Board of Education Regular Meeting - August 4, 2025

001[Music] ative center occupies the land of the Ho Chunk people. Please take a moment and celebrate and honor this ancestral Ho Chunk land and the sacred lands of all indigenous peoples. Will the secretary please call the role? >> Mr. Alberts >> here. >> Mr. Bigneski >> here. Miss Fuks >> here. >> Dr. Garcia >> here. >> Mr. Jackson >> here. >> Mr. Ma >> here. >> Mr. Newmeister >> here. >> Dr. Sprag >> here. >> Miss Sucla >> here. >> A quorum of the board of education's presence. So the regularly scheduled meeting of August 4th, 2025 is called to order. We will now have the pledge of allegiance. Please stand and face the American flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands,

002one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Tonight's agenda has previously been distributed to the board. I would entertain at this time a motion with a second to approve the agenda as submitted, unless there is a motion to amend. I move to accept the agenda as submitted. >> Seconded. >> Okay. Any We have a motion second. Any discussion on the motion? >> Seeing none, uh, we will have a roll call vote. >> Mr. Alberts, >> I. >> Mr. Beeski, >> I. >> Miss Folks, >> I, >> Dr. Garcia, >> I, >> Mr. Jackson. >> I, >> Mr. Ma. >> I, >> Mr. Newmeister. >> Hi, >> Dr. Sprag. >> Hi, >> Miss Suclla. I Okay, we will then move on to um the public speaker section of the agenda. It is

003the policy of the board to provide at its public meetings an opportunity for individuals to address the board. Comments about individual staff or personnel will not be allowed. Open meeting law prohibits the board from engaging in discussion or responding to matters not included on the agenda. All speakers are reminded that the same policy limits your time to speak to five minutes. This limit will be strictly enforced. May I ask the superintendent to keep track of the time and to notify the speaker when the time is running out? >> I will do so. >> Thank you. You're also asked to give your name and the school district where you reside at the beginning of your time for the public record. And our first speaker is Courtney. Hi. Oh, my name is Courtney. Hi. I reside in

004the school district of And honestly, after the experience I've had working with Hogan staff, I didn't feel all that compelled to try. As I moved on to search for jobs in Wisconsin, I found myself applying for a coaching role at an elementary school in Madison. They were eager to interview me. At the end of the interview, as I assured them that I would take whatever steps needed to obtain the necessary license for the role, I received a rather confused look from the principal at the school. She explained that Madison regularly hired middle and high school level staff as coaches at the elementary level without additional licensing, as these are the staff with the content expertise that they needed. And a quick search of the laws for licensing reveal that they are written for teachers and

005administrators, not roles like coaching. It appears that I may have been able to stay in lacrosse in that elementary coaching role. After all, I was offered that position in Madison, but for personal reasons, I turned it down and chose to apply to work in New York City instead. I knew my talent was larger than what I was being offered here in the state of Wisconsin. When my resume was posted on the job for the job board for the city, these are the numbers I received in a week alone from schools looking to interview me to teach. schools like Truman High School, the Business School of Sports, East New York Civics High School, Ebottzfield Middle School, Meer Leven School for Performing Arts, it goes on. And I got more in the time I took to print

006these to come over here today. And to be clear, these are not schools I applied for. These are schools that sought out me, talent that the Lacrosse School District supposedly could not keep. In the end, the oldest private school in the entire country, one that has over 200 years of history and serves some of the most prestigious families in New York, offered to create an instructional coaching role and program from scratch for me. This morning, I met with their head of schools to go over the job description that was written for me specifically and agree to take the position. They were so moved by my expertise and talent that they created a role from nothing to employ me. Again, this is talent that the Lacrosse School District supposedly could not find a way to keep.

007When I finally came to share the news of this with some of my friends from the Longfellow family, I was told some sad news. The person who was set to take my position at Longfellow had left, moved for another position. This is the weekend post for my position, the one I was laid off from. It is now unfilled. Had the district fought to keep me even in a different role, I would have likely never sought a comparable job in another district or state, I would have likely applied internally to return to Longfellow given the opening and continue the work I had been doing with all the institutional knowledge and expertise intact. Now, Longfellow will have to hire their third coach in 5 years. It took me two years to build the institutional knowledge and staff

008relationships I needed to start to see measurable measurable results at Longfellow. It will likely take even more for the next person as the experts who mentored me have now also moved on. Although this story has an incredible ending for me, it does not have an incredible ending for the lacrosse community or Longfellow. Just as I spoke to a few months ago, personnel practices in the district are misaligned and leave the schools here losing institutional knowledge, relationships with adults, students, and family, and expertise that are much needed for improvement. I know there's a lot on your all plates right now as you approach the upcoming school year with the consolidation, the massive political changes, and tight budgets we are continuing to see. But when you do find the time to step back and look at where

009to improve, I urge you to ask some questions about the practices of our upper level administration and HR teams. Until then, I fear that lacrosse will continue to lose incredible talent and institutional knowledge. Thank you for your time. I wish everyone the best for the next school year. Thank you. >> Thank you so much. >> Okay, moving on then we will move to the school showcase showcase. Um and we have uh an aggra science presentation. >> Yes, very thankful. Uh it looks like uh Dr. Rotoring is going to introduce our team. >> Hi, good evening. I'm Fred Roing, supervisor of career and technical education. And tonight we would like to highlight our Agra Science program, which is now middle school and high school, and our career and technical student organization, FFA. Um, our program growth

010and opportunities over the last two years. So, Brooks, would you like to >> and I'll encourage folks to speak into the microphone because we have somebody online. >> Um, I'm Brooks Luke. I last year and the past two years have taught at Logan and Central High School and will be moving to Central and Logan Middle School this next year um with my third year in the district. >> Hi all, my name is Jared Mickelson. Um this will be my second year um in lacrosse. Last year I was at Lawnfell Middle School and Logan Middle School and next year I will be at Lawnfell Middle School and Logan High School. Um, so we just have some handouts going around. There are newsletter from fall, winter, and spring. Um, our students create this newsletter highlighting kind of

011what's happening in the classroom and then what's happening with our FFA chapter. Um, and then the last one is a handout that we handed out to our state senators and representatives when we went and did FFA day on the Hill, kind of highlighting overall what's happening in the program, um, FFA and eggwise. Um what we're going to go over today is just some of the classes that we offer and kind of the topics that we hit on for our students. The first one is introduction to agriculture. Um this one had 21 students in total between Logan and Central. Um we cover topics of just kind of what is agriculture and how does it impact us? Animal science, plant science, natural resources and environmental systems. Um power structural and mechanical agrous food science and then supervised

012agricultural experiences or SAPE and then FFA. Um, this class really covers all of the different standard areas that we teach in. So, it kind of hits on every core area that we could pull standards from and align our curriculum to. Um, some highlights from this, uh, lacrosse was selected for the Farm Beats for schools program. Um, it's a computer program that runs with like little mechanics and kids learn how to code using basically pre-written coded blocks and then they can make the system say light up and do a heart um make sounds, play music, all sorts of things. Um, and it's really a push for um agriculture and where we're headed into the future. Um, so our students got to work with that this year. That was provided by a grant with Microsoft in partnership

013with National FFA. Um there were only about 10 schools in the state of Wisconsin that were selected. And then we also did some ice cream making at the end of the semester to kind of celebrate getting through the semester. Um and we used our ice cream makers and made some fresh vanilla ice cream. Then we have animal care. This is probably one of our most popular classes in the school district. Um this year we had 40 students first semester and 37 students second semester. Um we've seen incredible growth in this program. It is transcripted through Western Tech. By receiving a C or better. In this class, students get three credits of animal science that they can then transfer to any um college. A lot of students that are transferring this might be transferring for a

014veterary program um at either Platville or River Falls. Um and we've definitely seen some uptick in students going there for those programs. Um 57 students earned dual credit for the 2425 school year, which is really awesome. Um our goal is about 75% or more students earning dual credit. um which we are right at that goal. Um topics that we cover, we cover history and use, so kind of domestication and then what do we use animals for? So we go over products and different companion uses and things like that. As well as nutrition, we cover livestock and companion nutrition. Um being lacrosse is a more urban district, um I do feel it is important to expand those things for students to experience livestock which they might not deal with every day. Um we cover reproduction genetics

015as well as veterary science, anatomy and physiology, um welfare and housing and as again in every course we cover supervised agricultural experiences and FFA. Um some highlights from this class this year, we adopted five guinea pigs from the Humane Society. Um there were three at Central and two at Logan. Um their names are up on the board there. Um we also hatched out feeasants this year. Um and then Mr. Fergot, Todd Fergot at Central, he took them. he had a run that he releases them onto some lands. So that was really awesome. And then we also have been partnering with the special education department to really push students into um classes. And so animal care is one of the big pushes in their department for this. Then we have greenhouse management. Um this class was

016called plant science/greenhouse management. Um but we changed the name to make it more appealing to more students. Um, we had nine students at Logan High School first semester and 37 students at Central High School second semester. Um, this is also transcripted with Western Tech for three credits of plant science. We had 38 students receive dual credit this school year and that does meet our goal of about 75% students receiving dual credit. Topics include intro to plant science, plant anatomy, environmental factors, um, plant growth and hormones, floriculture. Uh some of the pictures are of our candy bouques and fake floral arrangements that we had the students do. Um as well as home gardening and landscaping and then SAPE and FFA. Some highlights. Um this was a new course for the 2425 school year. Um we gained

017six hydroponic grow towers, four at the high school and two at the middle school through an LPF grant um and through a compier financial grant. Um and then for the upcoming school year, we're excited the greenhouse building permits have been secured. So, um, Central will be gaining a state-of-the-art greenhouse. Um, and then we're going to be working with Grow Lacrosse for some field experiences, um, and getting out there as well as with the Renew the Block program happening at Logan Middle. And then the last course that we had this year was wildlife management. This had 28 students first semester and 42 students second semester. A very large area of interest in the Lacrosse community is that of natural resources. Um and so topics we covered were intro to wildlife and natural resources, mammals, birds and

018fish as well as some forestry and then SAP and FFA. Um some highlights where we did boon and crockett scoring of deer antler mounts. Um so the kids had to measure them um and use some math skills and some math knowledge to figure out the calculations and their scores. Um painting waterfell decoys. So we had some duck decoys and they painted them to match um certain waterfall breeds and then presented on them. And then also the hatching the feeasants was really nice when we were covering birds. The kids got to experience some actual wildlife animals in class. The 25 26 school year. Um this is kind of our progression and growth over the last three two years and going into year three. Um some additional classes we are adding. We are adding a companion animals

019course. Um so this will talk about all the different companion animals. Dogs, cats, guinea pigs, um reptiles and amphibians, other small rodents. um could be included. Horses potentially fall under the companion animal pathway. Um and then each area will cover breeds, health care, training, and things like that. Um and then we have a large production animals class. This is kind of the opposite of our companion animals. So it covers sheep, dairy, and beef cattle, swine or pigs, um chickens, and then we can go into exotic and zoo animals as well, which is definitely an area that a lot of students have a high interest in. um topics will be on breeds and healthcare, training and handling and then evaluation and how we actually judge those animals. Um and then the last one is an aggracience

020leadership independent study. Um this is for students to take a course if our schedule of sharing between two buildings doesn't align for them and they need to get a course in and want to be in the egg department. This allows them to have a little bit more flexibility in their schedule. And so topics include community service, um supervised agricultural experiences or better known as work-based learning and kind of other terms and then career and leadership development events and FFA. So it kind of ropes in that leadership aspect that we see with our CTSOs as well. All right. And last year, as we mentioned, the middle school program was added. So how that course works is that every seventh grader will have a quarterlong rotation through um many of our CTE areas, art, health education. Um

021so we have a nineweek course with those same middle schoolers as well, specifically in seventh grade. So between both middle schools, um we had the opportunity to teach over 300 students within the aggra science program last year, which was a really really awesome opportunity. Um some of the topics include but are not limited to since lots of storytelling leads to lots of um other topics that get incorporated in as well. Um but those main topics are four units that we go over our egg in our lives where we look at everything from your food that's on the table in front of you. Where does it come from? Uh the pencil you're writing with on the paper that's sitting on the table. How are all those things connected back to agriculture, food, and natural resources? Um,

022at the same time, then we hop over to the unit about animals. So, we talk about both companion animals and livestock animals as well. Um, so that students can compare and contrast the domestication of those species. Um, the history of use. Um, you mentioned horses kind of fall into companion animals. That's kind of shifted from production to companion. We talk about topics like that. um plants. A lot of the stuff we go through is um the science behind how plants um function and then ornamental plants. Um and then we wrap up with wildlife and natural resources. So you can see those four topics, those four units that we go through. They kind of provide a little taste of the different pathways that are offered in the high school classes, but they really also are a

023way for us to help our students become informed consumers. Knowing more of where the products that they use every day and the things that they interact with, how those are a huge part of their life and how they connect to Agra science. Um, some highlights then through those activities and units. uh dairy days, as I like to call it. I get on my um cow Hawaiian shirt and we make dairy um products. So, we make butter, we do cheese tasting, we make ice cream. Um that's probably one of their favorites that they ask for, especially if they have it fourth quarter. They've heard by that point of the year that that's one of those things that's coming up. Um we do radio ad projects, team activities, challenges. Um I brought in guest speakers from QuickTrip.

024Um the Lacrosse Police Department brought in their um service dogs as well so that students could interact with those companion animals, learn about work um working dog breeds. Um and then we incorporated a lot of academic and career complaining components as well through our careers activities um and kind of tied that into our um SAE, our supervised agricultural experience as well. while those students investigated careers of any type that they were interested in. >> So, how students become FFA members? Um, with FFA, there's kind of two ways to go about it these days. Um, we have affiliation and then we kind of have now the old school model, which is where you go talk to the teacher, you pay your dues, um, and you're a member. So, affiliation is that every student in an agricultural

025education class is automatically enrolled in FFA. So, they don't pay dues. it eliminates that financial barrier. Um it's actually written into our national charter um that it is an intracurricular organization and that it works together. Um and so that's part of our three circle model that we see. So we have our supervised agricultural experiences, FFA and then classroom and those three working together to create a really wellrounded experience for our members. So uh this past year Lacrosse FFA had 199 FFA members in total. So that really makes up a large percent of the students that we had in class. We do give students the opportunity to join um if they aren't in an A class to keep it kind of with that club mentality. Um and so this chapter consists of both Logan and Central

026students. Um I have both our officer teams from last year and then our current officer team coming into this next school year. Um some highlights, we had 11 students attend the national FFA convention. This was Lacrosse's first year down there in Indianapolis. Um we attended some sessions. They got to see Temple Grandon speak. Um they went to some workshops. So it was really awesome. The kids had a great time. Um this year we sold about $1,256 of fruit um meat, nuts, cheese, and strawberries um through our fall fruit sale and then our spring strawberry sale. We hosted the leadership development events. This is a contest that rotates through the district. We are in district 8 um and it rotates through about the 10 schools and every so often you have to host. Um lacrosse was

027up in the rotation this year and lacrosse middle will be up in the rotation next year. So um we'll be hosting again. We did have two students participate in two events each. Um we had one student participate in employment skills and extemporaneous and then we had one student compete in employment skills in discussion meet. Um sadly they did not advance onto the sectional level. Um but they did score really well. And then we had seven teams compete at the career development events down in W Platville. These are events that focus on different career aspects. Um we had floor culture team, we had a milk quality products team, a wildlife team, vet science, um and as well as a few others. We had four teams at state. Um we had an egg sales team, we had

028a nursery and landscape. Our vet science team also advanced to state and our horse team advanced to state this year. Um and then we had nine students attend the state FFA convention. Um, two of our students were serving as delegates voting um on constitutional changes being proposed as well as voting for our state officer. We had a state officer candidate this year. Um, this was the first year that we possibly could have had a state officer. Um, it takes you have to have two years of FFA experience to earn your state degree as well as four AED classes. Um, and countless hours invested and money invested into your supervised agriculture experience. Um, and so we had one student that filled out their state degree, received it, and then wanted to run for state office. She

029sadly did not get state office, but um, is very happy with the experience that she got overall. And then we had a high school quiz bowl team compete as well, as well as many other things. They were at workshops, they were in our in the expo attending sessions, um, and just a lot of award highlights for our chapter. And then real quick, the lacrosse middle FFA chapter. So um we had around 246 members of students who chose to fill out um the form through our affiliation as well. So this chapter is consisting of Lawnfell Middle School and Logan Middle School. Um it is the first middle school chapter actually in the state of Wisconsin. Um and that opens up a lot of new opportunities for students. We are the first district that chose to do

030it. Um, and I've been getting questions from Green Bay and Palaski now that are actually going to be launching middle school chapters as well. So, we'll be helping them along with that process. Um, so that's pretty exciting that we'll have some other middle school chapters as well. Um, some highlights, we had six students attend our FIRE conference. FIRE stands for foundations and reaching excellence. We took them down the Western Tech. Um, five students went to um, a conference called Experiencing Discovery, Growth, and Excellence in Green Bay. Um, back in the spring, we had a middle school quiz bowl team, and they were quite dieh hard. Um, they really wanted to practice every single morning before school and it really did pay off. They got third overall at the contest, which for a first year chapter

031is really, really impressive. Um, we're really proud of them. And we even had one student compete in exemporaneous speaking which is an extremely hard event. Um he's in eighth grade and he placed fourth overall actually and mainly competed against juniors and seniors in high school. So we are really excited to see what several years of him competing can um lead to. With that we brought two teams down to our regional career development events down at W Platville. five students headed to state convention where we um had people participate in the middle school essay contest. Um we got the pride award which is 10 plus members um added for the first year we added 246 so well over that 10. Um we were newly chartered and we actually had our middle schoolers help with the state

032officer candidates in their f facilitation things. So they were running MACH workshops and our middle schoolers got to be um themselves in the rooms and kind of um let those state officers facilitate MACH workshops for them. Um kind of the breakdown of our FFA membership. Um we have it broken down by grade. Um seventh grade obviously making up a large majority of our FFA membership. Um but then on the high school level, we're seeing a pretty even split come across. Um with more of our students being freshman and sophomores involved in the program, um agriculture has some of the most offerings for freshman and underclassmen to take coming in. Um so as we see a high enrollment in our classes with freshmen. Um and then our FFA membership breakdown by ethnicity. Um this is all

033stuff that like National FFA tracks for us through our membership rosters. um some community connections. So, um we are partnering with a lot of different community organizations. Um Grow Lacrosse is one that we've been partnering with and trying to figure out ways to work in what they teach students at the younger elementary level to really build and continue to grow upon in the high school. Um Renew the Block with their program happening at Logan Middle. We're very excited to get in on the community garden spaces um in the school garden spaces and the edible forest and stuff that they're creating this year. Um, Gunderson Community Garden, they're starting to really expand that and they're looking for ways that we at the high school level can really help out and help them increase that space and

034get it working. Um, Western Tech, um, every seventh grader goes to Western Tech and they get to experience that campus. Um, and Donna Gaty, who runs that kind of program over there, she is also our main contact for our transcripted credits. Um, so we work with her a lot and she usually tries to come into our classrooms in the spring to talk about credits that students have earned um and can then transcript out elsewhere. Um, and then the outdoor recreation association um, working with them on how can we work with them in their new property that they acquired um, and make it a community space um, whether that's sunflower fields and things like that. Um, and so very excited to continue that partnership. All right. Um, so some stuff about the future of our program.

035As we continue to expand, um, we're kind of changing our placements between the schools that we're in. We'll both be teaching one in middle school, one high school, which is exciting. Um, so we're working to build more community partnerships, see different places that we can take students for those field experiences, um, and learn from industry professionals. Um, we're going to continue to expand our class offerings, um, create more capstone opportunities for students, um, and just expand into those other pathways within agriculture, food, and natural resources. Um, the new greenhouse has projected date of October, I believe, was the most recent we had um, heard of opening. Um, we've been filling out more grant applications um, for different things like grow towers, edracks, things like that. Um we've been exploring different field trips and guest speakers

036to incorporate um college and career readiness. We incorporate through our supervised agricultural um experiences um and ACP components as well. We also have a lot of new opportunities for students um dual credit expansion and exploration um certifications through our courses apprenticeships job shadows and we are hoping to add an a um an aggra science advisory board as well um for FFA. We've hope or we hope to expand partnerships with um QuickTrip um and lots of different opportunities with that um opportunities for members, more proficiency applications, um leadership development events. We will host again next year um have students um go down to W Platville and hopefully up to W River Falls for career development events um and have them really compete in teams that interest them and maybe tie to the courses that they are

037already in as well. um have more state degrees, American FFA degrees, hopefully incorporate some Agra Science fair projects um where they can compete with a lot of different lab experiences that we do in our classes already. Um addition of community service and social activities on the chapter level. Um we refined our officer election process to make it more equitable between the four schools as well. Um and we are adding a lacrosse FFA alumni and supporters. um partnering with actually someone who is working at W Lacrosse who studied agricultural education in college and then moved here to work at the university level and really wants to flagship it for us. So um those are some exciting components with the next couple years. Lots of moving parts but really exciting >> is that >> I believe so.

038Yeah. >> Okay. So that was a lot of information that we just shared and as you can probably see we have um two very passionate committed educators. I just have to share that they're both from the same small town of Mazaini. Yeah. >> And you grow grew up how many blocks apart? >> Like four. Yeah. >> Right. >> My moms work on the same factory line even. >> Yes. We we posted and met them and hire hired them separately. But it's it's a ton of fun um to work with both of our instructors. because I'm incredibly proud of this program Science Education and of course the career and technical student organization. But like I said, we shared a lot of information. So if there are questions or comments for either of them or from myself,

039>> Mr. Nisher, >> thank you. Um, could you tell us how long or how long that grant is for that farmbeat? I you said it was it just a one year or is it >> Yeah, so it was a one-year grant. um we were able to apply for $500 after receiving. So they sent over 10 Microsoft tablets um that the students can use um and then all the programming stuff. And so then they also provided a $500 grant throughout that first year um if we needed to purchase more kits and things like that for the students to use. >> And just on a side note, my uh niece McKenna is FFA and she's very proud of it and talks about it quite often and she had a great time. So thank you. or Dr. Sprig,

040>> I think it was uh um and either the wildlife or welfare class, you talked about a jump from 28 to 42 students from fall to spring. >> So, you're obviously talking about adding sections of classes as well. What what kind of capacity do you have to continue to grow as presumably that gigantic middle school class is going to continue in this pathway? what what does that what does that that next couple of years look like for you? >> So, from serving the seventh graders at the end of each term, um it looks like there's a lot of interest um for students going to Central High School in the animal science pathways. A lot of them are interested in um well, large animal and companion animal and the animal care class in general. And on

041the north side, we had a lot of students who were interested in the wildlife and natural resources pathway and the plant science pathway. So, I expect kind of each um school to kind of see some bubbles in the numbers, especially once those eighth graders are um registering for courses come this fall and early spring. >> I can probably just add a little bit to that real quick about the FTE. So, if you noticed in the beginning, they each shared where they taught last year and where they're teaching next year. We're going like this across town with their positions, and they're both still smiling with that. And I believe you're both on a 1.2 for next year, so traveling teachers. But the reason that we did that um looping would be great, but crossing town um

042because we wanted to we couldn't make one teacher 1.4 and the other one. Traveling. Um, so they're both jumping into something totally new this year, which has been wonderful to have you be willing to do that. And the reason why the yeses came was because they knew we wanted to be able to fill as many sections as we could. You know, that students were asking and requesting. We didn't want to have to cut sections, especially as we're offering um additional courses within the pathway. >> That's great. Thanks, >> Mr. Bemisky. >> I don't know. This should be for all apprentice type courses, but how how do you arrive at certification? I mean with the students in your class, you get dual certification. Do you take a test? How does that work? Do you write a

043paragraph paper? What's used to determine? Yes. So for the um dual credit with Western Tech um they provide us with so we have our curriculum and then they have their animal science course that they teach at Western Tech and they will provide us with a list of competencies that they um teach within their class. And if we align our competencies and standards with them as well um as long as those students pass our class with the C or better they've also met those competencies of Western Tech. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Did we have students participate at the Lacrosse Interstate Fair this year? >> Um, we did not have students compete under or like participate under Lacrosse FFA, but um, I do have a bunch of students that are involved in their local 4 programs.

044Um, and so one of my students was showing goats this year. Um, there was another student that was showing crops, some woodworking. So, they're definitely there. They're just not under lacrosse FFA. So, they can show through their 4H's and a lot of them will stay with that. That's awesome. I go every year and look at all the animals and vote on the woodworking projects and check out all the arts and crafts and plants and usually take some plants home that my cats kill in short order. But um it's just such a wonderful program. I grew up in rural Texas. FFA is a huge part of like everyday life uh in my high school growing up and all my friends were involved in it. So, um I think it's awesome that you're keeping this tradition alive

045and helping kids get that kind of like experience, hands-on experience with FFA stuff. Thank you. >> Other questions? >> I can I just bring up one thing? I I think it's uh FFA, you know, back in the uh 1800s when I went to school. Um it was just rural schools that offered this. Um you know, you think of, you know, people living in farms and stuff. I think it's wonderful that uh we've opened the horizons for these uh city slicker kids to um have this opportunity. So, I appreciate that and thank you. >> Thank you. A little known fact about the school district, we're twothirds rural by by area. >> So yeah, so up on the ridge and out south towards Dotto, there's some dairy farms and some crop agriculture. And I'm sure some of

046those kids are interested, but I think to your point, uh, Mr. Newmeister, right here in town, we have fisheries, we have forestry, we have urban forestry. There's so many opportunities right here for kids to experience, uh, agriculture in their daily lives. And so everybody should get this experience. >> Yeah. I first um I first of all want to say congratulations on the first middle school chapter. That's a big deal. >> And congratulations to the student that ran for state office. That's a big deal too. So um uh Meredith I went to a school where I grew up on a farm and so yeah FFA I is a big deal. Um, I was going to ask um about the the fair um and and what your involvement was with the fair, although Meredith beat me to

047that one. There's also June Dairy Days and um that was Lacrosse County didn't have it in 24, but it was taken over by the St. Joe's Lions in this year and so and I think that's in our school district and so um I think I understand they plan to do it next year. I think that'd be a great opportunity for your students even if they can't attend it. there's, you know, the the decorations and the planning and the signs and I volunteered at it this year and there's so much work that precedes the actual event. So, I think that'd be a cool opportunity as well. >> Yeah, we're definitely hoping to have more kids participate and things like that. Um, we just didn't have the timing for getting out to the lacrosse dairy days and

048helping out with that. So, um, we're hoping next year that we'll have some kids volunteering out there and helping. >> And it's a St. Joseph Lions and if you need any I've got some connection so if you need that let me know. >> So thank you. Congratulations. Any other questions? >> Kudos to the kids participating in extemp too. I did that in high school and it's it's intense. It can be intense. >> I he said he was interested in I was like oh after him looking through the whole cat I was catalog. I was like oh that's the one you chose for your first year. Okay. >> But he did phenomenal. >> Thank you very much. Appreciate the update. >> Thank you so much. [Applause] We will then go on to the superintendent's consent agenda.

049The consent agenda is a mechanism used by the board to deal with routine business that must come before the body. Um, are there any items members want to remove from the consent agenda? Otherwise, I'll look for a motion in a second to approve the consent agenda as presented. >> So moved. >> Second. >> You have a motion and a second. Do you get the names, Laura? >> Okay. Um I do have a question. Um I see some of uh uh particularly TAs were resigning in July, but our fiscal year starts July 1st. How did like does their contract start July 1 or how does that work? I was just kind of curious about that. >> Um they're continuously employed with us. So it's a weird thing about schools. We don't work for three months, but

050we still consider them our employees. And so when they notify us of their resignation, that's when we process it. So we had planned on them starting on, you know, August, you know, 19th with everyone else, but um they found other employment. >> Okay. Just curious about that. Okay. Any other questions? All those in favor of the motion signify by saying I >> Oh, roll call. Thank you, >> Mr. Alberts. >> Hi, >> Mr. Beeski. >> Hi, >> Miss Hooks. >> Hi. >> Dr. Mr. Garcia >> I >> Mr. Jackson >> I >> Mr. Ma >> I >> Mr. Newmeister >> I >> Dr. Sprag >> I >> Miss Slub >> I >> Thank you. >> Moving on to the board consent agenda. The board consent agenda is a mechanism used by the board to deal

051with routine business and must come before the body. Are there any items of members want removed from the consent agenda? Hearing none. We look for a motion and a second. >> So moved. >> Second. >> I'm back. >> Wow. beat you. >> We have a motion and a second. Any discussion on the motion? >> Roll call vote. >> Mr. Alberts. >> I. >> Mr. Beeski. >> I. >> Miss Folks. >> I. >> Dr. Garcia. >> I. >> Mr. Jackson. >> Hi. >> Mr. Mao. >> I. >> Mr. Newmeister. >> I. >> Dr. Sprag. >> Hi. >> Miss. >> I. >> Okay. Move on to um items uh reserved for board action. Um the first one this evening is uh OE8. And this is uh administration will present any recommended changes to the template. Is that

052right? >> That's correct. Yep. So um uh we had presented OE8 back in July and we're presenting recommendations for changes to the monitoring poly policy for the next year. Um so if you are scrolling through OE8 uh you'll notice that there's some areas with no changes that we're recommending but OE8.2 two, uh, indicator one, uh, we're suggesting that this be combined with OE8.6, which talks about similar material and feels more fitting. And then renumbering indicator one or indicator two is number one. Um, 8.4. Um, our goal here was to create indicators that aligned better with the policy language. Uh and so as we were reading the uh the prior indicators uh for example indicator one provide adequate information for board members to fulfill their elected responsibilities. Um we thought we could align a little bit

053better with the policy language above and indicated our recommendation is instead throughout the monitoring process a variety of internal and external viewpoints are incorporated. feel that it'll be clearer alignment with the school board's policy and um more clear what we're supposed to gather for the school board in that process. The same for indicator 2. Trying to become more specific as it relates to the policy language above. 8.6 um uh we um thought that it would be better to combine with that measure from 8.2. uh it's related to significant media coverage and instead of having a kind of a a negative statement like we didn't do a thing uh making it a positive thing. Hey, here's where we did stuff. Uh and so um in that case changing it from zero complaints to provide timely updates

054to the board of education upon anticipated significant media coverage. >> We can still complain though, right? >> Absolutely. Complaints are always welcome. How will you how will you measure that differently? >> Um, previously when it was zero complaints, we would submit a letter that said we received no complaints. Uh, in this case, um, we will list the areas where we sent out notice to the board, hey, this is coming. You might see this in the news and there are any number of times throughout the school year where I'll send an email to the school board or um, have a verbal conversation with with folks where we're uh, outlining that. And so last year's monitoring report had, I think, a short list of five or six items where we had said, "Hey, there was this incident

055at Central. You might see this in the news. Be prepared." Or, you know, the state budget's coming. You know, let you know that it could impact how people reach out to the school board, you know. So, some of those sorts of things. So, it'll go from a letter that says we were in compliance to a list of items where coverage was provided. >> Thank you. >> Um, down. Do >> you have a question? No, I was just waiting for the next one. >> Okay. >> Uh down in 8.8. Uh for indicator one, uh we felt that it was a bit redundant with uh some other measures in here. Uh so we struck our clearly organized etc. And instead um uh board agendas are organized so that the purpose of each agenda item is clear. I

056guess it's not redundant. it was um not how we think about um our our board agendas and you know frankly it's not the superintendent's responsibility to put together agenda ultimately either it's the you know the schoolboard presidents but it's our job to articulate the schoolboard president's will as we're putting these agendas together. So instead of saying organized for communication monitoring or results compliance just so that the purpose of each agenda item is clear. the titles that we have in each of our sections make it very obvious what we're doing and so the the language that we had previously didn't make sense. Uh and then the last one indicator two there superintendent presents information in a simple and concise form. Um you know the additional explanation there you know didn't seem to reflect the language that

057we use on a regular basis. uh the language stating indicating clearly whether it's for whether the information is incidental intended for decision preparation or for formal monitoring. Once again, that's pretty much covered in our board agenda and how we structure things. It's clear if it's for action for information, etc. Um but the simple and concise form was related to the policy element above and those are the recommendations we have. I would count most of them as editorial, moving some things around. Um, functionally, you'll be receiving a very similar report next year. >> I thought they read very well now that they're cleaned up that way. I mean, they were a better rendition of what was what you wanted to say. >> Excellent. >> Any comments or questions? Otherwise, I look for um a motion to

058approve the recommended changes to OE8 communicating with and support for the board monitoring report template. >> So move. >> Seconded. Do >> you have a motion to second? Any discussion on the motion? Hearing none, we'll have a roll call. >> Mr. Alberts. >> I miss Mr. Beeski. >> Hi. >> Miss Fuks. >> Hi. >> Dr. Garcia. >> Hi. >> Mr. Jackson. >> Hi. >> Mr. Mango. >> Hi. >> Mr. Mr. Newmeister. >> I, >> Dr. Sprag. >> I, >> Miss Sukla. >> I >> motion passes. Thank you. Move on to operational expectations monitoring report OE9, communicating with the public and key stakeholders. Over to you. >> Yeah. So, this is uh a part of our monitoring process. This is where we present evidence for OE9, communicating with the public and key stakeholders. um as we

059have for the last um number of months, we've got a executive summary there that kind of provides an overview of some big things that we pulled out of this report. Um you can certainly read that yourselves. Um part of our district visioning has been captured in here. Um but also excited to see our Facebook reach this last school year exceeded a million individuals. So some of the changes that we've made to short video to photo reels have made a difference in terms of um people choosing to select our Facebook page and going to it on a regular basis. And so that has been a positive development. And our sku school communications department of one Nick Maru also won 10 awards for excellence from the national school public relations associations for our PR efforts. uh does

060some great job in producing content and it has made a difference. So I'll jump into the report. Um just two real policy elements and I think three indic just a handful of indicators. Um the first indicator on OE 9.1 um which is ensuring a timely flow of information, appropriate input and strategic two-way communication between the district and the public that builds understanding and support for the district efforts. Indicator one is information to stakeholders will be done in a timely flow. Uh the first piece of evidence is a a non-exhaustive list of all the ways our schools communicate. And that's really the primary way um we're communicating as a school district. It's directly to parents um and families and our community through school principles, through teachers. It happens on a very regular basis. Uh um if

061you're in kindergarten or 4K, it's almost daily. uh I see their uh parent square reports and it's incredible all the pictures and updates that they're sending. And then of course as kids get older, parents are more trusting of their environment at school and often need less and less uh communication. Um second piece of evidence is uh the role our school communications department uh plays. Uh there's a link there to a report that Mr. Maru uh put together that talks about um the mission and objectives of our communications department, achievements and recognitions uh and some of the impacts and benefits that um we continue to provide as well as the the partnerships and platforms that we're using to ensure that good information gets out there. Um, parent teacher organizations meet on a regular basis uh in

062order to connect to schools to disseminate information and we have a district-wide parent committee that meets every month as well. Um, I think we do a great job in distributing our code of rights and responsibilities and seeking input from the community on how to modify that each year. Um, some more evidence regarding schoolboard meetings, um, our newsletter and openhouse packets, uh, district letters. Newsletters are sent to staff regarding key issues in each department every month. Uh indicator two, the superintendent shall engage in two-way communication regarding the direction of the district and to build understanding and support for the district. U we meet with representative groups on a wide range of issues. There's a a document there that um is eight pages in length of groups that we meet with on a regular basis. Indicates the

063membership and frequency, their purpose and role. wide range of different issues that we're uh working with um families and the community on. >> Does that list include um all the outreach you did during the visioning process? >> Um I think down below in this list we talk about that. Yes. At the towards the end. Yep. Okay. >> Yep. >> That was substantial. >> Yeah. Um we I mentioned districtwide parents. It's a great way for two-way conversation. They can raise issues and concerns and we're able to either immediately address those or raise those to a higher level to ensure that they're actioned. We're also able to provide updates to them on things going on in the school district. So, it's a great two-way um communication platform. I meet with stakeholders throughout the community on a regular

064basis, either quarterly or monthly or weekly depending on on the group. And that has been valuable in terms of communicating what's going on in the school district and receiving information on what's going on in the community. Um atti had a variety of events. Um been fortunate to be on WISOM on a regular basis. Um this summer it's been almost every Monday morning. Um didn't have to go on this this morning, so that was nice. Uh but that's been a great platform to celebrate accomplishments in the schools, to talk about what's pertinent right now and to promote the great things that are going on. um the leadership SDLC group uh that we have in partnership with the Lacrosse Public Education Foundation. It's a select group of thought leaders, so to speak, in our in our community

065that we bring in uh once a month on Friday mornings to um have a conversation around public education to learn more about kind of a sneak behind the peak behind the curtain in-depth learning about the school district and then uh to also receive feedback on their experiences to to make change. That's been very positive. It's been our second year of that. And then to Miss Sla's point, uh we had our district visioning survey that went out um this year. We had 2,299 responses and we also met with 284 community members through 22 focus groups to gather information. Uh so felt it was a really good experience um good information that you know quickly we saw was consistent across types of groups uh across the community. Um, indicator three is the district communicates emergency or safety

066notices, district school closings and delays, reminders of alternate schedules, and no school days, and translates these messages appropriately. Um, our website has school closings and delays, and you can certainly see on Facebook where we've sent those out. Um, this last year we only had one closing, so there was more hope maybe than realization for some folks. Um and then we uh absolutely send out reminders of alternate schedules and no school days. Um those are published in our district calendars and made uh available to all families. Um we're communicating heavily that we start earlier this year right now. We start on August 21st. It's in alignment with our private school uh friends in town. it'll lower our transportation costs uh and uh create a really neat schedule this year where we have a full spring break

067for a week and then we're done by June 1st. So, uh really nice uh calendar this year. Um we also have different start times this year and we're communicating that heavily to our families. Uh for the high school students, it'll be approximately the same, but for elementary schools, they'll start at 7:45 and end at 2:25. And our middle schools will be starting almost an hour later, uh, 8:25 through 3:30. So, uh, much more developmentally appropriate for adolescent children. And we're anticipating increases in attendance, lowered behavioral issues, and increases in academic achievement over time. So excited about that. >> And then, uh, news releases. >> We have a question. >> Jim, >> well, going back, I you can think of me as Scott Newister. says here met with central students on a regular basis from the

068student senate. How come? How come not Logan? >> Uh Logan doesn't have a student senate. This comes up every time we mention this. Uh and as a result, there's not a group to meet with in the same way. We're still exploring how to meet with a representative group uh of of Logan students. I love the opportunity. It's awesome. I it's basically they put together their agenda and the questions they want to ask me and it's you know I I'll answer anything they they're trying to get after and so it's been a really positive experience. Um I've also been able to ask them some questions about things uh things I thought they really cared about sometimes they don't and uh or vice versa. So it's been very interesting to have that perspective but yes still looking

069for the right group to meet with that Logan. >> Thank you. You missed it, Scott. >> Oh, Scott's asked that one before. >> I've asked it. Yes. That's why I left it alone. >> Exactly. Asked and answered, right? >> Um, indicator four is news releases and story ideas are submitted weekly to a local newspaper while school is in in session. We don't just submit them to the local newspaper. It's also to all the news media, the uh news stations by TV and radio. Uh Nick has a great weekly process of just letting them know, hey, here's what's going on. They pick up some stuff, they don't others. Um they used to pick up more when they were better staffed. It's very hard out there in media right now. Um and so we see fewer stories

070being picked up at the at the local level than we have historically. Uh but we keep doing our best we can to get that stuff out there. Um OE9.2 two prepare and publish on behalf of the board annual progress report including AB and C. Uh indicators one, two, and three address those um indicator one providing community stakeholders a link to state required student performance. Um we have those report cards uh linked on our website. Uh make available to the board and all community stakeholders uh linked to the district's annual adopted plan. our budget plans available uh through an annual public hearing and it's also on our website and then superintendent shall post all board of education business materials meetings uh meeting materials and minutes on the district website in compliance with state open meetings law

071and that's all up on board talks within the required time frame and we try and go above and beyond by providing things to our best of our ability on Thursday uh so that we have a full five days prior to the meeting and a full 48 hours of open meetings law time uh for folks to access that. And that is the report. Happy to take any questions. >> I I do want to say to presenters from earlier, you can stay for this, but if you want to leave, we wouldn't be offended. So, I just want to make sure it looks like a beautiful night. So, I just >> Any questions, board members? Yes, Dr. Spre. Um, I'm really curious what um what the practice has been around um promoting uh the district-wide parent committee, but

072PTO involvement in general. I know at all of our schools, we have what might be considered small but mighty crews uh who are pretty dedicated and like how do we as the district support that level of parent parent engagement? Yeah, it's really done at a school by school basis and so our principles do their best to to recruit parents. You know, it's uh challenging in any school anywhere across the country, you know, to find folks who have the time and energy and curiosity to devote to that particular endeavor. It's easier at the lower elementary and it gets harder and harder as kids get a little bit older. Um, you know, our middle school PTO's are a couple parents often even though they're the size of four elementary schools. Um, and so it's really the grassroots

073level, the folks that know people and, uh, it's often parentto parent. You know, a new parent comes in and it's other parents recruiting them to the PTO's. Um there are certainly trends and correlations um with you know available time and money you know for for families. You know we see a little less participation where there's more economic hardship and a little more participation where there's maybe more time available for families. Uh, and so that is a small trend, but our parents do or our our principles I think do a great job in trying to build those um uh PTOs out to the best that they can. Uh, and it looks different in different places as a result. You know, sometimes there's a a school community that just has a lot of trust in the four

074people that are running it and other times it's 40 people because everybody wants to be involved and get their hands dirty. So, not a great answer, but we do our best. the local level recruiting could be hard from the district office to recruit people to state roads PTO. >> Other questions? >> Um I was wondering you were talking about you're pursuing avenues to talking about Logan. What kind what are those avenues kind of to talk to the Logan students? What what are you thinking? Yeah, they have other groups that get together whether it's class officers, whether it's a homecoming committee, you know, there it just there's it just needs to be students who are curious to talk to us, you know, and who have some time set aside. Um there's also um you know affinity

075groups you know whether it's the Southeast Asian club or the Black Student Union. You know in choosing the student senate we're looking for a body that might send somebody here and so it feels representative of the whole school. You know Logan has you know operated a little you know in ways that benefit them and so just trying to find the right group there. Uh and I'm certain this year we'll find it. >> Thank you. Any other questions or comments? Guys would be looking for a motion regarding compliance. Get the language. I'll make a motion in regard to the monitoring report for policy OE9 communicating with the public and key stakeholders and with respect to the provisions of policy BSR5, superintendent accountability. The board of education concludes that the superintendent and district are in compliance. >>

076Do you have a second to the motion? >> I'll second. >> Thank you. You have a motion and a second. Any further discussion on the motion? >> Take a roll call vote, please. >> Mr. Alberts, >> I. >> Mr. Beeski, >> I. >> Miss Fuks, >> I. >> Dr. Garcia, >> I. >> Mr. Jackson, >> I. >> Mr. Manga, >> I. >> Mr. Newmeister, >> hi. >> Dr. Sprag, >> I >> Miss Sla, >> I. >> Thank you. Motion carries. We'll then move on to uh results monitoring report R3 involves citizenship and um many of these reports have come to us under information at previous meetings. This is kind of putting it all together and looking for action regarding reasonable progress. >> So, uh in support of that, Miss Huth, Miss Carrie Huth, our director

077of curriculum instruction assessment will give us a highle overview of the report just to kind of refresh your memory. we can happily answer any questions and and then move forward. >> Okay, moving into if I start shivering, it's really cold on this half of the room. I don't know if it is there. >> I'm like my toes are cold, my nose is cold, so I apologize if I start to shiver a little. Um we are here to review uh the results monitoring executive summary for R uh R3 involve citizenship where students will demonstrate social and cultural competency necessary to participate as contributing citizens in diverse and global communities. Within there there are four elements and that's what we have reviewed over the last several months of board meetings R31, R32, R33 and R34 which include

078understand and exercise the rights and responsibilities of citizenship in our in our democratic society. Demonstrate effective skills in team as well as individual endeavors. demonstrate effective communication skills and demonstrate in an an understanding of good stewardship toward the environment. Within those four elements, there are 12 um indicators. Within those 12 indicators as reviewed on the executive the front page of the executive um summary, we do have seven of the 12 that we um have met uh reasonable progress including and highlighting uh 40% of our students in grades 612 are involved in two or more co-curricular activities and continuing to increase um the understanding of good stewardship in our in our environment. That's where Mr. Tim Sprain came and spoke and Brida Dr. Rotoring was here um last in our last meeting talking more about 32.

079So out of the 12 um indicators we have seven that have been met in five areas that we are still we are not making reasonable progress. We are close in many of those areas, but there are also areas that we continue to review and put effort into, including our um uh one of the areas we did not meet was our writing um indicator. And so we continue to look across our curriculum and ways that we can support writing in all content areas as well as professional development for our staff to improve um the teaching of writing in not only our elementarymentaries but our middles and our high school um across the content areas. So with that um we would mark as um this last 20 or 12 months of data has shown that we're making

080reasonable progress with the exceptions noted questions comments >> just a reminder like with the writing one you'll see that we increased in our proficiency but they kind of moved the goalpost this year and so when we look at the gap with the state it grew at a time when we would have wanted to at least maintain. So felt like we were honest in indicating we had not met progress there. Uh the other one that's potentially debatable would be the voter registration. Uh we saw a decline from 39.7% um in 23 to 27.4% in 24. Um that said, the state voter registration saw a 14% decline when we only saw a 12% decline. And so, you know, that's one of those ones where we definitely saw it go down, but relative to the state, you know,

081perhaps we held our own, if not increased a little bit. Uh, as it relates >> what national election years tend to have higher >> Yeah, for sure. >> Do you measure the fall or just how do you measure that again? >> Um, it's spring to spring. So, at the end of the the 24 year, so that would have been before the November election where So, it's an off year. we're measuring which students registered and sometimes you get more summer birthdays too or it's you know after April so there isn't like an incentive to register for a while as well depending on the the cohort of kids uh and so there's going to be a natural fluctuation that comes um but we're trying to compare ourselves to the the state average and and try and beat

082that if we can and so um if there was an area where we could quibble that would be it but regardless uh we feel confident with this report that we've got measures in place to improve those that need to be. Um, particularly in the writing. I think we've got some really strong stuff coming at the secondary level with SRSD and the elementary level as well. >> Correct. Dr. Sprag. >> Uh, thank you. I'm I'm curious about um R 3.3 indicator 4 the world language proficiency and because the data we have is limited to the most recent two years >> is it possible that because some of the some of the drops in percentages are disappointing right uh is it possible that those percentages are also reflecting students who have taken the highest level course we

083offer and therefore no longer taking one and not being counted in those proficiency levels. Does that make sense how I'm saying that >> to an extent? Yes. And I also think that Dr. Engel and I talked about this one specifically as well in regards to only having the two years of data. Um and also knowing that you know when we wrote it looking at the 90% as the the right >> the percentage we chose and is that based on um is that the is that the right benchmark we needed to set in regards to >> you know not having the data previously and then writing this to show growth right you add to that >> so we looked at the data from 22 23 as we were setting our percentage age for proficiency and or

084for reasonable growth. And so we thought 90% seems a conservative mark for that cohort of kids, but maybe that is not typical. Maybe they were outliers. And so I think a couple more years of data will let us know if 90% is a reasonable benchmark objectively or do we need to look at something different, you know? So um you know we went from 95.3 to 81% in Chinese, 88% in German to 76. Everything went down some >> and obviously we want them to go up but you know sometimes there's anomalies. I'm also just curious because like if if a different kind of measure and I don't know what it might be because when we have you know 46 students studying Mung but 730 studying Spanish it's it 90% looks a lot different and so it's

085a it's a it's a brute measure in that regard but I don't know what an alternative would be. Yeah, I we tried to use a kind of object objective benchmark in terms of a test. So the American Council on Teaching a foreign language we feel is a great assessment tool because it's kind of universal. We might have to explore more what a typical passage rate is across the country and if that's 90% then excellent. We'll leave that there and we'll work to achieve it. If it's more typical of, you know, students to be receiving the 80th percentile or 80%, then maybe that would be a better benchmark in the future. Um, this is an example of one of those things where we pick something, we're going to monitor it. High goals are good and we'll

086see if it's the right benchmark as we move forward. >> I have a related but somewhat tangential question. Do we already collect or would it be possible to find out? It doesn't have to be in this monitoring report if it's not Maine, but um the percentage of our students in each area that we teach who are heritage speakers. >> What was the last part of that that are >> are we are we able to look at the percentage of the students in the languages that we teach who are actually heritage speakers as well? >> I'm I'm sure that we could based on a a survey uh of our students. >> Okay. Might just be interesting to know for context to the statistics, I think. Yeah, it would be interesting. And I think this assessment is

087also looking at more formal language. And so a family might grow up speaking Spanish in the home, but it's maybe more um culturally relevant and not formal in terms and especially if um they're approaching foreign language for the first time in middle or high school. they may have spent, you know, the majority of their life speaking the language in a more casual way as opposed to the more formal way that they're going to be assessed on in this uh assessment. And so, you know, sometimes it's hard harder uh because it maybe there's no writing experience either, which would also be but that's a great question to ask and would be interesting >> especially for something like Mung, which I think we're really proud to offer here because we feel it >> um matches a cultural

088need in our community. Um, but we also know that there's a lot of, you know, white students who do not have a Mung background who are taking this class because they find it culturally relevant for the community they're growing up in. So, >> and we also know that some of the like like Mung is a is an area of growth for our foreign language. We have added FTE for Mong over the last several years, the M language. >> Thank you. Other questions? Otherwise, we look for a motion um about making reasonable progress with exceptions noted. >> So move. >> Second. >> Dr. Sprag is looking perplexed. >> Well, since we have the motion in the second, I I'm just trying to like do the math in my head. I'm not I'm not happy with uh

089uh obviously what is it? Five out of Can't do the math in my head out of 12 indicators. Right. But it doesn't mean that five of them are at zero. Right. So >> just wasn't I wasn't ready to jump in on that one. Sorry. >> We have a motion on the table. Any other questions? >> We'll look for a roll call vote. >> Mr. Mr. Roberts. >> Hi, >> Mr. Veski. >> Hi, >> Miss Brooks. >> Hi, >> Dr. Garcia. >> Hi, >> Mr. Jackson. >> Hi, >> Mr. Ma. >> I >> Mr. Newmeister, >> I >> Dr. Sprag >> I, >> Miss Sla, >> I. >> Motion carries. >> Thank you. >> We'll move to the information section of the meeting. Um, our first report is on fund 80 community services programs and service

090overview. Uh so this is a um kind of a update we give annually just kind of describing fund 80 and uh some of the programs that we have in this program some of the data that we've collected over the year uh that highlights some of those programs uh and it feeds into a larger conversation about fund 80 for the following year. Uh and so we have a a potential proposal for this next year um that comes right after this and then no decision would be made until the next school board meeting in terms of how to proceed with fund 80 in that levy. Um this all feeds into our larger budget process. We need to have this ironed out as we develop our budgets so that we can submit something for our budget hearing for

091the public. Um, but with that, I'll turn it over to uh Mr. Kurt Te to kind of talk through Fund 80 and the programs that we've had for this last year. Sounds great. Thanks for having me here tonight. Um, so tonight is going to be broad overview, a lot of different programs that we support through uh, Fund 80. Um, some of them we've had for a long time, some are relatively new. I'll be able to speak to uh, each of them. Some of them we directly oversee and support right within the community services department. So, um, Fund 80, a little bit of information around Fund 80. Um, uh, some conditions anytime that we're leveraging, uh, Fund 80 to support costs, um, that these need to be outside the regular curriculum, they can't you can't leverage

092Fund 80 to do anything that would that schools would otherwise try to accomplish. Um, also, uh, anything that we're attempting to fund with fund 80 can't be sustained if for some reason the fund $80, uh, ended up, uh, ending. So, that's some, you know, context with this as well. And then the, uh, final um, condition is it's available to any resident student. So, you're going to hear a lot of, uh, programs that are maybe connected to schools or I'm referencing schools. Um, want you to understand all those programs are available to even private school students. uh and many participate in it uh which is terrific um that it's available for the for the community. So um give you a little bit of context the way that we uh just largely think about uh our work

093within community services and impact and I think it's relevant to even fund 80. Um there's a lot of things that impact student achievement and well well-being and many of those things are well within our control. We get to pick the teachers and the school leaders and we get to pick the curriculum and and um you know make decisions about resources and facilities. There's a number of factors that are less within our control. Uh thing not that they're totally outside our control, they're just less within our control. Um early life experiences, economic stability, we know a lot of those things have big impacts um on kids ability to be at school um ready to ready to learn. Part of that is uh it's hard to imagine, but we share this with a lot of groups. School

094only represents about 25% of awake hours for kids. So I know school feels like a big part of the year. Um when you add it all up, it ends up being I think 16% of all hours, 25% of awake hours. Um so there's interest uh and you'll see a lot of the programs that that we help support um through Fundy do target that time outside of school. um uh making sure kids are supported. Um so that's really where a lot of the conversation, a lot of the programs I'm going to outline tonight is really programs targeting uh those factors that are typically outside of the school day. Um the uh work that we've done within fund 80 fits really well with a lot of the work that we've learned uh through community schools. One of

095the concepts within community schools is an inside and out strategy. Meaning you're doing the right things within school, but you're also strategizing um outside the school day because again it represents just so much time. Um but we we largely leverage fund to partner with our community um to help ensure kids are at school ready to learn, on track to graduate, that they're mentally healthy, that they remain out of the criminal justice system. um all you know inspiring outcomes that we'd we'd want um for kids within our community. Uh we've organized these strategies kind of into four buckets uh here. Uh so I'll talk about each one of them separately. Uh one of them is enhancing early childhood development. Um uh empowering youth beyond the school day, strengthening community connections and engagement um and then fostering

096school and and community uh justice. So we'll start with enhanced early childhood development. This is a relatively new part of our strategy. Uh this was something that the uh board had approved last year. Um if for those of you who are on the board um remember us really talking about gosh that early life experience such a critical critical window. The number of connections that kids are making and the experience that they have. Um and and one of the things that um we've learned is what surrounds us shapes us. And that that's true for kids and and um some of the data that Dr. Angel had shared last year uh really pointing to some of our outcomes can be directly tied to adversity uh that that's within our community. Uh early life adversity or economic adversity.

097Uh and uh youth end up um uh getting influenced by a lot of different things. Certainly the social context of the family they're in and how they're growing up. Um but there's also uh the environment that they're living in, the neighborhood that they're living in, the resources they have access to, and then larger systemic things. Uh and so the work within our early childhood impact um has uh begun. Uh we ended up hiring an impact coordinator a little bit later. We had some delays in hiring. So we're we're just starting to get into um uh some of this some of this work. But we do have a a coordinator. we are anticipating her coming um to your next board meeting to share an update on on more of the details of what's happening because we

098know there's a lot of interest um in this area. Uh but we're currently in um developing the needs and asset assessment. Um so we have a a community steering committee made up of uh leaders from our big health systems, from higher education, from uh child care, um uh from um family and and youth serving organizations. Uh and so we've pulled that steering committee together and and that is the group that's helping to develop the needs and asset assessment. Um so very exciting work. Um looking forward to uh meeting um uh our new coordinator uh Michelle Samson uh at a future meeting uh empower youth beyond the school day. Um so this is really targeting out of schooltime programming. Here's just a summary of some of the research uh around um out of school time programming,

099the benefits of making sure kids have safe uh places to be after school and are engaged in in uh quality programming. Um last year we expanded so through fund 80 for a long time we've supported out of schooltime programming. We had an increase last year um to be able to uh target staffing ratios to be able to maintain some programming on the north and south end of town. Um so current uh fund 80 programming doesn't pay for all of the out of schooltime programming but it helps the Boys and Girls Club um offer uh at no cost out of schooltime programming uh at a number of sites um with within our um community for youth. Um it's used uh so this is some data uh from Boys and Girls Club. We have about 1,200 students

100that are attending out of school time programming uh with them. Um a lot of the students um are and this is self-reported. Uh we don't share free and reduced uh lunch data with Boys and Girls Club but they collect it um you know based on surveys from parents. Um but 70 to 75% uh of the youth attending these programs are reporting some type of economic um adversity uh within programming. And you'll see some connections later even when I you know talk about community schools um we high levels of satisfaction with parents feeling like they have safe places for their kids to be after school. So there's connections across a lot of these um out of school time programs. I I have a really quick silly question on that those slide to single family that refers

101to single parent families. >> Yeah. >> Just different. >> Yeah. >> Uh in the area of strengthening community connections and engagement. So a lot of different programs. A lot of these are historical programs within fund 80. our cultural lazons, our community school coordinators, um community impact coordinators, lacrosse promises in there, and then the um graduation specialist be great graduate. Uh and that's a program that we had added some funding to um last year. So we'll we'll go through these um our cultural lison programs been supported through fund for a long time. Um and and this is uh the work of Mr. Tony Yang and Miss Laura Abolera. Uh and really they work it's amazing the scope of of work that they do within the district. Being able to work directly with students and families uh

102being able to work at like a district and school level and and be able to get in and and helps uh schools and families connect and navigate challenges. Uh and then their work within the community uh working with uh community stakeholders. So this is a program that that fits within that uh strategy. our community schools. Um, so I've got a couple of endofear reports um that that uh are in here. Um, so North Side Elementary and Hamilton Elementary are both community schools. Uh, and this is something this is a strategy we've been implementing uh for about seven years now. um in in community schools um uh really are are designed to be able to address uh needs within a a community where a lot of times the needs are exhausting the supports available. And I

103always share like all of our schools in some ways are uh doing the work of community schools in the in the sense that we're trying to meet needs. If kids are hungry, we're getting them food. If they need they're cold, we get them coats. um at in our community schools really we're seeing uh just such concentrations of need that we need a systemic strategy and so what I hope you'll notice in in these reports is just the high levels of engagement so I know earlier we're talking about you know surveys and and other feedback our target is 75 to 100% participation uh uh from our students our families and our community to help drive strategies um this isn't the district telling the community what what they need and what we're going to do. Uh this

104is us completing needs and asset assessment, getting to know the the community and and having the community prioritize uh uh you know what what they need. Um so you'll be able to see in there, you know, number of um partnerships that they've developed um over the year. Uh our schools develop um every month they've got a a newsletter on community schools. Um this one is um Hamilton's. Um, I'll just share a quick story on on Hamilton. Hamilton uh has been like a lot of schools working to target absenteeism. Um one of the uh breakthroughs that they ended up having this year, they had nominal increase in in attendance, but one of the big shifts that um they have um uh been able to see is absenteeism for no call no-show has dropped and we're seeing

105more absenteeism due to illness. Uh which is, you know, a good thing because it tells us families are engaged. They're calling to let us know when they're sick. And now the strategy has now changed to how do we communicate with families and provide supports in a way where kids can we can make sure kids are coming to school when when they are healthy and that they're only staying home when when they can't be at school. So uh it's just been a terrific um uh strategy for for those two uh neighborhoods. Um for Hamilton uh they wrote a uh for a 21st century grant. Thankfully those dollars got released. Those were some federal dollars that that uh were held up for a period of time. Uh but allowed Hamilton to be able to work with Boys

106and Girls Club um to uh operate a sale to success program which is targeted uh intervention for kids in K to2 available districtwide. So not just uh Hamilton students. Uh but as you can see uh being able to provide targeted afterchool support uh academic support has really uh made a difference for uh students in that uh program uh community impact. Um so th this been a kind of a longer term now uh strategy. So this work started in the Huber neighborhood out on the south end of town and then expanded into the Shu Mullen neighborhood on the north side of town. Uh both of those neighborhoods um our Lacrosse Housing Authority properties and and kind of the background on it. We got involved largely because we were seeing carrying issues into the school and and

107uh we um uh ended up having some resources to to be able to work with community partners to stabilize those neighborhoods. Um uh this been a terrific partnership. Um uh you know, we're we're still active uh in in both neighborhoods. I'll tell you Huber is really um stabilized. We used to see a lot of turnover within those neighborhoods. there's high levels of satisfaction. There actually isn't all that much turnover. Um so we've seen a lot of growth within uh the Huber neighborhood. Um it's only 40 households, so it's a little bit smaller. Shu Mullen is 140 households and we're we're working on a scale issue. So we just submitted a three-year uh submitted four. We haven't been awarded it yet. We hope we will uh three-year half a million dollar uh grant to support Chumal

108uh to be able to bring some additional resources um through the Wisconsin partnership program. Um so we're we're keeping fingers crossed on that. Uh but a lot of the work that we're doing within our community impact is modeled off of community schools. Um you know the people closest to the problems are often closest to the solutions. what they're not close to is the resources, influence, authority uh to be able to uh get their needs met. So, we're engaging those neighborhoods much in the same way we engage community schools, talking with people who live there about what do they want, what do they need, what's getting in their way, and then we we work to address that. Uh Lacrosse Promise, so that fits within this bucket. Um, Lacrosse Promise been a tremendous partnership for the school

109district of Lacrosse um, uh, in being able to provide outreach and engage uh, youth and and families in thinking about what's next after high school. So in there I've listed um all the activities uh that that Lacrosse Promise has been involved with um throughout the year in working to uh help ensure our our students, high school students um are are thinking about uh graduation and beyond. >> The Lacrosse Promise program, is that all funded by fund 80 or how does that work? >> No, it's a p it's not a percentage. I think it's a flat rate. Do you know the total? >> Yep. We provide $70,000 to Lacrosse Promise and um they implement the program. You know, they also raise funds themselves in order to operate uh their program. That one was started gosh, 15

110years ago at this point. Uh it started um out as the idea to create a a neighborhood scholarship project to encourage uh new builds and um revitalization of a a neighborhood. Um uh and then along with that process as they examined this scholarship program they noticed that in other places where they had done so kids weren't successfully completing college because they weren't prepared to go and so I think they actually started the future center before they actually kicked off the scholarship program. And so this has been in place a long time. Um we've had two uh folks implementing it. Historically we were down to one for a period of time. We're go back up to two for next year. Uh so we anticipate a lot of these numbers expanding dramatically. Uh we'll have folks dedicated

111on the north side and the south side to support the middle schools and the high schools uh in this effort. Um Kathy Mard, she's a rock star. Does an amazing job uh in this program and we're really excited for where this takes off for next year. >> Can I ask a question on that as well? Um, you said that we we supply 70,000 or 75, I couldn't remember. But, um, how much does this cost? I mean, how much are they fundraising for? Is it do we have their annual budget that we know of? How much of this are we funding through um our school district, I guess, is my question. >> Is it 75%? Is it 80 or >> when it started the fund 80 was funding just the future centers? Is that still what

112>> That's still what we fund. Yeah. Yeah, we we're we're committed to that portion of it. I I would estimate that when they've been down to a single uh person working the future centers, it's probably um somewhere in the neighborhood of 90 to 100% of the the cost of the program. As they expand back out to two, they're not, you know, requesting more funding and so it'll probably go back down to about 50% of the program. And so takes private fundraising and efforts on their end to to provide the rest of that funding. And I 90 might be a high. It might be 85 to 90% you know because there's administrative costs and other things that they're taking the burden on. Uh be great graduate uh graduation specialist. So this was added funding last year.

113Um uh historically uh the BG great graduate has been funded directly by the Boys and Girls Club and for a period of time they they had a grant uh and so last year's uh investment in this program um ensured we had a graduation specialists at both uh Central and uh Logan High School um targets uh some of our most atrisisk students uh students who are off track. They've fallen behind academically. They're disengaged. Maybe they're not even attending. Uh and so that that's really the uh targeted service um that that uh the BG great uh graduation specialist uh works on. Um some outcome data. Um 40 students enrolled this past year. Um we had uh at times some uh positions that were open. We had a person who had accepted the position but ended up having

114some health issues. So we had some gaps um uh within uh programming um but they're still maintaining um high graduation rate for all the active seniors um within the program uh fostering school and community justice. So uh within this uh group uh we have YW.CA justice circles, restorative justice circles. Um uh so you can see some of the data uh on that. These justice circles might be used when there are issues to help, you know, schools and students or students and students work things out, but these circles are also used to help welcome new students into the uh school uh and be able to do some proactive uh work with students as well. Um system of care, our school justice partnership, um this was back in 2016. Uh we joint fund a school justice partnership

115that provides um early intervention for students who are engaging in what could be considered criminal m misconduct. Um it's holding them accountable through interventions and support. So if any of you have worked with Bridget Todd Robbins, she's the system of care administrator. uh been a pretty successful program really targeting um uh youth who are historically over represented in our criminal justice system and and still maintaining a a high uh success rate working with them on skill development. Um final one in this group is our school resource officer program. So this program has changed throughout uh throughout the year. We currently have four school resource officers. We added one last year. Um year before we were we were at three. um uh outline kind of the goals of the SRO program and and within our SRO

116advisory, we we really organize that to uh be able to answer a few guiding questions which helps us rightsize that program. Uh making sure that school resource officers are being utilized for the right calls, not getting called in to just do school discipline. Uh making sure that most of the time a specially trained officer can um handle that call for service. Um and then considering other conditions that that we need to think about. So uh this slide really gets at the kind of a summary of the history of that feedback. Um last year one of the one of the reasons that we are looking uh toward adding was we were seeing some discrepancies or um some unevenness in in SRO response rate times um and some concerns about call delays and and things like that.

117Um, I'll tell you just from the feed I'm feedback from the committee and feedback from our schools and our community, people have felt really positive about returning to four school resource officers, two on the north side, two on the south side. >> Kurt, if I can interrupt you, sorry. Absolutely. >> Would it be possible uh maybe in the future to see the the year-over-year comparison of like the youth arrest rate as well? >> Yeah. >> Kind of see what impact that addition has made going forward. >> Yeah. Yeah. And that is something that um that'd be Yeah. Yeah. Great. We collect that information. It's part of our advisory, part of our data set. We look at we look at Yeah. calls for service, arrest rates, comparative arrest rates. Actually, I'll link back to the original

118uh report that Dr. Angel completed. So, >> just for context, I know the number is low. The number of arrests that we had last year of youth in our schools from a school-based incident, it was it's like the number of students was maybe six I 16 >> 16 students I think or maybe 24 incidents >> right so the percentage reflects of incidents at a school that an SRO was called to that percentage led to a youth arrest >> so the way we get statistics is from the state a uniform criminal justice code there it's all reported up to the state so there'll be like >> 250 youth arrests in uh in the state or in the in the in the lacrosse community. Of those 200ome, only 16 are students in our schools. >> Okay, >>

119I we pulled the data out of this, but the the the largest place where arrests occur is in our community. The second highest within the community is in home. >> And then finally, it's our our schools, >> you know, where arrests occur. We have a very low arrest rate in our schools because we have diversion programs. We have other options. We restorative justice options. Uh so it's a a relatively low rate regardless, but we can absolutely provide that full we'll we'll just share the slide deck that has all the data and you can dive into the weeds all you like. >> Yeah. >> Mr. Bneski, >> what differentiates how do you decide whether it goes to restorative justice or NSRO gets involved in criminal complaint is charged? >> Sure. So the system of care, for

120instance, is pretty prescribed. We have uh certain offenses that we consider, we call them focus acts, and they're they're essentially um chargeable offenses that we think we can target better with intervention and support. So it's disorderly conduct, which is very difficult to define. Uh that's been a a positive one. Um habitual truency is one. Uh minor theft is one. uh minor battery. So, think like two kids are getting a tussle. Um uh and then minor uh property damage. Um and so and and there's conditions, you know, within it. If there ends up being a victim, you know, they they have some decision on whether or not, you know, we we move forward with that. But those are largely the types of offenses we try to target. >> Good. Thank you. >> Yep. >> Yeah. >>

121Hi. Oh, >> just in in this presentation of all the different things, >> fund is just a portion of it. >> This is fun. You're talking about grants. There's right lacrosse promise, which is a whole separate thing. It's confusing to me what's >> this is a presentation on fund. I understand fund is done in a larger context, but I it's I've been here a long time and I'm still confused. So, I'm assuming other people around the table are probably struggling with sorting out with what's a grant, with what's fund 80. What are we asking for? >> I would say most of these programs are 100ish% funded through fund 80. We're talking about some grants and other things that facilitate our work over time. You know, the CLC grant that we had applied for and received

122and maintained funding that goes above and beyond what's included in here. It is hard to disentangle all the things you know and especially when we had SR funding as well you know that started some stuff that we continued here in fund 80 >> well like on the slide about foster school and community justice fund 80 funds the SRO's the other pieces are funded elsewhere is that correct >> funds those as well so the the justice circles the restorative justice program is is listed in there under our our budget you know that's something that we do fund and system of care is something we funded as well over the years so they they should all be in there Um it is confusing as we talk about all the different ways we're supporting stuff and you know

123it bleeds back and forth in some cases but by and large this presentation is the fund 80 work. >> Thank you. >> Yep. Absolutely. >> Can I can I piggyback on your question? So looking at like the where does that fall in the I know we're not on the levy slide yet but >> u the YWCA the justice circles the system of care is that included in the SRO levy or is it what other line item are we represented is is represented here or are they funds coming from somewhere? The next uh item on our uh agenda on the board agenda has the kind of itemized um funded budget and levy proposal and that kind of indicates the we have things bucketed. So um as an example for what you just mentioned there, community partnership

124programs includes lacrosse promise at the north side and southside restorative justice YW.CA CA partnership, system of care partnership, which we just talked about, Lacrosse County Transportation for System of Care, uh, BG Great Graduate Specialist, Community Impact Coordinator, and then professional development supplies. And so the the we have kind of some legacy buckets that we've tried to fit things under and keep consistent to the best of our ability over time. Um, school resource officers has always been its own line item, so that gets split out. Um Kirk tried to organize these in terms of um we try and organize them and how we think about things so that it feels cohesive. Yeah. >> Um but it doesn't necessarily relate exactly to how the budget gets developed which is its own thing. Yeah. So >> no that

125makes sense where they where they fall in community partnership programs. >> Yep. >> Yeah. And so the you moved on to the levy history. you know, this is what we've actually levied, not what the the program um budget was, you know, and so if we levy money in fund 80, but we don't spend all of it, it has to be it has to be used for fund 80 only. And so those dollars stay there until we use them. A good example um for this last year is um it took us a little while to hire early childhood development uh coordinator. And so last year we had levied $110,000. This year we're recommending just 20 because we didn't spend uh some of those funds and so they have to be used in that program for the

126next year. Uh and so we're able to carry that over and use that within fund 80 to offset the cost of the budget. Um there are a couple of um uh increases uh we're interested in having a conversation around um with strategy one um with the the coordination there just maintaining the programming our actual budget levy would be less but we would maintain that program as it is to see it come to fruition. Um and we've talked about these strategies over the last um six months and in a couple different instances. empowering youth beyond the school day. Um we're interested in moving middle school extracurricular cost to fund 80. It's allowable under the law and it would free up some space in fund 10 to be able to accomplish some important things. Uh especially as

127it relates to extracurriculars um paying our coaches uh a little bit more. We've noticed that we are under the market rate in our area by probably 25% and it's become apparent to our coaches and our ability to recruit and retain great staff there. Uh and so that is something like that we would like to address. Um and then you know middle uh athletic budgets, you know, we give our softball team $200, bat costs 600, bucket of balls cost 300. we can barely do anything to move the needle for basic extracurriculars or co-curricular programs. Uh and so there's an opportunity if we make this move to um better take care of those um um programs beyond the school day within our control, not just those in middle school. Uh and then the other one is uh

128expanding to partner fully with grow lacrosse, our our garden programming. Um right now um each school fundraises to the best of their ability to make these programs happen at the elementary level, but not every school has this program either. Uh and so our goal is to create equal access to grow lacrosse garden programming across the school district without the burden being placed on families and PTOs to make it happen. Uh it has been integrated into our curriculum now for a dozen years uh and has become a standard part of how we operate. Uh and so we see it as a um kind of a selling point for the school district of Lacrosse and a asset and an opportunity that we would like to fully become partners on. Uh so that um it's not left up

129to chance and you know random grants but instead fully funded uh well this wouldn't fully fund it but it would create stability from the school's perspective in ensuring that this programming was available at every school. And then um for the uh the strategy four um every year we calculate the actual costs for our school resource officers. They actually if there's some increases in in their costs uh we want to be a good partner in that endeavor. And so we'd be looking at it's essentially inflationary increases based on the school resource officers they have. Some years it could actually go down. If they hire folks that have a little less experience, we might actually pay less. Um, but sometimes I guess what we found is that our school resource officer program is desirable and we're usually

130getting experienced uh police officers who are really excited to work with youth in a more intense way. Uh, and so we're getting uh trained, experienced officers who already have experiences elsewhere coming into this program, which is exactly what we want. And so sometimes when they hire new folks, we see a slight bump in cost. So, uh, that's what we're interested in having a conversation about. Uh, and of course, I had provided a list of 10 things from 15 million to $7,000 that we could talk about as well, I guess. Any questions about programming and stuff for Kurt while he's here before we get into to budgets and programs uh, expansion? >> Could we look at the I mean, it's hard in my opinion to separate. I mean, we're we're asked to um fund the monies

131to do the program. So, could we do the budget piece of it and then do the whole thing together? I think that makes a better conversation. Is Is that okay with everybody? >> Okay. Okay. >> Do you want this locked up? >> Sure. That would be great. Thank you. >> So, move on to the um next item then. Got my script lost here. Sorry. Uh hang on. Uh 702, review of the proposed community service fund levy and then we can discuss 701 and 702 together since they >> I can describe it real quickly. Uh so you'll see there's two columns there and it kind of lists by item each of the programs. Um I had to increase my zoom a couple of times to read it well. um uh on the the left hand um

132in the fund budget, that's our budget. That's not the levy. It's what we'll be looking at funding that program at. Like I said, there might be leftover funds from the prior year that offset the the levy for the next year. Uh and so it continues our Boys and Girls Club programming and our afterchool community programs um which our schools use to fund additional programming. uh the building community use. Um this is um allows our buildings to be accessible to the community. Uh so uh youth sports and uh Y uh MCA programming and um others, we're able to charge those costs of operating the facility at that time to fund 80 so it doesn't come out of our fund 10 budget and it creates an opportunity there. Uh the next is our community liaison. In green,

133we've indicated uh a proposed uh program operation uh increase. Uh we've noticed that while we've been able to hire great people, they don't have funds to work with to operate um their programs. Um we've had to kind of beg, borrow, and steal that from other places. If we're able to incorporate that into fund 80, that would allow them to continue their great work uh without um that challenge that we've had historically. Our community partnership programs include Lacrosse Promise, YW.C.A. Restorative Justice, System of Care, Be Great Graduate, our community impact coordinator staff in shoe homes and um Hubert Court. And then uh once again, a program operation costs that we're um asking the board to consider. uh the community school uh coordinators. This provides the staff for uh North Side uh elementary and Hamilton Elementary for

134our community schools programs, program operation cost there as well. Um early childhood community partnerships. Um so this is the program we started last year and we'll have an update on this upcoming board meeting. Uh the Logan pool is in there. Um it helps offset costs for recreational programming. um there. Uh and then our school resource officers um are indicated there as well. Um the total programming um uh is about $2.1 million um if you include um those additions above in green. The levy would be 1.9 million. It's a little bit less than last year because of um kind of leftover funds, right? No, >> actually that's an increase >> dollar amount increase to levy. >> Got it. So, a slight increase. And then um we're proposing uh the middle school community co-curriculars and grow lacrosse

135in those proposals down below. And it shows what the impact on the total budget would be in the levy there. Um >> what does five cents on the levy mean? >> Five cents on the levy. $5 for a $100,000 valued home. >> Thank you. >> $5 for$100,000. >> Correct. >> Yeah. Yes, >> Mr. Bneski. >> Well, with those numbers going up to the Boys and Girls Club Southside programming in Hamilton says 100,000. That's what we pay. What do boys and girls club portion of that? Do they contribute a certain amount? How much or >> Oh. Oh, yeah. And they have a $5 million budget for >> But that's for all their clubs in lacrosse. So, do we know what they spend just at Hamilton in comparison? >> Could certainly get that. I mean, they I

136don't know, Kurt, if you have any context. >> I actually asked for that last year. remember we talked about that and I never received any information. That was one of the things I was going to bring up, but it would be nice. I think the public should know too and it'd be nice for us to know exactly what it costs us real moneywise. >> Yeah, I don't I don't have the full operational costs for all all the out of school time program. The only comparison that I had uh at one point was um the ESSER dollars when we had those um we were paying actual uh costs of programming and I think our lacrosse sites and we we helped fund not just Boys and Girls Club but we were funding uh YMCA uh and Good

137Fight Club at that time. I think we were in the $500,000 range. I'd have to look back, but that'd be we could get that. I know that I know that our contribution is just a percentage of what the total actual cost of >> Can we get a report on what that sure costs and what they provide and what we provide for next meeting >> for some just kind of relative context? I mean, our contribution is what $400,000 you know for the,200 students that are served. It's about $33 per student, which helps offset their membership costs. Um, if they attended all 259 days that they're open and available, uh, we're talking about 13 cents a day, you know, for a kid to attend the BGC year round, you know, so it's a huge asset to families

138and it makes it free and accessible to all that programming. I certainly get your interest in being fiduciarily responsible. I also see it as an incredible value. person. >> It may be incredible value and I agree it is an incredible value and it's something that's desperately needed but I I I think it would just be nice to know the real cost. You know, the devil's in the detail and it would be I mean it's just not the cost of that. Every time somebody uses our facilities, it costs us money. It's the school. So, and they're going to say, "Well, no matter what a janitor, somebody's there." Well, no, people come in just for it, too. So, but I I asked for that and I never received it. That was >> biting my tongue, but as

139long as somebody brought it up, I'm thankful. So, thank you, >> Mr. Beeski. >> Well, and then I don't know, it says three community school coordinator staff. Um, it says 318,000. I personally would like again a breakdown of what that's paying for. >> That's a coordinator and an assistant. >> That's their salary and their benefits. They're employees of the school district of Lacrosse. >> That was Tony Yang's presentation, right, that he gave that day. >> He's a cultural leazison. >> So, this would be so Alicia Place is the supervisor for our community schools efforts. And then there's a coordinator uh in each of our elementary schools at North Side and Hamilton. And so that 318 represents the salary and benefits for the three people uh involved. [Music] comments or questions? I have some too, but

140I don't want to. >> Oh, Dr. So, thinking thinking about the um early childhood community partnership and the the coordinator position. So, we're >> what slightly less than a year into Miss Samson's tenure, I imagine, since she was on board and everything. So, knowing that we're in this needs assessment and root cause analysis phase, >> what and and I'm kind of asking you to predict the future a little bit, like what might we expect like when we find what the root causes are, are are you thinking this is going to be a reallocation of existing resources to maximize impact that may or may not be fund 80 projects? Are we are we maybe looking ahead to additional fund 80 dollars? Um, so what we've found in our community impact work and this is true at

141our community schools at North Side Hamilton and the same for Huber Mullen and Shu Home or Huber and Shu Mullen is that we're particularly talented as a school district as a hub for all these different organizations that interact in these areas and we see their kids on a regular basis. So we have like a disproportionate regular access to these families and the students and what that has positioned us to do well is reach out to them, communicate and connect all these organizations to each other. Uh and so as an example in our um shoe mullen work we identified that underemployment was an issue or I should say the residents identified underemployment as an issue and so we identified a pathway through Western technical college to help gain uh TA certification for folks living in the

142Shu Mullen neighborhood. We ultimately were able to employ a number of those folks and some were employed in other places but we didn't pay any extra. We had no additional expense. We just connected residents who identified a need to a resource using our person. So we were a connector between organizations and and the the folks involved. We imagine something similar for the early childhood program. Our goal is not to layer on costs by provoting providing smoking sessation and responsible technology use and prenatal care. Our goal is to identify what is it that parents, young parents need and then connect them through our partnerships and our unique ability being this community hub uh to the resources that are available. You know, so by partnering with Mayo and Amplify, by partnering with the parenting place and child

143care centers, because we already have strong pre-established connections, once we've done a needs and assets assessment and find out what parents say they need, we can start connecting them to those resources or build new things uh with our partners. But our goal isn't to be the provider of those things, just a connector. I had nonbudgetary question, but if you're gonna go. >> No, go ahead. >> Okay. Um, thinking about the the sale to success program, and Kurt, this is maybe something you can speak. Going back to the other presentation, I'm just really curious what does a what does a 72% growth in SEAL skills look like? Is that >> And how are we assessing that? That's an interesting statistic to me. It sounds fantastic, but we're talking about social emotional learning skills. So on the

144ground. >> Yeah. So Hamilton uh has been piloting and and I think um we're looking to scale um the screener. So I think we presented here before around mental health screening uh that that um kids can elect to get into. Very difficult to do at the elementary level. Um, but Hamilton ended up developing a screener to assess students development where teachers who know the student the best can can help evaluate on these um metrics. And so that's what that is based on definitely. Yeah. Difficult to do that. Do they have it or don't they have it? But >> so probably indic I'm I'm thinking about like what are the indicators on that? Is it like attentiveness in class? uh >> be like, "Can I regulate my emotions? Can I um >> uh plan for a

145task and complete it?" You know, it um you know, was I a good friend today? >> You know, those sorts of things. >> That's what I was wondering. Thank you. Yeah, >> we're gonna go past eight. >> Pardon? >> We're going to go past eight on this one. >> Nine is our >> I know, but I thought if we having our other one, I'd >> Good point. >> Well, I'm still going to ask my questions. >> Yeah. No. Good boss. I'm just saying. >> So, um, because this is a levy, all of these things are are good things, but they come down to levy. They aren't state dollars for these are this is levy. So, do we have a ballpark on how our revenue increase went up to 325 per student? The state didn't fund

146any of that. So, how much are we going to be looking for for a a levy increase in in a ballpark? I know you there's a lot of other factors around it, but it's hard for me to figure out how we answer about this levy when I don't know that big levy. >> Okay. So, one one big component that we know is that our um equalized value for the district is going up almost 6%. So, what does that mean? And that means any increase to the levy uh be it from within the revenue limit, the community service fund or our debt payment is spread among more value that reduces that amount. So um as I was looking at it recently, I anticipate there's going to be a 40 cents increase in our levy just from

147our debt. the new referendum debt. >> Okay. >> Right. But when I look at the whole total picture, I'm only anticipating a 31 cent increase in our mill rate >> including the 40 cents >> because yes, because I anticipate that our our general fund levy is not um increasing enough where the value of the property increase won't support it. And >> part of the challenge is the $325 increase on the per pupil revenue limit is offset by our declining enrollment. So while we have an increase for each student, we have fewer students and that's a much more dramatic decline than the 325 ends up being on the positive side. But there's one one issue is obviously we all just received a letter recently on how our property values skyrocketed. >> Honest to goodness. >> Yeah.

148So, you know, how's that affect everything? That I guess that's what I want to be careful of because people I don't want people jumping off the rope thinking we're up the 6% that you mentioned. >> Yeah, that's >> it brings our mill rate down. >> Yeah, it's a little >> Well, but it brings the mill rate down. But if you had a 200 if you had a $200,000 house, it's probably 250. So So now you're still paying an extra 20 bucks or 30 bucks or whatever. >> And that would only be the case if only your house increased in in property value, right? So the total dollar amount you're going to pay, it might end up being a wash because the mill rate would be flat to a minor increase, but because everybody's house went

149up, everybody's paying a little paying a little bit more, which means everybody pays they don't pay more. You know, everybody pays the the equal amount of cost at all. >> Um, if just your house went up in value, you would see a pretty big increase. But when everybody's house goes up in value, all of that increased cost gets washed over the whole school district, which is which is nice. And so I know people are nervous about the the increase in property valuation. If it was just one neighborhood or one township, that would be super concerning. But because it's across the the city, it's going to be a relatively minimal impact to anyone personally. Now that said an increase in mill rates will lead to an increase in taxation and right you know so even at

15031 cents that would >> but even if the mill rate made flat and your assessment goes up 20% you're paying more. >> Not necessarily. >> It could go it could actually go down. It depends where the water mark is in the lower end typically. >> But the mill rate is a percentage of the hundred or is a per 100,000. Correct. >> Yes. You're you're you're right, Missukla. If the mill rate stayed the same and property values went up, you would pay more because there's limits on revenue that the city and the county and the school district can raise. When property values go up across the board, mill rates simply go down. And so that is almost inevitably the case. Ours will go up primarily because of the referendum that was passed, but we're anticipating it

151won't even be as much as we said it would be because of all these other factors. Can I make a different kind of sense of that? It just to check myself here. So yes, the our referendum mill rate is being positively impacted by all these changes, but that is also reflected in declining enrollment and the per pupil increase which are also disconnected from they don't match one another way we might like them to see. So although that mill rate looks better, we are ultimately as a district still left with less overall budget than we would need. >> Correct. >> Okay. >> Yeah. Doesn't work out in our favor. >> Yeah. Okay. >> Declining enrollment is a huge depressing factor on our revenue. >> Um so what is the timeline on when this has to be

152approved? I'm concerned because we haven't heard the report on child care. But I'm pretty sure somebody's going to stand at that podium and tell me that this has to be approved at the next meeting because if we don't, people won't know what to do come the beginning of the school year and our back is against the wall and we got to make decision even though we are just getting the information. And that's a struggle for me when I keep being told I have to hurry up and make a decision because inevitably I always regret that decision. Well, with fund 80, we'd like you to to tentatively approve so that we can figure out the mill rate. But like I it's just another part of that total levy. Remember all those pieces. We don't know until

153October 15th. after October 15th, you need to know >> you need to settle and if there's an adjustment that needs to be made any uh the the portion that you can fluctuate with is fund 80. So if we had questions at the next meeting, could we approve fund 80 at the first meeting in September or will that create >> some terrible thing? I just want I just want to understand what wiggle room we do or do we might not need that but I just want to understand that >> you could and because anything I give you as of like September 8th is always going to be tentative all those numbers are going to be tentative estimates and until you set the levy do you need to know that you are approving any one of those

154uh levies because you approve those levies separately for fund and for your debt. >> Thank you. My my last point I want to bring up is in the last two years we've increased this fund by almost a million dollars based on the proposal that we have here in front of us. That's um the fund 80 budget for 2021 and again it was a little bit reduced because of COVID was just a little under a million dollars. So we are doubling it in four years and I I want to make sure we give serious thought to this. These are all wonderful things. It would be lovely if we could do more to help families and do well. I totally agree that education is more than read and write and arithmetic as we used to say in

155the olden days. Um we have to do more to support the students that are struggling. Um the question that I'm struggling with in my mind that I don't have an answer um and I think we all need to struggle with is work through this is what can we afford to do? And that's I think the the question that's on the table. Other questions or comments? Yes, >> I would just add to that this represents like less than 2% of our budget. >> So, I don't know when we're thinking about what we can afford to do and I know as a classroom teacher like having students who have predictable after school places to go, predictable early childhood care that does have an impact on reading, writing, arithmetic. those things only happen when those other sort of

156Mazo's hierarchy of needs things are cared for. So I don't think it's reckless or um irresponsible to think that 2% of our budget could be used to build that foundation. >> And I just to be clear, I'm not saying it's reckless or irresponsible. I just it's it's something we all have to consider. >> Well, we are looking at moving some things to this. So it really going from one budget to another >> in some aspects. Correct. Where you know that >> where it's it's a benefit to our other budget to move it to here. >> Yeah. It's I totally get it though. But thank you. >> I have a question on one of those moves. So the $300,000 increase or the move it's a shift from 10 to 80. Is that a flat shift? Are

157we already at a $300,000 uh expenditure right now or is this a proposed increase to that budget to allow more resources or or access to to co-curriculars or >> I think when Patty gave me the estimate of the numbers, it was closer to $350,000 expense. I was choosing a number I thought we could conservatively meet on an annual basis um you know in terms of the cost for those programs uh for middle school and then that would free up those funds in our fund 10 budget you know to reinvest in similar sorts of programming >> and the only way you really can do this is to open up all of those co-curricular programs at the middle school level to everyone in the community. So those would not just be our middle school students. Those would

158be from the private schools and homeschooled students. >> We already see homeschool students enrolled in those programs. So that's no real change. And as far as middle schools go, we might see a kid or two from the privates. But >> so what would the scope of this be? Is this clubs activity? Like give me some examples of what? >> Um seventh and eighth grade volleyball, seventh and eighth grade basketball, football programming. sports uh and then also um some after school clubs um some of the very few because they're already paid for through community service funds. So they already are open to anyone who wanted to participate. There's like knitting club and video game club and some of those sorts of things where the more the marrier. >> Go ahead. Um, I'm just I'm just really

159cur you you mentioned that that was that was permissible under the law and I >> I take it on on faith that you've asked the lawyers about that, but I'm just really curious because the statute does like specifically say not extracurricular. >> So like volleyball as a very prototypical extracurricular activity, like how how is it permissible? >> Specifically talking about WIAA athletics at the high school level. Oh, >> that's the the more narrow definition that they've refined over the years. And so you say broadly extracurricular when you look at across the state what has been moved into fund 80 and has been consistently approved by the DPI. Middle school sports is one of those. >> Perfect. Thank you. >> Yeah. All activities at the middle school co-curricular of any kind. Music, band, >> music and

160band would continue to be a part of our curricular programs. and the after school programming that they do for ensembles and other things would continue to be a part of our curricular budget. >> Yeah, that's >> other comments, questions. >> So, at the next meeting, we'll hear a report on the child care and hopefully get some more information on the Boys and Girls Club. >> Yes. >> Program. >> Absolutely. >> And if the board's ready, we will make a vote. If not, we can push that back immediately. So that that will appear as an action item on the next agenda. >> Correct? Okay. Thank you. >> We could choose not to act, but that it'll serve as that. >> There you go. That's >> Thank you. Okay. So, um any other questions? Otherwise, we'll move

161on. Um 703 Wisconsin Association School Boards Resolution proposals. Um, board members should submit any proposals to the board secretary by the 4th of September so we can review them at the uh September 8th meeting and we can get things into WASBY on time. Uh, if you want to know what resolutions are currently out there, they're out on the WASBY website so you can see those. Um, and so you can look at that. Um, Mr. Ma being our WASBY delegate, I don't know if you have anything you want to add to this. Just put me on the spot. This is something I still need to do research on myself. We can be taking the initiative on that before September. >> Okay. So, um usually the resolutions are things about uh advocacy in terms of changing the

162law, changing um administrative rules, etc. Any questions on that? Uh we'll move to the proposed Wisconsin Association School Boards Wasby 2026 business honor role submissions and we did have this at a previous meeting. We said if any board members had any suggestions and I'll turn it over to you Dr. Engle. >> Yep. Our school board made a number of recommendations and we filled those out. We are allowed up to five with some administrative recommendations. There's five groups listed there. Mory's Auto Group, Amplify Health, Quick Trip Corporate, Ron Hams Refrigeration, and the Rivoli Theater, Rivoli Theater and Pizza Area. Thank you. Um, all have been excellent partners with the school district, and we would love to recognize them through the WBY business. I don't know. >> I had mentioned D for >> my apologies for missing

163that one. I will um we can refine our list for sure. >> Okay. So, that's under information. Anything else anybody wants to add? >> Appreciate your diligence as um administrative staff to keep moving this forward. I think it's good that we recognize these individuals. So, okay. With that said, we'll move on to announcements. Um starting with Dr. Garcia for Lacrosse Public Education Foundation. >> Yeah, LPF doesn't meet in July and we haven't had our August meeting yet. So, we're still on the bow tie classic. Keep it on your calendar, September 6. I think I'll have raffle tickets sometime mid to late August. Um, and they've um Smith's Bike Shop has donated an ebike to the raffle again. Very nice. >> A new announcement that we have um we have Tim Elberts and Scott Newmeister are

164working with um uh partnership with the city and the school district and um so we're just going to add them to announcements if there's anything to talk about there. >> Yeah, I'll let Scott um jump in if he has anything. But uh it it's been about a month and a half we started conversations. Uh we've had three meetings. Um, and basically what it extends it, uh, Scott, you know, being a a prior council member, myself being on the parks board, um, we've met with, uh, a few of, uh, their employees at the park and Rex, uh, along with a council member and just trying to come up with some things that we can collaborate on, uh, in terms of, you know, their resources, our resources, things that we might need in the future. Um, and

165the first thing that kind of came up was uh our Logan pool obviously is uh in dire need of some some help and uh renovations. Um, and theirs being uh the north side um uh pool also. Um so there were just some discussions on how we could collaborate uh maybe in the future with uh maybe building a new pool. Um, one of the ideas was uh an indoor pool to kind of uh compensate for the Logan pool um uh and moving it there uh as an indoor pool. Um being on the parks board, you know, the argument's always been we've had too many pools um outdoor pools um and they're always in need of uh some >> some help. Uh and that north side pool is uh it might get through the next year. Um

166so that's why they uh came up with that. Um and then obviously with our Logan pool um in the future needing to be looked at. So that was the first one on the agenda in terms of what we came up with uh as a collaboration possibly um in the future. So I don't know if Scott's got anything to add to that. >> I I think I just I'm excited over the collaboration to us working together with the city. I think it's building a a stronger relationship and uh we talk about a lot of things obviously and and that to be able to be in the that position to bounce ideas off each other I just think makes us stronger as as a city definitely and and uh I think it's going to be a great

167outcome. >> Yeah. I mean I think it's something that's was missed when I first got on this board. I was like why don't we why don't we talk with the city? I mean, there's a lot of resources that we share. I'm not a ton, but you know, some. Um, especially in the future here with, you know, some of these properties that we're going to have to deal with. Um, so yeah, it it made a lot of sense to to speak with these people and figure out all of our needs because sometimes you just don't know until you ask. So, uh, plus a shared cost. Let's just talk about that. It's always great when you can share cost instead of all the cost. >> The cost. >> Yeah, the cost. Um, anything else on that? Any

168questions on that? We look forward to hearing more from you on that. Um, announcements from the board president. Um, I do want to recognize that our September meetings are the second and fourth Mondays in September, not the first and third. Please mark it on your calendars. Um, we always want to make sure we have a quorum. Um the other thing that I wanted to mention on calendars is that in October it's the 1st and third but it's also the fourth mon Monday we have a meeting because that's when we have to officially prove the budget. It's typically a short meeting although we might have a workshop or something >> October. So there's three meetings in October 1st, third and fourth Mondays. Make sure you have those on your calendars. and um uh WASBY the thing

169was sent around the regarding the fall conference that they have on Thursday October 4th uh in an Alaska. So you don't have to travel anywhere too far. Um at 4:30 is a workshop. At six o'clock is a meeting. So give serious consideration to signing up for that. Um those who have attended in the past if you have anything you want to add but um want to make board members aware of that. over. >> Um, school's coming fast and furious. Summer's almost over for us. Uh, August 12th, we have new staff on boarding at Logan High. So, we're excited to welcome all of our new staff. Um, if anyone wanted to drop by for coffee and donuts at 7:40 a.m., 7:45 a.m., uh, we'll be mingling with uh, uh, new staff for about an hour. Um,

170on August 18th, we have our all staff welcome uh for um everybody in the school district at 9:30 a.m. We'll be at Logan High School. If anyone wants to show up to that and be a part of that, welcome back uh for our students. Uh that would be a great opportunity as well. It' be a very exciting day. I think we're going to have mascot races. Uh so very excited about that. Um and then August 21st is the first day of school. Uh it's an awesome day. Uh so exciting to have kids back uh and us back at our work. Um as a reminder, we've shifted um uh our school days this next year. We have two tier busing that allowed us to save five bus routes, which is huge. But we're also to create

171those developmentally appropriate uh start times. So 7:45 a.m. start time for elementary schools and 8:25 for middle and high schools. Uh excited about that. And then I did send an email, a board update this last week and it just talks about uh 4K and child care settings. Um don't need to discuss that further here, but I just encourage you to to read that. Um we'd be maybe moving fast and making some decisions around that. Uh potentially offering full day or all day 4K in order to kind of mitigate some issues that we see coming very quickly. Uh so just wanted to make sure that you're aware of that and if you have any questions, we can chat later. Thank you. Um so move on to agenda planning. Um the proposed agenda for the August 18th

172meeting is uh there. I would like to add an item under information. I'd like to add a discussion um about page 11 bylaws board uh compensation. There's a small nuance in implementation of that and I just want to make sure that we as a board me uh just want to discuss it um and give some direction to the staff. Um, so we look for a motion to approve that agenda. >> I'll make a motion to approve the August 18th, 2025 board agenda with the addition of the information item and as presented. >> We have a motion. Do we have a second? >> I'll second. >> You got it. You take it. >> Miss Fuches gets that one. >> Could have a third. >> Any further discussion on the agenda, proposed agenda for next meeting? >>

173We'll have a roll call vote. >> Mr. Alberts. I >> Mr. Bneski. >> Hi, >> Miss Hooks. >> Hi, >> Dr. Garcia. >> Hi, >> Mr. Jackson. >> Hi, >> Mr. Mango. >> Hi, >> Mr. Newmeister. >> Hi, >> Dr. Sprag. >> Hi, >> Miss Sukla. >> Hi. >> Um, board debriefing. Dr. Sprag, please. >> Good to be back, y'all. I missed you. I I had to get plugged back into schoolboard mode. So, this was uh awesome. um good meeting overall I think in terms of facilitating questions. I I appreciate the uh the questions that are coming out even on the information items as we're thinking trying to be forward thinking and and informing our decision- making and anticipating what's what's coming down the line. Um so sounds like everybody's bringing up their questions and

174feeling good about the conversation at the table. So am I happy to happy to be back on that. 10 out of 10. No notes. >> Can anybody read that? I don't know. >> So, uh we will look to uh uh adjournment. We do have um Lacrosse Board of Education will consider a motion to move into close session on Monday, August 4th, 2025, immediately following the board of education room 209 pursuant to Wisconsin statute 19.85 85 PN1 PN C for the purpose of considering employment, promotion, compensation or performance evaluation data of any public employee of which the governmental body has jurisdiction or exercises responsibility to it administrator compensation. Is there a motion to adjurnn to close session? >> So move second. >> Second by Mr. Beeski. A roll call will be taken. >> Mr. Alberts. >>

175I. >> Mr. Beeski. >> Hi. >> Miss books. >> Hi. >> Dr. Garcia. >> Hi. >> Mr. Jackson. I >> Mr. MO >> I >> Mr. Newmeister >> I >> Dr. Sprag >> I >> miss >> I >> this meeting is journ [Music]