06/09/2025 - Board Meeting

001leading to the school district Jefferson Board of Education. Start off with the pledge of allegiance and I allegiance to the flag of the United States of America to the republic for it stands nationy and justice [Applause] First, here next up will be on Rick. commissions. We'll start off with JHS theater, Mr. Carson. Hello there. I'm honored to be here once again to recognize our our students and staff who were recognized with Jerry award nominations. Um taking this our eighth year of doing the Jerry Awards and um we've had quite a few nominations over the years and this year we were nominated for eight individual awards. Um those awards are outstanding orchestra uh which is Gonzalez cleared Anthony Shaward Missoff and Mr. Outstanding lead performances by and outstanding supporting performance Landon Alvarado. Outstanding stage crew Amanda

002Stella Stella Price Caesar East Hansen Hans Nathan Harmon and Kim Patter outstanding musical direction outing design and outstanding costume design and then we did have one cherry award this year and just students and staff. So, if you want to come up, we've got certificates here for you. Are we getting a photo everybody? kind of behind that Awesome. Thank you. Next up recognition is going to be for wins and so we're recognizing Greg for baseball and Jeff for softball tonight. As it turns out, they're both busy coaches. Jeff has a great softball team is going to say they're the number one seed. So remember on Friday and then coach is getting ready for a game tonight. We want to make sure that we publicly recognize that amount. So 400 wins a quick takes an average of

00316 wins per year over 25 years and we have to coach those. So Mr. teacher at Jefferson and Mr. Jefferson as well. Most of his wins do come [Music] from other congratulations to those concludes recogitions. Welcome to stick around for the rest of the meeting, but we're going to get into the fun stuff now. Agenda meeting consists of both the open session from May 27th includes new employments of MG and this could be separated out into a separate motion. However, is there a motion to approve move. Second. Motion and second. Any further discussion? All in favor of the consent agenda say I say pass. Next up is going to be our reports. First one is going to be the staff school survey. I haven't seen anything yet. Perfect. Superintendent. So I have a number of

004attachments. Thank you. I have a number of attachments uh for just your information. So um you may have heard the term millionaire n I l this uh came about years ago where high school students were high school students started benefit notes here. This really can be traced back to the class lawsuit that is should the college athletes be paid that happened a long time ago if you play any football games especially with NCAA version of that that's where we started from display so it is a rule it's been for a few years now at the college different states and has laws knowing that so Wisconsin joined recently 40 other states and if you [Music] remember what you're doing with kudos to Mark Peterson our athletic director. He was proactive from this from the day that

005it dropped. We have a website that gives you all the information that you need to know as a student and so um the website you click on there's a yes no chart with compliance attached as well. The main is let's just use an example. Let's say we have a fantastic uh I'm sorry about that. Let's say we have a fantastic baseball player. He's a senior. Um just for our example, he he is 18 years old. Probably going to go in the major league draft. This is extreme example, right? Well, he could sell his name, image, and likeness to a car dealership for money or a free car. The main thing is uh this individual by our example could not be wearing a Jefferson baseball hat or or um uniform in that. So if you've ever

006seen the commercials where a Green Bay made a hacker may be wearing a green and white jersey, you're like, "Wait a second, that's just a little bit off." Uh that's a similar example. So NIL is here to uh it's it's brand new in Wisconsin. It will affect the 25 26 seasons. Um what what Mark Peterson has done is he's sent out the information and created that website with the help of uh Valerie Schmidt to make sure that we really educate people on this. Um will there be people pushing the envelope on this next year? You can almost guarantee it. Um but NIL is is something that you'll read about in the paper. You see um the updates on it as we go. Uh as as I mentioned um Mr. Peterson actually put together a summer

007contact letter attached a copy of that there too. Uh summer coaching contact so our students know what can be expected in the summer as well. It's a little bit separate from NIL but there's WIA rules around that as well. So uh the 24 clock is not here yet but that will come to Wisconsin NIL. We're about the 40th state out of 50 states that have that now in place. So, we'll keep you updated on on that. Right now, I can't think of any student that has this in place in Jefferson, but you can imagine um the football season, the volleyball season, cross country season coming up, we'll start to read about um students or even see commercials on TV with high school students with their owning and benefiting from their name image. happy to pause

008or answer any questions that you may have. Any questions from the board? That's everything. That's That's everything. Oh, the other thing that I uh put on there and and I'm I'm stealing my thunder, but I did update the uh the scoreboard and I'm not stealing my thunder. I'm stealing uh Ralph's thunder. Uh I did update the scoreboard with the um the composits that we use for engagement support staff experience. So you can click on that attachment and see our 2425 uh increases from the baseline that we established in 23 24. So how's that for a segue Dr. Demuse? Cool. Thanks. Uh let me get up my screen here. Hang on just a minute. We're missing some audio on our end. Sure. and Rob can benefit from his own convention like myself. All right. I know

009that. I would take advantage of that. All right. All set. Cool. All right. So, as you just heard, um I'm Rob from School Perceptions. Uh we're going to go through your staff and parent data tonight. Um, right away I want to go through just some, I guess, different ways to pay attention to different slides. Uh, we're not going to spend hardly any time on the background slides. Um, we'll spend a little bit of time on the yellow slides. Those are who took your survey, when the survey went out, when it closed, that kind of thing. Um, nearly all of our time will be presented on green slides. That's the results and analysis. And then we'll leave some time as we go for wrap-up and questions, but please interrupt me as we go if you think

010of something. Um certainly not uh not opposed to being interrupted if you have questions along the way. Um this is not the first time we've worked together. Uh we did a couple referendum surveys for Jefferson in the past. We've obviously done these types of surveys, your your adult engagement surveys a couple of times in the past. So I'm not going to spend too much time on this slide introducing ourselves. Um but again, my name is Rob and and by all means, uh let me know what we run into along the way. So let's start with staff. Put your staff hat on for just a moment. Um, your staff survey closed up around that third week of April, April 23rd to be exact, with 210 respondents. Um, your participation rate ended up at 61% so hovering

011around 2/3 of staff that took it. Um, that's about as average as average gets. Normal is about 60 to 75% depending on the size of the district. So, you're right in that normal zone of the percentage of staff that took it. So, in other words, you got more than enough data to be able to extrapolate feelings districtwide. And we are begin again we are going to begin with um maybe something related to those scorecards that you just heard. These are the indexes. Indexes are designed to provide educational leaders such as yourselves with a snapshot of the results. So it's kind of that 30,000 foot view. Um many districts do exactly what what you did kind of these scorecards. Districts choose to build strategic planning around these and kind of treat them as readymade quantifiable pillars.

012Um, regardless of how you use them though, bear in mind the scale here. Um, can't get worse than a one, can't get better than a five. So, you got to be somewhere in that range. The higher the better. Um, in fact, as we go, there are no questions that are reverse coded. There there's none of them where you'd want to have a lower score. Um, throughout this entire analysis, the higher the better. Um, I'll probably mention this a couple of times, but bear in mind halfway between then one and five is three. So oftentimes when I try to get my hands dirty with the data for the very first time, that's how I'll eyeball it. Are you above and below three, anything where you're above three, you're on the side of the fence that you

013want to be on. That's the goal to be above three. Um, so what you're going to see much of going forward is where you are now, where you were before the change, and then how you stack up against a pool of other districts that look like you. So let's start with the top which is that summary data for the staff for your staff indexes which are fed by key questions throughout the survey. The first is academics. We are effective in teaching and supporting our students. Two, engagement. I like working at this school because I'm valued, heard, and can contribute. Support is defined as I have the support I need to help educate our students and work as a team. And then staff have a have a kind of a birectional lens here. They can talk

014about the perception of the kiddos in their room and they can talk about the perception of staff and other staff members among them. Um so the student experience students are accepted, respected and supported at school. And then finally the same definition but for staff. So few observations here. One across the board staff in aggregate are leaning towards agreement on all of these i.e. None of them are below below three. All of them are leaning towards agreement above 3.00. So just eyeballing it, that's a great place to start. The other strong celebration, and you're going to hear me say this many times tonight, you got a lot of data to celebrate this evening. You are up across the board for these indexes. Every one of these improved on a year-over-year basis compared to where you were

015before, including strong growth in the staff experience. are up nearly 5% in terms of how staff feel they are accepted, respected, and supported at school. But strong pattern here. No matter where you were this year, no matter where you are, you're outpacing where you were one year ago when I presented this data. So that's awesome. Um 3.4% growth in that academic index, 3.2% growth in staff engagement, about 2% growth in staff support, and 1.3% growth in the student experience. If you compare the far lefthand number column with the far right hand number column, another piece of good news here is you are outperforming all of your comparison districts as well. So we put you in a similar pool of districts over the past few years that have similar demographics. Whether it's green reduced price lunch,

016your enrollments, your staff student ratios. So we say what are other districts that are similar to Jefferson? What's a normal score for other districts? What's a what's what's a what's a score for you? But you are above um your comparison pool. you're outperforming not only where you were last year, but other districts that look like you. Let's though dig in a bit deeper and look at some of those questions that feed those indexes that I just had up on the screen. So now these are questions that staff themselves saw, but the scale is exactly the same. Can't get worse than a one, can't get better than a five. Where are the items that are the highest scoring for your staff? So top to bottom, we made a list. What's at the top? What's at the

017bottom? Number one score from your staff. Kind of in that strongly agree range here. I feel safe at work. At a score of 4.29, I have healthy working relationships with my co-workers, followed closely by our staff does a good job of educating our students. In fourth place, most days I look forward to going to work. And finally, I have access to the technology support that I need. Um, couple of notes about these. So, we'll often do this kind of analysis for for a district, especially when we're looking at this from a 30,000 foot view, and just say, well, where are you performing the best? Where are you performing the worst? Typically, when we say though, what are the five highest scores? It's not common to see all of those scores north of four. So, you're

018in a great place here with just how many raw scores you have that are kind of in that green to strongly agree range. So, that's a great data point here. Um, the other things that I would say are really strong is that, you know, we like to think that every single question in our survey is important or we wouldn't ask it. That being said, there are some questions that are a little bit more important than others. So, what you're seeing here, I I'm happy that the scores that are in your top five, I'm happy that those are the questions that are there. In other words, if staff don't feel safe at work, if they don't get along with one another, if they don't feel effective in their job and teaching students, and they don't look

019forward to going to work, it's really hard to make progress on anything else that is not going as well as these. So, what really excites me about this data is some of those pieces that you have to have in place, some of those hurdles that you have to clear to mix my metaphors here, you're there, right? So, I really want to strongly celebrate that some of those things you got to have in place, you're achieving there in Jefferson. But when you make a list, you got something at the top, you got something at the bottom. So, let's flip that coin over. What we're seeing is that even when we look at the lowest scoring items for Jefferson, the good news here is that four of these five items are still leaning towards agreement. Now, I'm

020not going to minimize the fact that your staff is telling you that they want help in these areas. This is the lowest scoring items, but I will say that you're starting from a strong position and that even the lowest scoring items are leaning towards agreement save one. Couple thoughts about these. The lowest scoring item is the district's pay practices are fair. So that's in aggregate leaning towards disagreement. U there are a few of these that go together. Our staff handle student discipline in a consistent manner. the discipline practices and policies being effective and the social emotional needs of all students are being met which are rows one, three and four here. Those will go together. So the more that students feel socially and emotionally accepted and respected at school, the fewer discipline problems teachers will

021run into in their classrooms. Um, another way to contextualize this, by the way, is that I can't tell you in in God, I can't tell you the last time that I made a report here and didn't have discipline at the bottom. It doesn't matter what state we work in, doesn't matter what year after 2021 we're talking about, doesn't matter how rural or urban or poor or rich, doesn't matter where you are. We could probably make a template here and put discipline at the bottom. So, I don't know if that makes you feel better or worse, but if you got the secret here, there's about 14,200 districts that want the secret because everybody is struggling with that. So, your your staff here is very similar to other staffs that we that we work with and that

022we see. And that discipline is really something that they want help with, especially with those younger grades that maybe just didn't have the same sort of socialization tools coming out of the pandemic. Because you've done the survey more than once, you have the benefit of longitudinal data here. So this is you compared to where you were last year. Couple thoughts about this. So one, staff feel like they're in a much better place with their workload. You're up nearly 12% in terms of the amount of work I'm asked to do is reasonable or manageable. Any growth is good. That's probably an obvious statement, but the the magnitude of your growth here is not good or is not normal in a very good way. So normally when we see growth, you know, if there is growth, maybe

023two, three, four percent. Um so you're seeing growth that is much more growth than a normal growth slide. Um getting in the double digits is not normal and you've achieved that here with workload. You're up nearly 10% in terms of staff perception of how parents and community support the school district. Here another good data point is your staff feel like discipline is handled in a more consistent manner. So, yes, it's one of the lower scoring items, but you're moving the ball down the field. You're up over 8% year-over-year in terms of that item. Staff also feel much more comfortable sharing input and concerns with their supervisor or administrator, and they feel more supported by their supervisor or administrator when they make a decision. So, I I think some of those are probably going to be

024related to discipline as well, especially when the support when they make a decision. um but they're really feeling much more satisfied in terms of support whether e whether it's external from the parents and the community or whether it's internal support from their boss there. So, strong growth on many items here. Then you got some slight declines. Again, once we make a list, biggest growth to least growth. Um, some of these I don't want to minimize, but you know, 0.5% growth, that's a decline of about 300s of a point. So, the first two, yes, there was a slight decline, but it's pretty much where you were last year. And I don't the problem in air quotes with the first one is I have the technology I need to do my job well was already scoring really

025high. So basically you went from a high A to a slightly higher A. So I'm not really all that concerned about technology and job well because the score was already pretty high. Um I have training and support to work with students from different backgrounds about a decline of 1% there. Um staff are looking for more targeted opportunities for training or PD. Um also related feedback here. You can tell it's kind of a theme um on this particular slide. In the last year I received useful feedback to help improve my work declined by about three and a half%. And then the district's pay practices are fair which you saw is also the the lowest scoring aggreate item for staff is down by approximately excuse me 8% year-over-year. We also asked a couple of questions new for

026this year. So, if you're a parent on the board, um you hopefully already saw this already. Um it was a school configuration section. So, what this did, and by the way, the staff and parents saw the exact same questions here. Um but we did a little history lesson. You know, in 2022, majority of voters supported a capital referendum. Um and during that process, the Jefferson community also voiced a desire to keep East Elementary open. um thanks to that voter and resident support um currently going through the process of updating your buildings and those projects are coming in on time and under budget but your planning basically never stops. So as you're exploring ways to better serve your students in the future, you also have an eye on efficiency and one of those options is grade

027reconfiguration within the elementary schools in the city of Jefferson itself. So one thing that you're exploring is east serving grades 4K to2 west 3 to five and then your middle and high schools not changing and and nor would Sullivan as well. Sullivan would remain 4K to 5. So this question oh we also had a graphic here. What is the current configuration of your schools? What would the potential configuration be? Should you continue to explore this? And then why now? because you're always looking for more um better ways to provide high quality programs and services and declining enrollment which is not a Jefferson thing. Um 73% so roughly threequarters of districts across Wisconsin have fewer students than they did 15 years ago. So in the future um grade reconfiguration could allow the school district of Jefferson

028um could allow you to staff buildings a little bit more efficiently and you may not need the same number of classes or sections at each grade level as you may now. So, you're kind of in the fork of the road here before you move any further. Um, you need to know what potential changes would align with your resident's priorities and your mission, vision, and commitments. Um, sounds like this was not the first time that this had come up. So, we also linked to a few things in your board docs um where more information could be found. So, this was also a hyperlink in the survey. Then we got to the question. It read, "Should the district should the school district of Jefferson continue exploring grade reconfiguration?" So again, this is staff here. So yes, 43%

029continue to explore. But onethird, 32% specifically of staff said no. 13% not sure. And 12% just kind of shrugged and said, "I really don't. It has no bearing, no preference. I really don't care in that case." 12%. So not quite a majority. We can call it a plurality. Yes. but not necessarily above 50%. Um, one thing that I was kind of curious about is um, just when I was preparing for the meeting, I I thought, well, what if I take out the no preference folks? Not because they're not important, but I thought, well, of the people that have an opinion, yes, no, or not sure. Um, if you remove the no preference, you get to a split of 49, 36 for yes, no. So, still not quite a majority. Um, but as you move down

030this path, I would say the only way that you're not sure go down are with more information. So, I guess my takeaway here is that yes, beat no in terms of staff with your permission to continue exploring grade reconfiguration. We also had a communications section for staff. Overall, how would you rate communications from the district? You're up here, too. you're up to the tune of 8.5% relative to where you were last year. So this was on a one to four scale uh poor to great. So you were at a 2.7 last year, you're at a 2.93 this year. Um you can definitely tell that between the good and the great threequarters of your staff are rating you good or great on this particular metric. So you're going to hear me say this a lot. You

031definitely see a lot of metrics up this year relative to where you were last year. What about overall satisfaction for your staff? Here again we're stepping away from that agreement scale. This is a rating scale. It was an evaluative scale. So here one to four again can't get worse than a one. Can't get better than a four. So middle of the scale here is 2.5. We ask staff to rate the district in four areas. How you're doing in keeping the public informed. How well you're managing funds. Building pride in the community. and the extent to which the district is delivering a high quality education. Really strong growth in terms of keeping the public informed. 2.58 in spring 24 to 2.90 now 12.4%. Also massive growth in terms of managing funds appropriately. Um 2.45 to 2.60

032stayed very similar in terms of building pride in the community. Um down by just a hair, 2.94 to 2.92. And then finally down by approximately 2% delivering a high quality education. And there you're exactly on par with your comparison districts. Slightly below on some of these other items um but there you're exactly matching your comparison pool 3.06 to 3.06. Finally then for staff we have the overall satisfaction question. On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely would you be to recommend the district to a friend or family member? This is kind of our version of a net promoter score. And we ask this because this is a strong marker of staff retention. So in spring 2024, your staff gave you a score of 7.14. You moved up. You're up 6.3% this year to a

033score of 7.59. Um so outperforming where you were in the past. The other way I like to look at this um data here is by summing up your tens, your nines, and your eights. So when you do that, 25 and 24 is 49 plus another 10 is 59. So about six and 10 of your staff gave you an eight, a nine or a 10. Now the reason I do that is the research behind this question suggests that any um any person who's an eight, a nine or a 10 will act as an ambassador on your behalf. In other words, the research behind this question suggests that anybody who's an ambassador will will strike up a conversation. They're the con conversation initiators. They will talk to the folks behind them in the concession stand line and

034start the conversation about the good things that are happening in the school district of Jefferson. They don't have to be asked about it. They will they will strike up that conversation. And you got six and 10 of your staff that are there and you got a quarter that are giving you a perfect score. When you add in the sevens and the sixes, uh where did I leave off? So here at 79% that have a positive association with with the district. Um, so you got a lot of ambassadors, you got a lot of folks in your corner, you got a lot of people that are talking well about the district without you having to motivate them to do so. And you can see that borne out in in the gray box in the bottom right. U,

035I'm not sure I've ever had a staff survey where nobody gave you a zero or a one. Um, usually there's a few bees and bonnets out there, people that are more unhappy. Um, you didn't get that. And again, I that that's not normal in a good way. I've never seen 0% down there um since I began making these reports. So um a lot of strong things. I will turn over to parents in just a moment, but before I do so, you're going to get a lot of the same kind of thing here. What's what's up, what's down, where are you doing best, the school configuration question. Um so I want to pause here with your staff hat on. Any questions about this data or how to read it or or where you are, where you've

036been? I have a question. Uh, is there a means of knowing which buildings? Yeah. Uh, the teachers filled out this survey of the 60%. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we have that data. Charlie has access to that data as well. Um, so if you wanted to dig in and say, you know, I'm curious, do pair of professionals at the high school feel more satisfied with their PD opportunities than teachers at the high school? You know, maybe maybe that that score is vastly different. Charlie can definitely go in and do that. Um, and he can disagregate to his heart's content, provided um that he does not get to a pool of people that is five or fewer. In fact, I I get the same roadblock. So, if he disagregates too far, our system's going to say you might

037find out who they are and that would break anonymity and confidentiality and privacy promises that were made. So, we won't show you that data. But, that's a long way of saying, yeah, you can dig in by building, you can dig in by position level, you can dig in by staff tenure. any of the questions that are in here you can disagregate by. Um, sometimes I like to I don't know if this is the technical term. I like to reverse disagregate as well. So sometimes what I'll do here is well you know show me the twos, threes and fours and and I'll say you know just show me those folks. Are they localized in a position? Are they localized because they're brand new? Are they localized in a certain building? Um so yes again is a

038long way of answering that. I have a question. uh what percentage of change catches your eye? Like you go through this data all the time, 1% 2% you probably don't flinch, but where do you actually start paying attention to something significant? What's that threshold? Yeah, good question. So for district your size, anything above three or anything well I guess plus or minus three. So a growth of greater than 3% or a decline of greater than 3% is what's going to catch my eye either as oh you made some really good progress or oh so you know this really needs to be looked at in terms of what what what's different what did we not do as well this year. Um that's mostly a function of your school district size. You know if we were you

039know a little bit to the east of you. We had a um survey for Wawaos not that long ago. For them you know it just just a percentage point or so might trigger that just because of how many more people it would take to move move a direction. But for a district your size, um, I would say plus or minus 3% or anything that catches my eye. Thank you. Anything else before I turn the page to parents? All right. So, we'll begin where we began with staff. So, same survey deadline, 391 respondents. um 20% participation rate here. I guess I'll qualify as I think you're in the normal range. And the reason I just say I think is because we changed how we request email addresses, which makes our participation rate look a little worse

040than it actually is. Um so we used to just say, you know, ship us over an email for each kid. Um now, in an effort to try to get as many respondents as we can, we request any emails that are on file for for each student. So if there's a student with three email addresses, you know, two two for one parent, one for another, um that's counted in the denominator, whereas one parent might take it and say, you know, don't worry, I already took it. So um here, I'd still say your participation rate is normal, especially in the number of respondents that you have. U we've just changed how we requested it. So unfortunately, we've made the participation rate look worse than it actually is through no fault of your own. Um just because we

041requested more email addresses. So in terms of normal, I would say you still are. Um that's more of a function of us than from you. Um your indexes, let's begin there for your parents. Same scale one to five. Your parents also have five indexes and those are informed. I am kept up to date to my child's progress and what's happening at school. Included I am welcomed, respected, and part of the school community. Their kind of version of an academics index. My school my child's school is effective in helping them learn, develop, and succeed. atmosphere. My child feels safe and supported at school and their version of experience as well. My family is accepted, respected, and supported at school. Here you either have slight declines, you stayed the same, or you got a major growth. So

042you're a little bit all over the board here. Um, and very close though to your comparisons. So let's take these one at a time. Very slight decline down by 1%. That said it translate to 400ths of a point. So pretty static data in terms of information. 3.97 to 3.93 and you're pretty much like your comparison pool here. So your parents on that metric are pretty much like parents in every other district that you're compared to um slightly ahead. So you're declined by about 1% in terms of um feeling included, but you're slightly ahead of your comparison score. That academics educational excellence index up by 6%. So massive growth there. So not only compared to you, but you're also outperforming your peers. down by 1% in terms of the atmosphere, but once again that translates to

043400ths of a point. Very similar to your comparison. So you're at a score of 3.96. Your comparisons are at a score of 3.98. And then exactly the same experience. My family is accepted, respected, and supported at school. Um despite not making growth there, what pleases me is that it actually didn't go down because a score of four or above is pretty hard to maintain. um especially when we look at how many parents you have and the questions that feed these indexes. So sometimes not going down is a win in and of itself, but you stayed exactly the same at a score of 4.01 and you're outperforming your peers by 200ths of a point on that final experience index. Looking at some of those questions that feed those indexes, same theme, one to five, one being

044the worst, five being the best, three being the middle. Parents, where did they give you the highest marks? Parents are very satisfied with the extent to which school facilities are clean and wellkept. 4.27. They feel welcome in their child's school at a score of 4.24. They feel like they have at least one school staff member that they feel comfortable contacting when they have an idea of idea or concern. Followed closely by the extent to which their child feels safe at school. 4.11. And then finally, 4.10. School staff treat my child with dignity and respect. So, as a reminder, once you get north of four, you start to get into that strongly agree range on any of these metrics. When you turn that coin over, very similar to your staff function of a list, something's got

045to be at the top, something's got to be at the bottom. But unlike staff here, none of the items are below three. Every single item from your parents is leaning towards agreement. So, yes, we have some scores that are at the bottom, but the good news is that while you always want to work on something, your scores that are at the bottom aren't really that low. Um, I would not categorize a score of 3.57 as being particularly low. Um, that one happens to be something that many schools are working through as well. I am satisfied with our school's efforts to address bullying. Other than that, even your lowest scores are approaching four. So, in aggregate, you got some pretty satisfied parents out there. Um, they're updated on how their child is doing at school. they

046feel like the the culture is healthy. The district is heading in the right direction. I'll have more to say about that in just a second. At a score of 3.78 and opportunities to provide feedback to the school or teachers 3.70. So again, not to sound like a broken record, but even scores that are at the bottom are still going overall quite well. Quite a bit of growth here as well. So the first three I'm going to put together. That's that's kind of leadership and people will will will judge in which direction the ship is going based on the people that are steering the ship. So overall nearly 14% growth in terms of the district heading in the right direction. So huge growth from your parents there. Um big growth with satisfaction for district administration. Parents

047feel like district administrators are doing what it takes to make the district successful. And the folks in your chairs over 9% growth in terms of the school board doing what it takes to make our district successful. So big growth in terms of leadership. Um I feel welcome in my child's school, a growth of approximately 2%. And at a growth of 1.5% I have at least one school staff member I feel comfortable contacting when I have an idea or concern. Those items that declined a slight decline and I am updated on how my child is doing. Uh little over 2%. 2.5% decline. Most days my child enjoys going to school. decline of 2.7% which can also speak to discipline which you heard from your staff overall my child is able to handle the emotional challenges of

048of school a decline there and you also heard from your staff some of those challenges social emotional issues so that that's one of the benefits of surveying more than one group here is you start to see this data corroborate especially around these discipline issues and social emotional issues slight decline in I am satisfied with how much my child is learning kind of that expectation and academic expectations metric and then finally a decline of approximately 3% just a hair over. I have opportunities to provide feedback to the school or teachers. Same question then for um your parents. So same history lesson here in terms of school configuration, where you were in 22, your goals with east and west, how you could reconfigure grades, including the schematic that we had in here. Same information on why you

049were doing this now, including the same board docs resources. And then we asked parents this question. Should the school district of Jefferson continue exploring grade reconfiguration? Pretty similar story here actually. Um so your yeses beat your nos but not necessarily through a majority through a plurality. We have we have a 38 to 31 split. Yes to no. About 14% of parents are unsure. Um but you do have more parents here that just don't have a preference. Some of that is, well, that really wouldn't affect my kids because they're older. You know, if I got three, four kids or any kids for that matter in middle or high school or or even an older kid in the elementary grades where by the time you make this change, it may not even affect him. I may say,

050I do whatever you want. It's not going to affect my kid anyhow. Um, so you got a stronger set of parents here that don't have any preference. So for the sake of curiosity, I did that same exercise where as I was prepping for the meeting, I just took out those no preference folks and I said, "Well, of those folks that have an opinion or aren't sure, how do they feel?" And that becomes a split of 46 to 37, yes or no. So same kind of story. Yes, no, just not by a factor that you can say is a majority. Communications, same question for them. Overall, how would you rate communications from the district? 10% growth. double digits here. You went from 2.7 to 2.97 on a one to four scale and over threequarters of your

051parents are telling you that you are doing a great or a good job in terms of um your overall communication metrics. We also asked them to do an evaluation on those same four categories. Those categories being keeping the public informed, managing funds, building pride, and delivering a high quality education. Three of the four went up. Two of the four huge growth. So north of 13% growth on keeping the public informed and the extent to which they feel you are managing funds appropriately. Those two items are also outperforming your comparison pools where you are. So that lefth hand column and the far right hand column you compared to others you're outperforming them as well. Building pride in the community that's your well I guess close to being your biggest spread. You're at a score of 3.04.

052A normal score for a district like yours is 2.74. You're also up there visav where you were last year, 3.4% growth. And then delivering a high quality education. You went from a 3.12 to to a 3.03. Uh but you're all also outperforming your peers on that one. So the good news here is up on three, down on one, which I don't want to minimize, but you are outperforming your comparisons on every single one. Finally then, our version of the net promoter. On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely would you be to recommend the district to a friend or family member? For your parents, you went from a 7.14 to 7.57 up by 6% for your parents. And then I do the same sort of exercise. So I look at your eights, your nines,

053and your tens. I want to know how many are ambassadors. 24 and 23 is 47 plus 13 is 60%. So, right on the dot, six and 10 parents are acting as ambassadors on your behalf. When you add in your sixes and your sevens, you have 79% that have a positive association with what you're doing and 14% that remain neutral. So, a lot of folks that are ready to to talk well about what's going on in the district. That is your parents and staff summary. So, let me pause again. whether it's about staff or the second half of your report. Parents, um, questions about the things you got to celebrate. Do districts ever do anything as a means of encouraging participation besides sending emails and reminders? Yeah. Yeah. I'm giggling because they they uh they turned

054the kids loose on their parents. Uh, and what they did is they said, "Well, any um school gets a massive pizza party for whatever parents had the biggest proportion." So, they said, "If you want pizza party kids, have your parents fill out the survey." Um, worked really well, really well. Um, so they did that. Um, the other thing you could think about doing, depending on when it lands, is, um, whenever people are at school anyhow, that's a good time to nab them. So, if you got parent teacher conferences that are in there, we can set up a kiosk system with you where somebody can take the survey and then as soon as they hit finish, it'll just start over at the beginning so the next person in line can start from from there. So, anything

055where you got people at school um will work um you know, you're still kind of in the normal range for percentage of respondents and again, we requested more emails than what we needed. So, I certainly don't think that was red lights and sirens kind of concern, but if you do want some um some hints there, that might be a way you could you could increase response rates from parents. Any other questions for All right. All right. If I hang up and you think of anything, Charlie knows where to find me. Um, but other than that, I hope you had a great night. Thank you. Thank you very much. Take care. Right. Next up is going to be our policy and community engagement topics. First up is going to be our second look at the student

056handbooks for 2526. Well, I had a chance to review that. Any other questions, comments, suggestions for that? Just want to make sure that I know because we did add the stop building now and the pacer resources to all the handbooks as requested. This is an action item. Is there a motion to approve the student handbooks for the 2526 school year as presented? Second. Motion and second. Any further discussion? All in favor say I. I. Any oppose say nay. And student handbooks are approved. Next up is going to be our second look at the cell phone policy or cell phone allowance, excuse me. Um, any questions, comments, suggestions for that? Is there a motion to approve the policy 7530.03 cell phone allowance as presented? Second. Motion and second. Any further discussion? All in favor say I.

057I any oppose say nay and motion passes. Next up, Dr. Ernest regarding the employment contract. This is not a new policy, but it's an update to a policy. That policy would be policy 3124, which is employment contract. uh it would provide board governance that allows the superintendent to make adjustments to a teacher's contracted salary amount in rare instances. There is a policy administrative guideline that would be 3124D that lays out all the procedures, routines and expectations for that. So even though the policy is the board piece, the uh we've included the AG administrative guideline there as well. It would take uh quite a process to do so, but this would allow for emergency situations to make in rare instances small adjustments to a career letter. Um if the supervisor and uh the superintendent along with

058the um certified staff member meeting all the criteria that are in place. Uh so as uh noted the superintendent is required to inform the board whenever an adjustment is granted and a staff member's most recent educator effectiveness summit evaluation will have the most weight regarding distinguished performance and that is one of the overall um that's the overall indicator from the six standards and overall score that a teacher would need to receive. I'll pause for questions. This is a first read. any discussion you have. I just have one under um our notes it on number three it says the superintendent is required to inform the board whenever an adjustment is granted but within the actual guideline it says under um number six board notification district administrator will periodically inform the board of step adjustments made including

059the rationale so is it that the board will be notified when it occurs or will it periodically or will the administrator periodically just inform us when it occurred? It it would be my practice to do it, you know, can't say immediately but very within reasonable amount of time. So happy to edit that one sentence if that's necessary. It doesn't make any difference to me as long as it's consistent. I just see whenever means like I would think we know every single time. The other guideline says periodic. The intention is every time. Okay. Any other comments or questions? All right. Again, first read. We'll come back to that one on the 23rd. Next up is going to be financed operation topics with the five-year IT plan. All right. So, um I'm just going to go over

060a few items and kind of how I got this budget. If you'd like any qu have any questions about any years, anything like that, let me know. Um, so we have a life cycle management for every single hardware and um that I have kind of set and that's kind of how we have this budget. So for example, student some student Chromebooks are every four years, some are five years, staff laptops four years, we've got the new BenQ TVs are seven years. So, this is why my budget goes up and down like crazy is as those different years kind of line up, we get a really big year and then we'll get a smaller year and that's just due to the practice by the previous business administrator. She like me, we didn't do any leasing in

061the past and um it's technically cheaper if we buy all the devices. So, if you buy all staff laptops one year, you know, more bulk the cheaper it is by versus half and half. Um, so that's just how we've done in the past and that's kind of how my life cycle's been. So that's kind of um, so really a lot of the stuff you'll see annual cost. Um, you know, I kind of cover over that my yearly IT meeting. Um, and then we start to separate out um, we have East Sullivan and West Chromebooks. Um, they go every five years instead of four because the Chromebooks don't leave the classroom. So they're actually very well maintained. They seem to last longer. Um, staff Chromebooks. So, we're talking paired professional Chromebooks are every five years. Um,

062some staff members use them a lot. It all some not so much. It all depends on what their role is in the classroom. Um, we have - projects. So, this is wireless. Uh, our wireless network this year are it's our network switches. It could be cabling. Um, it just varies the year. This year is wireless. Um, and then we have middle school TVs. Interactive TVs are this year. And then the last one actually got cut is just IT security rooms. So we're not going to be doing that this year. Um and then we kind of go down to next year. You see Sullivan. Um we have kindergarten, first grade Chromebooks. Um those get replaced. They're touchscreen. They're a little bit more expensive. Um and then we have high school interactive. And then I started to

063put in miscellaneous because with it, it's tough to judge two years out what we're going to need. It's kind of like buildings. Sometimes things work great and then something happens. Um, for example, we had a security board go out. That's $2,000 to replace. You know, it's hard to judge those things. So, there's just kind it's kind of in there for for right now, but um then we go down to 2728. This is a big year just due to certified staff laptops is $170,000. Um, it's a huge chunk. We do it every four years. Um, just to give staff members working laptops that have great batteries. Um, and a lot of staff members take them home every night. So, there's a lot of wear and tear. Um, then it looks like I have a nice school

064interactive TV on there twice, but only be there once. And then we get down to 28 29. We start to get to high school iPads. Um, iPads are good for about six years for Apple support. So, we just need to make sure the iPads can keep up to date. Um, we have techad laptops which do all the CAD stuff like that. So, they need to be up to date. We have our servers. Um, we replace them every 10 years. Um, that's really pushing the technology, but for what we have internally, it works great. And then more projects, we start back up. Then the final year, um, we start back with Chromebooks and it's kind of tough to get out five years, but and then there's not too much those couple years just due to the

065life cycle management. So, I don't know if anyone has questions about any of it or There's no there there's no because it didn't report, right? Like it's not we're not voting on anything anything with that. Um the only thing I'd like to see on especially when it comes to voting that kind of stuff is just like your annual cost operations, student operations just I'd love to see a breakdown what it is like just in general because I know when it comes time to like approve the stuff you know I have to somebody asked me what they'd spend $122,000 on. be nice to be able to just see what exactly that entails. Yeah, I can send that to you and that was actually I was the board meeting I think before you started. I looked at

066that and that's I saw the breakdown of that report as well. Y So yeah, it would just like anytime there's a report it just be kind of nice to just kind of see what is like under those annual costs. Yeah, I have an itemized budget that every year. Thanks. Um mine was similar to what he said, but I just find that even if I'm estimating my own household, um the fact that the IT operations, student operations, utilities, office supplies, equipment repair, and I think that's yeah, almost halfway down on every list is the exact same amount for all five years. Do you think it's budgetarily better to try and estimate that there is going to be some increase in those? It's really tough. Um, depending on the software, we see anywhere from uh maybe 2%

067increase to we've had 10 to 15% increase per year. So, it's really tough to do. So, I just kind of like here's today's numbers. It could easily change. Um, and you know, it depends on what we're doing um, and what services we need for um, everyone. So, it gets it's a little tricky, okay, on judging on what that would be. But, I usually in my budget when I do the yearly one um, and I submit it, it's usually about the 3% I I estimate. Um, but like I said with we have VMware that was a 15% increase. Um, we've had P school that was a big one that was like four or five percent. So there's a lot of them. It varies. So I mean, and I guess that's the reason I'm thinking big budget-wise.

068This is a huge cost. Is it better than for us to be thinking about the numbers, all the numbers in these lists going up by certain percentages like we do with the whole overall school budget when we're trying to plan. So um you know, if we're looking at going to referendum and operational things and things like that, that's my question. It's just is it better to look at making an estimate in percentage increases and all these things or does it really make a difference? It's tough. I mean, I can estimate, you know, and this is just a model. It's not like we're set in stone with this stuff here. Things could change. We can move things around. Um, this is just kind of a forecast and I'm hoping I have it pretty well. I mean,

069like I said, we know what devices need to be replaced. It's the cost that is really the hard variable. Yes. Um, especially lately, I can't even get some quotes without them giving a week out um before they cancel the call. Mine's more of a finance question than a IP question, but do you have contingency fund where you can roll from year to year? So, you're kind of flattening that curve that kind of fluctuates. That's something we did at my previous job where you could, you know, the old school was use it or lose it, but rather than that approach having some sort of contingency like within the department so that if you get like that VMware instance where it shoots up, they've got something to buffer that. Yeah. So typically from maybe a school building

070and I'm kind of bridging here a little bit, we we've started talking about carryover, right? Just to make sure that we're using that from a department and a building level very effectively. Um I don't think within it specifically have we done that with a carryover. Um but just one note about some of the costs and projecting that out. Um typically when I share the bar uh bar modeling that I do in in July uh January excuse me um when we extrapolate that obviously as Mr. Couple said that gets more challenging but I take a lot of those costs the current year budget and cast those forward using this plan. I add and uh subtract, you know, trans another $100,000 to make sure that we're accommodating for that within the future of the model. Um that

071being said, I I don't have, you know, I know there's a lot more expertise with, you know, what's going to happen with some of those specific software costs, but we do try and account for at least using CPI, uh some amount of market adjustment for that. Uh but no, not specifically an IT buffer, but we do plan out some of those es and flows based on the projection. The biggest one for me would be like equipment repairs 25. If you don't fix $25,000 worth of stuff, where does that money go? Just back into the general fund. Yeah, great questions. A lot. Sometimes general fund. Um, sometimes too, there's different uh pieces that will tap into. For example, there's a there's kind of a bridge between a building and grounds and an IT. We have a

072safety and security location that we use for some of those funds. And we carry that's I guess maybe an example of where we might use some of that when a board goes bad. Um just in this small example you would use we set aside $20,000 to make sure we can cover some of those immediate safety and security concerns. Our security cameras were in 2020 20 2018. So that's kind of built in there and that's he knows that funds is just to replace things. Doesn't mean we'll always it's nice to have that number um just in case. Yeah. And and just to that point it's a little bit of a we want to make sure that we're conservative and prudent with them. At the same time, those numbers also impact that we project operation costs, future

073buddies, things like that. So, it's that balance and finding the right mix of the two. Any other questions? Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next up would be our five-year maintenance plan. Mr. B. Good evening everybody. So what I want to present to you this evening is our tenative five-year plan. And all of this right here was um presented to you when we did our board walkthrough. The only thing that really pivoted or changes right here was my West Elementary and we had to change some things up due to the internal of the integrity of HBAC piping system that was in there. So basically I feel you guys had some time to review this. Does anybody have any questions on the 5-year plan for any specific building or any project themselves? Um, please

074let me know if I may just add also to that. So, as Mr. said the the West HBAC was probably the the biggest change from the previous um and and uh besides the formatting change here to try and capture a little bit of more of the scope in the sequence of how things are replaced um that would be the one rippling effect that really happened throughout the plan um just because the sign significant upgrade. Um as we head into summer here um we've been working closely with Findorf as we try and project out uh project closing costs and how we might be able to uh with your approval kind of put these back through. uh for example with uh asbestous and things like that um through the contract with indorf. And so the the summary

075of where these are funded from whether it be fun operational referendum um with hopeful uh and and so far so good uh fendor on time and under budget uh that just provides us additional flexibility to utilize those funds uh to make sure that we can accomplish the goals. So thank you Ryan. Okay. Questions or comments from the board? I I guess I just maybe I didn't um hear it fully during the walkthrough, but I for some reason thought all the asbestous abatement was done at the end of this year, but it looks to me like I'm we're still having asbestous abatement done at Sullivan and West for the 25 26 school year. Does is that the case? Sullivan is going to be the gym for next year, the gym floor. Uhu and West right now

076is basically we're finishing up the asbestous um this year into the west wing over there where some more speestous on the flooring. Okay. So, it's not done at the conclusion of this. Yeah. Well, it will be except for Sullivan Elementary with the gym floor. Okay. uh East Elementary uh tenative everything will be um cleaned up for asbestous unless there's something hidden and the same thing with West Elementary. Okay. The end of the summer. The end of the summer. Just to rephrase that all known as that we have there could that's a great question Seth. There really could be something inside of a wall that we didn't open up for anything that could be in there. And I can't say that I Tim know 100% in behind the walls. I I can't see through the wall.

077So tentatively everything that we can see, feel or touch right now is no. So maybe I'm not understanding the timeline of the 2526 then preview. What does that mean? Yeah, that you need that money. No, that's a good question. So that is more so for me just from a fiscal year standpoint starting July 1. Uh so at the end of this summer uh Fendorf is completing their their uh west wing of the uh the hallway for the art room, music room, things like that. So at the in the 2526 year at the end of this summer, it will be completed, but we will not be spanning beyond into 2627 the US. So if you're looking at page three, I think that would be on the PDF. Yeah. Okay. So that's where it says if it's

078complete, it's it's truly complete at the end of the summer, which will be it's still part of the start school year. Correct. So that's where that cost is. Correct. Are there any concerns with project costs just because of political environment, stuff like that? Because I mean it's everything seems to be going up pretty quickly. It it does and I'm constantly working for some of these other projects with most of my vendors. I kind of calculate in uh my percentage of rising for some of the HVAC units, the unit events for stuff like that. Um but great question Tim. It's you know it can always change in our environment that we do have. So I try to get that figured in try to be as close as I can. If it's a big adjustment I would

079be talk to Ryan and then we'd come back to you. So yeah to that end so we'll be bringing as especially as uh Mr. Winch and Fendorf Keem are getting close to being wrapped up in August. Um they've been sharing more recently here with us some of their anticipated project savings. Um some of which they've been moving contingencies to allow for things that come up along the way. Um but with that, we've been very grateful that the borrowing time and action from the board in the community in 22 meant that we borrowed low and have been earning high. So, we have about $2.7 million of bond proceeds uh that again as a district being uh very mindful of and strategic with to make sure that we first and foremost take care of fidelity of the

080question and what what was asked of us. Uh but to one of the things that we'll be reviewing this summer and fall with you all is options of how we could utilize those funds. Um some of which we'll have to pay back to the the IRS. It's just uh you can't over earn on interest free borrowings. Um but it will give us some some flexibility to make sure that we can accomplish our goals and also uh talk about how we want to strategically use those to manage debt. Thank you. My last question and maybe it can't be part of the maintenance plan but I noticed in the IT plan some similar where you're trying to plan ahead there was a miscellaneous uh you know for the outline things that you didn't see or you you

081know that you put a dollar amount within your plan that's more miscellaneous. Now, honestly, I I tried to look um even my bif focals don't allow that that really small Excel document, but I don't necessarily see that there's a miscellaneous. And while I think school budgets probably shouldn't have a huge miscellaneous area anywhere because that doesn't really give bode well for transparency. I did notice the IT budget has at least a small amount. Is it something that you think our maintenance budget should have? I basically what I do for for that is I use my 710 budget for some small miscellaneous like you talk a miscellaneous for a dollar of sum like say maybe $50,000 or so like that. I sometimes absorb that through my 710 because I do my due diligence and I try

082to always be a good steward of taxpayers dollars for my operating budget and that usually has been coming in a little bit under budget um since I've been here. Um otherwise something in here um Terry if something came up say for instance um we lost a boiler or something I would maybe shift the track one more year for the track and field that to the following year. So we can always shift something around that's why Mr. Graphin was tentative and then when I first started says Tim things are changing I said it's I have a great plan for everything but just like anything things do change so we're always subject to pivot here at SDMJ. So we would have to rep prioritize these priorities then if with a bigger cost we can't do something where

083we put something in correct yes I would rep prioritize or shift some things around here and in and uh to that point it may depend on the scope for example the the reason to shift to this is the HBAC was not something we probably could just absorb we wanted to rework around what needed to happen at west um Tim talked about at 710 there's different uh layers for operations and maintenance that we do that we we budget internally ly for just kind of uh compartmentalizing a little bit that. Um the other piece that we have that we're gracious from the the board of support over many years is we do have our fun 46 balance uh that allows us to adapt a little bit so that if there's a boiler or something that where we

084don't want to go off of track here. Um ideally that's something that's already on our 10ear plan that was established as part of that um separate fund. Um but that is another vehicle that we have to be able to assess and evaluate the the nature of what might have come. Any other questions, comments, or concerns? You guys been easy on me for this one. So, thank you. So, then I guess to clarify your last point uh that you just said, Brian, none of this cost actually taps into fund 46. Correct. At this point, this is all general fund spending. Correct. And I think one of the questions that we'll have as we continue to manage that specific fund and also the the longevity of life after referendum is looking at the consistent investment we want

085to keep making into our capital maintenance whether that might be no longer referendum but operational or fund 46 costs. Uh but yes at this time these are expected to be coming back into operational. Uh and again there'll be a conversation of how we continue to invest in that whether it's operational. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you. That'll lead us into our preliminary budget report from All righty. Good evening. I closed my computer, but I got to get the burden here. That'll just suffice as well. Um, so this evening, a preliminary budget report more for your information. Um, just as we uh have spent for the past few months as administrative team working to compile the budget. Um, it's really the aggregate work of our entire administrative staff. um and working with their staff

086as well too as they establish their needs. Um knowing that we are in a 25 27th state bianium um which we're getting news by the daily it seems like depending on what's going to happen July 1st hopefully. Um there's obviously elements that are subject to change but my goal in sharing this is really just out of transparency. Um from a statutory standpoint we're approved for spending in 2526 until we adopt what they call the original budget which is our budget hearing at the end of August. and then our final budget uh when we set the levy and adjustments in October. Um and so for for this year um it's a similar format that I used last year. There are a lot of footnotes and I will apologize for some of these small number indices for

087trying to highlight some of those v various areas. Um but what I thought I would do is just really go over a couple of the pieces that um will just impact as most we talk about bianium budget and our budget uh for 2546 and that's this uh yellow and green and blue FGE piece in the middle just talking about revenue limits. Um and so I I just tried to maybe connect it a little bit differently there. And what I guess I would illustrate with those colors in that page, I believe it's three for you, is our just declining enrollment three-year average and and how DPI calculates it based on our our two avenues is our base average, which is the prior three years, and our current average. And so, uh, last year when we were

088in this process and we were talking about referendum, a lot of the elements we we kept coming back to was this declining enrollment exemption and flat revenues. And so in a world where we're talking about, you know, that the state is uh it is now a court of part of law that will be receiving a $325 increase or more depending on what uh state finanium comes with. Um we don't really see any new operational revenue because we have a counteracting force of declining and they they provide us these one-year exemptions to accommodate that. And so when we look at the comparison, I think I put in the footnote at the bottom. It's about $89$90,000 increase. Uh but that doesn't necessarily just mean operational dollars. That also includes vouchers and some of those other companies. Um

089so this was really that narrative of what drove the operational referendum as we continue to evaluate rightsize and and work through that process. Um so again, the the tables and the many many footnotes there um are subject to change before the preliminary uh based on statutory guidelines. um when I have to uh post my classroom notices uh which is at the end of July, early August to be in time uh for the August 14th budget period is this year. Um a lot of these pieces we need to have in place obviously before staff and students are out. And so um the the notes and the uh the tables that follow um are really provided as some guidance and transparency of what kind of financial transactions are we going to be making over the next few

090months. Uh specifically I added this year just for the report just uh the very last page the debt service fund um we have a WS liability a refinance that the district had done five or six years ago I believe it was um and so that's falling off and so our fall uh debt payments which occur at the end of August are reduced um and so that's reflected within the revenue and expenditure pieces quick note you might notice the revenue expenditures don't match just because we generate levy for debt payments that are in future years. And so they're always a little disjointed based on what we consider our fiscal year and when when we've levied the revenues for the following spring and fall. Um and so with that there's a lot of detail. The last uh

091element that I'll maybe uh say just before I pause for reflection or for any questions is that we are anticipating a balance budget for this year. I think it's $29 lost at the moment. Um some of those pieces are identified with Dr. Ernest and the other administrative team members. what are pieces that we can adjust? How do we uh maintain some level of contingency in strategic areas? Um and where can we continue to refine our budgets and and slim down as we uh try and manage funds and prepare for what this next benium brings. Um so with that, I'll pause for any questions. If there's any specific footnote that you'd like some more detail on, um be happy to articulate what I can moment and report out over the summer as we get to budget

092year. questions from the board. What exactly are those little numbers next to the supposed to be attached? Yeah, there's those little tiny numbers are supposed to be the footnotes of the previous two p or I should call maybe prenotes of the first two pages. Uh they just correlate a specific note or comment of maybe why it increased, why it decreased. um some particular go up looking at for the numbers at the end. Yeah, that that might be a friendly for the future. That that's any others. Uh what threshold do you get to for like the HSA where you start looking at other options? Yeah, that's a good question. Um, I was talking today with our payroll and HR specialists. Um, from a budgeting standpoint, given the transition to offering both. Um, I I don't have

093numbers in front of me for exact utilization, we're seeing a lot greater utilization for the H. Just as a result of those that are choosing that plan option are typically doing so purpose, right, to to maximize that. Um, so so currently from a budgetary standpoint, I budget the full amount, which historically maybe was closer to 85% of the utilization. Um, but at what point do you continue, you know, to your point, maybe do you start looking at alternative options? Um, it's it's a good question that we'll evaluate. You'll be meeting with our um USI advisory team here coming up in the summer and just seeing where our our medical loss ratios coming in. Um, comparatively, we're we're pretty competitive still with what our our deductible are is and premiums are from the employer contribution and

094employee perspective. Um but it's it's a good point you know we can't sustain 12% and 10% thereafter in perpetuity. So we we will have to continue to evaluate how do we compare and what's strictly sustainable. So don't have an immediate answer for that but it's something that obviously we need to watch just because there there's the neighboring districts um you know that that I've heard have have now been pushing for 30,000 $30,000 employee and employer premiums and for us as a district that's just not attainable. that be another $6,000 increase. Um, and so if we start aching towards that, we're going to have to consider what are other plan options. And there's there's some other ones that we've explored or I've explored as part of previous uh districts and uh committees. Uh there's this inbetweens

095between self-funded and fully funded captives, things like that that provide some stability. Uh but that's pretty uh there's not a ton of public sector districts that are doing that yet. Not let's say that that's not biological. Thank you. Any other questions from the board? All right. Then um Mr. Dresto isn't here, so I assume you're taking the 2526 breakfast lunch milk prices. Yes. I'm all from office without my computer. Uh so next one uh breakfast, lunch and milk prices. Um so attached for your review um and consideration tonight is uh an increase in our breakfast, lunch and milk prices for the 2526 school year. Um a nickel at the elementary level level, excuse me. Um middle and high school recommending a 10 cent increase. And then adult crisis just comparatively looking at um uh some

096of our peers and also what um the it's the Wisconsin uh let me get it wrong. I know it's WISN but it's our cooperative that we're part of purchasing um that is led by Middleton Cross Lane school district um just based on their comparatives for for your review. So adult prices staying the same. Um recommendation just based off of a little bit of I don't want to say we react to the uncertainty at certain levels. Um but just as we're responding to the price increases um looking comparatively where we're at against uh what our immediate peers are our norm districts that we've identified in our strategic plan um those that we can and um just the realities of federal revenues that we know we are already not receiving, let alone some of the additional ones

097that are proposed. uh would be some rationality that increase, right? That's no impact on the reduced meal prices. That's correct. So part of my uh learning for that too and again the the meal prices at least for reduced are very similar. Um we do receive uh besides just the reduced price, we do also receive some state aid for that. Um and some of my learning, we do receive some aid as well for our full priced people as well through the national program. Um, so no no adjustments to that. Any questions or comments from the board? I guess I was under the impression that breakfast was free. Yes. Now I see that it's going to be charged. That that's a change or that's not a change. Uh, still free. So just to maintain that pricing from

098a historical standpoint. Last year we added this this again maybe could have been called out a little more. this after saying that the recommendation is still to maintain that free breakfast as an option at the bottom there. Um just for comparative purposes, should we move away from that? We felt that it was important to maintain that as just a a data point on the pricing. Okay. I see. So because the asterct is next to the breakfast the way I was reading this. Okay. So we're going to maintain that. We are going to continue to maintain that and it's it's a good one that we a good question that we've evaluated Dr. harness MZO and I um just as we look at participation and while we're always looking for ways that we can enhance both the

099quality and the the quantity um the the the reality of just offering that as far as um an option for our students knowing that we have the staff and the availability to do so and getting that federal reimbursement uh means that it's still viable. Um I think the the question would be is if if we moved away from that one would that be good for kids good for food service program and what would that impact do as well so maintaining that right now seems to be the best option for those any other questions comments this is an action item and is there a motion to approve the 2526 lunch, breakfast and milk prices as presented. So moved. Second motion and a second. Any further discussion? All in favor of the motion say I. I. Any

100oppose say nay. And it passes. Thank you. And then next up is going to be our uh 2526 city of Jefferson Recreational Department use of facilities agreement schedule. I believe you get a break from me after this one. So the uh working with the city um and their team there we are bringing back just a updated version of this um just in conversations uh the the the team is transitioning our SDOJ team is transitioning to using um what incident IQ yes yes uh so working with Mr. Peterson Mr. level um and going away from kind of paper form. One of the things we're hoping just with this document, but also beginning that conversation early is just that migration into that platform. Um what that does is allow them to be able to schedule things directly

101um and for the entire span of the season. So the document that you have in front of you is uh their anticipated dates and times. Um there's obviously district events that take priority over city and city premises, city that takes uh precedent over district. Uh but but again this outline at least provides the the template of where they plan to schedule those items with their facilities. Um other than that, no functional changes at this time for your reviewing consideration, questions, comments, suggestions. Now with an online option for our facilities and the use of everything is so needed. Um so I s sure hope that can get done sooner than later. Uh just on the way here got two different teams signing up for the same field. No one knows which one's supposed to have it

102which one registered with the wrong person and that and got parents going where what are we doing? So, I mean, I can't tell you how many times we've run into the facility piece about trying to figure out how to centralize this and maybe have be able to at least visually see who's using what when. Yeah. With a small community in a limited facilities. Yeah. I'm transitioning from we've been doing we've been doing some test pilot I believe in the high school for for primarily the gym spaces and things like that where they're dual reporting through our paper process and then now through also the electronic. Um but then uh engaging with Mr. Cup and Mr. Peterson of uh the city obviously will be very familiar soon with how to engage with informing apps or I'm

103sorry incident IQ excuse me. Um but yes the the the general community would be able to access as well sign up as an organization and request use through that electronic. This is an action item. Is there a motion to approve the 2526 facilities use agreement with the city of Jeff Jefferson recreational department and schedule of usages presented? So second motion and second any further discussion all in favor of the motion say I. I oppose say nay. Thank you Mr. B. Next up is going to under uh curriculum instruction and staff development. We have approval or review of the Jefferson education employment sorry education for employment plan. Dr. So Mrs. Grindle did a report on this or presented this uh last time. A couple of reminders. So this is we do have an exemplar and we

104believe in place the way that our website is set up and you've heard probably have heard the acronym ACP. That stands for academic and career planning. It's part of PI26. This will be an annual agenda item to make sure that we are in compliance with the state and DPI regulations. Questions, comments? No, a lot of work. Thank you to everybody who put work into this to get it out to date. With that, is there a motion to approve the Jefferson Education for Employment Plan as presented for 2526? Some move. Second. Motion and a second. Any further discussion? All in favor say I. I. Any oppose? Say nay. Pass that. Next up is going to be update custodial maintenance position descriptions. And now I'm losing track. This is our second reading, right? Okay. Any further questions

105on that one? Again, action item. Is there a motion to approve the updates to the custodial maintenance position description is presented? So move second motion in the second. Any further discussion? All in favor say I. Any oppose? Say nay. Motion passes. Now we are up to the first reading the revisions for the 2526 employee handbook. And Dr. Yes. So you can see in the public content you can see the summary and then we've also included a complete um strike through and edit for you as well. Um so this is a two read process. This is the first reading. Um so I don't want to say minimal changes but there's some changes here. Um probably not a ton but more than usual. Um and you can see the probate I'll highlight a couple of things. Uh

106the probationary period language will help with some of the systems that we have in place as far as new hires are concerned when their insurance would start when their other benefits such as vacation days and sick days would start. Um, and then, uh, cleaning up. I want to highlight one on page, uh, 72, just removing the WRS eligibility language from retirement benefits because you could retire, for example, um, if you're going to turn 55 in September. You could retire when you're still uh, 54 and not technically be eligible for retirement. So that is a a change that we hope uh make things easier on our staff members uh certified staff members are in that age range as well. Um so uh letter of reasonable assurance that's on page 75 that's something that's language that we

107give to our um support staff that are your own employees. uh for example in May they'll leave a receiver a letter of reasonable insurance knowing that the job they've got as a pair of professional for example we'll be there for them in some capacity uh when we come back around to having kids send back to us in August um I also want to mention we've had discussion on this before adding a requirement for us accredit accreditation to masters programs um for the approval of grad credits not every district has master's column we still do Um so staff members if they're going to work towards a master's degree they fill out a form asking for preapproval of that program uh then once they approve it they can move uh the career letters next. So again you

108see the summary there and you can scroll through to see all of the detailed strikethroughs as well. This is a first read. Mr. M did I leave anything else? No, the other one I think that might just be worth mentioning would just be along with kind of sharing just kind of aligning everything um just a change for our support staff that are vacation eligible um with just how we you know just how we practice that and roll it out. So currently um it it's on an earned basis earned and granted basis. So if an employee started January 1 for us um they would receive a prrated benefit but they wouldn't receive it until July 1st the following year. So meaning that you could you could have a considerable amount of time before paid vacation. So

109we we we uh we have the practice already for crediting is the word that we use within the handbook. Uh crediting sick leave and so this would just be aligning that as well for um for vacation as well. So if someone leaves us early and has overutilized, right, there's protections within the handbook that allows us to make sure that we make that right before their departure. Um but it it it grants them upfront that as a benefit. Um and it's just a line of information. Um, so there just metification pieces as well as how that interacts for sports questions. Just I noticed that the short-term long-term subs have changed. Um, what's the reason for that? Yeah, I believe that was actually changed in the fall of 2023. Um, so I think this was just more

110clerical at it to update that with uh with the current practice of how was I think just a missed error with or not error but a missed area that needed to be updated within the handbook language um that was in our our rates. Each year we do the sub rates and we do a memo that the board approves. The board approved that memo but we did not catch to add it to the uh to the end. So this that makes consistently what stuff has already been approved as board action. It's just the number of days you need to get to before you uh switch into the long-term pay rate which is a higher rate than a daily rate to be a substitute. The only comment I had is just the idea that we floated around

111of doing a compensation committee and it was supposed to be around the time that we were kind of dealing with the handbook because they go hand in hand. So I guess I'm just throwing it out there. I don't know that that occurred or what the plan is or what we So the JA will have co-presidents next year. So Carrie Neman and Kelly Traber. So I've been in contact with them for setting that up. So that'll be a fall in addition to the meet and conference that we do. We'll set up that that committee to look at. I think there needs to be a number of things. First of all, examining other models out there and then looking at some models that people appreciate and that will springboard into got to be really careful with uh

112what is allowed for collective bargaining under actual. So that will allow us to have a model that we're comfortable with. And then when we go into the um spring of 2026, assuming things haven't changed with act 10, spring of 2026, uh then we have that at least that model. The board gets to determine what the career ladder, salary structure, whatever you want to call it, is uh but this uh compensation committee could recommend uh what they would like to see. And I think a step in lane certainly could be type of scholar structure could be in the mix. Um so that's the that's the plan work uh and the communication exchanges that I have with those individuals. Any other comments suggestions? All right. Future topics. Miss Fox was highlighted recently in WSB's magazine. So, we'll

113be reviewing that at the next meeting. Um, good article if you get a chance to read it. Any other suggested future general topics? I want to throw one out there for future future. Uh, July 14th is uh the first meeting in July. Typically, that meeting is light. So what we've done in the past is we've done a workshop following that meeting and the workshop at that workshop we can do a deep dive into what Rob Demuse has presented tonight questions about hey what about um a little bit more of the detail on on this question and that question we can provide that we can give you summary of all the comments that too that's a good practice then to move us into developing goals for the 2526 school year which we then approve in August.

114So put that on the calendar for July 14th. Any others? That's actually I think Charlie was actually reading my mind. Um I just based on you know what's the point of doing a survey if you don't actually do something with the data, right? So I would just be really interested in anything that add sound like the standard deviation was like 3%. I'd be really interested in the things we do well above 3% the things we don't do well above 3% to you know see what's working and what's not working is it yeah thank you for that. So we actually have an administrative team retreat tomorrow and they'll be able to see their building specific data. Um and so we'll go through that tomorrow with the administrative team and then prepare things um have uh ready

115to present a little bit on June 23rd but then more on the July 14th and we get to announcements. I don't have any Dr. Curtis, I included the um east executive summary just because of the work that's happening there. Big kudos to all the staff members for moving. Uh there was significant moving that happened at Sullivan East and West. Um and then to Tim for his work for the moving company. Um so I wanted to mention this earlier, but one of the things like the the flooring at a cost savings for us is we have the flooring or we purchase the flooring for Sullivan. So that will help and then the flooring will be um a continuation of that flooring in the aspesus estate bant at West Elementary as well. So lots of work um

116excited about the work also excited about September and August of 2025 when it's all completed. Excellent. And with that is there a motion to convene in close session pursuant to Scotsy Statutes 19.85 85 parents 1 C and F to discuss administrative and non-unit compensation and a situation involving student second. Motion second. All in favor say I. And I'm sorry this is a roll call vote please. Mr. CD yes. Mrs. Fox yes. Mr. Eel. Yes. Mrs. Mc William Mr. Noling Yes. Mr. Puppier. Yes.