Hudson Schools - June 12, 2023 - School Board Meeting

001please stand join me in the Pledge of Allegiance Liberty before I turn it over for recognitions I just want to acknowledge uh thank everyone for coming a little early we have because of scheduling we have two meetings tonight so we're starting with our June Action meeting and then which will be followed after we adjourned by our work session for the July meeting and um one of our recognitions may be a little delayed but we will improvise if we need to so with that I'll turn it over to who is leading on the Chamber of Commerce I'll take that um so this evening um we're excited about recognized one of our Hudson School District staff members tonight Mary Claire Olson Potter from the chamber is here to tell us a little bit about this recognition good

002evening as Tracy said I'm Mary Claire Olson powder president of the Hudson Chamber of Commerce and tourism Bureau and first of all I want to thank you all for your continued leadership and hard work ensuring that all the Hudson students have an excellent education experience as we prepare them for their next steps in their life so thank you for that each month as Tracy said we recognize a brand Champion through the chamber and the qualities of a brand Champion include passionate and supportive knowledgeable and communicative invested in success and interested in building loyalty so as Tracy said we were so excited to recognize Elizabeth Betsy Gantz as the Hudson brand Champion for May so that's the thank you for coming forward Betsy plays an instrumental role in the planning and coordination of our annual Hudson

003community EXO but and thanks to the superintendent we've been having it up there for the past three years at Hudson High School she joins the planning call she serves as a liaison between the Hudson chamber and the high school ensuring that we have all the necessary tools and staff to have a successful event in addition Betsy works with all the custodians to make sure that we are ready and set to go for the event and then they also help do all the cleanup following that and I'd like to recognize that team that worked on that this year Zach Erickson Shane McGee Mike kleinbrook Marcella fan San Flippo Amanda weishar Sean Hagan and Monica Milligan we could not do it this event with all of their hard work and dedication Betsy puts in a great deal

004of time energy and effort to make sure the event dates work equally well for the chamber and the high school she ensures that the chamber is assisted throughout the event and whenever we need Betsy delivers and we could always count on her plus she's just really nice and really fun to work with so thank you Betsy for all that you have done and continue to do for this community and all brand Champions receive a 25 chamber check that they can spend and use at a store of or restaurant of their location so we look forward to we're already planning for next year if you want to put it on your calendar it'll be May 5th but until then please join me in recognizing Betsy [Applause] thank you for your efforts and thank you for making

005us proud all right we have another recognition yes uh the next two recognitions are part of our strategic Vision the Hudson school district has established three pillars of focus our students our staff and our community tonight's appreciation of service recognizes community members who contribute to the school's dis the school district's vision and Mission so I'll invite Sue Homer's up first good evening this award goes to Lana schulberg on behalf of the Willow River Elementary School Alana is I don't know if she's an employee but she is very involved at the Phipps Center and in fact is there this evening at an event so was unable to join us tonight Lana is an alumni parent to Willow and has re recently renewed her connections to Willow River Elementary she approached me about a year ago to

006partner with the Phipps to participate in a migration celebration in May of 22. to celebrate the return of the migratory birds that go from Costa Rica to Hudson and back and forth I agreed but I had no idea what the level of involvement that Lana would provide or the and the high levels of student Hands On Learning and creative expression that would come out of this she told me that the fourth graders were going to make Birds sounded easy enough I thought by the end the entire school was involved in creating a Costa Rica rainforest habitat on display at the Phipps Lana met with our fourth graders and shared articles on every bird so that students could research their bird and then spent several hours helping these students make life-size replicas of the birds they

007chose Lana created or Incorporated no collaborated with her art teacher to design a rainforest habitat that would be built at the Phipps incorporating insects birds plants and flowers created by each grade level Anna's goal was to include every student and not to add any work to the teachers and she single-handedly accomplished that Willow eagerly into participated again this year in a collaborative project that made each student feel like a real artist in the words of one of the fourth grade teachers Lana works hard in the run-up to our Birds project she constructs templates for the students collects cardboard puts together binders and gathers needed materials like pastel crayons and scissors she has put together a presentation to ground the kids in the reality of what we are doing complete with maps and pictures she herself

008has taken she is great with the kids always smiling she works hard in the interim to put together the rainforest and on the day of she starts early to make the migration path from Willow to the Phipps complete with flags and passports so the students literally migrate their birds and walk down to their new habitat at the Phipps she was kind patient and enthusiastic with the students throughout the process making it memorable for everyone she takes time to get to know the students she's working with and she makes connections with them throughout this project she was was great at getting everyone involved even beyond our fourth graders from grade levels creating intricate parts of the rainforest like ants and frogs to the community involvement in the creation of the waterfall at our music and art

009show Anna's passion for art is contagious and for many this has been one of the highlights of their year her enormous contributions of time energy and organization made this experience enjoyable for everyone and made everyone feel like they were part of something big on the opening night at the Phipps in May through her donation of time and talent she inspired every student to work hard to be creative and to try something new Willow has a deep appreciation for Lana's partnership and we are grateful for the gifts that she has given us all right [Applause] next up is fafani and Julie all right good evening I'm Julie Johnson School social worker at the high school and I'm happy to be here to share information about the youth resource committee and recognize two exceptional volunteers that support

010the program we know that students who are prepared for school do better in school academically and behaviorally in addition a major roadblock that has been identified in the community is the lack of public transportation the youth resource committee helps with both of these and more it plays a critical role in meeting the needs of Youth so the students are ready to thrive and learn what is the youth resource committee it began in 2014 to Target unique unmet needs of Youth it is a group of volunteers from a variety of organizations such as First Presbyterian Church the Hudson YMCA youth action Hudson United Way Saint Croix valley Hudson backpack program and the Raider Network over the 2022 school year the youth research committee was very busy here are some of the contributions in terms of Transportation

011they assisted with six sessions of drivers education for Hudson High School students in particular behind the wheel they donated 15 25 gas gift cards to Hudson School social workers to give to students and Families they supported Hudson student families with over fifteen hundred dollars in taxi vouchers and bought a bike helmet and locked for two additional students other gift cards donated to Hudson School District include Goodwill cards Great Clips and ALDI cards the assisted crowning achievements with their hygiene drive for Thug Life donated to 200 for hygiene products they participated in operation helps Christmas campaigns applying two Hudson children with Christmas gifts they held the annual knit a difference it was back stronger than ever hosting the cast on party this past September with 30 participants and had a year and total of over 1

012000 donated items to various organizations including Hudson schools funds were raised to support a scholarship given to a Hudson High School senior new this spring was a college apartment drive for seniors in need with items for free code it is too expensive so it was one less thing to worry about everything you did for us was very helpful and for my family as well last but not least I want to thank the generous donors which are too many to name at this time and the two amazing volunteers that are here tonight Cassie Maguire and Jeanne Schmidt [Applause] and I know Ali Sauder is up there but she's not able to join us this evening so here are just some of the many things that these two do with their time and talent they actively participate

013and run the committee meetings they brainstorm new ideas and sustain current practices they set up a 501c3 and help fundraise and apply for grants for the many contributions to Hudson School District and lastly they coordinate with Hudson School District to best meet the needs of students and Families they are truly making a difference and I couldn't imagine collaborating with any better volunteers and organization thank you so I'd like to end sharing a letter from a youth resource committee scholarship recipient dear youth resource committee thank you so much for choosing me to be the recipient of your scholarship we had a zoom meeting a couple weeks ago but I wanted to write you all a thank you it means so much to me that you all decided to give me this generous scholarship and we'll use

014it to help further my education and so I can study neurology I was diagnosed with Tourette's syndrome when I was eight I have also worked with students with disabilities since kindergarten and I have learned a lot about my own disability and about autism I want to study neurology so I can study both autism and Tourette's syndrome and find out new and better treatments for both because of the scholarship I am more sure and confident that I am on the right path and other people are willing to help and support me and anything I want to do once again thank you so much so again wire May the cheers the committee and then Jeannie Smith is thank you [Applause] again we appreciate the service of all of the people we recognize tonight and we hope that

015now you got these Awards you don't stop contributing right thank you thank you very much all right um I guess is there any uh requests to speak on non-action items no all right no public comments and um I'd offer Aaron to to start if you think you have enough people here otherwise we could start with our annual reports and then hit you at six a six pm all right very good let's go with that Dustin you're up if I were you guys I'd yeah I'd want to be first too so yeah so I guess I didn't realize Aaron was in charge here but congrats uh Dr Mohan all right I won't Rob too much of your time tonight but um we have numerous highlights for our department uh kind of wanted to cover the top

016ones for the year so uh starting off we partnered with some new local vendors this year for arborist Services water damage cleanup and auto automotive parts and repairs we provided continuing education uh forklift training for the staff we collaborated collaborated with season 10 this year to implement updated safety plans and conduct our annual safety training which was this morning we completed in-house summer projects during the high school roof replacement ensuring a safe area for well I should say during Willows North Hudson and high school ensuring a safe area for all staff and students some of our big Ada wins for the year we converted two High School single style single stall staff restrooms say that five times fast in a fully automated doors with ADA compliance structures for students needs we installed an ADA Lyft

017in the high school orchestra pit and we added Ada soap dispensers to multi-stall public restrooms in the high school um we work with the elementary schools physical education department to design and build a mini golf unit we provided excellent service for community events such as the daddy daughter dance The Hudson Chamber of Commerce and tourism Expo the hot air Affair Hudson quilt show the North Hudson pepperfest as well as numerous athletic and Performing Arts events now we successfully completed the install of the North Hudson Elementary playground which included new ADA Compliant equipment despite numerous challenges we Implement a routine daily door checks by custodial staff to ensure Building Safety and Security we completed all necessary requirements to close out orders issued after the safety inspection conducted on March 28th by the department of safety and

018Professional Services we received our certificate of completion for our compliance we introduced a new weekly Turf maintenance program to enhance the safety and prolong the useful life of the High School athletic fields we collaborated with both the high school Metals class and the woods class to complete numerous projects some in-house promotions custodians moving to lead and head positions filling vacant rolls along those lines we distribute custodial 101 booklets to all staff serving as a resource for new and experienced employees we implemented safe and intentionally use protocols for our heavy operating equipment resulting in reduced maintenance costs and then lastly and I just continued our partnership with both the fire department and the city to share compliance and all of our projects any questions from board members all right thank you for your work go ahead

019I just had one question about the Ada lift for the orchestra pit that was very exciting something I never thought of but I'm sure does that really cramp the space with so uh short version of the history it was designed with a a very small hoist way access space prior to my arrival I guess the lift kind of went back and forth between the manufacturer so we finally got the correct one and got installed so the space was available you can't see it when the stage is in place but it's it's under there excellent all right again thank you for your report appreciate your brevity all right thank you all right High School Middle School are you ready yeah all right Aaron's ready all right go ahead okay yeah I guess I guess I turned

020into a creature of habit with the 6 PM start time so thanks to Riley white who's checking in on making sure she can be here on time and get to her next event as summer Summer's taken off and I glance to look at the agenda it's at 5 30 so three girls already here just like that within 10 minutes of email so uh appreciate the support not only from the fall in the winter but now another successful season in our spring as you can see as you work through the slides a ton of Great accomplishments Achievements not only individually but importantly team and representing our community a few of the sports aren't able to make it today as you all have kids in in high school ages they start going crazy the first day summer

021hits everybody starts heading different directions so trying to get groups coordinated can be a challenge but we do have representatives from girls soccer softball and hopefully track and field here if they're on time they were told to be here at 5 50 anyways so it'd be a good test I can speak to that first slide so our top senior GPA is always a great slide up there not only for an accomplishment lots of seniors participating so there's there's competition for that top senior GPA but it also shows high achievement in their respective sport but also in the classroom lots of All-State honors in terms of all state academics are still yet to be released but we'll have many students in the running for that across the state as well it's just awesome to see but

022a great reminder to make sure we address that piece too we had our third annual senior recognition that's turned into a really cool event if you hadn't have a chance to make it to that event we invite all continuing athletes who are going to be competing at the next level we establish a five-star award so that's five Varsity letters with no code violations we've had upwards of 20 students achieve that award over the last two years each year and then we have our high school athletes of the year and our WIA scholar athlete who actually Riley white should be mad at me for mentioning it was our female Wii scholar athlete recipient when she comes up to talk about girls soccer we had a new head coach this spring and Nick demolin and boys tennis

023who did a great job and even had a had a first year experience of going to the state tennis tournament with Luke dasheen and then we had nine individuals qualify for track state which was a heck of an event if anybody saw some Publications from that not only did they have weather delays due to lightning but the lights were automatically programmed to go off at 11 at night and they didn't think about that ahead of time so the Lights Went Out fortunately not within a meat or a competition or with it was within a meet but not within a race so those had to reboot for a good 15 minutes and get the power underway our athletes got back our seniors got back for graduation at 2 A.M for graduation that day so busy day

024for them and then two conference championships this spring which if we've looked at it's a little bit light compared to the success we've had but that's that's awesome anytime you can get two or more on the big Rivers that's a that's a great season so up front another successful spring season a little cold little snowy on the front end but we made a lot of great progress and a lot of Great accomplishments so as I mentioned we have a few groups missing but I've asked him to hit on the the main things that I know this group likes to hear about and the things that really give me the excitement and the interest and the passion is their overall experience again you can look through the accomplishments but what these three girls are going to

025come up and talk about and then hopefully the boys when they show up at 5 50 is that overall what they brought away what what they're walking away with Riley's a senior the other two girls get to come back for another year so they they have the junior perspective so we'll start with Riley for girls soccer hello my name is Riley white and I was a captain for girls soccer this year and um soccer has been an amazing part of my life and so I was really excited to do high school soccer and I was really fortunate and honored to be a captain this year and suckers taught me so much about resilience especially with our high school season having some weather delays at the beginning of the year and suffering a couple injuries here

026and there so the hard work really paid off because we were Conference champions this year as well as Regional champions unfortunately our season did end on Thursday but it was an amazing experience and I got to bond with the team and we have a lot of underclassmen that are really talented so I think that coming back next year our team will be super strong and hopefully they will get to progress further than we did this year and have another amazing successful season next season thank you all right [Applause] hi I am Mala the this is our first year playing on the turf this year for softball so that was a really big adjustment for us at the beginning of the season however it was really beneficial because we got in a lot of home games

027early in the season before any of the dirt Fields were ready and throughout the ups and downs of the season the team learned the importance of being supportive and that our teammates really learned how to play for each other personally I am very grateful for the connections and friendships that I have made through softball our team is very close-knit and we enjoy spending time together on and off the field and we all have really great connections with each other thank you hi my name is Evelyn wolfgramm and I'm going to be a senior next year a challenge that I face this High School season was that I did not perform as well as my freshman and sophomore years during my first two years I had a great seasons in making all conference and being a

028big river sad leader in several areas however this year was different I struggled with perform my performance in the mental aspect of the game I would feel down on myself when I was not hitting at my full potential even though I put in work during and during and after practices given this I continue to work through all these struggles while Beast while still being there for my team while they focused and found success participating in sports has taught me a lot of life lessons if you're not winning you're learning I've learned a lot to have a great work ethic in how to trust others and work together to accomplish a common goal overall this team has overcome many challenges this year and we're going to continue to strive for excellence next year and years to

029come thank you [Applause] hi my name is Luke Douglas I'm a captain of the tennis team there's a slide um yeah and we had a great season this year it wasn't as successful as our seasons in the past in terms of wins and losses but in terms of relationships and potential growth it was very successful last season we had we had seven seniors on our team so we only had three guys returning on Varsity this year so it was a big change for all of us and on top of that we had a new head coach as uh John Dahl left and went to Madison so our assistant our assistant coach last year who who had prior only had baseball coaching experience and baseball playing experience decided to take on the take on the role

030of being our head coach and it was quite it was quite an experience and on top of that we had our assistant coach uh Zacharias and he has some tennis experience but yeah it was it was all new stuff and we had we had just a great season I made all sorts of new relationships and I'm really excited to see how these guys can do in the future we had one um our one singles player Luke Duchene he ended up qualifying for the state competition um and then at Big at the BRC we ended up placing fourth in our overall record was three and three um and we also had a tournament down in Holmen in which we nearly swept the competition I think we won every single match except three so that was that

031was a success down there um but yeah it was it was a great season for the guy's tennis team and I look forward to seeing what these guys can do in the future thank you excellent [Applause] excellent hey my name is Justin Roby and I'm from the Hudson track team I'm the only one I was able to make it today we had a little miscommunication but um so our season this is my I'm a junior by the way and um our season some difficulties we had this year was the weather compared to last year like we had a lot a lot of cold and rainy Meats this year I think only like one or two meets towards the end we're actually like especially I'm a sprinter I run the 100 200 so the wind is

032actually a big thing and we had a ton of like headwind this year which like five mile an hour wind might not seem like a lot but like it can change your time by a lot like especially in track where like 0.2 seconds is like a huge difference so it's a big mental thing because as the year goes on everyone progresses so at the start of the year you might not like you might not think you're doing as great because like last year I finished with a 11.70 100 meter dash which is my PR person record and coming to the season with some bad weather I think my first open was like 12 1 which is like you can get in your head because you know in the off season you trained as like as

033hard as you could you did everything you're supposed to but um by the end of the year I was we were able to I was in the 11 fives almost eleven fours which with bad wind is I was proud of especially because my main sport is football so I focused on gaining weight so it's not always optimal for track but um yeah we had one of the captains who couldn't make it today Ross he was the one boy to make it in the OR to State for the boys team um he made it in the 400 and he did all right and state but he had a big jump from last year this year and then the girls team really did good too they had a few relays and girls make it um overall I

034think some of the challenges we faced as a team we haven't overcome because I mean the boys spring Sports lacrosse and baseball or the top two I would say so we don't always have the like I mean we have great athletes but like our State team lacrosse just once they obviously so they have great athletes too but I think we as a team did really good we especially from the last year we jumped up our distance was amazing but yeah that's about it all right [Applause] you can just flip to that last slide foreign so lots of great things happening this year um just in a in a full total year it was a ton of fun to look back and kind of try and pick different pictures but um I thought a couple things

035really highlighted it was a beautiful graduation night tremendous weather outside we had the state send-offs this year have just been a ton of fun in getting the drum line really if we we missed Drumline once and it was a big problem but now we don't have enough drums for how many kids want to join in that it's been it's been a ton of fun in that aspect too we did our first ever division three in junior college signing day that was highly attended I think in total our number of continuing athletes ended up being 42 seniors that are going to continue from the junior college through the division one level and I think there are still a few trying to make decisions on where and if they will continue to participate so a hugely successful

036year big thanks to this group and the support we've got some really exciting things happening next year we're looking at online ticketing with a program called go fan that's up through the WIA if you've attended one of their state tournaments that's the program they use we're excited about that trying to streamline that process we've got huddle which is a camera platform and film study where we had a camera installed at the stadium and in the gym that can automatically film and then ultimately stream lower level games right onto our school YouTube channel to try and help people that aren't able to make those games check those things out so just a couple things that we're really excited about into next year and then just the kids themselves and watching what this junior current junior class

037can be as senior leaders and in the next step in there like a season in terms of wrapping up their High School career so thank you for a great year and uh thanks for pivoting for us a little bit tonight a quick plug for facilities and grounds the turf does look great our our lifespan is expected to be beyond the warranty which is always good I see some heads not in there they said the stadium is at least five years they're looking at in terms of the quality and how that's responding and keeping up and then our back fields get a little bit more use those are right on track if not better too so big thanks to facilities and grounds for that too all right thanks Mr President yeah Rob earn up what is

038the Bell cow award good question so um oh you're gonna put me on the spot I'm forgetting his name he's a professor at the UW Wisconsin-Madison he is he has a very cool initiative across the state and it's only two years old um where he is picking leaders that he's asking around the state public education public service oriented he's building basically a network of these Bell cow Award winners for people to reach out for questions for people to reach out for Connections in a network recently in this area Bruce Larson for anybody who recognizes that name was a coach a famous football coach that passed from Somerset High School he's one of the recipients in Western Wisconsin so the professor reached out to me and asked for some some nominations Adam Cowles has been a

039tremendous Community member but also football coach and really great math teacher which sometimes doesn't get talked about as much so it was a really great way to be able to recognize Mr Cowles for his academic but also extracurricular performance as well glad you asked that yeah that was awesome excellent good question and thanks thanks again Aaron for a good good report and getting all those students involved and getting everything organized we appreciate your efforts appreciate it thank you now we get to resume the department accomplishments and highlights go to the middle school next good evening thanks for having me um just a little bit of some highlights from our 22-23 season uh season and Aaron left school year we do have three strategic Vision goals currently we are looking at um two goals for our

040students and one for our staff one for our students culture and really trying to make sure that we are looking to strengthen the positive relationships among staff students and families as caregivers looking to increase that on our school perception survey up about a tenth of a point our data's not back yet but we do have some internal indicators that look like we've made some good movement there our second student goal is to ensure the curriculum is developmentally responsive rigorous and relevant to our students experiences including the assessment of District curricular priorities and something new this year we broke that into grade level math and grade level English language arts goals again our forward data is not back and our third goal is focusing on our staff and really making sure that we're trying to promote

041a culture of well-being and safety for all employees we have a baseline index score on health Stress Management and wellness of 3.23 looking to increase that by one-tenth and again our perceptions survey data is not back yet um then we have a nice list of year-long highlights I won't read through all 38 but hit some of the highlights first and foremost two wonderful Educators Kelly Hackbarth Miller and Sam Peterson were recipients of the 2023 herb cold teacher Fellowship our school social studies Department teamed with the Wisconsin Historical Society to bring in a traveling Museum Great Lakes small streams hot water shapes Wisconsin and every child at Hudson Middle School had a chance to visit that traveling Museum our Hudson Middle School parent group this year for the first time hopefully started a new tradition we

042held two family bingo nights we had great turnout for sixth grade then we had a seventh and eighth grade night and we had good again good turnout and uh it was kind of just neat seeing families come in and sit down and and have a nice evening together in our building the seventh and 8th grade students or I'm sorry seventh grade students visited the Guthrie Theater again for the first time since 2019 um our math department reviewed and strengthened our six through eight math scope and sequence including conducting an independent math audit and the selection of a new 6-8 math resource we got back to some of our some of our finished strong events so we did student versus staff basketball student versus staff volleyball big highlights student versus staff tug of war um imagine

043that staff one but they had a great time we had a lot of state champions so we had an 8th grade e cyber mission team that were named States champions and Regional finalists a seventh grade e-cyber Mission team that were named state champions and Regional finalists we had two state champions in the Wisconsin Middle School Science Olympiad we had a middle school team placed first in the Wisconsin middle division future Problem Solver scenario team writing challenge two students named to the middle level All State Choir four students name to the middle level Honor Choir two students name to the middle of an honor band and two students name to the state's solo Ensemble with one being named exemplary musician number 32 this is really neat our we had 54 8th grade web leaders this year

044who not only do they meet with all the incoming fifth graders and help with the transition into middle school but then they follow up by going in and visiting those advisories throughout the year and maintain those relationships this year they hosted two carnivals for our sixth grade students one before holiday break and one right here in mid-may and then they hosted the scavenger hunt tours for our incoming fifth graders for this year and then uh finally the one thing I wanted to highlight number 34 is we we did a nice job expanding on our implementation of co-teaching language arts and math in eighth grade to include co-teaching language arts and math in seventh grade and sixth grade as well so again those are just some of the highlights it was a wonderful year and at

045that time I'll open it up for any questions yeah all right any board members have questions otherwise thank you for the report great job keep up the good work right [Applause] thank you for not requiring me to ask you to clap so that's good all right all right it is up next are those fish yes this is certainly going to be far too tall here we go hi everyone um so we had a really big year in it as we always do um in case you didn't know most of the things that we do are heavily reliant on the things that the IT department does and you don't notice it until you actually those things go down so thankfully we didn't have a year full of outages where people really noticed that things went wrong

046so uh first and foremost we did have one retiree this year uh James Peterson retired after many many years with the district on our department he was actually the originator of the I.T Department way back then so I just want to thank him for all of his years of service um throughout the year we've had projects that have been really people facing front-facing with staff families community and then a lot of projects also behind the scenes in the walls the ceiling you name it where we go so a couple of things want to draw your attention to the first one we started a home course that is accessible actually to all of our families and all of our staff that any of you can access to increase your cyber smarts so if you want to

047do a little fun course to beef up your cyber knowledge go ahead it's all listed in here that's provided included in our simulated phishing attacks uh software so feel free to check that out we have quite a few staff members participate in that when the feedback was pretty good so some of the videos are a little nerdy but um the information is really good second piece is really twofold focusing on family engagement our family shared with us that coming for face-to-face events is really challenging we know that parenting is really hard and it's really busy so this year we decided to take some of our face-to-face events and flip them to more of a webinar based um experience and we had a great response for our very first one we were really excited we didn't

048know what to expect we didn't know who was going to come we didn't know what it was going to look like but we knew we were going to record it so people could watch it after it was really successful Aaron Walsh from the spark and Stitch Institute talked to us about um kids teens and screens and just about like what does it look like to really parent what we call a digital native or a student who or child who has been raised through and through on technology and it was amazing the chat was just as powerful as the speaker so we had families and parents sharing stories asking questions and it was amazing so this is going to be the first of many we're looking to have several more webinars next year and in addition

049to that we also offered our sixth grade course for All Families to complete with their students uh the parenting course about raising teenagers and next year we're expanding that to ninth grade as well so in partnership with the mental health fiber communities Grant so thanks for that and then last but not least just around the like forward-facing pieces we had a cyber security curriculum zero credit bearing course last summer we had 23 students sign up for a summer school course between 8th and 12th grade trade many of them finish this online course and we had one student actually take industry standard exams and will ultimately continue that moving forward we have a cyber security course starting in the fall for credit so we're really really excited for that um we're gonna hopefully have students leave

050High School being able to enter into some of these really high high level jobs and make way more money than we could imagine um so good for them um just a couple of other things want to talk about we partnered with our Community Education friends to have some Community education classes that are really more focused on some of our senior community members the first one that we had was a cell phone and tablet course just on how to use your cell phone what seems easy for most of us maybe not Jamie but most of us what seems really simple for most Jamie we're going to have another course next year there you go but I think I'm the senior member of the here yes it has nothing to do with age um no uh but

051it 'll be fun experience between 24 people come to it's incredibly fun we had another course called intros to cyber security um and it was amazing and what came out of that is that moving forward we're going to have a seniors only tech club uh that will happen every single month for our most senior community members to come and join all are welcome obviously but there is one rule you have to bring a treat or a snack to share with the group so like just keep that in mind if you come and if you come empty-handed we will turn you away so just keep that in mind uh we also had our it transition staff with um the transition students between the ages of 18 and 21 they come to it every day for about

052an hour and a half and they work in our department we're incredibly thankful to have them they will continue next year and then the last two things is just more Behind the Walls of what we do with installing projectors laptops Chromebooks You Name It We did all of that and we really um utilized our e-rate funding to increase our network capacity our infrastructure and we'll continue to do that so if you get to talk to anyone tell them how important e-rate is it makes a huge difference for us in Hudson we just really appreciate all your support last thing is that 23 of our staff reported our simulated phishing links in our most recent campaign so on our first run in like 2016 or 17 30 of people clicked on the bad link that's not

053great but we've made drastic improvements since then so 23 percent of our staff reported these simulated links which is a really high number and that we're seeing that consistently and we're improving or increasing the difficulty levels so it's been a really exciting year we've been with staff a lot been doing a lot of projects so thanks all right any questions for Jen otherwise I guess this computer trend is going to probably stay so I think your your apartment your job security is there uh you all heard it it's on film I'm good thanks okay mic drop no okay I just wanted to say thank you so much for the family engagement webinars and I have little kids it's hard to make the extra meetings having things recorded and trying to figure out what to do

054with kids and screens so this will be very good for all of us thank you and like we are watching take the devices away like you have full permission to take them away at night we just need you to send them back during the in the morning to school so like you're the boss at home so just remember those things thank you [Applause] so Bonnie are you giving this report Financial Source you have to follow somebody that was giving out treats how about chocolate chip cookies do you have any of those or they will yeah [Laughter] I know we process payment hopefully I'm sure okay so I know Financial Services won't be as exciting as it but um this year I guess we just had a lot of growth in our department on me being

055new to the department trying to figure out how we've done things and really trying to move towards paperless we use a lot of paper um so our initiative is to really get rid of paper and go automate it as much as we can so I'm not going to read everything but some of our big highlights this year mostly were approved by at the board level so P cards so we are we have completed our pilot we had about six different departments pilot them during the end of this school year and we're in the process of rolling those out for next year so that should be really helpful I think for parent groups and that's where it kind of came from was a parent group that had to put out like a thousand dollars and then

056wait for reimbursement so I think this will be a really good fix for our district Food Service management company um when I came there was a lot of discussion about the offerings that our kids have in our district so we are excited to have a recommendation tonight and Mr Leary is here tonight to answer any questions but um recommending to move towards charred Wells for next year so I think our kids will have a really incredible offerings next year oh it's our next one um cross training um what we learned when I came we I think we'd gone through three payroll people in the last two years is that about right um so we're doing a lot of cross training so now we have two people that can do payroll at all times um and

057then um we have somebody that will be retiring in about a year and accounts payable so we're looking at warcross trading so more people to know what everybody's doing we finished our policy review of the 600 series so I think like everybody else those were a little outdated so I think we're up to date on those um I think that's about it um we unfortunately had to do some bidding with our insurance which you'll also receive tonight but it's been a great year I'm really excited to be a part of this district and I think we're moving in the right direction all right great any questions for Bonnie I know she's got some things later on about like our budget Outlook and all that but let's just keep it on a positive note right all

058right school and services yes yeah we don't usually clap after buying a gizzard requirements so you know let's let's give her that moment right yeah um we've got old muffins and donuts upstairs if you guys need it okay I think I have treats at my desk if you want to go get them for everybody real quick so real quick just proud and honored to introduce our assistant directors in our department uh We've survived our first season as a team as as a team this year so I'm glad they showed up tonight to talk about Department highlights for our students forgot we had a really nice collaborative effort between one of our occupational therapists Sydney gerbig one of our center-based specialist teachers the high school Tyler Hunter his students and Kyle Flanagan a science teacher to

059design a 3D print attachment for student lunch trays so some of our kids with some more orthopedic and other fine and gross mortar issues can feed themselves more independently so we're working on a lot things like that was I forgot to put that on there but did not want to foregold that one um other student highlights our student health services administered 12 370 medications this year we had no errors which is super impressive they don't have a lot of errors but they have no error no errors is really noteworthy um the district we received an 85 return rate on our indicator 14 survey which is one year After High School our students with disabilities are surveyed and there are Grant dollars tied to that not only do we have a very high return rate we

060have a very high success rate so great our kids are being successful after and that's bringing back some monies to the district and that's allowing us to fund some really cool things that we're doing and we have great support from internal people like John and other departments here in the district building our kids skills um to tie with that Robin Rivard our transition coordinator presented at the Wisconsin transition conference and she had standing room only they asked her to come back it was she sent me pictures it was quite a big deal so really proud of her and being able to share some of those accomplishments with our peers across the state keep in and with uh looking at our team or our staff we did have 16 teachers complete the teacher child interaction training

061or tcit we do have in-house coaches that have been specifically trained to do that it is when you hear about it it's a very simple interaction technique but the way that we're building relationships with our students and some of the classroom management is just unbelievable I know it's successful and I've got principals that I call and ask can we get so-and-so trained in tcit like it's they see it as being very successful and then we also had 21 teachers from all levels K through 12 go through Psy out training which is the sheltered instruction observation protocol it was designed specifically for working with children who are learning English as a second language but the techniques and the skills that they're learning are great for all Learners pointing out just some really simple things like at

062the elementary level when they're learning about writing and you have your introduction and your body and your conclusion to an ESL child who's also learning all those words body means something very different than the body of writing and a teacher went like oh wait no wonder why my student was looking at me like that like yeah just thinking through some of those those specific things that we need to teach um and then our community is our other area our El program hosted the celebration of Nations I know I saw a lot of you there that night last year was their first year doing that I think we counted like 55 people came to the door last year this year thanks to a grant from the Education Foundation we were able to bring in food and

063performers we more than tripled that number I don't know the exact count of it I know we had 250 like programs that we were giving out to families as they came to the door and all of those were gone and that was going to a family level so that was super exciting and then I get the really exciting indicator information so this is again one of our federal indicators it's family engagement of students with disabilities after every annual IEP part of our process and processing the paperwork is garnering feedback we're only required to do this by the state every five years we've elected to do this annually and collect our own data so we can be responsive to families needs and give feedback on our work and just the big success is getting the feedback

064because you know families get a lot of emails there's a lot of information pushed out so we appreciate that we've increased our our response rate and some of our teams have taken that data and are doing specific work around it our staff is also surveyed and we have a lot of feedback so it's it's a comparison between what our parents are perceiving what we are doing and what our perceptions are and where those things meet so we're still collecting data for this year and you know I'll be glad to come back and Festival um and then our last thing Within the community our early childhood special education program does an early childhood screening for any children before they are in 4k or kindergarten and last year we started um collaborating with the public library and

065so we hold it up in that children's section and it's so much fun um that Hudson Public Library they are so welcoming to us they have so many great activities for children as they come through and next year we're expanding that to do more days it's some of these little kids come all dressed up for it so we're going to try to make it like a bigger deal with prizes and like little gift bags or whatever but um and then the other inclusion and Equitable practices I apologize that's still on there from last year that should have been deleted before I share it with you that's my bad I apologize well so I mean yeah we're still doing those things obviously special footage and Jim did hit on that at the high school too I

066can speak this year we co-taught 33 sections next year we're pushing to 48 so we're continuing to expand that and serve kids in the regular environment with their typically developing peers and having access to content experts so all the things all right any questions for student services all right go ahead well you know I love you guys um because everything you did for my kids and for other kids and what I see when I see what you're doing I see data driven practices results driven and creative and I mean that can be said for the whole school district and teachers what they do it's just fantastic I'm so proud of all of you yeah thank you yes that deserves Applause [Applause] next up teaching and learning all right thank you very much I'm going to

067start with a recognition so this year we um or last year I guess going into this year we eliminated a position and that was the assistant director of secondary teaching and learning Lisa scoin as the assistant director of Elementary teaching and learning picked that up and did an amazing job so she has been an invaluable member of the team and everything that I'm talking about she's been involved in some ways so big thanks to Lisa for all of her work so I divided the highlights into five different categories and first one is curriculum sort of the most basic function of our department a few highlights there we presented on Elementary science which was Mystery Science excited about that you all saw the presentation on that Jim had alluded to our accelerated revision of middle school

068math very involved process including the audit that he mentioned resulting into hmh into math being implemented next year excited about that and I'm very confident that you you it will yield positive results music is super fun there's some um different resources in there that will help us move our music department into more music production music writing Music Creation as well as the performance so that's going to be great for our kids um art mainly additional resources not a switch in the curricular Direction World Language you'll see a lot of things there that is a tough Department to review the resources if you look at those I don't know what a lot of those say but we did review all those resources and excited about enhancing their programs the next thing in curriculum is our increased

069Clarity using Embark that used to be called build your own curriculum or byoc we're to a point where we consider that fully implemented by the end of this summer everything will be up to date and we'll be able to use that resource not only for visibility and transparency but also for curricular Improvement there's a lot that that will help us do moving into engagement looking at a few different ways we engaged community and staff members first one you'll hear more about this later but the human growth and development ad hoc committee process big hello and thanks to some community members that were part of the committee that are out there so thank you very much we'll leave that one for later since we'll go into that in more depth we do our rounding and luncheon

070listens that's where we go to each school we do this twice a year at each School spend the day or a half a day depending on the size of school listening to teachers asking a few questions and developing and understanding how things are going in the schools this last year a theme came out and it was crystal clear everyone was saying we need to do a better job of supporting new teachers and we have more new teachers than ever before it's a demanding job there's a lot of expectations and they need support and the neat thing was it was veteran teachers that were calling for that it wasn't new teachers saying we need more it was their colleagues saying we need to do more to support them we're able to respond to that and make

071some adjustments resulting in what I think will be great a year One Professional learning calendar where we took all the things that we tend to kind of cram in right at the beginning spread it out they really thoughtfully look at when will this information be important and how can we make sure that they're supported a lot of that support is in collaboration with human resources making sure that when we bring our new teachers we're doing everything we can to support them teaching and learning advisory Council we've had that group for a few years continue to expand their role we focused on family engagement we studied a book together and that also resulted in some suggested new practices and then we have a family engagement committee and we go our our goal is to ensure that

072Hudson is viewed as the best community in Wisconsin to raise a family we view everything we do with family engagement to help move us toward that vision and we've had a lot of good stuff happening there moving into instructional leadership so it's always curriculum instruction assessment are sort of the three cornerstones of teaching and learning there's a few other things that we're touching on but within instructional leadership our study of Science of reading we've presented on that already but yielded tremendous results we've had over a hundred teachers volunteer to be part of this group we will be implementing a new core phonics program for grades K2 all teachers will be trained we've now purchased that and we're ready to move forward very excited about that educator Effectiveness our tool for evaluating teachers we continue to

073try to make sure that that is a tool that's used to provide feedback and support as well as evaluation but not not just an evaluation process you to make sure that it also provides meaningful feedback we're working on some things we've already done but we'll be enhancing that actually starting Wednesday we'll be working on that assessment we presented on Fast Bridge a while back but one thing that we missed from our old Universal screener is What's called the quadrant report this is where you compare a student's growth and their achievement we recreated that in the system our teachers did an amazing job elementary teachers said you know what just give us some graph paper let's do this ourselves they like the idea of actually physically interacting with the data and it really helps teachers pinpoint

074what students need additional support moving on to inclusive practices Hudson virtual Charter School continues to thrive we're not bringing a ton of kids from other districts but we're certainly going in the right direction with open enrollment this is one of the major tools we have in place that has helped us reverse the trend in open enrollment and one of the most exciting things with hvcs is the work that Sarah is doing Sarah angstrom y the coordinator for the program to partner with our high school teachers so we're offering virtual courses with our teachers the virtual program is great but we have to make sure that we're we have enough students to offset the expense of partnering with different agencies that provide the content if we have our teachers teach those sections it's all benefit it's

075great for kids it's great for our teachers she's doing great work with that and then the last thing I'm going to skip over the rigor team conclusion and end with the elementary Reading Improvement or intervention Improvement our reading teachers we've asked them to shift their their role into a more of a consultant role knowing that we can increase inclusivity having kids receive their necessary reading instruction in their classroom if the reading teacher leverages their expertise to build the expertise of teachers so they're going in Consulting with teachers helping them understand what the right next steps are and we call it we refer to it as a prescriptive process just like going to the doctor you go to the expert they say do this for six weeks we're going to check in a little bit this

076is how you do this that's the approach we're taking with reading intervention we've had over 120 total consultations and every reading teacher has embraced this work and is doing a great job that's all I've got right questions for Dave otherwise the appreciate your report it's kind of the bread and butter that was the phrase I was looking for if every school district is teaching and learning but not that we've got well-rounded in lots of areas but lots going on so thank you very much [Music] foreign that we're up to Willow River and Sue helmers back at the podium or back at the microphone getting getting a lot in tonight um I am going to speak to the highlights of Willow River for this year as we were reflecting on the year we recalled that we

077started the year with a gigantic Crane and a scaffolding tunnel that came into our building which we shared until about Thanksgiving and I wanted to really highlight the flexibility and just kind of can-do spirit of the staff and students although it was nothing like the high school when they were building there was were some distractions and our elementary students did a really nice job staying focused and teachers just really went with uh kind of went with the flow and it really didn't take too much away from our learning so that's how we started and we ended our school year with a big carnival in the park in the playground and kind of referenced how we started and how we ended in the playground area but with very different focuses um another thing that we really

078wanted to focus on this year was family engagement and did a lot of family communication challenged teachers to reach out to families making those deposits speaking to that t sit or that program that fafani or referenced we also had two teachers at Willow put together a program called parenting with pride and that was using those strategies that we're teaching teachers and sharing that with families we had over 25 people attend that and really had rave reviews on just giving parents some tips on how to work with their kids at home um we also of course focused on reading and so spent a lot of time building students engagement in reading and excitement and interest in Reading we did lots of goals and challenges and kind of tracking what kids were reading we did chapter book

079challenges and really it was all hands on deck and anybody that was around to help would pull kids to read just really focusing on getting kids in into books and and excited about reading um some of the Traditions that Willow has had for a long time include a young author's day that has been around for oh gosh many many years and this year's theme was dream big and we invited two people um who have overcome challenges in their lives one was Jesse horn who is a Champion Cup a national champion cup stacker I wasn't even aware there was such a thing and he is a student with autism or an individual with autism and spoke to how he overcame some of his challenges throughout his life and now is able to travel the world and

080speak and he has a book we also had a woman Lindsey Moreland who has written some books who speaks to her own experiences with autism and so it was a really cool message for the kids and just an event that really brings our school together we also had our annual music and art show which I had a brand new music and art teacher and so um imagine their surprise when I I approached them and said well you're going to put on this really big thing and there's like 200 people that come but they did a great job and we switched it around it used to be kind of a raffle silent auction kind of thing and now it is stations and families work on Art together and it's really fun to see and then I

081think our final highlight is something that I referenced earlier with the award with Lana we have um created a partnership with the fips and we of course did the migration celebration but we also did a program or a an event this fall called breath of words where our fourth graders again created us a written piece about themselves and then were invited down to the studio at the Phipps to create a piece of art to match that and then we're given an area in one of the galleries to display this their work and so it was a really cool experience for the students and families to come and have you know hors d'oeuvres and walk through the gallery and so I see it as a really when we talk about Community engagement I see the fips

082and their their proximity to Willow as a great partnership and a way to get our kids involved in the community and get our families to a really great resource that we have right here in Hudson so just a really great year and I'm glad to have completed my second year and excited to the years to come at Willow questions any questions on on Willow otherwise I think you have another report I do all right I'm just gonna be up here again so my next report is on 4K 4K program we are in our sixth year and um just looking I had pulled some of our enrollment numbers January 2023 our student count was 346 which is up 33 from last year at that time and so that's exciting to see that the program continues to

083grow we have a lot of open enrolled kids 38 37 coming in next year and about a fourth of those stay in our district so I think it lures people in at this point in time we have 266 students fully registered which is about where we have been we're starting to just keep track of our numbers so that we're like oh is this where we were last year or not and so we are right on track this year we will our next term sorry we'll continue with three School sites offering school age care for the PM for students so really great um we've had one of my favorite things about the 4K program are the Family Outreach events and that is part of the program we have to do 87 and a half hours but

084it's really um it's very refreshing and fun for me to see the families getting together and the kids too you know they see each other at the their sites but then to come together we've done at White camp park at Castle Park and just bringing those families together um we I I surveyed the families this year just to kind of see I I think I did it the second year so I hasn't been for a few years just to see where what the perception of the community is for those that are involved in the program um and 95 percent of families were satisfied or extremely satisfied with their child's experience stating things like the social and academic growth kindergarten Readiness making friends and appreciating that their kids really love coming to school 91 percent of

085parents were satisfied or extremely satisfied with their own experience as an adult or as a parent noting that they had great teachers the transportation option makes it accessible for everyone having daycare options and aligned to the district schedule so I felt really good about what our perception or how people are perceiving the program obviously there were also areas of suggestions of next steps and so I will be looking at those to create a plan for next year just haven't gotten to that yet but no that's school is over we gonna move into that for summer planning so I'll use that information and look at next steps for the program I've also surveyed the staff to see what kinds of things they need in order to continue to grow the program some of our 4K teachers

086have been in the program and so are looking for new and interesting or new and relevant things for for them to learn and so that's what we will take that data and look at what they're ready for next year we are or this summer we're looking at aligning our 4K standards to our kindergarten standards to make sure that we have a smooth transition for kids that are finishing 4K and entering into kindergarten so that work starts next week we are implementing a phonics program that's only about 10 minutes a day but feel that that will build a foundation for our kids going into kindergarten and we are always looking for ways to increase the collaboration we have 12 sites and so it's always a challenge to get child care teachers together when they are busy

087during the day and so coming up with some plans of ways that we can build the capacity of our teachers and support each other through that process so that is all things 4K any questions any questions first one that are those satisfaction Rings among parents are above 90 percent like that that's just outstanding something to be very proud of thank you for doing that and you know checking in with the people that we serve so thank you for your reports great job thank you [Applause] all right and we have last but not least Tracy you have three reports three areas so I do I'll let you pick which one you want to talk about first I'll start with the community relations and a lot of what's listed here you're familiar with either as presented to

088a board meeting or as a community member as a parent there's lots of activities that happen within the district that's supported through our community relations efforts this school year started with a fairly comprehensive hiring campaign we we did a lot of new things this year to try and bring staff on we created a join our team video which had a fantastic group of Staff who talked about what's great about working here at the Hudson School District we had hiring kiosks at football games if some of you remember having to be at those events as well a large social media campaign so really reaching out as much as we could to make people aware I noticed that the high school sign still says we're hiring so time to update that one a little bit but in

089addition to some of those highlights one of the things in in some of what I'm talking about people have already mentioned but this year we have developed the format to start presenting podcasts to families and community members the parenting with pride group two fantastic teachers who led that will be able to continue that parenting skills building initiative through Community Ed moving forward but we also recorded our first podcast about transitioning back to school so we're excited to actually launch those in the fall I.T will be working with us to put those together and I was talking with fafani earlier today about some opportunities in student services as well and helping reach our English language Learners and families through through those podcasts so that's kind of an exciting opportunity for us we began the transition to

090a new mass communication system which we'll be implementing fully starting July 1. we're just a little anxious as we move to this new system it offers some most people are familiar with Blackboard which is our current mass communication system you get a message on snow days and all of that the new system we are moving to is called parent Square it's much more robust and will offer us improved ways to communicate with our ell families so we're excited about that there's lots of functions in that school safety one item that um well it's several but really working with our law enforcement leaders to we pulled them together in the fall to go over our threat assessment our school safety planning how can we work better as a as partners to make sure that our schools

091are safe one of those initiatives is to work with Saint Croix County dispatch so that they have access to our cameras in the event of a school emergency and we're continuing to work with them in along with it and we'll continue to train them regularly it's it's not an intuitive system so we want to make sure that in the event of a crisis that they're ready to go regarding Community Ed we had another very good year we've continued to grow our offerings with increased participation and ultimately that's what what we want I'll do a shout out to it again to Jen for that senior citizens group they are very excited group of folks to come back and learn more about technology pickleball seniors are are major audience it seems so pickleball we can't get enough

092gym space for pickleball so we we have two instructors now that have full schedules this summer to offer to folks another big event for us the daddy-daughter dance we had 1100 participants thanks to facilities and grounds for all their work in supporting that event and to Bev Hagin who put that together just to put that in perspective that event is larger than prom it's larger than many of the events that we host as a school district with overwhelming positive response we're looking at sorry Dustin another event to add to that one that is a mother mother-son event this fall and then also a family event in February so good stuff there facility rentals you can see the numbers there we we continue to use our facilities as much as we possibly can dance recitals have

093grown for us but that brings in revenue for us as well so that's that's good news for us switching to school Age Care our numbers have we we've steadily recovered from covid our staffing hasn't recovered in quite the same way as our numbers from parents so we we did increase our staffing ratios this year to 25 to one it's it's higher than what the the state recommendation is but we aren't we don't fall under the same licensing requirements we just use that as our guide as we're doing our planning as Sue noted we do offer the 4K wrap care in the afternoon at Ep Rock North Hudson in Willow um probably one of the the things when we looked at our feedback parents are anxious because the numbers because of Staffing and being able to

094get into the program so that's usually a great concern next year we're looking at some other options when we do registration for like 4K so that it is you know perhaps going to a lottery versus first come first serve those kinds of things to to help and then I just included our most recent survey from parents in the response from parents which is all very good our parents like our program it's convenient it's a good value they they enjoy the the programming that's offered the number of activities that kids get to participate in so overall a very good response from our families yes it looks like 93 to 95 on those areas that's again those are excellent whenever you can get that many people that are a green or strongly agreeing that's good value and

095everything that's that's great result any other questions for community relations or after school care all right thank you Tracy for the report appreciate it darn we don't have any more reports this this month we have to wait a whole month before we get another set of of reports it looks like it's going to be heavy on Elementary School next time because we only had one uh this time but all right uh next up in who's given the enrollment update is that okay I will do that yeah you haven't had a chance to talk sure yes there we go yeah thanks Steve um so this is what we do this time of year we looked at 23 24 projected class sizes we have the information on high school middle school on the following pages with respect

096to the elementary numbers you can see the chart looks very green at this point um we only have one area that we're specifically monitoring the Willow River second grade so again this is the roll up into 23 24 but we're projecting their class sizes to be it's not a summary of what the 22-23 school year was so going to 23-24 second grade we currently have 22 23 kids and our class size guidelines for K2 is 18 to 22. um however going to third grade we go to 22 to 27 for our class size guidelines so you can see with a lot of this um again there's a lot of green but there's also a lot of sections that are right up against that 22 number when it comes to the K2 area we did some

097last minute adjustments too in first grade where we're going down in sections at Willow for first grade to two sections um compared to what we had predicted the three and the North Hudson as well to two but we just moved that section up to second grade which had a few more kids um certainly it's the story of there's the 2627 kids perception and there's also the 15 and 16 kids perceptions depending upon the building and that's just the conundrum we have at this time our enrollment overall is at 2010 which is um substantially lower I think about 50 kids 50 60 kids lower than what we were last time or last year and then also we're looking at right now at 96 sections um and but we'll continue to monitor because again there's so many

098that are right on the cusp of 26 27 kids in the class or 22 that will continue to monitor that during this next um the next few weeks and months middle school high school just as an enrollment update and I think I'm just going to periodically update this so then we have more spaces going so I like to have a running total so June 2023 you can see the total enrollment at the middle school is predicted to be 11 41 and the high school 1686 so I believe just a few years ago Middle School was about 1300 1350 and uh High School is 1800 kids so you can see the declining numbers there and we're hopeful that um it'll rebound at some point but right now this is where we're at so that ninth grade

099projection is a roll-up of eighth grade and that's where we capture some of the folks that are in private schools yes in K-8 but yes there's a bigger bump going into ninth grade than there is going into sixth grade although there's still a little bit of a bump going into sixth grade and that is inclusive of those kids already yeah I can't remember the last time we've had a freshman class less than 400 so yeah I don't know if we have for since I've been here yeah right it's been a while all right uh any questions on that but just to be clear rolling back up to the elementary because we get emails on the on this from parents concerned that number of kids in their class and so forth but just to show because

100we do have six buildings as opposed to numbers where you know when you lose a section you don't have a big impact the smaller the building the bigger impact on the number of sections so we're losing 60 students in our elementary and these are these this is K through five so it's not 4K it's not 4K there's a column there but the numbers are really pretty premature at this point yeah so but even with that K to five number 60 lower we still have the same number of sections basically no we're lower um we have 101 this year okay and but we've already done all the cuts between retirements and then some layoffs okay um and I thought we were already under 100 so that's just wrong uh remembering on my part we were at

101100 and we added that fourth grade or third grade at Rivercrest at the last minute last year that put us to 101. um we were planning this year for 97 um but just we always try to be adaptable to what the numbers are showing us and in this case both at Willow and North we went down yes yeah I was wondering when you do these projections because I was one of those parents who was like oh no I didn't register my kids um do you assume that the children are moving forward even if the parents are a little slow and and doing the online registration oh yes okay in specific the principles are all over this I see you out there but not registered so it's okay exactly and we work collaboratively we have lists

102we do cross-checking we do a lot of analysis because this also leads to our placement for boundary exceptions which we're going to talk about later um so we are we do our best to make sure the numbers are as good as possible thank you so just the reason we want to make sure we get this in here is because if you remember last year people always ask us well how did you not see this coming why didn't you just add staff I mean as you look at that right now I mean the only one that is maybe a a maybe is that will a river second grade and really seven grades historically we've allowed that to go red a little bit because in third grade the class size guideline jumps up quite a bit but

103for the most part as we're sitting I mean these are kids that we know are coming to school here next year and have been verified uh in the district and so um as we're sitting right now we're either at class size guidelines or under class size guidelines in every single section except one out of 1996 as as we sit so just as a kind of a just as a heads up so when people do email or they have questions about it you'll be able to kind of speak to it you know and we'll give it we'll get this report to each month and so you can kind of see what's been going on but um and we'll continue to make adjustments so right any other questions regarding enrollment projections Heather I can hear you hey

104um so I know we've when we've looked at the elementary numbers well I think that what we've heard is that we've got like 2 800 capacity and about 2010 enrolled is that about right about about 2 900 capacity and yeah just over 2 000 enrolled what are those capacity look like then if we scroll back to the middle and high school totals um what are those compared to capacity what are what's capacity in those two buildings uh so middle school has capacity of about 1350 and high school has capacity of about 1950 2000 and a lot of it comes down to with the high school how and even really the middle school a little bit is how you utilize the rooms so whether or not uh rooms sit empty when teachers are having a planning

105period so the high school can ramp up its capacity without additional square footage needed so both buildings you know right now we are sitting quite comfortably in just about all of our buildings yep all right with that we move on to the action portion of our agenda but we've been going for an hour and a half is there a preference for us to take a five minute Comfort break I'm looking I mean I saw one nod that's enough all right we'll do four minute 59 second rebreak all right it wasn't right and I will entertain a motion to prove the consent agenda items with the expenditure language on the screen or I'll entertain a motion to adjourn her so you know everyone's jumping at that yes Mr President okay I'd like to make a motion

106to move approval of the consent items and that the chief financial and operations officer be authorized to pay bills in the amount of 2 million 749 thousand forty four dollars and 78 cents all right there's been a motion a second all those in favor say aye all right the eyes have it it's approved next up human growth and development Dave you are given you gave this report at the work session and now following that you alluded to the fact we'd be taking up something along these lines so what's the administration's recommendation yeah so you can see the administration recommendation essentially on the the last part of this memo but I just want to quickly walk through the way the memo is organized it starts with background and legal requirements the legal requirements are based on

107the concept that if the board decides to include human growth and development as part of the health curriculum we need to go through a certain process that's the process we engaged in with an ad hoc Council made up of members of the community I I've said this before but I am so grateful for the members that committee they did an amazing job the 51 members that joined from the beginning but especially the 20 that stuck with it till the very end a very productive process and it it definitely affirms my belief in this community that if we get together we have conversations we can tackle tough conversations or tough topics and come out on a in a good place so after the legal requirements we get into those areas for which we've found consensus and

108agreed and that was the overwhelming majority of the topics related to human growth and development and then the final part were those areas where we could not reach consensus and they are articulated in the table so essentially the administration the administrative recommendation is to approve this guidance and I say guidance because it is not curriculum this isn't a scope and sequence they're essentially guard rails we'd use that if approved you would use this to then bring this to The Experts the health teachers who would write the curriculum using this guidance as the basis for their decision making we started with some original content for consideration in the areas that we could not reach consensus those were specifically and almost exclusively related to gender identity so that's what that final table outlines we have the original

109content and then the suggestions from group a the suggestions from group a for Group B and then the administrative record recommendations looked for compromise as much as we could I do want to mention one time I mentioned this before but group a their position is they would rather not have the topic of gender identity addressed in the curriculum but if it is they would like us to consider those recommendations I did consider them as best I could in the administrative recommendation when I went this process I thought I was going to be typing for an hour or so of all the administrative recommendations but realized there was very little disagreement one of the areas that takes up a lot of text in this document are the definitions that are associated with gender identity and sexual

110orientation just some context that would represent one lesson in seventh grade and one lesson in eighth grade that would be the totality of the inclusion of that information it does take up a lot of space here but it needs to be called out we want to be 100 transparent so not only the community knows what we're recommending you know what we're recommending and the guidance to the committee that will be writing the curriculum is clear and easy to follow so the recommendation would be to approve this as as articulated with the consensus area and the administrative recommendations okay any questions of day I have some questions um after looking at it I I've gone through some of these definitions that want to that are recommended to be added um gender questioning gender creative intersex cisgender

111I I have seen a national public debate about this it's been on fire on our news I'm not sure that this is the time to be adding in terms that are public is still debating about um I don't think it's in the best interest of our district to continue those anyone else have any questions or comments I guess I have a clarifying question Mr President so the original content for consideration that's in that blue far left corner if it doesn't say new does that mean it it is already there or it does it mean it's being added as a result of the conversation and based on the recommendation I'm a little confused about the blue column versus the administrative recommendation column and what what we're actually approving sure good question the original content was primarily

112but not exclusively taken from a resource called Teen Health which was an addendum that we do not currently use but is the addendum to our actual Health Resource we use at the middle level and we took for the most part that information from there so that is all new information that is not included but the idea is if neither group a nor Group B called in to question that information that the administrative recommendation is to include that original content with the adjustments that are articulated in the final column so just so that means that for those definition of terms non-binary transgender Etc that there was consensus between group a and Group B um for yes if they are not articulated differently there's consensus on the definition with the understanding that group a would rather not

113have them in there at all um because their position is not to include the information on gender identity now there was some debate over um the concept of sexual orientation which was different originally reached a higher level of consensus for that than we did in gender identity but some of those terms that are specific to sexual orientation were also called into question but if they weren't a lot of the work we did was actually on wordsmithing those definitions so that a lot of work went into that actually right up until the day of the presentation at the last meeting yes I think I think a little eating or have the same questions as Heather so in the blue it looks like people agreed that that is the definition of whatever it is but it doesn't

114mean they agree that they want it in the curriculum that is correct Group B wants it in the curriculum group a would rather not have it if it's related to gender identity would rather not have it in the curriculum but if it is they would like us to follow those recommendations in that second column right and the it you're talking about is those specifically gender identity gender dysphoria and biological sex that was the only three correct all the other definitions you had consensus on yes with the understanding consensus on the definition but not on its inclusion because group A's overall position is still that they would rather not have it in at all Mr President okay and just to be clear from the last meeting the group a and Group B both agreed on there's

115no disagreement on keeping sexual orientation correct okay thank you yes sorry it's a little confusing so the administrative recommendation is the only thing that you're recommending you're not recommending the consensus no we're recommending all of the consensus area with the administrative recommendation only clarifying those areas where there was specific disagreement so the administrative recommendation is when those two sides were not matched we put together an administrative recommendation that we tried our best to blend the perspectives as best we could I want to be completely clear though the administrative recommendation from our team is that we do include information on gender identity so am I remembering correctly that um group a would have preferred it isn't included at all Group B prefer things that it should be included and it should be at sixth grade and

116so the administrative recommendation is yes we're going to include it and we will move it back a year to seventh grade that is accurate yes thank you Mr President yes well I just want to say I think we talked about this at the last meeting but the great work that you and your team did the the community Representatives you brought together I mean starting with over 50 people and then ending with over 20 in like a year-long process is just unbelievable and that there was so much wordsmithing and work together as a team on on complicated and um difficult issues for folks to get in a room and talk about and I I'm very supportive of the work you've done along the way and of the administrative recommendation here I think um that you built

117consensus where consensus could be built and this is a a plan that um respects parents rights and also respects um the needs that people have for their children to learn about multiple identities so thank you yes Jake do we know what the other districts are doing as far as um defining these gender they're all over the board as as we'd expect you know when we talk about something that's controversial doesn't mean that um that it's something that should not be explored but what it does it necessitates more dialogue and every Community is a little bit different the way they approach this and we've seen the full gamut from it will not be included to something that is far more detailed and takes up more time in the curriculum took from the Mayo Clinic and I

118just wondered I mean Health to me is about science and so I'm curious if they have definitions for the other newly recommended terms sure and I so what Kate is referring to is that definition about gender dysphoria was started from a definition from the Mayo Clinic with one slight modification where we took out reference to Medical intervention that was something that was part of the compromise process and although we have not searched for all definitions I doubt Mayo would have definitions for things that aren't medically related so if it's if it is more of a social construct I doubt they would actually have definitions around that I don't know that for sure program I didn't see in here but I know we had talked about before it opt in so how what does that look

119like yep that's a good question so um as a district and as teaching learning Department we um we allow families to opt out of any learning experience that they feel doesn't match their priorities of family or or their values it happens rarely but it does happen from time to time but that's an opt-out meaning it's up to the parent to reach out and say hey that's something that I'd rather not have my child experience for this we expect an opt-in so an opt-in means that literally if they don't sign that permission slip their child doesn't receive that instruction and and we're going to make sure that that process is very transparent it's not something that's buried and with no information like just a check box with no we want to make sure that that families

120have the information and that if they decide to allow their child to participate they do it with full full awareness and consent of that process Mr President yes and from the from my understanding then if a parent chooses the opt-in they could also choose to opt out from any specific lesson so the one day in seventh grade and the one day in eighth grade on um gender identity and sexual orientation they could say my kid's not going that day yeah thank you Megan thank you for that clarification I forgot to mention that yes so you could opt in as a family to the entire experience but then reach out to the school and say but for these two lessons or these two experiences I'd rather not have my child participate good question all right thank

121you and another day and this has been a concern that people have come to me with that's why I bring it up another day a kid says in class can you explain gender creative again or I think my friend is can we talk about it what would be the explanations to that yeah and Kate you brought that up the other day and that got me thinking what we can do is we can guarantee we can provide some parameters around this that these topics because they are sensitive if a child brings it up outside of the time when that instruction was provided that would not be discussed in class and that would be we have those four bullet points of different ways we can respond when students ask questions and that would be we'll have to

122talk after class conversation and not discussed in front of everyone and for the questions otherwise they entertain a motion president I would move to accept the recommendations of the committee with the um uh including the ultimate administrative recommendations on the couple of areas where the committee did not come to consensus all right second all right and I'm sorry who was that okay it came from that direction I don't know if it was Megan or Molly all right got a second from Megan further discussion on this we have the motion before the body yes that's Bob yes Mr President um because of the work of the committee and um and administration on this is what we want to see is community engagement and the with the opt-in um uh policies and safety measures I am I

123am in support of this get your comments questions otherwise all those in favor of the motion which is to accept the administration recommendations where they're um where there is needed recommendation otherwise there was consensus from the committee and accept the work of the committee all those uh in favor of the motion signified by saying aye aye was opposed nay nay all right the motion passes next up approval of architectural contract yep uh you have in the uh board pack and I sent this to you about a week or two ago the contract with Bray Architects for architectural services related to the referendum projects we've been working with Bray Architects here for the last few weeks month or so actually we started our work with them about 12 months ago as it relates to architectural services

124and and redoing some of our a couple of our elementaries and in the middle school and so the recommendation as you saw we went we entered into this agreement or we've entered into conversations about this agreement had it reviewed by our attorney School attorney and I it sent you an email that forwarded her response which was Nick I'd recommend I would concur recommending the board going and entering into this agreement as presented so I would open up for any questions people have Mr President yes right so Nick when you and I talked and I sent you know my list of uh just general questions and it really started with when you and I talked you said um in the contract in section three it talks about all the varying scopes of work that are included

125are excluded yep and you had said interior design you know was included yep um but in the in 3-1 it's it it didn't it didn't appear to be included likewise building envelope and then because of the specificity with um you know some of the security and some of the other stuff I just want to confirm that the building automation stuff the direct digital control that's also included is scope yep that's also included uh interior design is included in 4.1.1.11 of the contract is a basic architectural service um and then also the building envelope because the scope of the project involves Windows exterior doors Roofing and things along those lines that is included in the project uh as far as specific specificity to the security system design we do not um that was just an example

126yep nope absolutely uh I will say the controls are included uh in the design and that process related to HVAC um so yes those are all included we made sure that I was reading it the same way the architect was reading it which was the same way the attorney was reading it uh so that's how I answered those questions okay absolutely and then just because I think we did this so remember correctly with the high school as design drawings and then construction yep we will get asked design drawings uh so once uh we're all said and done we've gone out to bid we've made any adjustments to move forward with the construction process so if there was any changes or modifications that are made uh related to you know suggestions that contractors give us things

127along those lines we'll have a set of as design drawings that'll be kind of a moment in time at that point and then we'll get those electronically and then we will also get at the end of the project What's called the as builts or the as constructed that is something that the construction manager is required to provide as they're part of their contract with all the annotation or any things that have changed that differ from the as design plan so that we have what's actually been built so those will be part of the process yep okay exactly like we did at the high school project so then if there are charges then the district will pay them the construction manager would pay the architect for any of those updates yep if there's any updates that

128extraction manager is not able to do within their own software and as they as they send those things through but the way we got our as built designs at the high school project that they were annotated PDFs and things like that so they're able to do them right on the actual drawings there wasn't a need for the Architects then to do that for the construction managers now we will still have all the change order pieces and stuff like that those will all be added in there but yep that'll all be part of the process and that's part of the construction Management Services okay yep and then likely we're going to hire a commissioning agent I would assume that's correct yep so we are planning on commissioning uh in the in the drawing or in the

129contract section 3.1.2 it does spell out that the architecture is responsible for coordinating with our Consultants uh outside third party Consultants because the commissioning agent is really truly a third party consultant for us they wouldn't necessarily be directing their work but they would be coordinating their efforts uh there'll be some conversations that we'll have between you know Dustin and Bonnie and myself the architect about when would be the appropriate time to get them involved in the process it could happen anywhere from the design development phase all the way through or it could be towards the end as more of a uh and and system type of check on things but we are planning on having those conversations and the pros and cons and also talking with the instruction manager about that process getting their feedback

130on it and then making that determination okay yep because four four one one 21 it talks about uh Architects coordination with owner's Consultants that's excluded so I mean just as long as we've got our yeah we're covered that's all I care about and and really felt in both the attorney felt that 3.1.2 would supersede all that because they're required to work with any third parties that we hire directly and that and to coordinate that however they uh they would not be directing the work of the commissioning agents because that would kind of create somewhat of a conflict of interest if you're going to have a third party commission agent directed by something that's designed facility but if they need to have the mechanical engineer change a sequence of operations like that then that coordination is

131going to happen that can all happen just yep okay that's perfect um and then six six it talks about if for some reason when they the construction manager completes their budget work um and ultimately the design exceeds what budgets are six six talks about well the architect will make those changes without charge to the district correct but then six seven immediately after says well they'll make the changes note in six six but then it's an additional service so I just I mean I want to make sure that we're not paying yep for that additional yep so um they don't conflict because basically what those two paragraphs mean is we worked with and talked with the attorney on it is is if the district decides to spend additional money beyond the guaranteed maximum price the architect

132would get their percentage fee on that additional on that additional money so for example if all of a sudden we decided to add another million dollars to the projects or things like that that's where the additional cost would come in and as we work that the other the other piece would come is if we get all the way to the point where we're at like 75 percent construction drawings and the CM has not at any point along the way which they're the ones they're going to be responsible for the budgeting the majority of the way said oh no everything's great and then all of a sudden things are coming in 10 12 million dollars of a budget 25 there's a tremendous amount of design work we'll be working with the CM that'll be part of

133their contract they'll have to reimburse the architect for design work that they should have caught on the front end of the project okay and yep actually I think what I was talking about was even prior to either at bid or just prior to bid and so if the construction manager goes through and they they pull together budgets based on whatever the design work was done and it turns out the architect designed more than what the budget is you know according to six six you know the architect would have to go back then and change their design without charging us correct and six seven is seems to sort of fly in the is it seems to be the opposite again maybe I'm and the way the way that the attorney read to us is if we

134continue to increase the scope from Beyond the original if we do yep that's where we would pay additional money if they have to reduce then we don't pay if if they have to reduce things down uh based on the original based on the original scope yes then we then we wouldn't pay perfect but if they have to reduce because the CM all along the way oh yeah that's great that's looking good that's you know and now we get all the way to construction document phase which is the fully engineered drawings and now all of a sudden things are coming you know bids are coming back way over then that's conversation that'll be part of our CM contract that works in conjunction with our architecture contact contract because there's an expectation that they are keeping track

135of those things to not allow the project to continue to move forward in the design phase if they're seeing red flags like hey you're designing something that's going to be way over budget yeah and so that's where then the CM is going to carry some of that liability to have to potentially reimburse the architect if there's a tremendous amount of redesign work related to something they said nope this is perfect this is great we're going great and then all of a sudden the rug comes out from underneath us okay and that'll be in their documents that'll be in their documents yep they work together yep and then I know we probably beat this to that I mean just based on our conversation you know 354 talks about quality control and I know that we've had

136lots of conversations on this but in the contract the only sentence that talks about quality control is the architect shall meet with the construction manager construction manager to review the construction documents um so what and we'll talk about this later because I you know I I know there's a lot of really good things that are going to happen what what are those things that Bray is or any architect that's going to work with us frankly you know what what is that Quality Control process look like well and and I think that you know the big piece is um and it wasn't necessarily that our quality was was not good last time I mean there's challenges and it was a very complex project um you know a big piece of of talking with Bray you know

137they're doing now the 3D modeling the 3D walkthroughs so all the engineers will have that more time on site for the engineers ahead of time those those different components and then in addition to that I mean it is the architect's professional reputation online obviously the quality and then working with the CM uh through this process more ongoing meetings and then making sure that the project team not just representatives from the construction management firm are actually involved in those pre-designed meetings and making sure that the people that are actually going to have to carry this thing out are on the front end not just representatives from the um construction management firm okay and have they talked about that page turn process at all um we haven't talked we haven't gotten to that point yet but I

138mean we did in a pretty extensive page term process when it talked about the scope in each classroom and each piece of the building um you know it wasn't necessarily that things were left out or that we didn't have the scope right but there were there were things that uh definitely were changed in the last one uh either on foreseen conditions or things yep that were missed as we worked through as we worked through some of those things so I would anticipate that both the Elementary's at the middle school we'll go through a full page term process both uh they'll do it with the Architects engineers and the CM and include School District staff in that process that's that's perfect yep um last thing didn't didn't you say that brave if we were to move

139forward with them tonight in this contract part that ultimately they would forgive the master planning this 18-5 and the referendum support weren't they gonna forgive those dollars and granted small in the grand scheme of things but it's outlined in the um it's I believe it's outlined in the contract it's in parentheses as credits I'm just looking at eleven one one uh under cost of work let me pull it up it and we don't have to spend time on a Nick if it's theirs or credit I believe you yeah I mean it's it should be there as a credit um and I mean I can go and find those act if it's there I yeah I believe you that's all I've got yep okay um Mr President I'd like to make a motion to approve the

140contract with the parade moving forward construction the motion is there a second all right there's a motion second hey further questions or comments hearing nine all those in favor of the motion indicating personality I I was supposed to say nay the eyes have it uh the motion is approved contract is approved next up is the first reading of teaching and learning policies part seven this is for Dave mostly me yeah if you remember right we you saw those last meeting even though it says teaching and learning the majority of those technically fall under student services nothing very alarming a lot of it was outdated policies some surprising policies that we didn't have that were recommended we needed to add in there some policies that we got rid of um and I know there were some

141comments about this seems like it's important it is important it's just in other places so it's not that we're getting rid of it so um this is the first official reading of those okay Mr President yes Heather I uh moved to approve the first reading of these uh teaching and learning policies part seven and which includes uh the recommended deletion of several of the policies that were previously correct the proposed deletions uh modifications and new policies as presented is there a second to the motion second oh that's very close it's like simultaneous I'm going to give it to Molly all right so uh it's been moved in second is there any further discussion all right hearing none all those in favor of the motion which is the first reading of part seven of teaching and

142learning policies and including all the deletions and modifications signify by saying aye all right yeah that's all right yeah how many years has it been since we started part one two years yeah okay well hopefully our next five-year cycle we'll start in his review next year on his policies so yeah that is past um we got a vote on that so now next up the elementary student handbook yep so did such a good job in all the other 17 presentations so she's going to talk about the elementary handbook um and just we've got some slight changes that she'll talk through work look through kind of go through it each year and just look at anything that needs updating or changes or changed and actually there were very few things this year with the exception of

143a few updates from teaching and learning with some of the curricular changes that we are adding for example the kindergarten K2 phonics program so otherwise we've had school Age Care Transportation Health Services every kind of everybody looks through their section and very few changes just with teaching and learning and we did get those changed Megan the so uh folks if they've read uh you know reading the packet the handbook actually goes through and it's nicely color-coded there with red with the deletions and uh changes are all in red Mr President yes Megan I think the book looks great I find the expected behaviors on the bus a useful resource to use at home so thank you for that but again uh my brief review of that it looks like there's some grammatical things but not

144major policy shifting or anything like that um correct all right is there a motion then to approve the recommended changes well some to approve with the recommended changes to the elementary school handbook all right motion my Molly second by Bob all those in favor signify by saying aye aye those opposed nay the ice have it next up is Food Service management company that's Bonnie um just an update from our last meeting we had an interview with our two finalists we had directors principals our food service director um had an interview process of our two finalists it was a great day I think other principals wanted to sign off after they got to have the taste and all the great food that was there that day um so we did do that we submitted our recommendation

145to DPI they have approved it on pending your approval to go with Chartwells you know I've been asked a lot of times of why we're doing this I mean one I think is big is extending the offerings for our kids at all grade levels I think the other is just providing the support to our food service director it was pretty amazing you know going through the interviews they brought teams of like 12 people that would be able to support dietitians and HR Support um chefs the executive chefs would have resources to meet with I mean it was just like how and I was looking at Nicole like you're expected to do all that with no support you call me and I'm like well I don't know I can try to help and we try to

146get so I think it's really exciting to see where the program's gonna go um the recommendation um that everybody came up with was Chartwells Tim Leary is here he's the regional director is that right something like that um um he did and he's here to answer any questions our thought was to if it is approved to um have them at next month I didn't want to be presumptuous if it wasn't approved um to provide a presentation to the board of what it would look like their catering menus and things like that so um I don't know if you want to add anything we're really excited about this if you could come up to the microphone we're very excited about this about the opportunity in Hudson I've been around the community for a number of years

147and you know this is I think I started talking to Tim Ericson you know six or seven years ago so it's been in the works for a long time in an Essence from a you know big picture standpoint Bonnie really understands what we do as a food service management company and her expectations are totally in line with what our capabilities are and we're just gonna over achieve every day so we view this you know you're going to approve a one-year contract with up to four renewals we see it as a day-to-day contract so and we're going to put an end to Jimmy John's at the board meetings well I was going to say when you make this presentation um you better bring samples well yeah Mr President I don't have a bag of treats I'm

148the I am the food guy and I didn't bring any food so yeah all right we have a question are you a little concerned after seeing how the board goes after the contracts I'm just saying it's pretty specific uh and I may have to recuse myself because of all the free samples I took at the convention down in Milwaukee but yeah my own my only request is no quinoa please all right we're going to start a big debate here but no I think yeah the samples that I got at the convention yeah were definitely uh worthwhile and helped you know make my decision here so yes um Mike I'm not sure who can answer it but what happens to our staff that are currently working in the cafeteria um would they continue on with this

149company or with us or how does your work sure so um part of the bid processor was a requirement that all of our staff would remain our employees um I think it's really important to honor their years of service and the wrs we didn't want to pull that from them so as long as they decide to stay with the Hudson School District they will always be our employees if they choose to go to Chartwells because there are some different benefits through that they just can't come back like it's a one and done position but as long as they are um our employee now if they will remain all new hires would be charitable employees and a couple of things we did behind the scenes on that too is that the the employees are all pre-approved

150if they do come to us that they will have benefits immediately on day one their prior service will be credited forward so in our eyes you know someone was here 20 years they'll be viewed as a 20-year employee everybody gets a raise in that respect and from a benefit standpoint you may not be familiar with who we are we're the biggest company you never heard of which Bonnie's probably heard that 19 times every time you see somebody you're making food on TV or away from home that might be us and we're the 800 pound gorilla in our industry so it probably is us okay Mr President Rob and so just two uh two things so the director of nutrition then would be part of their organization is that right the director will be a Chartwells

151employee and so will the executive chef our current executive chef did resign prior to what's going out to bid so that's kind of a nice transition and then Nicole will start having those conversations and we've already had those conversations a little bit okay and what's the term of the agreement so it's a it's a one-year contract with up to four renewals and then we would have to rebid the process but after one year we could say this isn't for us and go back but that's not going to happen that's right because I guess we're going to push it to make it incredible there will be so many things offered that you won't even notice the Keen one okay Bonnie would you be able to share a little bit about changes at the high school and

152the menus options so kind of the physical changes at the high school and then the menus for all the right whoever wants to answer the question would be awesome yeah I can kind of just tell you my experience so we went to River Falls River Falls does have chart walls because we wanted to see it in person in action um it was really impressive and we talked to the kids we're like do you like the food and um they had what they had grab-and-go sandwiches like hamburgers chicken sandwiches there was kind of that they had a bar so that it was a potato bar and you could have like fresh broccoli and they had a grant that they had written for um asparagus so they had roasted asparagus um what else did they have they

153had wow yeah I mean it was pretty impressive but you can say I think our high school will probably be a step above that because of our facilities you have at the heist I use the word gobsmacked the day we were there and you know it's a shame that there's not enough labor right now to use the elements and uh I keep saying Ground Round my camera so my family-owned ground I like a million years okay um but we will have those facilities open and fully staffed we envisioned the elements piece as a partnership with the culinary and business classes here as well as the uh common ground and you know I forget how many offerings there were right now but our typical you know High School is about 20 different choices a day and

154the idea is to get kids through a queue and just as quickly as possible because if they start standing you know you start losing people when there's lines so and we are the experts in managing cues you know for anything from a high school to you know we run the Oscars it's a it's a well doesn't more options help those cues yes it does and we also spread them out too so there there is actual science to moving people around and where you put you know like a taco bar where you put pizza and you know where chicken is and things like that but we are a scratch cooking organization too so this isn't about us you know filling up the freezer uh it would be a chef on site and we're going to train

155people up and raise the bar on you know you know what can be done from more sophisticated menu Bonnie referred to River Falls we've been there for 40 years um we can do a very sophisticated menu there when we need to and the catering events that we do there are really First Rate so uh and moving forward anytime you guys think of food we want you to think of us you know I'm joking about Jimmy John's but not really you know every meeting every interaction every booster club all that purchasing benefits the school district and you know that's our secret sauce we have an entity Within our parent company that did purchased 140 billion dollars of food last year more than any organization in the world and we're at 23 billion dollar company so obviously

156we're vying for third parties so but with that kind of buying power why not leverage that you know to help the district I am I'm curious uh how are we gonna advertise this and get spur some you know because it could take a while if it doesn't have a big splash as far as marketing sorry so to speak and promotion um you know what yep so in the the letter I wrote to the board there is a transition program um I think a lot of the back to school we're really going to have like tables or you know experiences for the kids so we have big plans to Splash this all over the place okay Mr President yes I think I know the high school stuff is is very exciting and it sounds like I

157want to go there for lunch but as a parent of a grade schooler I'm really excited about the changes that we're going to see at the elementary level too that there's going to be better breakfast options my kid lives we live way out at the edge of St Joe so she's on the bus for an hour so she wants to eat breakfast when she gets to school second breakfast um and having another hot entree in the grade school as well so it's I think just important to remember how much it's going to help Middle School grade school and the high school along the way yeah Mr President Rob and so what then I didn't have a chance to go through all 320 Pages [Laughter] um do you guys have a program or some kind of

158attention to food waste yes uh matter of fact sustainability was a buzzword in our world long before you ever saw it in the media or anything because what we do is very resource intensive and we know that right from the start one of the things you know we don't really even talk about this but we'll survey all the schools and we look at it from a carbon footprint and look for ways within the operation even before we you know cut our first onion to you know save things for the environment then we've got three programs and I'm not I'm the sales guy I don't get my hands dirty very often so but three internal programs that the motto is the waste basket in the back of the house is just as important as the one

159in the front so we are constantly looking at you know what sort of waste measurement there is and yeah there's you know we're in the Edina schools and we have a program there where we're weighing it in a couple elementary schools and it's going to compost and we'll look for a partnership like that is there any farms are out here you know somebody always wants that stuff which is you just have to ask and you know we love to do things like that because sustainability is a huge part of what we do great thank you yes uh yes I hope we look into the composting and also there we have numerous food rescue operations in the area too but really looking forward to a big splash rollout for this because I think that's a huge

160opportunity uh long overdue thank you all right is there a motion then to approve so moved all right motion by Rob second by Bob everyone's got to be right on that you got to have more coffee I guess all right all those in favor signify by saying aye aye those opposing a the eyes have it and the motion passes next up insurance coverage with recommendations assuming Bonnie this is you we're no longer gonna offer health insurance is that what you said Bob no I mean yeah we have we have to pay for the food service so um Tim can you go to the other well the recommendation click sorry not that document it was the other attachment on these it's the blue and the red comparing the two years yeah yep so I think I

161had alluded earlier um we were we received a drop notice from CM Regent from our property insurance had a 12 million dollar claim so imagine that happened um so we've been looking for another another company to provide us Services um we sent the bid out I believe it was 10 we were rejected from seven um and then we had three um that we well one of them still thinking about it and we said well we need to make a decision um so this is the one that we are proposing for tonight it's not ideal but this is where we're at so Liberty Mutual proposed um it's kind of scary because if you look at the premium last year was 164 000 their proposal is 271 000 but if you go two lines down there's a

162very big difference blanket building and contents so CM region had not updated our value of our properties and if you look at what Liberty Mutual is it's almost 100 million dollars more so although the premium is higher I think it was probably due of whoever got us that it was going to go up just because we needed to update that um the our current deductible is ten thousand dollars per current the lowest we get from the other person was 75 and this one was 50. so that was pretty comparable not that big of a difference this is our big um the next line where it says wind and hail so we went from no deductible to well it was it was 10 000 last year um so both of the two proposals that we did

163receive um had a percentage so basically if it's a Halo wind um one proposal was two percent one was three percent um but the other one had a higher premium rate so we are recommending this one and um I mean based on our lost history last last year was a anomaly I mean I don't I don't think we should base our whole decision because I'm hoping we don't get hail and win but um if you look at our past experience over the last 10 years that those were the only claims you've had there was really there was an eighty thousand dollar claim I think about three years ago then there was the scoreboard and then the big one so um so that's kind of our our negative um with this proposal again we didn't have

164a lot to choose from we weren't people were lining up to give us Insurance um so that would be our recommendation for property insurance if you do go down we did have a glimmer of hope with our workers comp insurance so because our mod Factor we were at 0.99 it's down to 0.84 because we had some claims fall off our record um we saved almost a hundred thousand dollars in that premium so net we're about sixty thousand dollars more than last year so in the big picture it's not as bad as it is but um the same coverage of workers count there wouldn't be any changes other than our mod Factor improved Mr President yes um what does a mod what is a mod Factor sure does the dividend mean for yep so a mod

165Factor basically they look at your claims for the past three years and it's like a state calculation whatever the lower your mind Factor the better it is because it means that you have less claims um the dividend is basically companies will kind of buy your business and say not buy your business but give you like a rebate so last year they said 40 of your premium we're going to get back to you as as our proposal um that was reduced this year to 30 percent but it's also on a lower premium so that'll be a little bit less as well thank you Mr President yes Rob so the wind hailed deductible does that say three percent plus 250 000 minimum so it's it's 2 50 000 minimum or if it's over 250 000 it's three

166percent oh okay yeah it's not yeah so basically you're deductible for when in Hills 250 000. but I mean so if you have three hundred thousand dollars for the damage we're paying the first 250 250. and then after that you're paying three percent I think you know with our insurance we've had the same carrier for a while and I think we had somewhat of a policy that has been really good it hadn't been really adjusted in a long time and um a lot of these property Casualty Insurance companies are really reevaluating their level of exposure especially on really big uh insurers or insuries like us so um we would anticipate we wouldn't hit that but uh as as Bonnie said the other one didn't have that same height of deductible and rain and rain and

167hail or wind in hail however their premium was about fifty thousand dollars higher I think sixty thousand years so if we go four or five six years without a wind hail claim will then eventually be money head we haven't had a windtail claim in 10 years yeah this was the only one he's the only one we've had and so if we have another big claim like this where it's 15 million it's only that I mean it's that's a drop in the bucket then at that point so Mr President yes and so that are we doing anything or changing anything where we keep something in the fund balance for that or is our fund balance good yeah we talked about that today it does need some fund balance to kind of almost do some reinsurance with

168ourselves within fund balance kind of set aside maybe that difference every year and start to build that up as as we uh as you work through it yeah we also one of the vendors which he didn't have time to explore but they do have reinsurance for hail damage so I don't know how much it would cost but I mean I think that's something we could definitely explain you know if it's not crazy expensive maybe that's something we add to our policy but we also talked about the savings of Premium this year to designate that as a help with for future deductibles right I'm sure we could have insisted on a two percent deductible but we would have paid a lot more for the premium um no they were pretty much just appreciating it was I

169think I've never just kind of take it or leave it yeah I knew we were in a tough spot yeah we lose coverage coverage and they basically told us the last week in April so to turn around and try to get bids and get clean history and go through their Underwriters and this was the only meeting we had it was a tight turnaround so could we table this for further discussion and give Bonnie a heart attack no insurance I will not be sleeping but sure about it let's not go without insurance motion to approve all right we have a motion a second all those in favor signify by saying aye aye those opposed nay the eyes have it and the motion passes uh with the recommendation for our new property insurer and work comp is

170basically renewed with the same company so all right next up is the budget preview which is also money more super great excitement um so on Friday I think I'm hoping people were emailed I did attach a legislative um um summary from the school administrators Alliance there seems to be a compromise between the legislature and the governor next year's budget they are right now it's a 325 dollar per pupil increase in the revenue limit an increase in low Revenue ceiling from 10 000 to 11 000 which for us we're at about twelve thousand so that won't affect us they're going to be reinvesting 30 million dollars in a school-based mental health program and then there's 50 million dollars slated toward reading initiative that's in development so that it's just attachier so what does that mean for

171us so if we look so the two things that we had talked about earlier was the revenue limit increase and the state or special education Aid the revenue limit increase so 325 dollars per pupil they only increased special education 80 to 33.3 percent so when they were shooting for 60 percent that really was not much for us so for next year if we just look at the revenue limit don't include any um reduction of staff due to enrollment or other Revenue sources we estimate about a two two million dollar deficit for next year um and then if you project that out the first example is has steady enrollment after five thousand five five thousand fifty students and then the one below has a reducing by about 30 students a year enrollments the driver of the

172revenue limit so that's just kind of our best guess at this point so um we didn't get it near what we were hoping to get you know we built models around um you know 350 650 we built models around 45 60 percent uh special ed Aid it the thing that's probably the most disappointing about this year's budget compromise both from the legislature and the governor's office is the voucher reimbursement is going to go from nine thousand to twelve thousand so they're going to go up three thousand dollars per kid right away year one but public school kids are going to go up 325 bucks in the first year and 325 bucks in the second year it is you know it's pretty disappointing um especially as we continue to know that people are struggling with operational

173referendums we didn't pass hours we have as by elutu we do have some uh additional one-time monies coming in kind of the balance of our Esther money that will help offset some of this for next year and we've already identified about 700 a little over 700 000 in staff reductions going into next year almost all through attrition I think is that right Andrea so um you know netting it out will probably finish in the positive um you know as far as we won't be negative or a deficit but we only have so many of those things up our sleeves before we're going to eventually run into some problems um you know we'll we'll probably be reasonably okay through this biennium through continued expenditure reductions and things like that but we start getting into that 25-26

174school year facing a seven million dollar deficit is going to be really hard to overcome without some additional operating Revenue as we as we look at this and so like I said pretty disappointing because when you think about it we got zero percent increase the last two years from the legislature and then moving forward you know we picked up about if you think about the next two years we picked up a roughly 650 which would be about five percent over two years but that's really five percent over four years because we didn't get anything the last two years so uh when inflation's at about at five six seven eight percent we've been averaging over the last if you think about it over the last four years a little over one percent uh in increased Revenue

175that way so we can continue to cut and we continue to make those adjustments um but we still have to pay people and we still have to be competitive and things along those lines and so it's going to continue to be a challenge for us Mr President yes um so are you projecting that uh the revenue limit will keep going up by 325 dollars in future years because I'm worried that that could be optimistic I hope it's pessimistic but if that's often you know what I'm saying yeah we can definitely run models um to have other scenarios we did just projected to go out 325 um we did drop the salary uh wage increases down to three percent in those years and then um but I think you know typically I mean we've gotten around

176200 bucks on average 200 plus plus we've got you know the last by any Budget prior to the the freeze we did get some special ed Aid and we did get some other AIDS and things like that it's just um essentially this buy-in and budget needed to take care of four years worth of of Revenue and unfortunately um it just didn't it just didn't do it yeah it didn't it didn't quite catch us up you know I I think it's it's it's going to continue to be a real a real challenge for us um we're in a phenomenal position because even after we do the designated fund balance for facilities we still have about a 9 million dollar buffer between what our undesignated fund balance is and our targeted uh undesignated on reserve fund balance

177so that's why I said I think we'll be all right the next couple years as far as from a standpoint of the sky isn't falling we talked about that during the referendum uh but these numbers are start they start to get exponentially larger and you know I asked Bonnie what was the big jump or from two million dollars and five million deficit a lot of that has to do with the uh declining enrollment adjustment drops off so we get kind of a three-year declining enrollment adjustment to kind of ease your pain as you've had as we've all had here as we've had declining enrollment well essentially what we're really going to be feeling that year is that big drop of about 250 kids we had during covet now all of a sudden we're going to

178feel the full impact of that in the 24-25 budget year Mr President yes um where we're just talking about these projections right now these are projections and we got basically 90 days to put together a budget for the annual meeting um and start honing things right yep so we are um starting to work with HR we have negotiations this week so once we get those big uh things taken care of we can start plugging that in and get better numbers for you okay now you do have another part of your report and that was the fund balance designations and you're looking for Action tonight with a motion correct correct and why don't you lay out what the recommendation of the administration is and sure I can't read that I'm too old can we increase the

179size of that that's all right I've got it right here so um these were we talked about these at the work session last time um but the first um designation would be the additional five million dollars that we had talked about last summer to designate for capital projects as part of the to complete the referendum project so that would add 5 million for that um an additional 500 000 for a self-funded health fund balance um I think it's just updating it in accordance with our increased claims that we've been we've been seeing our non-spendable and restricted so that's basically things that we will have do when we close our books so there'll be bills coming that we have not received yet our back to school supplementally that was we received last is it September October

180um we I think we just haven't come up with a plan of how we're going to designate that use so we need to designate that because we need to have a reason of what we used it for and then the unassigned fund balance we're anticipating would increase about 490 thousand dollars so be looking for a motion to sign an additional five million dollars of fund balance to capital projects yep and do we have to do a motion for the 500 000 on the self-funded or is that already been made nope we wouldn't need for the whole sheet okay for all of them so you could say as prison yes so we could do just one versus individually yep you could just say as president so moved as presented exactly okay motion by Rob second by

181Bob and any further questions on that otherwise the figure that we see there the unassigned fund balance after we move those numbers over will be uh 28 million nine hundred thousand yeah almost 29 million so still more than what it is now okay all those in favor signify by saying aye aye those opposed nay the eyes have it and the fund balance designations are approved now next up support staff wage schedule I assume we're looking for a motion here as well and just a motion to prove I think Andrea already presented to you the support staff wage increase this is just the final schedule it's to implement what you guys approved at the was it the last meeting Andrew is that right yep of the work session we discussed it these include the adjustments that

182were identified in the in the work session and then the increases with the five percent is that right the five percent and then the additional targeted increases for some administrative assistant position caregivers lead caregivers and custodians specifically based on the median data from our comparables and the way this I mean I can see that there's a big difference between step one and step three which is important because um you know of all the expense of retraining folks we want to experienced people that know what they're doing but um what's the one percent two percent in each category that goes along with our support staff compensation system was which is our performance-based system where it's not a compounding impact but it's essentially the base of the step one step two step three and just adding one

183percent two percent depending upon their evaluation okay trying to reward performance exactly yep and so we have that in here as well uh one other note um is the elimination of the we're combining two positions the coda and the PTA position so our occupational therapist assistant as well as our physical therapy assistant our comparable data showed that the combination of the positions was warranted and there's been a lot of conversation about um where those positions should fall and what our data showed is that we were substantially over our median in terms of those rates of pay and so we combined it and put it at the lower level which is which was the coda position however it's still um the median right now is 26.82 and current 2223 rate of pay at the top end

184was 34.89 in Hudson so we're substantially over the median and so with all of that in working collab collaboratively with student services the decision was made to combine those positions into one and red circle essentially our existing staff at the higher rate of pay but then eliminate that going forward Mr President yes and then red circle means just to keep the people who were overpaid at that level the keep the higher rate of pay for those um yeah the individuals currently placed at that level they would still get the five percent so it's not like we're going to freeze them however that classification going forward for new hires is going to be placed at the coda slash PTA one rate of pay which is again consistent with our comps so Andrew what is the minimum

185percentage raise five percent five percent is the minimum is the minimum yes and then it was a little bit more for some of those targeted positions but we went substantially less than the one percent that we'd asked for with the board and the work session when you're saying median what what installed a beating amongst our comparable districts yep and that's defined in the handbook and also determined by the board we did do a more robust analysis this spring where we looked at um that data quite closely and those were the targeted positions that I listed as the ones needing some 11 Cent increases just to meet to meet the median others were more substantial and looking at it holistically looking within our position classifications we came to a recommendation collaboratively with financial services about what

186we can afford but also an important note is those adjustments occurred before we did the five percent so that it wouldn't put us behind the eight ball two going forward so after we you know attentively approved this tonight I mean we would would be improving it but assuming that happens then you've got what uh 60 days to do massive recruiting and filling these positions we sure are going to be working on it July is when we're going to be posting our support staff positions usually mid-july of wrinkle with support staff it's hard to recruit now for positions that start in end of August beginning September people usually need jobs earlier than that in these type of roles and so we look at it differently depending upon the position but yeah definitely a recruitment effort start

187towards the end of July okay all right any further questions or do we have a motion to approve the specific pay scales mentioned as recommended by Administration so moved all right motion by Molly second by Kate any further discussion hearing none all those in favor signify by saying aye aye those opposed nay the eyes have it next up we have blast on the action items of our regular meeting is the student transportation contract which was discussed in depth it's a work session so this is Bonnie I think just recommendation to approve as presented correct unless you have questions it's all moved all those in favor signify by saying aye aye those opposed nay you always have it and it's approved I will now entertain motion to adjourn the regular meeting all right motion a second

188all those in favor signify by saying aye aye those opposed nay we are adjourned and we'll have a 15-minute recess