have them TA in our labs. So that this summer, three of the candidates who finished last year were in our classrooms helping the new group. So that is another way to give forward and and let them let them shine and just expose them to another opportunity putting them in that leadership role. Um so it's pretty magnificent and one of our first participants is still she's at WGB.

196She wants to be a pediatrician and she's still taing for our at the 14week course. Can I say her name or no? Was that Marita Lopez? >> We'll see her Wednesday, September 10th. And she's always got a beautiful smile on her face. Yeah. >> And she is she's just killing it. >> Sorry. >> The other thing, so I have I have a mic. It's dangerous, I guess. But um the plan in the future of course um is to offer uh the very training that I experienced it was a week-long training at WMadison. Um Joe Handlesman is the director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery. In a way Madison and the um she's a director of it's called the WID. um they are a partner, maybe a silent partner in all this, but um that's not

197going to change. They're highly supportive of this of this program and um so the very training uh and she was the science adviser for Barack Obama. Um so the very training that I experienced a weekong training at the WMadison campus so that I could do this and have this as a part of my own research agenda. Um, I will be hosting trainings um at the UW Green Bay campus for all the science teachers uh throughout the district. Um, because uh for all the great things that high school teachers do. Um, I just think it's a terrific opportunity for us to work together in this collaborative way. Uh, and I think it's inspirational. I think it reinvigorates all of us about science and um and STEM and what it means to actually do research. Um the

198IB programs are great, but too often we're not really training high school science teachers how to do research, but yet there's some expectation that they should be able to. And so my hope is that we can change this as we work together uh with what we're starting and building upon here. Thanks to all of you. >> Thank you for the opportunity to expand this program to our tour school district. >> Anybody else? >> Thank you so much. Maybe I'll pass that back to you. >> Thank you, Alex. Um, we'll go on to agenda item number five, operations for referendum updates. Laura Um, I think I think our referendum person is just stepped up for a moment. So, everyone just take a beat. >> Um, so let's do this. Uh, can I have a motion to

199reorder the agenda to do? Um, >> motion to reorder. >> Second. >> Favor. >> All right. So we're going to do um section six policy and governance and advance of operations. Um Andrew. >> Okay. Thank you. First we have uh revisions in the um 800 series policies. Um we have um two numeric headings. So first we have general public complaints and concerns. >> Good evening everyone. I'm happy to report these are the last two policies in the 800 series and then you will have successfully completed review of the entire 800 series. So thank you for your work on this. Uh as Andrew said the first policy for your review is the general public complaints concerns. Uh really this was to provide the revisions provide more detail to the public in how to process their complaints

200and concerns and a better streamlined process for doing so. It doesn't really change our work uh because this is what we were doing on the back end, but it just provides more detail for to the public. >> Uh board questions. >> Um okay. And then so that's the um then we have the charter schools and associated rules. The updates are minor um with respect to the policy just um better headings for the paragraphs to provide better detail and the cross references were all updated. And then with respect to the rules um we don't do cross references on rules. So, we struck those out and just again some very minor uh changes to rule one and rule two. >> Okay. And just to be clear, we're we're talking about here situations and and always have been

201in this policy situations where uh the board itself is um being involved in a in a charter school playing such as Dwey. >> Yeah, these are instrumentality charters. Um all right. Any any questions on 896 policy or rule? Okay. Then uh next we have um board of education rule 187. >> So I was asked to um make changes to this rule to reflect our movement away from the Zoom platform here in the district. Um, we have transitioned from Zoom to Teams. And an add-on to that Zoom contract is this call-in feature that we implemented during COVID to allow for the public to participate in the schoolboard meetings. As the cover page says, this was last our records show that this was last used as far back as May 2024. uh we don't have records going

202back further that were ascertained but we could to see actually when the last time it was that it was used. Um we have other methods for the public to participate in our board meetings including submitting comments um allowing things to be read at the board table. Those comments are then posted on board docs so that they are are made public so that the public does get to see and hear what the public would want to comment if they weren't able to make it to the board meeting. In addition to that, of course, you have the public comment period where people can come and speak for the five minutes at the board meetings. >> Um, board member questions. Um, okay. I have a a couple of things. So, we're switching to Teams. >> I'm just going

203to ask Amy to come up so that I I don't want to misspeak about our technology. >> And my computer wasn't working today, so it was clearly user error. Good evening. I almost said good afternoon. Um, we are switching from Zoom to Teams within our regular workday virtual environment. Um, just the Teams virtual meetings. We're not shifting to Microsoft Teams. We're sticking with Google. But the board meetings will stay with Zoom. >> Okay. So, one Zoom account. We're limiting our Zoom accounts from all staff members having a paid Zoom account to um 20 which is the smallest unit that we can purchase. >> And one of them would be one or more of them would be the board meeting account run by Kinsey or whomever. >> Yep. Correct. So, what what's the actual what's the

204actual what's the actual cost of the the call-in feature? >> The call-in feature is $1,200 a year, $1,200 a year, $1,200. Couldn't Couldn't we just switch over to Teams where people could do it for either free to join via, you know, the web or um or add um add the license to allow callin for, you know, one person started meetings for a trivial amount of money. Could we do that instead and then keep the option? So, we can still have the call-in feature allows us to call somebody and have them come into the Zoom call and then we can exit that person, but they don't become like a square on the Hollywood squares. So, that integrated audio allows us just to bring somebody in, they can have their public comment and then exit versus joining

205the Zoom the way any of us would join the Zoom. So, it's a more secure method of having a guest come in. >> Okay. I'll I'll um I'll contact outside outside the meeting with some additional questions. I I'm fundamentally opposed to things that remove a method of participation. And I don't like it when uh obviously everyone knows they can email the board. um written comments are are not on the same are people who want to do more than a written comment are seeking out obviously a way to do more than a written comment and this is one of those. So, um I if it's if it's $1,200 for something that hasn't been used um at all in well over a year, um I guess it's disappointing that you can only buy it in the 20

206pack, but I understand how that's how it works sometimes. But I I would like to see some other way that a person can be who can't be here in person, who wishes to make public comment, can actually make a live public comment. And I'd like to maybe see if there's more we can look at and there's something affordable we could do, but I can have that conversation outside of of here. And Andrew, I just want to quick clarify. The 20 licenses is different than the Zoom add-on, the Zoom integrated phone add-on. Those are two separate things. >> Can you buy one add-on, one integrated call add-on, and it's actually $1,200? >> That $1,200 is an integrated add-on on top of our Zoom licenses. Um, tell me if I've got this right. The when it was

207originally the Zoom thing was originally um started, it was during COVID and it was using ESSER funds to pay for and there are no ESRE funds anymore. And is this in our budget? Is this $1,200 in our budget? That's a good question. This is the first year that Zoom will be funded outside of Esser dollars. Um, we have to maintain our Zoom license to maintain our phone system. So, we will be purchasing the the 20 licenses is in my budget. Um, and then there is a little there is wiggle room if we need to. We budgeted for everything in hopes of decreasing. So, there is wiggle room for that that 1,200. Um, but again, it hasn't been used. As far as we can go back in our system, we can't find when it was last

208used. >> Janette. >> Okay. I'm um just for clarification, you said that we could call someone and they can tell us what their comment is via phone. Is that an extra charge? That's not the Okay, that is an extra charge. Okay, I'm glad I asked cuz I misunderstood that. Okay, >> again, that was put into place when nobody was in person, right? When CO had taken us to the place of virtual land. Um, so the only way to get public comment was that integrated audio option. Now we see folks are, you know, have the ability to come in and do all the other things that they may opt to share information that way. So sort of a followup. So let's say somebody is disabled, however, that they cannot come in. And I I agree that

209oftentimes hearing somebody's voice and their comment is really important rather than them submitting a letter that I would read, let's say, um or someone else would read it. Do we have any option for, and I know that's not a common thing that would happen, but would we have any option without purchasing that $1,200 that somebody could call in? Would they have to do a videotape of their presentation and email that to us? Are there other options that won't cost us anything? You all have your phone numbers listed on the board website. So, the individual can certainly reach out to you. I know it's individually, but if they want to have a conversation about something, they could reach out to you and have that conversation. >> That that that's not a substitute for public participation in

210a broadcast format. Obviously, James, >> he's right, but it's the broadcast format that creates the expense, right? Because it's an integrated um technology and we use visit at work and I I completely track whether So, I've remember Josh Patrick like twice over the four years that I was here. So, and it was well over 18 months um ago. Um and the the integration is was one time we tried several times people weren't wouldn't answer the phone, right? They had moved on or whatever. So um it was it was clunky at best um that interaction um to to set up and start and I I can only remember in four years doing it twice out there. So I I hear what Andrew was saying. I mean, you we want to be as accommodating as possible, but

211I do think that over the course of the last couple of years, we are pretty unique in the number of ways we allow public comments and the fact that we broadcast our meetings. So, I don't have a transparency concern. Um, and so, I understand that, yeah, we have to pay attention to the budget now that it's not under SR dollars. um and looking at things that we don't use in the whole scope of things that we have to cut. I I I see the reason why this is on the chopping. >> All right. Anything else? >> Yeah. Thank you. Okay, that's >> I think that's it. >> Yes. >> All right. Um, so we're going to step back. Laura, I'll pass the chair back to you. >> All right, we're ready for you, Kale. >>

212Yes, you step out, you lose your slide. All right. Good evening. Um I will jump right in since it um a lot of things covered tonight. So I'll jump right in. Um I'll start with the 24 um 2024 referendum update. um our partners at Nexus helped put together a little more comprehensive update now that we're getting a little further into the 24 projects. Um and we'll start with Star Elementary. Um this gives you a little bit of um photos for those that haven't seen um the site and then uh a brief kind of shortterm schedule on the right hand side. Um as you can see if you've been at the site or by these pictures um the building is starting to take shape. Uh much of the site work is complete. Um much of our

213geo uh thermal system um from the site is complete. Um and then um what you'll see here is there we are still we're working from west to east um on the building. Um, and the footings and the foundations that you see in these photos are that western portion um where we get into the um second through fifth grade classroom areas. So that's the last piece that's being um poured for our footings foundations and that's the last piece you'll see with steel coming out of the ground. Um on the eastern most portion um Chantel and Seventh intersection um you actually start to see that building taking shape um above ground. Um our building envelopes being created. Um pre-cast panels have been set for the gymnasium. Um and that's it's really starting to look like something. Um

214and this will that progress will continue kind of in a phased um west to east um visual for people as you're looking at the site. Um and then just a few more photos of STAR. Obviously, we have our um structural steel, our steel studs. Um our building envelope um um underground um mechanicals have been placed within the building footprint. Um and that's what you see in the upper right corner there. Um and we'll start to once we get that enclosed, start to see concrete going down, get our floors installed, and start to tighten that building up before winter. Any questions on STAR? It's not really a question, but I did um I was at a unexpectedly at a social event recently where Bartar Jr. was in attendance and he happened to be sitting at the

215table right next to ours. And um after the event was over, I went over to him, introduced myself. He doesn't know me at all. Um, and the minute I said I was on the schoolboard in for Green Bay, he lit right up and and um and and started talking about he had been by the school the day before and he was very very happy at the progress and he had um just a lot of good things to say about the school. He had a lot of nice things to say about Vicki and our um our school district in general. and he and his family are extremely excited about this project. So, I just wanted to share that. Um, also I'm hearing a lot of other, you know, people who who go by it, they're they're

216surprised at how big it is, right? Because now you can really see the scope of how large this building is going to be. And that got, you know, you kind of have to remind people, well, that's because it's got to fit three schools in it, the population of three different schools in it. And um so it's starting to get a lot of attention and um I just wanted to share that >> that brings up a good point too with all of these projects we focus on the construction aspect of it. The the physical plant itself there's a lot of work um with our branding um with Star Elementary uh furniture uh equipment things like that are continuing in the background as well um all to be ready for that 26 27th school year. um Washington

217Middle School. So, this this will be our first completed um 24 referendum project. Um there was a few tweaks to the scope of this project due to existing conditions in the building. Um but overall um with uh a restroom upgrade um and a a front office um upgrade as well as some ADA um upgrades with doors, uh door hardware, accessibility, things like that. Um as you can see, we have our substantial completion um for this project. There's a few little pieces that are still being worked out, so I won't say it's 100% complete, but um obviously we're having school there now. Um, and the majority of the project is complete. Um, the final piece you see there, um, are some unique window, fire windows for our quiet cafeteria, um, that's adjacent to their existing cafeteria.

218>> Quick question, when you say front office work, which offices are you referring to? >> The the main um, entrance kind of in the center of the school. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. there there was hope to cut through kind of a new um access through the building. Um existing conditions kind of had to make us pivot a little bit there. Um but we were able to improve um some potential security um pieces there um just to help accessibility throughout the building and how they monitor that. And then no. Oh. And then next I have Dodie Elementary. Um again, if you've been um near that site, um you'll see a lot of activity. Um majority of that um masquerading has been completed on that site. Footings, foundations have started. Um unfortunately we had some delays with the

219playground which um we're are being currently being addressed. Um it was partially installed and and we're continuing to get that wrapped up. Um hopefully by October have that 100% complete for the brand new um playground. Um but as far as the building, there was some um interior renovations done. Um a lot of work as you see the gas electric service relocated um relocated some of the HVAC systems. So there's a cleaner transition um for our work over the next summer. Um majority of the work you're going to see um over this winter into spring is the addition. Um and you'll see a large addition going on here. Pre-cast walls are going to be going up shortly. Um and with the footing and foundations wrapping up, you're going to see steel coming out of the ground

220as well. Um and just some additional >> Sorry, Andrew. So, what's uh what is what's the situation with the playground equipment and why is the delay so long? >> Um I I could say it's a number of reasons for the playground. So, there's existing equipment um that was reinstalled in its new location um that was intended to have a new playground surface to be installed underneath it um in over the entire playground. Um the new equipment was the the last update we had was stuck in customs uh and could not get released. Um so there was a shipping issue was the major concern there. Um that I believe has been released and they started install this week. Um and then we will just trying to recover with the playground surface. Um so right now there's

221chips that the playground is usable on the the portion that's installed. Um, we will have those chips removed and then that new playground surface still installed yet this fall. >> Okay. So, the equipment's here now that was in customs. It's it's here now. >> I'm hesitant to say all of it. They started installing it. Um, we're still we're meeting on sites uh with our vendors on Wednesday to confirm that all the parts and pieces are there to finish the install. >> Okay. But it's not. At one point, all of it was stuck in customs and it no longer is stuck. Okay. Thank you. Um and then I'll address there's a few more pieces of the schedule coming up on the the um in the next couple slides, but um those are kind of the projects

222that you'll see the most progress on to date. Um, and then a brief up update on kind of where we stand and progress we have made overall with the 24 referendum. As you can see, the majority of this was very front-end loaded. Um, which is very valuable to us as a district. Um, it was a big lift, but I think we're going to see um with price increases and things like that. Um, this is going to be very valuable to us and get the most out of these referendum dollars. So you can see 63% of the referendum has already been designed um and 57% has been bid out and um contracts have been let. And then as far as a budget update, this reflects the actual work that has taken place. So that's 17%. The

223inflation and contingency dollars, you'll see it's a little heavier on the front end because of how much we let. Um that's a number of reasons whether that's scope whether that's true inflation inflationary costs um or um just some proactive kind of contingency things where we're holding contingencies for things we might get back but we're going to allocate those dollars upfront uh to make sure that that we're covered and we don't have any surprises later in the project. So, still a healthy contingency left of of where we sit today with the amount of contracts let. And then kind of final schedule update. Um, Chapel, you see here, Chapel um was bid and awarded. Um, if you drive by that site, you'll see fencing up. You'll see grading has started for some of the temporary um pieces.

224You'll start seeing grading and excavation for our footings and foundations here um in the coming days and weeks. um that um will accelerate very rapidly. They're going to be doing three of the four additions um this winter um and to get that ready um all in a push to be ready for the 2627 school year. Bulmont um we're doing very well um schedule-wise that 95% designed. Um we're looking to bid that project in November. Um Lincoln uh we've had some discussions um on that verifying scope of that one. Um and design should be shortly behind that of Bulmont. Anything else? That was kind of the wrap on the 24 referendum. Any other questions on the 24 referendum? >> Andrew. >> Oh, so go ahead, James. So on the chapel site um and just walking around

225and talking with individuals, do we have any kind of um delays or um associated um weight states with the city on that that property. When when you say that we're going to grading, that tells me that all of the city stuff has been cleared and we're we're we're building now. Yeah, I think we had some um and I wouldn't say just the city. I think we worked through some things with uh plan design at the state level. Um if you're not aware, the city um certainly has a large backlog of projects, had a lot of turnover in their their um um planning review. Um and they outsource a lot of that to the state, which a lot of cities do. Um so between that and our contractors working through, you know, a few I would

226say bumps in the road on that. um we got through it. We're moving ground now. Have our permits in place. Um and we're kind of full steam ahead now. >> Thank you. >> Um and then for 22 referendum, so kind of a hopefully one of our our last recaps here. Um I'll have maybe just some highle notes in the future. Um you'll see here in the construction close out. I won't go through all of them. If there's any specific questions, I'll sure surely answer those. But um ASB expansion really the the last one you see in construction is really the the only true construction project we have kind of out there um other than a small phase at Sullivan that will happen next summer. Um but those are kind of our two projects that are

227truly in construction. The the remainder of those are kind of in a closeout phase, punch list items, smaller kind of scopes, but we have um I would say essentially substantial completion at all these projects. um on that lefth hand column and then on the right are ones that are are substantially complete and closed out. Um I would say there may be some furnishing or FFN type pieces uh to those that that we're still addressing. Um but I'll say from a construction standpoint, those are complete. >> Andrew, >> so what's the what's the timeline on Sullivan HVAC? I was I was there on the first day and it's it's very hot. >> Um the chiller will be operational this week. Um so that's um all the HVAC we were still moving air um in there. We

228had occupancy um to the air requirements. Um but as far as air conditioning, um that was scheduled for this week to be startup and we should have um air conditioning and then obviously we'll have heat um come the heating season. >> And is that is that when it was supposed to happen or is did someone get behind? >> As I think everyone knows that was a a a very difficult project. Um I I don't think I would say a number of factors may have caused that um to happen. I think to have that um chiller start up um about a week late I think is reasonable within the scope. Um the contractors certainly did um address that upfront with us as we went into that project this summer. um and being able to kind of

229condense the schedule overall, we've limited that impact for that school in later months. So instead of phasing out that project in like the second floor, first floor type piece, we were able to condense that project and limit the overall impact of that project, which I would say a portion of that and you're kind of in a three-month window to replace an entire buildings nearly entire building's HVAC um is pretty impressive. So um I I wouldn't say necessarily it's blame. It was an aggressive schedule and I think we missed our mark a little bit and um by a week I I think that's acceptable um for the scope that we asked them to do. >> Thank you. >> Is that your report or anybody? Go ahead, Lyn. I just want to thank you, Kale, for your

230you use the word aggressive, and I just feel like every time you come in here, you are demonstrating aggressive um work with you, you take the money that the taxpayers have given us and you're making it happen. I really appreciate it. >> Anybody else? All right. Thank you, Kim. >> Thank you, Laura. And with that, that u concludes our agenda for the work session. I would entertain a motion to well actually no I apologize. Lynn, would you please read the motion to adjourn into um close session? >> I move that the board convene into close session pursuant to Wisconsin statute uh 19.85 85 section 1E deliberating or negotiating the purchasing of public properties, the investing of public funds, or conducting other specified public business whenever competitive or bargaining reasons require a close session. more specifically

231to it, negotiating with third parties regarding the potential acquisition and investment of real property Keller Elementary and negotiation strategy for collective bargaining agreements between the district and collective bargaining units and Wisconsin statute 19.85 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 or is likely to become involved more specifically to it potential litigation matters regarding the district >> second. Yeah, I will uh read it just a second. So, um I just want to make sure that the public understands that going into close session, the district has received several offers um for the purchase of Keller Elementary School. The board will discuss what, if any, response it may make to these

232offers as it continues to negotiate sales of these properties. Good. All right. Um, let's take a vote to go into close session. >> Meister, yes. Nell, >> yes. Minnow, >> yes. >> Gerlock, >> yes. Larly, >> yes. >> McCoy, >> yes. Becker, >> yes. >> All right, we are journed into close session. >> You have been watching the Green Bay Area Public School District's Board of Education meeting. Please visit the school district's website, www.gbaps. gbaps.org for more information on the district and future meeting dates. If you cannot fully access the information on this video, please let us know the accessibility issue you are having by calling 920-4482025 or by email at communications gbaps.org. We will try to provide the information to you in an alternative format and or make the necessary improvements to make the

233information accessible. [Music]