HUHS Board of Education Meeting - March 31, 2025

001Good evening everyone. It's 5:45 and I would like to call this board meeting to order. Uh Laura, would you please start with our roll call attendance for board members? Sure. Tracy Hennis, present. Nolan Jacket here. Heather Barry here. Craig Westfall here. and Don Pridemore. And Don will be joining us um in process this evening. Um next on our agenda is a pledge of allegiance and we have Jessica. Jessica coming to say the pledge for us tonight. Jessica, please make sure the microphone's on. There a little button on the front. Okay, there we go. Okay, we see the green light. Okay. All right. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you,

002Jessica. Is there a motion to adopt the agenda? So moved. Is there a second? A second. Any discussion? Yes. Um, under the close session number 7A, I believe that date should reflect February 27th and not the 24th. Yes, it should. Let's change that to February 27th. So, there's a motion to change the date on under 7A to February 27th. Is there a second? I'll second. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor of that change signify by saying I. I. I any opposed? That motion carries. Any other discussion about the agenda? Hearing none. All those in favor of passing the amended agenda say I. I. I. Any oppose say nay. That motion carries. This agenda has now been approved. Um our next on our agenda is our public comments section. Laura, did

003we have anybody sign up this evening? We did not. Okay. Thank you. And then next on our agenda is our recognitions. And we'll start with our March Rotary students of the month. All right. Our first Rotary student of the month is Annie Netesh. Annie, if you want to come up. Annie has a 3.9 GPA, and has taken honors English one and two, three AP courses, US Gov, AP Physics, AP Lit, and Composition, with the favorite being AP Lit. Annie was involved in CAP classes last year, journalism, for example, where the paper won state recognition, including best publication of a high school newspaper. And he participated in three musicals, Legally Blonde, Once Upon a Mattress. Urine Town received a Jerry Award, uh, which is truly a great honor. This year, Urinetown fellow classmates voted Annie for

004Spirit of the Jerry's award. and he's been in the WSMA, SMMA, state honors treble choir, band, choir for all four years, concert band, oral choir, jazz band, VBC symphonic band, concert choir, and Annie joined the international awareness club last year, and as of this spring directed the Aaron Alumni Musical for all four years. And Annie, there's a couple questions up there for you. Hello. Thank you for having me here today. My plans after high school include going to the Culinary Institute of America in New York for baking and pastry arts. I plan to get my bachelor's bachelor's degree and then go on and open my own bakery someday. My favorite memory at HHS was probably This is a hard decision that I've thought over a lot today. It was probably participating in Once Upon a

005Mattress because we had just a phenomenal cast of people and I made some of my very best friends during that show and it was a great pleasure to take part in. Some advice that I would give to incoming freshmen would be to find your people and to stick with them. Don't give into the drama and everyone else trying to take you down. Find your people and stay with them. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you so much, Annie. Congratulations again. Our second Rotary student of the month is Natalie Corey. Natalie has taken honors English one and two, five AP classes, uh, US Gov politics, language and composition, AP psychology, statistics, calculus AB and BC, and three college classes through the early college credit program. She's ranked 11th in her senior class with a GPA of 4.148. Natalie

006participated in both cross country, track, and field teams. She's on the executive board for the student council as well as a member of the National Honor Society and H Club. And through these organizations, Natalie volunteered with blood drive, Salvation Army bell ringing, musical ushering, Shamrock Shuffle, Downtown Decorating for Christmas, HHS Jumpstart, Operation Christmas Child, and Natalie is very involved in her church, teaching Sunday school and working vacation bible school. and she's also a swim instructor for the Hartford Rec Center. Uh my plans after high school is going to attend W lacrosse. Um I'm going to major in elementary and special education with hopes of becoming a first or second grade teacher. Um, my favorite memory at HHS was probably homecoming week and just being able to dress up, have fun with my friends and then

007also being able to walk um on the cross country float in the parade and just seeing all the school spirit and just having a lot of fun dancing and singing to song um some songs and throwing candy and stuff. Um, advice for incoming freshman would be to try something new. Um, I never did a sport until my freshman year when I joined track and I ended up sticking with it um all four years and I really enjoyed it, made a lot of new friends and made um lots of memories. So just trying something new and getting out of your comfort zone. Awesome. Wonderful. Congrats again, Natalie. We have a few uh donations tonight as well. And so we would like to thank the Wisconsin State Golf Association for donating $500 in grant money to enhance

008the boys golf program as well as 500 in grant money to enhance the girls golf program. We also would like to thank Mr. Roric Griffith for his generous donation of 26922 which will be p which was paid for the fan bus to Beaver Dam to support the girls basketball team. So thank you very much Mr. Griffith. A big thank you to the Hartford Basketball Club for the generous donation of $1,000 to support the girls basketball team. And finally, thank you to greatly to the anonymous donor who generously provided funding for the rental of the mini coach bus valued at approximately $900 for a girls basketball team's travel to the sectional competition. So, thank you again. The kindness and generosity of our community is amazing. And thank you again to these donors. And that is the

009end of our recognition portion for this evening. Thank you. Uh next up is our consent agenda. Now, typically if there are some things that we want to pull and discuss or state before we vote, that is what we can do now. Um, I would just like to say that the February 24th regular board meeting minutes have now been changed to reflect that um, Craig Westfall did not vote on the last thing in in the discussion and action, which was the dugouts at Lincoln Lincoln Fields because he had left to go to the concert that evening. So, that has been corrected. Um, the other thing I do want to make sure that board members are aware of is there are quite a few corrections to meeting minutes in this consent agenda. This was a result of

010having our attorney advise us on one of our recent U meeting minutes and she brought up a couple of clerical points that we should be sure we have in our meeting minutes. It was that we went backwards. There were some things that we needed to to add. Um, nothing has been changed substantially about those meetings. The votes are all the same. There just might be a couple more details in there or maybe a word here or there that was missed. In terms of other things on the consent agenda, there are personnel recommendations here. Um, I just want to say that there are three resignations. We will miss all three staff members dearly. Um, but the board has worked closely with Katrina Cravy over these last couple of years and I want Katrina to know how

011much we truly appreciate you and what you've done for our district with communications and um, you'll be missed. Thank you for being here with us. Um, anything else that a board member like to pull out and talk about on the consent agenda, Craig? I don't need know if we need to pull it out, but I guess part of the minutes that we're correcting. Um, just an added tidbit maybe for the the 24th or last month's meeting where we note people that are non board members that are in close sessions. Um, If there's none, like in the 24th meeting minutes, maybe we state that just so it's clear that there was nobody but the board in in that closed session. Um, and we don't necessarily have to do it now, but I think moving forward, I

012think it it just confirms that we didn't miss adding somebody there. There was no one. Thank you for that suggestion. Sure. Anything else a board member would like to state or talk about this time? Hearing none. Um, is there a motion to approve the cons the items on the consent agenda this evening? So moved. Motion by Nolan Jacket. Is there a second? I'll second. Seconded by Heather Barry. Um, any further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor signify by saying I. I. Any oppose say nay. And that motion carries. That consent agenda has been approved. Uh next up we have our report section of the meeting. And we'll start with our student board representatives report. Oh, perfect. All right. So, I'll just be providing, I guess, a little update on the school board election coming

013up because it is tomorrow. Um, early voting has obviously already started because it's tomorrow. Um, and just like looking at the demographics that we're looking at, it's um probably just going to be mostly the same demographics we look at when we look at primaries. um just to the fact that there's no there's no big race on the ballot other than the state supreme court election which may or may not um actually according to the data I've been looking at bring out people. It's looking like it probably won't just because it hasn't been publicized the same way that I guess like a federal election or something like that will be. Um but um I've also been talking to a few people in the area of Richfield and they think that they're going to experience higher turnout

014just due to a few controversies that have been about um their village their village races this um election cycle. So we'll see how turnout looks, but overall I mean it's not it's not looking too high as it would be if it were a fall election. Maddie, you forgot the state superintendent election. Oh my gosh, I I did forget about that. I did vote on that one though. I I felt very educated knowing who was running in that one. Um so Owen's not here tonight and we are going to table ACT testing um to next meeting just when we have a little bit more of the results because most juniors I did not but most juniors got their ACT results back. Um so we'll just be waiting until next meeting until more of that information is

015um given to the district and we can kind of analyze it in a more professional way. Um and then for the college career fair that was for juniors. It is required every year for juniors to attend. Um and that was on March 12th. It was for two hours and juniors had to attend talk to a few colleges um attend breakout sessions. There were 10 different speakers offered and um different sessions were offered on pathways into medical careers, law enforcement careers. There was employability skills, um introduction to the UW system, like how does applying work. Um so there were a lot of very helpful breakout sessions. I personally attended the employability skill one. In that one, we talked a lot about um résumés and job interviews. So that was very helpful for me. I mean, my

016job interview experience is fairly limited. All I've been is like, "Oh, what are you involved in at school?" So, it's it was nice to kind of see how a professional job interview is done. Um, and then apparently there were 28 colleges plus trade schools and all branches of the military except for the Coast Guard were there. And then there were also 26 career opportunities. So, um, things like all of the manufacturers in Hartford, all of the plants in Hartford, um, businesses like that attended as well. Um, and I feel like the feedback we got was it was very helpful, but we needed a little bit more guidance of like what was required of us because I know a lot of people they just like went there, signed in, and then left 10 minutes later because

017they didn't know like what they were supposed to do, like what they were required to do, how they were supposed to record what they had done. So, I feel like next year we could just kind of implement that a little bit better to encourage the engagement within that. Thank you. Okay. Um me and Jackson are just kind of here to give an update on the academic the assembly today. So we have been working with multiple people. Everyone in the office probably hated me today because we were going crazy trying to find all this different information about people and how to make it work on each slide. Um, we decided well from the fall this year and last winter there was no academic recognition. However, in the spring there usually is academic recognition but this year

018we aren't doing a spring assembly so we had to kind of do it in winter. We usually do have academic recognition more than any other school or not any other school but more than a lot of schools. Some don't even have any and we do do it. However, I remember like my freshman year, we would the top 10 of each class would be able to stand up and like get a little something and then we would be recognized and then sit back down. And then sophomore year it didn't happen. And I just remember I felt like really proud of myself and I felt recognized and I want that to be able to happen for years to come. So, we kind of worked together and we went back and forth on how to do it by

019GPA, percentage, rank, and so we did divide each class up and put the high honor role in all of their names up on the screen. Those names were not read out, but they were all listed. And then the following slide for each year um then had the top 15. And if there were um some doubles, sometimes there were two people at rank five or however that was, then mult a little bit more than 15 names were up there. But that's kind of how we recognized and those names were listed off. So they got the little bit more recognition and Miss Lamb actually had people stand as well. So I think it just helped bring a little bit more recognition to the students and their hard work. But yeah, that's my little update. Oh my gosh.

020Yeah. All right. So, about midway through the assembly, music started playing and then Mr. Helms was confused and then or confused. I don't think he was confused. And then all the or majority of the staff members and teachers, they came down and they did a little flash mob dance for us. And it was it was a good time. We all everybody enjoyed it from what I've seen. And it was it was just a little day brightener. Yeah. My mom met my mom. Tammy Tammy. Um, I'm going to be working with Miss Bhunts and Miss Lamb on a college and career center in the back of the library. So, we're thinking this is going to be a space where kids can study and research possible future careers or colleges that they want to go to. And

021so I'll be helping to give student feedback on what people think should be included and how it all should be laid out. For example, furniture, like what kind of chairs we want and tables, refreshments, like we talked about, possibly a coffee bar. Um, and then also what kind of computer software we might want to upload for that. And then we're also looking into the Washington County Charitable Foundation grant to see if it's applicable for that college and career center. And then we've also just been looking at college and career centers at other high schools just to get an idea of how we want to lay it all out. Okay. So, um we wanted to give an update on the tutoring program. So, last month we did uh make a form and we sent it out

022to all the students and then we also made a separate form for staff but we don't have those results yet. So um we got 316 responses from students and more than 70% would like peer tutoring to happen at HHS. Um the subject that was most needed help was help tutoring was math and more than 80 individuals were willing to become tutors for volunteer hours and more than half of them will be willing to help tutor in math. uh 45.5% of them would tutor for science and English and then about 42 for social studies and 27.3 for world language and then the rest um 13.6 would be other classes and subjects. So we just wanted to like give an update on what the students wanted. And then we also created a marketing doc which includes information

023about peer tutoring as well as a QR code that sends teachers to a survey. They can recommend kids to become tutors or for extra help. So our next steps is to send out the marketing doc to screens and teachers. Do you have any questions tonight? I I have I have a comment. Um, I wanted to thank you guys for all the information and all the hard work you guys have put together. Um, this program is the student board reps the last seven school years has been very informative. You guys have been the ones that have given the board the information that we may not ever see. So, I just wanted to say I appreciate what you guys do and the collectivity of the program itself. Um, I think I speak for all of us when

024we say that we really enjoy presenting before you. We've really enjoyed having you on the school board. Thank you. All right. I wrote down a few comments, too. I just want to echo what Craig said. You guys always do a fantastic job. It's great to see how this group has developed over the years, hasn't it, Craig? Yeah, it's it started out as as something small and different and it just keeps rolling and developing into something really great. So, we appreciate hearing from students at the board meetings. And it's an opportunity for other staff members to hear from you, too, who don't necessarily know some of the things that you're going to share and some of the ideas that you have. So, it's wonderful because they get to use them and take them back for positive

025change. I loved hearing about the the college and career fair and the career center. Um the college and career center, those are amazing things. The tutoring, the fact that you guys are looking at marketing it, that's awesome. Let's get more kids engaged in that. Um you're encouraging people to vote, especially young people. That's fantastic. So, so happy to see and hear about all these different things from you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Anyone else from the board? All right, thank you guys. Uh, next I forgot to give a shout out to the the staff for doing the flash mob. Nice job, everybody. That's that's pretty cool. I hope it's on video. Oh, yes. Okay, we have to view that later. Um, next up is our referendum update from Mr. Matt Wilford. Good evening. Is

026this still on? All right. Good. Good evening, everybody. Uh, board, good to see you. Um, do I click through or do we are you going to run the click or do I do it from here? McCoy, does he click through? I can use this. Okay, great. So, just as a reminder for some in the crowd that aren't familiar, I think you as a board are are pretty much up to speed, but wanted to just remind you of the the different team members. Ryan Schmidt from CG Schmidt is here this evening. Um uh the CG Schmidt team has been joining us at our our bi-weekly meetings and will be uh bidding and managing the the project on your behalf. Other team members uh we have civil engineers at Kapor who uh designed the parking lot and

027are working on the track replacement project and things like that. So anything outside they'll be working on. MSA is doing all of the other engineering, plumbing, fire protection, HVAC, electrical security. Um and then water technology is working on the pool piece of the project. So just wanted you to see some additional names and teams uh that are are involved in helping move your projects forward. So this preliminary timeline seems to change all the time. Um changes meaning as we get more detail and more development, we are better able to predict the best time to bid to construct and how is that going to impact students and teaching and learning and outdoor space and pool use and all of that. So, we're still on track for completion on target. We're still on track to start when

028we said we were going to start, but as the projects are constructed, we'll be changing a little bit. So, this does not reflect an accurate construction phasing. Um, because that's literally changed this afternoon when we met and learned that we've got some spoil, some dirt that we're going to need to store and the only real good place to store it is on the soccer field. And why would we store it in on the soccer field instead of just regrading and getting the field done right away? So that piece of the project actually moved ahead in the schedule. So all those details are there. I just wanted to make sure you understand we're on schedule. We're on track to complete the project as we committed to to the community uh and to you as a board.

029We have finally gotten some structure to our bid packages. So this is important information not only for you as a board but for community members who are interested in in potentially submitting bids on the project. The first bids are actually come back tomorrow. So for summer scope of work, which is generally lighting, bathroom renovations, a couple of other small things, the parking lot, those bids come in tomorrow. So, uh, we will want to talk with you about structure for how much the board needs or wants to be involved with awarding those bids. Um, because if we don't have another meeting for a month, that that isn't going to work in terms of holding the bids, keeping the schedule, getting things awarded. So, that will be a discussion we'd like to have with you to nail

030down how that's going to work. The second package will be released um late April and that's really focused on the pool renovations. And then you can see the others. There's a s a simple package for emergency generator and switch gear. Those take forever to get as long as a year right now still to get emergency generators. Um so we have to bid that early enough so that we have it uh for next year. Synthetic turf is technically a bid package. What we're actually doing is we're going to be um requesting qualifications and proposals from three vendors uh that have proven to install synthetic turf in the region and have have successfully supported uh other K12 districts. And then we're going to bring them in and interview them, learn more about who's going to be doing

031the install work, who would how long would your warranty be? So, it's a bit like saying I want to buy a a midsize or a fullsize pickup truck, right? I could buy three. There's three different four different varieties, but each one might have a slightly different bell or whistle that we're interested in. And so we're using a similar process where we're by we're going to interview. Price will surely be a factor and a consideration in that, but we also want to make sure that we're not taking the low bid and find out that that entity's closest service team is in Texas, right? We we want to have some of those assurances and understanding of how they would support you moving forward. And then the final bid package in at the end of August will be

032everything else. So that's the roofing, the mechanical systems, etc., etc. So anything that we haven't talked about above that's in the scope of the project would then be bid in that final package. So very briefly, this again shouldn't be terribly unfamiliar to you, but we're on track for the the new parking lot in green at the top of the plan that will be constructed in the summer. uh this coming summer. So, bidding tomorrow, we are going to be starting and this is another tweak working with with Scott Helms and and the district team on what's the right time to do the track instead of thetaic turf project. We originally thinking we were going to start earlier in spring of 26. It's going to push a little bit back further so they can use the track

033uh for that season. So, basically, let's just say late spring until it's completed for the track and uh synthetic turf project. The northern tennis practice, tennis, what am I saying? The northern soccer field will be the one when this uh um parking lot is constructed, there'll be extra soil that will be spread across this field using to improve the drainage on there. Um and so that field will then be seated this fall. We can't plan on it for a year uh until after. So Scott's working on making sure that works from the schedule perspective. Uh and then the rest of the grading and drainage will happen afterwards. This is the parking lot layout. So far, the city's been receptive. This is the landscape plan. And you're going to say, "Wow, that's a lot of landscaping."

034And we're going to say, "Yep, that's what the city requires." So, um, we're basically working within the the confines of city ordinance uh for that. I also think it's a it's a nice gesture to have kind of a nice landscape buffer to our neighbor, a residential property directly adjacent. I think that's a nice thing uh for you to be providing. And then a little bit of storm water here. So, how far from the edge of the parking lot to the basically the lot line? I believe this is an existing fence line that exists right now. Do you know the distance about um three parking spaces? That's probably 35 ft. Okay. So, and then and then this will be the storm water drainage for this parking lot. So, this parking lot will all flow to this

035new piece of storm water which will then connect itself back into the municipal system in the road. Again, hopefully this is a lot of refresher for you. Um, the pool project is bidding as we noted plans will be released shortly. They'll that's construction will start this summer uh and extend into next fall. Um, that is kind of the scope that we've been working hardest to pin down and we're we're there now. Um the rest of the the lighting, HVAC improvements, all of that will be happening likely in the second summer with some stuff happening in in the interim when we can access the building and not disturb uh teaching and learning. So just real briefly on the pool, I think as we all remember at the board meeting in the cafeteria when we decided, you

036know, we're going to go for referendum for a given dollar amount and and we placed an allowance within the budget. We didn't know exactly what the scope of the pool was because we didn't know exactly what was wrong with the pool and and what needed to be done. Um we're still working towards that. The plan right now is to replace the entire gutter on the pool. So the part of the pool where we have the drainage water goes into that and drains back into our system. Um the theory is that that's where the leak is that we're we're losing a lot of water there. Um, we're going to be doing some additional testing of the concrete just to make sure that we're not seeing voids elsewhere. But that is the the the main thought is

037that that gutter is where the leak is occurring. So, we're going to be replacing that. Um, and then replacing the walls. If we remember, we CG Schmidt team went in and did some kind of proactive demolition to expose the steel structure. we were seeing a little bit of rusting on that structure and wanted to make sure that it was was still sufficient and supporting the building before we went all the way in and started replacing gutters and doing a bunch of additional work. Um, so CG Schmidt's team opened these walls up. Uh, we had a structural engineer come on site and and wrote a lengthy report regarding uh the condition and and fortunately and I think a bit to our surprise after some of the first things we were seeing um it is surface rust

038and and not of structural concern. So, we'll be able to clean that rust off, repaint these, and then we're we're tearing all the wall off and recovering and putting what's called a vapor barrier in between. So, now the the very moist chemical fil air from the pool will have a barrier between it and the steel and that should protect that steel structure moving forward. So, the other part, and this was just added, thank you for flipping this out. We we got this plan done late last week. Um, this isn't final either, but this is a plan that we've been going back and forth with the tech staff on. So, they have provided some feedback on on what they would like to see in the new addition, uh, how it would function, how they can better

039support teaching and learning. Again, this isn't final. We're going to change some doors, may change some wall construction, things like that. Um, but just again wanting to keep you as in the board and the community up to speed on where we're at in the planning process. We don't have any renderings of the of this yet or anything because we're still working on nailing down the actual floor plan itself. Um, but this is the latest version that was shared today, this afternoon in our core planning team. Um, and I believe there's a meeting coming up in about a week with this uh the tech staff again uh to go through this again. Rooftop units that are being replaced, these are part of the final bid package which will allow us to procure them and replace them

040next summer, summer 2026. roofing. Same thing, same schedule for that. So, I'll open it up. We will we actually just saw um an initial concept for the track replacement and synthetic turf and some early renderings for the pool today. Um so, they're not in here because we're going through the process of core planning, providing feedback, tweaking, then when done and comfortable, we're bringing them to you at the board level. So, next time we meet, we will have a preliminary site plan for the track and synthetic turf and a rendering or two of the pool itself. So, with that, I'll turn it back to the board if you have any questions. I just I have one question for you, Matt. At the beginning, you mentioned how bids will be coming in as early as tomorrow. And

041then, um, when were you hoping to have those decided upon? I think we had talked, Ryan, the latest would be April 15th, 16th, something in that time frame. Um yeah, we were going to try to take about two weeks to do a full scope review of all the bids. Um so that uh involves our our project manager and superintendent meeting with all the biders, making sure all the bids are apples to apples. Um and that process takes roughly about two weeks um to have a recommendation put together. Okay. And I would just say from a process perspective, every every board's different. Um, many of our district clients, the boards have approved the referendum budget and if we are on budget for the projects, they would like a report on what was awarded at their next

042meeting, but they aren't interested in approving every bidder formally at a board meeting. Not saying you shouldn't do that. If that's what you want to do, that's fine. Um, but we would just ask that the board then know that we're going to likely have to schedule some special meetings after these bids come in to do that formal board approval and award um if you want to go that route. Okay. And Rob, maybe you want to help um chime in. I know you and I have talked about this a little bit. There is more information for um clarity coming to board members at next month's meeting as well. Correct. Well, we had that discussion today with with the team here of how can we put that together to to give the board um to be able

043to see something to show that we're on track, right? Like this much was was allocated for HVAC or something like that. Um the part we're working on now with uh Ryan and his team is, you know, when those numbers are put together, it wasn't a line by line. We knew a lot of the big pieces, for example, in HVAC that we would need, but not all the detail. Um, and some of those are going to fall into different of those five different bids you saw, they're going to fall into different areas. So, that's what we talked about today is how do we come up with um some type of of spreadsheet that we can kind of say this is pretty accurate. It might not be 100%, but it's pretty close when you start breaking pieces

044out that are in different uh bid portions. Um because that's the point like even with the pool is a good example. We want to make sure that we've got all those costs known through a bid before we move forward with uh the first piece of which is replacing the gutter system, but we want to make sure it's all within budget. Um so I don't know Matt or Ryan if you want to touch on that like how you've they showed us some examples at other districts of how they've provided that report to the board. Okay. Feel free if you want to jump. Yeah. So, and during the design process, there's different milestones, right? So, we're trying to get to a point and we've talked with um Matt and his team about um in early May having

045basically a schematic design of the entire project that allows us to take our estimators and and get into those and and put together a line by line budget that reflects um the final kind of scope and the direction that um that Bray and the district are going as far as making decisions. So having that SD budget is a good uh check to make sure that what was originally put together in the referendum budget um more as a concept before anything was designed to make sure we're on track. So that will help us have a line by line and quantities and lineal foot of of base that's going along a wall um down to the finite detail um to really determine, you know, that we're on track. So, um, through those design milestones, we're providing budget

046updates to make sure that we're on track. But I I think right now we have allowances set up and tracking towards those allowances for certain components like the pool. Okay. And then if the board members wanted to see what those allowances are right now, because it sounds like you guys are looking to have something approved and and decided upon in a couple of weeks. Unfortunately, April is a tricky month as a board. We have an election tomorrow. Then there's canvasing and then there's the the board members taking the oath and then the meeting. So basically this the board will be getting together the last Monday of April with two new seated members. And this in between time is kind of hard to navigate through. Understand? And and that's that's why part of the discussion really

047should be is is is the current board because that's really who's I think going to have to approve these bids or give us permission to proceed with if we're on budget proceeding with those contracts. We do need to award to these subcontractors two weeks after the bids come in in order to meet our summer target for procurement of materials to keep their bids valid so that they aren't pursuing other work. And so there there is some urgency coming here that we that's why we wanted to bring it forward tonight so we could to try to work together to navigate this initial round of bidding. So in terms of understanding what the allowances are or the money that we initially put aside. I mean this was months ago we heard about it as a board and

048now we're kind of seeing timelines and we're seeing project details but we probably need a resource where we can see what those actual numbers are that are allow that are in part of the allowance for different projects so we can feel comfortable about saying, "Yeah, just go ahead. It sounds like you're within within that amount of money." Great point. Thank you. For that first bid package, the one that bids tomorrow, we'll be able to give you a pretty direct comparison from the referendum budget that we shared with you before we went in to what the bids were. That one's quite clean and clear. It's as we get into some of the larger, more complex projects, the pool's probably the biggest wild card in terms of where that is. We, if I remember correctly, we had

049a million and a half dollars as a line item and then there was an inflationary factor down below that raised that 1.5 up a little bit higher. We'll be able to get a sense based on that if we're on track or not. The bigger picture is we eventually will switch from referendum budget to CG Schmidt schematic design budget and then I believe you typically prepare those in a linear fashion where they're the same each time. So you as a board will be able to see from CG Schmidt's detailed budget, schematic design, design, development, construction documents, bidding as they're doing estimates, and then eventually real numbers come in more of a direct comparison to that. Okay. So you I mean really the focus is so the timeline of the board and the the new board is

050the phase one because if you go you know two weeks after the first that's in that gray area. Um the second one, your bid isn't due till April 25th. Add two weeks to that, you've got your board intact and and a week on. Um that will be a more difficult conversation just because of the pool and in and in itself. Um, but if if if we could see the numbers that you guys are talking about and the bids come in within that, I I think we could go forward. If not, if things don't jive, then I think we really do need to have a special meeting and and I'm okay being a participant of that between here and the time the next board gets sworn in because put a lot of time in this, too.

051So, I'm equally invested. So, um that that's just my two cents. Thank you for that person that's not going to be part of it hopefully today. You still are now. Yes, you still are. Now, um input from other board members. Heather Nolan, can I just clarify one thing for the dates that are on here, the April 1st are the dates that the bids are received by us. Um the bid package two are when plans are issued to us. So that's the date at which we send it out to bid. So we don't have necessarily have the date less of a those bids will be further down the line that point and I think a good thing to point out too in that uh May June timeline. Our our May board meeting is on the 12th,

052two weeks earlier than normal and then we don't have a meeting till almost the end of June. So depending on the timing of when those bids come back in and the and the analysis been done, there might be times where it actually fits without within the existing meeting schedule, we don't necessarily need one an additional meeting. But the first one is probably that example where we may need to to have that, right? And and I think what Matt said was this one is probably the easier of the the ones to tie it out and whatever we can share with the board uh from Ryan his team that'll help us decide you know do we want to put something on or have a tenative meeting maybe already scheduled and then make that decision right so because

053the issue is excuse me also making sure we can have enough board members at the meeting uh ahead of time so that forward planning it might be something at the end of this meeting we kind of talk about. Do we want to tenatively set a meeting date? We can always cancel it if we don't need it. True. Okay. Heather, do you have any input? No. Okay. Tracy, if I can add just one more brief thing. This this kind of applies to a later agenda item as well, but since we're talking budget, I just want to remind the board, we did have a an estimating contingency included in the overall referendum budget. And that was intentional because, as you all know, we didn't have plans, right? that they were they were budgets, not bids. So things

054change, things go up in price, hopefully things go down in price, but that that contingency was there to protect you as a district. And it was also there to tackle projects that come up as we're developing the plans that weren't originally thought to be included. One of those is coming up later on the agenda. Correct. So that's an example where that estimating contingency could be allocated. you as a board could allocate that estimating contingency to the project we're talking about later. Or if we have a a a budget on the pool that's off by making up a number $50,000, $100,000, you may say, you know, we're in the pool, the pool's shut down. Let's get it done right. Let's allocate some of our estimating contingency to to tackle that portion of the pool so we

055don't have to come back and deal with it in the future. So I also want you to know that that is a tool that we all have as a team is that estimating contingency that isn't allocated to any projects at this point. It's there as a standing lumpsum number. We're not spending it. It's something that we're going to eventually allocate potentially um if we need to um or if there's scope the board wants to add. Okay. Thank you. I just wanted to add um you know we kind of come in and come out of this and and as soon as you show all this like oh yeah I everything um all the information the details when you're doing the budget what would help is for all the work that the advisory committee did to show

056the choice that we picked for the amount and the amount that we're getting if those numbers could somewhat track so then we know where we started before getting into the the devil in details because then we know, you know, to your point, 50,000 versus this is a big one. That that first number would be helpful for me to know how much we're looking to stretch it or maybe it's coming in our favor. I mean, little internal optimism here, right? No, that's fair. And I do think we'll be able to give you I mean, I can tell you how much we had allocated for the emergency generator, for example, right? that that'll be a really straightforward comparison because it's just the purchase of the generator and the switch gear installation will be at a bid bid

057as part of the final package. So, for the most part, I think we'll be able to give you some pretty good comparisons of referendum to bids, they're not going to be exactly it was $1 million and now it's 1.1 million. As long as the total for all those hopefully ties out, that's I think what we're really shooting for. Okay. That just helps us too to keep our community involved and updated too is what's going on. You gave us this much money to spend. We're being fiscally responsible and here's where we're at today. So, I guess that's where where I'm coming from. Sounds great. So, it sounds like we're going to be getting information in a couple of weeks roughly and then board members can take a look at it in our email and decide whether

058we want to call a special meeting. Is that what I'm hearing? Yes. Okay. All right, sounds good. Welcome, Don Pridemore. So, let's the record state that at 6:30, Don Pridemore joined the meeting. Thank you for being here. Any other questions? Yeah. Any further comments or questions for Matt? All right. Thank you. Uh, next on the agenda for reports is our communications updates from Miss Katrina Cravy. Thank you all so much. Um, this being my last school board meeting to talk about moving up and moving forward with communications. And I was brought into this district as a consultant and I think we quickly knew that I needed to become an employee for what we had the road ahead of us with the referendum and what we were going to put together. And I want you to

059know that in this last year has been an incredible opportunity that I think that the learning that I learned of course working in a school district for the first time was amazing but also the teaching of storytelling has transcended to so many people in this district and I just wanted to talk about the communications is not just a communications department it's the teachers it really is our staff and so when you saw those numbers go up for the parent survey. It really requires the teachers to be communicating with the parents. They're our number one person and I always said staff comes first. We've got to always think be thinking about the staff. So, I want to say thank you to all of them for this incredible work that they were doing. I know our scores

060are going up for communications. I was really happy to see that. And again, it's about the entire community and how all of us, even as leaders and even as you as school board members, start to tell the story of Hartford Union High School to everybody that you talk to. So, these scores are yours, too. I like to say, where do the Orioles get their juice? Um, these are the places that we get the juice from. Uh, people like to get their information on emails, of course, those automated textes. As we went through the referendum, we recognized that the school district newsletters and actually the print that went out to all the households that don't have a student here was really valuable. But when I look at this, I'm like, okay, this is what is on

061my desk, but this is the way that I see it. And where do we tell our stories? And I came up with this little acronym of Westmac because we have to have a website, the emails, the social channels, telling the media about things, also sharing with our area schools. We have incredible relationships with our area schools. So, I want to thank all the communications people there that help us put out the information. And of course, our community newsletters because as many of you know, those relationships we have from I say to Rubicon to Richfield, right? All of them have their own newsletters that go out and if we can get the great news of Hartford Union High School in every print publication that we can partner with them and don't have to pay for, that's

062an incredible win for us. So, what are the stories that we tell? In my mind, it's amazing award-winning students and teachers because we have them. Test scores and state scorecards are on the rise. that is very important to people that are thinking about coming here and living in our district. And I'm happy to say that the work that's being done in the school. You guys have done an incredible job on raising those test scores. And we have the best of both worlds. Whether you want to go to college or you want to go directly into your career, Hartford Union High School is where you should be. Can you tell I'm still pretty pumped up about this school? The stories that we tell, those award-winning students and teachers. I love the fact that Fox 6 came

063out here and did a story about Max Clocko um because he is one of our incredible students. He's a great uh athlete. He's a great musician. He is a great student. And on Facebook, um people were saying, "Nice job, Katrina." It wasn't me. It was his grandmother. His grandmother called Fox 6 and got this story. So, I just want everyone to know that it does take a village to tell the stories and it's important to get everybody learning that you can call the media. you can get our story told. I love this story, too. Award-winning teachers. Hats off to Jamie Lowour. Um, chosen as the 2025 Excellence in Science Teaching Award. We have so many great teachers here that we need to continue to tell those stories. Test scores on the rise. Love the fact

064that we did. I hope you all were able to see the really fun video that everyone chimed in on getting the juniors pumped up about taking the ACT. And I'm also happy to say that wasn't my idea either. That was Mallalerie Smith and I think Stevie was in on that. You guys were all sitting there writing the script and I think Stevie said, "Just make sure you call Katrina and we'll get this done." It was great that came up from everybody else and everybody saying, "Oh, I have something creative that could be fun to do." In fact, I love seeing uh Beth Allen, our custodian, being arrested and telling them to do the right things and don't cheat on your tests and all that kind of stuff, which I don't even think is possible, but

065very fun. Uh, Principal Kelly Lamb asked me to come up with some really great fun way of talking about the ACT scores. I'm happy to say that my relationship with other public relations people and school districts around the state helped me come up with this. So, again, not my idea. Waterford Union had something very similar and they were able to share the docu document with me and we got that put together. So, I was happy to see that done. And then again, telling that story of both worlds and that we do have the best. Everything from us winning uh at the technicians of tomorrow competition to teachers Kevin Martin and Terry Wick were recently talking to a Marquette neuroscientist about our programs being they're helping put the curriculum together to teach other high school teachers

066to do what we're doing here. So, I just think that that's important for people to recognize. It's happening here at Hartford Union. Now, the top stories. I like to look at the analytics. You all know that I want to know, okay, what's going on with our social media? What's engaging? What are people doing? And I have to tell you that there's a major competition going on. Mr. Lamb, our art teacher, is also the adviser to the fishing uh group. And right now, he is winning ahead of his sister, principal Kelly Lamb, uh on her little tractor. Well, she didn't get a tractor, but the FFA riding your tractor to school day. Kelly Lamb came in there at the end. I think they gave her a field painter, a line painter. Is that right, Mr. Helms?

067Uh, so Kelly is behind in that. But if you know Kelly Lamb, you know that she's not here to make friends. She's here to win. And that's what she wants to do. Because like Kelly, I think everyone on the district leadership team, and you guys all know, all the folks that are on the district leadership team, we like to win. So happy to tell you that when it comes to videos, Kelly is winning in the video department. Heck yeah. Doing great. So, in my time, I had Facebook go back when I started in December to see, okay, where have we increase? So, you can see that our visits are up, our follow is up. Really wanted to focus on Instagram because it's not where we had put a lot of time before. And I have

068to give a big shout out to Amy Wald who is with athletics and activities because she's been amazing in helping me do a lot of these posts. um Laura Trap who's with the district and of course um Marie Hoppy who's with Principal Lamb's office. We have a district leadership or a district uh communications meeting every week. So they help me come up with like okay these are the things that we need to be covering. happy to see that Instagram is really on the rise with the viewership which is awesome and also too about the stories that we're going to be telling about the construction with referendum and big shout out to Bray Architects for the coming up with this monthly post that you're going to be seeing on our website. You'll see it in the

069newsletter and then it'll be shared on the social channels as well depending on how much activity there is. Like is there anything big really going on? If there was something really big going on, then I would say um back into my consulting world, uh I think that's when we need to be reaching out to community partners and getting that into some of the newsletters that could be out there for people that don't have kids in the district just to know what's happening and where their tax dollars are going. I mean, it is their tax dollars. So, I want to say thank you again um for it's really rare for a mother to get to spend the senior year with her son because Billy was here last year. Uh really rare for me to get to

070meet so many people in the communities that make up our 225 square mile district. Really rare to have some terrific community partners that you see there. And of course, Tracy Peterson with our building and grounds who was my right hand at so many of these events. Is there any questions that you guys have for me before I do my last swan song here? What was your favorite memory from your time here? It has to be uh November 5th when it was a yes. And I think it leaves really nice. So, thank you Nolan for the segue because this picture was taken the next [Laughter] day. We were so happy uh as the students like to say, I feel like my assignment is done, right? Happy to go back into the world of consulting again. Uh,

071this was just an incredible experience and I've got to tell you that Hartford has incredible stories to tell and with your just recent hiring of Laura Trap to take the position of director of communications, I know that that's going to continue to happen. These stories, she knows what it takes to get these stories done. In fact, she took this picture right here and um actually forced me to come in the next day because she said, "This is the time everybody needs. you know, this was a big deal and we need to have this photo. So, I just want you to know that you are in good hands and I will always be proud to say that I was a Hartford Orio. Thank you. Thank you. [Applause] Uh, next report is our principal report for Miss

072Kelly Lamb. Well, thank you, Katrina. And I'll also let you know that my parents somehow got that information and let me know when me and my brother were there having dinner. So, that's always fun. But guess I'll let them have it this time. But there's still time for me to win. I'll tell people to view it. Um, for my principal report this year, this is a lot of our work our school leadership team has done. We're trying to get more engagement out of the students and go into classrooms and do observations and share out. What was great about this year is we also had some admin assistants be able to get in the classrooms as well to kind of see what's going on and be more connected in their learning. So the first person that

073I did is I actually went to observe Frell Preston who is our educator of the year. So that was actually really fun because I got to go in there before it was determined that she was educator of the year. But what she does is so unique. So this is a new class this year and part of it came from a lot of our kids creating amazing artwork all throughout the Hartford area school district and even in Westbend. So this year we had a project that we wanted a mural in our college and career center that our student board reps talked about earlier. So the process of this is her art in the community class made a couple of designs. Those designs were brought to administration and then we voted on the one that we like

074the most. So this was the awardwinning design. And what's really cool if you see the upper left hand this painting is kind of broken up into four parts. So when I was in there is what is a really neat I've not I don't know all the art terminology. So, I apologize, but they needed to have a collaborative viewpoint so everything kind of made sense, but then they broke it up into four areas where each team got to put their own spin on it. So, if you notice something that the two birds obviously have the same color scheme, but their feather pattern is slightly different, which adds its unique spin. So, it's really cool how they work as a team, but then in small groups as well. Obviously, with the mural, it's hard to get everybody

075engaged, but what she did is she had different activities going on at once. So, when there was teams working on the mural, there was half the class that was working on their art for the Westbend art show. It was 100% engagement. It was really neat to see our electives and the students engage in something they're very passionate about. So, I won't go through all of them, but Christine Schmidt is one of our admin assistants, and she went into Mr. Schmidt's culinary. And what was really cool for her is to see the kids engaged, being listening to Rich, and also putting their own spin on different culinary items such as a what is that? Starfish from Spongebob. Okay, Patrick. Thank you, Patrick from Spongebob. So, that was kind of cute. So, it's just something that she

076got to go to and again see kids engage in their talents and their hobbies. And it does look very delicious. Jen Kirst went into Mr. Ecklan's class and something that she saw that was very engaging is what Kyle has been doing is he sees that there's some skills that needs to be filled gap-wise in algebra. So to continue skill building for the students, he created a different type of warm-up to make sure they're identifying the specific gaps for kids and really really targeting that area for them. So the purpose of that is to get kids more confident because unfortunately in math as a former math teacher, some kids don't have the confidence to think that they can do well, but in reality they can. So most of it's getting them engaged and participate and understanding

077that they are capable. He does a great job and this has really helped build the confidence and I'll say I've been in Mr. Eklland's class and the participation is huge. It is great to see kids actually excited to talk about math. Tammy Rosema, the leader of the flash mob, um, also has another side to her. And she went into Miss Lockwood's class and she loved it how Miss Lockwood got the kids engaged in a question of the day. And if you notice, they were making their own board games. So, what was cute is the kids actually invited Mrs. Rosemouth back so she could play and participate in those board games. Jason Krauss also went to see Mr. Ecklund and I thought this was a unique opportunity because he went to see his geometry class and

078there is a lot of parallels with geometry and the trade work. So that was something he was really looking at and what he noticed is that there was some things that happened in his class as in Kyle's which was good to see a couple of the things that were finding relevance in the work because that is something that Mr. Mr. Krauss does in his construction lab or woods lab and that's what Mr. Ecklund tried to relay to the kids when they're learning soa which is trigonometry s cosine and tangent and he also noticed just like in his class is that there's a lot of kids with different levels of ability and the fact that he could meet kids where they're at to grow all students is something that he identified and really resonated with and

079to build different opportunities Todd Whitlo went into aviation class and the thing that gets kids engaged in aviation is if you look at some of these modeling, it is lab work where they can see the results, take down data and understand what is going on with aviation. This is a particular wind tunnel. So they are measuring different types of wind. So again, that hands-on activity and the relevance of what they're learning. Ben Huffman did he went to an Aeron science teacher and part of it was just kind of exploring what why does a ball bounce and that inquiry method that science teachers use to get kids thinking because when you engage in trying to h getting different hypothesis, you can do it yourself trying to do a ball bouncing. you get kids interactive with the

080learning. Um, for Spanish one, Desire, do you want to come up and talk about this? This is one of the personnel recommendations. Lisa's retiring. This is Lisa Fent. And just super quickly, did you know that you could create your own verbs? So, if you like to fish, but you're learning how to conjugate in Spanish, just add an ar lower left corner. So, someone made fish are. Um, if you're a Chevy fan, not Ford, you add the AR. So, um I I just wanted to speak to how when she needed to spend time doing an every other week Friday verbal, they're coming to her desk, as the middle pictures show, the students across the room were still highly um involved and applying a really tricky um but necessary concept of conjugation, but able to do that

081based on their interests. It just knocked me out of the park. Um, and there were no phones. No phones. No phones is a miracle in itself. Great job, Lisa. And this is one of our newer classes. And Dave went in, Dave Lynch, our guidance or our school counselor. And what is truly remarkable about this class is I'm going to say their teamwork because as Katrina put on earlier, all I want to do is win. you know, when at any cost possible. But which is interesting is when I was in Mr. Sinsk's class, there was a kid chatting while playing and I asked him, "Well, what are you doing?" "Oh, I'm playing against this person, but they're not very good, so I'm giving them hints to play against me." And I was shocked. I said, "Why

082are you helping the person you're trying to beat? Like, I don't understand that." But he told me that I have a lot of knowledge, Miss Lamb, and I'm really just trying to teach others how to be better at these games. And I said, well, good for you, because I don't know at that age I would be willing to give my tricks and teach others to get them better to try to beat me. But Mr. Suinsky does a great job having different rules. They're very targeted at what they're trying to do. So, it is very skill-based. And what is neat, if you see in the middle of this class, you see some kids are not participating in the game. They're actually reviewing the skills and seeing like how other people play and analyzing that, which I

083thought was just amazing. I never realized how complex gaming is and I do have a newfound respect for esports. Frell went into Miss Yan's um egg or life science and agricultural class and the biggest thing she got out of that is the way Miss Yan makes everybody feel safe and comfortable in that class. And she could see that by people wanting to give presentations, giving information on the landscape because as she knows and a lot of other staff people or staff members and teachers know, a lot of students don't feel comfortable giving presentations. It's something to be in front of their peers. They may not feel comfortable with public speaking, but she said it was so great to see every kid up there give a presentation and be engaged and excited about the work that

084they were presenting. So that was really neat to see. And she also had that strong community where students were helping the teacher, students were helping peers and also how students took on different leadership roles in helping with their education and the learning. And last but not least, and I think is Kim here, teacher over there, Kim Baltimore. So Abby Balumgardner went into her class and they're reading Fahrenheit 451, which I also learned. Dr. Schlwi is your favorite book. One of them. I know there's more. It's my favorite book also. Oh, wow. Well, great job. I guess I never read it. I probably shouldn't have said that. Take that back. Strike it off the record. Can we do that? Yep. Whoops. I haven't read it yet. There you go. There we go. Uh, but Abby was

085just so impressed by the quick transitions, the way that Kim always checked in on kids to getting a pulse on where they are with the book and understanding the material and how 90 minutes just flew by. When something's fun, you get engaged in a book. I do think it makes learning that much better. So, as you can see with all the different teachers and different subjects, we went from culinary to teched to math to English. And the things that are happening in this school right now are truly remarkable. And kids are getting engaged. And we can get kids engaged in many different types of instructional strategies. And that's what we're trying to highlight. There isn't one way to reach a kid. and to engage them in different type of strategies is what we're trying to

086accomplish and showcase what is working in different classes. And I do want to give a shout out to um Mr. Westfall and Mr. Pridemore. Thank you. It's been a pleasure being here and presenting to you guys for the last four years. Thanks, Kelly. I appreciate all that you've done as well. Yes. And what a presentation. I love this. Thank you so much for sharing. It really gives us a great glimpse into the school and how how different teachers and students are working together. This is just phenomenal. Thank you very much. And this was actually shared at our staff meeting as well. I just want to say the reason I wanted to run for school board is to have kids be inspired to learn. It's one of the my founding objectives. And if they're engaged, they're

087going to totally be inspired to learn. So, great work. Yeah. And I do want to thank all the school leadership team members. I know later on in the meeting, we are going to set up a new structure. And the reason why we can morph into something we believe is better in creating more engaged leaders at our school is because of the foundation that the school leadership team has done as well as the instructional leads that Stevie has led as well. The collaboration of our staff members coming together has allowed us to move the needle forward, make steps in our academic progress, but it's not just academic as Katrina was saying is the stories that are being done here that people do not realize what is going on. I know now that I'm a principal a

088lot of people like to ask me my opinion on different school districts and I keep coming back is I really believe in Hartford and the opportunities we give our students because I don't believe another school can match what we have to offer from students being able to get a 36 on their ACT to build a vision home to do catering at different Hartford community events and create beautiful artwork all across. We really have so much talent here and I'm so glad we can have our assemblies to recognize all that talent. Thank you. Next up on our agenda is our yearly library and technology update. So, we're here tonight. Um Kim Altmore and I are here tonight and Stevie's up here too and has been part of the work that the technology and the library update

089that we're giving to you. Um this is our yearly update that we'll be doing every we do every year in March. So, we're going to start out um our agenda is we're going to talk a little bit about the library and the four things and then the technology and the three things on there. And we're gonna start with the library. Um so with um parent communication um we've been kind of going back and forth with different um processes as to how parents want to be notified what their kids are checking out from uh the library. Uh we've gone from an opt in to an opt out to what we are going to be moving back to is an opt in with a more streamlined very simplified check here if you want to receive notifications about

090what your children are checking out from the library. Um Miss Baker spent a lot of time inputting email addresses last year to only have the majority of those email addresses removed because parents didn't understand the way uh the communication process was being set up. So, we are going to go back into the optin, which will be a form that parents will fill out during registration through Skyward. Um, overdue books um fines and notifications. Um, we Miss Baker once a term right before the end of the term will print out overdue library book uh notices and we will give those to the oral time teachers to pass out to the students. Uh we also make announcements uh close to the end of the term for par uh students to return their books um and they receive

091the email notifications. I will say that we have had um better success this year than last with students returning their books. Um yeah, sorry next. This one. Okay. Um this is just looking at um board policy for um parents right to request um the information or request the materials that their children are um checking out from the library. Uh the process that they go through and then um that form right there 2416.01 F1 that is the form that parents need to fill out when they are asking to review what their children are checking out from the library. Um so the statistics for collections uh from last year to this um last year we had 30 3,619 uh books just print books in circulation. We deselected 340 of those books. This year we had 3,987 books

092in circulation with uh being an increase of 368 print books uh from last year to this year. Uh this year we deselected 567 books for a total of 227 books from last year to this year. Um these numbers were compiled from the first day of the school uh school year through February 14th. Um the circulation number deselection was uh put into consideration based on circulation numbers from 2017 with zero checkouts. Um the condition of the book and the relevancy of the book. So a lot of non-fiction was deselected and that's just because tech like technology and science changes. So we need to be up to date with that. um memoirs, biographies, and autobiographies, especially by age, because so much stuff is easier uh to be easily accessible on the internet. So, we went through and

093we're trying to get more up-to-date information with our books there. Um this is just more board policy on how selection um is uh conducted. Um, the biggest thing for me is using two professional reviews on the book. Looking at the content appropriateness, relevancy, um, and diversity, making sure that we are adhering to the American Library Association's Bill of Rights when it comes to selection. Um, again, more board policy. Board policy. Um, so we are constantly going through selecting and deselecting. I will say without Miss Baker this year, none of this really would have been possible with the deselection. She spent a lot of time um going through data reports and pulling books from the shelves so that we could replace new um new ones. Um uh as you could see from the numbers back here,

094we did a really good job with increasing our circulation. Um again, more board policy. This is the administrative guidelines. Um there are links in here for uh the resources that we use for selection, the professional reviews. Um oh, I forgot to take that slide out. That's last year's. My bad. Sorry. Um and then our goals coming up. Um so looking at budgets um provide more maker space options which we've been um definitely working on building up over the last two years. Uh, Miss Baker spends a lot of time going in and doing some research on what are some new cool things that kids would want to um utilize with the maker space um items. Um, collections um collaborative leadership um collaborating with teachers to design learning learning engineer um experiences. Um hopefully having a full-time

095library media specialist next year to collaborate with uh classroom teachers. um professional learning committees um and then uptodate professional learning um the last two years I've been able to go to WEIMA which is a conference for uh media specialists which has been really really um helpful for me in my um journey to becoming the librarian um curriculum instruction and assessment um looking at standards I don't know Val if you want to touch on that a little bit more um looking uh with Val and myself working closely together and then hopefully getting into classrooms and working with teachers um in collaboration with uh databases um AI and different technological um aspects of the library but also getting into classrooms and trying to get kids to get into the library to check books out. Any questions about

096the library? I just want to say thank you for being so thorough and so transparent. This was really great to see and get a good understanding of. Thank you very much. Thank you. So, I'll go forward with a tech update. A lot of this will be there for you to review and continue your reading, your nightly reading if you as you have time. So, first of all, I need to give a shout out to the technology services team. Um, Jonathan and McCoy. They are a great big asset to this team. They keep the team running. Um, McCoy is always here every board meeting keeping everybody online and Jonathan is here every single day and works they work so hard. So, I do want to give them a big huge shout out because they are an

097amazing team to work with. Um, the three things I'm going to talk to you a little bit about is cyber security, instructional technology, and then the future ready plan and our uh tech goals. I just kind of highlighted those and you can read those then as you have time. So we're gonna start off with cyber security which is always a huge thing. Um so anyways in our world right now cyber security is huge. Um there's things changing every day. We are constantly making improvements on our team to make our systems more safe. Um we do require password changes once a year. We use multiffactor for Google and Skyward and we continue to use more of the signing with Google because we do have authentication with those. So we try to come up with plans to

098make sure that everybody is using two-factor in a lot of different um programs that we use. We have a cyber res uh response plan and um I do look at that continuously to make sure that it stays up to date because things change continuously in that world. Um we the biggest thing um to prevent us from getting cyber attacked is for educating our staff. So just as today which I'm sure some people probably have seen is that just today we sent out a fishing scam for because it was brewer opening day. So I did send out something today about you won some free brewer tickets and to see once and educate them on do we click on things with saying like all these free things and it's amazing our um percentages have gone down quite

099a bit um on those clicking and um fishing scams that are out there. Um we work with vendors on our cyber security as well. We really want our um vendors that we partner with to join the student data privacy privacy consortium agreement that the state of Wisconsin does have. So we have 197 districts and we are one of them that participate in this and there are 1,638 and this was taken about probably like three four weeks ago. There was 10 1,638 agreements signed with different vendors across the state that just make sure that our student information is safe amongst them. So we work with that instructional technology. We really wanted to make sure that all classrooms are the same and seamlessly um can go from one classroom to another classroom with their technology and that

100has been a big huge bonus on that. We've been working a lot with artificial intelligence with our teachers and really we're discovering the pos our goal with our teachers is to discover the possibilities of AI and how we can use it to save time, provide us with resources and help us be more efficient and then also prepare our students for the future. But we also talk about our best practices with AI because it is kind of a scary world with AI. We really talk about the 8020 rule. we'd really talk about um privacy and security about our student data and making sure that we do not use that when we're using AI. So um continued learning on and in our advancements. So we continue working on schooly and some analytics. We use go guardian a

101lot of that with help common distractions with the kids that are being addicted to technology. So a lot of classrooms are using goardian. And then we also have magic school which is helping teachers save time and creating valuable learning resources. and that's an AI tool that we have purchased. Um, again, this is our future ready um, plan and our tech plan goals that we've been working on. I'm just going to go over them really, really fast because you have the I put everything there for you to read. Um, but these are the goals that we have been working on for the last couple years and continue. Here's my previous work. And then there we go forward. And Kim brought something up um, about the standards for the Wisconsin um, technology standards. They are being reviewed

102right now. I'm actually a part of the state with the DPI and writing them. So, we just had a meeting last week and I have one again this week and they are to be finalized. So, we're going to be working on that next year with our staff and updating those technology standards with our staff. Um, but you can go through all this and talk about um what our next steps are like robust infrastructure. I cannot wait for a generator. Um, so that those are just some of the things that we're looking forward to our next steps and what we'll be doing. Um data privacy. We're always going to be working on data privacy. That's just an everyday thing that we work with our with our team on. Um community partners continue to reach out with

103that. U provide professionaliz uh uh personalized professional learning budgets and resource which is always which we'll talk a little bit about coming up. And then collaborative leadership. Any questions? I thought Heather was gonna say something for a second there. Thank you. Thank you for being so thorough. Really appreciate it. And last for reports is the schoolboard report from myself. Um I just have a few things here. On March 12th, um three of us went to the day at the capitol for schoolboard members. I did um leave partway through the day when um two board members went on to meet with legislators in their offices. So Nolan and Heather were there as well. Um Nolan and Heather, do you want to share anything from that day? Yeah. Uh so the first half of the day was

104mostly presentations from the Wisconsin Association of School Boards. Uh we heard from a couple other legislators in there and then we heard some about the uh governor's budget proposal too. Uh more specifically though, me and Heather got to meet with uh multiple legislators and their staff. So, we sat down with uh Senator Fen uh Representative Pivar and staff members from Senator Capigga's office and Representative Dietrich's office. Uh the main points that were in our conversations was the percentage of special ed reimbursement that the state gives to school districts. Uh that is uh which fund is that again, Rob? Fund. Yeah, fund 27 for the uh reimbursement for special education cost. and then um a lot of conversation around tying school district funding back to inflation as well. Uh so those were the two big things

105and then uh we had chances to uh also ask them about some other education related bills that are floating around Madison right now. So really great experience uh good to see what was going on there and uh everything that is going on from the budget and other bills that affect every school district. Thank you. Nolan Heather, would you like to add anything? I thought it was great. Excuse me. Um connecting uh Madison with the educational system as my first time um serving in that capacity. Um I think the eye openener for me as a school board member is communication. There's got to be communication between what's happening in the schools and getting it right to the office of the legislators. Um I think that's really key. um the group that we were with, we all

106we all had similar themes and similar concerns and um addressing it with the legislature. But once the day ends, you know, coming back and having that day again, um looking forward to next year if they have um resolved some of the things, move some of the things forward. Um, special ed I think was the hottest topic and I think it's just educating the legislators that people will learn and continue to learn and continue to have challenges learning because we all learn differently and for policies, decision- making, budgeting, and all of that stuff that happens in the capital. um just having more of a collaborative communication channel to let them know here's what's happening in the daily lives of a student versus the effect that they can have as a legislator. So that's really critical and

107that's what I hope to continue as they have these days moving forward. Thank you Heather. Um another thing I want schoolboard members to be aware of is so we had the state education convention in January but coming up now on May 9th the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty is having their annual schoolboard summit. I know that some of us were there last year. It was their first time doing the schoolboard summit and I will say it was it was definitely worth the time and money for that day to be there. I I got a lot out of being in Wacaaw for one day at that conference and in fact I was so impressed with it I shared the um the video links afterwards with Mr. Walters and he looked at them and felt that

108it definitely was, you know, a worthwhile um worthwhile way to learn more from the schoolboard perspective and hear from other school districts and um just a lot of other things are going on in the state. So, that was a a great perspective to to get and I'm looking forward to going that again this year and I hope other board members check it out to see if they'd like to be interested. Um the last thing but not the least thing that I want to make sure that we talk about today is this is the last regular board meeting for Mr. Mr. Craig Westfall and Mr. Don Pridemore. Um, so thank you very much for your years of service. Craig has been on our board since 2018. So, seven years of service. Thank you very much, Mr.

109Westfall. And Don has been on this board for three years. So, thank you very much. We really appreciate you being such great and dedicated board members. I think Stacy wanted to say a little something, too. Absolutely. Craig, just wanted to thank you for all of your engagement um and contributions to the mental health council in particular from the grant writing to our universal tier um foundations and interventions and just all of the services and supports that you really assisted in in really laying the grounds for. So, can't thank you enough for for all of that. Also, thank you for just the care and the service on the personnel and organizational management committee as well as the community and legislative um engagement committee. So, a lot of time, a lot of care and a lot of

110effort. So, thank you so much. Thank Thank you. I appreciate it. So, thank you. and Don, thank you as well just overall for your dedicated service and just recognize again that time commitment to to the role and your careful work and time on the community and legislative engagement committee as well as the finance facilities and operations. So, thank you so much Don as well for your service. So, thanks Don and Craig. and we have a little a little gift for each of you in recognition of you tonight. So, I think Nolan's going to help me bring them over. Thank you. And then um as we go into the next section of the meeting meeting, we're going to be going into close session. We do have the photo backdrop in the hallway. So, if we could

111just pause there and take a photo, that would be appreciated. Well, I just wanted to to thank everybody. It's been seven school years. Um I was actually appointed to this position in the beginning. Um that was my first mistake but um as a parent it is truly eye opening and and I hope that more parents become more involved in the sport because I think it it brings a unique perspective and I learned tons of things that that I never knew before about how a school is run and proud moment as as Kelly was alluding to. We have a unique group of students in this building and we have to make sure we hit every one of their marks and that's been my goal since day one of being part of the strategic planning committee many

112years ago is to find that thing for those students because we hit every mark in the whole spectrum of who a person is after high school. So I wanted to thank everybody and for the support over these years as well and got to know some pretty cool teachers too. and administrators, I guess. Well said. Thank you. [Applause] So that concludes our reports for this evening. Um the next section is of the agenda is to adjourn to a close session. I would like a like to make a motion that we adjourn to close session for two reasons. to approve the February 27th close session meeting minutes and then also contemplated close session is pursuant to Wisconsin statutes 19.851C considering employment promotion compensation performance evaluation data of any public employee over which the governmental body has jurisdiction

113or exercises responsibility 19.851C specifically administrator employment and performance evaluation data. Is there a second? So moved. We have a motion and a second. So, we will do a roll call vote to go into close session starting with Nolan. I I I I Thank you. We are going into close session. Board members, feel free to bring your computer in case we do want to look anything up. Um, and Craig and Don, maybe if you could Katrina, should we have them bring their certificate or the cutting board for their photo? Yeah. Okay. So, just we can bring that out into the hallway for the photo op. That'd be great. Thank you. Tina, if you want to meet us out there to grab Don's goodies, you Anybody else? So, Heather, do we officially need to reconvene in open

114session? All right. And I'll make a motion that we go back into open session. It's 9:04. Second. All those in favor say I. I. I. I. And that was unanimous. We're all back in open session. Sorry folks. Um, next on the agenda, we have our items for discussion and possible action. Starting with the ad hoc committee for referendum projects engagement. I'm just going to pull that up. Um, I can talk about this. This is on the agenda because last month the board decided to form an ad hot committee for engagement and referendum project updates, discussions, and possibly make recommendations to the board. Um, I did have notes in the packet for board members to see. Since that February meeting date, there were um discussions had between district leaders and um community board leaders, Bray Architects,

115CG Schmidt regarding some other possible ideas that we could we could use to allow more opportunities for community members to have a shared vision, be actively engaged in updates, ask questions, and provide input in the process of the referendum funded construction projects. Um Tracy Peterson, our buildings and grounds supervisor in charge of facilities and projects at HUS, um has had a lot of input in this as well. And she has agreed to be in charge of a district hosted monthly update and Q&A session which would be held prior to each of the board meetings. So I guess at this point to me that seems like it would maximize opportunities for anybody to participate and have some input. They could get questions answered. It wouldn't necessitate us establishing a committee, making sure there's a quorum and

116then that in fact just limits it to those people who are committed and signed up for the committee. This way it's wide open. Um the part of the conversation and Matt was a part of that as well was that we may hit a stride where we could designate a certain topic for the meeting. Correct Matt? So say we know we're be talking about electric. That way then anybody in the community who has an electric background may say that this is a month I want to make sure I show up. I want to hear what they have to say and offer some input or ask questions because I know the trade. So, it also just gives gives some unique opportunities for anybody who's paying attention to jump in when and if they can and when it

117seems applicable for them to offer their their perspective or their expertise um on any given month as we're talking about topics for the referendum. So, that is of the referendum projects I should say. So, that is is my recommendation that we consider a dissolution of that ad hoc committee that we formed in February. Um, knowing that instead this is in favor of providing space and support for a monthly open meeting for all community members dedicated to HHS construction projects update and discussion. I'll second that. Okay. Motion by Tracy Hennis, second by Craig Westfall. Any other discussion? Just a comment that I think this is a better, more transparent way forward and I think we'll get better information out to the public this way. Okay, great. Hearing no further discussion, let's put it to vote. All

118those in favor signify by saying I. I. I. Any oppose? Say nay. That motion carries. Next item for discussion and possible action is a start college now applications. So Start College Now comes to the board every um October and March. Um, it's a program that allows eligible high school students to take college courses at technical college where they can earn both high school credit and college credit. The registration process for students um for these courses opens in early April. So, it's crucial to make sure that they get their applications in on time. Um, which is why we bring it to the board in March. This opportunity helps students to jumpstart their education plans and save on tuition costs. The total cost to the district is written as will not exceed $60,000 um because there are

119um different variations in terms of what courses students will register for versus what courses they apply for. Um so you can see in administrative content the list of um requested stu courses from students but that doesn't necessarily mean that all of those um courses will be taken by students. Um they're encouraged to um request a number of courses that relate to um potential career fields or um different um general ed courses that they could take. um again just to provide them an opportunity to um save a little bit on tuition and then jumpst start whatever career plans they may have. Thank you, Stevie. Any discussion or questions? I I just have to say that I I think this is a great program and I'm I'm glad our school does it because I know not all

120schools do and I think this just creates another opportunity for students that maybe they're not going to go to a four-year college, but they can get a jump start on a technical degree which would lead to maybe going into the trades or something like that. And it gives them a reason to stay in the building and not try to graduate early or or drop out to go do something else. this gets them into the the mode of doing the thing they want to do after high school. So, I just I applaud this program and always have and being the clerk, it's always fun because you have to sign every one of those applications, too. So, if you're ready to sign, but I fully support it. Thank you, Craig. Any other comments or questions from board

121members? Hearing none, is there someone who'd like to make a motion? I'll make a motion to approve the Start College Now applications for the fall semester 2526 school year. I'll second a motion by Craig Westfall, second by Heather Barry. Any further discussion? Hearing none. Let's do a roll call vote. I'll start it. I Heather I. Craig. I. And that motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Uh, next on our agenda is the Neola update 34 volume one, which included several policies, and I'll let Stacy kind of lead us off on it. Sure. So, there's a number of policies uh within board docs that you'll see. Many of the revisions were made primarily for consistency. For example, among policies. So if you look at 11:30, 3230, 4230, um it's really including more consistency among them to have a

122broader application. There are also various revisions around consistency with state statute. Uh rescending contents for example that are incorporated already in other policies. So like 5341 emergency med medical authorization is already in 5330 5611 um is already in 5610 components there. So really around um also reflecting some new requirements for example in policies. So really primarily really for consistency um to be more user friendly and we're sending some contents that are essentially in multiple uh policies among and I will say that um Stacy, myself and Laura all sat down with Bernie our Neiola rep to go through these policies that were in this volume um one by one and there were at least a couple that we decided to pull out and bring back at another date because they warrant a little bit further discussion.

123So these are just those policies that we felt were pretty straightforward but um I am open to hearing any comments, questions or discussion on the policies. Is there anything a board member would like to bring forward? Nolan looks like you're looking for something. I am. So, under uh policy 2464, just a little technical correction on the bottom paragraph where it says the district administrator will evaluate effectiveness and identification for our school district. Should that be 912 instead of K12? Oh, I see. So, like the second last paragraph there. Yeah. But it says it a couple paragraphs out too. Yeah. Or anywhere that it's necessary. Well, it actually it says it a lot because in identification it says shall be identified in kindergarten through grade 12 and the five domains. I mean it isn't it all

124encompassing? I mean are we taking it too literal? Because then you're going to have to mark up a bunch of stuff. So it um when we had looked at it, we had discussed that it could go either way in terms of us being a 912 district or just if the language stayed the same and was more generally applicable um to just be in line with what the statute reads. So it's really whatever the board determines is best. Yeah. If if it's not really that much of a big deal, then it's fine the way it is. So, I just wanted to make sure and know that, you know, the board can adjust these policies to whatever they feel is most appropriate for this school district, our school district. So, if the board would decide to um

125amend it to anywhere noted K through 12 schools, that would say, you know, our 9 through 12 school, that is an option. I'm not making a motion on it, just saying that that would be an option. Sounds like we're okay with it though. I'm okay with it. Okay. All right. Thanks for bringing that up though, Nolan. Any other policies that you want to bring for discussion? I'm good. No one anymore. No, I do not have any more. So then we have a first we have a motion and a second to approve the policies included in our Neola update 34. Who are the motions in the seconds? I don't we we have Oh, we do have I'm so tired. I'm so sorry. All right. Okay. Is there a motion? Yeah. I will make a motion to

126approve the policy update uh from Neola update 34 volume one. Thank you. Motion by Nolan. Is there a second? I'll second. Second by Heather Barry. All those in favor say I. I. I. Any oppose? Say nay. That motion carries. Thank you. Next, we've got Val coming up for few items here. Yes, I have quite a few items here. First of all, I would never want to bring this all to you at one night. Um, just because there's so much, but because of pricings increases, um, instead of waiting till June or July to purchase it, we thought maybe we could purchase them now to save ourselves at least like probably like we're looking at like 20%. Um, so and you you can see in one of the quotes that I got um that was for the

127servers that even from January 19th to now it went up I think it was 16%. So it's just that it's going up quite a bit. So the first one is the firewall. So we looked at the firewall um and we would get it an upgrade um every three years you look at replacing a firewall or at least extending your warranty for longer. We looked at the warranty to extend it longer instead of replacing and that was over 7,000 just for one year. So it was almost better off just replacing the firewall because that would be for three years. Um and that was like so I got the quote for like 28. Um the next one was the servers. You can see that old quote and the new quote going on. Should we address this? Oh

128sorry you Okay. Yeah, we can do one at a time. We can go one by one. So So Val just shared um the information on the firewall replacement. Are there any comments or questions? Is there a motion? I'll make a motion to approve the firewall replacement with a not to exceed $32,000 for the three years. I just put a little bit of cushion in there just in case because I got these quotes and then you never know, every day it kind of changes. So, I just put a little bit of cushion in there just in case. Okay. And would you like us to be sure that it states from source one? Um, it you can there they are a vendor that we used in the um pass and they do have state contracts for pricing.

129So they are the lower pricing. Okay. For the products. Would you like to amend that Craig to say source one or just keep it as is? I keep it as is. Give her the flexibility. Sounds good. I'll second it. We have a motion in a second. Any further discussion? Hearing none. Let's do a roll call vote. We start with Heather. I I I I. And next up is our purchase of servers. So, this one is a fiveyear replacement plan that we have put together. Um, usually you replace servers every five years. So, it's just the perfect storm of the three and the five kind of meet at the same time this time. Um, you can see an old quote from in December and then the new quote that I just got last week and how

130much it already went up. Um, we did ha uh did look at extending a warranty for a year and again extending it was over $5,000 to extend the warranty for just the extending what we have now for the warranty. Um, and we talked about it and went back and forth and we decided that it might just be best just to replace because get it for five years and you just moving on from there. Um, and so it was um 35,000 for the servers for five years. 36. Yeah, but I asked for 36 for 36. Yes. Any discussion? Is there someone who'd like to make a motion? I'll I'll make the motion to approve the purchase of three new servers with not to exceed $36,000. I'll second that. We have a motion in a second. Let's

131put it to a roll call vote. We'll start with you, Craig. I I I I motion carries unanimously. Next up is our electric and data lines to library classrooms. So when we remodeled the library, we did not put in a computer lab in there. And one of the things that requests that um I've received and others have received too is possibly putting a computer lab back in that area so that other classrooms can just freely use a computer lab whenever they need that area. Um we can use common school funds to purchase those computers. So, that's the nice part about that is using some of the funds that we received from the state for that. Um, but in order to do that, we have to put electrical and data lines back into the library. Um,

132we did have a computer lab in there previously, so we're going back kind of going back to that. Um, and that was for $10,085 to put data lines and electrical back in the in that one additional classroom. Thank you, Val. Is there a board member who would like to make a motion? I I have some questions. Okay, go for it. Sorry. Um, so is Next Electric a contractor that we typically do business with? Yes. And Tracy and I met quite a few times on this and we had both vendors were preferred vendors that we've used in the past. And I appreciate you getting two quotes. Any other comments or questions? Hearing none. Is there a motion? I'll make a motion for the approval of the purchase from Nex Electric for electric and data lines to

133be installed in the library classrooms not to exceed $11,000. I'll second that. We have a motion and a second. We'll do a roll call vote and we'll start with Nolan. I I I I That motion carries unanimously. Next is the purchase of lab classroom computers. So, we were purchasing 33 computers. 30 of them would be in the lab classroom. Three of them would be in the college and career center. Um the three in the college career center could be used then for like building resumes, applying for colleges, taking some um practice tests for ACTs or whatever is needed for that. And so these computers would be purchased with common school funds. So um they are the library funds that are given to us by the state for every every year. And we do get a

134quite a large amount of money every year for common school funds. So this is something that we can purchase because it stays in the library and being used for all of our students. Great. Any comments or questions from board members? Craig, so every student is given a laptop when they start, right? So why why do I need to buy computers? Why can't I just buy docking stations and have them work from that? So they have Chromebooks and sometimes so for example if they're taking an architecture class sometimes that architecture class needs a certain program that the Chromebook does not have. So then they can go to the lab to use that area if they need to. Um science they might be doing some science experiments that need to be using some kind of Excel spreadsheet.

135Well Google Sheets is not the same as Excel and sometimes they want to use those Excel sheets. So that's why. Thank you. Any other comments or questions? Is there a board member who would like to make a motion? I'll make a motion for approval of purchase of lab computers to be placed in the library classroom and college and career center not to exceed $65,000 and the common school funds will be used. I'll second that. We have a motion and a second. We'll do a roll call vote. I'll start with myself. I I I I that carries unanimously. Thank you. Um, next up for discussion and possible action is the 6603 agreement with the Holy Hill Area School District. I can speak to that. Tracy, thank you. I was wondering. Um, last year we entered into

136an agreement with Holy Hill to uh share Tracy Peterson's uh expertise in buildings and grounds. Um, and um, it has worked well. Um, and they we both expressed interest in renewing it for another year. Um, so what is put forward to you um, from a from our standpoint is not an additional cost to us. Um, we do receive revenue from Holy Hill for those services. Um, and we did make some few tweaks to the agreement. Most of it was uh for dates uh or things that were put in place. Um, for example, she started last year. The agreement was set to start July 1st, but she did some work in June. So there was a kind of a there was a paragraph we took out that just talked about services and the amount that would

137be paid prior to July one of the actual contract starting. So uh what we brought to you is the uh new agreement and Holy Hill has approved u their board has approved the agreement. So we're looking for approval from the board tonight to uh solidify the agreement for another year. Thank you. Any comments or questions? I would uh like to make a motion to approve the 6603 agreement with the Holy Hill School District to share the buildings and grounds supervisor. Is there a second? I'll second. And I am going to recuse myself from this vote as I am on the school board at Holy Hill Area School District as well. So we'll put it to a vote. All those in favor signify by saying I. I. Any nays? And that motion carries. Thank you. The

138next item is Wisconsin School Nutrition Purchasing Cooperative 66.0301 agreement. Thanks for being here, Monica. Okay, this is uh the renewal of our 663, which is a cooperative purchasing agreement. Um, we go together with 62 other school districts to bid our prime food vendor, milk, bread, produce, and those things for cost savings for our program. Thank you. Any comments or questions from board members? We've been doing this a long time. Yeah, I believe this will be our ninth year. Next year will be our ninth year. Wow. Thank you. Um, is there a motion by a board member? I'll make a motion to approve the School Nutrition Purchasing Cooperative 66.0301 agreement. I'll second that. We have a motion and a second. This will be a roll call vote. We'll start with you, Heather. I I I I

139that motion carries unanimously. Next is the updated teacher leader job descriptions. So, Miss Lamb referenced this um earlier during her principal report. Um but we are looking to um revise um school leadership team currently and instructional leadership team. Um since these two teams were started during the 2223 school year, um they have been aligned to very specific goals. For example, some of the goals Miss Lamb referenced um would be strengthening student connections with teachers by enhancing communication to students and families um fostering a positive environment around testing. ILt has worked to guide departments through curriculum division revisions and goal setting to improve student outcomes um within their professional learning communities. We're looking to refine these roles for next year. Um, and the purpose remains the same. We'll continue to prioritize student growth and engagement both

140inside and outside the classroom with support from these roles while supporting teacher growth um through more opportunity for peer leadership. These updated roles allow for a more targeted approach that aligns to those goals. Um, and as I said previously, allows for more teacher leadership opportunities to come forward so that there's an enhanced learning culture of not only um growth for our students but also growth for our teachers. Thank you. Any comments or questions from board members? Hearing none. Is there a board member who would like to make a motion? Yeah, I will make a motion to approve the updated teacher leader job descriptions for instructional leads and department leads for the 202526 school year. Is there a second? I'll second. We have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in

141favor signify by saying I. I. Any oppose say nay. And that motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Next is our schoolboard workshop which was scheduled for Thursday, April 17th, 2025. I'd like to make a motion to cancel it. Thank you. Second. That was easy. We have a motion and a second. Any any discussion? No. All those in favor signify by saying I. I. I. All right. Thank you. And uh up next we have a discussion of HVAC budgeted referendum dollars. So this came to us because um we're kind of in this process of trying to figure out in the sequence of referendum projects. What are those parameters when things should come to the board versus not come to the board? Um so there are different different parameters we discussed like dollars or you know is it

142a dollar amount? Is it based upon what's being discussed? Is it the look of things? So, um I'll let Tracy kind of go into a little bit more detail. She she and I have been kind of like bouncing this around and as well as the whole team I know. And so when she came to me with this, I said, "Here's a great example. Let's have this discussion with the board and kind of get a feel for what board members think should come before the board during the course of these projects versus what shouldn't or what suggestions you might have. So, I'll let you go Tracy. Um so, our current air handler systems uh use what's called a face and bypass damper system where uh when a room or an area stops calling for heat that

143air is recirculated by the air handler um and then you know it it modulates the air going into the classroom spaces. Uh the plan that MSA first brought to us did not include um uh the face and bypass. That's a pretty old system. Um, and they were just going to use the booster coils that are currently in place in the building. Um, but with that, the new air handlers would turn into what's called a constant air volume system where we would just be continually pushing air into the spaces. And it creates inefficiencies where um air is flowing um more heavily into some areas depending on where they are in the air handler run. Um so I had requested that we add what are called VAV boxes um in front of the um the booster coils

144so that those would modulate that air flow. It would create efficiency and um much much better control for the temperatures in the classrooms. So, with the addition of the VAVS, um, we got, you know, just a very rough estimate of a $300 inc $300,000 increase in the HVAC portion of the referendum, Rob, is there anything you'd like to add to that? Well, I think this is an example of of when we look at where would this fall in the the process of all of our bidding and it'll be part of the last um the number five that you saw on the list earlier today. So, I think it's something we put a part of that process and work with Matt and and his team and and Ryan and see where the actual costs come back,

145right? And that would be something that we could say, okay, based on the the bids, you know, the number of 300,000, is that high? Is that low? Um, where does the rest of the items in that HVAC bucket of money come in, right? And do we have does it fall within the dollars that we had allocated or not? Um, but it would be an example of something that could potentially be it's it wasn't a part of the original. Um, but as we refine each of the areas that we're getting ready to bid, those are things that come up. So, Tracy bringing that to our attention, we could talk with Matt and kind of make sure that's a part of the the bid spec and make that decision once we have the final dollars that we

146know are coming back as hard numbers and and make sure that um is that something we want to do, right? So, that might still be something we need to bring back to the board. Um, but it's just a good example of of we're just getting started with this process and there's going to be other things that pop up and trying to find out where are the where's the comfort level of the board knowing that we're going to have two new board members in a month as well for the next meeting. Um, I think it just starts a good conversation of as Matt talked about earlier um some districts will say here's the amount of money that was allocated. it falls within that move forward even if we've made some subtle changes to the to the

147specs. Uh others would want to have uh the ability to weigh in on that. So we're just trying to figure out where do those pieces um and comfort level for the board stand. And I think what what we have working to our advantage too is you know on our agenda we have this whole section that is items for discussion and possible action. So, it could actually just be informational. But if if you're looking for that support or you really want to gauge what the support of the board is, then we could, you know, you could say, well, I recommend we put it to a vote and and and as we put as we build the agenda. So that way the board would know, okay, we really need to pay attention and decide like, okay, does

148this seem appropriate for us to put put to a vote and make sure that we're voicing our support or our non-support for it. I think that that it says somewhere around 300,000. Well, it I think it should stay my personal opinion is it should stay a discussion point and and the point I would want to bring up is the VAV boxes are the way to do this, not the way we're currently doing it. And as Tracy, I'm sure you know, we've struggled with HVAC in this building forever. Like before HVAC was invented, I think so. So So I I think it's a fair discussion point. I like it and and I think it should move forward and then but after tonight I don't have a vote but but I think this is the right way

149to do it is a discussion point in moving forward at what that is and hopefully we won't go into the estimated slush fund that Matt referred to before right and considering this is in bid package five we have four other bid packages that you know if they do really well then we have the funding we can always you know move the buckets a little it. I'm just going to say that as long as we're this far, let's do it right because we don't need to be keeping going back if it's been archaic in the past. So, right, let's keep it, you know, let's let's do the right thing. Nolan, any thoughts? Okay. So I I think what I'm hearing is it's good for the board to be aware and I mean I think I share

150with you too my personal opinion is if if I knew we had a certain amount number budgeted for HVAC and instead of a boiler that was $300,000 we're going to get the VAVs. Like if I know it's still within the same kind of category um that's that's pretty simple for me. But if it's now now HVAC is going to cost us $300,000. So, we decided we're going to cut and not do this little piece of a project over here to make sure we've got the money. I think that that's that's something that we definitely want to make sure we hear about and make sure that the public sees we're discussing this. We're being very transparent about those changes. Yeah. And that is also something that has been discussed. Um, we have two Cleaver Brooks boilers

151from um that I would they only turn on when we have a polar vortex, but the gas used for them is very high when they do turn on. So, I mean, that was something that was put into the referendum, but could easily be omitted to, you know, to compensate for the VAV boxes and then taken care of with capital projects funding at a later time. So, you know, we have we have a lot of options with this and it's just, you know, a discussion with the CPT and with the board and, you know, to move forward with it. And it sounds like we're in a process these next few weeks of just really kind of getting this nailed down to more what this looks like in terms of the spreadsheet you referred to earlier. Agreed.

152And and I think the the key point is it's coming in ear, you know, the discussion is coming early in the process, right? knowing that you know once we get all five bits you know back uh by you know fallish time we'll know that you know what is everything cost and hopefully you know the hope is always it's comes in under budget we just don't know where things are going to go in the next few months with the way the the economy is and potential tariffs and things like that that could adversely affect our projects. Um, and this is just one example, right, of something that we may have to make an adjustment on. Okay. All right. Well, thank you. Are there any further comments or questions for board members? Matt, is there anything you

153wanted to add? All right. Well, thank you for being here. All right. So, thank you for bringing that forward. Um, there there is no recommended action from the board or for the board at this point in time. It sounds like there was really wasn't an interest in making a motion for action. So, we're going to go on to the next portion of our agenda, which is future schoolboard related dates. There is no longer a workshop on the on the calendar for Thursday, April 17th. There is a regular schoolboard meeting on Monday, April 28th, as well as May 12th. That one comes pretty quickly after the April one. There is a schoolboard workshop scheduled for Thursday, May 22nd, and asking board members to be aware of graduation happening May 23rd, which is a Friday at 700

154p.m. this year. Um, are there any recommendations or thoughts on possible future agenda items? Hearing none, we'll move on. Um, our next item is to adjourn to a close session. This is contemplated close session pursuant to Wisconsin statutes 19.851c 851c considering employment promotion compensation or performance evaluation data of any public employee over which the governmental body has jurisdiction or exercises responsibility. 19.851C specifically support staff employment and specifically administrator employment and performance evaluation data. I'm making the motion to go to close session. Is there a second? I'll second. We have a motion and a second. We'll do a roll call vote into close session starting with Craig. I I I I And we are going into close session. Thank you for being here everyone.