001Hey, welcome everyone. We are starting today with a citizens request to speak. Have any citizens? We have none. Then we will move on to reports um with the community relations. Tracy, >> thank you. Um actually the next three are all in the same document. So I'll go through all three of those. Um, with respect to students and families under community relations, um, there are three highlighted areas here. Um, one, ensuring that we are compliant with all of Wisconsin Act 143 school safety um, requirements. Um, that's that's an ongoing um, responsibility throughout the school year and working with each of our buildings um, to make sure that they are compliant. Um it's always one of our goals to make sure that we're sharing the stories out, the exciting stuff that's going on in our school buildings.
002Um looking at our analytics from our two primary social media accounts, we um are happy to report that there's been an increase in both um Facebook and um Instagram. We also have a Twitter presence and an Instagram presence, but Twitter's kind of um not a whole lot of um activity there. I mean, we post there, but there's not um a growing population there. And then um in preparation for our new website, we did survey all of our families to find out um what were the things that they found most frustrating about our current website. Um things that they um found useful in our website. So, as we went into the redesign, we had that input um so we could um set that up from the get-go to be more responsive to our families. Uh next
003slide is our team. Um some of the additional work this year related to supporting staff um as we continue to work on um uh professional boundaries with students. Um, we worked with the office of school safety to provide some training on compassion fatigue um for staff. At the beginning of last school year, we hosted an awareness to action with uh awareness to action Wisconsin child sexual abuse prevention training for leadership team and community nonprofits. Out of that work, we developed an action plan. It's a multi-year action plan, and there's a group of folks who continue to work on that action plan, reviewing policy and practice. Um and then separately we worked I worked with the school administrative assistants to meet um each building's communication targets and um begin that transition to the new website. With
004respect to our community, a lot of these things that you're already aware of um as far as our long range planning um and community engagement and those activities related to that. Um the additional point here about the Hudson Area Chamber of Commerce, we partnered last year and again um recently to host a job fair. So we had our second annual job fair last week and have already scheduled the next one for 2026. Um and then just a note of um my involvement with a variety of state and regional school safety groups. um just to help me stay current on school safety best practices. Questions? I'm going quick, but um then we'll go on to community education. The data here in community education, we we've been pretty consistent as far as the participants in community education.
005So, um and we we're split into two different seasons. So, fall, winter, and then spring, summer. And our numbers, like I said, are pretty consistent. Um, we have three large events that we do each year. Um, each of these continues to grow, though, uh, with the daddyaughter dance. I'm not sure we have a lot more room. That's become a very large event. Um, but we we have the mother son night of fun. Um, this year we had the second annual puzzle pulooa in, if you didn't know, January is puzzle month. And so we host um the puzzle pulooa and we had 18 teams this year. We had great participation in that event. We continue to partner with IT um and the high school national honors students to host the senior tech club and we work
006with over 50 community ed instructors. So these are not employees of the district. they're independent contractors, but um we provide support to those folks as they continue to offer classes u for the district. And then the last item here is school age care. Um this year we uh Michelle Hagen retired from school age care after 33 years in that position. Um huge transition for us and kudos to Bev Hagen who jumped in with both feet in on June 1st. Uh we welcome nearly 500 students to Willow River for summer school age care this year. Um very large group of kids. We had a total of 55 staff that um have been working throughout the summer. This is the last week. I think uh custodians are happy to have this be the last week and I
007know our staff would like um some a little time to breathe as well before we head into fall. Um we served 44 children in the 4K wrap care program. Um also uh just over 600 children throughout the school year in our before and after school care program. And then I just added some statistics. We do an annual survey of our staff um asking about um whether they believe this is a good um value for their families, whether they believe we're communicating well. um also questions about um the activities and all of that. So um we consistently receive high marks from our families who participate in school age care. >> So that's the three programs. >> Are we seeing a change or an increase in the wrap care now? We're in year what what year are
008we in for that? Um for us this will be our um fourth year of rap care going into um yes so we are um right now we're about 60 kids in rap care and that number grows every day. I think, you know, we've got more families obviously signed up for 4K. Um, but as the start of the school year starts getting closer, we have more families asking to participate in wrap care and before and after school care. >> Thanks, Mr. President. I just wanted to um ask I had kind of two things to ask you about. You mentioned earlier about the new website. So that will be live to parents next week. Is that or is that the transition is kind of ongoing? >> So our Yes, our new website goes live um August 18th.
009Fingers crossed. Um and um I'm excited for it. It it brings um a a a much more robust system to our families. It's much more responsive. We know that most of our families access the website with their their phones and um our current site is not as responsive as we would like it to be for a phone. Um this one is totally responsive to um using your phone. So that's a huge advantage um as we move forward. Um and the other part is I'm able to release some um more responsibility to each of the buildings because I can kind of compartmentalize this site a lot more so I don't have people wandering all around the site as we do right now. So I don't have to worry about somebody coming in and duplicating the whole
010site which gota that sounds like a a great improvement. >> And then um I just wanted to overall all this stuff is so great. Everything you do you wear so many hats and you do such a nice job. >> Um it just everything you're doing it's like it's just great. Um, but in particular community ed. I know people love community ed and this is a totally old stir thing that I'm gonna ask you. So tell me about pickle ball and are we having are we getting new pickle ball courts inside? Is that correct? In the winter time, will people be able to reserve courts or are there out any outdoor courts at the different the new and improved elementarymentaries or am I totally misunder >> the new North Hudson Elementary does have pickle ball lines
011on that court. Um, the middle school gym has pickle ball. The high school has pickle ball, I believe. Nope. >> No, >> I think so. >> Inside? >> No, >> inside. Not outside. >> Yeah. No, no, no. Inside. Um that's where we hold most of our classes are at those inside locations which all fill up right away. >> And we'll get we have a lot of new asphalt. >> We have a lot of new a lot of new asphalt going in at the elementaryaries. We're going to get pickle ball lines eventually strike on those outdoor areas as well. >> Thank you. Because you know how it is. You get to a certain age and you either watch birds or you start playing pickle ball. The other thing we'll we're excited to add with the new
012gymnastics space at um North Hudson is we'll be starting to um offer tumbling classes and early gymnastics classes. >> That's wonderful. Thank you so much. >> Any questions? >> Um I just want to echo what Molly said and say thank you. really excited about those tumbling classes because one of my children just asked me and I was like I can't be driving to River Falls or Woodbury for this. Um and I just wanted to say thank you. Um the school age care program is great. Uh I think that the quality the like the giant magnetiles like the toys kids have to play with. It's really an amazing program and really makes it easier for working parents. So, thanks for all you've done to run that program. Thank you. It's a great team. >> Thanks, Tracy.
013Uh, next up is uh instructional technology with Amanda. >> Cheers. >> Well, good evening. If we haven't met, I'm Amanda McCarthy. I'm the assistant director of teaching and learning for technology. I oversee all IT throughout the district. Um, so I wanted to start with uh our students. We rolled out the new Chromebooks. We shared that last year when we were here. Uh but we got those into our system. One of the really interesting things, our staff started because we track repairs, noticed a repair trend, and we were able to find an issue with our Lenovo Chromebooks and bring it to Lenovo and worked with them to get it fixed. So, our staff did great work there. Uh I wanted to highlight the students who work in our office. Uh we have anywhere between one and
014four students who are in our office every single day and they take on part of our workload. So you can see the things that they've done this year. We had over 400 Chromebooks in addition to the 612 Chromebooks that we purchased last year. They unpacked and inventoried all of the new high school laptops support duplicating their inventorying, unpacking, dating, um asset tagging our equipment. They update all their TVs across our buildings and then basic office tasks. But if you think about the work that these students are able to do, it's work that we would be doing in our office. And it just makes our office so much more efficient and it gives these students an opportunity to learn life skills and be a part of a workforce in our space. So our team did some
015big work this year. One of the biggest things you may have heard, but Windows 11 is going away or Windows 10 is going away. And every single laptop, every single device that runs on Windows 10, we had to update it. And so many of them, we were able to just magically make that happen without ever having to touch a laptop. But we had to account for every single laptop in our environment and get everything updated prior to school starting this fall. We did a pretty significant infrastructure upgrade to the wireless. So, we put in over 200 new access points and then a new wireless controller that is the brain that makes all of the access points work. And so, what we should see for our staff and the people who use our resources in our
016district is better, faster um access to our wireless. Our staff at the high school will get all new laptops this fall. Many of them have already picked them up. We have a few remaining in our office, but that'll be a great update for them. We replaced over a hundred of the mini computers. The mini computers are the devices that run the Epson boards. So, in a typical setup in a classroom, there's a small little computer that runs it. Wouldn't you know, they ran all in Windows 10. So, many of them weren't able to be updated because of their age. So, we uh replaced over a hundred of them. like we do every year, we did a large uh batch of recycling. And so all of our computers that are no longer usable, iPads that are
017no longer usable or equipment we're pulling out, we're able to recycle that and then um use some of the resources we receive from that to reinvest into our um it uh we sent out over 2,000 Swedish fish. So as you know, we send out those fishing emails every month to our staff. And the graph is really important. So the dot on the far left is May of 2024. So that's when I took the position and we were sitting at a fishprone percentage of about 7.1%. Over the course of the year, you can see our graph slowly declines. We ended in April at I think it's 3.2 or 3.3%. So, we made a significant change and that represents the people in our environment clicking that fish hook, noticing those fishing emails and it ultimately makes our
018environment much more secure. So, I'll talk about kind of how we got there in a minute. You go ahead to the next slide. Construction obviously was an enormous theme for us over the course of this year. our team um all but two dawned a hard hat and got in there. One because they were medically unable to do it and another one because somebody had to be there to answer the phone. So, one person just stayed and everybody else was out. For every single space that was a part of construction, our team had to be in there twice. One to deconstruct and one to reconstruct. So, we were busy. You can see some of the things we did. We obviously were putting things up, hammer drilling. Uh the picture in the middle is Steve, one of
019our IT specialists. We had to move the network at North Hudson. So it was located in one place and we had to completely move it to a new room. Uh it's a was a dayong process, but we also um were able to do some cleaning. The picture on the right is one of our network racks. So, we have these two big fourpost racks that hold all of our switches that make all of our internet run, and they needed to polish the floor underneath it. So, the only way to get that done is to lift the entire rack off of the ground. So, if you could see the top, you'll see some ratchet straps and some really interesting mechanics. But, we got it off the floor. The floor is polished. It looks beautiful. The bottom is
020part of construction that I think we often don't think of. So we have old infrastructure in place that we don't need anymore. So if you think back in the day, we had computer labs and every sing every single computer had to plug into a cord to make it run. That picture on the bottom right represents it's the back of a pickup and it's one of the loads of cabling that we were able to remove because we no longer need. Let's go ahead to the next slide. We did work alongside facilities and finance to implement a new help desk. We had an IT help desk and we had a facilities help desk. And then we had a process where if you needed the inter school delivery person, that was a different process. And if you needed
021to schedule catering, that was a different process. So we took these paid tools, merged them into only one paid tool. And the entire district will access the help desk regardless of the support that they need. And so that was a really great upgrade and a great collaboration among all of our departments. As far as the IT team, we responded to over 2500 IT tickets. averages about 255 per IT staff member and that's every single person. That's me, that's my administrative assistant, that's everybody. So, it was a busy year in terms of getting people what they needed. The last piece is the way we interacted with our community. So, senior tech club, Tracy talked a little bit about that. We averaged about 40 participants in each session and we integrated the national honor society students which
022was an amazing help because the participants and senior tech club got individualized support. The other way that we as an IT department impacted our community was cyber security. It was a big year of studying and implementing cyber security. The beginning of the year we applied for a federal cyber security grant. Unfortunately, we didn't receive it, but the opportunity to apply for the grant. We audited, we studied, we determined where our strengths and our weaknesses were in our environment, and now we have a clear plan moving forward. One of those clear plans that we took forward was no, which is the fishing training. And as you saw in the past slide, we had a dec decrease of 3.8%. We also implemented activities with cyber security awareness week which I think was part of the 3.8% decrease.
023Um but just a couple of facts for you to be aware of the why cyber security is important. I know you all understand it but 82% of the reporting K12 schools and this is an MSISAC reported cyber security impacts. So I think often we think oh we're little we're Hudson it's this isn't us. It's everybody. And so the safer we can make our environment, the better trained we have our people, better plans we have in place, the better we're able to respond when something happens or if something happens. So that's what's been going on in it this year. What questions can I answer? >> Mr. President, >> what's your biggest ticket? >> My biggest like it ticket? >> Yeah. The one that you get the most? you you had a lot of them on there
024over 2,000. Is there an average of like this is the ticket we get the most of? >> Um I would say probably Laura's laughing because we just had this conversation today. Rostering getting people resources in the timeline that works for both us and them because our timeline isn't always their timeline. And you know, technology, you think it works and you've tested it and it worked and then when somebody else goes to log in, it didn't work. So, >> yeah, >> it's a really big job. I appreciate all your work that you've done to secure the the network for the district and um I have a lot of appreciation for that. >> We do that at our work. That fishing stuff is is real and just training people on knowing the difference between this is a
025spam email versus not is it's a large undertaking just for that piece. and and I love seeing the cords come out. That's great. And u my last comment is I really um I think it's so fantastic that we're utilizing the students in being able to help in that department as a student. I would have so appreciated being able to be in that room um instead of having to be stuck in the classroom. I think it's I just think it's awesome that we're using our students like that. So good job. Thank you. And I would add if you had to point your finger to one administrator that is that is needs the most help with the fishing could you point just in the direction maybe >> President Obama and I don't think that's a wise choice
026part but thank you >> good >> I've got a lot of Swedish fish I turned them okay >> thank you >> uh next we have an um teaching and learning with a new face Shannon Oh, okay. >> I thought I'd take this on since Shannon's relatively new to the position. So, >> I often kind of think at the end of each school year, like, well, next year is going to be so easy because we've implemented so much this year that next year can't possibly be as busy. But then if you look at our plans for the 2526 school year, I realized very quickly like it's going to be just as fun and exciting as it was this year. I'm just going to highlight a few of the things from each of these lists. Um, so
027our new student learning experiences in 2425. The first five bullet points on this list, you can see that we implemented five new curriculum re high quality curricular resources. Um, and the purpose for us implementing these curricular resources is to ensure our teachers can fully focus on instructing the students, making sure that they're learning and making sure that they're engaged rather than focusing on what are we going to teach our students each day. That was a huge undertaking and I want to credit the teachers who were involved with that because teaching a new instructional resource is kind of like being a firstear teacher all over again and our teachers just handled it with such grace and such professionalism and our students are really seeing the benefits and we're even seeing that in our data as we
028move forward. The other thing on this first lefthand side of the list I want to draw your attention to is our act 20 implementation which the whole state of Wisconsin was working with this year. But I'm so proud of the work that the team did for our students. Um the state requires us to implement personalized reading plans for students in grades K through three. Our team decided that we don't see a world where Hudson wouldn't also extend that those personalized reading plans to grades four and five. And so the amount of effort that went into creating those personalized reading plans by our reading specialists um gave countless students the individualized support they needed to get caught up with their reading. And our data shows that when we know exactly where kids struggle and can focus
029those interventions in that exact area, we can really make progress. So we're really excited about that. Um, moving ahead into 2526, we'll continue to reflect and refine upon the implementations of our current resources, but we're also going to be expanding. So, we'll be moving um CKLA will be going into grades K through two. So, we'll have a full K5 implementation of CKLA. We'll be um secondary mass implementation will be expanded to geometry and algebra 2. And then um I'm going to skip to the bottom of this list because there's a highly anticipated launch of the welding academy. Um we're excited about this because it gives our students an opportunity to receive credits toward a full um welding technical diploma at Northwoods Technical College which will jumpst start their post-secary education and their career. So on
030the next slide, this is just oh yeah >> um core knowledge language arts. Yes. And that's one of the um four curricular materials that was endorsed by the state of Wisconsin to meet the criteria for act 20. So this is just some pictures of our students interacting with several of our new curriculum implementations and I hope you can see the engagement that um took place. So for our team, um the reason our team exists is for everything we just talked about in the last few slides. Um our success as a team is determined by the success of our students. And so um I want to just highlight that coming into this next few weeks of school, um our instructional coaches and literacy specialists will be offering over 60 hours of professional learning for our probationary
031staff to just ensure that they get off on the right foot and have a successful school year. In addition to that, the support that each of our instructional coaches and literacy specialists provided for the implementation of these five new curriculum resources is beyond compare. They worked so hard to ensure that they knew the curricular resources inside and out so that they could work alongside our teachers to co-e, co-plan, um, and just work alongside them to make sure that our students had a good experience and that teachers felt supported. And then you can see that um we're continuing to train our elementary teachers in the science of reading. And an exciting um expansion to that is that we're moving that science of reading training to the middle school. And then that 2,000 hours of professional learning
032through instructional coaching is such a foundational piece of our professional learning platform. Our coaches work so hard to learn what's happening in education so that they can give people the indiv individualized learning that um that they that they want. The next slide is just kind of a picture showing in the bottom leftand corner. Um, one of our teachers and our two of our coaches wrote a grant to go to a national for knowledge language arts convention and they, you know, they do that so that they can bring that knowledge back to support our teachers. And then we have some different professional learning opportunities that our coaches provided throughout the school year. And then finally, um, our community. This is an amazingly important aspect of our team to create opportunities to engage with stakeholders about what's
033happening in the Hudson School District. Not only to tell the story of our students experiences, but also to create partnership and two-way conversations that contribute to the outcomes for our students. So, the two main ways that we were able to do that within our department this year is through the teaching and learning advisory council where we work to share and receive feedback on what's new with teaching and learning. Um the four bullet points are the four areas that we covered throughout the school year. So there's a core group of um council members who come and engage in the curricular materials and they ask questions and give us feedback. Um the second one is the character education council and this was a really interesting opportunity to be a part of and work alongside the team to
034to create this event. Um the goal of this council is to create a set of community developed and supported character traits that can be taught and reinforced in the Hudson School District. The committee consisted of 40 community members. 20 of them were from the Hudson School District staff. So that include teachers, administrators, school counselors, health office, etc. And then 50% were comprised of parents, clergy, mental and healthc care providers, business owners, and community nonprofits. So there was a really great representation from our community. You can see that we went through the process in each of the meetings listed on the slide. Um we wanted to talk about what character education is and what character education is not so that we could come to consensus on key character traits and their definitions that the Hudson community
035endorses and wants to support within our students and our community. So, that's just a brief overview of the work of teaching and learning in the 2425 school year. Happy to answer any questions you might have. >> Megan, >> thank you for such a great report. Um, I love CKLA. I love seeing what my uh older kid was working on and I'm really excited to see what happens this year with the expansion to K2 as well as the expansion with the new um math curriculum, especially, you know, it's not all about test scores. But it is good to have measurement and seeing what happened with middle school math scores this past year and see how that um >> it's clear you've all done a lot of work and our teachers have worked hard um and they've
036I've you know been really well supported. So thank you for reporting and Shannon, great to have you here. Thanks for stepping into this role. [Laughter] Thank you. >> Thank you very much. Next, facilities and grounds with Dustin. An underappreciated job, I would say. >> I don't know about that, but um we've had a interesting year. So, um kind of theme for us is just continuous improvement and continuing programs we put in place and and we're really trying to fine-tune and make better COC on there. our ADA door access. We've continued with that program, just improving this the u access to each space. Um our high contrast strips really tackled last year and just trying to identify and improve those areas. Um big highlight was the completion of the EP Rock playground. Finally got that done
037and set and then did a bunch of construction and closed it off to people. Um Rivercrest was a neat little project. We're trying to match uh their carpet, their 17-y old carpet with North Hudson and Rock. So that's coming along nicely. Uh we implemented a door repair placement program um just to really track and and manage better what doors are replacing, repairing, kind of useful life of those. Um as far as continuous improvement, just year two in our gym floor service program and our weekly turf care. That's been um good for the useful life of those. Uh big pool upgrades this year outside the referendum project. Really from a safety standpoint, you can see everything we did up there. Um we transformed a existing science lab um into a transition lab which is a cool
038project down the way from my office. Uh finished the Willow River chiller project. Um this long ongoing sentence next the practice turf mobile softball fencing. It's just a big set of fence that we can take up and down and that practice turf in the back of the high school can be used for lacrosse, softball, soccer. So it's a it's a nice addition. Um I should have said on Newton I didn't mean we recycled all the bleachers. if you've driven by just the the road bleachers. So, the school can kind of use that that side for FIAD and other uses once they get back in there. And then, if you guys haven't seen the middle school, the media center, we tackled um kind of new bookshelves. Um Bonnie was instrumental in that. And then, uh new
039paint that recently went up. We took care of it's kind of a cool design. Gets rid of all the gray. So, it's a it's a good look. So, under our team, um still working with CISA. They provided our annual or CISA 10, our annual safety training. Um, they took our feedback, made it fun, more fun, as fun as safety training can be. Um, we got our lead custodians. We use heads and leads as different language, but our leads are nighttime folks that are in charge of the building. Got them up to Amory for a Wasbo conference. That was pretty good, good feedback on that. Uh, folks and cheers for peers, updated our district annual asbestous coordinator. Um, partnered with the fire department once again just for identifying safety hazards. They've been great to work with.
040uh four new CPOS or certified pool operators. I'm one of them. Really exciting. Um like I said, still working with CISA 10. Uh year two of the safety walkthrough with them, which has been great. That's been helpful in the schools and uh of course worked through and supported referendum projects, which has been chaos. >> Nice pictures. Uh community is always a good one. And there's just I can't list them all, but um you folks have seen it all. the uh their spring expo, hot air, which went to Riverest, Pepper Fest, which um they're kind of not using our kitchen right now at North because it's under construction, but we still did good work with them last year. Tons of dance recital, quilt show, craft fairs, uh everything. And then like I talked about earlier, our
041lead custodians at uh middle and high school just have been really instrumental. They they're kind of the point of contact and they've just had a a phenomenal uh run here the last couple years of really working with community members. uh year two of our pavement management improvement plan. Um which has been great. That's really helped us identify spaces that need repair verse replace and then cost it out over a series of 10 years and we we've done a good job following that. Um we did we partnered with the K9 dog trials. Again, I don't have that neat picture of a dog jumping out a window, but get the idea. And then um partnered with the city once again. They did uh Rivercrest last year um and then AP Rock this year. What questions do you
042have, Kate? >> Um, so first of all, I just want to say every time I've been to an event at night with my kids, whether it's swim or any number of things, the custodians are always extremely helpful and friendly and happy, which is great to see because usually if you're happy at work means something good's going on. So, thank you for that. Um what is the difference between a science lab and a transition lab is one thing I just wondered as >> so student services could help me better with that one but it was an existing um chemistry uh so I think transitions is more for uh kids not in the traditional uh school going out you can help with that thanks tap dancing forever there >> you were doing a good job uh they
043transitioned the lab into the pace lab that I shared about that was that workplace lab that we um are going to be starting this coming school year. So that's what that is. >> And it was not one of our new labs. It was one of the labs we didn't re model the original remodels there. >> That was brand new and then we changed it. Oh yeah, you're >> Yeah. >> Makes right? >> Yeah. So it wasn't it wasn't one that we just did and then changed it again. It's one that we didn't do the high school >> on the west end of the high school. >> Mr. President >> Molly, >> thank you. Um I love how you talk about continuous improvement and again seeing all the hats that you have to wear and the
044things that are going on. I don't know how you keep it straight but good job. Um and I also want to note I mean we know that our schools are used for community things but what a tremendous asset we have um that is available for everybody to use and we all pay our taxes for it and we all get to use it and enjoy it. and it's great to see how um well cared for the buildings are and the projects that you guys kind of you know have ongoing. So thank you so much and thank you to your team. >> Appreciate it. I would say that you know I work in facilities and and I know how difficult it is but I am glad to hear that we you know for budgeting purposes that you
045know you have like the asphalt monitoring plan and things like that how important that is uh important that is to help us you know get things you know keep things running smoothly for the district. So having that uh good information I would also ask uh the the turf fields are how old now? Uh what are they? So it'll have been the the referendum for 2018. So 2017 install. >> I noticed that, you know, I saw the fence go in for the softballs movable fence. I see a lot of, you know, I live right by it. So the the turf fields, I see everything from, you know, ebikes running around on there to god knows what else. But um I mean what is the condition of that? What is our expectations? And >> yeah, so when
046we implemented the um kind of our turf care program, um you know, useful life was hoped to get 20 years out of it. Um, but I I think through both the kind of the management of the pellets, uh, the seam identification which needs to be repaired, and then just the general we have like this, it's called the kitty. It it picks up all the trash and and smooths out the beads. So, I think if if we can keep that up, we can probably stretch that. Excellent. Thank you. Anybody else? Okay. Thank you very much. >> Thanks. Uh moving on to enrollment updates with Andrea. >> Okay, so our monthly update for enrollment. What you can see here is we do have some celebration and that we are above 300 kids right now, knock on wood,
047at the kindergarten level. So the first time I think all year. So we're at 305 um for K. Uh and then we continue to monitor um class sizes. This is updated as you can see as late as last week. And uh we are uh definitely aware of the River Crest third and fifth grade situations and um being at the high end of our class size guidelines, one above in each of the four classrooms. Um and we plan and we've been working closely both Shannon uh Paula Blatner and myself uh plan to have some conversations about some supports that we can do in that area but that's really the only bubbles um for this entire enrollment document and then high school middle school as well. So uh you can see we're up 10 kids at the
048middle school and we are up about 10 kids as well at the high school. So, um, monthly update. We'll give you another update in September, but these are good trends, but they're still certainly down from last year's numbers in terms of overall enrollment. Any questions for me? >> Sorry, Mr. President. Um, on on the first sheet, um, in the total, it has on the left the 134 school sites, 283 enrolled. Is that the 4K data or I'm just wondering. >> That's the 4K data. And actually Sue texted me a little bit ago. Um and as of today it's 291 overall for the 4K. So right now it's such a fluid number especially at the 4K level. Um but she did just let me know that it's at 291. So I don't yet know how that's
049broken down between school sites and district sites or school sites and community partners, >> but um it is a number that's going up. Thank you. >> Okay. Okay. Then we have a back to school updates with Nick. >> Yep. I'm sorry to Erin. Did you have a question? >> I was just going to ask what um strategy you have for those River Crest overflows that are 28 kids in the two and two classrooms >> in the third and fifth grade. Yeah. I know Paula's already been talking to the teachers and we're meeting this Thursday to come up with some um options of support, what what will actually help the teachers in those situations versus making it more work for them. Um, we are very concerned about any potential posting this time of year and the
050quality of candidates um that we would ever get in that situation. So, we really think um based on conversations that it's best to problem solve with the experts, which are the teachers, and then having Paula and Shannon and all of us working together to come up with some options that uh can um support both third as well as fifth grade. >> Did those numbers did those numbers how how much did those numbers jump up from the last time that we reviewed this? >> Not much. I mean, it went from 2728 2728. Um we're monitoring almost on a weekly basis and Paula has been um making both Shannon and I aware as this is coming in. Um and so the problem is at 27 they're still within our class size guidelines and we just never know
051in the month of August who's going to move in and who's going to move out. So yes, it's something that we've been closely monitoring. Um but now it's officially gotten to 28 28 28 28 and that's what triggers additional conversation. >> Got it. Thank you for working with those teachers. Nick. >> Absolutely. So, um just a couple things to go over with the board with the welcome back. It's hard to believe that school's just around the corner. Kids start two weeks from tomorrow. Uh we will have uh staff, new staff in the building starting on Thursday of this week. So, we are moving through. Uh a couple things to invite the board to and I believe Tim sent an email out. We have the new uh educator uh lunchon that's hosted by the chamber, but
052it's right at the high school. all the board is invited to to attend. It's about 11:30, 11:45 is about when that lunchon um happens. Uh you'll be able to listen to keynote from your very own Bob Bowman. Uh we'll be, you know, just inspiring those new educators for us. Uh so, uh we'll work through that. On Monday, uh we again uh we have uh new staff will be with us again. So they basically start on Thursday, Friday, Monday and then all staff uh basically uh start uh start reporting on Tuesday or sorry on Wednesday. So they will have some work in their buildings and some meetings on Wednesday and then we have the district day um the opening uh wellness walk and district meetings. So we're doing it in the morning this year uh a
053little bit different. Um we've done them in the afternoon in the past. Um, we do not have a speaker this year. We're going to try something a little bit different. Uh, we'll see how this we'll see how this goes. It I think we have some people that are really excited about it, but kind of some staff Olympics and some different things going on. So, it should be a lot of fun. Uh, but the board is absolutely welcome to join us for any of the wellness walk, the breakfast at the high school, or the welcome back. Uh again, you'll get to hear uh Bob a second time uh speak and inspire the entire staff at that point. >> Um so >> I think uh I think Kate was going to help out this year >> as
054a former Olympian. Just kidding. >> So um yeah. So, and then you know you can see where some of our uh our sixth grade orientation slashopenhouse is the night of the 21st uh middle school openhouse and then the high school freshman orientation openhouse is that evening also. Um and then uh our elementary schools have their meet the meet the teacher nights are Monday night right before school starts on the 25th. Uh we do have a board meeting that night. Uh but it is elementary meet the teacher night uh that that evening and then the first day of school is on the 26th, Tuesday the 26th. Another date uh that's a fun date uh to would invite the board to is our all staff barbecue. We do that is kind of a family event uh where
055we invite all of our staff and their family members uh and we do a barbecue before one of the games. We rotate between volleyball, soccer, and football uh and try to uh bring our staff in. We usually get, I don't know, four or 500 uh people that to attend that. And it's a pretty fun event. Um they get to stay and watch whatever game it is that night and and uh have a have a cheeseburger or brought maybe. I don't know, maybe they're maybe it's just cheeseburgers. I can't remember what we do. Um but uh really a great event. So if you want to be a part of that or attend, we'd love to have you. Usually kicks off around 5:30 and goes to about 7:00 7:30. So look forward to that. So, that's just
056kind of some back to school stuff and some dates to kind of keep in your mind. Um, the only other thing that we have coming up that I just put a plug for is we do have our annual meeting that is coming up. Um, and that will be at the high school. So, this is our last uh televised meeting coming out of the district uh the current district office as we get ready to move over to the middle school. But the annual meeting uh which is September 8th is at the high school. So, that'll be our next regular meeting. We do a regular board meeting ahead of that meeting and then we followed up with the annual meeting that evening as well. So, um just a couple things as we get ready to start back
057to school. Some dates to keep on people's calendars. Any questions about back to school activities or what we have going on. All right. So, I have the next item on the list. Uh we're really excited to present to the board our 2025 2030 strategic plan. You've seen a draft of this this spring. Uh it was it didn't look this good. Uh Tracy did an outstanding job uh doing all the graphics related to this. Um this is really kind of our road map over the next five years. We're not changing our mission statement. We're not changing vision statement or our um our values or anything like that, but it's really the road map. This is all comes from uh the conversation that we had, the community conversation that we had back in 2024. And it talks
058a little bit about that on page three where um you know what this process has been and and what we're working through um and how we got to the point we are we are at. Uh the the plan is really is really kind of based around uh the the four areas the educational excellence operations well-being and partnerships. So the last strategic plan that we had was based around more around the audience. It was more around our kids our staff and our community. Um, so what we're really doing is we're kind of changing a little bit and we have those we have those audiences built in within each of the I don't know they're not really pillars you call pieces of the pie, however you want to how you want to phrase it, but um what
059you see there uh starting on page four is each area. So uh educational excellence, you'll see there's a focus area. So it talks about academic achievement, you know, what we're hoping to accomplish, you know, all ac, you know, all students demonstrate academic growth in reading and math. And then what you start to see is the action plan in place um the interventions and who's doing what. So on the far right side the timeline um as we met as a leadership team one of the things we talked about is you can't do everything all the time. I mean and everybody can't start everything all at once. And so uh we broke the leadership team into groups. So we have the elementary group, middle school group, high school group. We have a separate group that's uh teaching
060and learning. So an instructional side which includes student services uh but even there they're kind of broken out a little bit and then we have the operational side which also breaks up a little bit into human resources facilities and grounds and uh and finance. And what you can start to see is we we have a lot of other things that are going on, but these uh these initiatives or these things that are going on are when when they're going to start and how long we think it'll take us to get fully implemented in these different these different areas and and who will actually uh be responsible for some of these different these different components. And so um academic achievement is obviously going to be uh much heavier in the areas of elementary, middle school, high
061school uh and on the instruction and student services side there is you know a human resources does have a component in it. But as you work your way through uh educational excellence and the different areas, you can start to you can start to see who are our target audiences, what are we what are we trying to do? Um you know what we heard from the community conversation quite a bit was more partnerships. we want to be involved, you know, they want more involvement in schools. How can we get the community involved more? You'll see that that is is uh throughout this document working on partnering with local organizations and getting different folks in um when it talks about real world uh learning as a focus area too under academic achievement. Even with the community members,
062we're looking at bringing more community members in as guest speakers, mentors, and and career adviserss as we work with kids. Just trying to bring more people in. You can see what we're talking about with parents. Like for this example, focus area two. Um we heard from parents they want more resources related to post-secary planning. Now not college planning but post-secary planning. So what what what is there um what is there for my child after after 12th grade? And so working on on on some of those different components as you work through. You can see the well the well-being pieces mental mental health uh components were a big piece of what we heard from the community. um and wanting to make sure that we continue to build upon a lot of the successes we've had uh
063with our mental health programming in the district and um and expanded mental health services and and colllocated services. Um we're also looking for different ways that we can collaborate with different partners in the community uh to uh work on mental health campaigns and things along those lines. You can also see the positive school climate. We're also wanting to take, if you go to folks area too, a proactive approach to uh mental health because we know that um you know with with our kids with our with our staff or our parents and staff. It's it's important that um you know we can do some things on the front on the front end of this of this which is encouraging positive behavior. That's the PBIS things that we've been working on. We want to continue to keep
064going. Um we want to continue to have students take leadership roles and work through those things. and then continue our employee recognition and wellness uh initiatives. And you know, we've had a lot of different wellness initiatives. We've had mental health wellness initiatives. We've had financial wellness initiatives with our employees. Um we've done health, you know, wellness initiatives. And so really trying to look at our employees well-rounded as well. You'll see that we have an entire pillar dedicated to partnerships and and family engagement and what we're what we're trying to do with that. primarily focusing on parents and family, our staff and our in our communities. Uh some of this uh some of the components are backloaded a little bit or are going to start in year two of the in of the uh strategic plan
065just because we we are working through and finalizing some things as it relates on the academic side of the house that really we're we're in the process. There's only so much bandwidth that everybody has to work through some of this stuff. And then as you get into operations, this is an area in our last strategic plan that we just didn't we didn't cover. It it just didn't have a it just didn't have a a home. And so it really is talking about resource equity and infrastructure. You know, how are we making sure that um that all of our students and staff have, you know, access to the efficient and uh uh secure and well-managed systems, you know, as we work through that. You heard Amanda talk today. You've you heard uh Dustin talk. You've heard
066other uh Tracy talk today. There are so many other things uh that go into school than just the teacher standing in front of the classroom and uh and working with kids. And so uh a lot of that a lot of those pieces related to operations as I talk about with our leadership team is a lot of people don't realize we do those things until they don't go well. So, uh, nobody thinks about the 200 wireless access points that have to be up in our building in order for everybody to connect to the internet. And, uh, if all of a sudden the internet's down, uh, people hear about it. And I will say I've never been in a district that has such a high rate of uptime. I mean, we're rarely down. Now, I say that.
067Um, but, uh, you know, it it takes a lot of moving pieces, you know, to keep those things up. And so, I think that's that's an important piece. Um, and as we're continue to uh map out our district finances and operations, we want to make sure we're continuing to provide clear and transparent information. Uh, that's in that that kind of that focus area, too, to make sure that we're not just um making connections with industry connections, but also making sure that we're letting people know what is going on and what do we have going on. Um, the neat thing is, as you saw from Dustin, I think in the past we've done a a rental hours, like how many hours our facilities have been rented, and we could probably get that information for you, but
068it's it's it's thousands and thousands of hours the community is using our our facilities, and and it's great, and we want them to use it because they're the ones that have paid the bill for them. So, um, this is our this is our roadmap over the next five years of how we plan to build on all the successes you've heard about all summer long with the individual reports and also where we're going in into the future. So, I'd welcome any questions board members have or any comments. >> Any questions or comments? Uh I I would just say that I this is in my years of paying attention this uh strategic plan is uh is a very well thought out, very well put together, very user friendly, something that I think uh the public could uh
069understand and appreciate as well. Um so great job Tracy and your team and Brian. >> Sorry. >> No, no, no. >> Were you finished Mr. President? Of >> course. Thank you. Um, I I really appreciate this, too. I'm I've I've left Sears paying attention than than Bob over here, but but I I really appreciate the acknowledgement that we can't can't do everything and and zeroing in on focus areas. One question I have is did you talk at all about measuring um these focus areas and >> and could you say a little bit about that? >> Yeah, absolutely. And so what what happens is um so when we have these focus areas so um and we'll be talking about this a little bit later but uh we set our district goals for the year department goals
070building goals all get tied back to what are the initiatives within the strategic plan. Once we do that once those goals are set we create what's called a scorecard action plan. So it has uh measurable um outcomes. So we have baseline data um and also it has uh different milestone points four milestone points throughout the course of the year so that we can figure you know they don't just become words in a wall we're actually getting these things done um and uh that's how we track the progress towards all of these things and and continue to work continue to work towards it. So what way the way this will work and the way we have been working for a while is if a new initiative can't tie back to the strategic plan then we're probably
071not and if we can't measure it we're not we're not doing there has to be an outcome and one of the biggest shifts we've had over the last probably five to seven years is we've moved away from process goals to outcome based goals. So, uh, you know, back in the day it used to be implement, you know, it might have been enough to just say implement CK CKLA the new reading. Now, that's that's just the process. The the actual goal is we want to see literacy uh, you know, student achievement literacy improved by this many points. The process to get there is implementing CKO. And so, it's definitely more an outcomesbased model. Um, and the team has done phenomenal job. And so I'll be uh going over some of those things with you guys as
072well. So you'll be able to see examples of what those strategic plans look like or those uh scorecard action plans look like for each of you. >> Sorry. Um so following up on so we're the public will see this. >> We talk about measurement. >> Yep. >> Will we follow up with measurements as we're going along to show how you know these fall into these areas. >> Yeah. So, I I believe, you know, the best way that we can do this is is potentially every year uh at the end of the year, we'll do a report out. This is what we've accomplished towards the strategic plan. The reason why they have those weird initials, uh by everything, you know, it says like E2- or or uh those things, it's so that we can tie everything
073we're doing back to those pieces on the strategic plan. So, uh, yes, I would I would envision that we would be then doing kind of tying everything back with our, um, a report out usually in August or September on both the district goals, but also this is the progress we're making at this point in this plan. >> Yep. >> Mr. President, >> yes. >> Um, I also want to compliment how user friendly this is. I think oftentimes you look at a strategic plan and you think you can't even really follow the plan, let alone follow how it's going to how the outcomes are going to come out. Um, and then also I want to compliment the fact that I think every single area of this comes from our community conversation. And as I sat through
074all of those sessions, I thought, "Oh my, there's so many ideas. How can this possibly be put into one document?" And you have done it. So it looks excellent. Yeah, it's it it you know it was a lot of work. Um and the team did a great job over the course of this year uh this past school year putting this together and taking the feedback from the uh community conversations last spring and the community put a lot of time in because we had over 150 people with us for three nights and four hours each time and and that was a lot of work. But we wanted to make sure that people knew that we weren't just getting them together just because to say we did it. It was actually going to drive the the direction
075of the district. And that's that's what it did. So, >> okay, that brings us to the end of reports. Moving on to topics for discussion and or possible action. >> We do have we do have one one more report left. Construction update. >> Oh, >> yeah. >> Sorry. >> Well, just want to give just want to give an update uh as we get closer to school where we're at with things. >> Um I know as people drive by buildings, they go there's just no way these are going to be ready. And uh you know, we've been working with uh we've been working with our contractor um and we we do feel like we're in a pretty good spot uh with the buildings. Um as we kind of work our way through North Hudson, what you
076see up there, that's new main entrance. Uh this was pictures from Friday. Uh it looks it looks different even today. It's Monday because they worked over the weekend. Uh so if you were to drive by it would look a lot it would look a lot different. They're definitely making progress in North Hudson. believe that just about every part of the building will be done on the first day of school. Uh we may be eating lunch in the old cafeteria to start. Uh which isn't the end of the world. Um and the the main office will be ready, but the principal's offices, uh you know, might not be ready, but again, that'll be within about a week or so. Uh the rest of the building is in really good shape. Again, it wouldn't be a construction
077report without a picture of bathrooms. Um you can start to see this is the cafeteria space. Um, ceilings are, you know, they're getting drywall sophets in, ceilings going in. You can start to see the windows that have been cut in and the light coming in. But now, if you go to the next one, you can see this is what it looks like now down the hallways at North Hudson. Really some neat spaces. I don't know if you can make it a little bigger, Tim. Um, but uh the the spaces have really uh really turned out really nice and and uh it will be very similar in some of the other buildings. Um, you can see some of the classrooms, the last couple of classrooms that are finishing out. Um, they need uh ceiling tile and
078carpeting. Now, it looks like, god, they got a long way to go here. This is, you know, there's probably about six to eight hours left in this room. I mean, it's just not not much time. Uh, it's finishes as we go through the side of the building. Uh, that's where the new windows for the the um cafeteria are. Uh there's actually I think uh they've they should have glass in these windows by the end of the day tomorrow. Um so uh they're definitely moving along. It looks a lot different. Uh the front of the building I go down one more there are glass. You can see they started putting the glass and there are glass in in these windows and the brick has been patched in. And again these are pictures that just took Friday.
079Uh you keep working your way down. Uh this is a changing room uh family style uh bathroom that we have uh for the gymnastics to use. So it has it's a separate it own kind of se separate family style bathroom that has a shower and things like that. Um we didn't do full locker rooms for the gymnastics space just because uh kids don't use them as much as they used to. But we do have at least one space if somebody would like to shower after practice and things like that that they have that space available but it's private bathroom. Uh you go into EP Rock um main entrance EP Rock from the outside uh is definitely looking uh pretty good. Sidewalks are in. Uh asphalt is going to be in uh start going in the
080end of this week. Um the same thing with North Hudson. So it will look drastically different. All the construction fencing came down today. Uh then Dustin and his team are going to go and we'll start getting everything kind of put back together um grasswise and things like that. Uh the main office uh is ready for paint. Um actually they work through the weekend. Uh it actually has started to get paint on the walls. That's the new main office controlled entrance area. Um this next picture is actually out in front of the media center. Um they're just they're about ready to get ceilings in. Again, they worked all weekend. This is drywalled now. uh where it wasn't dry old when they took this picture on Friday. Um you start to see the tile go in in
081the um cafeteria. So the cafeteria space is about uh is about done. That will be ready for the start of school. Uh you can keep going down. Um these are uh classroom. This is a classroom uh bathroom space uh related, you know, off of a it might be a 4K or a kindergarten room. Uh so flooring's in. They just got to put the fixtures and paint. Uh we go into the middle school. The middle school is in really great shape. You start to see uh the flooring has gone down in the hallways. The lights are in, lockers are in. We did have an issue uh last Tuesday. A little bit of a setback. Um, we had uh worker that was working on a sprinkler system that uh thought there wasn't water in the system and
082opened up a 5- in valve and dumped a few thousand gallons of water in the second floor of the building. Uh, so that had to be mitigated and um and all all of it, you know, stuff pulled out, things like that. Not exactly what you're wanting to deal with when you're trying to crunch to get everything done. Uh, but we're in a really good spot. Um, and big thank you to Dustin and Bonnie and their teams. Uh, we had a lot of custodial help to help the construction crews just to just to get things going. Uh, you can see the wall uh going in the media center. This is actually now painted and has glass in it. So, this was taken on Friday and now it's it's just a different space. Um, over by the
083gym entrance, uh, people say, "Why are we messing with that?" If you ever remember going into that space, uh, they had a roof that slanted forward. The gutters never worked. So that meant the sidewalks were always full of ice, especially in the spring and uh in the fall. So that got a flat roof with internal drains. Uh it's a it was definitely a safety issue, maintenance issue. Uh so that will be done by the time we start. Um I think what you're seeing that's district office space uh which is actually I think they painted started painting that will not be ready until end of September. Um and we told them focus on everything else and not that space. And so that's that's where they've spent their time. Uh you start to see ceilings are going
084in by the multi-purpose rooms. Um and you can keep going down. You start to see the walls being painted with that uh kind of neat design on the the big wall. It's actually all done. Uh it's really kind of a neat space. Uh when people go in there, they're it's it's definitely um transformed that space and you a lot of it's just paint and flooring. It's not a uh it didn't didn't get a tremendous amount of investment, but it it will look very very nice once. So, we're feeling like we're in a pretty good spot. There are parts of EP Rock that won't be done until uh probably about the 10th of September. Uh but we have enough extra rooms on hand to uh be able to move some people into those spaces. Uh but
085it will be kind of a race to the end. Teachers will be able to get into their classrooms next week. Um, and although the hallways won't be done, they'll be able to set up their classrooms and get those things done uh in the buildings and get those rolling and then uh it should be all ready, all the buildings will be ready for their open houses. Questions? >> Dr. Wlette, thank you for all the um information. The one question I have is with um it running behind and um construction going on over the weekends, how are we with the budget and does this eat up contingency or is this just part of the job that they are contracted to do? >> Um some of it is just part of the job they're contracted to do. They
086have an expect, you know, they knew the timeline. So some of the, you know, a lot of the biders built overtime into their bids because they knew they just about every school project ends like this. Um there always a race in August. Um contingency, you know, we're sitting in a in a reasonably good spot. We still have a few hundred,000 left in contingency, which is great considering what the point we're at right now. Um and you know, we were able to uh get um as opposed to just burning through contingency, we've been pretty diligent about it. And so we've been able to get some uh increased value uh for folks uh in in the project. Um, but it's it is, make no mistake, it is a huge uh time consuming uh piece for Bonnie, for
087Dustin, myself right now. It some it is a very important piece because if the buildings aren't ready, we can't start school. So, I mean, it's it is a high priority. Uh we're meeting daily at this point. Um as as I think um I made three different trips to North Hudson today um for different things that came up uh two trips to EP Rock and one to the middle school. So um Bonnie made at least two or three trips to different places. Dustin's all over. I mean it's just it's a on top of everything else we're trying to get done to start school. Um, but uh I think we're, you know, I think we're in a good spot and I think when it's all said and done, the community is going to have buildings they can
088really be proud of. Kids are going to have wonderful learning spaces. Teachers are going to have great resources at their disposal. Um, so it will it will be things that I think everybody can be proud of and that, you know, we all indications at this point look like we will be bringing this in under budget. I just uh can echo the the amount the amount of effort and the time involved in this from Nick, from Bonnie and uh from Dustin and all the staff. This has been a huge pull and uh in some ways, you know, you'd have to say, you know, a disappointment. It's a challenge. This is we're putting our staff through a lot. We're putting our students through some. Uh, but I think the end result is is just going to be
089awesome from what I've seen. Um, but the call out, the uh the dedication um Nick and Bonnie have have done, you know, holding uh holding our contractors, uh that constant communication, the number of hours they spend out on those sites, it's not, you know, doesn't show up anywhere except uh in the finished product. And uh so thank you very much. Anybody else? Okay, maybe I forgot to I was trying to skip over that one just to save Nick one last report on it, but uh um but uh so moving on to topics and possible action. Anybody want to help help us out with the motion? >> Mr. President, >> yes. I move approval of the consent items and that the chief financial and operations officer be authorized to pay bills in the amount of 1,700,790.93.
090>> Do I have a second? Second by Aaron. And all those in favor say I. >> I. All those opposed say no. Nay. Um hearing none. Motion passes. Anything from Andrea? any retirements or anything this time? >> No. Um, see, moving on for Nick with the uh fall regional meeting of the WASBY. >> Yep. Uh, so just to give you a heads up, the uh WASBY regional fall regional meetings for our area is Tuesday, October 28th. Is that right, Tim? At the top there. Um, and it's I don't know if it's is it at is it at uh it's in Oaklair this year. So, it's been I think I've been oming in past years. Um, so it's in Oaklair. Um, and uh, you know, just they give a legislative update. They'll have their executive director's
091report. Um, and, uh, looks like they're going to be, uh, they you usually a short presentation. Uh, kind of a short board learning opportunity. Uh, so if you're wanting to be to go to that, um, typically we send at least a few people to that. um please email Tim and myself and we'll get you registered uh and we'll work through the the car pooling to do that. So um again just wanted to get it on people's radar that it's Tuesday, October 28th in Oaklair. So >> and I think Bob, you have some >> Yeah, some great news. Yeah. uh with with Jamie uh retiring off the board uh he was on the policies and resolutions committee for for uh for WASBY and um because he is no longer available uh Mr. Totenhagen from River Falls
092the committee chair has reached out to me to uh bribe me into trying to continue Jaime's legacy. So I have accepted that. I think it's important that we have someone from our district um as part of that resolution and policy committee uh and just from meeting to you know a few times but meeting other other people from the state and hearing those concerns and what's on other districts you know mind and what they're looking for and how that meshes or does not mesh with with what we're looking at. So I uh happily look forward to being on that committee. Uh after moving on uh we have a certified staff handbook with Andrea. >> Yes. So as we discussed at the work session in July these this is our traditional review of our certified staff handbook
093and this is for the 2526 school year. And so what you see here with this document is a red light version has not changed since the work session. So I won't go through all the details but again it's primarily um updating nothing that sub substantive but instead uh updating names and some language issues. We are embedding within this document the previously board approved uh modifications to our layoff language um that was approved last winter by the board and now it's reflected in this new handbook. So that'll show up as a red line. It looks like it's new but it's really not um uh because you'd already approved it. So, uh, nothing earthshattering when it comes to this handbook and the recommendation to move forward with the redline version. We then would communicate it out to
094all of our certified staff. >> Okay, any questions? Um, I would um, do I have a motion to approve staff handbook? >> So moved. >> Second from Brian. All those in favor say I. >> I. All those opposed say nay. Hearing none, it is approved. Moving on to the support staff handbook. >> Similar analysis here where it's just an update primarily dates and some like the insurance language is updated but it has not changed from the recommendation that we uh made at the uh work session. So the same modifications as reflected in the redline document. >> Mr. President. >> Yes. Okay. >> I move to uh I move to approve. >> Do I have a second? >> Second for Aaron. >> I move to. >> All those in favor say I. >> I. All those
095opposed say nay. >> Hearing none. Motion approves or motion passes. And then we have Tara with second reading of uh update policy on school wellness. >> It's actually Wait, is that okay? >> I think it's Bonnie's. That's a goof up by Tim just so we have that on record. >> Um so this was this is a second reading. Nothing has changed. Um this is a wellness policy that needed to be updated based on our administrative review we had this spring from DPI. Um the main things was about nutrition promotion in the school as well as updating our non-discrimination statement. >> Mr. President, I move to approve the wellness policy number 450. >> Motion by Bryant. Do we have a second? >> Second by Megan. All those in favor say I. >> I. >> All those
096oppose say nay. Hearing none. Motion passes. Now we have second reading of uh parent and family engagement. Is that Bonnie? >> This is me. >> That is Nick. >> This is Nick. >> Oh, that no family engagement. >> Oh. Oh, it says >> I'm just not gonna I'll just whoever is taking it, please just come forward. >> Uh so we have the second reading. It's the same policy that you approved at the last uh at the last regular meeting uh first reading. This has to do with the act 20. It act 20 programs that were added to it. Um and it's the language directly essentially from DPI which is the uh act 20 parent notification requirements for universal screening and literacy assessments. So you can see that down at the bottom or at the end
097of the uh at the end of the policy. So the administration's recommendation is to approve the second reading of this uh of this policy. >> Do I have a motion? >> Mr. President, I move to approve the second reading of policy 342.51. >> Thank you, Molly. Do I have a second? >> Second from Megan. All those in favor say I. I. All those oppos say nay. Hearing none. Motion passes. And moving on to long-term facility planning and possible school closure. Is that right, Nick? >> Possible school closure discussion. >> Discussion. >> Yes. Um so what you have here is and the board talked about this in the work session in uh July is there's two different documents here. Uh the long the first document is the base staffing scenario. So basically it's the five different
098kind of options related to moving forward. Option one being um maintain six K5 elementary schools. Uh option two is to uh go to four K5 elementary schools. Uh option three would be to just close Willow River Elementary and have five K5 elementary schools. Uh option four would be to close uh both Willow and Holton and have two K2 buildings and two 35 buildings. Uh so those are more gradeal alike buildings. And option six would be to uh sorry option five would be to just close uh Holton Elementary School. So, um, you know, one of the questions that came up as it related to 4K last time and, uh, we believe that no matter what option you you choose here, if you choose to keep all six buildings, um, eventually, not that you're making that decision,
099you know, tonight, or if you decide to close one or two buildings, we believe we'll be able to still maintain uh, our in-house 4K programming. The thing that becomes a little bit more of a challenge depending on, you know, what our numbers do is wrap care. You know, that that that wraparound care piece. Um depending on on what building and what numbers look like. There are different options for that. It could be that certain buildings have additional classrooms to provide additional wrap care. Um there's also the options that uh potentially um you know there could be a a centered uh centralized wrap care facility where um and when I say rap it's it's basically child care for the parts of the day that aren't uh that aren't school 4K. Um so there there are some
100options there. So, in all of these options, we do have the ability to continue to to provide our 4K programming and maintain our relationships with our community partners that also do 4K programming as well. Um, it just a lot of it depends on the boundaries and where classrooms are and things along those lines as we move forward. So, one of the other documents that you have that's that's right below there. We felt it was important to put the folder that has all the background information that you guys went through uh in July. Um you know, we have uh enrollment data in that folder. Um so, uh we have all of the you know, different uh different pieces. We have uh enrollment studies that we've had done his historic enrollment information um and in those different
101pieces. and then elementary uh class enrollments and things along those lines. Uh also you have in the communications uh tab um and again not to go through everything labor everything but the long-term facility and budget planning communications Tracy did a great job putting this together. You can see uh in this document when we talked about either budget or uh or you know the need to potentially reduce our footprint in the district basically since 2020 2020 I think the last five years. uh and as a board you guys have discussed it and what Tracy did is she linked the different um documents whether it be needing referendums whether it be you know potentially talking about needing to close school or talking about enrollment situations things like that but I think as a board you've talked about
102it over a hundred times in the last five years uh with staff it has the different communications we've had with staff um families the different communications and then community where we've had these different communications and so as you look at that document and people in um uh folks online or in the community can see exactly when these different communications happened. You know, we had over 50 communications with we've talked about it over 50 times at different community uh settings uh with families. Uh it's you been almost 60 times uh with staff. We've had conversations that we may need to address, you know, some things uh related to facilities, long-term planning slash, you know, the potential building closures over a hundred times. And like I said, as a board, uh this has been on the docket
103over 120 times uh with different things. Um so we wanted to make sure that people could go to one location and say, "Hey, uh have we ever talked about this or have we ever talked about that?" uh and we say well at least for the last five years this is our kind of running record of when we we feel like we have um have addressed different areas whether it be enrollment facilities or budget areas as it ties to um long-term facility planning and those and those different components there. Um also in that folder uh facility information. So you have the W facility reports. Um, this was the 10-year facility plan and then also the architect's report. So, you have the full document which is 24 megs. So, if somebody's really dying to read a very
104detailed report on our buildings, uh there's I think three or 400 pages there to dig into. Otherwise, there's a more u six-page more truncated uh summary of, you know, based on their assessments of our building by building about how much investment is needed uh in the buildings and in which years. Uh that front main page kind of shows you um what they would anticipate if some of these things kind of get, you know, pushed out a few more years and things along those lines. Um you also have in that uh folder and the community has that as well you have the staffing information which is the base staffing scenarios um and potential savings. You also have um the long-term potential savings related to related to staffing um pieces and and and overall savings over the
105course of 10 years and 20 years. Part of the reason why we advertise it over 20 is if we were ever to borrow money. When we originally started looking at this was back when we were talking about going to referendum in 22. Um we borrow money over a 20-year period. And so that's why uh we break it down that way. And then um you start to look at uh staff counts. People wanted to kind of know overall from 2017 to 2025. uh you know wanted to make sure people understood yes we are um we are reducing uh staff it's not we're not waiting you know we have been reducing uh we reduced about 6% of our certified staff about a little over 8% of our our leadership staff in the district um and actually it's
106about 11 or 12% of our support staff in the district uh over that that that time period and so um people have access to that um to that information as well uh Uh as we look at that, there's also a ratio report in there. So you can kind of see um the again the reduction in enrollment, but also the reduction in staff. So we're down about we're down about six almost 7% of our enrollment since 2017. We're down about 8% administratively. Um we're down about 13 and a half percent with our our support staff. uh we're down about 5% of our licensed staff as we look at that. Um but overall total staff we've cut, you know, almost 9% of our of our staff. So when sometimes people say you have to, you know, keep
107living with your means, we we are trying our best. Um but now there gets to be a points where it's really hard because we're not real efficient, you know, with with some of the things that we've done. So that's the background information for the community. Megan, you had something? Yeah, I just realized and maybe I'm not seeing it. Um, but I think it might be helpful if in this folder there were the most recent budget projections if if if they were kept somewhere in here too. Just I think that it's all for me it's always helpful context to keep looking at okay what is the deficit looking like however many years out and of course that factors in to decision making. >> Absolutely. And we can we can definitely uh we can definitely add add
108that in and have a budget have a budget tab. So um yeah that's that's not a problem at all. Kate, no. >> I as I was looking in preparation for this meeting at all of this and have been through the last couple years, um I think that we should say that we've decided as a board to come to a decision by October. So I think it's important that we start kind of being productive and and in my in my opinion it would be to look today to look at all of these options all five and look at which ones as a board do we think that we could whittle down so that we can start to move forward in some of the most realistic options that we might have. I don't know if other people
109I know there's strong opinions on the 2K2 and 235 buildings within the board. Um I person as my own opinion would be that keeping all of the buildings open is not an option for our district. I don't think we have the finances to do that and I think that's been proven over and over by our our budget projections. So that's my opinion on how we move forward today. >> Okay, >> Nick. >> Well, I just like for a process so you guys have some type of process to go through this. So, one of the things that you you potentially could do is you could talk about each option, kind of weigh the pros and cons of each option as the board. And then at that point, somebody could make a motion on each option uh
110to either eliminate that option. And then, you know, if you had a motion and then you had a second, then you can have more discussion about it. Um, and if it passes to eliminate it, then you would eliminate that option off of there. You're not you're not closing buildings or anything like that. You're just saying, "Hey, we're trying to get down options." So that way you guys actually have a have a path to talk about each option, what you guys feel like the pros and cons are, and then there's some record that said, okay, you know, we voted 60 or or whatever it is to eliminate that as an option to consider, you know, type of thing. So just a thought process, but go ahead, uh, Erin, I didn't mean to cut you up. >>
111No, that's fine. Um, thanks Kate for your comments on that. I I do feel very strongly for the record on the 2K and um 35 buildings. I'm not a fan of that um model for several reasons. We did talk about that in the previous um board session. Um my main concern, I just wanted to address it. So, it's on record here. Um that it loses generational experiences and there is a serious need for role models from kids that are younger to older um and how they behave. That is a very large concern of not losing that. And we just spent a lot of time listening um at the last session of all the wins that are happening in the elementary schools in the district um with the the reading guided reading programs and helping with
112math and and you name it. It was it was phenomenal to hear how those older kids are really stepping in and and finding joy in helping the younger kids and how much the kids all around enjoy that. Um um along with in this discussion being as sensitive as we can about this um it sounds really horrific um to talk about schools closing. And I personally think as a I mean just as a parent with multiple kids in multiple grades. Probably about the most horrific thing you could say to me right now would be like, "Oh, hey, by the way, we might close this school and now your kids are going to go to separate schools now on top of it." I I just wanna I want to say that because I I just don't want
113to see that happen. There's enough that's going on here in the district um to just I would I would like to actually make a motion tonight if now is appropriate to remove that as an option. >> I have a question. >> Go ahead. >> Um just because of the way my brain works which can be rather linear at times. Um, so I'm not saying whether or not to make the motion now, but it would be helpful for me in framing the discussion if you talked a little bit through the timeline of when we >> I mean, you said we had to make a decision by October, but then what are the other decisions that we need to make? I know there's a memo and I did read it, but that helps ground me in like
114where everything's going. I did have a couple other questions. So, I didn't mean to go on a tangent about that, but um if I can just before you answer that question, um is there a place in this where it would say how many kids would be in the classrooms like a projected model to look at how many kids if we narrowed down to four schools, five schools, what that looks like for classroom sizes? >> We we wouldn't change our class size guidelines. >> Okay. So, um, now if you were used to going to a school that had 13 in a class, sure, >> you're not going to have 13. I mean, the whole point of doing this is to get to more, uh, within our class size guidelines. Um, so yeah, we wouldn't be changing
115them. Uh, I can tell you that the the models were built around. So for example, we took uh so I took okay if we had 300 ele um kindergarteners divided that by uh 22 is our class size guideline. Uh then that gave me how many sections and if it came out to be let's say 13.1 sections we called it 14. We automatically rounded up for space. Uh and so you know that's kind of how it was how it was set up. So there's there's a little bit of buffer in there. Um, but I couldn't tell you exactly until you reboundry exactly what the class size should be until you get to that process. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Yep. >> Point. >> Um, could you talk a little bit about how full our our elementary
116schools are today >> versus under a a four school model, a five school model. >> Um, and also possible the middle school and high school. I don't know. I I know we're not going into those buildings at all in this discussion. >> Yep. Absolutely. So, um at the very bottom of the first document that is linked, the long-term facility planning, uh possible school closure, uh at the very bottom, uh if you go down, Tim, and you can kind of zoom in there a little bit. Um what you'll see is for each of the different options what the capacity is and what the um what's needed and then what the percent of capacity we would be. And so the the tough thing about capacity is people always say what is you know what is capacity of
117the building and what we often say is tell us what you want the program to look like in the building and we can tell you what the capacity of the building is. So if all of a sudden you take regular classrooms offline because it's going to have other specialized programming in it then all of a sudden the capacity of the building goes down right u also the difference is for example if um you raise class size guidelines by one student per class let's say it it goes 18 to 20 from 18 to 22 to 18 to 23 let's say at the elementary at K2 and then from 22 to 27 to 22 to 28 now all of a sudden and you just increased our elementary uh capacity by 100. So it's, you know, because now
118alo, you know, you've said you could put an extra student in every classroom. So now the capacity is bigger, right? And so that's why capacity is is we have what we used when we did the elementary reboundering in 2018. And that's where we set the numbers at a four section building both uh the four section buildings are about 588 I think somewhere around there. Um and then the uh uh Willow and uh North were set at three section buildings and then Holton was set as a two section building. So they have lesser uh capacity. When we look at based on those numbers, we say that currently if we kept current class size guidelines and based on the number of classrooms we have, we'd say we have enough seats in our current six buildings for 2,988
119kids. you know, it's give, you know, give or take. Um, we currently have, now Andrea gave a different number from July because we gained some kids, which was a nice uh nice thing to have. Um, but at 1929, so 1929 elementary kids, you know, our capacity is we're running about 65% capacity. So, we're much much less capacity. uh when you start to look at these other options, when you start to take buildings offline, if you take both buildings offline, it drops our capacity from 19 from 29.88 to 2205 and all of a sudden, you know, we're running at a much a much higher capacity um you know, percentage we're at 87 and a half%. If you take one building offline, depending on which one you take off, because Willow is obviously bigger than than Holton,
120um it changes the capacity to either um a 2500 student capacity or a 2700 student capacity. And so on the bottom there, you can kind of see what is the percent, you know, as you as you look at it. Um and and how that kind of shakes out. You have to remember these are of K four I'm sorry of K5 rooms. So we do have buildings that have additional rooms uh that we could use for things like 4K that we can use for things like uh special education and things like that. And so sometimes people say, well, if you keep 4K in there, won't that put you past the capacity? No, that's not exactly the case. So we count like for example, we count North Hudson as a three section building. 18 classrooms for K5.
121Okay. But it actually has 19 classrooms. So there's a there's a extra classroom at North Hudson that could be used as a 4K room. Um and so not not part of these not part of these numbers as we go through. Same thing at River Crest. We have some of those uh we have that basically that situation going on. >> But I think it is important to note to Erin's point that for the community, there are people in the community that think that we're shrinking schools. So all class sizes are going up and that is just not the case. Never was part of the plan and you know and it's just a you know a misunderstanding out there you know and I'm not saying it was mis you get it but uh um that that is
122you know one of the challenges we have uh I wanted to include some information that was sent to me from Maria and I will share that with all board members too as well but uh um you know she is supportive of of uh making a decision by October 2025. um she would love to see uh you know minimum of minimum of one but hopefully two community sessions uh and then she goes into the facilitation of that because we want to avoid some of the just open-ended you know kind of pass a mic session kind of thing. So, uh, like we've re we've kind of done in the past, um, her position and she gives some information on the on the, uh, the K235 structure. She her her instinct would or her like would be to
123see um three moving three with forward with three options to the community. One would be no closing, keeping all six elementaryaries, and that's basically anformational push, you know, because why we can or why we can't, you know, to to Kate's point. >> Can you start over that part, Bob? I didn't follow. >> Just um that she'd like to see us move forward, not necessarily tonight, but with three options to the public um for discussion. and one would be no closing and and understanding that financially we can't do that but you know just communication. Um second one would be closing two elementaryaries keep the five case or K5 structure and the third was closing two elementaryaries uh keeping or moving to a K235 and she gives information on just the different pros and cons of that
124uh of that structure. Um but and I talked to her personally and she was like we she led the one of the the boundary committee so she's been through this and she understands the the the negative effect of having closing one school rebounding closing another school and I know Nick has talked about there's ways we could potentially do it to reboundry where wouldn't be as big of an effect closing one school and then a little later but I just thought I would mention that. So her information I wanted her thoughts heard. >> Mr. President, um, thank you for sharing that. And I just wanted to kind of go back to the capacity and the uh class size question. And I think, you know, it came up tonight with with uh Rivercrest now having two was
125it River now? >> Two classes um that are a little bit above the our district guidelines. And then we had the issue at Hudson Prairie. And so I think, you know, there's a lot of green and then there's a little bit of red and it's we can't afford to just add teachers when it goes over. Um, and so I think I feel like the administration and this board has shown that well I have I do not have a desire to see class sizes increase which is the vibe I've gotten uh from our other discussions. Um, so I just wanted that's that's not part of the consideration in my mind is to increase elementary class sizes and we also heard from the community conversation and I haven't heard anybody say like yeah let's just put like
12640 kindergarteners in a room and see what happens right like that's not what anyone's looking to do. Um >> I have a question for Dr. um as far as the percent capacity that we're talking about. Um, I know you said it depends on what kind of education you want to deliver or capacity. So, should So, if you're looking at like the options that have the 87.48% capacity, so basically getting down to four schools, so we have space for less than 300 additional students. Is that enough space? I mean, it What's your opinion? Um I I I just I don't I don't have a crystal ball with it. I mean I think um you know one of the things in the enrollment information that you've got was you we're down almost 500 elementary age kids in
127the last 10 years. Um with no trend that says it's going the other direction. Um, you know, when we talk about yes, we're up some kids uh from July to now, that's it's it's positive to not be down from July to now, but the real likelihood uh of what our enrollment will be when day one uh happens is there will be kids that we are currently counting on showing up on the first day of school that won't come. Because one of the things that usually happens is the kids that we that are new that are coming in that are ads, usually those parents are the ones that are calling and saying, "Hey, I need to get my kid enrolled for school." Uh, but sometimes when people move away, especially over the summer, they uh they
128enroll their kid in their new school, but they rarely um tell, you know, tell the school it's leaving. And so we get some of that through records requests and things like that from the from the setting schools. But um it it is rare for us to start uh you know especially like middle school high school and have more kids after we start than what we were counting on having. Usually fewer kids show up the first day. Um, as far as the, you know, the total number, one of, one of the concerns is always, you know, if you eliminate too much capacity, could you potentially need to have to add capacity back if we started to have growth? Absolutely. I mean, that's there's there's that's a very real possibility. I will tell you that all of
129the remaining buildings of the four uh at least three of the four buildings uh Riverest North and EP Rock can all be added on to relatively easily without a referendum or things like that if also you need to add some classrooms. But you have to understand in order for us to get to that point um we're talking about a lot we we'd have to have a lot of growth. Um, EP Rock and Hudson Prairie before we opened Rivercrest had over 630 kids in each of those two buildings. Um, we we wouldn't go we don't even say that's their capacity. We say their capacity is actually 50 fewer than that. Um, so yeah, I mean we try to operate, we'd prefer to operate between 80 and 90% capacity because that means we're our most efficient and
130we can eb and flow with neighborhood changes, you know, the the best we can. Um, but I, you know, I can't I can't guarantee you that, you know, five years from now if all of a sudden we have, you know, some more development that comes on that the board might not have to add a couple classrooms. Now, I will tell you that if you close a building or or two buildings, you're going to see up there annually about what the savings is. Um to add a handful of classrooms uh is probably less than one year's worth of those savings. So, that's where you got to start to look at that and go, okay, if five years from now, we need to do this. Um, and you did happen to close to uh over those five
131years, you may have saved, you know, $16 million in the process. You definitely are not going to spend $16 million adding a couple classrooms on just a thought process. >> Yes, Erin. >> Um, Nick, I don't know if you can talk to this, but I'm pretty sure Bob could or myself a little bit. Um the economic develop corporation put out that housing study and I think it would be really helpful for anyone who um is listening or here if they are questioning um the um housing structure the enrollment studies that you are referring to to find it really helpful to just look at what the EDC has been doing. Um and I think there's actually some tour dates still available for people to attend. It's very interesting information, very helpful information. I don't know if
132all board members have had an opportunity to go Molly. >> Um, >> but I haven't gotten there, but I've heard it's really good. >> But it's it it was really helpful to go because you kind of sit here and you're like, okay, well, people are leaving the district and everybody, you know, has this idea. I am one of those people that I have an idea of why people might leave the district, right? Um and everybody here can speak to that on their own, whatever, however they feel affected by that. But um the uh population study is it's very real and we're not growing in Hudson. We have very expensive homes and we have um uh it's hard for new families to come in here and to be able to afford them. So that's why they're
133looking at many affordable housing options. But I just wanted to put that in there. >> That's a that's a great point. And uh could we include the WEDC uh information on our on our site as well as a um because absolutely encourage anybody to look up that on on the web or or see one of the uh meetings that are still left. >> Um what's that? >> I just had a >> Can I Can I finish please? >> I didn't know this time. I'm calling you. Um, I will say that, you know, I I had a friend that we drove we drove all over the area looking at lots and things that was was he's hoping to move to this area. And, you know, the ones up by Holton north of Big Guys Barbecue, you
134know, they're all three acres. Again, they're all three acres. Ones off McCutchen right next to an industrial building are one acres and they start at 200,000 and, you know, a finished home is, you know, starts at 600,000. So, those are oneacre lots. So, it it's It is just very difficult. Um but uh good good point Erin about that that study. It is just more reinforcement. Brian >> I just wanted to share. >> There we go. >> I wanted to share a stat from that um presentation that I just found striking. The that St. Current county is growing according to that that study like something like 1% per year, something like that. But what was striking about it is every population group except those over 65 years old is shrinking and projected to shrink in our
135county. Um, which is really just um evidence of what we're seeing in our schools. what we've seen in our, you know, 500 kids since 2014 aren't in our elementary schools. Um, and is is is a is a stats that's evident of of, you know, kind of the tough questions that that we have to deal with today. >> Mr. President, >> yes, ma'am. >> Just to sort of piggy back off that, and from my understanding, the state of Wisconsin doesn't look much different overall. We're one of the fastest aging states, I think. Not that we grow older faster. We we stay younger longer as an individual, but there's just fewer young people in our state as people live longer, too. So, um there are things about Hudson that make it difficult, but it's also like people
136just aren't having as many kids anymore or people are leaving Wisconsin altogether, which huge mistake in my opinion. Yeah, it's it's no coincidence that the companies that build and manage assisted living facilities are zeroing in on St. Corey County because they're they're looking 5, 10, 15 years down the road the need and uh yeah, that's sobering. Any other questions or concerns? Oh, well, we have a motion. That's >> I was going to perhaps suggest that we do what Nick had said is go through each option, discuss it as a board and then if there's a motion we can go through that. >> I think that makes sense. >> Okay. >> And just and going back to your original, you asked about the timeline and we talked about the memo that came out in July. So
137the the memo that was put together was in response to the board saying if we wanted to make a decision and we wanted a change for the fall of 26, you asked me to put together a timeline of when you would need some milestone dates. And so uh so this wasn't I just want to reiterate it wasn't a you know administration coming out and saying okay we're going to close things by 26 or things like that. It was just people wanted to know if there was going to be a change for 26, what does that look like and what what are all the different pieces? So decision on school closures, if they want if if you want to have a change for fall of 26, our most ideal situation is a decision that's made in
138by October of 25. And some people say, why does it have to be so early? And the biggest reason is there's a lot of things that have to happen once there's the decision made. Um there's a lot fewer things that have to happen if you choose to keep all six buildings open because we you know we don't have to do some of these things. Um but uh one of the first things that'll happen is when the board decides to make a decision whether they want to keep them open or or close buildings or close two or close one is then we go into a boundary adjustment mode. And that would basically start um with working with the consultant basically as soon after the board would make a decision on what they wanted to do to
139start looking at what do boundaries look like. Um and that that situation that needs to happen by February. So the board would actually have to set the boundaries for the following school year by February. Uh is what we gave you as a date. And so part of what would happen from basically October to February was we'd be working with the uh the consultants to put together they basically have to uh you know map where all of our kids are in the entire district where they think growth's going to happen where they think our kid things are going to happen and start to come up with sample boundaries. We would then uh have two to three options of boundaries uh proposals for the community to give feedback on for the board to provide feedback and that
140process all kind of happens in by January February. February is important because then once February happens we have to go through a staffing uh consideration which is in the spring of 26. We try to let staff know if you choose uh to close a building. You know part of the reason why there are savings is because we have fewer staff members that are working. you know, it is a reduction in force. Um, and so we want to make sure that we have plenty of time to let people know that if if there are going to be some reductions in force, what does that look like? We also have to reassign the buildings so we know um how many sections we need in each of the buildings. And we need to also be in compliance with
141our contractual obligations and our HR timelines, state obligations, things like that, which come up very quickly in April. Then what happens also after boundaries are set is we basically have to reroute the entire school district. So that means you know the 36 or so bus routes that we have in the school district have to start over from scratch and we have to start figuring out what's the best way to pick up all of the kids that are going to be bus to school and how do we make that work within the time frame that we have. And so there's a lot of moving parts so that by the time we get to the end of the school year, uh, going into summer, uh, families know where their kids are going to school, staff know where
142they're working, and transportation wise, we know exactly kind of what what direction we're heading transportation wise going into the summer so that we're not waiting till the very end. And so that's kind of our best our best case scenario. Could you condense that timeline? Sure. it makes it a lot more difficult um and puts a lot more stress on the system. Uh could you also say could you do it for a a date of fall of 27 instead of 26? Sure, you can do that as well. I mean you there's a variety of things you can do um and a variety of different options that you can do. So that's kind of the timeline and and where we came up with the dates and why they are what they are. >> Mr. President. Um, just
143one more thing maybe probably with the staffing considerations. Uh, Nick or Andrea, could you talk a little bit to um, you know, obviously losing certified staff, losing um, other SA staff. It's a hard idea to think about. um how what the average attrition retirement is versus like is it going to be for sure 19.78 certified staff are getting laid off or do you know what I'm saying? >> I do and I think uh for example right now we just hired about 35 new teachers going into the school year and so um granted that's across K12 but we also um have I think about what 18 retirements last year of certified staff. So between retirements and normal attrition, it's likely um there's potential, I don't want to commit to it, but I mean there would definitely
144be potential that it wouldn't be additional layoffs, but we also modified our layoff language this past spring to look at if this was something in the future we have some more K12 positions. So then we really prioritize um um our criteria that we laid out in there. So, uh, trying to be very transparent about how we would approach it. Um, but knowing that our natural attrition rate, um, would probably accomplish a lot of that. Probably not in the right spots that we need, but that's where we then follow through with our staffing process as well as, um, our other language commitments. Bonnie um and um Andrea, could you guys also speak a little bit to part of the work session when we asked questions about how the staff how what your you know what you've
145discussed with the staff like how they actually feel I know Shannon Sarah Shannon's you know obviously been part of Holton for a very long time like what the you know just the comments have been that you're hearing so we can kind of start working through some of this. >> Well and certainly I think um they want. >> Yeah. When I Yeah. their time. >> That's when I went and communicated out the layoff language this spring. I think both uh Holton and then Willow and I think Sue would echo the same and Shannon can speak to it. The staff appreciated the conversation because they they want a decision is kind of the cons consensus that I get from the buildings. Um especially those Uber engaged buildings where they it's been really tough to not know what
146the future holds. And so trying to reassure that there's going to be processes in place. We're going to be looking at our whole system, not just these buildings. Um uh but then having a larger staffing process, but I think certainly correct me if I'm wrong you guys, but I think the consensus from most staff is let's make a decision and then move forward >> and and holding off versus not holding off. You we just threw out 2027 potentially, you know, I mean, what what were their feelings on that also? Please. I would say the same thing is is that staff it's hard culturally to kind of think of something looming over them and also as a building leader we see um staff making decisions for themselves based on what they think might happen. So they
147might want to leave the district they might want to meet leave buildings. So those buildings that we're talking about are kind of left with holes for the past couple of years. Yeah. that we're finding to have to fill because they're making decisions based on what they think might happen. So >> this year in particular, right, like we I can think of a few positions in Holton >> um where it's been difficult because even a new person coming in is like well is am I going to have a job >> in a couple years? >> So that's a new uh I think factor that's come in or variable that's come into play in particular this year. So, the consensus would be what I'm hearing is a decision sooner than later is what staff would is hoping
148for. >> One last question as you're talking here. Um, looking at these different models on here, um, and option three is closing Willow and option five is closing just Holton. Um, can you speak to how that might affect the staff if one were to close versus the other and maybe that additional dreaded timeline? And Nick, if you could also speak to that. um pertaining to the boundaries and how long that type of a model would be able to be sustainable just keeping one of those schools open, please. >> Um well, so you're how long could if we just if you just chose to close one financially, how where are we sitting? Is that kind of your thoughts? Yeah, I see the numbers. I see the >> I see the numbers below, but I mean going
149out like I mean are we looking at if we were to close one like are we looking at five years from now, two years from now, like what's your what's your read on it? just an opinion um on how long we would be able to sustain like that given all the circumstances that are being thrown at us here >> and then what that would do from a staff standpoint is kind of that second piece I guess instead of the first piece. >> Yeah. So, um, when you look at the budget models and and Bonnie did add them to that folder, so now people have access to them in there. Um, we start we start looking at a deficit um, even with the operational referendum in the past. We start looking at a deficit as soon
150as 2728 school year. So, basically two years out um, you know, type of thing. Uh, and you know, it's not big. It's $190,000 deficit. People That's a lot of money. Well, in the scheme of a $80 million budget, it's not not a huge amount. Um, but that the following year it grows to 1.5 and then three million if you do nothing. If you just if you just keep six buildings open. So, if you chose to, you know, for example, if you chose to close uh one or the other u either Willow or uh or Holton, you know, closing Willow saves about $2 million a year. closing Holton say it's about 1.6 give or take a year. So um you you basically would delay uh those deficits uh if you only closed if you only closed
151one of them for the most part you could delay them at least five years four years five years by >> I think the other thing that it it doesn't come out in the projection model of the cost savings it's just we have two buildings that have some very significant infrastructure and you know Willow We just put in a chiller that was $300,000. We didn't have a choice. We had to do it. There's a lot of other mechanical systems in both those two buildings that either we need to make a decision that we need to fix them or, you know, and if you delay the decision, things might break and we have to fix it and now there's more money out the door. So, I think that W study was pretty um accurate of those expenses,
152but those savings or costs aren't in the projection models. Just something to think about. >> These are more operating savings. I mean, uh, if you if you go back to that, uh, you know, like Bonnie said, if you go back to that wool, um, kind of condition of those buildings, separate of of operating, um, you know, there they projected, you know, this was back in 2022, that uh, Willow needed about $18 million worth of work, $19 million worth of work, and Holton needed about uh, about5 million worth of work roughly. Um, those are not things that we can just take care of in our regular a regular budget. I mean, as Bonnie said, you you're going to have to go back out to referendum in order to maintain those buildings. Um, if if that's the
153if that's what you want to do. So, okay. >> I also wonder what the cost savings is because I'm not quite seeing it on here of just not having electricity. And >> are you talking about that the facil the facility cost savings >> right? >> So that is that is built into that bottom number. >> So um you know see where it says 3 million or 2 million at the bottom. So uh we do have a we have a separate worksheet that we we tracked what we tried to look at the at the time when we created this the only thing we had a full 12-month run on was the 23 24 school year. So, we'll be able to get an updated one um put together, but built into that $3 million savings or $2
154million savings is the actual utility cost with those buildings. Um and uh you know, it's it's not a huge dollar amount, but it's several hundred,000 every year um for each of those buildings. >> And you'll be able to add that into this. >> Yeah, we can we can get a new updated we can get a new updated uh look of a 12 month basically the last 12 months. This is how much our our utility bill was. This is how much um you know we do on um snow removal, grass, things like that uh associated with it. It would be separate of repairs. It would just be you know >> y >> just our overhead basically. >> Yep. We can do that. >> Right. >> Kind of a tangent on that same point. One of the
155one of the concerns I hear in the community is that continuing to own those buildings um comes with a cost. You have to even if no one's in them, you have to maintain them, keep them safe, so on. You may not have numbers today, but I wonder if you could speak to if one or both were to close, what what would be the options for the district with those buildings? and and and even in the near term, are there operational costs of continuing to maintain them? >> Yeah. So, um you're you're exactly right. So, when you have a when you have an asset like that or you have a facility like that, you you do have to you still have to maintain it. So, unless we totally mothballled the building, and that means basically you
156drain everything out of the building, all the water lines and everything, all the cooling lines and heating, all that stuff, uh, which is not an overly easy process to do so that you allow that building to freeze in the winter. Um, it's really hard on buildings to not be used. It's like houses. It's really hard on a house if there's nobody living in it. And so, um, so typically what happens is we're still going to have to pay even if we weren't using, let's say, Willow or Holton and you want, somebody said, "Why don't you just close it and wait a couple years to do something with it?" Well, we'd still probably keep it from freezing. So, that means we're going to pay to heat it or uh, in the winter. And then you run
157into a little bit of an issue of when you have a closed up building like that and it gets to 80 90 degrees out and you're not bringing a lot of fresh air in, it starts you start to worry about mold. You start to worry about some of those other components. So you you do have to you have utility cost even in the summer. So there is cost of maintaining them so they don't just basically fall in on themselves. Um and and so there is that. Uh as far as what do you do with them? um the board, if the board chose to uh close one or two buildings, similar to what we have here, um you put them up for sale. And um a lot of people think, you know, these buildings are worth
158lots and lots of money. But you have to remember, if we have to stick $18 million into Willow River Elementary School, whoever buys it for something is going to have to stick a large investment in it um uh into that building. And so uh same thing with Holton and and things like that. So sometimes, you know, that that can be something that is really hard for people to wrap their mind around it because um there's the nostalgic value of a building and and the fact that it's been around for a long time. And then there's the reality of what somebody will actually pay you for that building. Um and uh developers are a uh uh they they they don't make money by buying high and selling low, right? I mean, so they're, you know, they're
159they're they're definitely out to try to get their best deals. So, you know, there have been developers that have reached out to us on both of those buildings, and my response to them has been neither building's for sale because neither building's closing. Uh the board's made no decisions and they said, "Well, can we get information on them?" And they said, "No, you can't get information on the buildings until we have a decision." Um because you know we have a uh we have a process where we keep you know certain aspects of our building for safety reasons are private especially while we're using them for kids and so we don't just push that stuff out to the community or anybody that wants access to it. So um I think there is interest in both of those
160buildings but again you know we're still trying to sell this building right now. So, um, yeah. So, do you want to go through and kind of let's, you know, talk pros and cons of option one? I know there was kind of a a motion on the table. We can you can either resend the motion and go through the options and make a motion each one or we can vote just straight on Erin's option to start with or what do you want? You want to start? >> It was just a request like are we ready to do that? >> Okay. I didn't mean to make it sound like I wanted one right then and there. Okay. It was like, "Oh, can we do this tonight?" I should have added the word tonight to it. >> Yeah.
161>> Um so I didn't I don't want to jump the gun there on it, but um the I I do I want I just want to ask um so other people know. Um, were you able to come up with any compelling data uh or live models of that K235 elementary that I mean we discussed that a little bit last meeting you weren't able to really >> Yeah. So I went through Yeah. went through and tried to tried to find um you know why why grade configurations you know tried to see what research was out there uh as it related to uh there are several districts um that are doing grade alike models um there's been some different research on grade schools improving collaboration amongst uh teaching staff so for example like right now uh third
162grade at Holton is a one section building that teacher is a is a singleton versus if you're in more of a grade like model, you're going to have other peers that are all teaching the same subject. So, there's more collaboration pieces, uh, things like that. Uh, I was able to kind of look at um, uh, some of the things, you know, multiple transitions and stuff like that. We talked about that a little bit. Uh, there wasn't a lot of lot of data on. We know that the biggest things that impact kids with transitions are when you switch models. um you know teaching models going from one teacher all day as an elementary to now you're traveling between teachers going to middle school and then going from uh taking uh one group of kids and mixing
163them with other groups of kids you know so multiple elementaryaries going to one middle school those are things that that weigh on kids uh not as big of a uh thing according to research is okay just because you switch buildings with the same group of kids in the same model it's just you're switching buildings you know so that's that transition itself isn't as big of an issue. Um there's a limited number of districts in Wisconsin that have it, you know, like thatville I think has um K2 35 models. There's just a handful. There's not very many. Um you know, you see it in some of the uh some of the other suburban areas. People ask, "What is the best grade configuration?" And quite honestly, it's what will fit in your buildings most efficiently. There are
164districts that have high schools that are 1012, high schools that are 912. There are rural districts in our state that are K12 buildings. There are, you know, there's just a variety of different things. Um, and so there's not anything real conclusive that I can point to or say, hey, here's a list of 15 districts that are doing this and it's really good. Um, and it's going to improve these things. So, I I just don't um I couldn't find any data related to that. And you and I talked on the phone about that as well. Um, but really it it it really came down to the the biggest benefits are going to be operational efficiency. It's not necessarily all of a sudden you're going to see scores go through the roof because we did something like
165that, but it's not a huge dollar savings. If you look at the dollar savings between those two models, um, it's not a huge dollar savings. One of the things it it does help us with is allowing us to eb and flow a little bit better with um, neighborhoods because you now have seven or eight section buildings. So you have like seven sections of second grade. So if all of a sudden class sizes start to get bigger, um you add a section and it's not like you've dropped the class sizes drastically. You might only drop by a couple kids where uh in more of a regional elementary model. We don't have neighborhood elementaryaries, we have more regional elementaryaries. Uh we currently kind of have regional elementaryaries and and this would be more regional approach. Um sometimes
166it can it can spike a little bit more. we don't have as much much wiggle room. But I would say um there's no evidence that that points that one's going to be better than the other. I mean, so to go to the K235 model, I don't have any data that tells you, hey, this is definitely the this the silver bolt. >> The only stuff that I found actually none of them appeared to be public schools. They seemed like they were smaller schools with much lower like example um like Holton would maybe you know because they are using because they have much less kids in that school. So I can see a school that size doing that kind of a model. But when you start looking at what these would be with four schools, that's >>
167I don't see any examples in the state period on those. And um they they seem like they were the the one or two that I found were like monastery style. They only had handful of kits. Um so I just wanted to point that out. I I I'm not comfortable moving forward with the model when we can't even provide an actual real life example, a real living example of that model being portrayed um with success um with any even relative statewide district. >> Yeah. I mean I mean Mecoan has it. Mecoanville has it. It's a very high performing district and they they have great like elementaryaries. Um but there's not there's not a whole lot Okay. >> I also wonder with the transportation if there would be a an increase in transportation cost having that. >>
168Um yeah there I mean there definitely is a potential to have increased uh transportation costs or transportation savings. A lot of it um we don't know until we have boundaries set. Um, you know, that's that's one of the tough things people always, you know, people ask and tell until you have boundaries, it's hard to model what what it's going to take to get it done. Um, so right now I just was trying to find research as we were talking. So, um, McFarland has uh K235. Hamilton has K4s and 56s, and they have two of them that are K235s. Toma has K235s. Um, Slinger has K235s. Muano has uh K235s. Uh, Rylander actually has K3s, four fives. Um, and then like I said, uh, Meccoin has um or did at one point have that. Um, you
169know, it it's just, and again, it goes back to that there's you wouldn't do it because you think it's going to be the most academic because there's just no research one way or the other. There's no also no research that tells you K5s are going to outperform K2s. I mean, it just a lot of it has to do with what fits in your buildings. So, >> Mr. President, >> um I it just sounds like a logistical nightmare if you have like a second grader and a fourth grader >> and you have to pick them both up. Uh then you're paying for after school care for one kid just because you can't be two places at once or you know you need both parents. it and those are kids not of an age you want to
170leave home alone. So, um yeah, I think that that is a huge downside. Or if you're dropping your kids off at school, one of them's going to be late every day. You're going to have to pick. Um so those Yeah. So those things seem very difficult. Um >> well, and logistically they they wouldn't start on time or they wouldn't start at the same time. So, for example, if you were going to pair Hudson Prairie with Riverest, you know, Hudson Prairie, uh, if that's going to be the first building that gets bus drops, um, you know, maybe it starts at 8:50 and Riverest starts at 9 and then on the way back, uh, you're picking up at Hudson Prairie at 350 and you're picking up at Rivercrest at 4. So, there's a you wouldn't start them
171at the same time. They'd actually kind of be paired up and and you would stagger them. And again, the board has no interest in it. Don't don't think that I'm like, "Hey, you better go this route." I'm just telling it's definitely an option. Um, and there are there are districts that do it. It's just it's just not an overly >> Mr. President, >> can I say one thing? Um, just to your point, Megan, um, you know, Maria did spend some time on this and and she's like, you know, many families have kids in multiple buildings. Families with kids in multiple elementary buildings. Yours would be one of them, you know. um families with kids in an elementary, middle, and high school. So, you know, her her says she'd love to see more information on some
172of those districts that do it. Um because, you know, kids are resilient and families make things happen, you know. Um I'm not wording that probably correctly, but I just wanted to, you know, uh I personally am not a fan of the K235, >> but I've made that clear. But I wanted because just some some of the back and forth. Kate, >> um I think because we're looking at deadlines here, we need to move forward. And in my opinion, I'm comfortable removing that option. It's not saving us a ton of money. There isn't a ton of research saying that this is an amazing model. So, I don't know, Erin, if you wanted to continue your uh motion or what everybody else is thinking. Then I I make a motion to eliminate the 2K2 and 235 elementary
173building option number four from this potential staffing scenario for elementary options. >> Motion from Aaron. >> Second from Molly first. Um all those in favor of eliminating >> Oh, any further discussion? Sorry. I think we've discussed it quite a bit. So, uh, all those in favor say I. >> I. >> All those opposed say nay. Hearing none. That that option is eliminated. >> What do you want to call the next option, Nick? >> Um, >> to discuss, >> we just uh if you go to that sheet, um, you can you can pick whatever option you got. option one, two, three, and five left on the table. You may say that, hey, you're going to try to get down to four options tonight or three options tonight so that you, you know, can continue to get
174feedback. >> Um, >> yeah, whatever. I mean, >> I think looking at option number one is important tonight. So, if people have pros and cons of option one or what they see as the pros of keeping option one open around the table, if anybody has any pros for option number one. >> I have I could I could start the discussion. Um, I think, you know, pros are people are pretty comfortable with what they have. They like their schools. They're all good schools. Um, it's a pretty welloiled machine moving forward. Cons I think are um it's not sustainable financially and it's a an equity equitable issue where we have classrooms where teachers have 25 kids 28 kids and other teachers have in the teens. So um in my opinion I mean there's lots of nice things
175about option one but it is not sustainable financially or otherwise. So I would hope to eliminate that. That would be my opinion. >> Okay. >> I also the equity part of it I think for our students some students are getting a ton more attention which is wonderful and some students are not getting that same amount of attention. So I think it's not only for the the teachers but also our students who are getting those variations in class sizes. >> Mr. President, um >> so I uh this coming year I'm going to have a kindergartener at Holton and a fifth grader at Willow. Um so I've I'm experiencing both of these and have experience with both of these uh schools and I love them both. Um, and they are wonderful places with their own traditions and
176quirks and they're fantastic. And um, what I also see is every pretty much every parent I talk to in this school district loves their school. So um, uh, that's just one thing I wanted to share from my personal experience. Um, and I will stop. >> Right. >> I just kind of on the theme of pros and cons, just kind of just to say out loud on the on the con side, I'm I'm also a board member who this coming fall will have a 4K kid at Willow and a third grader. Yes, a third grader at Holton. And um on the con side, you know, taking this step, we're we're these places have a culture. They're the center of their communities. It this it is tough. But um I was just sitting here thinking about, you
177know, to keep them open, yes, it is an option, but to do that, we have to pay for it, right? We have to find a way to pay for it. And there's a couple options to pay for it. the state the state could be an option but so far they haven't really come through right um there's referendum we would we would likely to maintain these schools over the next five years the next 10 years given enrollment projections we'd need to go to referendum again and again and it would need to increase each time and the the third option is to start making cuts in other places so it's class sizes need to increase um we would still be dealing with the equity component. Um we would have to start eliminating programs, look at special, you
178know, it it would be a real challenge. So So just sort of thinking it through there there are real costs to the rest of the district to maintaining these two buildings even though you know it it is so tough losing one or one or both. There's they are community centers. there's there's um there's culture we're losing. But um I just kind of wanted to to make that point. I uh I think uh we what we've learned in the last I would say the talk was starting five years or not five but four but since a potential declining enrollment housing costs things like this um I I I would hate for this board or future boards down the road to have to go through another operational referendum because of state funding that again we saw another
179example this year when we thought we'd get some good news and we didn't get good news. Um, all the all the all the projections I've been around as far as uh enrollment has proved true. You know, a lot of people thought it wouldn't. Um, I very very I recognize greatly the cost of keeping buildings open that are underused. U, I think it it is a band-aid that needs to be pulled off. Um, I think the community understands and is ready. I I just to be going through another operational referendum and building referendums with the cost of the needed maintenance at the and we're set up really nice right now with these this last, you know, building remodels. The high school's in excellent shape. Middle school, I mean, we are really good. Some very good facilities.
180Um, I think it would just be hard knowing with the challenges going forward, which have been proven that they're not going away. Um, yeah, I I see absolutely no way six schools could stay. >> Mr. President, >> yes, sir. >> I would like to make a motion to remove option number one from the scenario of elementary options. Motion from Kate. Do I have a second? >> Second. >> Any discussion? All those in favor say I. >> I. All those opposed say nay. So that motion passes to take option one off. Are you wanting to reduce any more options at this point or are you wanting to move forward with kind of the last three options and have more discussion in September or what how would you guys like to proceed? >> Mr. President, I would
181like to from here maybe get input whether it's continued conversation with the board or in community conversation and having people in the district maybe emailing us, talking to us to let us know what their thoughts are on the remaining three options. >> I wonder um about if we if we have the options of closing one of the two or both in the discussion of what which one to close if we were only going to close one you know I I'm thinking that say you close Holton it's the biggest cost biggest potential future cost to keep that building running and you think well any development out in Holton maybe keep Holton open for another year I mean, are we talking about an expectation of two years, three years, five years potential? See where it is or
182because Holton will always stick out to me as a concern from class size. It's still a two section class. That's not going away. That's going to be a frustration. So unless we're willing to say keep Holton open because of its location and and community, but then we have to we have to redraw boundaries almost every year to keep because I will not keep I would never vote to keep a you know 14 13 kids of class moving forward. We one of the big pushes for this, you know, with the remodel and everything was to increase the uh the experience and class size and be fair to teachers, staff, and families. And so I don't know where we go with that. >> Mr. President, >> I would kind of like to just add to that a
183little bit. Um, I feel like keeping option three and option five I I it makes me sad that the community I feel like might be kind of like I mean we're kind of like picking and choosing now and we're I feel like it's almost pitting people to get would people together. You you know what I'm saying with that? Um, I I don't think it's really fair when we're looking at these operational costs and how much um money needs to be put in to repair Willow and saying, "Oh, we're willing to invest in this group, but we're not willing to invest in that group, and there's not as much run with that school." Um, and they're further to us, and we have two board members sitting here, and it's like my heart's breaking for you guys.
184This is like, it's terrible. This is not easy to sit up here and go through these options, but to continue to drag the community through something that the end result is closing the schools according to what we just said. Um, I think I think we just got to quick hit quick kick in the can. I mean, we really just need to like eliminate all the hardship that we pro possibly can. I to have emails coming in from one school versus the other. You know what they're going to say? Please don't close my school. And I can't blame them because I'd be one of those parents, too. And we and we did see that three years ago. We saw the Holton parents, you know, being very vocal, just keep us open and the Willow parents come
185with their So, so are we by keeping both those options open, are we setting ourselves up for having again another another hardship to the community itself? Well, and then you talk about redrawing those boundary lines. I because if this is a matter of I think Nick just said like what four years, couple of years, we might be able to s sustain with one being open versus the other. We're going to be redrawing these lines again and doing this again. We just went through this, what was that, six years ago. My family was part of that. It was horrible. We had we moved from Rivercross to Prairie and and I mean the options it's Yes, my kid was fine. It's really hard. I think it's harder for the parent than it is for the kid. And
186it's like you're you build your home next in a community to be with that community. And it's like it just feels like everything everything is not good those couple of days. It's just not. But it it did get better. And it was it was okay. And as parents, we have to make that okay. And as a board, we need to do what we the responsible thing and minimize this as much as possible. Ryan I I agree with that sentiment that that um you know we don't want to pit the community against each other. And however um while our our agenda was public today, our agenda the last meeting was public, I'm not ready to to vote to close one school or another. I don't I don't think we've given the community an opportunity to, but
187we have an obligation to hear the voices of the community before we take a vote to close an actual school. I don't think anyone in our community was expecting that that would be the choice tonight. Um I'm I'm a proponent of going through a process of having a special meeting to hear from the community. Um certainly I don't I don't want to do it just for it to be painful. Um, but I I don't think this community is ready to all of a sudden, you know, we have a newspaper, but maybe open Facebook tomorrow morning and say, "Oh, the school board voted to close a certain school or another school or two of them." I don't think we're quite ready for that. >> Mr. president. I'll piggyback on that and I totally get what you're
188saying, Erin. And my one of my fears slashconerns is now this turns into like the Willow versus Holton face off, right? And like um that makes me sad and I think uh I will feel real weird personally, but nobody needs to worry about my feelings. Um, but I think, you know, I was one of those parents from Holton who uh it got me to run for school board. I was like, there's no way we're going to see growth. Like, let's get the board to stop. Um, and I was wrong. And the demographic projections from the demographer have turned out to be right. But I don't I don't feel ready to vote on those because I feel like people are on vacation right now. I think people are just like like I just did my back
189to school shopping yesterday. I'm worried that it's going to feel like the rug was pulled out from under people and they didn't even get a chance to speak their mind. And I there's something about feeling like you've been heard even if the result isn't what you want that I think does make a difference in in these sorts of processes. >> Can How about scheduling a listening session? Could we start with that? I I totally sympathize what you're relate to what you're saying, Erin, because that's kind of how I am. I'm like, if I make a decision, I'm I'm good. We're good to go. You know, um but we're not the same as a family that has kids at these schools. Um so, as much as you know, a listening session, Yes. The one thing I
190really feel like if we do, I think we should do it and as we move forward doing that, understanding that we're here to make the hard decisions and this can't be just um like a pass the mic thing. I think we talked about that. We need to have kind of a structure to it so people can have their say. And it's important um like we need to It's hard stuff. Um but with the understanding that we have to do something and this is financially not um we can't go forward and the only way was when I was a kid um my dad was a real estate broker and built houses and in 1979 you know it was great everything was awesome um interest rates went up to like 20%. and we had to move from
191our beautiful home to a speck home and it was like we had no lawn. It was like it was a horrible thing. We had to I mean horrible. I survived clearly but it was hard. It was really hard. Um you can't you shouldn't minimize how difficult something is. But also we need to know that we will be okay. Like what you said, we will be okay. Um so we can do hard things. That's what I have to say. >> Well, and and a lot of times the numbers don't lie, whether it's enrollments, projections, um uh the the budget, you know, the the the state aid and how much money we get back. Uh so those kind of tend to in my mind make a decision for me, right? Um but I I agree that um
192we don't have to make that decision today. Um also you know 50% of our public our voting public minus six votes said no right so uh um the you got to remember we have like Nick has said many times 75% of our community wants us to be efficient with our money and is not involved. Um, so like I said earlier, we've got some really good facilities that have we've invested in and improved and should be very proud of. Uh, and they also give us the flexibility to answer some of those questions. If we had extraordinary growth like we had 15, 20 years ago, we could address it without again going to the taxpayer. Uh, is the are very important points I think. >> Okay, >> Mr. President, I would suggest that in our next work
193session we discuss dates for a community meeting and the structure for it. >> Sounds good. So, does anybody else have anything they want to add to this then? because that pretty much takes us uh to the end of this discussion for tonight. So, very good. Um, accept a motion to Oh, >> yeah. We'll be moving to close session, but I'll need a motion to adjourn or to move into close session. >> Okay. >> The board will entertain a motion to convene in close session pursuant to Wisconsin statute 19.85 1E to discuss the Safeway bus company contract and the district properties at County Road UU and Rocky Drive. B pursuant to Wisconsin statute 19.85 parent one parent C to consider employment promotion compensation or performance evaluation data of any public employee over which the governmental body
194has jurisdiction or exercises responsibility regarding superintendent evaluation. >> Thank you Kate. Do I have a second? >> Second from Brian. We have a voice vote. Um, D. >> Hi, >> Garza. >> Gerlock Powers Rowski. >> Hi, >> Rudy. >> Bal. >> Oh, she's not here. That's right. Bowman. I We are now in close session. Take a >> Nick needs a fivem minute break. died.