001meeting for the school district of Jefferson Board of Education. We'll start off with the pledge of allegiance and the flag is in the back there. Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Miss Smith, could you please do roll call? Mr. Pondan here. Mrs. Fox here. Mr. Eel here. Mrs. Mcwill. Mr. Nobling here. Mr. Piltier here. Mrs. Winkman here. All right. Thank you. First order is going to be the recognitions and we'll start off with our schools citizens of the month. Uh we'll start off with east with Mr. Weekman. All right. Good evening everybody. I get the great honor of introducing you to Sam Emanuel Kennel. And Sam, who is here with you
002tonight? My sister Zuri, my sister Sophia, my mom and dad. All right. And I got to see you guys last two nights. So, it's a music concert, right? They did a great job. Sam has been nominated by sixth grade teachers and they wrote, "Sam is worthy of the Citizen of Month award for many reasons, including possessing extremely good character, a helpful heart, outstanding respect for teachers, students, and school property, an admiral work ethic, and for being an overly positive role model." And I agree with everything they wrote there. Sam is an eager learner at East Elementary, always willing to try new and harder tasks with a truthful disposition. He takes initiative to clean the room and others and offers to help with small tasks throughout the day. Sam's math, reading, and writing skills are exceptional,
003and he puts forth his best effort to create quality work. Sam is also very creative and is always making new crafts and projects with supplies we have at school. Sam will promise you and we can't wait to see what your bright future holds. Keep being you. And Sam is a great student, but he's also a great person and that's an amazing thing to be. Samar. Next up, uh, Mr. Howard. Before I introduce the Canoe family, Samuel Claudia is a first year worker with us at West as a pair professional. And Claudia, you're doing an amazing job. And I want to say in front of the school board because we're so happy to have you at West and I get to see the kids. You come from East and you say hi to me and give
004me a hug every day at three o'clock. She gives me a hug every day when I see her. So anyway, this is an awesome family, guys. So Claudia, thank you for the work you're doing. West Stam, congratulations, bud. All right, I only Leo, how you doing, buddy? Okay, she's gonna introduce everybody in his family in the in the next row behind the canoes. You ready, bud? My little brother named Noel, my big brother, Gel, and my mom and dad. All right, the Contreras family. You guys have been in our school a long time. We're so happy to recognize you. Leo's teacher is Mrs. Karsten's. He's a third grader at West. And here's what she had to say about you, Leo. I would like to nominate Leo Contrus for citizen of the month. He embodies our
005motto at West Elementary. Be respectful, be responsible, and be ready. Leo is always excited and ready to learn new things. He listens to directions, pays attention in class, and he quietly goes about his work in the classroom, always willing to help others. Leo works extremely hard with every teacher he works with. He has an incredible amount of perseverance for a third grader. Leo's respectful to both the students and the teachers. I can always count on him to work well with any student I pair him with. He's a great friend. He encourages his peers and brings others up when they are struggling. Leo's a model student and truly deserves the award of citizen of the month. Congratulations, Leo Contras. All right. Then Miss Krauss Sullivan, I am honored to introduce to you Abigail Stock. She is
006a second grader at Sullivan. And before we begin, I would like you to introduce who you brought with you tonight. I brought my mom, my dad, my two sisters, Bridget and Jane, and my little brother, Matthew. Fantastic. Thanks for being here tonight. So, Abigail is an wonderful, wonderful child. She has worked so hard and has just been absolutely blossoming over the last few years. So, we're very, very excited to honor her here tonight. So, this is what Mrs. Langanger had to say. Abby is so kind to others and all and is always trying to help others be successful. She works hard and does her best. The improvements I have already seen in Abby are cause for her to be proud of herself. She has shown that having a growth mindset truly does work. Aby's confidence
007has grown and I love how much she shares now. Keep it up Abby. So, we're very, very excited for Miss Abby and she has a very big night at Sullivan tomorrow. It is our concert tomorrow. And what do you get to do tomorrow, Abby? I get to do the one of the speaking parts and the solo. she gets to sing a solo. So, if you come, make sure that you bring your Kleenex because she does an amazing job and she made us all cry yesterday and today. So, I imagine tomorrow we'll have the same thing. So, Abigail Stock from Sullivan. All right, Mr. Madison with the middle school. All right, good evening everybody. Uh, it's my pleasure to introduce Luca Alcantara. He is an eighth grader here at the middle school. And uh, Luca, who
008did you bring with you to the board meeting tonight? My brother, Alco, and my mom. Right. Thank you and welcome to to both of you. Uh, so Luca was recommended by our eighth grade team and I just wanted to share some of the things that they uh they wanted to share. uh uh about Luca so far into his eighth grade year. Uh during his eighth grade year, uh the eighth grade team has been consistently impressed by his character, work ethic, and ability to collaborate effectively with his peers. Luca is a kind and friendly individual who creates a positive atmosphere in our classrooms. His dependable nature allows his classmates to rely on him, whether it's for group projects or daily assignments. He is always willing to lend a helping hand and often takes the initiative to
009support his peers. Furthermore, Luca works exceptionally well with everyone. He fosters an inclusive environment in our classroom where all students feel valued and encouraged to express their ideas. His ability to collaborate with diverse groups has made him a respected leader among his peers. In conclusion, we firmly believe that Luca embodies the qualities of an exemplary student deserving of the citizen of the month award. His kindness, dependability, flexibility, and studious nature make him a standout individual. We are confident that he will continue to excel in his future endeavors positively to impact those around him. And uh just in in conclusion, Luka, have you had any highlights for eth grade year so far or things that have been kind of standout moments for you? My friends, I don't know. All right, that's a good answer. Absolutely. All
010right, so please join me in congratulating Luca Alcantara. All right. And then our high school citizen of the month is Kessa Pulkerbeck. And she is unable to make it tonight. So, but congratulations to all of our citizens of the month. Next up for recognition is going to be our all state volleyball athlete, um, Ella Featherston. However, she is busy doing volleyball stuff, so she's not here. Um, were you going to speak on her accomplishments? We want to highlight some of her um pretty amazing accomplishments. As we mentioned, she's not here tonight because she's uh at volleyball practice. So, co coach Hurley shared the following. Ella has a new school record with 26 kills in a match. She did that in five sets versus Delivan. Uh what was a little more impressive was her 25 kills
011versus Delivan, but she did that in four sets. So, here's her top three matches this season. 26 kills September 18th versus Del De Delivandarian 25 kills uh versus Delivandarian Port Delivan uh and then 20 kills uh versus Palmyra back in August 26. So fantastic volaw player and she's still got plenty of time to go and play for Jefferson High School in the future. So congratulations for that all state athlete um award and recognition for Ella Featherson. Now, we're going to get into the little more heavy portion of the meeting. Um, if you're looking for an opportunity to step away, now's a good time. But, of course, we always welcome folks to stick around for the rest of the meeting. Next item is going to be our consent agenda. Uh, at this time includes the minutes
012from our previous meeting on November 10th. There are no employments or resignations. There is a presentation of claims and a list of donations there. Any of this could be separated into a pulled out for a separate motion or it could be all in one motion for the consent agenda. Do we have a motion? Motion to approve the consent agenda as presented. Second. Motion in a second. Any further discussion? All in favor of the motion say I. I. I. Any oppose? Say nay. And I am going to read the donations into the records here. Uh we have a couple of donations for the basics community Thanksgiving dinner. The chapel provided $1,500. Optimus Club of Jefferson provided $300. County City Credit Union uh gave $200. The JHS Popcorn Club gave $200. And Emanuel UMC gave $100. St.
013Luke's Lutheran Church donated $1,180.38 to purchase Thanksgiving meals for SDOJ families. And then there are donations to the JHS Engineering Fabrication Lab. Uh Pratt Brothers HVAC provided $250, CJ Painting Solutions gave $250, and Lonnie Ptorius gave $250 of welding booth supplies. And then Herring's Town in donated $960 to the fall sports teams from the Eagles Day promotion. So the total this month is $5,190.38 and a school year to date total of $71,657.14 of uh support from the community. So thank you to everyone for that. Next up on the agenda is going to be our public comment. Of course, we always appreciate feedback from the community. Is there anybody here that wants to provide public comment at this time? I don't see anybody jumping up and then we'll get into the first reading of the 2026
01427 teaching calendar. And Dr. Ernest, I'm happy to take this to repeat. It is a first reading. So, we know that uh this is the first opportunity you've had to review it. I want I want to put particular a memo that highlights some of the changes for the future that we hope that are good changes. Um and but I want to explain them first. Um so, August 31st is a Monday. Uh and we certainly are not the first district to come up with this. We're stealing this idea from others. Uh but what we'd like to do on August 31st is have a jump start day. that day. Um, so that would be 4K only, 5K only, sixth grade only, and ninth grade only. We typically do that on the first day of school, which would
015be September 1, which is great. Uh, we've loved doing that, but then that that takes a day of instructional time away from the other students. Um, so there's there's some there's a lot of smartness to doing it on October 3 or excuse me, August 31st, uh, because we can also count that for summer school minutes. So, we'll have the students come then uh count it for summer school minutes. Staff can you still use that time to prepare their classrooms for the first day. Um so, we're proposing that change to the calendar. Uh and if we like it, we can do that uh moving forward. Probably one of the bigger uh things, the requested change or recommended change is the Thanksgiving week restructuring. So, um, I want to back up and say we use a calendar
016advisory committee for this whole process and all of the staff members that participated in that committee are listed on the on the uh, memo. Uh, had good discussions. We did three different surveys. We really wanted to get feedback from our staff that aligns well with our second wildly important goal, staff collaboration and leadership and growth. Um, so we really wanted to to make sure that we're we're we're hearing what people are wanting. Uh, what's interesting is when we had a calendar almost ready to go, we did some research uh on which days were the lowest attended days for calendars. As you can guess, a lot of times they're Fridays before breaks. Uh, but we noticed that to two days in Thanksgiving, that Thanksgiving week are historically really low attendance days. Well, there's a couple things
017to keep in mind. Uh, number one, you're losing instruction. Um, and if the teachers know that a lot of people are going to be gone, they might not do some new things, new instruction. Uh, and then the other piece is on a state report card, uh, we get dinged, um, when kids miss school, especially if they miss more than 10% of a year. So, we looked at that, brought it back to the staff with a winner take all survey, and the staff did choose the um the selection, the option that had a full week off for Thanksgiving. We will use the Monday of that Thanksgiving for professional learning day. Uh and that falls a nice time because typically we don't we've got a gap between professional learning days between October and January. So putting this
018one in uh Thanksgiving week on that Monday should really help that whole situation. So again, this is a first read. Um we want to bring back the second read on the January 12th school board meeting with requests for board approval. You've had a chance to look at the memo and look a chance look at the dates. So I'd be happy to entertain any questions that you have at this time. Have question? Go for it. Um, I have a couple questions I and comments. I did hear from two parents uh very much in favor of the full week at Thanksgiving. However, um I heard from two additional parents and I'm a third one that wondered since we have never had until this school year in about five to six years, we have never had school on
019the Monday and Tuesday before the major Christmas holiday. So, there is no real research um that if we do see significant absences for the same reason, um the calendar may want to be looked at. Um, and I don't know when we're going to approve this, but we certainly would have the research by the time this gets approved. And I don't know how difficult it is, but I did hear a lot of feedback about why we would not for this major holiday, but then I went back in my own calendar with my own kids and went, "Oh, because we really don't have a lot of data because we've always had the full week off of Christmas for at least five to six years." Um, that that's been the case. So there isn't really a lot of
020backing, but that would be one major feedback I would give is you may see the same for the same reason you might see significant absences on those Monday and Tuesdays um because it hasn't happened in a long time. And then the only other question I have is what's the definition of a flexible professional development day? Thank you. I I admitted that. So um this is an idea that other um districts have used as well. So a teaching a teaching contract is 187 days. We stick to 174 days for our our teaching amount of days. So you can see there there's there's 13 days different. Two of those days basically eight hoursish come with the professional with parent teacher conferences. So you have 11 days that you use for uh professional learning. Um what the flexible
021workday would be is the staff would have an opportunity to choose one of three days to um use that for their professional learning. And a lot of times we hear from staff that they need time to get their rooms ready at the beginning of the year. And sometimes that pushes into some of the things we want to do with the other professional learning days before the start of the year. Um so we have uh three options for staff that they can choose professional learning day. Uh there's one in August, uh there's one in November, and then there's one in June as well to make sure that they meet all the requirements of 187day uh teaching calendar. So, um they would have some flexibility in choosing that time and they'd still meet the requirements of the
022187day contract. So, again, an idea that we've stolen from other um other districts. You you have to we call it freedom within fences. You can't just say choose whenever you want. So, we gave them three specific dates to choose from. I think a good 80 to 90% will choose the August date. But if you for some reason have that that trip of a lifetime, you can't come in that August date. You certainly can come in November or you can even come in June as well. So, little bit of flexibility there. It is required that you have to work one of those days. Okay. And how many are mandatory professional development days? So 187 uh minus 174 minus 2 there's 11 PD days in a contract year. Okay. If you add them all up. Okay. Okay.
023And so they just will choose I mean I guess I'm I'm looking at the way that we get presented from the board what gets covered in those professional development days. So, are you just saying if somebody chooses not to go to that professional development day, then they'll get there's a tracking or they're going to not miss whatever professional development and take it on a different flex day or Yeah, a lot of the a lot of the professional development on that uh 24th is getting your room ready. Okay. Um you know, and just in planning and you know, setting everything ready for that first day, successful first day with students. Okay. And back to your first comment, we made a joke at the at our first committee. You know, we want to we want to start
024after Labor Day, end before Memorial Day, have two weeks of Christmas. You know, there so there's levers you have to pull. I'm not real excited about going to the 23rd this year. Um so we will be able to give you data uh by January 12th um on the attendance for the 21st, 22nd, and 23rd. Okay. Any other questions from the board? All right, that is a first reading. So, we'll come back to that at the next meeting. Next up is going to be the report of district and school report cards. So, you have all of the report cards um in public content. Um you also see the newspaper copy class one notice. Um and then um as well we um I've shared the 100 day uh plan that we're and the and the strengths, weaknesses,
025opportun opportunities, and threats of SWAT breakdown of our district report card as well. What I want to focus on tonight is the um it says district school report card report December 10th. And this is a memo that was put together uh by our director of teaching and learning, Mrs. Grundle, uh to go over all of the information um for that's been provided with uh the updates with our new report cards. Uh so you can see the uh the first uh her note, use caution when interpreting the scores due to a number of updates and factors. If you've been following the news, it there were new cut scores and also there is uh a new rating amount accountability score range for the different um scales as well. The highest you can receive is significantly exceeds expectations
026five stars. Then you have exceeds meets meets few and fails to meet which is a one star. Um so you can see the other scoring updates I want to point out um from Mrs. Grundle. Achievement scores for 2425 use two years of data. That's 232 24 and 2425. This reflects the transition to updated statewide assessment. The three-year approach, the first true time we'll see will be next year's report card 2526. Uh there's no 2324 scale adjustment. That means that they apply a one-year only scale adjustment to achievement scores to align them with 22 23 distributions. So this you know it's still a really important that we look at all the data but this report card uh is a hodgepodge of past years and starting a new trend with new cut scores and then uh 2C
027norming achievement and target group outcomes by growth distributions uh instead of achievement like it has been in the past by norming to growth instead of achievement. the three impacted priority scores of achievement, growth and target group outcomes have similar score distributions to each other making overall scaring scoring comparable and fair. Um so you can see that to repeat 2425 report cards represent a new baseline for report cards moving forward. Um so you can see all the data there um what's comparable to 2324 and what's not. you can see um you know the things that they've changed. One big change is there's no longer a deduction for not meeting the percentage of students that take the forward exam in the ACT. Um so you're seeing more and more districts because there's not that deduction for not
028uh reaching the I think it was a 95% threshold. uh you're seeing more and more districts have uh an increase of students that are opting out of either one of those tests. Um so you can see that that's be there 95% um participation rate. Uh and we met that um just looking at some of our neighbors. We had neighbors in the 80s, high 80s for example that did not meet that 95% threshold, but they no longer receive a major dis deduction on their scores. You can see the three third grade uh reading report reporting. Um that's act 20 as we're all aware. Um so we're really looking at third grade students meeting in advanced performance levels on the forward reading and the DLM. Um so that's for uh students with uh disabilities and then all
029significant disabilities and then the certain state and local violations reports. So that's new as well. that is like major crimes or violent crimes and we were that's a new data uh that's put on the report card as well. Uh so moving moving down you see our overall score uh is meets expectations for the districts 65.4 four. Um then you can see the high school meets few. One note on that um the high school score actually went up but the way that they set the delineation for what meets and what meets few is they raised that bar and so the high school did not hit the 60 um threshold for uh meets expectations. Uh middle school I want to point out they were a tenth of a way point of way. 71 would have been the
030next threshold of exceeds expectations. Um we've seen some um some good growth over the years of the middle school and you can see east score uh increase and then Sullivan is the our school that exceeds expectations. When we talk about kids we talk about the whole child. So this is a snapshot in time of how they did on those tests but it looks at their growth. It looks at their achievement and for the most part it looks at how they did on the Wisconsin forward exam high school of course that's the ACT. Um you can see over time from 22 23 23 24 and then 2425 um how each of the buildings uh have done as well. And then there's tons of information there as far as our district report card overview. You can see
031that score again the 65.4 for when we break things down, uh we look at uh at items and in some areas we've got some good achievement where we can generally speaking work across the district is our growth. Um and so there's a lot of different factors for the growth scores being not where we want them to be. I'm excited about the new ELLL. I know Mrs. grindled is too. So I can say this about the new ELA curriculum benchmark advance because that is based with science of reading um to help with that and it's giving our teachers the resources that they have a really solid resource that they can use uh in the classroom instead of kind of peacemailing things to uh fill the gaps from the the previous uh curricular resources uh did not
032have. Um so the district report card review I'm looking at V now the celebrations uh achievement above the state average in both ELA and mathematics the achievement so you can see that there uh and on track to graduation those are all scores higher than the state uh areas of growth again when it comes to something called value added you want to be 3.0 O or higher. And this uh slide, if you look at B, uh areas of growth, it really tells the story. English language arts, everything is below that 3.0 line. So that's a concern. That's something that we're working on, teachers are working on, principles are working on. And then you can see the mathematics in different areas. And this is a student group value added. Um we are hitting that 3.0 mark in
033certain areas. We want to hit that in all areas. One of the things about Jefferson that's really interesting with this value added um as there's a sliding scale for the report card based on the number of students who receive free and reduced lunch. So the higher number of students that you receive free and reduced lunch, the more the report card um values growth. If you didn't have any students with free and reduced lunch, it would be all about just student achievement. If you had tons of students on free and reduced lunch, it would be mostly about growth. So that's one thing that the state does. I would say in in some ways, this is my personal opinion, it's a it's a good attempt, but it's a failed model as well. they are really um looking
034at a kid differently based on whether they have free and reduced lunch in a district based on others. There's no there's there there no doubt that the most of the schools that have some of the highest scores there's a correlation correlation is not causation. There's a correlation between the number of free and reduced lunch students in that district and the report cards. to repeat that that doesn't mean that just because you're unfree and reduced lunch you're not going to do well on the test. I'm not saying that. But that is one of the things with value added that's the rules that we have to play by and those are the things that we really want to work hard on to make sure that kids do grow from year to year when they're taking that test.
035Okay. Uh looking at the targeting group. So the targeted group is it's it's important because we want to make sure that the gap between the targeted group and the non-targeted group is is minimized and that would mean that the targeted group the kids that need to grow the most that they're doing that growth. That's another thing that we're working on our administrative team and our teachers to make sure that we're uh doing our best with that. And then you can see the chronic absenteeism. um you want that score to be high um and and the higher the better when it comes to that score. So, we're making some making some uh steps in the right direction between our targeted group and our non-targeted group. Obvious statement to learn, you need to be at school. So,
036we're working with our uh parents and really making sure that we're showing how important it is to to have good attendance. Uh next steps then you can see C um a focus on ELA uh instruction for tier one. Tier one means universal instruction. That's what everyone is gets. Uh so we're really looking on that and I and I mentioned benchmark advance. Uh that's grades K through five. I've been in kindergarten classrooms where they're doing it. It's a different paradigm for teachers. So it is a big learning for them but we're doing it's the right steps. It's in the right direction. Uh, and then build on our tier 2 WIMLSS. What the heck is that? So that is Wisconsin multi-level systems of support. For example, if you are uh a little bit behind in reading, we
037have some interventions in place, strategic skillbased groups to help them catch up and close that gap between their uh non-targeted peers. So, we want to make sure that that that is in place u at all times. U so those are the those are the big things that we wanted to cover. Um, I will tell you that uh I can tell you that our our our principles are not never satisfied with their scores even when they're they're good. We're always looking for continuous improvement. I think there's some things that we can do in the future to make sure that our students with IEPs and our EL students are having access to high quality grade level instruction instead of being pulled out of the classroom. uh we want to minimize that as much as possible uh with
038co-eing and making sure that uh everyone our advanced learners, our students with IEPs and everyone in between has a really good quality core instruction. That's that tier one that we were talking about. And we're doing a lot of things uh to make sure with our scheduling and everything else to make sure that that that is the case. So um I covered that memo. I spoke for uh quite a bit. So I'd love to hear your questions or comments. Um, I have a question. What What's a What's the target group? I kind of looked around. What's the definition of a target group? So, the target group are the groups that are going to be in the the lower two, the minimal. They changed that. I'm trying to remember. It's like meets and not meets uh u
039instead of me than proficient and advance. So, the targeted group are the the students that aren't in the proficient range. So that's from the more that comes up from the student um scorecards then that those would be in that group. Yeah. Okay. So you're looking it's like uh so again it's it used to be meets not meets proficient and advanced. We're looking at all our proficient advanced students and then um those would be our targeted students. So those are the ones that you need the most growth out of because they're not meeting necessarily the grade level. um if there is such a thing the grade level uh benchmarks for essential learning for a child. So based on that scorecard then our growth that's even then. So target group and our non-target group are both getting
040a 47 which in ELA grow. Oh yeah that's the uh let's see what page am I on? Seven with the green the component scores. Am I reading that correctly? Yeah there's some there's some if you're looking at the mathematics you've got for example the 47. So that's a that's a good example of growth. Um if you want to look at achievement then where you have uh on the other side mathematic the t target target group is 27 and the non-target group is 84. You want to close that gap. Okay. Now there there's also something um it's just common sense that your target group most likely is going to be lower than your non-targeted group. I mean there's just some common sense there. But you want to close that gap as much as you want. And
041that's why growth is so important, especially if you're um if you're not meeting you're not proficient or advanced on on these tests. are are for the value added is is there more than just free and reduced lunches as a criteria for that? Yeah. So the the it's it's it's a balance of achievement and um so it says validated scores cover approximate 0 to six range. Higher scores mean positive impact. A score of 3.0 0 is average. Group size is shown in parenthesis. So, um, an average growth over a a school year is going to be a 3.0 or higher. So, we want to have all of those ranges a 3.0 or higher. When you're in the 4.0 range, that's a really good score. So, we're we're really looking for the 4.0 range for a lot
042of those. What I like about the the value added where you can really look you can break down the different groups uh as well uh you can look at Hispanic Latino you look at two or more races you look at econ economically disadvantaged that's the state report card terms for free reduced lunch basically uh and then you can see non-economically disadvantaged um so economically disadvantaged in English language arts actually that group does better than our non-economically disadvantaged whenever you see things like that that that points out that that's we want them both to do well, right? But that's a good sign that there's not really a gap between those two groups. Um, and then you can see the English learners and then the English proficient uh as well. So, we've got some good growth with
043our uh or we still want it to be above 3.0, but you can see the English learners are 2.3 when the English proficient is 2.0. Um to repeat, you want everything on the right side of the 3.0 value graded value added lines. But our value added score is different than a district with high economically disadvantaged free juice reduced lunch. It's also different than a district with very few. So that is a where it's hard to make an applesto apples comparison because that is based on a sliding scale uh for your value addit. So and that's the the brilliance of the people who developed the state report card that that was an important thing to do. Um value addit's been around for eight or nine years in the report card. Mine's kind of a silly question.
044How come there's all students you've got a different number that took ELA or that are in the ELA from the mathematics? Um, do you know why somebody would get graded in one and not the other under value added? It could have been um they were oh the eight number 892 896. Uh could have been a number of different things. Okay. Um could have been that they were absent that they didn't take the test. They moved away. Okay. Because you're doing the test. Different topics are on different days. Yeah. We usually I got it's in April. Um we want 100% of kids, but kids get sick, they move away. Makes sense. Okay. So four isn't a huge discrepancy, but it is a discrepancy. Okay. But it makes more sense then. So just from my chair um
045to repeat you know the principles are always looking to improve this um happy to say that I was at U Jefferson Middle School today and uh Mr. Madison and I were doing instructional rounds with the whole idea this 100 day plan to make sure we're looking at high lever strategies that can help us with the um the state report card. It's this it's this weird balance where it's not all about test taking. Uh it really is about a whole child. Uh but we want them to be we want everyone to be prepared uh to be a test taker because that's just a life skill that we need to teach um in school. So there's a lot of things that teachers can do um small things to prepare for the ACT to prepare for the Wisconsin
0464 exam. Maybe it's their bell work or their success starter at the start of class. That might be a question that emulates a question that might be on the Wisconsin and forward exam. And you don't just try to stop, drop, and do that in March. You do that all year long. You specially do it in January and February, March. Um, I'm a big fan of two phrases, appreciative inquiry and positive devian. So, we're going into classrooms and we're looking at what's what's really working well as far as student engagement uh and and doing those things that can make sure that our kids are ready for these tests. Necessary evil uh in the world that we live in. Any other questions from the board? All right. Next up is going to be the updated pair professional
0473 library media position description. This is a second reading. It is an action item tonight. Uh so we saw that at our last meeting. Any questions on that? Is there a motion to approve the updated paraprofessional 3 library media position description is presented? So moved. Second with a motion and a second. Any further discussion? All in favor of the motion say I. I. Any oppose say nay. And the motion passes. Next up under reports, we got Miss Krauss with the Sullivan Elementary good news report. Good evening everyone. I'm excited to be here to share some of the great things that are going on at Sullivan so far this year. It's only December, but we have a whole lot of things that we can share out and um share with you tonight. So, I want to
048start a little bit Oops. going off a little bit um of what Charlie had just talked about um with our school report card. We were exceeds expectations and our celebrations is that we were above the state in the ELA for growth. We were above the state in the ELA and math for achievement. Our third grade um was significantly higher score than the state. So, 89.2 versus the 64.7. So that was amazing and exciting to see as well. And then our chronic ab absentee pism rate is very low which is another improvement that we had from the previous year. Our growth some of the things that we want to continue to work on is that our math growth score is lower than our ELA and our math growth score is less than the state. Uh we
049noticed that this was a trend from the year before as well. some of the things that we are trying to do to move forward. Also knowing that we are taking um biting a lot off with our new ELA program, but we also know that we can't let math just fall through the cracks either. So, some of the things that we are working on um is we've worked with our math interventionist to really talk um and look into the data, talk about some of the professional development that she can provide, some of the tier 2 interventions that can happen within the classroom, and then some of the things that she's working on with students that she's working with um so that we can better support those those students. Um we also are going to be doing
050some math PD across the district through the elementary schools as well. Our academic goal which supports our district focus on reading achievement um is really it it's written similarly for the three elementary schools is that we want to increase student achievement on reading the state assessments which is the Wisconsin forward by about 4% um this coming year. Our action steps have a lot to do with our ELA program and all the science of reading training that we had um over the past few years. So you can see there's some things in there that we talk about using tier 2 words. Uh tier 2 words are words that require explicit instruction. So some examples might be to analyze, evaluate, predict, complex, those kinds of words that we want students to not only be hearing, but we
051would like to have them use in their vocabulary as well as they're talking. And so some of the things that we did is that we identified 10 words. Each teacher identified 10 words that they really wanted to focus on for trimester 1. And with those words, they're in the classroom so that they can point to them and talk to them and they're, you know, in in their sight so they remember that. But we're also, as we are co-planning for our ELA is that we're making sure that we include those words in um the the um lessons. So, what are some different things that the kids could turn and talk or if we have sentence stems, we can use those words so that we're, you know, getting the more exposure to those. And then that will
052change um at each trimester. So then we'll analyze all those words at the end of the year just to see how many words we covered. There was 101 that we could choose from that we had from the Cox campus which was the training that majority of the staff did. Our goal I don't know well how well you can see that but by the end of trimesters two and three 80% of our students will meet at least one self- selected goal for the school year. uh on here. I actually had to pull up my computer because I couldn't see it quite well either. So, we had uh we started off the first trimester that every class chose a goal that they could work on together. We wanted to make sure that they could build some routine
053and that they had the understanding of what what this was going to entail. And then what we just started is that students have individual folders and they are going to be self able to self- select a goal that they want to work on. So some of the examples um might be I will raise my hand so that everyone's voice can be heard. Another one is I will keep my materials organized so that I am ready for learning. We want the kids to understand why it's important and then we want them to be able to practice that. So as students are practicing that there's charts that they get to fill in that are all embedded in this folder and after they practice about 10 times they get to come down and we announce that they have
054that they've met their goal. They may not 100% have that goal, but practicing it and keeping that in their forefront. We know that that's something that that they're recognizing and the hope would be then that it would continue on and that it would be just become part of of what they're doing in the classroom. So kindness, this is one of our our big words that we're working on. Um really the message that we're getting across. Uh if you've heard this the last couple years, we've had the word that was respect. That was the big word we had two years ago. And then last year was integrity. And with these we also uh do a lot of turnin talks with um with students. So I will have a kindness quote of the day. And then sometimes
055it might be a turn and talk and tell someone next to you um what you're going to do to be kind today or it might have a sentence stem that just says please explain something that is kind. You know just getting the kids again some of that oral language but also getting them to recognize some of the kindness things things that are happening. um we're you know putting those things out. If we have um you know any issues we talk about kind what can we do to change those things. So it's it's it's down by our library. So we have our three words from the last three years that we're working on. There we go. And this one, our community garden, um our PAS group a few years ago um bought all of our garden
056supplies for us and we have a fence that's out there and we had flowers that went um a couple years ago. And this year, Mrs. Peterson worked with her her dad actually. Her dad is a master gardener and started all of our vegetables and fruit for us. And our students last spring planted and if you had a garden of your own, you know that this summer it was amazing. So, it could not have been any better for our students. We had parents and staff members that came out and volunteered to take care of it over the summer. They watered it. They pulled weeds. Um, and then as the vegetables were growing, they were allowed to just take those and take them home so they had them for their family as well. You can see that
057we have first graders there that they had quite a uh big load of things that they got to pull off. We also then brought that in. We cut everything up so that all of our students got to have some food from the garden if they wanted to do that during lunch. And we had some fruit that they got to try. They also then uh went and cleaned everything up. So, they pulled all the plants out and got everything ready. And um Mrs. Peterson's dad is on board to help us again in the spring. So, it was it's it's pretty exciting. We're also going to do an additional bed so that we can grow watermelon. So, our annual fund run, I've spoke before that we have a very strong parent group um out there. And so,
058the fund run is our big fundraiser that we have. It's always a great event. We do it during the day so that all students can participate. Our parent group um buys t-shirts for all of our students. U Mr. Wickman is very generous to us and allows Mr. Isacson to come out um the PE teacher at East and he does the DJ for us all day long. So the the kids love that and he plays different music and they get to run around for that. Uh some other things that our PAZ group does also is um different assemblies, movie nights, um we have a Santi event that's coming up actually on Friday. Um and staff meals, gifts, and and a lot of other things that they do for us with our fun run this year. Uh
059if we make a certain goal, they like to do something for us. Last year we had a a med m med scientist I think is what it was called came in for an assembly and this year we did wildlife in need. Wildlife in need is um out in the dousemana area and they came and did a presentation for us. They talk about the different animals that they take in that they they help so that if they're injured and and things and hopefully get them back into the wild which doesn't always happen. And then I just wanted to also highlight Mrs. Vocal. She's a big part of our fun run and she always does PE teacher for a day. So we have all of our students names go in and we choose one um K through
0602 grade student and then another one from 3 through 5. So we have Matthew and Ella who were gym or PE teacher for the day. So you can see that they're leading some exercises and they get to choose the activities that the students do that day. There we go. Uh, Playworks. This is the second year that we've had Playworks out at Sullivan. So, it helps Playworks helps kids to stay active and build valuable skills through play. They really focus on conflict resolution, leadership skills, and academic success. One of the biggest things that we have noticed is the conflict resolution. That seems to be great. We can talk about the deal wheel. we can do ro shambo which is like rock paper scissors um to work out some of the conflicts if there's games that are
061going on and then a lot of different games that are taught. Uh this year we had teachers that for an example if I had recess duty on Tuesday I picked a game on Tuesday and I would lead that game and our junior coaches would come and assist with that with the idea that come spring since we have all the snow that some of those junior coaches would be able to lead some of those games as well. We wanted to kind of have that gradual release where they could do some of that as well. We had so many leaders this year it was really hard to decide and so we created these morning manager position. So these students get to come in the morning and they put on the the purple light works vests and they
062come out and they help students get where they need to go in the morning. They might walk, you know, stu uh 4K students to the back um and just work with kids and again if there's conflict resolution. So it's just a little added leadership that we had for those students opportunity. Dogs and vest program. I don't know if I was not familiar with this exact program. Uh Mrs. Shelley is our reading teacher at Sullivan and she actually works with dogs and vest and does some training. Her dog Cleo is trained and so about once a week she brings a dog in for the students to be able to read with and snuggle with and and enjoy. Um, so some of the benefits that they talk about is that it may improve reading abilities, makes kids
063comfortable, improves attitudes towards reading, and helps build self-confidence. We don't have hard data on that, but I think that Mrs. Snell could tell you many, many stories about the students just really there, you could see their bodies relaxing. They're lifting up the dog's ears, whisper reading to them, they start to read more fluently. So, we've just noticed that it's been a huge benefit. The entire school is very, very excited when one of the dogs come. Um, and I just really would like to point out the deep thought. Um, the first one especially thoughts from first and second graders about liking dog visits because the first grader said that when she was young that she got to read a book and snuggle a dog. So, I thought all of them were cute, but I thought a
064first grader being young was was just a cute little quote. Oops. I think might need batteries. There we go. Uh in November, we had an author visit. We were lucky enough to have our reading teachers across across the district along with Miles Alley um reach out to Samira Alvarez. She is a bilingual author. She came to all of the elementary schools. She was absolutely fantastic. Uh her message was a lot about mindfulness and breathing and being calm. She shared her life story which was very interesting. She was very captivating. She kept those kids going and moving and she was she was wonderful. So it was fantastic to have her. I don't know how many. There we go. And then some of the things that just happen around um the school, some of the same things.
065Our Halloween parade, fifth grade basketball, first grade does turkey centers every year. Second grade uh pie making. You can see some pictures in there. Mrs. Shelley and Mrs. Langanger have that down to a science. I think the kids are measuring and they're mixing and stirring and cracking eggs and washing dishes and making pies. Uh they bake them on one day and the next day they deliver them and all the kids make cards uh thank you cards. Um it's obviously Thanksgiving um and they pass it out to the staff. And then we have birthday lunches uh about about every other month that we have birthday lunches with me. fire station visit, dress days, STEM, uh third and fourth grade I have are after school. We have STEM monthly STEM ones that are schoolwide, all school rewards,
066music concerts, Battle of the Books. There's a few that I forgot to add on here. Student council, and our annual food drive, which is also starting now. So, that's what I have to share about Solomon. Any questions? Uh yeah, I've got a couple and more of definitions in the uh I think it was one of the first slides. What is math PD? Professional development. So we would have some math professional development. So just different ways that we could work on math skills. What would be best ways to reach students to to build their skills? Okay, that's for staff to work on to come up with ideas for kids. Okay. And then um you also are using the word trimester in I guess I've not heard that like related to a school year. What is a
067trimester? So elementary goes by trimesters instead of quarters. So we just finished our tr first trimester. So we just finished it. We sent uh report cards home on Monday. And so now we're in our second trimester which goes until March right around there. And then so we just are broken into three instead of by quarters. Okay. All right. Any other questions from the board? All right. Thank you very much. Thank you. And then next report is going to be superintendent report with Dr. Ernes. Thank you. As Jason's setting this up, I want a chance to I I was a principal for 20 years and proficient advance is stuck in my brain and I had to look up the new cuts. It's called uh advance, meeting, approaching and developing. Those are the four categories now. So,
068we're looking for meeting and advance is the is the two lumps that we want uh every kid to be in. Um, so, uh, last week when we were preparing for the, uh, school board, um, I thought it would be a good idea just to remind everyone of our procedures and routines and protocols and expectations for school delays and closures. So, I put this together last week. I didn't know that this morning was going to be a lot of fun. Um so whenever I do a report it's good to remind ourselves of our mission, our vision, our commitments and then of course uh our our pillars um as far as student engagement, community through partnerships, staff growth and leadership and then improving services and operations and of course our wildly important goals as well. That's student
069achievement and then collaboration lo grow growth uh and leadership as well. So winter weather preparedness and communication. So, just to review with everyone what we do. This is as much for the board as it is the public. Uh, and we make sure that we're getting all that out to parents as well. We really have a a fantastic web page with all this information on too. So, you can see the decision- making uh information there. Um, you know, the buck does stop with me, both good, bad, and everything in between. But we monitor weather weather patterns. This morning, for example, I was on a National Weather Service webinar at 3:45 a.m. That partnership is invaluable because they send emails, they do a webinar, they cover a large area, so you have to hone in and be
070real specific about what's going to happen with your district. Uh, but we also consult with uh Delman. So, Caroline uh Courtney, who you've met before, uh she's on speed dial in the morning when I talk to her. Um and then this morning for example uh was a go and then also talking to Tim uh graph from whatever necessary as well. Here's where the where things get tough. You really need to make a decision by 6 a.m. Uh after 6:00 a.m. buses are rolling everything else. So that's uh this morning is a great example of the quote unquote perfect storm as far as uh when things intensified. This is our schoolboard policy as far as a school day and school closure. We're really looking at weather conditions, uh, driving conditions, and then actual occurrence or imminent
071possibility of emergency communication. We do a nice job with this, I believe. We send out bright yellow arrow messages when we close school. Everything's on our district web page. We've got a new popup banner that will show there uh if we're to be delayed or cancelled. And then social media and then our local media as well. You can go on channel 3000, channel 27, the website, the app, everything in between to find out if we're closed or delayed if you didn't catch the message. Um, here's the main thing that we have to make sure that we communicate with with students, staff, parents, etc. Uh, we're really looking at a warning designation which helps us make many of the decisions. Isn't just Jefferson, it's other districts as well. A winter storm warning. So you you can
072see some of the criteria there. 7 in in 12 hours or less, 9 in in more than 24 hours, covering at least 50% of the zone. And then they use a midpoint as well. When it comes to ice, they're really looking at a half inch of ice or more uh for at least 50% of the zone. That's what will trigger the National Weather Service to issue a warning. And a warning is is a big deal. That's a that's a red flag for any district that that's looking at uh cancelling or delaying school. When it comes to extreme cold, remember we used to say windchill warnings. They changed that in 2024. Now it's called an extreme cold warning. Uh I think this is interesting. There's two thresholds. They they vary by location. Uh if you're in
073the western or northern c counties, it's minus 35. our area we're minus 30. I'll let you fill in the blanks whatever that you think that means about the people from Hayward. My wife's from Hayward. Um so uh this weekend for a lot for example we'll probably have it on Sunday but we're I mean it's going to be cold on Sunday. It's like on minus 11 without the windchill. So we'll probably hit that extreme cold warning on Sunday. Of course you can imagine all the things that happen with an extreme cold warning. you're working worrying about uh kids walking to school because we do got a lot of kids dropped off, but we do have kids that walk to school as well. Uh two-hour delay. Um you know, I I'm I'm I listen, I'm I'm tough,
074but I got I have broad shoulders, too, if I if I get second guessed on things like today. I was over at the middle school this morning uh doing that those instruction rounds with Mr. uh Madison, and you you can uh you could sense the unpleasantness with me with some of the middle school students. uh for this morning. Uh but in the event of a 2-hour delay, all pickup and start times are just delayed by two hours. We keep it real simple. A lot of the schools do run a special schedule for 2-hour delay. They don't have to. There's no uh morning uh 4K or early childhood classes. Uh but the PM and the afternoon early child classes do run as scheduled on those delays. And then the school dismissal times uh run a normal
075schedule. One of the things I don't have on the slides, early dismissal is really a hassle. We have done it in the past. We try not to, but those are the types of things that can cause disruptions in a day if we have to dismiss early. And when that happens, it's usually a curveball that people have not seen with the weather forecast. And then makeup days, we do have a buffer of instructional days uh in our minutes because we do have 174 days, but as at a certain point just for academic achievement and then also to uh to fulfill a teacher contract, we will um add for either extra time in a day or extra days in in the calendar to make up the time miss if we get to that. And we are on
076I believe it's a len this year. So we're looking at a wet weather. Um, I was watching the news the other night and they were showing a plow company. They we already have more snow this year than all of last year and it's not even technically winter yet. So, uh, when necessary, uh, you drive the roads. I was on the roads this morning at 4:45, uh, a.m. We factor in road conditions primarily, uh, in no particular order, but we have to look at buses first because they roll. Of course, we know that there are student drivers out there. There are parents and there are staff members as well. Um, I did mention that we have a lot of our information on the web. We sent out a bright arrow to parents to say, "Hey, check
077this out." What it really comes down to is yes, we make the overall decision to delay or cancel school in inclement weather situations. But people have self- agency. If you do not think that you can arrive or get to school safely, that's when you as a parent have to make that decision. You contact school uh in the right circumstances. I'm not given a blanket statement here. In the right circumstances, principles can administrate a administratively excuse a child for that day if there was a hardship due to the weather uh coming to school. So, um wanted to do this, haven't done this in a while. I wanted to make sure that I I did it both publicly and for the board. And I certainly want to answer any questions that you have this evening. Questions from
078the board. This will be far left field, so bear with me. Um, do we track like attendance on inclement weather days even when we don't close school? But like today, a lot of students drive here and it it's real easy to just call in sick and not drive for safety reasons. But do we have like historical data on days where we have poor weather like what our attendance looks like? Yeah, we we can we can track that. We do track that. It's it's all different because certainly, you know, when you when you like today's a pun excuse uh please a perfect storm. when you cancelled activities last night, a lot of people just assume, well, you're going to be canceled the next day. You get people in a mindset and then it was bad roads
079this morning. Uh we'll look at today's attendance, for example. Um there is that that give and take. Um where you have to also think of there if we would have canceled school, there are parents that still need to go to work and there's there's all those safety concerns as well. So yeah, we do track and we look at the attendance on those days as well. Yeah, I'd be interested to see what like your high school attendance is compared to the lower grades because a lot of the lower grades, they're busing. So, it's like the bus is the bus. But even looking at the data, the report card, the you know, chronic absenteeism at the high school level is pretty high. You know, even though they're graduating, they're still missing a lot of school. So, I
080would just be more interested to see if any of that data correlates to weather or anything else. Yeah, we we've got a couple days in our back pocket that we can cancel, but just because that's that doesn't make our or break our decision. Yeah. If we had to have 10 snow days because we had 10 snow days, we we'd have it. Um so, but and and I want to make sure that people hear that as well. So, we're not making decisions based on we're trying to bank a snow day for for January, but yeah, we do look at that attendance data. Yeah. Thanks. On a lighter note, what was the percentage of dirty looks you got? Well, I was in the classroom. We did a circle activity where that was uh to talk about how
081the weather affected you and I got to participate in that. I didn't they didn't feel sorry for me when I said that I was up at 3:45 watching the webinar and driving the roads. Um but they just wanted a day off. So, and I and I don't blame them. So, All right. Well, thank you very much. Next, under finance and operations, we're going to be looking at the certification and written evaluation of required school safety drills for state statute 118.07 parents 4E. Um, that is the report there. Uh we I'll have copies of those. Dr. Ernest, were you gonna add more to this? Just a quick comment. Uh this shows a partnership with our police department and our sheriff's department and also the seriousness at which our our principles take school safety running those drills,
082making sure that we uh do the safety walks with uh both our SRO in Jefferson and our sheriff uh deputy in Sullivan. and they give us feedback. Um, a couple years ago we took out some bushes because they said that that could be an area where people could hide. So, check the doors, look at everything. Just like fire inspections, uh, the safety inspe inspections yearly are a very important uh item. Um, we were able to practice the reunification plan at one of our professional learning days. And then so you can see the various uh drills that the principles uh were able to hold with their staff and students to check the boxes for this uh requirement every year. Any questions from the board on that? Is there a motion to certify the 202526 written evaluations
083of the school district safety drills conducted as required by Wisconsin statutes 118.07 parents foreign as presented. So moved. Second motion and second. Any further discussion? All in favor of the motion say I. I. Any oppose? Say nay. And the motion passes. Next up is going to be future agenda topics. Any suggestions or feedback there? Then we'll get into um president superintendent announcements. I don't have anything. Uh Dr. Rice, uh a couple things. Uh, every year our certified staff members must vote uh to decide whether they're going to reertify the union or not. And it needs at least 51%. Um, just received information from the elections commission that we did, our union, the JA did vote to reertify 91 of 143 members. So, we have a good working relationship with our JA. So congratulations to them.
084Um so we'll we'll make sure that we get all that filed with the state correctly. And then uh we meet on this Wednesday once in December because there's lots of holiday concerts that have either happened or are scheduled. You know that Sullivan is tomorrow night. Um we had a packed house at the middle school band and choir concert last week. That was a lot of fun. Uh kudos to our uh high school band on Monday. And then of course uh west and east yesterday. And so um to repeat the concert season's one of the reasons why we hold uh the single December meeting. Uh busy time, but it's fun to see our musical talent on full display. All right. And then with that, is there a motion to convene into close session pursuant to Wisconsin
085statutes 19.85? 85 parents 1, C, and F to discuss certified staff members on performance improvement plans, contracts for administrators and directors, and the midyear evaluation of the superintendent. So move second. Motion in a second. Can we have a roll call vote, please? Mr. Condan, yes. Mrs. Fox, yes. Mr. Eel, yes. Mrs. Mcwill, yes. Mr. Nobling. Yes. Mr. Peltier. Yes. Mrs. Winkman. Yes.