001okay first up is recognitions uh Cinderella uh the High School Musical um and uh who will be speaking on that I will be all right right go ahead good evening my name is Ryan delacroix and I have the privilege of directing the high school's musical this year and we are doing Cinderella just for the record as a new version of Cinderella it's not the Disney Cinderella um I have brought with me several of our students hop on up here kiddos um and they're going to perform a couple of songs for you tonight from our upcoming show they are seniors Heather Derrick and she is playing Ella Libby Huber who is playing Charlotte and Via Grant who's playing Madame we have Junior Ali zoba Joba Joba who plays Gabrielle and sophomore Silas Heisler who plays Prince
002Topher we also have our amazing music director Miss Carrie Heisler who's going to play for them tonight uh performances are November 4th 5 and 6 and 11 12 and 13 at the high school um and more information about the show and for tickets can be found on our district website they're going to sing two songs for you tonight the first one is between Topher and Ella and it's called um 10 minutes ago and then the four ladies the step family as we called him will be singing a song called a lovely night take it away friends [Music] 10 minutes ago I saw you I looked up when you came through the door my head started reeling you gave me the feeling the room had no ceiling or floor ten minutes ago I met you and
003we murmured or how do you twos I wanted to ring out the bells and fling out my arms and to sing out the news I have found her she's an angel with the dust of the stars in her eyes we are dancing we are flying and she's taking me back to the skies in the arms of my love I'm flying over a mountain and Meadow and Glenn and I'd like it so well that for all I can tell I may never come down again [Music] and it's so cool I met you and we murmured or how do you do's I wanted to ring out the bells and filling out my arms and to sing out the news I have found him I have found him in the arms of my love I'm flying over mountain
004and Meadow and Glen and I like it so well that for all I can tell I may never come down again I may never come down to earth again [Applause] a lovely night a fighter night to know you'll never see you meet your prince a Charming Prince as Charming as a prince will ever be the stars in a hazy Heaven tremble above you while he is Whispering darling I love you you say goodbye away you fly but on your lips you keep a kiss all your life you'll dream of this lovely lovely night [Music] a lovely night a lovely night a fighter night you know you'll never see [Music] you meet you meet your prince your princess a Charming Prince as Charming as a prince will ever be [Music] stars in a hazy Heaven tremble
005above you while he is Whispering darling I love you you say goodbye away you fly but on your lips you keep a kiss all your life you'll dream of this lovely lovely now [Music] stars in a hazy Heaven trample above you while he is Whispering darling I love you you say goodbye okay but kiss all your life you'll dream of this lovely loving [Music] [Applause] all right you bet absolutely I before you go is there any board members that wanted to ask a question or comment I am happy to comment I am so excited to see this show and this is just marvelous I you know um you obviously are not my children but I feel like you are I'm super proud of all of you for doing this it's just amazing and we're all
006excited to see you so good job yeah thank you all right thank you Molly for those comments and thank you for your performance and looking forward to actually the musical and coming up in a couple weeks folks should get their tickets before they're sold out all right uh next up then uh we have another recognition Nick yes we have we we do have another recognition this is actually we have two board members uh that are being recognized by the Wisconsin Association of school boards uh we have Jamie Johnson receiving his level four uh designation and Heather Logan receiving level three designation uh from the Wisconsin Association of school boards and I think what is uh neat about this is uh you'll be getting your pins and certificates at the upcoming regional meeting but to give
007people kind of a little bit of a background on this is essentially um in order for you to achieve these different levels you get points by basically going to additional trainings and uh conferences and and things along those lines I don't know if we level four might be as high as we've we've ever had anybody get Jamie so that's impressive or level three uh also right there and so uh big thank you for all the time that you guys are putting in and the effort and so if you are attending that regional meeting on the 26th of October you'll be receiving certificates and pins so thank you for attending so all right [Applause] congratulations Heather and I guess yeah it's a it is a function I think of being on the board um for a
008while um and if you attend the regional meeting I guess you get more points so all right uh with that we'll move on to Mr President yes I do I think it's worth pointing out to folks who might be watching that um if you were to decide to run for school board the Wisconsin Association of school boards provides a lot of opportunities to get trained on the stuff that speaking from personal opinion or personal experience you never thought you'd need to know to surround School works just to know that there are folks out there who are thinking about it there is a great resource with the Wisconsin Association of school boards along with our own administrative staff who are great orienting new school boards so just good yeah but Heather you don't get points with
009our Administration no points for meetings with Administration that's correct okay um with that we'll move on to the next agenda item which is Citizens request to speak about non-action items um the chair has the discretion to limit it uh to less than three minutes but I'm just opting we may have uh more than five speakers but tonight um just allowing the the extra minute I would just ask the speakers to please abide by that and if my timer goes off that means that you are done otherwise I'll have to shorten everybody's to two minutes so if we could do that please um and I have to remind folks that the public comment is for input only it's not a question and answer session a time for debate or a dialogue session members of the school
010board will not respond directly to public comments that are made at this meeting no specific action will be taken at this meeting in response to comments that are made or issues that are raised during the public comment period if the board determines that action is appropriate the action will occur at a future board meeting and a District representative may follow up with you after the meeting the board chair will recognize one speaker at a time only those speakers who are recognized will be permitted to speak individuals who interfere with or interrupt speakers the board or the proceeds may be directed to leave this is not a time for personal attacks or concerns about a specific individual including any other speaker during the public comment session those type of comments are not acceptable as are of
011course obscenities or profanity persistence in making such remarks will end the individual's opportunity to address the board it may result in the individual being directed to lead so first up we have Talia from the city of Hudson I just wanted to share students should be able to enter a school free from judgment from the school officials and their peers the primary responsibility of the school administration is to create and sustain a school environment in which each student is accepted valued respected cared for and encouraged to be an active responsible member of the broader School community they must also support an environment where diversity is valued and accepted where students of diverse backgrounds and identities are affirmed supported and assured Equitable educational opportunities within our own District non-discrimination policy it reads in part but this goal
012in mind and consistent with legal requirements the district shall not unlawfully discriminate on the basis of sex including gender identity expression and non-conformity to gender role stereotypes by the district administrating disseminating guidance to the principles of schools to cease and desist open dialogue pronouns informing guidance counselors that should a student disclose to them they identify as a gender diverse human who wishes to be called by a chosen name in affirming pronouns those students are the counselors are being mandated to report this to said child's parents in doing so you're not only violating the students constitutionally protected right to privacy but also directly violating your own non-discrimination policy by specifically targeting transgender and gender non-conforming students you are creating a hostile educational environment which emboldens abusive behavior from others victimizes our students and violates their right
013to exist our students shouldn't have to lay bare their soul for the school board or anyone else to validate their right to privacy and access to a safe educational environment I hope what has been conveyed to the broader community and is a case of the Optimus communication on behalf of the district leaders who disseminated such guidance if this is indeed the case I would strongly urge the school board and administration to update communication with the district Educators and staff to reflect guidance that is non-discriminatory in nature and that helps support his healthy school environment that does not violate our students civil rights for poor rights and right to safety let me make this very clear being uncomfortable or having uncomfortable conversations with our children about the existence of someone different than how they may identify
014as not discrimination we are all allowed to carry fervent faith and religious belief no one is demanding anyone Stop Believing as they do no one is demanding you identify as anyone or anything other than what you are what is discriminatory in nature is informing the student populace who doesn't conform to that ideal that they are not allowed to exist they are not allowed their identity and they don't have the right to personal boundaries or safe educational environment we can all stay strong in our personal faiths however we do not have the right to force that religious belief from one segment of religion as the basis for discriminatory guidance in what is supposed to be a neutral inclusive secular and educational environment for all and the package that I shared with you all has case law
015um recent found case law as well and allow that vaccines well thank you very much next up we have River from the city of Hudson first thing I would like to say is I apologize for having to wear a hat and door the reason as to why I'm wearing a hat indoors is because of the risk of possibly being targeted and possibly being relentlessly bullied for being a transgender student at Hudson High let that sink in me a student at Hudson High having to hide their face due to safety concerns as a student at Hudson High School who is medically transitioning is it was to say at least a big deal for me to notice at Hudson um that they were including pronouns for once at Hudson High because the school finally acknowledges acknowledge that
016not every person is a heterosexual cisgender person that people could use pronouns that weren't assigned to their biological sex I'm at risk at high at Hudson High every day with the supposed legal rules that Hudson said will take place the rules of teachers having to out their students to their parents I'm not out to a parent of mine that's due to safety concerns and but the rules that Hudson is implying that make it as Lee it's at least to say nerve-wracking for me to possibly be out into this parent there needs to be a change in the Way Hudson school districts is dealing with the pronouns usage because you never know what the post person's home life is like so putting the student through so you will be putting the student at risk take mine
017as an example thank you for listening to what I have to say right thank you all right next up we have Hannah Young from Hudson what's the mom of four I'm here to express my support for non-binary Trans and all lgbtq plus gender diverse students and Educators I openly support pronouns and the chosen name of a student as that student discloses along with creating a classroom environment where they feel safe to do so as many of you know research has shown that all it takes is one trusted adult affirming a youth to make the difference between hope and despair it is your obligation to protect protect all students and create a safe inclusive learning environment they are obligated to address any complaint of harassment discrimination or abuse against students on school grounds or sponsored activities
018by blocking supportive use of pronouns and chosen names in the school environment the school is effectively telling our students that they must change who they are if it has not been addressed by now I would hope that this Hudson school district will come up with a policy that is respectful and inclusive to all on this topic so there are guidelines for new staff and educators our kids have the right to a safe educational environment and I will not be silenced by those trying to deprive gender diverse students and educators of this thank you for your time all right thank you for your comments next up is tsukatas of North Hudson congratulations uh Jamie and Heather notable numbers thank you um I addressed this body in August regarding the school climate for kids who identify as
019gay lesbian queer questioning and gender diverse and recently I sent everyone an email providing evidence that the school district is at times an unsafe place for children I included an actual alarming incident from a year ago about a transgender student who was pushed and shoved around in the boy's bathroom um and I realized that maybe I don't know if my message I'm the messenger I don't know if my message is having any impact so tonight I thought I do what good school board members always do and that is make that a based uh decision so I'm going to move to measurable data to hopefully help us see that we need to be educated about non-binary youth tonight I went ahead and looked at the 2021 Yarvis report and I know at some point you're going
020to get some disaggregated details for a specific specifically for Hudson but I looked at the Saint Croix County Yarvis results and that includes four high school so this is not just trimmed down for our school district um so overall uh also among all students as far as school climate bullying is a problem at school and the indicator was at 36 percent of all students indicate uh that there is a bullying problem so that's one in one in three uh and on page 21 it says while higher risk groups often report a lower sense of belonging teachers administrators and classmates within a school can have a tremendous impact on how included or excluded such students feel so then I skimmed down to the part that specifically lgbtq students at a glance that's the headliner and and
021if you want to skip ahead that's like page 81. students who identify as lesbian gay bisexual transgender tend to be at a higher risk than their peers in a number of areas and they they covered four areas sense of belonging bullying having a teacher to talk to and mental health concerns so these are the specific numbers that are quite um outstanding they're kind of like cold hard hollered cold hard truths sense of belonging among lgbtq 36 percent but then straight and cisgender 69 so that is a sweeping contrast and the quote under that on the yarbus report by the way Yarvis is uh um a youth risk behavior survey for those of you that may not know what it stands for but it said School climate and culture can influence students sense of belonging oh
022my done Shucks okay no problem just go to the next two okay one of them is not so bad your comments next up we have Addison from City of Hudson I'm going to be really quick because I'm sorry that my that they've been a little disruptive but um I'm Addison villietro and I live in Hudson and I am here to support lgbtq people and asking the school board to come up with a procedural policy so that teachers can consistently and equitably Implement pronoun usage you can do it in a private manner um it's so simple it can be as simple as a Google form trained staff and as a teacher it's just nice to have an inclusive classroom and from looking at the curriculum there just isn't a lot of lgbtq voices in the K-12
023curriculum including social studies and there are some really cool lgbtq historians that could be included or historical figures sorry they have my phone with my stuff so I apologize for it um what no but like anyway so that's my my support just please create an equitable policy so there's consistent implementation or procedure and then my other quick comment is I know I've emailed you but I really love Willow River and I know that we all love our elementary schools um but I don't think that I know that the budget is tight but I don't think that you can really quantify a neighborhood school and it is a neighborhood school where everybody's walking their kids to class on the first day and the communication is so great because it's a small school and you want your
024elementary schools to be small you don't want them I just I really love my school all right that's all all right thank you for your comments next up we have Liz from the city of Hudson um I didn't so I didn't I don't have anything prepared so I'm going to just try to go off the cuff but um I work in the school district we talk a lot about trauma and Equity um we had a gentleman from UW Stout I think in 2020 John Clem came and spoke at the beginning of the school year about trauma and students who are living in trauma and I that was the most informative preschool meeting that I've ever gone to and probably as a parent the most informative thing that I've ever listened to because he talked about
025first and foremost we don't get to tell people what trauma is for some for somebody they might make it through life-threatening experiences for another person it might be very mild according to us but to them it might be huge um and through his lens and through that conversation and his his PowerPoint which I have I mean I can send it to all you guys too I began to look at my own son in a totally different light and Matt my oldest son Max is gay and he's been you know I've known since he was two years old and it's probably nowhere near as difficult as being transgender but I began to see his experiences in school through this trauma lens and I realized that everything that was going on to him was foreign to him
026but he tried very hard to fit in all the time so every Jersey day he pretended like he cared about football every football game on the playground he pretended like he cared about that when he started becoming involved in theater and kids teased him about it he told him that his mom made him do it he hid from kids he avoided classes and all the while it was because he was so anxious inside of himself because he knew he was hiding something now I think he really made it through school because he had this the absolute unwavering support of his his family um and I give a lot of credit to my husband because he watched him at home in little dresses and and Performing plays to us and saw all of that and just
027you know loved him like crazy um but I know that he did not get out of school the education that he should have because he was spending a lot of time in that fear fight or flight part of his brain and it wasn't until too late that I really understood that so when we talk about trauma and we talk about it talk about it talk about it we're causing trauma to these kids that are in school that don't feel like they fit in that don't know where they fit in that don't feel like they have a place and for us to acknowledge that struggle for us to acknowledge that they are you know choosing who they are that they are that they are using the pronouns that they identify with it's it's infinitely incredibly important
028and when we talk about equity Equity is tied into that too because Equity is different than equality and for us to talk about equity and to have equity in our district it's not about our buildings and our spaces and our rooms and our places and our technology it's about the students having the right and the ability and the connection to a meaningful a meaningful connection to Educators thank you within their schools thank you for your comment okay then next up we have stop now cancel It Won't Stop all right we have one more speaker and I'm sorry on the pronunciation Jayla thank you I didn't know if that was an H or a y sound but I'll just go in I'm Jamie Johnson so I'll go with Jolla then all right Jayla Jayla all right
029very good Jayla Jayla beer Hudson thank you all right so Studies have shown that when there's just one accepting adult in a transgender Youth Life they have a 39 lower suicide risk when there's one accepting adult in a child who is non-binary that number is 33 percent imagine an entire School of people being supportive using the pronouns that they identify as using the name that they want to use by teachers asking if they have a preferred pronoun that does not harm a straight cisgender student by refusing to let teachers do that that automatically it dismisses any student that does not fit in that Norm that is not okay this definition of progress is forward and onward movement over the years black people have been identified as slaves three-fifths of a person without progress they would
030not be treated equally over the years just barely over a hundred years ago women did not have the right to vote without progress all you ladies up there wouldn't be willing being able to sit up there I know it's not the norm that we've all grown up in over the decades but we need to normalize teachers asking a student's pronoun students being comfortable to identify if they choose to for every student that identifies and openly there's probably a good handful more students that do not feel comfortable being out but just knowing that that safe place and that acceptance is there can do absolute wonders all right thank you for your comments next up under the agenda are reports and I'm assuming Davis is yours since yes yes thank you very much Jamie so I thought
031what we do tonight is provide an overview of the teaching and learning presentations that I'll be well my team actually and I will be bringing in throughout the year the idea is to give you an overview a quick blurb about what each of these presentations will be and also an opportunity for you to suggest other topics that you might want to hear about throughout the year so we're on October 10th right now and you are receiving that overview of board presentations on October 24th we plan on bringing forth inclusive practices and prescriptive interventions this is something been working very hard on and that is creating more inclusive interventions that is when a student receives support making sure that they receive that support as close to their classroom environment as possible most often that means in
032their classroom and prescriptive interventions means having interventionists provide direct support to teachers providing them very specific plans for interventions for their students and then just like you would if you go to the doctor this is what you're going to get this is how long and this is how we're going to check to see how that's working rather simple plan but it takes a lot of work to get there November 14th for those of you and I'm sure that Heather and Jamie have heard about the science of reading probably something that wasb has been presenting at because it's a Hot Topic essentially what it means is that when we instruct reading there's a lot to the very specific signs and those steps that students go through when they learn the science of reading we were super
033excited we opened up a training with program called letters it's a it's a nationally renowned program for the science of reading and we opened up voluntarily the response was overwhelming the majority of our primary teachers elected to be part of the first two cohorts in this training and the training's going very well so we'll be giving you an update with that November 28th we'll be focusing on the coaching model and that's the our primary professional development support for teachers so you understand the model that goes behind and strong instructional coaching December 12th family engagement update this will be internal family engagement what I mean by that is we have a standing committee of teachers dedicated to improving family engagement we meet regularly throughout the year they'll be providing an update to their work December 19th
034curriculum transparency and trust and then using the Embark platform used to be called build your own curriculum now it's called Embark a different company bought that platform essentially works the same way but working to build trust in the community by being absolutely transparent with our curricular offerings then we have a couple Open dates there January 23rd human growth and development this will be essentially a process update for you so you can see where we're going with the human growth and development committee that work has been outstanding I'm so proud of the team and the parent volunteers that are part of that crew had a couple of them actually here tonight a couple of them present just a lot of really strong engagement digging into the topic and um coming to understanding both sides of a
035complex topic February 19th we'll be bringing forward the winter assessment results from our fast Bridge Universal screener we're going to teach you a little bit about a quadrant report which essentially is a process teachers go through where they analyze the achievement and growth of their students and then plan based on those results then we get into some of the curricular things remember last year we talked about science brought in the science actually social studies rather social studies a little bit of science to let you understand the resources that we would be recommending for adoption same thing this year bringing them a little bit earlier so we have time to make the purchase make sure we have those resources on hand before summer hits because that's when we do a lot of our professional learning so
036you'll have a chance to review our final recommendations at that point for K5 Science 6-12 World Language and K-12 art those are the three on the board work session then we have an annual report that is I think something everyone enjoys it's the Career and Technical education workplace wake work based learning it's where we have Robin Rivard and Leslie Wisconsin come in and share their collaborative work supporting all students as they transition out of our K-12 program and then on May 8th we thought teaching learning volunteer recognition Edition we are getting a lot out of volunteers who are putting in so much time to help us improve our program and to make sure that the voice of our community is heard in that program improvement process so excited to bring them forward and then we
037have the year-end reports that we're used to and then finally academic standards notification a little more perfunctory at the end of the year again there's open spots and we can always bring in other reports so if there are things you'd like to hear about feel free to let us know we'll certainly put together reports for you to make sure you get the information you need to stay informed questions sure I think you are correct yeah so that would actually move over to the May 22nd yep yeah thank you Jamie no I don't think so yep absolutely look at that done yeah so Dave and I'm I'm sorry maybe you maybe you clarify this but am I right that the the reason that we have in February March and April that we have those three curricula
038pulled out is because those are the three that are at that stage of review where we are selecting curriculum is that why those three that's exactly it those are we'll always bring forward the phase three curricular areas because that's when we're going to be making decisions on resources we'll have already established the priority standards already established the outcomes and essential questions and during understandings which are the really high level things then we're getting into the nuts and bolts and ready to actually write the curriculum and that's we think is the appropriate time to bring it to the board so we can bring you sort of a full platter of what's been done to build the most effective curriculum and could you remind me and maybe remind everyone are we still using the um my curriculum
039online is there an online resource for parents or community members who want to go and look at any curriculum are wondering what is it that we're teaching yes exactly and that's the December 19th presentation it used to be called build your own curriculum it's now called Embark a different company bought it it is on the web page it's up and active so at any point you can go there under the curriculum Tab and see a full accounting of what we offer yep thank you so with scheduling for what it looks like two areas that's a great question we started the process K-12 the secondary just got a little bit ahead and we were ready to make that decision so we brought that forward previously so it's just we we usually start K-12 but depending on
040what the content areas as an example Elementary English language arts takes longer so that tends to get delayed a little bit so just trying to balance things out the other thing that plays into that is the budget some curricular resources are more expensive so we need to balance that from year to year to make sure we don't have several really expensive implementations one year and then not the next okay but these are all on basically six year Cycles then correct okay all right any other questions all right well thank you for the report and look forward to uh you know the work we have cut out for us at both the work sessions and the the meetings at this time we now move on to our action agenda and I would entertain a motion um
041for the consent agenda items pursuant to the expenditures language Mr President Rob I move approval of the consent items and that the chief financial operations officer be authorized to pay bills in the amount of two million eight hundred thirty seven thousand four hundred twenty five dollars and seventy seven cents all right we have motion by Rob second by Bob all those in favor signify by saying aye aye those opposed say nay the eyes have it and all the items of the consent agenda are approved including the expenditures next up is the financial projections and potential need for operational Levy and Nick I'll turn over to you and you'll probably turn it over to Bonnie but I guess we have two different things one is budget assumptions and budget forecast so and Tim is passing out
042right now some hard copies so you don't have to try to flip between screens so you're getting copies of that and Bonnie can kind of walk you through these different options but you know we were able to through Baird start to do some budget projections looking out over the next you know four or five years and what does that look like we've talked about multiple times when we look at the elementary facility projects and things like that what is the long what's the long-term savings or cost associated with things and then also what is our what is our budget picture budget Outlook as we're as we're looking at this so I'm going to let um I'm gonna let Bonnie kind of explain through some of these things and then we'll talk in a much bigger
043picture also so you kind of know what you're looking at you have two different documents dude um what we talked about last month was student enrollment is the main driver to all of our financial projections in the district so during that study applied population provided us three scenarios or three different Frameworks of how they projected enrollment one was called Baseline one was a five-year Trend one was three-year Trend one was Kindergarten Trend and one was residential trend so what we did was we took each of those models and used their enrollment projections to try to project budget scenarios for the district in the upcoming years we did two scenarios for each model on the first scenario so if we look at that first page that Baseline forecast is a Governor's proposals funded in its entirety
044so what that would be for the 23 24 school year is a 350 increase in the revenue limit a 766 dollars per student per pupil Aid and a 45 percent reimbursement for court categorical age for eligible expenses and and just to clarify in the per pupil Aid it's about an increase of about forty dollars Thirty or forty dollars it's not an increase of 766. so it's about a 40 increase yep um and then in the 24-25 school year um that increased to 8 11 per student for per pupil Aid and a 650 per student increase in the revenue limit so pretty substantial um also an increase in categorical Aid at 60 percent currently special ed categorical Aid is about 28 so that is that's a nice bump that he is recommending um we did go
045out for the 25 26 26 27 school year um just made some basic assumptions so increase that per pupil Aid the same wreath that he had that was presented in this year's Governor's budget and also increased the revenue limit at 300 dollars per student for which has kind of been the trend in the last years prior to this last two biennium um some other assumptions we made the wage increase we said five percent for the next two years and then three percent after that and then benefit would follow suit and then the second so that's kind of that first scenario and then the second scenario we costed everything out at 50 percent because pretty often the governor makes a proposal it goes to the legislation they say zero they meet somewhere in the middle so
046then we did a projection based on 50 percent so as you can see for the Baseline forecast the highlighted line with the the red basically projects the deficit that the district would be facing using that enrollment projection and then if you look at the you know next page would be the five-year it's basically this exact same information based on the different enrollment trends for each of the the projection models Bonnie just to clarify and these projections are all based on status quo with existing programming existing buildings correct correct so this is just nose change in staff and and that's one thing we just used like one because if you drop 100 students obviously you're going to drop some staff members too you know but we just thought to just project it out equally we just
047kept the same Base information and then that the second document is basically the exact same information but it's a copy of we worked with Baird they have a whole projection model we imported our information and then did the projections out so it's more detail of the exact same information just to answer if it where does this information come from I think you know a couple things to note here is those red numbers at the bottom of each fiscal year are not cumulative those would be every Year's um balance at the end of the year and so uh when you look at the bear budget forecast model you can see our fund balance which is kind of the middle of the page halfway down you can see it start to decline rather rapidly should we do
048nothing and again there are assumptions in here Bonnie and I spent a lot of time talking about it you know what what are reasonable assumptions um some people would say it's not reasonable to put in five percent wage increases uh this this coming year and the next um so you could argue that reasonable would be two percent reasonable would be eight percent um we know that right now the the W uh ERC number which is the uh they set CPI for the state of Wisconsin as far as what we use for bargaining purposes right now sitting right around 7.3 percent um it's gone up every single month uh for the uh since since we it locked in last January it won't be locked in for this coming year until January essentially what happens is we'll
049get the number in January that is the number in which we have to use for bargaining purposes for this coming school year but historically you know prior to you know this really high level inflation right now you know we've historically been around three percent you know right around there if the board does it uh you know board increase of two percent when you lay the performance systems on top there it comes out to be about about three percent give or take um so try to be somewhat conservative in those estimates um and again I think the DPI budget which is graded with the governor's office is it's the high water mark so the governor's proposal at 100 percent um we would say we would think his best case scenario now we could be absolutely um
050you know wrong and they actually the legislature presents a budget even higher than this um you'd be shocked but um then we thought we're not going to give absolute worst case scenario zero because the likelihood of the legislature giving us zero again is slim to none I mean just regardless of the outcome of Elections and so you know what could be a potentially more realistic scenario if we got half of of what was what was being asked for in the budget process and I think as Bonnie talked about there's five different models that we're using here based on enrollment projections so we're looking at you know the Baseline like you said kindergarten model three-year Trend five-year Trend and then Redevelopment Trends and uh all of the models really when you start to look four or
051five years out are deficit budgets within about a million dollars of each other give or take depending on which proposal which proposal happens but as Heather said this is if there is nothing done I mean it keeps the same amount of staff keep motoring through type of thing and you've heard me talk at the parent meetings that um you know we can we're sitting on quite a bit of fun mounts we can weather some storm we just can't weather it indefinitely because you can see over the course of about five years um in just about any of these scenarios we we drop anywhere from 15 to 25 million in fund balance and um that that that starts to hurt quite a bit um as far as being able to continue down the path you can
052also see how uh without doing anything it starts to exponentially um build upon itself it gets uh worse and worse each year um which kind of leads to we had some questions about you know different savings under some of the different options related to um the facility pieces that we were looking at and what is that you know what does that look like we did um look at I'm going to pass some of these out what this is is kind of an amortization schedule of based on the based on the different options so we we have you know there's essentially five different options that we're looking at to solve some of our facility uh situations from option one the reason option one's not on this because there aren't any savings related option one so there's
053nothing to amortize out uh related to option one but what you can see is options uh 2A through e um the reason they're all the same price and the option 283 is they're just different configurations of the same option and so when uh when Bray gets done kind of putting the numbers to everything um it's the difference between a new building versus a remodel Edition building and stuff like that but the actual Staffing model doesn't really change inclusive in here as well on the amortization chart is also the savings uh of the of the closure of buildings related to uh utility Savings of those buildings so not taking into account on any of these savings is any additional uh savings we get through Energy Efficiency or things like that in the existing buildings that stay
054open there starts to become uh you know we can dig into that deeper as we look at it but it's it's been our experience that as the buildings become more energy efficient even when they grow in size we're not we're not spending more money on utilities we're actually spending less money on utilities but so what we try to do is look at a conservative look at with the different options over 10 years how much would it save over 20 years how much would it save obviously option five which I think has somewhat been called the the nuclear option which is all of a sudden major shifts and grade configurations eighth grade to the high school fifth grade to the Middle School it does have a little bit different twist to it than what Bray was
055looking at it would be that if we couldn't pass a referendum at all and we had to get down in size it would be going down to three elementary schools with shifting those grades up because it would be similar to option uh 3 which is 3k4s and uh fifth grade at Prairie the big difference is is we'd be pushing kids up into the other buildings and so there's a reason there's more savings there is because you're now essentially closing yet another building so there's there's some additional savings that way um but what we are planning on doing uh is having when we do look at the different options and we look at the budget projections is on each option we're going to put kind of that the savings or the you know cost associated with
056the different options over 10 years over 20 years so that people have this information with them as well uh with the with the cost of the options what questions do people have so Nick to clarify and make sure I'm understanding correctly so like with option two when we're talking about the savings is it the savings of you said it includes the operational Savings of the closed buildings but but is it also this is it savings compared to option one which is making all the investments in all the existing buildings uh this is what this is purely uh doing is the savings from the reduction in staff and then the utility savings from the closure of those two buildings there's no there's no other you know it's a very kind of um conservative estimates so we're
057not taking into consideration Energy Efficiency improvements at the other buildings or anything like that this is purely looking at uh if we were to go to um let's see here so this is just the operational this is this is capital investment aside this is just the when we're talking about the efficiency of having serving our kids with less buildings this is that this is just the cumulative operational Savings of doing that through each of these different four options yes so this would be the reduction in the amount of staff we would need to do it and also the closing of those two buildings from a standpoint of paying their utility bills every every year so just to give you a little bit of a breakdown we spend about 50 to 60 thousand dollars a year
058at Holton Elementary utilities and um some supplies in order to maintain the building you know and reoccurring costs such as pest control and um you know what Waste Services and things like that you know when you so that's figured in into there you know Willow River we spent about 165 000 a year when we talk about utilities um sewer water you know supplies are needed just to maintain the building and then reoccurring vendor cost associated with like again Pest Control Water Services um you know miscellaneous things and then at North Hudson we went and did that because if you do option five we had to kind of look at what that would be um option five would be at North Hudson it's it's an additional about ninety thousand dollars a year is but what we
059spend on utility costs in that building um so those are those are part of this part of this amortization number so as you can see you know the savings at 10 years for the um middle three options basically the going down to four elementaries of something saves anywhere from you know 32 to you know almost 35 million dollars over 10 years and over the course of 20 years saves anywhere from you know 77 to 81 million dollars of operational costs and this is maintaining all of our existing programs so this is you know not cutting specials this is not raising class sizes this is not cutting counseling services this is really implementing an elementary program based on the class size guidelines you know Tracy's been working on a frequently Asked question sheet coming out of
060the parent meetings and one of the things is Will class sizes go up I mean yes and no um if you're at Holton and you're used to 14 or 15 kids in a class then more than likely you're going to see a class size increase to closer to 20. if you're at you know Ep Rock or Rivercrest or Prairie you may see class sizes saying about the same or maybe dropping one student on average per class so the one thing that won't go up is the class size guidelines you know based around this model um and so one of the things that Bonnie also ran with numbers was kind of looking at so what kind of operational referendum would we need on top of this Rob's asked that question too um so basically there's about
061a roughly a three to you know 3.2 million dollar savings with most of these options you take that off the deficit in 2526 and that tells you about what you have left that you're still deficiting at that point you take it off you take about the same number off 26 27 and that'll tell you what the deficit would be projected for that following year um again you know there are other things this is these these budget projections are still giving people raises um trying to stay competitive in the market uh trying to keep all the programming going um but I I don't see a scenario even if we get down to four elementaries or long-term long term the district doesn't need an operational referendum to go with uh look at the scenarios maintain six Elementary's
062which is still an option um that you guys wanted on the table the uh you'll need a operational referendum a much larger operational referendum long term what other questions Mr President yeah Rob so just just quickly where where are you at with the concept of going to the community with the survey we've talked we talked about Peter Leatherman we talked about school perceptions in a one-on-one conversation you mentioned a third party where what are your thoughts so uh we still haven't gotten direct I mean the board's going to tell you're going to need to tell us go to survey or don't go to survey start building even if it's we don't know what options they are um but at least coming off the last work session it seemed to me like there was still not
063an agreement on whether or not the board wanted to go to survey again or if they want to do phone polling or if they didn't want to do phone polling or a survey so I would just need that direction from you guys on what you get when would you expect to get that Nick when do you think that we need to give that to you I would say at the very latest we would need that direction at the work session um and I uh coming up in two weeks at the extreme very latest extreme very latest I mean we're already at a point where if we were to want to mail a survey we can't do it we don't have the time mean two weeks from now likely the only survey option and Peter Leatherman
064he does surveying it's just a phone screen type um that he probably will be the only option we will have access to yeah I mean we we've sent the survey out is uh the last survey I believe went out the 10th or 15th of November um it was drafted in less than a week printed in about a week so um yeah I mean I would say you know we would uh like I said the 24th of October gives us probably about two weeks to draft it complete it uh have you guys review it at the November meeting if you're okay with it and then send it out if that's the direction you want to go um we would not right what's that this would be a survey that we would not write we would still
065have a professional third party yeah we work with we work with um whomever we you know deemed we wanted to work with whether it be a phone survey or a applied School perceptions I mean School perceptions right now I think I think would turn us down because we couldn't get to work we couldn't get it out in time and I could be mistaken on that um anyway Jamie I interrupted you yeah well I just because I you know it's not part of our agenda and I want us not to get into you know the logistics of the survey regarding the facilities because that's going to be discussed at the work session but to put Rob's point about timing um when we did do a survey on November 10th or 15th the last time we had
066those results by when uh they were due back I think you know about the fourth or fifth of of December um maybe a little bit after that and then you went over the results at the December work session which is usually um the Monday before winter break yeah yep uh and then you're able to go through them again on the January regular meeting and then you had until essentially the um work session in January you have to make your decision on what you want to do with random wise I think you know when Matt brought it up um there's two points to a survey one to get information out and one to um obviously get feedback educate yeah to get information out and um and I think the the idea that you're going to get
067some great feedback from the public by doing another survey I think you're I I personally I don't know if there's going to be a huge benefit I think you'd have a better benefit of polling and and doing phone polling that way but I just don't I don't know how many people are gonna say yes I want to vote to close my schools um you know that's why and that's one of the comments that that Matt said as well um right but again on this whole point about surveys and stuff it doesn't have to be decided at night we can talk about at the work session and whether we're going to referendum or not doesn't have to be decide till January 23rd so we're still we have a little time but as Rob said there is
068time of the essence I mean uh I will tell you as I told you at the last board meeting um um my original recommendation was to go to four of something and the board chose to keep six as a viable option eventually you're going to have to get either to six as your option or four is your option or what what for or whatever it whatever it ends up being the longer we push some of those things off you know the the tougher it's going to be to kind of pull things together um I will say we have the community meeting on November 1st we should have all the costs associated with everything uh ready to go we do have a newsletter that's going out in the next two weeks so it'll hit a week
069before that meeting that'll go into every mailbox it will have information about what we're asking people and then in addition to letting them know about the November 1st meeting that's going to be at the middle school so we're ready to you know send those things out and get that all all the time in on those things so um you know I think before we talk about the elementary parent means which I think is the next agenda item do board members have any other questions about these budget forecasts or budget assumptions that you know Bonnie reported on I mean no great I think I think where Rob's going with this is to me I and and I would tend to agree with this is that once you start looking at these numbers kind of obvious the
070direction we need to go and I think as a board we need to give that direction to the administration to our architect Etc to move forward but rather than you know continuing to delay that process but I think that these budget numbers are kind of overwhelming so maybe that's what's got everyone's cats got their tongue about it but I think it's uh you know it's not looking real good um and I don't see how we could continue to operate six schools I don't see how we can do that given these numbers I think um speaking to these numbers what what it makes me think is how important it is first that the community understand these numbers and I think that's part of the challenge is that these two things are interrelated um but I My
071worry is and I hear what you're saying about the sooner we move to for the the more we're able to move ahead with a plan that is likely to be successful if that's the direction we go My worry is that if we don't spend the time um sharing these numbers with a community in a way that they understand we're going to end up with a community that does not think that we did due diligence and is not going to understand then why we're going to Capital I mean so I I feel like this has to be a really big part even of the community meeting on November 1st is leading with not not leading at all with the capital part but really living with a 101 on School financing and why we're concerned no matter
072what we do with our schools why we're concerned and then moving into kind of the here are some options that we've been discussing one of which is keeping schools open but understand this is the context in which we're operating will the mailer have the financial data or are we waiting till November first for that yeah I mean whatever we're planning on having for November 1st you said a mailer's going out yes so it will have high level and then directing people to the website so all of the these documents are will be linked to that Elementary facilities page so we'll have a QR code directing people back to it so just high level um information about this and then directing them to the website Mr President I wonder um and I realize this is putting
073a lot on already full plates but I think one challenge is that for a whole lot of people it is really hard to look at these kinds of documents and make sense of them and so I wonder if we could do some sort of a short-ish video that would walk people through in regular language you know pointing to but kind of in the kind of for the I'm not a spreadsheet person that would help give them the same kind of information but in a way that's more more easily digested I think that would be nice to have that on the website as an option as well prior to that November first meeting you know our public we are we are asking them to support and we don't know what the referendum amount is but hypothetically
074let's say it's 70 million dollars in order to save 2.4 million dollars which may escalate over time um during the parent meetings I understand during the teacher meetings there was no real discussion on how looking at our mission statement how this was going to improve the educational quality of our students at the same time reducing schools um it's a focus on the Dire Straits dire Financial Straits of our school district and so to have any at this point and of course I'm I'm supportive of doing something but not having the engagement where they understand what they're going to be getting in return before we're asking them to make a decision is going to be challenging for all of us and we're not going to get that support so my question to Nick to you is
075that is there an opportunity maybe for the board to focus on an operational referendum we've done a fantastic job talking about the financial Dire Straits that we're in we haven't done a fantastic job talking about the benefits of these brand new educational spaces in smaller buildings or in fewer buildings and so what if we were to focus on this operational referendum first and then a year take a year work with our community get them to understand the benefit maybe we close the school don't know but a year from now have a plan where we can say look even though you were kind enough to pass this operational referendum we may be able to create an under Levee again although temporarily if we were to go to referendum and these would this is what those savings
076would be and so I think that would be broadly more well received than trying to go at the pace that we're going right now again this is just me talking but I think we're much better positioned to pursue an operational referendum by itself right now than a capital referendum especially since we can't go again for a year after April 23. uh you run the risk of how you're going for two referendums and the prom the kind of the the perception might be that this operational referendum will delay you know potentially the inevitable closing of one or two schools uh are we setting ourselves up for you're coming at us again you know and you you the the concern was there two years ago and now you're coming at us again um but that's where the
077communication would come in but we have I mean we'd have to tell them what the long-term plan is and that we will be coming back another time for Capital and this is why and here's potentially the benefit we we have to do a better job of I think there's a lot of misinformation out there um you know a speaker said tonight about how you know everyone walks to the first day of school I will we know that's not true it's just not true so you know about the you know the perception that you're going to close some schools you're going to have less teachers without the understanding of well we're going to have less students or you know we're ignoring the efficiencies that you know make or the inefficiencies that that make uh Holton a
078concern for not for Holton but for the rest of the district as far as efficiency so I I don't know um I'm not a favor of multiple like we have to do our job we have to get the information out there and it is just to clarify Bobby you're not in favor of multiple asks in consecutive years or multiple asks in one year or just multiple ask periods yeah well I think that um Nick was rather clear and I think Bonnie's numbers um kind of show it that we're going to need an operational Levy regardless of what we do with our buildings so I think that we need to continue to move both forward at the same time and again have the public get to understand the numbers I think that the notion that they
079can't understand this and we have to spoon feed it over a period of a year and a half is I don't think it's accurate and I think that an operational Levy with a capital referendum is something that we should go for and then see where the vote comes out because if we don't get either pass it's we're then we are stuck with making some real hard decisions so I would that's that's what I think anyway but Carrie you were going to say something thank you uh yes I would I would agree that we would be negligent not to address this now and um it's not just a savings of two two and a half million it's you know cumulative 70 or 80 over 20 years and um again don't sell the public short that they
080can digest this and understand it emotionally it's tough to hear but certainly they're capable of of understanding the numbers and understanding our situation and if they choose to support six schools that's something that we'll need to hear that they're willing to pay for Mr President one thing that that um that you said Rob stuck with me the um you know about kind of leading with the fiscal crisis and it does make me think well we have a lot of communication to get across maybe we need to be even more intentional about leading some of these conversations to what we're committed to maintaining for our students um because I think I mean that's that's really the pre that's really the um the challenge we're presenting is that we we want to maintain strong specials we want
081to maintain um small classroom sizes as defined by our classroom guidelines we I mean maybe to lead with the we want to keep what's good here in Hudson because the the parent is we're not going to be able to do that if we don't do something financially right but I think maybe to be really intentional about communicating that up front and I I do think that both and the capital and operating I mean it's obviously an oversimplification but I mean there there's there's your your mortgage and your budget right I mean there's the home you choose to live in and there's what you spend every month and if you have a significant change to your family income again simplification you look at both you look at can we afford to keep keep living in this
082home that we love and what changes do we need to make to our income and our expenses in the meantime I mean so I think it is it's that both and and so it feels like what we're saying is this is what we want to maintain for our kids here in Hudson and to do that for the long term we're going to need we're going to need a two-pronged approach we're going to need both some operational savings um and even with those savings we're going to need some Levy support and you know we're going to need to look at what we're spending on our on our mortgage on our Capital pieces so but I think that's um I would agree I do I worry that they're so interrelated that while I hear what you're saying
083rob I worry that disconnecting them almost then feels disingenuous like like we have to be able to present them as two parts of the it's the mortgage and the monthly the monthly budget outside of the mortgage it's not one and then the other and certainly don't want to be you know disingenuous certainly as a board as we represent ourselves to the public the concern that that I have is that we just we don't have enough information nor have we even thought about starting to communicate what are the things that are going to be better in the remaining schools that will help our kids you know it's the all of the conversations so far have been about our financial needs um you know we'll get to the parent conversation here in a second you know but
084I I had heard from the teacher meetings that the conversation was their takeaway that districts in dire financial situation you're closing two schools and teachers can't do anything about it well I mean I think there'll be an oversimplification but um I don't know what else to tell you every projection we have shows massive deficits so uh whether people like it or not or they want to hear it or not or they're upset about it or not we have to make adjustments to how we operate the only way we can make adjustments to how we operate without having a significant impact on the educational delivery model in which we deliver is to have fewer facilities it just that it's it just it is it is what it is and people can be mad about it they
085can be upset about it but at the end of the day we we can maintain the same level of educational experiences for our kids in four buildings whether you have remodels new builds or existing um is what we have now continue to push this thing down the road we can't guarantee that yeah and maybe that's something you know when they're saying what what benefit are the four buildings maybe that's something uh if they're so tied to six that they don't want the same programming and they don't want the same class sizes so so that'll be a decision or a discussion that comes out November 1st if if specials aren't important if uh you know maybe class sizes of 30 to 35 and that's what we'll need to hear my I guess my point and Nick
086certainly you delivered the message that you had to deliver you know that you did as well as you could have done in those meetings I guess my point is that it would have been wonderful to have had Bray at a point where we had schematic design at a high level so we could say this is what these four buildings would look like here's where special ed would be here's potentially what a classroom would look like here's the flow you know positives versus resting on solely the adversity of what we're contending with you know give give some of our parents that are actually losing their neighborhood schools you know something to to be positive about you know easily with an egg Bray absolutely would like to do that too we just can't do that with 19
087variations you know because we're trying to keep you know that's how many different variations we technically have with these five options from uh priority one and two type of Investments to full build outs to new buildings and so we did we did have some high level schematic design last year with Wold that they presented which were primarily boxes on oh you know on paper but that that very detailed part of the drawings comes and it came at the high school time with the secondary space after the board determined the option they were going with that's when you saw the the potential plans that um that Bray came up with that we use during our referendum meetings it was not at this stage in the game we are literally almost identical to again where we were
088in 2016 as far as our timing moving along moving along that base we have been talking about facilities and the elementary facilities for over three years this isn't like you know a new thing we sent a lot of newsletters out over the last couple years we sent emails out recapping our facility committees last year it's now becoming very real as we are hitting a financial wall that is going to say you probably can't keep kicking this thing down the road it's something something's got to give Kate had something I think yeah I um two things that I've I don't know if I've gotten a clear answer for it is the priority one and two that I see in this um summary that we sent out last time or that we had at the meetings can
089we clarify Priority One and Two and what that means yep we can uh and that's that's on the website there's a definition of priority one and two and it's actually broken down by each building and that I sent you guys uh both the full report which was I think 70 some pages and then I also sent you guys a summary report that breaks down um those Priority One and twos and what they entail um but I I mean I can I can resend it if you'd like no I'd like it just in simple terms for people who are watching today party one it boilers roofs electrical I mean it's it's things you have to do because eventually they're going to fail on you so priority two though and I can see in each building that
090would be more your priority threes and fours so priority twos would be then move into your kind of like flooring painting some of those upgrades that you're going to do because when you come in and redo a space like the mechanical systems and spaces it's a pretty big invest in that space that's why you would then do some of those secondary things that are listed on there so for example it wouldn't make sense to come in and do all new Lighting in this room and then come back three years later and do all new ceilings you know and have you know be kind of if we're gonna do all the lighting we're going to do all the electrical in this room and we're going to sprinkle it it would make sense then to put in
091the new ceiling tiles and and those types of things so that's why one and two tend to go together a lot when you talk about three and four that's when we're starting to talk about uh moving walls and starting to get flexible classroom spaces we're talking about um you know some of those some of those types of kind of how we how we deliver instruction basically if you think about Priority One Two as Matt described at the last meeting it's basically things are going to look the same um with the guts of the buildings upgraded and potentially you know yeah maybe new carpet maybe new paint and new ceilings but not necessarily the building's not going to function any differently you know it's going to function like it it always was intended and that's what
092that's what's kind of laid out in in those things okay and [Music] me that is big picture and that's something that I definitely feel like I need to see in order to make ABS absolutely and that's what that's they're literally going to cost out all 19 options okay and that will be ready men that should be ready for you guys I would imagine by your work session on the 24th for you guys to review so that's about a week before everybody else everybody else has it on the November 1st meeting and then my last comment is that we got all of this feedback from these meetings and um Tracy wrote it all up for us and looked at a lot of it my concern is that we are moving quickly um I'm not sure that
093we're taking this feedback and saying maybe running some of these numbers that people are for ideas that they're giving us you know and any any for example when I heard a couple people saying let's look at closing the um admin office and closing one of the schools and run those numbers just so they can see what different ideas are and feel like they came to the meetings and gave ideas instead of four is that what I'm hearing you say Elementary okay yeah I mean we can that would be that would be additional options so I guess that would be the question I'd have for the board um when you're looking at the feedback is that that you're getting feedback on these five options or are you looking for even more options for us to um
094potentially look at and price out as we as we work our way through this just before we talk about that was I guess are we done talking about the budget forecasts and the assumptions well do you have any questions does anybody feel our assumptions are I guess this would be a good time does anybody feel our assumptions are not reasonable question on the Amazon at the top you have rate of increase and then 1.05 and then rate of increase 1.03 is that making an assumption about the bonds that we can get in the rate nope so really what that is is it kind of coincides with what you see the assumptions on the budget stuff is if you know we we would hope that inflation would start to get under control hopefully in the next
095two or three years and we'd be back down to some level of normalcy in that three percent range um but we also know that um it would be really hard for us to think that um we're going to be able to operate as normal over the next two years given the current environment and so that's why those two years are kind of set a little bit different the other piece is the first two years in the amortization schedule are not part of the schedule those are because you're not getting any of those savings because we haven't made any changes to our configuration so it's an amortization but it's an amortization not for a bond amortization of cost of costing amortization of cost okay that makes more sense but that's savings from regarding the facilities question
096which is different than the report that Bonnie gave which is on the budget projections and assumptions and I guess my question to that Bonnie is you know and I know that we're asking you to do a lot here in in these projections and um we probably need some projection from a political scientist to say what's going to happen in November because that's going to have the biggest impact here but these appear to me to be potentially optimistic I guess um in the sense of only five percent wage and benefit increases for 23 24 and 24.25 now maybe inflation is going to get shut off like a spigot but um even if it tapers in it's likely to come in at higher than five percent for each of the next two years but I know you
097got to start somewhere and so I guess we were being hopefully or maybe that it will get back down below that yeah I mean we had a lot of discussions and we went back and forth each way we also thought it five percent salary increase might not just be what the raises are but it might be our staff turnover we might hire you know senior people might leave and bring in so we thought overall a five percent seemed pretty we don't want to say like 10 and be like be over pessimistic so that's where we came with the five percent oh but it is this is um when you say Governor's proposal is that DPI I'm sorry it's dpis to the governors for his yeah okay biennium budget right and when is that when does
098that voted honor happen or passed or it could be period should be July 1 but so it could be a difference so it could be a different Governor yeah yeah oh yeah yeah so this is this is dpi's proposal which they have worked with the governor to create this proposal um I would be absolutely shocked if the governor's proposal the current Governor's proposal doesn't mirror this proposal that would be um completely out of left field I think the other thing is there's going to come a point where you guys are going to have to balance as a board uh the need to give raises and the need to live within our means and it's um I can tell you that if you know you say well you know we're just going to knock you for
099every percent on the wage benefit um is about a half a million dollars is what kind of Bonnie and I were looking at so you say well at five percent that's two and a half million dollars if we just froze everything um that would take care of deficit for next year which I mean I guess technically would but uh then going back to strategic plan and everything else how attractive of a district are we to want to work in and what type of employees are we able to attract uh as we as we do that and so um it's it's trying to come up with you know as a board you may not be able to give a CPI type of increase but I also would say is I I think long term it would
100probably hurt us worse to say let's let's freeze if everybody else around us is giving raises it's going to be very difficult for us to attract Workforce so it's it's that's where that five percent we more than likely it you know CPI number is going to come in potentially three or four percent higher than that than that five percent um it's just I don't know how we would go to the public and say hey we're going to give eight percent raises in we need an operational referendum but I also don't know how we go to our staff and say we're going to freeze your pay in times when it's you know eight and nine percent inflation I mean it's well and I think that's another one of those things that you know as we're leading
101off with what we're what we're what we want to keep doing in this District to to be leading off with we want to be able to attract and retain good people and while that doesn't mean giving the highest raises of anyone in our region we want to be reasonable it also means that we want to be competitive because we don't want good staff to leave because we're not acknowledging them and I mean so I really I feel like that's part of that setting the stage for the positives what we are committed to before we start talking about the cliff the other assumption Bonnie if you could address that you have for this forecast because you're only going out basically four calendar years beyond our current budget here and that is uh five percent equalized valuation
102growth and we know that uh cumulatively over the last three years it's been closer to 30 percent and for this forecast we're assuming five percent for four years which is cumulatively about 20 percent yeah um so my question is what if uh instead of a five percent assumption that our equal equalized valuation growth continues to go closer to that 10 percent uh per year what does that do then to our state aid so it's not going to do anything to your Revenue limit because that's purely based on enrollment but a really good point is that it's going to reduce your Equalization Aid because the higher value behind every pupil is going to reduce your Aid and you're already a negative or we are already in negative tertiary Aid so as that value keeps going up
103we will lose more aid for every dollar we spend and I think that the thing that's important people understand is that really is determining our mill rate it's not a it it doesn't help our budget by The District's value growing it doesn't actually help our budget because the budget is set as Bonnie said number of number of kids times what we get per pupil that that sets our Revenue now the blend whether it's coming in state aid or property tax you know is in there but I mean it we could have 40 valuation increase and our revenues will not go up they'll they'll hit these targets but the reality is if our enrollment figures don't match valuation growth then we end up losing eight correct correct and that's been the trend for four years well
104but we don't lose we don't lose Revenue we just lose Aid and I think that's the thing we just got to be clear with people is we still are on the revenue side of our budget it just we're forced to put more on property tax but it's not as though our overall Revenue goes down because of because of that our Revenue goes down when we don't get uh when our student count goes down is essentially what happens so um we're having decline enrollment and really people say well how do we go from such a surplus in the last couple years to such a deficit so quickly well the biggest the biggest thing we have is we've dropped you know close to 300 kids in the last what three years when you figure um and when
105all of a sudden you have that amount of students that eventually walk out of your budget essentially that money it's not that they're leaving to go to other districts it's just we're not replenishing like we have in the past it creates a pretty big hole and there's the um decline in enrollment exemption and this started hitting us three years ago our declining enrollment started hearing us three years ago extreme decline in enrollment and so now it's starting to what's happening is we're losing that exemption and that's why you're seeing all of a sudden a drop so quickly um and that's why when we talk about you know we're not in a dire strait like hey you guys need to make cuts this week you know we're not going to I mean yes there are some
106real you know fiscal headwinds here but the good thing is is we are positioned that you know we can ease our way into this potentially over two or three years um very difficult for us to get the operational savings if we don't do something different with our facilities I mean it's really hard for us to get any real type of savings um and the biggest reason why we haven't looked at five after after last year's facility committees is it just it seemed like it would be a lot of change and we wouldn't get the type of savings that we'd want and we could potentially be looking at closing yet another Elementary School a couple years down the road and so if you talk to parents from Holton they say let's go to Five in Cole's
107Willow if you talk to parents from well they'll say let's go to five and close Holden um and so uh you know it's it's not that we haven't looked at it it just it didn't seem like it was um it would generate the type of savings that would warrant that type of change to the district um all right any other questions about the budget otherwise we'll go into the parent meeting follow-up all right hearing none I guess we started talking about this a little bit but Nick did you have other comments leaning or Tracy uh Tracy you want to just kind of talked about what your process has been since the meetings and what we have set up absolutely so uh the first bullet on the site there is the actual feedback so what you
108have there are the comments that were left at the two parent meetings and then we've also had some people who have started to complete the online feedback form not much we've only had about five uh individuals reporting in in that format I suspect we will get more as we advertise this out through our newsletter and the information is there verbatim from what was on the form so that's that's been our process in the past so that's what has been included here so folks if they didn't they didn't make the facility meetings that we had on September 28th and October 3rd they're still able to get that feedback in yes so the the form is right there so it's very easy for people to go on complete that form and as well as all of the
109supporting documents so the documents that people saw during those information sessions uh and it also includes all of the information provided by the facilities task force previously so the documents that Walt provided all right questions regarding that or comments from board members Mr President one one of the things I feel like I heard um numerous times at the parent meetings was kind of referenced to um losing neighborhood schools for Mega schools you know that phrase Mega schools and I wonder I realize we don't have our own schematics but I'm remembering the last state school board convention I know several of us went to a couple of sessions um with districts that had recently done Mega school elementary schools that were beautiful I mean that I think that maybe would would ease parents concerns a bit
110about what it what a big what a big Elementary School looks like so we don't have our own schematics but I wonder if that would be a way to at least start sharing some information about you know we're not talking about building high schools for elementary school students these are these are buildings built for elementary school students and they still very much retain a lot of what you probably love about your smaller number of students school so just that thought in response to some of the feedback yeah I mean I think um you know as we as we look at that I think this was a total misstep on our end last fall where we talked about building capacities of a five section building getting as big as 700 750 students we're actually as we've
111now finalized the enrollment projections and things like that we're really talking about uh if you went to a four Elementary option two buildings that are four sections which are the size of currently Prairie Ep Rock and and Rivercrest and two buildings that are essentially four and a half sections which is the size of those buildings with three additional total classrooms so they're they're not Mega by any stretch of the imagination they also when you look at our enrollment um you're probably at the very very high end maybe you're going to hit 550 students Prairie currently has I think 510 511 in it um so we're we're not talking about building Mega elementary schools we're talking about building buildings that are similar to Rivercrest and Prairie with a little bit you know a little bit of
112additional space not um hundreds of students worth of additional space and I think that was uh you know uh something that last year was probably not conveyed very well either by us or by our our Consultants that we looked at that I have looked at I have gone through and I have looked at um the the comments and the feedback as we look at you know what questions do people have I don't know if the board has had the opportunity to look at these different components and there are a lot of great questions on here um you know even people have asked you know why not move the ninth grade down into the Middle School sixth grade back in the elementaries um in the I guess the um somewhat simplistic answer would be we we're
113not looking to try to remove you know reduce space uh you know we have we have plenty of space at the high school um and our goal is to not to just put kids in buildings just to keep them open you know uh type of thing you know Middle School we're in a good spot with the Middle School we're in a good spot with the high school um you know it's it's a it's a big it's it's a big challenge as we work through some of these but um I just I think the thing for me is we have been talking about elementary facility planning quite a bit for no less than at least one year and we actually started talking about a pre-covet when the board said go ahead and put together a committee
114and then it was about to start in March of 2020 and we tabled it basically for a year so um I think the reason it's going to feel kind of rushed right now is because we are in decision-making mode we you know we we do have to start making some decisions I think the other piece is some of the information that goes out or the level of detailed information that we put out when we did our last referendum is that a lot of that happened once a decision was made on the direction that we were going to go that's when you start to see the renderings that Bray put together you started to see more space programs I say space programs not uh not NASA like space programs but like what what does the building
115look like what does the footprint of the building look like and things along those lines you know even if we get it down to a few options um but I mean what what other type I mean what other types of things or what other types of feedback are you are people hearing out there or even from the parent meetings and the direction to move forward I think one other thing I would like to see us um respond to is this uh perception and I think it's a misperception that um you know if if the if the last enrollment studies were so wrong why are we trusting these numbers I've heard versions of that and I think we saw it even in the feedback kind of this subtext that when you wanted to build a new
116school you told us enrollment was going up and not I mean so I think that if there's a way that we can communicate and remind folks here's what the last projection studies said here's what we've actually seen because I think there's some distrust out there about these numbers that we're sharing I I agree I think people that look at well you you know you condescend to building this big huge high school well that no that high school was a disaster before it had problems we addressed it or the people on the board I wasn't on the board of the member but that was a responsible way to take care of of a concern and we're not going to have another concern with that space for for quite some time um it wasn't certainly wasn't overbuilt
117um and I you know I've heard some people say that as if if we hadn't done the high school remodel we'd be in so much better shape now we know we wouldn't be um I think a lot of the things I've read online as far as the you know the district spot where people approaching their comments are or from the parent meeting or that we put on at the schools a lot of those things were a lot of those concerns were addressed in the presentation um and meeting with parents after at the tables talking about it I think the people that were there taking part in it have a much better understanding than than of the needs than what or what we're saying are the concerns than than their questions show because they did have
118time after they filled out those forms to talk to board members and and Matt from bray and Nick I I don't Nick feels the same way on that but well Nick can you just address that what Heather raised as far as the perception about the the enrollment projection prior one being quote unquote so far off or wrong so if you go back and you look at the enrollment projections that we utilized when we were doing the secondary space referendum uh we were not pitching that we had this huge growth and actually we showed three different enrollment projections from Tom Gillespie all shown a dip and then eventually over 10 years coming back up uh to about where about where we would be um so I I don't believe we sold that and I know we
119also were very clear I know I was very clear that we would be back to the public in the next five years asking for money for the elementaries I mean that was that was uh we can go back and look at the videos that was on every one of these because we said this will not address the you know secondary space thing will not address our needs in our elementaries and uh and the majority of the middle school so um so that's the fact that that enrollment projection it had kind of three different I don't know models of grow both in ways of looking at it but the the one that was pessimistic happened to be the one that ended up closer to what actually happened in the last seven years yeah and I think
120nobody predicted back when we had that nobody predicted the pandemic um and and the just total shift in our student enrollment um and so now the new projection has taken that into account they yeah I mean because we're down those kids and so we you know if all of a sudden the pandemic doesn't happen and we haven't dropped 300 kids in a matter of the last three years our financial Outlook looks a lot different um but I think when you couple that not only the pandemic but you couple that with also uh what we've seen housing values do over the last three or four years five years since we went to referendum last uh I don't know if anybody predicted at that time that housing values would give us you know the ROI or the
121you know the rising costs that they have over the last five years I don't I think there are very few people who thought that would happen especially after how badly everything crashed in 08 you know I think most people thought things are going to be a little bit more tempered so when you add that to the mix it's not just the enrollment projections from applied populations it's looking at other economic indicators we there's not a whole lot of reason to believe that all of a sudden uh the value of housing in the city of Hudson or the town of Hudson or town Troy or Town St Joe is going to drop like a rock and make it any more affordable to anybody else if it does drop it'd probably drop equivalent to what other places
122are dropping and so then it's it's all relative it's not it's not as though people would have more money I don't see it becoming any more affordable but um you know I don't I I know people want to say why trust these projections they are just projections I mean they're not a guarantee um and I would just yeah um highlight they are seven years old already the the previous the glaspy ones because those were done in 2000 2015 14 15. um yeah so those would be those would be seven years old but we did use those projections when we put out the survey last fall we had those same same numbers that literally the exact same slides um from our survey in 2015 for last year's I think part of the reticence or delay and
123accepting those numbers whether that's a you know current delay because of the survey would just or the projection we just got or the one that was from seven years ago is similar to what I experienced when I went down to Madison this last weekend for a wasme among the state policy and resolutions committee and you know we have our name tags and they say oh you're from Hudson and we started talking about you know facility issues everyone has their facility issues and I said yeah we have experienced some big decline in enrollment over the last four years and they were like what you know Hudson is growing so rapidly and I said yes St Croix County is growing rapidly Hudson City and surrounding area our school district overall has a lot more numbers of people
124but we don't have the students and what was feeding our growth and this is long before I was on the board what was feeding our growth was not only the houses that were being built out in the townships and the expanding City boundary places like you know red cedar or Cedar Canyon and um but it was the move-ins you know that's what our previous superintendent would ask at the graduation ceremonies okay all those people who have moved in here since kindergarten stand up and more than half the kids would stand up that's not going to be true anymore because the affordability of being able to move into Hudson is much different today than what it was 15 to 20 years ago it's just that's just the reality but anyway so again I see these comments
125there's 23 pages of them by the way anybody in the community can go online and see those and add their own but there is still even though those people got a presentation from bray on this stuff they're still um you know putting in comments and asking questions it's that you know you know they're not accepting of the maybe the information or whatever it is going to be a challenge in Communications but I think we have to continue to communicate and that's what we're going to do with the mailer that's going to go out that's what we're going to do with the November 1st meeting and it will be a continual process we're not going to have you know ninety percent of the community all educated and up to speed and then be able to take
126a vote on how things are going to happen that's not going to be probably even happen for April let alone try to do that before our decision on January 23rd so is there other comments on the parent meetings that I think all of us attended at least one and some were there for all four so or three or four so you know Jamie just one other thing I'd call out because I see it in the comments and I definitely heard it at the meetings was just this real appreciation for and concern for our staff I mean yes the we don't want to laugh staff and even beyond that just the creating culture is really hard whatever we do we need to make sure that we are really being intentional about caring for our staff because
127and I mean I believe in some of the parents that we're talking believe you know we have really good staff they will create good culture even in new configurations and new buildings and they're going to need support to do that so just to not to be really mindful that transition is hard for families it can be hard for kids but that it's also hard for our staff and to make sure that we're mindful about that wherever we land with this process other questions the hope is that with out of all this you're going to develop a kind of a frequently Asked question not going to ask ever answer every question but at least the more frequently Asked ones and then that'll be part of the information that will also be given out in on November
1281st correct actually it'll go in the newsletter and we'll have it online excellent all right Molly do you have I had a couple comments um just Heather reminded me I had talked to a parent at North Hudson and ended up staying later talking to her and she made a comment that I thought was just so insightful that we don't know what teachers can do because teachers can do amazing things and I just thought that was um just a wonderful um kind of acclimation for the the staff that we do have the other thought I I was thinking of is um you know after we had some of these meetings and you know you have lots of different opinions I have had trouble sleeping thinking about how hard this is for people um that I I
129would like people to know that this isn't um it isn't a simple thing for all of us we all feel super sad and it's a it's a really difficult process but that we have to do what's responsible for the community as a a whole so that's it anything else any other comments otherwise let's see next on our agenda is I guess a motion to go into closed session Jamie can I just add one final because um Molly made me think about I think sure what worries me is that I feel like there's this sense that we're talking about what's doing doing what's right for our taxpayers not what's right for our kids and I think that the what we need to figure out to get through is that this is about making sure that long
130term we are able to do right by our kids I mean that that is so yes it's you know for someone who's worried about their kid three years from now it feels like this isn't right for my kid but stepping back it really is about making hard decisions so that we are positioned in the you know over the Long Haul to be able to do right by our kids and be able to have great staff provide really good core and extracurricular programming to to to provide what we're providing today even years down the road in different Financial situations I think that's we have to make sure we don't lose that that it's not a it's not a money before kids it's a they are related and long term we need to do what's right for
131our kids and for our community so that we don't lose that in the communication as well great great Point Heather anyone else have a comment along that vein I I think the um to that end about you know doing what's best for our kids um it's all about a perception I remember when we did the reboundering process um they're they're such involvement in interest in it because everyone seemed to have a vested interest in their school and it actually made me feel good because everyone loves their schools that their kids go to and you know River Crest at Hudson Prairie our schools that are designed to have you know roughly 600 kids so that's not necessarily a mega school one that's harmful to kids you wouldn't get that from any of the parents that are
132that are there at least I haven't heard that to date that they want you know River Crest split into three schools so they have smaller schools to go to um again it's about the teachers and being able to retain quality teachers retain our class sizes that's why we're doing this as a school boards not having to make decisions and be closer to what they are in Minnesota with 30 to 35 kids in a classroom we want to avoid that that's why we're having these discussions so all right otherwise I guess now we'll do the time I'll entertain a motion on closed session I moved to convene and closed session pursuant to Wisconsin statute 19.85 parent one parent G to confer with legal counsel who is rendering advice concerning strategy to be adopted with respect to
133litigation second motion by Heather second by Bob this recalls for a roll call vote of Bowman aye Brown aye Garza Logan Powers aye Whitaker Johnson I the eyes have it we are adjourning to closed session from there we will be adjourning the meeting thank you all for attending