Board of Education Regular Meeting - September 22, 2025

001[Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] like call this meeting board of education for September 22nd recognize lands of all indigenous peoples. >> Will the secretary please call the role >> here? >> Mr. Vneski, >> Miss Books, >> Dr. Garcia, >> Mr. Jackson, >> Mr. Mup, >> Mr. Newmeister, >> Dr. Miss SLA, >> of course, below the national average, but we've seen a rise in this community. Um we've seen some armed juveniles in the community that have um fired at each other in public spaces. Um one being wounded on Logan Street. Um the other shooting I think occurred with another student that went through our school system as well. Um and we also had a loaded weapon brought into Central of course. Um and then we have our shootings around the country, Minneapolis, Madison nearby. So, I've been

002involved with um uh school shooting, you know, legislation and work for many years. And I lived in DC. Some of the legislation that I worked on for years was repealed in like five minutes. So, uh I have switched gears a couple years ago and understanding that the way to end school shootings is simply with weapons detection systems, um this is how we stop it. It's not what I want. It's not what a lot of people want. But when we see a rise of violence in a community, so I reached out to this guy and he talked to me for like two hours. Um, just totally brilliant and it's been a huge success. They had very little push back. Um, they are also below the national average on violent crime, but they saw similar things in

003their community as to what we're seeing in Lacrosse, armed juveniles. They had a shooting in a park across the street from one of the high schools. Uh, unfortunately that child was killed. um not like the boy on Logan Street who survived. Um so they decided to act. They said the uh alarm bells are there. Of course, it's a different city, different demographics, but it's not like terribly different. But they did such a good job in pushing this through, but really what it came down to was like who is in charge? The superintendent had come from a district where um there was more violent crime and armed juveniles and some gang activity. She was receptive. the chief of police had come from Stockton, California, dealt with lots of um criminal gang activity, juvenile armed juveniles, etc.

004He was receptive. And then their safety director, Chris Baldridge, that I mentioned, um had a law enforcement background. So, all three just decided, they said, "Why wait? Why are we waiting? Um school shootings aren't going away. We are not getting the legislation that is going to stop them or slow them down anytime soon. It will be 50 to 100 years in reality before that happens. So the way we make them stop is with weapons detection systems just like we did at our courouses. We don't have courthouse shootings anymore because we've had the systems in there for 30 years, right? It's like an obsolete term. So why wait? Um and the thing that impressed me about this district, I would um ask you to reach out to them. He is waiting for your phone calls. I

005don't know if that's appropriate, but I said they might want to reach out. Um, because he talks about how it enhanced the student experience. It was not a negative experience. It enhanced the student experience. They get 2300 kids into a giant high school there. That was their pilot program. Started with pilot program. They did some studies. They eased into it. They slowwalked. They had an open house almost like a trade show. and they invited these vendors to come in. They opened it up to the community and said, "Come in." So, parents and kids can like walk through these systems and try it out and okay, this is the best one. This is what we want to go with. So, it was kind of we'll be receptive and grateful for it. I think it came in

006at a cost of about $90,000 per school. They did the pilot program with um one large school, but they could have selected two medium schools, but they went with the one large. >> All right, that's it. And if you need information on those links, I'm happy to rescend it. >> Thank you for your time. >> Um, our next speaker is Mr. Adama. >> You get to time your own school board member. >> Oh, it feels nice being this side again. Feels like forever since I'm a sophomore over here. But, um, I just wanted to bring an opportunity up for you all here. I didn't even bring up my name on this. originally had something planned up or I wanted to speak about but this was something that's personally I kind of wanted to go through

007by myself. Um I wanted to start the initiative here to start a scholarship from our own board because the best way we we govern through the board table here but some of the best ways we can actually impact students themselves is when we actually do something directly for them. It's not just you don't just lead from the top you lead from everywhere. And I want to kind of bring this to your awareness here is that I want to try to bring a scholarship up for our homeless students or students who have housing instability. And a big reason why I wanted to start this off with is because I used to be one of those students. When I was a senior in high school, actually when I was running for the board due to kind of

008my own family situation here, I lost my home due to domestic violence. And when we talk a lot about what are the best policies bring us up for our own students or more or so like we only can control exactly students that come come inside the schools. We can only do the best policy inside but outside one of the biggest challenges for a lot of students is how exactly they can do over at home and really finishing up their education at home too. And I can personally say for myself here is that when I faced a lot of my own struggles, it was incredibly hard for myself and um challenged me in my own faith quite a lot. And I'd love to have a testimony with some of you have asked about this too, but

009I want to bring this up to you guys here. And then the other thing I wanted to do is I requested this for our board president and I was going to mention kind of more so political shooting that did happen is I want to also take this time just to pray for the school board. just take this time not to make a political statement but just to share everyone here and invite you all for prayer for our own school because I think there's a lot of pray you'll give all of our students the safety and the things they need to be able to bring themselves closer and to finish up their education as strong as possible. Lord, we know there's so many different students, so many different walks of life. And Lord, a lot of

010us here, we all come from different backgrounds and sometimes we disagree with each other. And that's really the beautiful thing to be able to come closer even with our disagreements. Lord, I pray you'll bless the school board meeting and pray you will bring us the way forward for all this here in your name. Amen. Thank you. I'm very spiritual in case can't tell over here. This is just kind of my way just brings us up as a not just as a board member, but just as me myself personally here. And for that, I want to thank you all. and feel free to ask me more about this scholarship here. Thank you. >> Thank you. Okay. >> We will then go on to the school showcase and we have the Lacrosse Promise Future Center and Kathy

011Mard is here. I'll let you two tag team wherever you want to go. >> Excellent. So, um we are fortunate to have had a long-standing uh relationship with Lacrosse Promise. And I'm sure Kathy will describe the program to some to kind of flush out what it is. Uh but um it's been a great program and we've been thankful to have Kathy here these last few years to uh be a part of the program. Dan, is it possible to put the the uh po top part of the podium down so we can see Kathy's beautiful face? >> Can do that. There we go. still working out the the logistics of this place. >> All right, thank you. There we go. Thanks, Dr. Engel. Um, as Dr. Engel said, I am Kathy Mard. I'm the future center

012adviser with Across Promise. This is the start of my fourth school year, so I'm excited for that. And I I will just state another thing. I love my job. This is one of the greatest jobs that in my long career of working, this is my favorite job ever. So, um, we're going to learn more about it uh, as we go through this process. Also here tonight is Julie Sawyer. She is the future center adviser at Logan and Amanda Acklland is also here. She's the executive director of Lacrosse Promise. Promise has been around since 2012. So, we have had a presence at both Central and Logan since then. Future center advisors have changed a bit, but we've at least been here since 20 center office. We're future all of that. But still people have no clue

013what it is. So then I get to tell them that's the great part about it. Here are some things I tell them really. We help students plan for their future after high school. That's career ready, future ready, job ready. And we do that in a number of different ways that we're kind of looking at on the screen here. But really, it's above and beyond what the students or I'm sorry, what the teachers and the counselors have time to do. And as you can see, this list kind of summarizes that. So, I don't know too many teachers or counselors who have a can sit down with a student for an hour or two or three at some point and go through a college application or help them repeatedly with an essay to get it right to

014the point where they're going, I want to submit my application because I think I'll get in with this. We do career expiration who can sit down with the student repeatedly and go, "What do you want to do? What are we going to look at? Where are we going to go?" Future center advisors can do that. Scholarships, we're talking about that. We do. We help with that. financial aid, FAFSA, we love that word. Um, it's going to be easier this year, better than last year even. That's what they say. We do campus tours, job shadows, smile. We'll wait till you have to do it and we'll see how easy it is, right? Um, but interviewing and resumes and so much more. So, the easiest way to kind of describe some of the things we do is

015show you some pictures. So, one of the best parts about the job is we get to go into the classroom. I love talking to students, love going in there, talk to Owen's class, remember talking to Adam's classes. um that gets us in front of the students to say here we are as a future center. This is what we can help you with guys. Come and see us. Come and make those appointments. So at this point we've talked to all the seniors so far to get them to come in because they are working on essays and applications right this now. Right now we're working with the juniors next and then we'll get to the sophomores and then we'll get to the freshman. So eventually we'll get to all of them before the end of the year.

016But that's where we're at right now. So we love going to the classrooms is just one of the best spots ever. We take a lot of selfies. So in you will notice that there's a lot of selfies that are are part of this presentation um as we continue to go through essays and applications that takes a big chunk of our time right now. Um they have questions sometimes they don't even know where to start with with essays especially um Oaklair Madison and WL are some of our top three schools they all have essay questions and so it seems like it's easy and then you look at the question going I don't know what to write. That's when we as the adviserss can sit down and help them and make it perfect. Um, Caitlyn, the Minnesota

017girl there, she just finished her application after working really hard on it. So, we needed to take a picture to document going, "We were done because she worked really hard on it to do that." Also, part of the the process is financial aid. We have a financial aid night that we do at both Central and Logan. We offer that to parents and students. Some come together as a family, some come just separate. Uh, it's perfect on parents teacher conference night because they're already coming to school anyway. In fact, we will have it for the first time in this newly revised room. so excited to offer it to them. We invite our partners from either WL or Vurbo or Western a individual from Veterbo this year will be presenting the program. It's not about Vurbo financial

018aid. It's just financial aid in general. So it applies to really any school that they go to, but we work closely with Vurbo Western and UWL in in a variety of ways during the course of the year. Financial aid night is one of them. As we move on from financial aid night, then FAFSA's coming up. So we do a FAFSA completion night where we again reach out to some of our partners. Vurbo hosted last year. They are hosting again this year as well again for either parents and students or all of the above to come. Um a lot of questions get answered that night. We have 30 or 40 families that show up and a lot of questions after that. So the students will come in for individual help or parents will call or email

019as well in order to get answers to their questions. And honestly, some of them I know and some of them I don't. And if I don't, then we reach out to those partners again or to the school they're applying to to get them answered. Career exploration is a big one. We have do a lot of one-on- ones with students to determine where they would like to to go after high school, but we have some great events that take place in this community with a lot of our partners. This is healthcare career day. Mayo and Amplified do a big thing at UWL. All hands-on CPR, uh, X-rays, ultrasounds. They learn how to to count the proper pillillage for the uh for pharmacy. Um they're taking blood pressures. An absolutely fabulous day. We have a a bus

020load that we take to that. This is teacher day. We spend time at W Alverbo and Western and they all talk about if you want to be a teacher, this is what we offer you at our schools. And again, we have a number of students who want to go into the teaching profession and this is a great way for them to learn about that right in our own backyard. National Guard had a career day as well for those thinking about taking that path. This was new this year. Um they're going to be part of something coming up later this year for us. But that was again all hands-on, all on the machinery, medical, communications, weapons. It was it was fantastic day. They were they were a great host. The one picture on the far left

021with the girl in the green shirt, we are going there on Monday. That's the Wisconsin Education Fair. 100 colleges, universities, uh military will be on hand so the kids can go around and ask all these admission counselors to say, "Hey, what do you got for me?" And it's an in-person uh person that they can talk to and not just someone online. We have a full bus to go to that too. WL is hosting for the first time this year. So excited to excited to be there and and see what the fieldhouse is like. It'll be packed. It will be packed. Um build my future. We take buses buses several buses of students to this. This is all hands-on for the trade. Welding, circuitry, siding. You want to learn how to use a drill, you learn

022how to use a drill. You've never hammered before, you can learn how to use a hammer. Some of these kids have never touched a power tool or just even a hand tool. And they get all hands-on um with the Lacrosse Area Builders Association. That's a great day. This takes place in April. Um one of the most fun events and they all get a t-shirt. One thing we started last year, we talked about all these community partners and all these great people that are in the community lunch and learns. So we invited um some professionals to come in. These were all studentled themes. So there was a number of students that said they're interested in cosmetology. Somebody from the school of beauty came. We're interested in business and real estate. Marvin Wanders from 360 came in

023and becoming an electrician. So Hippie, yes, that is his name. Um that's what he goes by. His real name is Chris, but he's known as Hippie. came in and talked to the kids about what it takes to become an electrician. Again, the students had interest in this. We they grabbed their lunch, went into a classroom, classroom was full, the two lunches that we had. So, we are planning to do that again. Our next one will be in October and we're going to talk about criminology, the new program at UWL. Um the adviser is coming over to talk about that. The kids are highly interested in that. So, um how to do that. So, I'm excited to have her come over and speak. College tours and visits. Again, counselors can't take a whole day or a

024day and a half. Sometimes our days are long. We might hit two colleges in a day. Um, but that's what we are here to do. Many of these students that go on these college tours, this is their only chance to get on a college campus that isn't right locally here. And that's the way that we can do it by doing these college tours and really getting them again to to see what else is out there. We usually do a bigger campus and a smaller campus. So, Whitewater and Madison, uh maybe Riverfalls, Twin Cities, something on that order or a small or a campus and a business. This is Whitewater. We went to uh the Twin Cities, um River Falls, Madison. If possible, if we have connections with the student that's there, I'll text or call

025and say, "Hey, we're coming to Madison. Will you meet us at the union at this time?" And they'll come over and then talk about, "Hey, this is what life is really like now that I'm out of high school and I'm here as a student." So, Kathy was right. Listen to her. This is what she said. It's really actually is. So, it's always good to see the students on on a campus and see how they're doing after high school. So, we have a couple of those set up coming up, too. Um, I'm showing this one in particular. This was W Green Bay. Yes, the picture in the middle is a bathroom. W Green Bay is the only campus that has the their own bathrooms in the dorm rooms. So, the all the students were just mesmerized

026by that. So, I thought a picture would be one way to note that. And then we went to um Lambeau Field as a tour. And we focused not just because it was cool and it was Lamblefield, but what are the jobs and the occupations that it takes to make Lambeblefield work. And so the tour guides were able to talk about all the just just envision Lamblefield and what it takes. And so the tour guides were absolutely fantastic and there are hundreds of different jobs um that take a lot of education or not so much education but something. So the kids really really love that. And of course the bathroom picture too as well. And we have a couple kids going that went to WGB Winona State WL. visited there too. Not only do we do

027out of campus, but we got people that come to visit us. So, a lot of the campuses will come during lunch. Um they'll set up their table and then they can talk to the students and we talk to the students as well. But that's a great way if they didn't get to WE or they're we're not going to go to Ribbon or we're not going to get to um maybe Vurbo or it's just not working in their schedule, they're coming to see us. So, that's another great thing that we offer. One of the biggest things that we do and this is one of the most fun events that I've ever had to plan is the future fair. If you have not been to the future fair, I'm going to invite you and I will I'll

028send you an email with the actual dates and the times. It's coming up in February. This will be my fourth time now that I've planned this. Um, again, we are super unique because I don't know any there's no other place in the state of Wisconsin that has a future center, let alone a future fair size that we have. So, there was a Koolie Career Fest last week. We have more people than what they had at the Koolie Career Fest. We have almost 50 different uh we have universities. We have two-year, we have four-year colleges, but we have a number of different businesses, all that represent the pathways that we have in the district that we talk about on a regular basis with our students. Um, this year we're adding some folks from the National Guard

029to bring some of their equipment in. So, they will be part of the future fair. In the one corner, the one picture up there, you'll see the fire. Um, that that is they could go on the computer and they could actually put a fire out via computer. So, the fire department brought that in and that was a big a big hit at the feature fair. We've had pet therapy dogs. Those are also a big hit. This is a great way all the We've had uh 600 700 students at each school that attend. They come through. It's from 11 to 1:30. So, some more block time hours, so a little bit longer. Teachers will bring their students down. We play bingo to get them engaged with the exhibitors. We'll go into the classroom and talk to

030them going, "Please don't go up to the table and just grab a pen and run. Engage with their they want to talk to you." And we have no trouble getting anybody coming to the fair to exhibit. All the employers are like, "Absolutely, we'd be more than happy to come." They want to talk to the high school students and share what their career is like. They do so many adult career fairs. They love coming to do the high school ones. So, we do that at both Central and at Logan. That's coming up at the end of February. So, these are just some different pictures from that. Um, again, we we do super well and the kids just love it and so do the teachers and it's getting bigger and better each year. We do other stuff

031too that we partner with. All of these are with partners. We don't do this just ourselves. We partner with those businesses. We partner with student services. Um here at Central, we the student services do a presentation with the seniors kind of I think in March like it's time for you to get ready. If you applied to three colleges and you going to one, tell two you can't go. All these little things, your housing date, this date, things that those seniors that are going to walk out the door need to know to know. We also talk about scholarships. So we have a scholarship meeting with our seniors as well to let them know you got to apply for scholarships. Um this was uh registration day. So we we have a presence at registration day both at

032Logan and at Central. It gets our face in front of all the students and there's a lot of parents that come on registration day as well and it just gets more more recognition for us and and a lot of parents will come up and saying what do you do? What are you I'm sending my kid to you or they make note of it. So uh it's always good to be different places. Again, more things that we've attended. I have to mention uh the girl in the pink shirt. This was at a Southern Bluffs career event that we had. And I asked all the little kids. I'm like, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" She said, "I want to be a marine biologist." And the mom was like, "Oh, it's great." And

033I'm like, "Well, why why a mean a marine biologist?" I like fish stickicks. So, you never know what's going to come out of the mouths of babes, but it's always fun to be at those events. And a lot of them had some really good answers about what they wanted to do. So, it's again really fun. We're starting at that age. Um, we got to we got to start younger to get them thinking about what they want to do. So, we have fun at those events, too. Talked about scholarships. Lacrosse Promise does uh provide scholarships to a student at Central and at Logan. So, we do attend the scholarship presentations and present to the student. Uh, the student services uh scholarship committees pick the winner. We do not have any say in that, but we do

034have a parameter. Our parameter is you need to go on to do something in education. It could be a two-year or four-year school. We we don't care, but it's got to be something in education. The photo in the middle is Andrew. He's is at Oclair right now and he is wants to teach um high school or middle school history and maybe do some traveling in teaching that. And Ava is uh the Logan winner and she's going to Vurbo to work in early education and wants to work with the with the first and second graders. Two great students, two great recipients. Anything we can do to help um financially, we provide that as well. That's just kind of an extra bonus for us. Here's some happy kids that got into wherever they were going to go.

035So again, we have to take pictures of that. Uh just fantastic students. Uh I helped them in some way, shape, or form. Speaking of students helping in some way, shape, or form. We'll hope that this works. Um again, these are former graduates um that I reached out to to just say, "Hey, tell us a little bit about the future center and and and how it helped." This is Alex. >> How has the future center helped me? Well, it's helped me in so many different ways. From helping me apply to college to finding scholarships and even helping me with my FAFSA. The Future Center was a great resource whenever I needed questions about anything about my future. And you might be asking yourself, Future Center really that important? Well, I believe so. I always went to

036the Future Center whenever I needed help with things that I simply didn't understand. When you're in high school, you're going to experience a lot of things that you may not know the answer of, and Future Center is a great resource to go get those questions answered. Oops. This is um so Alex is going to Madison, so he'll start his sophomore year and we'll connect with him when we go on a school tour um coming up in November. This is Sam. Sam is going to BYU. >> Okay. Why should anybody use the future center? >> Well, I think the main reason why someone should use the future because of Catal. I don't know if you know. She's a great lady. She's very personable and friendly and always eager to help. But if you have any questions

037about college applications, FAFSA or anything, anything in life, even if you're just looking to chat, Kathy is always there to go and chat with been a massive help for my college application process and my FAFSA. She's very diligent in reminding people. She can help you with all that and can help you get your colleges and universities. Um, I want to invite I'm got some current students. Um, we've been going a little long, so I'll just I'll move it along a little bit. >> He's got a um, so this is a current senior, but he's got to go to jazz band rehearsals, so we'll get him. >> Uh, hi, my name is Lynon Torlson. I'm a senior here at Central High School. Um, and in in addition to being a student, I'm also a two varsity

038sport member and a music student. So, I just have a lot on my plate. And the future center has been just amazing for me. Uh, it's been just helpful when I've had so much on my plate. Uh, just helping me with college applications, college essays. Um, and just recently I was accepted into the South Dakota School of Minds and Technology. Um >> yeah, that's that's all I've got to say. So, thank you. >> Have fun at jazz. >> Thank you. >> Um I'm going to play this one um before I have one more student who's a junior, but um this particular student is going to the University of Minnesota. You'll figure that out. But um we need to play her. >> Name is Maddie Bondo. I'm a sophomore here at the University of Minnesota, Twin

039Cities. Um, I graduated from Central back in 2024 and today I'm going to be you a little bit about the future center and how helpful it was for me and how Kathy was so helpful in my college application process. So, back in the fall of my senior year, I was feeling really lost like I'm sure a lot of you are feeling. Um, I didn't know exactly where to start and I found out what the future center was from, um, Kathy. She actually came into my resource and talked to our class a little bit about it. So, I thought that'd be a good place to start. Um, I ended up probably spending every single 8th hour um, study hall in Cathy's room working on my application. Um, when I first came to Cathy, she was so

040welcoming, so caring, and she really made me feel like she wanted the best for my future and for me. Um, she helped me rewrite three different essays. Um, I felt like I had the perfect one. She helped me, um, write answers to short answer questions on the application. and she helped me um answer questions about FAFSA and just things I really didn't understand at the time. And I strongly strongly recommend using the future center because it is a great way to build your network. It's a great way um to just learn a lot about the college application process. Um and even if you have a simple question um I'm sure she can she has the answer for you. And yeah, um, she's probably the first person that I went to when I found out that

041I got into Minnesota. And once again, I strongly, strongly recommend using the future center. And I wish you guys the best of luck. She was one of the first people that um, she came right away and said that she was she got into the University of Minnesota. She also told her sister, remember the picture in the beginning um, with the girl with the Minnesota banner? That was her sister. She applied to the University of Minnesota because her sister went there and she wanted to go and she got weight listed and she was she's weight listed. She wasn't happy but she got into Madison. It's like okay great you got in Madison. Sweet. She comes maybe two weeks later and says I got in. I'm like well yeah you're going to Madison. Like what do you

042mean? She goes no I got into the University of Minnesota. She got off the wait list and was accepted and went and I'm tears are streaming down her face because she was so excited and she goes, "You're the first person I told." She had even told her parents yet. she had gotten an email. So, um that's that can be the power of relationships and just kids that you do. And that's that's really the power of the future center. I have one more student here um who's a junior, so she's not quite a senior, but she's getting there. But we need to hear her thoughts as to um what the future center is. >> Hi, my name is Rachel Egan. I'm a junior at Central. Um and I think that this future center is really important

043for all students looking into their future. Um, next week Monday, we are going to WE, the Wisconsin Education Fair at WL. Um, I convinced like three of my friends to join me going to this so that we can walk around to all the booths and get all of the information cuz one of my friends is so obsessed with colleges. She likes learning everything about them and is comparing like six or eight right now, but consistently is going back to the future center to get more help, to look at more information. Um, and the future center is just such a great place to get advice on everything. Um, I went in there asking about jobs and about applications and about volunteer opportunities that I could use for my resume just to build it up and really

044prepare myself for my future. >> Thank you, Rachel. I think that um pretty much sums up what the future center does. Um, if you have any questions, please feel free to Green Bay, which is now one of my top colleges, top on my list, uh, and then went toward Madison. I think it's really great to have the opportunities. Um, it's really nice to be able to get the information at all the career fairs and things like that. um they do really great work and I'm very glad that we have it at Central School boarding. I I work in the admissions office at WL. I'm the director of transfer admissions over there. So when you realize you've made a horrible mistake and you want to come home, I'll be there waiting for you. But um I

045want I just wanted to comment on what what an important resource in even even the seemingly simple things like like the essay help uh really really can be. In a in a past life, I also worked for um a private college application support, kind of a concierge service. And it is not cheap to do to have access to those kind of resources. Uh and and the fact that we have this help uh right in our schools that we have somebody who obviously creates such strong relationships, such supportive relationships with students to be able to support them through that whole process is phenomenal. It's not that everyone has and has access to and I just think it's amazing that we have created that opportunity in our district. So, thank you very very much. >> Thank you.

046>> I have I just have a comment. Um, recently I just had a rough weekend. It was my birthday and uh beginning of September I noticed that uh while I was going through my Facebook that I could raise money for Lacrosse Promise um as one of the uh things that you could do for your birthday. You reach out to people and I'm happy to see I surpassed my goal and um that was one of them. So, I I think it's important for people to realize that um it's an important piece to the cross and it's obviously very important to our students, but it it isn't free. I mean, somebody's got to pay this. So, anything we can do to help, I'm sure, is appreciated and any funds uh given I'm sure is is appreciated as

047well. So, um don't be afraid to give people. That's all I got to say. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Um I have a question. Clearly, the testimonials are excellent and thank you to the students that came um to speak. That's not easy to stand in front of us and do that. Um so is there any kind of uh uh data that talks about a percentage of our students getting accepted versus other schools? Is there anything like that that that shows our level of success because we have this great resource in our community? >> I don't have a specific. We have great success. We can I I don't have a percentage in front of me of how many go on to higher education. Um I do have that data that I can share with you

048later. >> Yeah. I I think um I mean there's having some of the data to show about not just the student testimonials which are remarkable, but I think sometimes the data kind of helps back that up to talk about how important the work is that you do and how successful it is. >> Correct. One of the things I appreciate about the future center is college admission is certainly a large focus of things, but it's really any pathway as well. It's helping kids find their right fit, whether it's technical college, joining the military, uh going straight to the workforce, maybe an apprenticeship. And so, I mean, you've placed people in any possible path. >> All of the above. Yes. All of the above. Yeah. It's not it's not just about college. It's really, you know, becoming

049life ready. Um we are often um one, I don't have a name. I'm the future center lady. Two, we are Switzerland. So we are often that neutral person from mom or dad want the kid to go here and the kid wants to go here or wants to do a job or wants to do it. So we often play the role of Switzerland. So we play we have different faces and different things we do but it really is it's two it's four year it's the military it's a job. We just want to make sure that they are as career and life ready as possible when they walk out this door. So anything that we can do to help that we will do. questions. >> Thank you. Appreciate it. >> Thank you for your time tonight. Appreciate

050it. >> So, we'll move on to the superintendent consent agenda. The superintendent's consent agenda is a mechanism used by the board to deal with routine business that must come before the body. Are there any items members want to remove from the superintendent's consent agenda? If not, I'd look for a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented. >> So moved. >> Second. >> We have a motion by Dr. Sprag, seconded by Mr. Beeski. Any questions? >> All those all those in favor of the motion signify by saying I. >> I. >> Those opposed. Motion carries. We then move on to the approval of the board consent agenda. And this consent agenda is a mechanism used by the board to deal with routine business that must come before the body as well. Are there any items

051members want to remove from the board's consent agenda? If not, I look for a motion to approve the board consent agenda as presented. >> Make a motion to approve the items in the board consent agenda as presented. >> Thank you, Mr. Ma. Do we have a second? >> Seconded. >> Thank you, Dr. >> Gota get space for others. Any questions, discussion? All those in favor of the motion signify by saying I. >> I. >> Those opposed. Motion carries. We'll then move on to the referendum construction plan update. And I'll turn that over to Dr. Engel. >> Our primary piece of business is in action with the bids for the State Road Elementary School addition. So we could expand the conversation then if that makes more sense. But otherwise, that's the the largest part of our

052conversation today. >> Board's Okay, we'll do that. Then we'll move on to the seclusion restraint report which is an annual report we have to look at. >> So I want to invite up uh Miss Ammy Zabrowski, our director of student services. Uh it's a report we've been putting together for years and so I'll have her describe it a little bit and talk about the program. >> Yeah. So this um report we are required every year to report on the number of seclusions and restraints that um we use in our schools um to the board and then we also report out to DPI every year. Um just some background when we're talking seclusion restraint. Restraint is um physically restraining students use of um their torso, arms, legs or head and seclusion is involuntary confinement in a

053space that a student's not allowed to leave. Um we use these practices only in the last worst case scenarios where um there's an imminent threat to the safety of that specific child or to other people and there's no other um there are no other interventions that we can do to um prevent prevent um harm from occurring. Um you we um you can see also in the report it talks a little bit about the training that we do. We have teams trained in every school. they are trained um under a specific model to prevent cris student crisis but then also um safe ways to um intervene when we have these significant situations. Um and then you can see the data um reported both last year's data and the year prior. I will note um while there

054was an increase this last year in the use of both seclusion and restraint um we have seen significant significant um reduction in the use of seclusion and restraint over the last six or seven years. Um we had um around um 201617 were look seeing like four or 500 uses of each um in a given school year. So, we've done a lot of things to reduce that to train staff to intervene earlier and to prevent um these type of situations from occurring. So, with that, I can take questions. I can go into more detail about any of it, but >> there's some um organizations listed here that aren't our buildings. Can you explain why they're on there? >> Yeah, so those organizations are listed. We're required to report out on any students that we place in

055alternative education. Um and they're they also have to keep records on their use of seclusion and restraint. So uh Chilita Kulie connections and drifless pass are the three um primary alternative education programs that we utilize for those purposes. >> Yes. >> You indicated there's significant reduction in terms of these acts. Uh you have a reason what what the district changed. We got new kids in. Um, you know, I think we've just gotten really, really good at supporting students and being more proactive. We've done intentional things in terms of our training. We've been more purposeful in our training of of staff. We're really purposeful about who the people from the buildings that are trained are so that they have a disposition to go and diffuse situations rather than jumping to more significant interventions. Um we also

056um the state requires it but even prior to the state requiring it we require uh we required a debrief after every incident of seclus seclusion and restraint. So um people that were involved they meet they have to talk about what happened and how to prevent a similar thing from happening in the future. And we have staff at the district level that go and help support those conversations. So, it's kind of a combination of all those things have really led us to be just more mindful and intentional about our proactive practices and how we diffuse those intense situations rather than jumping to those really significant adult interventions. >> Thank you. >> Yep. >> Uh you kind of uh prefaced my question my question already was was about the the jump for this year and and so

057I'm glad you you were able to put that in some context. Um, do so do you see this year as kind of anomalous where we were really on that downward trajectory and I guess that 91 up from 45 in seclusions felt felt like a lot when I read it. >> Yeah. No, and as I look at it from year to year, I was like, "Oh, we we kind of almost doubled last year." Um, I I don't think I think we've been on a downward trend and um we're kind of fluctuating up and down over the last couple of years. I don't think it's an anomaly. I do think that we have some significant needs coming into our buildings that are requiring um a little bit more intensive intervention. Um it often is with our youngest

058kids. Um we do as and you can see in the data our middle schools, high schools don't use these interventions. Um partially because uh a lot of times we get police involved when it rises to that level and the students are of similar size and harder to manage behavior. um at those ages, just to be transparent. Um and so and as I'm know you've talked about it um at previous meetings, um we we have a lot of little ones that are coming in and they're needing lots and lots of um exposure to good consistent behavioral practices in classrooms and we're working with them through um learning those things and adjusting to what a school setting um and group settings is like. And so um I attributed a bit to that. I also you can see

059in the numbers too that um it's it's not a lot of students and sometimes one student can throw off your data for a whole year um or just a couple can. So >> yeah to my question when you see 27 but six students involved it's the same six students for the 27 is 27 like one day when you what is what counts as a number of seclusions is it one day one class period one >> any incident so like if you a student in seclusion for one minute is considered an incident of seclusion. So when they're in a when you put them in a space where they're confined by themselves and they're not able to leave regardless of length. Same is true for restraint. Regardless of length that you use it, whether it's for 10

060seconds or 10 minutes, it's considered one incident. >> And that probably doesn't count like moving. I've seen like regulation rooms or something that would be different, right? >> Yeah, that would be different because you have an adult in there. There's purpose behind those activities. Yeah. This is truly when it's not even safe for the adult to be in the room in the space with a with a student and we're not allowing the student to leave. Sometimes physical proximity just, you know, is is enough to kind of deescalate situations and it doesn't have to be a seclusion. >> I have questions. >> Yeah. No, you're fine. >> Are the parents notified? I'm assuming like right away that they're in there. >> Yep. Yep. We have legal requirements that we have to notify parents within um 24

061hours and then we also have to have a written report provided to them um within three days. Um and so we comply with all of that. If the student has an IEP um after their second incident of seclusion or restraint um we have to um hold another IEP meeting and review their plan and make updates to their plan to address whatever led to that intervention. This is a report that's required by the state um where I worked with uh human services and we serve kids with um disabilities. Um occasionally those students where they were living or in the program would have to there might have to be seclusion restraint and visa reports. And quite frankly, I think it's it's unfortunate we have to get to these points of the students, but it's really good that

062there's a reporting system that doesn't just go on unnoticed and unreported and unressed um because that's not always good for kids either. So, >> 100%. um appreciate the report and I think quite frankly it's highlighting an issue that um superintendent and I have talked about with the behaviors and I think we'll be having some information um in upcoming months talking about what the district is doing regarding some of these behaviors. So >> yeah, welcome that. >> Thank you. Thank you very much. >> Sorry, we have one more. >> Oh no, go ahead. >> I just want to touch on the training that the other teachers are having for the other students. As someone who went to Northwoods when they were in elementary school, I think I remember at least three times that this happened and

063the teachers were doing an amazing job. I remember me and my classmates being confused but feeling really safe and feel like we're in a good environment. So, I just want to say thank you. >> No, thank you. that highlights a really important point that um this is like the intense intervention that happens, but our staff are really really good at working with all the other students, making sure that we're um getting them away from these situations and keeping them safe and then helping them, reassuring their their safety in the classroom when these type of events happen. So, thank you for bringing that up. >> I think it's important also to realize it's it's not just about the safety of others, it's about the safety of the ch child that this is happening with, too. And

064it's important to uh make sure people understand that because it's it is while we you know don't want to restrain anyone, there's a reason we have to. >> Yes. >> Any other questions, comments? >> Thank you for the report. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Then we will go on to district vision and portrait of a graduate. Now we'll turn over to Dr. Engel. Um we uh we're at the towards the end of a probably a six-month process. Um um >> started in February. >> February. Okay. Ninemonth process. Yes. >> Uh it's been uh uh it started with um steering committee coming together. Um it was uh self-nominated from our community. We sent out a request for anyone who wanted to get involved and we were able to take about half of

065the folks that uh put their name in the in the ring, hat in the ring. and uh we um convened to think about how we wanted to gather information. And so the committee decided that a survey and focus groups would be a great way to do it. Use the same question for both the survey and the focus groups. We had about 1,800 responses on the survey and we did uh well over 20 uh focus groups to get a variety of different voices and collected a lot of data. And I was impressed by our our our steering committee's ability to weed through all of that, start to find uh some sort of organization and structure and uh ultimately arrived at um uh some of these samples that we have here. Uh there were two different things

066that came out of that group. First was a district vision, some aspirations that we want to be as a school district and the second was a portrait of a graduate. Um the characteristics our students should have when they leave our schools. Uh and so you'll see examples of uh those two things. It's uh on an information item. So just kind of exploration and discussion. There's um the the point we're at right now is how do we want to present this information to our community? How do we want to adopt it if it's the board's will? Uh and so thinking about both with the portrait of a graduate work and the district visioning work uh how should we display this information so that it's accessible to our community and can guide us in our work moving

067forward. There's two examples of the portrait of a graduate. One's in a circle motive like you see here. Uh second one has a graduate cap um and there's little icons for each for the district visioning. Three different layouts, different ways to view it. um uh and ideas and thoughts and uh happy to refine any of those, update, add uh whatever the board's will may be. So just interested in some discussion to learn more about how the the board's looking at these. >> Before we take I served on the committee and it was a great committee to work on. Um I will say that the input from the community was pretty cohesive. It wasn't like it was all over the place and we had to kind of thin it out. There were some very strong messages

068and I think that's what you see here. The other thing that I want to point out in um to consider as as you're looking at the options um the vision and we talked about our last meeting the vision everything we're doing the vision is to create the portrait of a graduate. So we kind of want these two documents to work together. They are separate documents but they one supports the other and so I did want to kind of point that out. So Dr. Any questions? >> I have just a quibble about the the circle motif and that >> the language used for and I understand the reason for it on communicators changes to effective communicators and so there's inconsistency in the the actual verbiage there and I don't know that effective communicators would fit on

069the circled motif. But from an accessibility standpoint, um I think while I while I like the graduate cap, um I think that just the iconography and everything would be a little harder to parse. And um I appreciate that you kept the text relatively light and and to the to the point. And I think that the lighter background with the contrast with the darker text has uh and the sans Sarah fonts are all good. >> Excellent. >> Uh I thought you really did a pretty good job in all of it. Uh if you ask me as far as which of the vision ones I like, I prefer the one that is horizontally across the top of the page because doesn't I don't know. This is maybe very minor, but it doesn't put one above the other.

070They're all at the same level >> and so that was most appeasing to me. But everybody in art has a different >> eyesight. >> Yeah, I think the the long columns of text is a little bit more challenging, but otherwise, yeah, putting them on a level is nice. I forgot to extend my quibble to character centered and students of character as well or indicated. happy to take suggestions on students of character for a better um adjective noun phrasing. >> I really like the circle motif. I feel like it shows that a like for a graduate you're not just one thing. You're the sum of your like you have to have all of these things to be successful. And I feel like it really ties that together well. I also like I believe it is the

071third option available the sample five. Um just in that same kind of mindset I feel like it can tie it all together as the vision cannot be separated from each other and I feel like that's really important to keep in mind and makes it really nice or like clearer to people who are just kind of checking it at a glance. other comments, inputs. >> I like the circle one as well. He said it very well, so I won't go into big detail, but I think it's it's short and simple. It's the KISS method, right? And I I think once you look at it, it kind of pops and and it gives you Yes. a few of the words can be changed up a little, but I think it uh I think it really sets a

072sets our goal relatively easy to look at as well. >> I would agree with Scott. do have to shout out Bethany Nent, our um tech integrationist. She helped uh make these on uh my behalf and so I'm grateful to her uh skills. >> Um I will say the circle motif also feels very on brand for the other things that the district has released for information. I feel like it's very cohesive. >> Thank you. Any other comments? I thought this was going to be much more lively and Um, but this is good. It's nice we come together. >> I I didn't I being on the committee, I didn't have a preference. Um, also like on wording things, I'm it watching paint dry would be equally pleasant for me. Um, I just like the big ideas I

073like coming up with, but the rest of it is is not my thing. And like these all presented are ideas. So, I didn't have a strong opinion. So, I appreciate your what you have to say, and I'm sure the committee will, too. sentences are very dense. There's a lot of very purposeful words in there and accessibility >> about for hours >> may be a challenge uh in some cases, but I think it was all very purposeful and intentional. >> I mean, I can talk about the choice of tense if you want and the future perfect being indicative of hope and >> as long as it's indicative of hope. I'm happy to hear more. >> It's aspirational. I really appreciate the way they were written. >> After the meeting, you guys can talk. Good point, Mr.

074Newmeister. We have other things, too. >> The committee really had a lot of different backgrounds and lots of different philosophies and points of view, but really agreed to what we came up with, which I thought was really it was a a really good process. I I it again, the community gave us pretty clear direction what the big pieces were. Um, but again, how we phrased them and what individual words said something versus another, I think, we had a lot of discussion, but really careful thought really dedic I mean these are not on the schoolboard people these are just people in the community and really put in a lot of effort so I want to thank everybody participate in that >> do you have what you need >> any other thoughts from folks who haven't had

075a chance to weigh in happy to take other comments as well we'll bring back some uh final drafts here when we come and meet in uh two weeks >> okay >> thank you so much >> yeah thank you we'll then move on to matters reserve for board action starting with the award of construction bid for State Road Elementary School edition. >> Bids are in. I would invite uh um Jolina to come up and uh help walk through um the process that we had uh to get these bids kind of what we saw from the bid opening day and then uh the results and our recommendation. >> Yeah. First of all, congratulations. It's exciting to see you are all part of the discussion. where do we go with this elementary and then that whole process and

076through the design process and tonight I bring forward the bid process as we stated before we advertised uh locally in our builder exchange and through that process we had three biders all local companies um it was a great bid if you will um when we started this process there's no way we thought that we would be able to do everything that's in this bid and so what you'll notice in the bid process process. We're recommending uh five alternates. And really what those alternates do allows us to up upgrade the facilities so they all look uniform from the old portion of the building into the new portion of the building. And what I'll do is I'll just walk you through what each one of those are if you would. The special education and sport spaces, those

077are spaces for our support people. It changes where they currently are into the closer to the classrooms and gives them space to work with our students a little bit better by altering that. The next one is cubby replacement and collabs areas. We have collab areas in the new section. And so what this allows us to do is create those spaces mainly in the east wing that are uniform with the new one. Uh alternate number three classroom finishes. And that's really looking at flooring, painting, lighting, ceilings so that it looks uniform as you go into each and every classroom. Uh classroom case work. We don't have a lot of casework uh in the current classrooms, but allows us to upgrade those uh so that looks uniform with the others. And then the last one, storefront replacement.

078Really making the outside doors and replacing 16 windows so they're uniform with everything else uh in the facility. So it really gives us that uniform look. We think that everything with this budget um we think everything fits really well and so we're recommending that you approve all of them at this point. >> And the special education and the collaboration areas, those came from our staff as they were working through this design. >> Yeah. One of the things that we did through this whole process is we sat down with every staff at least twice. And I know Ammy, who you saw up here earlier, she brought her staff together and we sat down with them more than twice looking at those spaces. how could they better serve our students? And so they were all part of

079that process. The other thing I want to point out is if you look at the bid process, we broke we broke out the bids a little bit. So you can see by um so it looks we broke it out by HBAC, civil landscaping, plumbing. That really gives us an idea of where are the bids coming in. So then when we look at the new school, are we on track? What are we looking at? And we feel really confident based on the bids that we've received here that the bids for the new school that we'll be bringing to you will go out in November, bringing back in December. We feel really confident in the numbers that we're going to be bringing back, especially as we talk to these contractors. Um, basically they're what they're seeing is

080that the pricing of materials has really gone down. And so that's uh been a big part of it. Also, the other part of that is we looked for inflation, right? We're using inflationary numbers of about 7%. We're seeing next year I think we'll see closer to 3%. So that all plays into uh us getting good bids at this time. >> Yes, sir. >> Do do those alternates that you uh wrote down here, they're not included in the bid above, are they? >> No, they're not included in the base bid. So the base bid came in at 9 million y >> uh >> 900,000 and then with all the alternates it gives us 10,616,200 >> and so >> so if you took any of those and what what do they approximately add up to? >> Uh

081that was 700 I should know that number 700 and some thousand like 712 or something. >> Okay, good to know. >> So really feel good about where we're at with with the bid process. Uh, first off, great job. It's nice to see that we're moving forward and and it's nice to see where the bids have come in, which was I think we were all a little afraid. So, >> we were as well. We were as well. >> And it's it's really nice and I'm very happy and and proud that you guys went in and and took uh major suggestions from the staff from there because nobody's going to know that building better than them, right? So, Exactly. It's nice to see that their input is is a big part of this and I look forward

082to seeing it done. >> It's going to be exciting and we'll be bringing you upgrades and giving you tours as the process goes on as you'd like. >> We'll be looking at a groundbreaking in the near future and so it'll be, you know, a couple weeks notice. >> We get gold shovels. >> Gold shovels. >> Gold shovel. >> Let's not do it in December, though. Is that an alternate? >> Yeah. >> I will tell you this. They're looking at getting started as soon as possible. So, in October, for sure, the beginning of October. >> Dr. Spring, >> um I'm just curious. Um I assume that it's built in here somewhere. Do you know do they do they build in overhead and contingencies in each line? >> They do. And I should have broke out that

083number, but we do have a contingency in in the number that we have. >> Yes. >> Um I have questions on some of the alter alternates. Um >> almost 200,000 to move support staff um seems expensive, but I understand understand that there's more into it than that. There was some bathroom issues for special ed. >> Yeah, it's really changing some bathroom issues, making those a little bit better, creating their spaces where they need to separate some students, also putting those spaces where students are close to proximity where they'll be in class. And so there's it's really when you start moving walls and things, you start to get into the expense. But it's uh when we sat down with uh the special ed staff, they really felt it was important that that was a part of

084this design. >> What is casework? >> Caseworks like cabinet cabinetry that you'll see like in the back. We call that case work. >> Okay. Um so my last question is are these alternates would they technically be included um for funding as the referendum was written? >> Typically no. We we kind of expanded that. So, we were that's the reason why they're alternates. Um, what we did was we didn't know for sure when we did the budgeting at the first part of when we decided to go to referendum. Again, we are talking about potential funding of being a little bit higher, but we've seen where we expected the budget to be and so we provide alternates. Can we do extra things if the budget permits us to? And that's why we do the alternates, never knowing

085for sure how the bids are going to come in and if we could do those extra things, >> but the money we get can only be spent on the referendum >> on the referendum. >> But no, these are things I I'm >> these would fall into that privy. Yes, they would fall into that. We would not be violating any any laws by doing that. >> It just I just want to make sure for the public that we're not doesn't look like we're like, hey, we got a low bid, so let's spend some extra money. >> No, we did not do that at all. we were able to expand the scope a little bit, but the bottom line is this was all this is all verbiage that was allowed under the referendum. >> I'm curious if

086the alternates also represent so like if we have to dip into the contingencies for whatever reason and we have to end up cutting them, do they represent priorities as well? >> Yes, they do. In fact, if we felt super confident going into this, we were concerned like everybody was. If we felt super confident, they would have been in the main spec. Okay. but we didn't know. And so looking at that, whenever you do that, you might have to make some some decisions down the road. And so we separated them so we knew what those decisions might be. >> I appreciate that the top two priorities are the areas that are really geared towards functionality for the staff and the and the faculty. Yeah. >> For the new elementary at the Hogan site, there will be

087alternatives as well, projects that we hope could fit into the scope, but if not, then we know where we are going to start with trimming back the project. Okay, congratulations and thank you and look forward to moving forward once you decide. >> Let's get the shovels out. >> Yes. >> So, we need a motion to approve these bids. >> Yes, please. >> I'll make a motion to approve uh the bids for the state road edition award of bid to Fowler and Hammer as presented. >> I'll second. >> We have a motion by Dr. Sprag, seconded by Mr. Ma. Any further discussion? All those in favor of the motion signify by saying I. >> I. >> Those opposed. Motion carries. >> That automatically includes all the alternatives. >> Mhm. >> That's good. Good clarification. >> Um

088we then move on to the proposed budget approval. >> Uh listed in the attachment is the notice of the budget hearing which includes the budget that will be published. And then uh Miss Spang has uh some additional information that we had discussed uh the last time we met. >> So there was a question about the personnel and um going over those numbers with the person who does this in HR. She did uh take into consideration filled uh spaces that um or unfilled spaces that we have budgeted for. So, so what I did is I put another column there as far as the FTE that's included in these budget dollars. And uh it will differ until we know like last Friday was actually third Friday. And as I mentioned before, that's when we take the student

089count and we also have to report our staffing as of that point. And that is what we will uh go forward to even if those spaces are not filled. Do we have enough? >> We do not have enough. >> Let me just >> Was there two handouts? >> We'll hands out. So while we're I can pass my >> Patty. While we're while we're passing down, can I ask am I am I correct in understanding that then you you have budgeted for hypothetical full employment? >> Correct. >> Okay. >> So we budget for the staff we need. And if you look at any of our HR reports from month to month during a school year, we have resignations. we have added. Uh so of course this is always an educated guess and that is what we

090are prepared to support and if student needs change during the year we would maybe have to add a position or we might have somebody leave and not replace them. This is the best we can do at this point. So um any questions? So the next report when you get this for when you're approving the actual final budget and levy, you will have those numbers by employee group as of third Friday. >> Do those numbers typically come from like building principles? Is that how those staffing numbers are put forward for you to >> It's a long process where um Mr. Wentthy, our HR director, meets with all of the principles, the um secondary and and uh primary uh directors as far as what staffing needs they're projecting. >> Class sizes dictate a lot of it. If

091our goal is, you know, about 25 students per teacher in a core class at the middle school, you know, we can look at the number of kids in the seventh grade and divide that out and pretty quickly get the number of teachers that we need to adequately support uh that grade level. U similar for elementary school, you know, if our target is 18 to1 with a little bit uh better ratios in schools where we have higher needs, then you know, we're using that as our benchmark. Of course, I think many of you were part of a workshop activity where we tried to like balance class sizes and things and looked at some scenarios. Gets tough when you have a a you know uh 23 kids in a grade in a building. You know, do you

092have a a large first grade class or do you have two smaller first grade classes? And so those are some of the the challenges that we face as we're trying to balance all these uh staffing questions out. And you'll notice that on this um budgeted line, some are larger, some are smaller, and that's because as of right now, we're still cleaning up some things from our our system. So like um there might have been overloads at 0.17 for some teachers that we were able to eliminate and so those will go away and probably end up back at our budgeted rate. But second semester, we might have a need to increase and so then the budgeted rate might be lower than what the final ultimately becomes. The teacher assistant line is about five TAs lower than

093the estimate and that's because we anticipate hiring folks. We have vacancies right now that we have not hired yet and we're still in the process of making that happen. So we anticipate 159 TAs. Um Mr. Sowski just stepped out, but you know, we've seen a lot of increases in special education needs, high behaviors, high needs, new referrals coming in with our students. And so that's one of the primary causes for increases in uh both teachers and TAs. It's the mandated services we have to provide to students through special education, which require hiring. And we are aided to some extent from the state on that. Uh and we get a little bit of funding from the federal government to help mitigate some of those costs. Uh but that's been the primary source of increases in our

094staffing over the last probably eight years. We've seen declines in most other staffing groups except for special education because of that increased need >> questions. So maybe I'm making this too simple and your systems may be far more complicated than what the simple picture in my head is. Since the majority of your budget is personnel, I mean, it's the biggest cost. You you have to start out with how many of we have these teachers. They cost us this. You know, we don't know if they're going to retire in the middle of the year, but we assume they won't. And that's how you come up with your budget. So, um the what would be helpful to me when we approve the final budget is to what was the budgeted FTE in the last budget. I think

095looking at the number of bodies, I mean that has to change. A budget is a plan and then sometimes plans change because class sizes are bigger, smaller, there's more kids here than there are there and you can't like when we did the exercise there's seven more. What do you do with seven? And so, uh, a budget is a plan. It's the best plan you can come up with, but then some things have to kind of tweak inside of that. Um, so I I I understand that. Um so the teacher assistance uh did go up. We heard that very clearly in our linkages particularly the elementary schools last year that people really wanted more help with TAS. Um so so I heard um we heard that the there's an increase in non-UN staff. I'll have a

096question on that in just a second. But we are looking atund and some fewer students this year. you're waiting for your final Friday numbers because today's technically the last day I learned um in the three-day formulas is really complicated. Um but I I guess I'm struggling with how do we pay for more staff? We've we had a request for more staff. So I'm not necessarily hating it altogether, but we're paying for more staff. We have fewer students and if we continue to do that, um uh we have to be able to be accountable to the public, too. So I'm struggling with that a little bit. So that's just where my head is at. But can what are the non-union support staff like? What kind of positions are those >> and what what are the increases

097because it looks like we increased those by several as well. >> As you remember um we had talked about how the psyches um were used to be on the teacher salary schedule and they are now on the non um okay union support schedule. >> So that's a big part of that addition. >> Some of our fund positions fall into that you know. So, if we authorize the early childhood coordinator, that falls into that role. Um, >> but that wouldn't be an increase because we approved that last year. Correct. >> Um, we we didn't hire that position. It wasn't hired at the time, >> but it was budgeted. >> But given that these numbers that we reported last year were kind of like snapshot in time as opposed to budget. So, what you're looking for is

098those budgeted numbers. And so, that number would probably go up from last year when we try and find that budgeted number. in the picture in my head and I'm not trying to be difficult but our job is to approve a budget. So we compare budget to budget. Operationally, you have to make some tweaks and that's our policies allow for that. That's what we'd expect you to do. So that I'm just trying to compare like what was in the budget here to what was in the budget there and what's the difference and what am I approving. That's what I'm trying to understand. I'm not trying to be difficult about it because >> the actual is different and it >> I expect it will be different with this many bodies. It's going to be somewhat different, but

099that's your job to figure out because >> based on what we're approving for number of physicians, that translates into dollars. >> Somebody that makes more might retire. So then you hire someone that makes less. It gives you a little bit of gap. So then you can hire over here. Like I get you have to do those things. Um uh so I'm just trying to compare budget to budget because I only approve the budget. The operational stuff I don't do. So I'm just trying to understand my job and make sure I have the information to do my job. So, one piece of context that might be helpful that I'm thinking about now, what you just said there is, you know, where our our revenue is limited. We only get so much money. The state says you

100can only have so much based on the revenue limit. And and locally, our taxpayers have said you can have a little bit more because we passed a referendum, which is amazing. Uh, and so we only have so many dollars to work with. And so, um, and and our increases don't equal inflation. So, functionally, we have a little less money each year. Uh, and the way we kind of figured out some stuff this year to make some staffing increases was because of the efficiencies that we found through busing. So, we have to become more efficient operationally. And so, you know, we saved maybe $200,000 a year by aligning with the private school students so that we have fewer um days of transportation. We changed to two-tier busing which allowed us to cut five bus routes and

101save about $350,000. And so, uh, represented in here is some special education teaching staff, some behavioral specialists, some TAs, different types of positions, some non-union staff that allow us to meet what we were hearing in linkages from our our teachers. Uh, and so those are all built in. And so that's how, you know, even though we have the same budget year-to-year, you know, it's, you know, the about the same amount of money, we're able to do more with the the few funds that we have. Uh, we are trying to find budgeted numbers from last year. It's difficult because our our systems don't um take snapshots in time and memorialize them. They're kind of running records. And so Patty and I are discussing how to figure out how to compare backwards to give you that direct

102year-to-year comparison you're looking for. >> Um I had similar question. I think we're thinking about it in similar ways and trying to understand how do we account for the movement of the columns in different directions and things. My question is so I if I'm remembering from our last meeting in the budget book we saw like a 1.5% staffing increase. Am I roughly on track there? >> That's what I remember. >> What is it? >> Something like that. >> Some it was at anyway whatever it was. >> Um so my my question around the um the percentages then is actually even like anecdotally are are we with that increase are we less understaffed than we were last year? >> Right. >> Absolutely. >> Okay. If you talk to our elementary teachers this year, aside from one

103grade level and one building, they would say that there's a much different feel this year and it's directly related to our initial level of special education staffing and the behavioral support specialists that we uh hired to help uh make some impacts. Also, at some of our buildings, we were underst staffed last year because we couldn't find the right people to fill those roles and we were able to since then uh be able to figure that out. So, you know, the first couple of weeks at Hamilton Elementary School, I have heard have gone really well and smoothly because they were fully staffed for the first time uh in a while. Um I know um Southern Bluffs had some really challenging students, but we were able to leverage some of those u new resources to help teachers,

104you know, figure out these big behaviors and manage things. And it's it's still a lot, right? But we're able to like make things much better, much faster as a result. And that really impacts the day-to-day experience of teachers and our students that are trying to learn in those classrooms. >> I I'm glad to hear that. I really appreciate it because I I think what what gets missed in a lot of the conversations and and the kind of the public understanding is is the degree to which school districts have been asked for a long time to do less with more or more with less other way around to do more with less and that the assumption that we already started from full employment, right? and and that all of our needs were already met, all of

105our positions were already full. That that muddies the data a little bit. So, I'm I'm glad to know that if we're seeing that increase, it's bringing us closer to that full employment where presumably in those conversations with with between HR and the building administrations that they're not, you know, asking for a cohort of 800 teaching assistants, you know, for one building, right? and that negotiation comes up with a solid realistic number about what their needs are and what our capacity is and and what is going to create the excellent experience that our students deserve. So, good to know that. >> Yeah. And I think it plays out in our studentto staff ratios. We have passed a referendum which is huge and that allows us some additional staffing, but functionally we have about the same amount

106of money as every other school district in the state on a per pupil basis. We have just leveraged that in ways that lead to more staff available to educate kids than many of our peers have. They have leveraged those funds in some other way. Might be significantly uh more transportation costs or it might be uh more outofstate professional development. You know, there's different ways you can use it. Here we've really focused on the staff in front of kids every >> and referendums helped us. >> Oh, absolutely. Y >> our community has been very >> so generous to us that >> absolutely. >> Can I ask a question, please. >> I I understand in the budget that, you know, this is a running snapshot, but I I unless something's changed, I don't know. I know we

107brought it up before, but there's a couple of bargaining agreements that aren't finalized yet. Or maybe it has now. So, it has. Oh, awesome. Well, then I Sorry. Then that'll help the budget. Obviously, you'll know where you're going to be at because I was going to wonder how you were going to do that. So, I'm sorry that I missed that. Well, congratulations. That's nice. >> Yes, all of our employee groups have settled. So, >> and that's the other thing is we we take a snapshot in January of our staff and that's where we begin our costing for the next year. How much can we afford to provide as increases? So, that all comes into it too. could be a different amount of staff but it might you know be increased because of the increase that

108we thought we can afford. >> Um I have a question on the dates here on the notice. Um so it says here that um the 20th of October is the the hearing and then it references an October 4th date. Is that the date it's going to be published? >> Yes. >> Okay. Thank you. I I know in previous year that we approved it after it had been published. So I really appreciate the effort bringing this forward and I also understand that this is the budget same similar numbers to what we saw last meeting the the official numbers with because they'll adjust with whatever that third Friday count is. We will see that in a upcoming meeting. Correct. >> Correct. So this is just a a summary of that book and all the detail that you

109received, putting it into the format that we're required to have it in for publishing to the newspaper so our public can review it and um and it's their notice of the public hearing and that uh these are the numbers that they will look at. And so when you're looking at this, it's always uh good to look at the ending fund balance in the previous year. Then you um add the revenues that you're thinking of and um subtract the expenditures. And then that will show you the projected fund balance for the next year. And what you want to keep in mind is you um you would like to see that uh as a a balanced budget, but that is not the case for this coming year. as I mentioned that we will be using some of

110the fund balance that uh that was part of the June 30th uh that we received in the previous year and we'll be using in this year. So we'll be reducing our fund balance but not for ongoing expenditures one-time expenditures. And on the October 27th meeting, we'll have an updated version of this that will capture all that we know about third Friday count, property valuations, all those other minutia that they have not given us yet. >> Um the last question I have is uh the bottom the percentage uh increase of levy >> the 9.7 um is that that's not the mill rate that's the total dollar amount. I want to make sure I understand that correctly. That's the percentage of increase for the dollar amount. >> Yep, you're correct. >> Um like as you noticed the

111uh debt service that's starting to pay back our new debt. >> So that was a an a large impact on the increase. >> Other questions? We'd look for a motion to approve this to be published. So moved >> motion >> a second >> by Scott. That's kind of a nice and seconded by Dr. Garcia. >> Any further discussion? >> All those in favor of the motion signify by saying I. >> I. >> Those opposed? Motion carries. We'll then move on to thank you. >> Um operational expectation monitoring report OE1 instructional program. >> All right. Um so this is a part of our typical monitoring process. The school board has set in place um the values of the community in OEE1 our instructional program and uh we presented to the school board a list of indicators

112that we thought we would be able to provide to demonstrate to the board that we are meeting the values of our community. And so this is our opportunity to present that uh report. the book report basically that the school board assigned us uh for our instructional program and uh Carrie uh wishes she could be here. She is ill today though uh and so I am filling in as the presenter with some help from uh Jeremy uh Skooner Skunover our IT um supervisor a little bit later um and so I will get us started. So, OE1 is instructional program. Uh, it starts by stating the superintendent shall maintain a program of instruction that offers equitable, challenging, and relevant opportunities for all students to achieve at levels defined in the board's results policies. I'm not going to

113read through each and every one of these. There's a lot of attachments and other things. A lot of this is um self-explanatory and just demonstrates that we have done the things that the school board has asked. But I wanted to highlight a handful of things that are either topical interest or of a little more nuance and depth. All right. So, first kind of cruise through these a little bit. um OE uh 11.1 um we list some of our uh curriculum review cycle and how we make improvements uh to our processes and our curriculums. OE1.2 indicates that our standards are reflective of national standards uh and they're approved by the schoolboard each year. So it's uh aligned to that OEE 11.3 uh we align our curriculum uh with our standards. Uh and you can see that

114there's uh lots of documents you can dive into if you are so interested to see how that happens. Uh 11.4 uh we measure students progress. Um uh we've had some new opportunities with the new reading law uh to monitor progress in different ways uh this year. Um but um you can see with first grade reading I Ready scores or with our forward ELA and math um we use a number of different national, state and local assessments to track progress. Um 11.5 um instructional program includes opportunities for students develop their talents and interests in their specialized uh areas of interest. Um here in indicator one there's an academic guide that we make available to all students and it lists all the different uh courses and options that students have to take. Um, indicator two is our

115test participation uh rate and you can see that listed there. It's at uh 95%. Uh, and then number three will provide opportunities for dual enrollment with postsecary uh options. And we talked about this the other day in one of our results policies. Um but uh it's really incredible what we've been doing in our schools uh in the last uh five six years in providing uh articulated courses with both the university and with western technical college. Um so in that uh first link the redefining readiness report which you've seen before um you know the number of students that um earn dual credit with a university is 90%. So that's that's incredible. 90% of our students can earn dual credit, earning transcripted credit. And so that's uh working with our Western Technical College. 90% of students are

116also earning transcripted credit. Uh so just incredible opportunities for our students to be getting uh a college or quasi college experience before they ever get to uh the post-secary level. There's a early uh college um credit and start college now. uh summary there as well uh and lists uh the range of opportunities that are available for our students here and the dollar amounts uh that it takes to to make those happen. And these are uh courses that our students are allowed by law to take at our universities. So, it's up to 15 credits uh in their uh high school career that they can take at the university directly. uh and it allows uh some cost sharing that goes on with that, but it uh lowers the cost uh for our students. And I would invite

117any of our students, have you taken any directly at the universities at all? >> Um I'm currently taking two. Well, I'm taking one this semester, one next semester. I'm in Spanish 307 and I'll be taking a 400 level Spanish next year or next semester. >> So, I know it's 15 credits, but even the 307 class. I've surpassed that already. I get credits for every class that I skipped. Um, it's it's an amazing opportunity. I'll be walking into college with almost 10 credits to need a minor. It's it's truly amazing. >> Once you do your placement test and do well in your first class of college, >> I took the placement test my freshman year and that's what got me into the 307 class. >> Good on you. I was going to say and that's what

118you mean by the I don't know if they understand the classes you skipped at the highest level of foreign language you take it gives you credit for all of the classes you would have had to take >> correct >> to get up there which is really impressive >> thanks to Northwoods >> and so we have students taking courses at Vurbo at WL and at uh Western Technical College. Uh and then there's also the transcripted credit list listed there uh as well. And uh it identifies the the range of courses that you can take um with Western uh in our schools with our teachers and get credit over at Western Technical College. So just a a huge range of courses from construction industry basics to um contemporary healthc care practices to dining room theory to selling

119principles to solid works uh early childhood development. Uh just really neat opportunities for kids to get their uh get some credits out of the way uh in a in a safe environment and try out college. I believe I have six classes already that I have received credit for through Western and then I have um my accounting classes first and second semester also for credit. Um I believe each one counts to two or three as long as I pass which means I have 18 to 24 credits through Western not including any of the other stuff. So, it's really nice because other than asking and paying for your like your college transcript through there, you don't have to pay anything. So, I get uh college credit for just like going to my classes and not failing. >>

120See higher. >> You're better. >> Yes. That uh just uh awesome opportunities for our students there. >> Does PY have that as well? >> Uh yes, we do have it. Um I know a lot of my fellow classmates are in it. I myself am not um just extracurriculars that I'm already busy with. But thank you. >> Um move on to 11.6. Uh this relates to accommod accommodating different uh learning preferences. Um students are placed in the least restrictive environment. Um we have a comprehensive English learner uh service model. Um and then we have just a a variety of alternatives for um our students. Um so Polytenic is a great example of that. Could you describe a little bit like how you learn differently at Polytenic? >> Yeah. Um it's project based, so we have a

121lot of um input into what we learn and how we learn it. Um uh just this last year, my junior year, we took a trip to Orlando um and we got to do a physics project based on that, which was really cool. Um we got to build roller coasters based on um what we saw there and um applied the physics towards that. Um and then just our personal projects uh get to pick a topic that we are interested in and do a trimester just focused on that topic. >> And you do a senior showcase each year? >> Yes. Um seniors we do a year-long project um and we incorporate community um events into that as well. Um and yeah, it's just really really cool. >> Yeah. So that an example of a great way that

122our district is able to provide those opportunities, but our charter schools um and our choice schools also provide a lot of those neat opportunities. All right. Uh OE1.7 um we use a social justice lens uh and incorporate culture responsive uh content. uh and you'll see that that information is listed there and how we approach that. Uh 11.8 uh we modify instructional programs as necessary. Um so we identify our instructional priorities each year and those are listed. Uh and then we also uh make sure to track our students progress and be responsive to that. Um, we have continuous improvement plans for each of our buildings and review data each year to ensure that those are on track. 11.9 uh we consider class size, composition, and organization as important components. Um, so we use the age achievement

123gap reduction program. We receive a few extra funds from the state in order to lower our class sizes at the elementary level. We have a >> former sage. >> Yes, exactly. the former SAGE program and we provide a report to the school board each year twice a year uh uh after the spring and fall semesters. Uh for that um we there included in here an indicator two on 11.9 are the north side Hamilton uh community school reports. Uh, and I've shared those with you before, I think, in an email, but just, uh, incredible things that, um, our neighborhood schools do to build community and support. Um, I don't think I shared it here, but Hamilton uh, had a family night a couple weeks ago and over 250 uh, folks from the community showed up uh,

124to support the school uh, after school. It was just awesome, you know, and I know North Sight does the same sorts of things. Um something to highlight as an area where uh we indicate that we are not in compliance is OE1.9 indicator 3 proportional enrollment. Uh and if you look at that you will notice uh that um we are tracking um the proportionality in our charter schools. Koulie Monasuri, Koulie Region Virtual Academy, Polytenic, Soda One and Soda 2. And uh a goal that we've had is ensuring that these schools are accessible to everyone and representative of our school community. And um we have never been proportional in these schools, but it's something that we keep our eye on and we continue to try and think of ways to lower barriers to access. We know that

125simply filling out an extensive paperwork form can lower the barrier or can increase barriers to folks if you're struggling with reading as an adult or if you have an uh if you if English isn't your first language. Any number of ways that that can be a barrier. Another one is transportation. We do our best to provide transportation, but even uh getting to your uh homeschool boundary and then traveling across town might feel uncomfortable for you if you've grown up in a neighborhood and you want your kids to attend there. Uh and so we know that there's any number of barriers for our families in accessing these schools. And so it's something that we continue to track and monitor and every year uh seek ways to uh mitigate um that um that disproportionality. Happy to take

126any questions on that, thoughts, ideas. >> Well, one one thing maybe I should have brought up the last time, but there was a a section in here talking about attendance over the last five years. And it talked about, I think, if I can remember correctly, that attendance in the freshman year is seven times more important as an indicator than X. And so when I see a situation like that, I try to say, okay, what could the district do differently to improve attendance. Now, I think a problem that we heard in different languages last year was one on behavior. But if that's really true, attendance is seven times more important in terms of success. Then maybe we should look at somebody that deals with an attendance specialist, just like we deal with disciplinary specialists. Maybe we

127could look at somebody that's a specialist and come in and suggest things to improve attendance in our district which then would improve scores for those students that typically miss a possible solution. >> Absolutely. Yeah. Uh we're always open to solutions for attendance. We've had a great um county uh attendance committee, truency committee get together each year uh and really work through prevention strategies, early intervention and acute uh intervention strategies. But um you know we're always trying to find the next thing that will help us move the needle on that. So that's a great suggestion. Anything else on proportional enrollment? >> No, I I appreciate that you have this indicator um and you continue to work at it. Um the failure to meet it in my opinion isn't a negative thing. I think removing the indicator

128so you can be completely successful would be a negative indicator >> for sure. Yeah, it's a goal we have and we're not there yet, but we continue to focus on it. >> I think it's a good goal. >> Uh, moving on to uh 11.10, I would invite up uh Mr. uh Jeremy Skoonover. Um to talk about 10 and 11 to Oh, no. Mostly just 10. What's up? >> Just just 10. >> Just 10. >> I mean, I can do 11, but I haven't. >> Yeah. Have you had >> all the way to 11? Yeah. >> Have you had a chance to speak to the folks here? >> Yes, you have. Last year, um I was able to speak. I don't know if this is working, but >> yeah, we spoke last year, so familiar faces

129and some new faces. So, it's good to see everybody. Um so, um I'm dealing with uh OE1.10 and we have two indicators there. I'm just going to kind of briefly uh go over those for you. uh 100% of district-owned computers and devices um used within the district network are protected using reliable safety measures. The firewall security and content filter are SIPA compliant. Um that um is evidenced by a letter that um is in the packet. Uh we also have our authorized use of school own equipment and internet safety and acceptable use policies linked there as well. we do go above and beyond uh what's stated here and I think I think Laura kind of talked to me about maybe we need to change some of these things up. The verbiage is a little old uh

130for what we do. So um so we'll be trying to update that. But um that's uh 11.10.1. I'll get into some other things on that in a little bit. Um and then 11.10.2 two is identified prohibited sites and information attempted to be accessed by students are flagged, excuse me, and blocked by the district's filters. Um, and that we have evidenced by some alerts and reports that we get from our content filtering system. Um, so some other so there's a couple ways that we keep kids and staff safe um on the on our network. Um, but we kind of go above and beyond that. Um, the OE 11 um 11.10.1 10.1 talks about being on the school network, but we have devices that leave our school network. And so we don't just provide safety that way,

131we provide safety off campus as well. And so our filtering and our safety measures also extend off the campus. Um so it's not just here. Um this year we also implemented a new um uh email filter. It's called abnormal AI. It actually takes a look at our emails that are coming in and will detect when someone sends an email to everybody in the district uh on behalf of Mr. Angle asking for lots of iTunes gift cards. So, it has been doing a good job so far and that's actually the one of the biggest vectors of attack right now is just shooting a fishing email out getting somebody's somebody to sign into a site that they think is legit, but it's not really legit. And then we end up, you know, they end up transferring money,

132you know, out of our accounts. So, >> sure. >> I've noticed that happens a lot to our board members where it's like one Trevor. I'm sorry I didn't give you the money there beforehand, but >> I'm kind of curious if that's been a recent problem since I've noticed it's kind of spiked up a little bit last year and maybe I might have seen your information from this year kind of block off kind of recently. >> Yeah. So, hopefully you have gotten less of those. That's what this is for. Um, so if you haven't, let me know. Um, but no, it's it's been around for a long time. It's just that now with AI, they're able to generate these things uh more easily and shoot them out. So, it's becoming a big like just it's whack-a-ole.

133We play my job is playing whack-a-ole basically. Um, just trying to defend our network from things and new things and stuff pops up all over the place. Um, so yes, but that that is that is for those like it'll try to take it'll they'll go through and find out all the officials of the district and try to scam people into answering emails or logging into things that they don't need. >> Never ask you in an email for money even though you've received >> I may >> I know I got a couple text messages now from Elon Musk in regard to a car that I >> Oh, nice. Okay. Well, I can't block those, but I I'll, you know, >> but I do have a follow-up question. This is something I'm a little bit quite concerned

134about is I can imagine most of this information it kind of gets leaked out there is just, you know, we're on public for us board members. You have a website you go to, you find our contact information for a bot, they can do that themselves, >> but you said that teachers are gaining some things. Is that still public information? Even worse yet, has been any cases where students have received any of these fishing emails where some of >> I actually haven't heard of many students getting Have you guys ever gotten a fishing email? Okay. Thank you. All right. >> I don't know. No, it's normally it's stack because the students like their data is very but it's it's very valuable but it's only valuable to get through me. So the value that I keep track

135of or that we keep track of in data services of personal personally identifiable information, a lot of that is stuff that we have to keep safe. So hacking a student's email wouldn't really give them that much information, but hacking one of our emails or hacking one of us, fishing one of us would get them a lot of information potentially. >> And I asked that because remember some time ago, Black River Falls had an incident where they had a cyber attack and we were told last time where it's only a matter it's a matter of when, not >> if. Yeah, >> and especially since all these students information want to save their um >> so if I understand this right, most of these fishing attempts from these emails are sent through staff because their information is

136public. >> Correct. Well, it's usually your email address is listed on a website. They can go out and scrape the website, find everybody's email addresses, and then add them into uh you know into the system. So, we're we're trying to work to not do that anymore. Like, you can still contact people, but like we don't need to publish >> students. Yeah, but it's not hitting students. It's it's hitting staff. The Black River Falls one was a staff member. It was actually um looked like it came from the business director to someone and they thought, "Oh, this looks legit. I'll I'll send the ETF information for the district to this person and it ended up being a a big deal." So, I mean, that's why we why partly why I've, you know, implemented this is that

137just if we can if we can just get a few fewer fishing attempts, like we just reduce that risk of of attack and getting actually hacked. um through that. So, yeah. So, good question. Yeah, >> this may be a little bit out of of kind of the purview of what you're what you're like protecting us from, but we've obviously had lots of conversations recently about student use of AI. >> Yes. >> Um and so I'm curious as I was looking at like the blocked categories and signatures like chat GPT wasn't on there. Is is that something that you're monitoring when they're accessing? >> Yeah. So AI like all those AI sites we have them blocked by a category an AI category in our filter. >> Oh I think I saw that. >> Yeah. So th

138those do get those do get blocked and I I could get you a full Okay. Um but no we do have those and so one of the things that we have done because we need to do that because chat GPT is not filtered really and we have no control over that at all. Um, and so what we did instead was we purchased Magic School, which is an AI platform that allows you to allow students to get um, experience using AI and prompting AI, but in a in a school safe environment um, where their teachers are able to monitor and help guide um, as they learn how to use that. So, that's one of the things that we've done. Um, Google's come out with the Gemini, which is safe for schools, but we haven't done anything

139with that yet. So, we'll just kind of stick with the ones that are for schools. Um, but yeah, so we we do block those just because again, we can't we can't control what those things say um and what they come up with and what rabbit hole they will take you down today. So, yeah. Um, just a couple more things just to round this out how we kind of go above and beyond. You know, we have antivirus in all all of our machines. Um, we do actually have security trip wires in our network. So, if somebody tries to poke around on our network, they will go for this really enticing looking machine that looks like they should be able to hack it and then we'll get a notification. Um, sometimes our machines trip up our other

140machines and that's good. We know that the system's working. Um, so, um, but yeah, that's that's kind of what I had for safety and cyber security that we have in place. Um, we're we're working really hard. I have lots of very paranoid people on my team, which is what we get paid to be. Um, and so, yeah. So, any further questions? >> I would just say that um I think uh Jeremy and the IT team does a good job of balancing the need to access information and for things to be convenient with also the safety side of things. You know, sometimes you can lock things down so much you can't access anything and it just gets hard to operate. But I think it's always a a reasoned judgment to make that call. >> Yep. It's

141a it's a highwire act and whack-a-ole too. We carry insurance as well. >> Yes. Yeah. And we have insurance. Yeah. We have cyber insurance. Um we have to fill out a big long form every year of all the safety protocols that we have in place. So um yeah. So hopefully we'll never have to use it, but I'm going to try really hard not to use it. Well, it's become even more important as as this gets more developed with AI and everything because the >> the opportunity to do destructive things to our network and even at home. I mean, they can literally take your home, right, and start >> taking, you know, money out of it. But it is more important now than it's ever. It's almost like we need our own police department for it.

142And >> cyber cops, >> you'd be our sheriff. Yeah. But yeah, >> okay, I'll get a badge. >> Yeah, we'll get you one >> t-shirt. All right. Well, before I go, just make sure you thank Dan Levendski for all of his hard work and dedication to the district. Giving up He hates this. He hates this so much. But Dan does such a great job and he's been dedicated for so long. Gives up two Mondays a month where he could be spending time with his wife or his dog. So, thanks to Dan and thank you all. >> Thank you. Thank you. >> I think we should all give him hugs at the end of >> looking very red behind that. >> Um, >> I'll round out the rest of the port. 11-11. We protect instructional time

143for students as best we can uh by minimizing disruptions and well as um by monitoring the use of substitutes to use those in the most effective way. And then we uh periodically review um uh for school attendance boundary changes. Um we share analysis update on an annual basis in the budget plan. We've got a number of capacity studies that we've shared with the board that'll be in place for a number of years. Um we are monitoring open enrollment seats that are available uh and limiting those for our most um difficult to to staff positions in this case American sign language and deaf of heart of hearing services. Uh we monitor the 45555 rule which is the rule that balances our enrollment north and south in our school district to ensure that we are able to

144offer comprehensive educational programs at both our middle schools and both our high schools. Uh and then uh lastly, if need be, we present uh recommendations for new attendance boundaries based on enrollment projections or changes. And while we don't have any listed in here uh for recommended changes, we will be addressing those this year as we get into the new year for our new uh buildings and additions. That is OE1. Um we are presenting it as in compliance with exceptions noted uh as a result of the disproportionality at our charter schools. Mr. I have uh three things kind of just questions for all this. This is a big >> OE. So I first want to turn over to the student representatives for OE1 for indicator 4 and um I've been got myself into Central High School

145and do a tour for a full day back in September. I'm trying to find time to in October. But one of the things I'm trying to kind of investigate upon is standardbased grading and how it's performing. elf. I see a smile. >> But um one of the things I heard, one of the struggles of standard based grading was the fact that you couldn't really see your grading or what kind of grades you got. And OE um 11.4 kind of talks about Canvas Skyward Educ. And when I came over there and talked to some of the instructors that they one had a grading scale that was accessible and they said that u in comparison to the previous years with trying to put in standard based grading is something a lot about linkages when you don't know

146what your grade is on the spot. I want to ask you guys if that is still the case right now since what I heard I came in like the first week or two when I heard that there wasn't really anything be tested by this but could you at this very moment if you really wanted to check what your grade was for a certain assignment >> for a certain assignment? No, not necessarily. But for an overall grade, yes. Um it's changed a lot this year than it was last year. Last year was a lot more difficult. I remember emailing a lot of my teachers several times before the quarter came, but this year it's it's there's more numbers. It's less of a advanced proficient. Not yet. It's 4321. So, it's a little bit easier. I know

147it's still not popular one among staff and students, but I also will say I'm not a fan of it for the that sense, but more in the sense that it's a lot easier to get by in classes now. Like I don't find myself studying as hard because I know that it's a lot more lenient now. It's a lot easier to get A's than it was before. I mean, that's my take on it. Can I can I interject that that's not what this this discussion is not what this monitoring report is about, right? And I I know this is kind of your axe to grind, but it's already 8:00 and we have further items. >> That's not my I'm I'm asking this because it's in character to four. I requested a workshop specifically. I started based

148grading kind of focusing on see if it was accessible. That's one of the biggest things I heard about this year and saying that we have data maintain that that's something we didn't have in the past. So particularly just when it comes to being able to access your grade, you can see what a grade is. You can use these software themselves. There's something that is there as opposed to last years where there was not something there. You had to >> Yeah. Last year there was nothing >> because I'm looking at the data here and all I see is kind of talking about the benefits all these here, but that doesn't exactly say what you see inside the schools on students. That's why I want to ask you there too because I don't think we had the

149evidence here and that's why I was curious for that which is my intention not to grind on sandbased grading but this is a specific issue that's being monitored here and I didn't see any evidence to support that and I want to ask over there. >> Yeah, I know the staff are working hard especially at the beginning of the school year to kind of push out what they're looking for for each class. So even if you're not necessarily seeing a number you're definitely getting an idea at the very beginning >> in the syllabus. Yeah. of what they're expecting from you and what each number or what each proficient advance not yet what that will equate to >> in the end. >> Good. >> So awesome. >> I think um Mr. M if I might jump in.

150Um first of all we have a workshop on this um October 27th. So we'll get more into details on this. Um I also had a question on OE14 and it wasn't about um this is our only policy that addresses grading. Is that correct? I I looked quickly. >> Yes. This is the uh policy that addresses assessment and all that that encompass. >> To be honest with you, I um um I believe that the way everything's written, you are in compliance. I think what we as a board might want to discuss um on the 27th at least consider is is this policy is what we're saying we want from the staff and then their subsequent indicators getting us to where we want are and I think the question and we've talked in general terms in the

151past is um an assessment um effective measure each student's progress toward achieving exceeding standards using quantitative qualitative measures and methods to assess teach students continues improvement. I believe the staff are doing that with standard based grading. I also have heard that not everybody loves standard based grading and we'll get into that on the 27. I think what we as a board might want to say because our policies are supposed to reflect our values in the community. If we're hearing from students and parents and staff that um perhaps we want to add language about um that it would be then uh information be shared with students in a way and parents in a way that is easily understandable or something. I'm just throwing an idea out there. Um I personally I think the issue isn't with

152what's been measured. I think it's our policy and I I think we have some work to do and I think that's on us as a board. That's just how I I'm reading it. Um and that was actually I had a question here about the um uh number four as well, Mr. Ma. So I don't want to take away your question. Um That's just my p my read on it, but I think it is a good issue and I think we're going to have a good discussion on the 27th and I >> is there anything you want to add because you seem to have a lot some concerns here. >> My my questions center around process a little bit and and I am looking also forward to the to the workshop discussion around this and I'm

153trying to make sure that I understand what your what your criticism of the policy issue is because as I see this this is our policy that directs the superintendent and the district to have an effective assessment system. Right? No board of education that will reasonably be elected by any by any locality will be experts in assessment. That's why the the meat and potatoes of assessment and what the district does on a day-to-day basis is an administrative issue and I firmly believe it should remain that way. >> I I agree with you. My thought was I I couldn't pick out a grading system to save my soul. But I think if we're going to say values, then we need a grading system that's uh and again we've received feedback and we also in all fairness the

154administration has done a lot of work this last year to improve it. So I I don't want to take away from from that and that's why I think on the 27th I think we'll have a good discussion. But my comment about the policy is does a policy represent the community's values? And if we want a grading system that's easily understandable by students, staff, and parents, because that was one of the concerns I'd heard was that PE students didn't know where their grade was. Parents didn't know where their grade was. And and maybe the system, that's why I'm saying maybe all along in this because when we hear what changes have occurred, that might be taken care of. But um I I think Mr. Jamaica's concern is there are concerns that he's heard concerns from individuals

155about the current grading system and is so are we in compliance with OE4. I think we are in compliance with O4 the way it's currently written. If we as a board want to make changes on that um I would encourage us to discuss that after the 27th of October because we may be enlightened in a way that everything's perfectly fine. But I feel the superintendent and this administration has done what we've asked them to do um the way it's currently written. But I I I'm not sure that aligns perfectly with the concerns we're hearing from the public. And I it's not to say that we would pick out a grading system, but we could say we'd want a grading system that produces X Y or Z in very general terms. Owen. >> Um I will

156say that at least at central there has been a like um universal policy on what constitutes what grade. So moving back to numbers, uh 432 and one allows us to have I believe it's 2.8 is an A. Uh which makes it so that if students are put in are willing to put in a little bit of work uh to figure out kind of what their mean grade is uh they're able to determine, okay, I should be roughly about here. But then as far as I'm aware, most if not all of the staff have been told that if they feel that that number does not reflect a student's recent growth, um they're able to alter that. So if they started the year really struggling with a concept, but then made incredible growth, but it still only

157put them at like a 2.7, they have the room to say, "Okay, I understand that this number is not where it should be, but that's because like that's not due to you not to learn and putting in that effort and so they're able to make change like that. I feel as though it is very easy to tell kind of where you stand now with that universal policy and if the concern is that students and parents don't know what their grade is I feel it's that either that standard like the scale has not been properly communicated or that the parents are not trying to stay involved or actively checking um on their student >> and that was a past concern. I don't I haven't heard anything this year. Um Jim, you had something else. >> Well,

158I just really believe that we were stuck on one grading system for so long that somehow we have to nudge that forward. I can say as a math teacher for a lot of years, even the three people lined up down the hall from me would give different algebra one tests on the first chapter. The complexity of the questions, the percentage that you'd give to the person, they all differed. So there was no consistency from teacher to teacher, building to building where now it's trying to say, hey, listen, in order to get the best grade in this class, these are the four things you have to know and this is how you know them by using a rubric and so on. So there's much more a definitive reason why you get the grade and even what

159you have to study. One of my one of my arguments might have been you have to know how to graph a linear equation. And if you can't do that, it's not yet. Before this, you might have got it halfway. So you get 60%. What's 60% mean? Well, we average that with 100% and you get 80%. So that's a B even though you never learned how to graph a line. >> Mr. M, >> I also had two written questions. Only one of them was kind of related to my own study. this is like the one time you could talk about this. Again, I'm asking these questions to take a look at the evidence because the evidence kind of hard to read when there's not really that much. Um, so my next question was on indicator or

160OE 11.3 indicator 2. That's something I've also heard a lot not just when talking about this issue kind of in general or standard based grade, but overall when I when I'm talking to staff inside the schools are what exactly constituates a committee? Who's involved with it? Are there some teachers who are not involved with it that perhaps should be since I've heard there's been some kind of disconnect sometimes these committees here and for the sake of the language transplant curricula is collaborate developed through curriculum committees define the committee for me here through the right there it's there I'm just seeing through who's leading it or what's part of it I'm curious to see with where that kind of disconnect could possibly be Yeah. So, um it's not in this uh report, but there's um God

161is OE eight or nine communicating with and support of the community or something. And there's a a probably a 13page document that lists all the committees that we have in the district and uh the ways that we involve staff and community members in order to ensure that we're hearing voices, you know, from our community to to make decisions as it relates to curriculum. A change that we've made since I've been in the school district is um historically um content coordinators, folks that were in charge of math curriculum or science curriculum were administrators in the school district. Um Mr. Bagneski was probably a math coordinator at one point >> and science and uh that was a great strategy and our administrators uh were very good at uh ensuring that those programs were investigated and uh deployed

162well that the curriculum was reviewed in a timely way and in Mr. Bneski's case, he was a subject matter expert. He had taught math. Um, over time though, we found that we couldn't always find subject matter experts in those areas. And as our budgets reduced, we couldn't have, you know, jobs that allowed people to do that full-time. It became like an elementary principal who would also be the math coordinator, uh, a high school principal who would also be the FIAD coordinator. And it maybe not an area of expertise, but an extra job that they had to make them full-time. uh in the last um three- four years uh we've transitioned to uh teachers as content coordinators. And so uh on that list there, the teaching and learning committee, those are all teaching staff in our

163in our school district who are certified to teach in those areas and passionate about it. Um Melissa Norman just rewrote our FIAD curriculum uh with a group of teachers in collaboration with UWL. uh so really passionate about it personally, engaged in the work right now and uh interested in in making those changes herself. Um I was a science teacher. I could probably weigh in a little bit there, but not to the extent that our existing science teachers can right now. And so that's why we rely on that committee to help develop curriculum because they're the subject matter experts in our school district. They're the most passionate about it. They're the closest to the work. >> Dr. Didn't we hear from the math committee when they were piloting different math programs? They came and gave a

164presentation about how they chose the different curriculums that they were trying out when they were updating and those were teachers. They're volunteers, right? They volunteer to be part of the committee. >> Yeah. And we seek uh additional like if there's a curriculum that we're going to pick, we seek teacher input for that. So for math in particular at the elementary level, we transitioned probably four years ago now. Um the the teachers had a vendor fair. They looked at all the different curricula. They were all presented that stuff. The teachers identified their top three. They whittleled it down to two that they wanted to pilot. Then teachers piloted that material and then based on their feedback, that's what we ended up selecting. Uh so it's super organic. It's involves the teachers at the at the ground

165level. you know, the extent to which administration gets involved is just to facilitate the work uh to make sure that it's not teachers doing the logistics and taking the minutes and finding the materials and coordinating the vendors. Uh we do our best to make that happen for them. They're the the voice in the in the process. And it it's tough sometimes for our content coordinators to find the time and the energy to be able to do this on top of teaching all day. But the benefit has been um um I think apparent in our selection process and how teachers feel about curriculum. >> You had one more >> one more um and this one again is on OE 11.11 indicator one disruptions act day will be discouraged. This is a minor tidbit where it's kind

166of but kind of focusing or it's compliant but something better upon is um the student codes of right responsibilities. I know you guys have a committee for that there. One of the biggest issues I have had and I've actually voiced this to you in private a couple of times too is the fact that we are the only school district in our area that doesn't have like a three-point or doesn't have exactly a coherent drug enforcement policy. Um, other school districts across our area when I've checked through their code of rights responsibilities have something along the lines of if you're caught using a substance once, it has a standardized kind of approach for it. And the thing I get back from you on the end is you don't want to be punishing or it's too not

167necessarily get ticketing anything too. But one of the things I've seen and I've asked about this a couple of occasions as well is that the fact I think we have a dis uh proportionate amount of let's say disciplinary things where it kind of allows the idea to fester there and I would say that would be a disruption to the academic day. We have something where it's kind of best what comes the administration do. So can we do something to better that and actually to incorporate because everyone else is doing around it too and I've even asked teachers across the area how they do it and they I I think they have a better way of doing it is what say or next time we do have something for our student code of race responsibilities to

168have that kind of three strike system at least have something that's standardized when it comes to drug enforcement. >> Yeah. I I've as having been an a teacher and a principal I've seen all the different types of um disciplinary continuums that you can develop and I've gone down the path of if this then that very you know just you know very defined like if you are tardy you will have uh a detention you know if you um are caught you know with drugs on your person in your school you will be expelled and without any accommodation for the circumstances of that student or the situation itself. I've done that before and it's always failed in every school districts I've been in. Uh in my experience and in the experience of most of my staff, you

169need some flexibility to uh adapt to the personal circumstances of that student, the context of the the issue that you you catch the student uh in. Um that has always worked better where I've been. Uh we do have a a a continuum a matrix um that we refer to uh for our more severe things to identify what should be school-based discipline, what should be an out of school suspension, what should be a disciplinary referral, what should be uh pre-expulsion and what we would refer for expulsion. And um you know, we've had one expulsion here since I've been here. Uh and I think it was very warranted. Uh, but we do our best to find ways to educate all of our students because regardless of whether or not they're in our school buildings every day, they

170will be in our community. Um, as it relates to to drug offenses, we're fortunate to have seen a pretty significant decline in those in the last five years. Uh, it relates to lots of different things and most of it, frankly, to forces outside of our control. Uh, the the norms have been changing over the last five years since the pandemic as well and that's been the largest cause for those change. we would like to point to something we've done. Uh but that's been a a large part of it. Uh I think it was two years ago uh we went out to our community in the student right code of rights and responsibilities process and specifically asked about AODDA issues because we were hearing from our students, we were hearing from our parents that these were

171issues that needed to be addressed. And so we rewrote our guidance around AODDA uh issues and then increased our supports for students in that process. And so if a student was caught at school with a vape uh and they indicated that they wanted to work on avoiding this in the future, we have um specific methods for our counseling. Espert is the acronym. I don't know what it stands for. Uh and also um uh some counseling at the the local drug treatment center. And we use that for the same with other types of drugs as well. It's primarily marijuana that we deal with in schools, not much else. Uh and so we've been fortunate to really listen to our community, our parents, our teachers, our students, and refine our guidance in our code of responsibilities. As

172a result, um our the development process we have for our student code, I think, is a model uh nationally because we're listening to the community and it's reflective of the values. Just like the school board's policies are reflective of the values, so is our student code of rights and responsibilities. how we approach discipline for truency, for drugs, for dress code violations, for all those things. It comes from our community. Uh, and so I definitely um understand like frustration. We just wish the stuff would go away or that you know these kids would stop doing things. But um our schools are a reflection of our community and as long as there is drug use in our community, there will be drug use in our schools. And we have to mitigate it to the best of our

173abilities and ensure that those kids still have an opportunity to learn and can repair whatever harm or fix whatever mistakes they made and get back on the right track because they'll be here in our community for the foreseeable future. But happy to to take notes and and think about how to do it differently as we move into the future. >> Follow up on another time. Um, Mr. Mink, I appreciate your concerns and questions. I've heard some of those as well. I guess I would, um, as I reflect on it, um, I guess my first question to the board is more rhetorical. I can't say specifically, but is our policy written in such a way that it's getting us to where we want to be? And if it's not, then that's probably a better dis that's

174not a better it's a different discussion that we should have. Um, and I I want to make sure because I think that's separate from monitoring, which is what we're supposed to be doing right now in this agenda item is monitoring um the performance according to the currently written policy. >> Does that make sense to you? >> Yes. >> Yeah. I I mean I that's our our bylaws, our policies allow us to change them as we need to. as communities grow and change and different things come up and happen that we should be reflecting on what our policies say and and make sure they represent what our community wants. So um I think that's maybe more to your question than um perhaps the monitoring at least from my perspective. I'll just say that >> and I'm

175happy to look into AODDA trends and share those with the board and uh upcoming communication. >> I'd like that and share that with the students as well. >> Of course. >> Thank you. Any other questions on um OE1? >> You the floor. >> Sorry, we kind of piled on you, Adam. I'm sorry. >> I mean, we only talk about this once a year, it seems. Well, going back to our own time. Um, it's important out of the way. And as far as the discussion on the grading system, the reason it's set up for the 27th is it's at the end of the first the first quarter of this year. So we can kind of see what the changes that have occurred, how has that made things better or not. And that's I think that's a

176more meaningful discussion than to um rehash what hasn't worked in the past. So um okay, losing track here where I'm supposed to be. So we unless if there's no other questions, we would be looking for a motion to approve um with exceptions noted as presented by the superintendent. >> I'll make a motion that in regard to the monitoring monitoring report for policy OE1 instructional program and with respect to the provisions of policy BSR5, superintendent accountability, the board of education concludes that the superintendent and district are in compliance with exceptions noted. >> Second. You got one. >> Miss Fuk's got the second. Thank you. Uh, and a motion by Dr. Sprag. Any further discussion on the motion. All those in favor of the motion signify by saying I. >> I. >> Those opposed. Motion carries. We'll

177then move on to uh approval of linkage groups. Getting >> did I miss something? >> No, just one thing. Um, these are kind of small things. I'm kind of curious. We can possibly make a motion to just put this all into one big thing unless there's any questions. Any of them in particular just for sake of time. >> Oh, for the items 705 through 7:04 to 79. >> We could address them as a package. >> So, whoever makes a motion could make a motion to combine them all if you're okay. 704 just starts out with the big pink big picture and then if somebody wants to make a motion to approve them all, they could do that. Mr. Beeski. Well, my my concern with that is they all kind of say the same thing except

178they're in a different order in many cases. I like the two that specifically start with a positive comment. Like I'm looking at the one for the district-wide parents. It says, "When it comes to educating children, what do you see the lacrosse school district doing?" Well, sometimes the other questions come first is they're on a negative tent. You know, what do what could we improve upon? So, I don't know. I' I'd like to off on a positive and go down the line from there. Um >> I I agree. Yeah. I mean, if you've been at the linkages, you know, the the whole conversation can get really taken up with that. And my suggestion was going to be that we adopt I'm looking at the linkage questions for the cultural community partners. I think it's the same

179ones that you were just referencing that we adopt those four questions um for all of the linkage groups except maybe the students. That's maybe not as the most I like. largely the way the student ones were written is slightly different and there's a different perspective that we're inviting. But I think the the phrasings of those questions um are just a little more productive while still opening up that space for people to to highlight a challenge or an issue. >> Yes. >> I mean I would even like the barriers just like start off positive because everybody's kind of geared up when they go into those linkages anyway. Let's talk about something positive instead of >> sets a tone. >> I like it. >> The other question that's on here besides the questions are the linkage groups.

180Do we still want to do these groups and are there any other groups that we want to talk to? >> Well, the one I thought of as far as we talk sometimes we talk to our own crowd. We talk to parents, we talk to students, and maybe an diverse group might be could we start talking to some neighborhood groups. Um every once in a while I know the Lide Neighborhood Association is meeting tonight. Uh we usually get a pretty good turnout. U but there's nine other district or neighborhood committees that matter of fact we could hit we have some joint meetings sometime. We just had a joint meeting between Bluffside Neighborhood and Jenna and so we meet sometimes together so city employees can come out and can talk to us about what's the city is

181planning etc. So I might add to that city neighborhood. So, how would do you want to have like representatives from each of the neighborhoods or we just put all the names in the hat and pick one or how would you recommend we do that? >> Uh, I think there's a Jenna is her name in city planning. I think I could communicate with her and say, "Okay, how could we set this up?" Right now, they're going through presenting zoning changes in the city and you're reading through codes and you're saying, "Should we change this? We have too many areas zone strictly single family housing. How can we change that?" what would that mean? And so they're going through that right now. So I could ask Jenna to help out trying to get neighborhood groups to answer

182these questions. >> Mr. Newmeister, sorry. >> Well, would it be beneficial as well not us talking um with just teachers and stuff, but other staff members um you know, the people inside the the >> schools, the Yeah. facilities, the the food perhaps, everyone that you know that isn't part of the actual teacher group. >> But they're already open to those. >> Pardon me. >> They're the school ones are open to all staff. >> Mhm. >> It's just I'm not sure. I agree. But I'm not sure they feel comfortable about >> Maybe. So, you know, so if we just had just a separate one for them, maybe they'd feel a little more comfortable, you know, attending it and speaking up or, you know, or that we're doing excellent. You know, let's face it, no matter what

183we do, there's going to be a couple hurdles we need to look at. But, >> um, I think it's important to make sure that we try to at least keep them in the in the loop and and hear from them. And I do agree that we have the all staff, but I just feel it maybe that they don't feel as comfortable speaking up in that kind of setting. >> It could very well be Scott. >> Yes. Go ahead. >> Um I feel like um I really like the bottom two ideas on like potential groups, the business community and local education institutions. Um especially like one of the questions raised is is the balance between internal and external stakeholders resulting in well-roundedness. Um I feel like there is a solid amount of skew kind of as

184we were saying earlier to those who are already involved. So parents and families, students, staff members, I feel like external involvement might be good to balance it out. And then especially for business and like local universities because those are what we're ideally preparing our students for getting their input on what they think we're doing well or what they're seeing especially if a lot of our students go to school nearby as we talked earlier how we have a high rate of UWL and Turbo students seeing if they're noticing anything trendwise on what students are lacking or what they seem to excel with. point. >> So before we approve the questions, I think we should pin down the groups if you're okay with that. If everybody's okay with that. >> So um looking at the linkage summary

185that we have on this agenda item, there's year one, two, three of which school we go to. Which year are we in? >> Two. >> Laura would have that answer. I don't know if anyone remembers who they talked to last year in a linkage. thought we went to state >> pulling it up. I believe yes, we are in two this year. >> Okay. I just want to be clear. >> We did one last year. >> Um also on the staffing, I thought we did a a linkage with the LEA last year, didn't we? >> We did. We did. >> Tim and I went. >> Yeah. And they're not listed on here. I didn't see that. Um >> I can get that added. >> Okay. Are there other employee groups that we would want to meet

186with separately? Um we've also Laura, tell me if I'm wrong. for some reason like we've picked certain like we have the schedule year one two three so we get to each of the buildings but then we also have like an elementary school linkage and a middle school linkage and a high school linkage or something like that. Do we still do that? >> That would also be a great thing for you all to consider if that would seemed beneficial or not. That was kind of a trial run the last two years. We did that in part at least for the elementary because we only get in that particular year to a few of the elementary schools and if staff from elementary schools wanted to meet with us that was an opportunity to do that. >> Um

187yeah, go ahead. >> I I have an idea related to the rotation. I just because as we're talking about adding additional meanings and I I don't I I think we're we're walking a line between uh expanding our access so much and creating a lot of additional work when sometimes it's already tough to get enough board members at one of these. And so I want to be sensitive to that >> and the fact that um our meetings are already public. We've already had Scott and Tim participating with the city. Like we have other methods beyond just the linkages in which we do connect. And so expanding these as the sole method of connecting I don't think is necessarily the way to go. But in terms of meeting with all of the elementary schools, all of the

188middle schools, when could we look at the year 1, two, three rotation more as simply the location, but keep those open and invite and really actively invite staff from all the buildings just knowing that we are physically moving around because the board doesn't always get a chance to go to all the buildings and it's nice to have an evening or an a late afternoon in one of those locations, but to make sure that it's an opportunity that staff, you know, from Northwoods can come down to Southern Bluffs and vice versa and things like that. >> I agree with that. I love that. >> So, we're am I hearing consensus about not having an elementary linkage but inviting other >> kind of making them all like like anytime it's an elementary linkage. It's >> I just

189want to make sure I'm understanding like an omni linkage. >> Yeah. >> Maybe not just one but maybe two or three though. I don't think you can expect everybody every elementary school to come to Spence or Henchin or whatever, but if you had a north side and southside location or something where people would easily transition between schools might work. >> So looking at this document, we've got the year uh so we're year two, we've got the district by parents, we've got the high school students, um we have LEA are there um I'm just going to keep going through. One question I have is do we have any other um employee groups we want to single out to meet with? We would then also meet with a community cultural group uh youth serving organizations and then

190is this the year to do the this >> in next year. >> So not this in January, it would be the >> following January. >> Okay. And then um the question is uh at the bottom would we want to add other groups as well? And I'm hearing Maybe, maybe not. So, what's the pleasure of the board? >> I I think he brings up a very good point. Uh we're all this isn't our only job, right? And as much as I would like to talk to everyone and if we did decide to do that, maybe we rotate year after year on something like that where, you know, next year we focus on neighborhood groups and the year after we'd focus on something else if we were to add one. I think that might be the option.

191Another thought might be on the rotation since we're already looking at roughly, you know, six six per year in the rotation. If we take the two middle schools, the two high schools and and we do a linkage at each or even in those cases two linkages at each site, right? But again, opening it up, making it a really active invite to the whole high school staff, the whole middle school staff, and then rotating through some subset of the elementary schools in one year and then the next year going to the other elementary schools. But again, opening up the invite and encouraging faculty and staff to to meet us wherever we're able to hold these. Right? Does that does that make sense what I'm suggesting? >> Totally. I mean, we've been to them where there's two

192people. So, you know, if we can combine them and it makes total sense, >> Mr. Bneski. >> Well, and my only point was there was a conversation last year that all we did was we talked to school people. We never talked to people outside of the school area. And so, we were suggesting ways of getting in contact with parent groups or citizen groups. And that's why through the neighborhood situation out there that we got to see some people that were >> consumers of our product. Um I will add that this last year not to talk about the linkage questions but to get information which were the questions were similar to the linkage questions um for the visioning group you met with 20ome groups you and Stacy and other staff went out to and so we've

193gotten input from a variety of groups um just recently um that really was driving u our vision that we are going to have a workshop on next meeting talk more But um so I just I want to throw that out there that we have recently talked with those groups. Do we want to add neighborhood groups into our rotation this year? If we can find a way to have one meeting to >> I think that's a really good idea. Um, as I was talking to people in the community like during the election process, a lot of people are like, well, you know, I don't have kids in school, so why why should I really care? So maybe we need to reach out to those people so they have a reason to >> be involved. So we

194will have if if I'm hearing consensus around the table then in in addition to this uh the ones are listed plus the LEA um the external audiences would add a neighborhood group and that can be I'll let you as administration work with uh city planning and figure out how we can do it in one meeting. Is that clear to everybody? Is everybody agreeable with that? I are we going to meet with all neighborhood groups then because we're just going to have one >> I think one meeting that >> one meeting >> Jenna can set that up >> one >> Jenna can set set it up but you're going to have to have it at a spot where it's conducive to everyone being able to go otherwise we're going to create the same problem >> the

195nature center is where I met with different groups >> it's good area >> that's good >> point well taken >> south you get the south side or north Okay. >> So, now that we have our groups, any other recommendations on the groups. Okay. Um, the questions, uh, we want to keep the similar questions, but we just want to change order to start out with positive. Is that what I'm hearing? >> Well, a couple of them were actually substantively different as well. So, if I I would push for adopting the language used in, as an example, the cultural community partners linkage as the standard. And if we want to consider changes for the high school students specifically, I think that's a population we could ask differently pointed questions. So, so I would look for a motion

196to approve the um linkage groups that we just identified and the questions from the cultural group um for the linkage questions with the exception of the students and we would use the questions we've used in the past for the students and starting with positive. Am I hearing that? >> So, I'll make a motion to approve uh the linkage groups with the additions and amendments discussed as well as agenda items, the linkage questions and agenda items 7.06, 7.07, 7.08, and 7.09, leaving out 7.05 for a separate action. >> Okay. Is there a second? >> We have a second. >> Oh, we're getting different voices for seconds and motions here tonight. I'm loving this. >> Got to be quick. >> Laura, that was Mr. Alberts that did the second. Um, any further discussion on the motion to

197approve 704 is amended and then 706, 707, 708, and 709. Is that correct? also with the amendment to to adopt the the example of the questions from the the community youth support groups. Thank you as the standard. So >> that's the motion and the second. Any further discussion? >> All those in favor of the motion signify by saying I. >> I. >> Those opposed? Motion carries. >> Now we just need to consider 705. >> Since I singled it out, I I guess I would start. Um, I I think the the framing of the discussion the way we talked about beginning with a positive is a is a good one as well. Asking what makes you proud to be a student here is good. Maybe asking what you think can be done to to help students

198more. Um, like I said earlier, I think largely the questions are good. It may just be reordering them in this case. Again, I don't know if other people feel differently. >> I agree. >> Students, do you have what do you think of these questions when we go to your schools? DC. >> I actually really like the questions. Um I think reordering them would be um a great idea. Um just starting with like those positive ones like we like you guys said. Um starting with what makes you proud and then I think three and then probably one and four. >> Yeah, I really like having four in there. Um the ability to kind of say anything that's been on your mind to the board is something that I think is really important. The only minor thing

199that I would say is like having some sort of example of like what to bring up because for a lot of people it's well that's not really a big enough deal for me to want to address. So or they're like it's just it's probably not worth the effort or something like that because already I I haven't been able to attend any of the languages. But have they been large groups of students? typically >> um >> Logan we had a a very specific >> the last couple years Logan's been large. Central was large last year. The year before not. >> Um but last year um unfortunately with Central we had whatever day we picked was a day that I was like picture day or something. Everybody had a run out. >> Yes. >> Um but we

200had a really nice group. We had a nice diverse group there. We had, you know, students that were really uh we again don't want to beat a dead horse, but we're talking about the grading and and it was uh students that were really achieving and doing well. There were students that were struggling and we talked about the bathrooms and so we had a great discussion with the students. Um so yeah, we've had pretty good turnout, but part of it is um we've asked you all to encourage your fellow students to come and talk to us and tell your fellow students why it's important to come talk with us. >> Yeah. Am I remembering correctly that the one the the really big one that we were at together at Logan there there was like a specific

201group of students that were either invited or or encouraged. I forget if >> uh if Wall-E had had done that or if it was a class or something. >> I don't know. We had >> but it it was a full room. I mean it was great and it was such a good discussion. Yeah. So, I don't know if if there's specifically with the high school students because we have a little bit more of a captive audience if we could if we could lean on the principal or or teachers to really encourage um or even incentivize. >> Everyone came to the Polytech one. >> Yeah, now we're all going. >> All right, that was a good one. I like that one. >> And those are great discussions. >> Yeah. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Um, so

202yeah, but just was thinking about that. >> So, do we have a motion for 705? >> So, we we want to go like 2314. >> Okay. I'll make a motion to approve over there. I'll make a motion to approve the 2025 2026 linkage questions for high school students uh with the amended order of 2314. >> I'll second. >> Okay. We have a motion by Dr. Spreg, seconded by Miss Fuches. Um do you need anything else from us, Laura? You know what the motion is? >> I got it. Thank you very much. >> Just want to make sure. >> Real specific. >> Um any further discussion on the motion? All those in favor of the motion signify by saying I. >> I. >> Those opposed. Motion carries. Thank you very much. We will then move on

203to uh 7.10 policy approval. First reading uh governance culture or uh GC4 officer roles. And there's a slight change um to the description of the board president on number eight. And it says board meeting shall include an agenda planning item. Simple. We talked about it. the last workshop. Um, I don't know if there's any other thoughts or questions. >> May I just make the motion to um grant first reading approved for governance culture GC-4 officers role. >> Thank you. You have a second. >> Second. >> Thank you, Mr. Ma and Dr. Sprag. Thank you. Any further discussion? I know that uh Laura and uh Dr. Dr. Engel had kind of looked through the policies and felt this was the best place to put that in and quite frankly um state as we talked about in

204the workshop the state statute allows the board president to set the agenda but this putting this piece under the board president's duties um I think is important because that shows that that is the minor change to their role that that does allow the board to provide uh input on other agenda items. I think that's a the right place to put it. Um any further discussion? All those in favor of the motion for the first reading signify by saying I. >> I. >> Those opposed. Motion carries. We then move on to first reading for a board member salary. The salary was changed a couple years ago which included some annual adjustments. The proposal that's in front of you now is to set it at what the current rate is and just leave it at that and

205not have annual increases. As we discussed in the workshop, >> I move to approve. >> Second. >> May I ask a question here? >> Um, so first, um, a motion by Mr. Newmeister, seconded by Mr. Beeski. Yes. Go ahead. >> Okay. So, I believe we talked about in our, um, workshop there. The question I kind of brought up was, is this proportional what we're giving to teachers for raises as well too? I just want to clarify that. Make sure I'm >> that would that would be dropped. That's what's being removed. This is just going to be it going forward. No increase unless the board specifically takes action to do so. >> Gotcha. >> Does that answer your question? >> Yes. >> I mean, as a struggling young student, I'm sure that that's disappointing to you.

206>> No, I it I just it feels weird, I guess, to be in the position here just saying, "Well, are you just going to give yourself a raise?" I just I it doesn't make make me feel comfortable. >> And we aren't giving ourselves a raise. are actually freezing it at what it currently is based on the current policy and what we're saying is it doesn't increase in the future and removes the um language in the policy that gives us annual raises. >> Right. And that's just want to kind of clarify there. >> Yeah. Thank you. Any further questions? Okay, we have a motion and a second. All those in favor of the motion signifies by saying I. >> I. >> Those opposed. Motion carries. These items will then be on the next agenda under um

207>> consent agenda >> which the board can pull off if they so choose. >> Okay. Moving on. 801 communications from the student representatives to the board. >> Nothing. >> Do we want to do >> you had some good fundraisers? >> Okay. Well, um, we, uh, the Battle for the Cause game went really well. We initially initially raised around $5,000 solely on t-shirts from both schools. Uh, the last I checked for the digital money that was raised. Um, I checked last week, maybe a week and a half ago, we were over $10,000. So, that went really, really well. Um, I'm really happy that it's going to a good place. It's helping a lot of families, helping a lot of research. So, that's makes my heart happy. Um, a lot of students are happy to have Friday

208off, that's for sure. October Fest weekend. Um, the Ark game did not fall in Logan's favor. Um, we were winning, let me tell you guys. Uh we were uh until the last minute and 53 seconds. >> It's two-minute drill, baby. >> Yeah. Yeah. And then Well, he can tell you. >> Um Yeah. No, it was a great game. Uh I have no bias at all. I promise. No, it was a very hard-fought game from both sides. I mean, for two almost two quarters straight time wise, there were no scores. Um, not going to lie, I was a little worried there for a minute, but we pulled through in the end. Um, very, very glad, but no, it was a a good game and I'm glad that I was able to be there and be as

209involved as I was. >> The ark was stolen. >> It went home. Calm down. >> Go, Central. >> You had it for one year. >> It should have stayed there. >> So, any other updates from your school in the classroom? trying to use this here. >> Why can't you kids just get along? >> Um, there has been a little bit of talk, nothing serious about a spring fundraiser when uh between Senate and a handful of organizations. Um, nothing set in stone. discussions still had to be made, but um representatives from our school's FBA chapter went and spoke with the Senate and we are trying to get some details finalized and as that continues on, I'll be sure to share the details to try to do as much good as we can. >> Can I ask

210a question? Are you still collecting donations? Because I know that like some of us didn't get to order the shirts and stuff for the cause. Are you still collecting them to this? >> Um, there I think there is like a QR code, but the all the proceeds are going to Alex's lemonade stand and I think the QR code is it's through there so I can I can get you guys. >> Thank you. >> Bethany, no update this time. >> All right, then we'll move >> we'll move to announcements. Um, Dr. Percy of public lacrosse public education foundation. >> We're quiet little PDF. Finished coming off the bow tie classic that was really successful and getting ready for Golden Apple Gala planning in the spring and stuff for that. So that's all that's going on with

211us. Although I did Owen, did I see that you're a National Merit semi finalist? That feels like something worthy of an announcement. >> I mean, yes. Um, one of my one of my best friends, uh, is also a semi-finalist, Santi Tibia. He is one of the smartest people I know. Um, he's insane. He he was in the math that I'm in now, and I'm ahead. Like, I'm in AP stats. He was in AP stats two years ago. Um, it's actually concerning. I don't know how he does it. He he showed me last year in AP Physics the kind of work he was doing. Um, you know, for once I was really glad I didn't know what was going on. Um, because I watched him furiously scribble down um notes and I >> Well, that was

212a very humble deflection, but congratulations. Yes. Congratulations to both of you. It's a it's a accomplishment. Okay. Um, for my announcements as president, um, you can see on the calendar that, um, um, I have to do math, man. Friday. Is it Friday? Yes. Uh, no, whatever. Yeah, Friday. National Teacher Assistance Day. So, we're giving them the day off apparently is what I'm hearing. So, that's that's what he's tell. But the teacher assistants do a lot in our district. You know, we've hear a lot from our teaching staff how much they wanted more teacher assistance. So, I think says a lot. October is National Bullying Prevention Month. Um the first week or October 5th through 11th is fire prevention week. Um but more importantly, it's also Wisconsin schoolboard week. So we can all pat ourselves on

213the back. Um the other two announcements I have is if you're going to the regional WASBY training, if you haven't already, please tell Laura. She's got to get that taken care of. And my last point I want to make is I was asked um to have a moment of silence uh regarding a recent national um tragedy. Um a a victim lost their life. I chose not to do that. Um I didn't want to make it awkward for anybody at the board who may or may not be comfortable with that. I also didn't want to make it reflect poorly on the victim. But what I do want to say is that the conversation and the positive thing that's come out of it is we keep hearing about we need to be able to talk to people

214with different ideas and hear each other uh respectfully and and share our thoughts. And as I thought about that um I am so proud to be at this table with all of you because I really feel we do that here and we do that well. We don't always agree um but we respectfully listen to each other. we give each other space to have uh to express our concerns and come together and really focus again at the end of the day on what's best for kids and um in the world of where there's a lot of one side or the other I'm really proud of this body that we stand together and I'm really proud to be at this table with all of you. So I just wanted to be able to say that Dr. Engel

215>> thank you >> um torch light parade on Thursday. Our kids will be marching in that parade. Um, and then the same uh for the October Fest parade, so check those out. We don't have school on Friday and next week is uh teacher conferences, so make sure you sign up for those and attend to see how your kids are doing. Um, the only other thing I would mention uh much like uh Dr. Garcia mentioned uh the awesome post of Owen Skyles and Santi uh Torabio. Uh we also had uh a post that broke a lot of internal records for us. We had amazing photos and a video of the Mung New Year parade at North Side Elementary. Uh 152,000 views and 6,500 reactions. It was picked up nationally on a lot of M uh national

216organizations. Uh and the comments on there were just awesome and the kids in there were so cute. Uh and so if you get a chance to check that out, uh it was amazing. And kudos to Nick for his photography and videography and finding ways to spread the great things that go on here every day in Lacrosse. So that's it. >> Um moving on to agenda planning. Um attached you'll see the proposed agenda for October 6th. Um also we are planning to have a workshop at the end of that meeting to talk about um some facilities big picture stuff and the visioning and um portrait of a graduate document. >> Did you have a question? >> I I would like to I don't know if we could have another person come in and talk about the

217program. I I never even knew this program existed, but there was an article or an email that came out in regard to fundraiser for the Lacrosse area children's home homeless services. We have some people working in the district that help kids that are falling into homelessness. I think her name was Alicia Place. >> Yes. >> Yeah. I mean, if she'd be I I was intrigued by that program. >> I didn't showcase or something. >> Absolutely. Okay. >> Yep. I'll schedule it. >> So, we look for a motion to um for the um agenda planning for uh October 6th. >> I'll make a motion to approve the October 6, 2025 board of education agenda as presented. >> I'll second. >> Dr. Sprag made the obligatory motion. >> It's my one job. >> Seconded by Miss Fes.

218So, thank you for chiming in on that. >> Um all those in favor of the motion signify by saying I. I. >> Those opposed? Motion carries. Board debriefing. It looks like it's my turn. Um I think we had a lively discussion here this evening. I think um it's nice to hear different points of view around the table, but it's also nice to hear how we come together and focus on what's best for kids. Um I think even though we might not always come start at the same place, um we always want to do what's um try to find the best way to for grades or whatever it is for kids. and I and I appreciate that very much on this board. Um, and I already had my say in my announcements. So, anything else on

219board debriefing from anybody? >> Okay. Well, with that we stand a journal. >> Do you plan on meeting [Music]