001[Music] a [Music] think we'll get started with our Workshop so we have three topics uh to discuss during our Workshop uh we have Staffing linkage uh process excuse me Staffing process linkages we'll have a quick Break um to exuse to excuse any anybody who may want to leave and then we'll talk about the board self assessment so I'll turn it over to Dr Engel and Mr Wy about the Staffing processes yeah we're in the Staffing season right now um March is when we're you know putting together budgets and thinking about next year if we're hiring for next year we want to get those postings out right around now so that we get good candidates to fill positions for next year that's the typical way that the teaching world thinks about these jobs there's some things
002like administrative assistants or custodians or it those hirings can happen at any time during the year and the pool of candidates is generally similar regardless um Matt and I were talking about like how to how to talk about Staffing and we thought we'd first kind of go through this worksheet to kind of highlight some of the conundrums we face when we're doing this it's not as easy as just like count up the number of kids divide by 25 and make a decision you know it gets a little bit more complicated there's a lot of perspectives out there too I appreciate your comment Deb about um being in a management role and having the employees sometimes seeing things a little differently because uh as we do the Staffing um there's a lot of perspectives and so
003our our handbook kind of puts together some recommendations for class size that we try and follow to the best of our ability and at the in that language is there on that little worksheet there you know 6.03 class size and self-contained classrooms a district average and en rment average enrollment should not exceed 25 students in K3 or 30 students in K8 and the same for high school should not exceed 30 except in situations that are individualized that said our targets are a little bit less than that we've received um Sage or AGR aid for many years to keep our class sizes lower and so our Target at the elementary level in K3 is 18 to1 and in fourth through e8th grade it's 25 to1 and then we're talking about 9 through 12 we have some
004different considerations but generally we're trying to hit 25 and even up to 30 to 1 depending on the the circumstances of that class now the caveat to that is there are some classes where it needs to be a little bit smaller for safety reasons and so if you're of a a lab class for anatomy and physiology and you're doing lots of dissections you might want that to be a little bit smaller if you're in a food science class where you're doing lots of cooking and it needs more personal attention and there's gas and Flames might want it to be a little bit smaller so those are some of the classes where we might have it smaller than 25 to accommodate yeah it's also the average too so if you have let's say 60 kids and
005you're you know knowing that 30 is within the guidelines sometimes it's almost impossible to get 30 and 30 it might be 32 and 28 something like that um and so we thought we start off with the the the easier sort of scenario with our middle school there and so um question is for sixth seventh and eth grade you know given these benchmarks and our our kind of Target of 25 Max of 30 how many classrooms would you put for each of those grades and so we've got sixth grade with 125 students seventh grade with 115 a slightly larger eighth grade uh with 140 students and so you might pull out your calculator maybe you're good at Mental Math but uh I'm just we're kind of curious you know as a as a collective process like
006what are you thinking for the number of classrooms for each grade six grade easy what would be what would be your target there it's the goal is 25 of 125 kids that's five pretty easy easy one straightforward right on our Target we look at the grade the whole grade range and we average that yep so like for sixth grade we'd be trying to average or so we're not looking at the average 20 25 to 1 for four through eight we're looking at each grade level each grade level generally each grade level yeah seventh grade I'd say about five as well because you have too many students for four are we factoring that there's two middle school not in this case we're dumbing it down making a little bit this is one of the buildings this
007is yeah and so for eighth grade I would probably say six because we have too many students for just I mean ideally and I think that's what this is all about right is in the ideal world this is what we would like but now let's translate it into reality what does that mean it would only be around 28 if you went with the smaller size for each of those it would still be under the 30 it's only three more kids per classroom they eth [Laughter] graders I consider seventh grade sometimes both based on uh where kids are at developmentally and it's the hinge point it's sometimes the armpit of of middle school we used to take we take three of those for yeah the Middle grades those teachers are special Matt was a middle school
008principal for many years I have extra respect for Middle School principles and Middle School teachers some good stories from those years and there will be a teacher then that says well it's it's we have you know 25 in my uh sixth grade classroom but in uh 7th grade you know they've only got 23 you know it's not fair you know the numbers don't always work out I mean you got to work with what I mean that's why there's difference of opinion between staff because they see what they see in two different two two kids is 10% of a classro so I can see why to the teacher it makes a difference but as Administration and is you have to make a different kind of decision because you're working with limitations and you've got to real
009and to build off that point two kids can make a difference one of the things we'll hear sometimes is like this this is a class that has a really high special ed population there's some really big behaviors in this class you said five but we really need six sixth grade teachers you know we this is not a you know those are the types of arguments that we hear and have to factor in behaviors are a huge thing right like I taught in Japan and I didn't have a single classroom under 40 kids wow but we had Z The Worst Behavior issue we ever had was a kid falling asleep at his desk there were no behavior issues so it made it easy right but like when you've got all those distractions you need a smaller
010class size so that's the equity Focus right like making sure kids have the tools they need to succeed and a tool is attention absolutely teacher attention one-on-one opportunities smaller group things and on the flip side of that if you've got a class or a classroom that has fewer challenges maybe it can add two or three kids and it won't be as big a deal all right let's move to the high school um so how many sections for each course we've got a welding with 31 kids signed up AP US History with 32 10th grade biology at40 and n9th grade English at 130 welding has to be two three three I think three yeah well they probably probably aren't Rich enough to have welding devices for 31 kids so we probably need classrooms of like 10
011kids I think yeah I mean I think there's capacity issues right how much equipment do you have in order to have students present but also um you're going to have a lot more safety issues to deal with in a welding class than maybe in a US history class so really heavy textbooks in AP US History only hurt for a second in welding are like that's typically we're looking for 15 to one in classrooms that have like higher safety needs but we're at that 31 Mark you know so is there enough equipment to share is there enough supervision available those are realistic concerns and they probably won't be split evenly either like when you start thinking like kids schedules one of the when you're building the schedule one of the things you do is that conflict
012matrices to see who signed up for what and what you know we we talked often times you can't run the AP classes opposite band or choir because there's too many conflicts um I I remember we had one situation at the old school I was at where we had a really unique kid who signed up it was the only time we had a conflict between uh Auto te 2 and AP AP uh uh calculus he was in both and that often times we could always run those well then it was one of those well we got what is this kid going to do um so it's you know creating conflict matrices and looking at best schedules too can rarely get them even were you able to resolve that no you had to choose first yeah and
013even if you go with welding divide by two you know two sections it might be 18 in one and 13 in another depending on how that plays out you know then you start to run into those concerns so you might run under that 15 to1 that's your benchmark simply because you're trying to on the like there's not only the averages there's also like the high water mark like how are we meeting all of those various needs and also how many students do you need minimally in order to run a section right because you could split them but then you may not have enough to run one section so I'll give you an example of that we have a robotics class the numbers aren't at 18 but yet we want to run it in that class
014uh br will tell you that's one of the classes that's part of the pathway oh I forget the fanic robotic certification yes so if you know to do this we need to offer for that as a class and yet we only have 15 signed up well we're going to run it so now we've got a welding class split three ways one of those classes is only 10 in size and then the apus history teacher is looking at that and asks well how many sections do I get does he kids using no ARG the amount of the amount of prep work and you know with you know if I've got this upper level class I mean this is there's a ton of correcting that goes on they're not wrong just another perspective right and the challenge
015sometimes is if you split apus history even welding to three sections it's an overload now it's not like they have time in their schedule naturally and so now you're paying an extra $7,500 that year for them to work an extra section which is reasonable for the compensation but you know it does stress your system just a little bit yeah 10th biology at 140 five five you have 28 students in each if it all works out beautifully which it never does y will be consideration for labs yeah you consider Labs you know materials that you need you know if it's five that's a full-time job for one teacher you could one person could have one prep all all day if it's six they either have to teach an overload or two teachers have to take it
016so now somebody has two preps you know so now somebody's teaching AP biology and a 10th grade you know so they've got to prep for two different things instead of one teacher prepping for one thing each you know those are different things to consider nobody wants one for all day no but it's I would agree with you some people don't I mean but it's also how big are our biology Labs how many seats are available and most of those lab courses are going to have capacity issues that you just can't go above because of physical limitations more so than your Staffing requirements of course the other part of this is the Staffing part you got let's say you've got five people in an department and you're trying to come up with you know five sections
017for each of those people well now you find your one section short are you going to have somebody at 80% or you're going to split one of these big classes into another section just to maintain full-time employment other you don't want have good people leave because they're only 80% you know FTE well that causes a bigger issue if they do leave of course yeah then it's then it's a Turn Style of teachers so and then of course this is this is the thing that we see all the time is that kids sign up for classes and we do our schedule well then they decide you know what I think I'd rather be in this class broke up with my significant other over uh break and uh we're not together anymore and I don't want to
018have all my classes with them and so the classes that that we see in or the enrollment we see in February is not always the enrollment we see in September there's been a shift one way or the other and so you want to allow a little bit of room for that hopefully going up not going down how much change do you see with seniors who have most of their credits fulfilled but have to sign up for a minimum and then also sign up for the college courses and then drop some of their classes at school how much does that impact I know there's some I'd want to talk to the counselors or the principles to get I don't know the number off hand the other thing is you know you sign up for things and
019then because of that conflict matrices not everything works out the way you want and all of a sudden we're sticking in a class that I didn't sign up for that I don't want to be in that section but yet I know I can't be in this other one so that's that's a common thing too um I will say since this my fourth year here one of the biggest changes that's happened was um uh we changed release time and that made a big difference as far as number of kids taking electives that's a POS positive change um rather than you know leaving school and playing video games now kids are taking classes that you know they may not have taken otherwise so we are our elective numbers have changed and and you know BR Rodin will
020tell you too that our our CTE classes have really seen uh we we've while we're trying to reduce overall I know that in CTE we've had additions every year and add on to Katie what you were saying you have colleges advising those seniors you need to take a more rigorous schedule you need to get into those upper division classes yep well and to go back to your comment about that 80% instructor and having to potentially split the class my assumption is that could also um be what we're seeing in our HR report when we're talking about changes in assignment and we see people going up or going down and it's that that fluctuation in the schedule so without saying too much I can tell you that um we have a new M teacher this year
021who's doing a great job and his numbers are going up and M which I'm so happy about it to me that's one that's pragmatic I mean I I'm glad to see that is a language taught in Lacrosse schools but it's impacting our numbers in Chinese so our Chinese numbers are going down a little bit um we had 1.4 or 1.6 I forget what what it was but now we're going to have a one full time and then the other person is going to take on more um eel is the other that was her other half next year we'll see how things go but she may be 02 Chinese she might be zero and then e will take up the rest of that yeah and when I started off as a teacher having a teacher that
022was 087 was not uncommon I would say in almost every Department depending on the school district I was in like I want to stay at this school take a reduction this year hopefully it's full-time next year teachers have a lot more Choice than they used to and so you don't see that very commonly any longer because if they're not full-time they'll go find a job where they they can be there's plenty of options and so we're trying to find ways to be efficient and Frugal but also keep great people because we are not going to find a 087 anyway who has uh one section missing from their day has a district ever done something for example assuming that point8 teacher we cannot there's no way to really make up that person to be fulltime uh
023has there ever been a situation where that person is told well if we could teach something during the summer school time we would count that as part of your full-time load we haven't gone the summer school route but we've you know like I mentioned with the Chinese person they were teaching e else that they're certified in yeah or or can get a license with stipulations to teach something else too so we've done a little bit of that not one of our scenarios but our specials at the elementary level are a particular Challenge and so a full-time position is 18 sections but with declining enrollment in our elementary schol schools we have a lot of folks that are at 14 15 16 and so they'll have like two hour two holes in their day at 16
024sections you know so two days out of three they have a gap of an hour where they're not fully employed quote unquote and so you're trying to figure out how to productively use that person two days out of three in your building and they can do interventions and duties and other things if it gets down to 15 they have a full hour gap all week long now we start to think about can they teach an art class at the high school can they help out with fad at the am start their day at Long Fellow and then go over to Spence teachers hate that by and large some are some actually okay some like the the just the difference they get in a day but there are others you like I didn't sign up to
025teach seniors I'm not comfortable with 17y olds I like the littles yeah and and that's the hard part is finding the right people that are willing to do um both but we have um we have quite a few we've gravitated more toward helping alleviate the overloads at the high school in art music fied and we we're used to have some of those people going to um jdc the juvenile delinquent um we're not there's so few kids there it's there's four kids you know and and the teachers who are there have a license where they can do every subject already so rather than push them there we're sending them to Central you're doing vocal lessons and that has flexibility you can you know work around your schedule or you're going to start your day with fiad
026and then come back um we have a we have a excellent firei teacher at Northwoods who coaches at Logan so it works out well that she can end her day at Logan and then go straight into coaching so I'm assuming for ninth grade English we're all going to say five yep seems about right all right the tough part is elementary school where we have we don't have as much volume as we do at the high schools and the middle schools and here at the elementary schools where we're particularly starting to think about an equity strategy we're looking at free and reduced lunch we're looking at special ad numbers but with the numbers being so low it creates dramatic differences between buildings and they talk they have grade level meetings at least monthly so you know
027they see what it's like in one building versus another um our higher poverty schools have title support that our lower poverty schools do not you know so not only do they have um different class sizes they have more supports and so those ones at the bottom are where it gets a little more difficult and you can see at East it has kind of District average or below District average free and reduced at West it's District average free and reduced and at Midtown it's higher than the district average and the special ed rate climbs at each of those which is typical as well you know so a classroom of 36 or class of 36 at East our Target is 18 to1 seems pretty logical to have two right you know it's a lower poverty but it
028could be 24 and 12 depending upon the composition of special kids and behavioral issues certainly feel that way at the elementary level it's typically evenly divided but the number of students in special ed might be different in each based on and because it's an contained setting we can distribute those you know to our desire as well and one might be smaller or larger based on what you said like we're have fewer kids here because they got a student that's really challenging teachers used to come into the office and say I'll take three extra students but I need this student out here wow my dad as the title one teacher in the school was the uh uh the uh mediator and there was a little bit of horse trading in order to like get the right
029composition so that every kid could succeed you know that was the intent sometimes that works I mean really yep sometimes it's a conversation where this kid can't be with this kid and this kid can't be with that kid and they're cousins and they don't get along and there's some bad blood in the family and and then it gets very challenging to try to make a a classroom yep second grade what's the answer 44 say 22 two classrooms lower poverty it's within our handbook guidelines if a little outside our Target do three because here if we're you can't use just poverty as an indicator there's some pretty there's behaviors everywhere behaviors everywhere so there's a three preference for three potentially we're going to cost you a lot of money welcome to Staffing well once we once
030we get done with all of our our initial Impressions then I tell Matt hey you need to cut$ 250,000 next year so who's going here again there could be two but you put a teacher assistant in each room and there's that as well that's something you know the organizational pattern the use of teacher assistance the types of students and other services provided those make a difference as well we've talked about at the kindergarten level do we start going to full-time Tas in kindergarten because of the Early Childhood behaviors that we're seeing that we have historically done in 4k but do we Elevate that to kindergarten we might have to accept higher class class sizes in order to accomplish that based on the cost involved though is there a specific formula for how the presence of
031a teacher's aid should impact the Staffing ratio is it just it's just Vibes well and you know [Music] it's not every ta is the same right when I have seen some schools have guidelines where in 4k up to 15 kids it's just the teacher from 16 to 20 it's a teacher and a TA and at 21 we split the class and go to two teachers no ta but but there's so many variables I I would I wouldn't want to be locked into I wouldn't want to be locked into that because there's so many variables in given situation so at West 57 is that three classrooms three four man three to four learn that gym is mean another grade that's like three people because he says above here you can split with the grade so I
032would do three plus a split with the second graders we've definitely done splits in the past it's a common practice in Lacrosse it's um a multi-grade classrooms are a standard practice in soda and in uh koui monor it's a part of the instructional program it's intentional it's a desired outcome so that kids can learn from each other at different grade levels it's less desirable when you're doing it just to accommodate class size because it's not part of an intentional philosophical program so you're just doing it to manage Staffing especially when you're looking at the reading levels and um OG and at the lower elementary we're finding it's harder to do well because of the range of needs of kids and if you take the highest readers from first grade and the lowest readers from second
033grade that's not a good strategy either and so you would like a homog or a heterogeneous group but now you're trying to teach you know kids that are functionally kindergarteners all the way to some that are functionally third graders and that's just a real challenge at the Upper Elementary it's easier I was going to say we've done four or five splits are a little bit easier but those K1 is awful K1 is awful one two isn't great and it's that's the challenge there's yeah there's clearit this doesn't help Staffing necessarily but I think it's a successful thing if you teacher agrees to it and that's looping yes the looping with a good teacher is a great strategy the the research shows that if you have you know one mediocre to under performing teacher in your
034Elementary career not a problem but if you get two particularly back to back that can be a real challenge what's looping it's when the teacher follows the kids from first grade to second grade so they all go together as a cohort thir thir four from one grade to another can you guys send a bottle of water over this way please thank you so West Second Grade we got 60 kids say four three three three to four Jim thanks three which one second grade and West four I would say so is it's typical to the school district in terms of free reduced lunch and special ad three sections would be just two above our Target four would be three below yeah I definitely if there was one class of the three that was more the teachers
035struggled with more of the students then I would definitely add a teacher assistant that's that I would say I I agree in theory but it's right now one of the hardest positions to fill Tas are hard to find right now so we can post the position we might never find the person yeah we look at our HR report today all the those those things that are on there I mean it's four of them are T at the moment and you know the the deaf and heart de and heart of hearing teacher is the one that's going to be there the whole year and I wonder if if for instance some of those people that were T were given the encouragement to become teachers the way one of those State proposals indicate that might help that
036whole situation that's where I think might have more of an opportunity to have four teachers and spliting this into four rather than three in a TA only because of the challenges but that's also going to cost the district more in order to do that and then Midtown first grade two two in first grade 11 each I probably would combine I don't think you can have one I mean that's well you could you may not could again the average is 18 doesn't mean that it has to be 18 a right but I mean well at that rate it's probably a um what's it called with 75% free and reduced lunch it has the C title one thank you so you probably can't exceed 18 you could you could yep maybe is it is it still based
037on averages there because if we're if we're asking the East School to have two of 22 and then we can break out Midtown into two in our because it's across all of them right uh it's generally looking at the building in the building yeah yeah I will say that we have noticed with really small groups of kids things get weird sometimes you might have four boys and now like you don't have somebody that you identify with or friends with you might have weird social dynamics with the other kids you know we've found that low class sizes aren't uh a Panacea either I remember having a second grade teacher who was super excited about having a class of 10 one year and it was her worst year because it was she just never get away from
038those kids you know they were always that kid was always like present in dominating the the classroom she couldn't have different groups of kids she only could ever have three small groups and none of them worked she wanted more kids to like create small groups and have more mixing and more opportunity so even small necessarily better no and that's and we've we've like seen like the limits of what that can be sometimes and yet had 22 and a you know when you look at some of our elementaries some some of the neighborhoods that's a lot it's too many can't do it that's where I was thinking one two splits across the board in this building yeah I mean and then 33 at Midtown deu two would be 16 and and then they'll look down to
039first grade and they'll say like but they get 11 like if we split three ways next year yeah just B your time not as easy I don't I don't think you get a lot of those in I don't think there's a lot of jealousy in most elementary schools in terms of they only have 15 I have 20 there's some we've heard we've heard some of it in our linkages just a little more more I think comparing the lower grades to the upper grades if there's a behavioral issue which there is every single time I so in terms of our our process in general Matt sits down with the directors of Elementary and secondary ad Matt sits down with the principles I don't know if you want to describe anything else at the at the secondary
040level I I meet with the princip and we go through and and uh look at number of sections determine that and determine staff we try to take take advantage of attrition when we can um I know that right now Central is going to have one less science teacher next year um we're taking advantage of a retirement there but at the high school level too you know there you know I mentioned you know the Mong and the Chinese you we had to change that a little bit um they they right now they're sharing a a a literacy specialist right now one person between two schools and she's doing her job and she's making a difference and they see value in her and they each want one 1.0 and it's hard to argue that the person isn't
041making a difference and this is our goal and this is what you know what we're trying to do so why wouldn't we increase so that's one of the things that you know factored into discussions and then uh family and consumer education our numbers keep Rising um our numbers are going up and kids are finding value in what they're doing um we had a bunch of overloads we finally decid let's quit doing all these overloads and just hire one more person and now we won't have three overloads we'll just have an one additional person of course those people aren't growing on trees right now either so you got to go early if you're going to find a face teacher otherwise you're finding a long-term sub or someone with a license with stipulations or something like that
042at the middle school it's a little more straightforward yeah we're I think our numbers most grades are are around 26ish and one of them is a 23 as the average but I know how that goes too on paper it says 26 and then you have a class of 30 and a class of 22 and well I think doesn't it also deter um isn't it also determined on what license the teacher May hold because you might have midle yeah Middle School is unique yeah because you can have people who have a K8 license and then they can teach any subject great but you might also have someone with a 612 Lang I have a 612 in English I have and and so both Longfellow and Logan usually have a split where you everyone picks up a
043section of social studies you might be a math and social studies teacher or an English and social studies teacher that's your you know and that's how they split things well that's great I could except now I bring in someone who's a great fit who's going to help our literacy scores great English teacher but there's 612 licensed what are you going to do with that social stud and that's where we work on a license with stipulations or we try to shuffle some things around if we can but that has implications on the whole schedule then when you try to do that you can't just have people rotate the way you wanted them to rotate because now you got this X Factor where they can't rotate in there I would also argue that having only one type
044of license isn't e good either right because if you only have just Elementary licensed individuals you don't necessarily have that knowledge base of the 612 that you can be brought in to transition students in and if you only have 612 people well you don't have this the ability to flex and you don't understand the elementary side of things of where students are coming from so at the eighth grade math level I as a principal I kind of liked having someone who is a math background so you know that's one of the things you have to look at as well now the other part that makes it a challenge is all the shared Staffing you have because now you're working with multiple schedules and if you're a middle school you might have people coming from three
045different buildings into you know into your building and you have to find a way to cooperate and collaborate with uh all the elementary people I would say at the elementary level is the hardest we're dealing like these scenarios at the bottom it's might it might not even be 22 it might be 21 and you're like h a split would probably work except it's one and two and the needs are high and Emerson had 19 and 20 this last year I think and that was at even at kindergarten which is high but it's Emerson so we said we're going to do it at North Side we had some sections of 11 though because of these type of numbers yeah you know so balancing that and dealing with the fairness issues that people see and you know
046the number of sections has implications on the specials teachers you know if you split it may that be full-time locally if it's not split then they've got to travel somewhere sometimes team teaching works in the elementary school work two of us take all 40 or 30 kids MH yeah there's uh especially at State Road that's a common practice because they have dividers between their walls that they can open and so they'll often team teach on lots of things and it's been a great strategy there miss Valentine did that with me when I was subbing one day and it was all that saved me that particular day uh and so as we look at Staffing for next year we see opportunities for some reductions in a few areas you know but um you know maybe it's
047four or five FTE total and depending on what we do to support student behaviors at the element country level it might start to look like a wash you know when it's all said and done but it's using this exact same process that we did here to try and like do what's best for kids in the classroom keep full-time staff accommodate the really significant challenges in some of our schools while also trying to be ion Frugal efficient you know we're trying to reduce where we can but it it's really tough once you start to get down to Brass tax on paper it's a lot of strong personality a lot of strong perspectives as far as what's best for my school and and you know some of these sections of you know how are you going to
048split this and when we round down rather than up and it reduces the number of sections in the building we get pushed back unless we have more declining enrollment we lose 36 students at the elementary level great but they're split over seven buildings well and right and it's it's never one grade I mean it's maybe two Less in this class and one less in that class and it doesn't drastically change what you do then of course we have schools too where it's not uncommon where we get a lot of move-ins over the course of the Year where um it's more you know it's you know you might start with it might start with 16 but it's going to go up and we're not going to add a teacher mid year or down ni one day
049we lost nine and by the end of the week we picked up 11 different ones EXA y I said the we to down up thank you for entertaining the Staffing discussion I appreciate the discussion and conversation hopefully that provides just a little more awareness as we go through Staffing you know what our process is we hope it's perceived as being thoughtful and uh an eye towards efficiency no I made IM that is a puzzle yeah it's not easier at the college level all right I was doing medical assignments yeah so I guess our next item if uh we move on is to linkages like to probably have I can stick around for that one yeah got thank you man all right thank you have good night everyone you toks ma' so um I believe Laura
050put at your seats the linkages for I believe the year correct Laura up to this point the school year yes and so um just an opportunity to discuss as we had talked about um kind of having a overarching review of linkages and what has happened over the past year so I think we'll give give you a little bit of time to just quickly peruse those looks like this I don't know that he has one I don't have a second one should be at the top unless people shifted papers should have been at the top is it behind your computer it is yeah what I've what I've appreciated about the linkages is I mean and given the exercise we just we just went through and hearing those comments about exactly those things like you know this
051this at this school level there may be one class with 50% IEPs right versus another there's only two students and like the the lived reality of that you know counterpoised with the exercise of having to to manage the entire District scheduling and everything like that's bonkers I think one of the things that um I picked up on the linkages that I was at um thinking about the schools that are going to be affected um with the referendum um first of all the professionalism of Staff um considering there's changes that they might not love um we didn't I didn't get any sense of anything negative about any of the from any of the staff even though this is going to be a hard change for them I just have to really just comment on the exemplary
052professionalism of the staff um but they had a lot of questions about um working out particularly if you have a title school and a non-title school and how does that work and um I think how we can get more information to staff and I know this is ear on but the sooner we can address some of those I think um as we move towards eventually having the buildings done and staff moving in together I think it really pulls together those pieces um and of course the other pieces um how do we build a common culture when there's two different buildings coming together and what can we do to help with that that's got to I mean staff didn't really complain about that but there are certainly differences in culture and and how do we pull
053that together um for staff I think the big lesson we learned with the closure of the middle school was that it was done quickly and there wasn't enough attention put together for combining those cultures when you split those staff and kids up into two different schools I would second that and I I think one of the lessons of the Lincoln closure is actually exactly why we wanted to avoid that with the referendum the way we did it you know that that was a big talking point about the ability to to do do this planul right and and I I liked your initial Point too Deb and I think that in terms of the professionalism of the staff what what I took away in particular from the hinin linkage was their concern is for how are
054we going to get to be able to keep doing the really good unique stuff that we've been doing at at our school and and I think that's completely legitimate concern and and hopefully as we're discovering ing what's the way that we create this new culture right what's the synthesis of these two schools and and and we take those opportunities um and that good work and be able to continue it so the other big thing that I got particularly from the elementary schools is the behaviors like yes there's behaviors in every classroom everywhere but the number of behaviors the types of behaviors the number of kids with behaviors this community isn't prepared or aware of how that has fundamentally shifted particularly since Co and the pressure it's putting on the classrooms and the other students in
055those classrooms and I think we as a district need to be talking about and we as a board need to be talking about what are we going to do about that I think we have to acknowledge it and then what's our next step and I that's a big thing there's always been behaviors but the number and the number of Staff saying uh about how they don't physically feel safe in their buildings many days is alarming to me and because of these behaviors that are going on it's it's part of society it's not anything we can change but how are we protecting our staff how are we protecting other students how we addressing students needs we have to make some pretty dramatic changes I think to really think about that uh because if we don't we're
056going to be hearing that from middle and high school kids more than we already are yeah as a an example of that like we have data to back up that Trend as well and at kindergarten we're finding that our letter sound assessments have gone from like an average of 80% before the pandemic when they show up to 60% So 20% reduction and the letter sounds that kids know when they're arriving at at school uh and a similar trend for numerously although not quite as bad disability rates uh in kindergarten have risen 3% since the pandemic so from 12% to 15% so kind of dramatic increase in the number of kids identified with disabilities um and then office disciplinary records uh went from 100 in 21 uh 20 2122 to 882 this year I mean these
057are kindergarteners that was what disciplinary referrals so 800% increase in five years I I remember many years ago when Jim was at Hamilton and I had a meeting with him and his staff when I was heading up a nonprofit for kids in this town and I remember Jerry wetstein talking about kindergarteners coming to school and a teacher telling them where you can sit and when you can sit and when you can get up and these kids are like I've been raising myself since birth and my siblings and you're going to tell me what I can do and that I found that shocking but now this isn't an unusual occurrence in any of our schools and um you know what's caused that you know the little ones looking at technology and what's gone in the world
058and all there's so many factors that contributed to it but we really need to be talking about it and figuring out what we're going to do about it and telling our community about it because um we're going to be asking them for help at some point and they need to be aware of it um because we need to keep our kids and our staff safe and we need to serve those kids that are struggling in a way that helps them and we really need to retain our staff because they feel safe coming to work every day totally agree yeah I thought that was a big theme that came out was behaviors at the lower at the elementary level particularly lower elementary where they hadn't seen these things before that's exactly what they've been saying every
059school says we haven't seen it like this before the theme I noticed was also benefits health insurance you know we did have a dramatic change last year and so it certainly showed up um you know if we have an opportunity to shift trajectory there we're certainly going to seek that as one of the first things we're looking for you know with a new budget um I wanted to ask about the uh from the Lea linkage um the comment about you know the new teacher mentorship program which I noticed thought was listed on the cover sheet that every teacher 100% of teachers are assigned to Mentor this was September cover sheet is I assume accurate to like right now where are we at with that and and is that is is the mentorship relationship again is
060it is it systematic is there a program behind it or yep we've had a program for many many years that that um for mentorship our staff wasn't in love with what we did last year so we made changes for this year we're finding this program didn't meet their needs either and so we're working closely with uh representatives from our teachers union to think about what it is that they do want as we move forward and so it's a work in progress we recognize the same flaws we always take teacher feedback and look to make it better and so looking at changes for next year to to see what we can do I did get some feedback recently from a couple of teachers I ran into just out and about in the world um that the
061the efforts to reduce the reporting and paperwork load um for our operational expectations is appreciate it I think should how do they know should be ongoing how do they know the gra Vine our meetings are public and if one person knows and if one teacher knows as we've heard everyone know one viewer we've also kept the folks that are responsible for Gathering data for our result policies you know that were changing aware of what's going on and they saw you know the board vote for that and so they're excited for those changes we've kept them aware so it's nice to be appreciated do they um so and forgive me if I'm misremembering um in our last uh Workshop linkage Workshop we have been talking about reconfiguring the number of linkages and so some of what
062we have here going from like every school building right and thinking about the you know it's difficult as it is to get members at board members at these meetings um where are we all with that I mean that didn't feel like a settled question maybe other people remember it different not having a linkage at every single building but grade levels you know like Elementary Middle High School and because we also we also did talk about you know the the nature of the linkages themselves and while I think in general we all agree that like having that ear to the ground is really important and that mechanism for feedback understanding how it conditions the work that we're doing under our governance model is also important and and the time that we're committing to to these things
063so our current process is that we do um well maybe it's not do we do both we do both high schools with staff and students or do we do one high school with staff one year and one the other year there are three high schools now yes that's right thank you good point I can pull up it's varying so it's a three year cycle so I believe the high schools are on different years yes and then we do a third of the elementary so yeah we don't do every we don't do every school every year but my understanding of our conversation was was that doing more regular but more more aggregated so in the past we have done a third a third a third once the pandemic hit what we heard from teachers was you
064haven't come to my building in a long time and we've got a lot to say but it was also the pandemic so we weren't going to buildings um but also it had it wasn't going to be in their cycle anyway you know that we were still in that threeyear cycle and they went in 2019 and they wanted us to come back in 21 so well actually you're slated for 22 um so there there's been some of that and that's where we created this all elementary all middle all high school because we kept hearing from people like you've not come to our building in a long time it really only had been a year so we did that um but they were very poorly attempted I mean I we might have had two or three people
065yeah show up to those so um there's good and bad with having just all level um because you may not get the same uh level of insight that you currently get by having required staff meetings in the building where people are showing up in order to talk to the board so there's that um I would also U link this back to what we were talking about earlier with linkages where we're having trouble even having a full contingent of board members meaning three attend the linkages um we'll also see as we do our self assessment that there's comments about committees well uh again committees are still outside of the regular board meeting so for having challenges and even attending linkages you know we're adding more we're asking for more and more of our board outside of
066a regular board meeting so I think that the board has to struggle with that uh in the future of how much do we want to expect board members to do outside of normal board meetings um and that's something that the board will have to Grapple with as they um move forward with their new leadership in April to May and the only thing that I would say about linkages is that thinking about that how coherent governance is structured with the board being the direct relationship ship to the community those are the linkages I think have the most value for the board from my perspective is that connection to the community whether it's youth serving organizations or city council or County board or you know uh parent groups in the in the community like those are the
067linkages I think you know fit into that model and have the most potential value in terms of like knowing what the values of the community are and scaning those in policy and monitoring and holding the district accountable to those things staff is certainly valuable I I definitely see an opportunity for that as I expressed earlier meeting with Lea you know has been super valuable for us in terms of joint leadership and that more holistic view of the district I find more impactful and actionable than kind of some of the one-offs that you might get from a a narrower group of folks but that's my perspective I do think our linkages our staff heavy right now and I do think connecting more with the community is important and businesses and other kinds of groups I that
068I I agree with that um I also hear that not all staff are in complete lock step with laa so the Lea kind of represents them but kind of maybe doesn't so having conversations with the Lea and the other groups I think is helpful for us to get a better sense of what's again what a lot of what I get out of the staff linkage is gives me an idea of what it's like to be in their shoes for a while and how hard their jobs are and what's going on in the classrooms because if I don't understand that I can't do a good job here I was just going to say I don't and we also have to remember as board members that you don't have all staff present at linkages right you don't
069have teacher assistant you don't have administrative assistance you don't have um a number of people who might be hourly so you know also consider that we are only hearing from a part of the employee group groups and not all employees so you know think about that as you think about linkages as a whole I think that context is important because no any particular meeting with any particular group is not fully representative and it's never going to be so like having having those touch points and to go back to one what you were saying just before about you know the pros and cons of having like poorly attended all elementary school months like well I I get it because they're they're just more like to come to their building right and and to to have it
070be a session that is focused on their building I I think they would understand that if I'm with all of the elementary schools like well my particular concerns of my building may not you know find enough space in that conversation and I think that's that's a fair concern obviously right um I think yeah I mean I think Deb like you were saying about or or Juan actually sorry about wrestling with the amount of commitment that we're asking of everyone right and like to the point where does that need to get spelled out in our board member roles or our job description right um because right now it's just sort of on the sense that we all want to do a good job right and what that requires from time to time will EB and flow
071like obviously there was a lot more around the referendum right and since then it's calmed down quite a bit right um and maybe that's okay I mean I like the idea of maybe providing more clarity of that in our policies bylaws or whatever on well it might help perspective candidates too think about you know can I commit to this and if I'm going to commit to this but at the same time that's another that's another hurdle that's another barrier for a lot of individuals and espe what you couldn't compel an elected official to attend any meeting corre ultimately you could censure them but that's the extent of it you know so there are some like legal limitations as well I yeah I think just back on our meetings with the Aspen group and their opinions
072about languages and their value in a coherent governance model not being something that they would necessarily recommend doing at all and then to have an expectation clearly stated of potential board members that if they get on the board they expected to attend these things that are usually during if you work a traditional work day during your work day that's what's hard for me exactly no I I absolutely get it well and you know just to be clear at least in the times that I've done uh the prospective board meetings in December for people who are thinking of running I have the question has always come up so what's the time expectation and it's like well I can tell you that there's first and third Mondays I can tell you usually they're 6:00 to 9: but
073there's other commitments like preparing for the board meeting there's linkages there's you know other uh meetings that we may have if there's committees there's committees so I mean it's it is it's not necessarily spelled out and that also gets set as the new board gets seated right so it not necessarily clear from one year to the next right what it's going to be so I actually think the way we're doing linkages now could in some ways be more damaging than beneficial just because with our inconsistent ability to have board members present and maybe just one that that sends a message and we we could procure the same information with a survey and not require them to take time out of their day and stay after school and find alternative child care or whatever to attend
074a language with the board that maybe one person shows up to and then it's un clear what they're even going to do about their grievances anyway I mean that's that's a real like critical look at the linkages I feel like I've definitely learned from the linkages and appreciate the in-person connect with staff so I do think there's benefit to it but I also see that there are detriments to how they're done and how we do them especially with the time that works best for teachers is really hard for most of the board that's exactly why I I raised the question again because that that was sort of the upshot of our of our previous discussion is like the within what our role is the question should be like to to what end right and while
075I value as devb does the chance to like really hear like this is the experience this is what's going on because it keeps me connected to that at the end of the day like we're not we're not changing most things we can ask questions but like the administrator who is getting this feedback as well is the one who's in the position to act on it most most directly and should be and like and hopefully we are seeing that in our regular work process as well so I I agree with you on the on the detriments as well and that's that's why I raised the question because I'm I'm of two minds about it yeah but the the Aspen group their concern was about the linkage with staff it wasn't about linkages in general sure yep
076that's that's mostly what my comments were framed around was the ones with staff yeah so I agree with Ain as well that like us focusing on like I'm a little surprised that we don't have a more like specific relationship with the county board or the city council like it seems like a natural like hey how you doing kind of like here's what we're up to what are you guys up to senior centers like places where people were having a hard time reaching right exactly that popul I asked Nick about right who who was like they don't necessarily have kids in the district may never have had kids they still own these schools we still need their input and we may be the answer to that particular problem yeah I think the externally focused linkages are
077I totally agree with that as as a general comment um about the linkages um two things one is Laura does a great job on the notes like that's a a lot of notes and you do like you really capture like I don't read these and go oh my God you totally missed the point of it like you really do capture it so pudos to you for that um second of all um you know you we always start the conversation what's the barrier and I I don't know you it seems you should start a conversation with something positive and I think we put the barrier first because a lot of people are there to share that but I'm what you put at the top of the agenda ends up taking up most of your discussion so
078I'd be switching the second question at the first question in the future we talked about exactly that I think tell me something good yeah I also think Katie's comment is a is a good one and considering if you did a survey not saying that it's the right answer but if you were to do a survey you could then have a workshop to discuss what was found in that survey and the data and then you could also then add it to your board agenda so that you can have kind of two bites at the Apple and the public would see you wrestling with it twice right because you would also have a discussion when you accept the linkage notes so I mean there there are different ways to handle it but also just considering that I
079know in my time on the board um it has been very adamant that this board has never wanted to remove linkages with staff because that has been such an integral part of the district so um you know could moving to a survey be viewed as removing linkages with staff possibly but on the flip side there's also some positive be gained so I think it's just how do again it gets back to what does this board want to do and how does it want to handle and value the time not only of each board member but of the staff members who are attending those meetings after school or before school sometimes I think the challenge with a survey I mean surveys have a value but I think the the context of a comment comes across better
080in person than than in a survey I think that's what is helpful is that a lot of the comments that are made understanding the context behind them is helpful to me to understand what's going on yeah I mean it's it's well sorry Jim Jeff sorry just wanted to kind of add in um with the with Community linkages I don't think there's any reason why that can't be set up for staff to attend to so you have community and staff all in the same area I don't know if that's possible I think those would be really competing discussions could you know yeah but then I always I think I've made it pretty clear kind of how I feel about linkages because I don't think it really promotes a trust trusting basis between Administration and staff and
081it takes that middleman out of there so the staff it's like okay we can just skip right over the top of you know the director or whatever and go right right to the board um especially when it's like set up with mostly it sounds like kind of complaints so but we at the beginning of each linkage we read we read our linkage statement which I don't have in front of but it basically says you know we're coherent governance board part of the linkage is to get feedback so we can do our job better but there's a lot of day-to-day stuff we can't do anything about and so they are well aware of that that's read at every linkage and so I think that does help them know Well they maybe don't like about I'm just
082going to pick on cell phones because somebody mentioned it earlier like we can't fix that um so I kind of go back to Katie's point though is it doing more damage because you're not able to you know provide any kind of solution I mean the pressure release is a value though and and the ability for them to to feel heard is a value as well and but again like I go back to that to that exact question of like to what end though right and is is there a is there a mechanism by which we could get a broader crosssection of of feedback that that gives us that kind of ground level look at what are the challenges what are the the joys what are the priorities that that they have what are they hoping
083for I think that that's all that's that's valuable for us to not be you know aloof from from what's happening in the schools I I think the best ones that I've been at is when they follow staff meeting uh the whole staff is there then some people can leave if they have to but if this whole staff is there rather than just a concentrate number of people that are there so if we can tie it into a staff mean I think that might wider range value I think like one that we weio the board has to decide what we want to do going forward we can talk about this upate but I know which I was just going to do a time check you know it is it is almost 20 to 9 and we
084still have the board self assessment and we still have a closed session um but point take Frankin I I agree Tim I think we're not going to resolve this tonight I think it's gonna I I didn't mean it like that I just meant like oh no no no I know I either we either pull a bandid or we continue to do yeah I'm speaking only for myself like I just know like I said I I'm of two minds I will probably keep spinning about this for a while so I I think yeah I think there's more value in it than lack of value I think we could get something out of it and the plus and minus on 10 point scale I'd say for me it's 7 comments I don't want you know I'm sure
085Tim and I are the same I like we're not trying to stifle the conversation but you just also want to you know be all of time and and move forward with with the agenda that we have in front of us so any final comments on linkages okay then hearing none we can move on to the self assessment I you know again um St Administration can stay they don't have to say only we have to them just board president would it be possible to table this so that we can have fresher Minds for the close session discussion um I would be happy to do that I I okay I think this is important rather this wait quite honestly I mean I was hoping to do that um I think that um April 17th we have one
086on April 17 7 and the 21st okay let's do the 21st is that be you're done is that that will be I won't be here on the 7th and I want to be able to hear the conversation and the 21st is perfect because it's our last board meeting so it's a perfect way to end is by doing Workshop yes you all are the ones who make or break the time that we have right I yeah this isn't going anywhere all right well the school district across Board of Education will be meeting on Monday March 17th 2025 immediately following the Board of Education meeting Hogan administrative Center Auditorium oh excuse me U room 209 um pursuant to Wisconsin statute 19.85% there you go thank you Mr Alberts hi Mr beneski hi Miss bural hi Mr Mana
087hi Dr spray hi Miss Sula hi Dr jenez hi [Music] oh [Music]