12/13/21 Board of Education Regular Meeting

001the speakers [Music] so let me know when you're ready um all right december 13th 2021 regular board and education meeting i'll start by reciting our movement statement every school will be a private school that prepares every student to graduate school college career and community ready and recognize recognition of the mmsu's nursing and nursing assistants and then barb i have from um dr jenkins will introduce dr jenkins okay great great thank you so much this evening we want to take time out to just show our gratitude and appreciation to our school nurses and nurses assistants and continue to support our students staff and our families and truly been amazing our health office staff has been working relentless hours just to ensure that everyone is safe in our schools we can truly say that we're proud of

002our entire team the way that you've been working over this year they have been leading with humanity and integrity and i think as we look as our look at our partnership as a part of abc collaborative duke university university wisconsin we are leading the way in the nation with the things that we're doing and that's only because of the leadership of our nursing staff in our whole health office so to you from us all of us thank you and we hope that you enjoyed the nice gift that we brought out this past week thank you so there's a video and i'm gonna try to start that as the videos coming up you're gonna see some amazing people here so to all of you if you know a nurse say thank you to him this week

003[Music] it's really hard for me thank you so much for bringing the board dr jenkins and i want to thank my fellow board members for being available to rub off gifts to our nurses last week um that there's not i don't know if we can we cannot say thank you enough to our nurses um but i think we're sure gonna try it's your mother yes i may also take this opportunity to say thank you to karen kepler who is a person behind the scenes for many things and she too uh just took a lead with our nurses along with all of the other people who took out our baskets i want to say thank you to just taking our time to recognize our nurses but thank you to carrying calculations i suck at that thank

004you i think it's nice to work with people who have their heart in the right place and karen times too um all right we're gonna move forward with public comment and barb do you have the registration for what sunday row i'm ready for your public comment just turn on your camera and your mic and we're ready to go um good night everybody how are you um so um i have a bunch of hats that i wear in our community um mom neighbor um and so i'm i'm calling in support of our students at east high school particularly i'm concerned about their their safety and their food needs and so i i just really feel it's it's important to try to explore as many solutions as possible so i really really want to um give my

005sincerest heartfelt thanks to our community members our moms who've been showing up uh reverend hart uh there's just so so many people who have been stepping up right uh facilitating meetings uh trying to you know problem solve and so what's happening has has been really beautiful and i'm really glad that um people have been as supportive as they have but i do have a concern about interim principal smith um really just i understand that she is in a really very difficult place so i really want to say that i appreciate the hard work and dedication that she's putting in um and i really also would like her to make the change of having two separate lunches it's it's what we had for three decades when milton mcpike was present uh principal there there's a reason

006there's that many students there has to be multiple lunches one lunch does not work and so i'm gonna let other people that i conceived the rest of my time thank you so much i love you all have a great night i think our next mirror is that was our only speaker was our only speaker yes ma'am all right tonight so i do want to also mention i will take a little more time that people were having a hard time connecting they were having a hard time signing up so um i don't know if parents are still on the call that we're not able to that um so if you can if there's a way for people to show their hands if they were wanting to speak and you maybe call on them that way because

007i know there were at least you know for parents and community members who are planning on speaking that were unable to register so i don't know how it's possible to address that thank you so um she let me know that she was having trouble signing up the only reason she was is because she was trying before the portal was open doesn't open until half an hour before the meeting begins sometimes people don't know that we start this meeting at six rather than five that's that's probably 98 of what the problem is but if there are other people who are waiting to speak i would not know that unless they emailed me or called me and all of those numbers and all that all that stuff is on the website or wherever you're looking that's exactly

008the problem everyone thought the meeting begun at five as opposed to six okay so there are there are many other opportunities perfectly willing to open this up again thank you i'm just persistent so thank you three appearances released your time and then reclaimed your time in real time so thank you thank you for joining us and i apologize for any difficulty folks had registering to speak this evening all right i motioned that the board of education approved the minutes from the regular board meeting dated may 24 2021. second thank you vandermee mama your advisory vote hi all those in favor motion carries news from around the district these are the board presidents announcements new year celebration let students share traditions in states only bilingual program in the state's only hmong bilingual program students in wisconsin's

009only polylingual program celebrated their culture and a chance to educate others at lakeview elementary school lincolnview put on among new year celebration which was a chance for the bilingual students to wear their colorful traditional dress school staff designed a way for all students to be a part of the celebration through an art and crafts activity where they can make money bounce and money bags an essential part of traditional hmong outfit the word recognizes and appreciates lakeview elementary school's passion and commitment to promote cultural awareness and celebrate our among students and families during long new year successful youtube grew videograph videographer passion at memorial high school memorial high school alumni listening very slowly you all retreat tree tray a successful youtuber with more than 261 thousand subscribers another podcaster author devotes her work to sharing personal

010development and productivity tips through her passion for videography during high school video and photo classes taught by memorial art department chair jerome frontier as the editor of the sword and shield students newspaper the board recognizes both memorial art department chair joe funtier and gretchen for her commitment to bringing people together with her youtube channel that promotes productivity positivity while serving as an example for young students to follow superintendent's announcements dr jenkins yes uh thank you for that too i was celebrating among uh family's new year all of our new year and that was a great success that lakeview are winning i also want to acknowledge the work of moms at east high and how they've inspired other parents and community people to get involved at the fallen high also had moms stepping up with some

011other community people as well uh there to show their support students and for the staff and a very amazing feeling go over to the father one of the mugs actually said to me yes we're spreading it over here to the father doing the same things and i thought that was very powerful in our district we're seeing a lot of powerful things uh happening with people and relationships and we want to continue to work at it we're not perfect but we are going to continue to work it so tonight announcement about our essa 3 dollars the american uh rescue plan dollars that many people have been talking about and it's the 40 right now at this point we're earmarked to get a significant amount of dollars 42.4 million dollars here in our district and these dollars

012aren't just a free flow they're willing to support what we've been as a district as everyone the last 20 plus months been going through this pandemic uh the requirements of the grant uh the the dollars i shouldn't say grants the dollars and we have a safe return to school plan and this is what we've been working on and as we've stated many times our mitigation strategies we have been on top of them working closely together 20 percent of the evidence-based strategies for addressing learning laws in our schools we also are required to have community and stakeholders with these particular dollars and to have a maintenance of equity in terms of the plan that we have and we have a spending deadline 2024 we have our cfo tonight who's going to be going over some of

013these things i'm just giving you a highlight of some but he will go over this in his presentation tonight and when we start talking about evidence-based strategies it's kind of like a little uh educational jargon right but in short for you it's just basically those strategies those activities all those things that are being done at the evident base refers to that activity that strategy and how this has been proven our research to give us some real results the maintenance of equity when we talk about that those schools excuse me um it's basically a requirement for districts uh to maintain spending and staffing ratios at the top quartile of those schools identified by high poverty uh demographics and we want to make sure that we also satisfy the other two tests that they have in this

014particular offer awarding and dollars and those two tests are the fiscal test the ratio of state and local spending by people at these school sites must be higher than the previous year so we can't go lower than what we had previously the other particular piece uh by this is that we have the staffing test the ratios of the state and locally funded fte by these uh particular people i'm sorry by these uh i'll say that again if i lost you on that okay the state and locally funded ft uh people at these sites must be higher than the previous year so those are the two basic tests there and the other things within the requirements we're going to have our cfo go over later we're very excited for this opportunity to receive these dollars and

015we have to be fiscally responsible as we're doing so and the requirement that we involve others as we're doing this planning i think it's very positive and it should help us if not should it will help us see some positive results as it has already with our particular mitigation strategies as we look at each facts and all the other things that we've had to do from a sanitary standpoint to ensure the safety thank you so much dr jenkins i see that you're ready to present i'll start the presentation in just a couple seconds actually barb i'll start it if that's okay yes go ahead thank you uh good evening oh turn the camera off good evening everyone uh yes thank you dr jenkins for the introduction i i do want to get this up on

016screen here real quick everyone see the presentation okay okay so this evening i do want to give everyone a brief overview of esther 3 which dr jenkins started to already and ground us in the idea that when we get back from blake we have a lot of heavy work ahead of us when we talk about the the budget process for 22-23 the reason i want to highlight sr3 tonight is because we have requirements of the grant we need to consider and we also have the need to establish the beginning of our community input process so once again the american rescue plan is the third federal covered relief law passed in march of 2021. madison is expected to receive approximately 42.4 million dollars in s3 funding uh once again since this is the third award the

017funds must be used to support our response to the copa 19 pandemic funds are intended to help safely reopen our schools and sustain the safe operation of our schools and address the coronavirus pandemic on the nation's students so once again i'll go quickly through the sr3 requirements we are required to maintain and update a safe return to school plan i want to thank karen kepler and her team who actually have been working on this for quite a while now which is one of the reasons we were able to reopen this past fall that plan as we have it is currently uh completed but that doesn't mean we're done we will need to be updating this plan as new challenges or changes emerge to address copa19 the big piece we want to make sure that i

018preview the board with is our stakeholder input and we're currently in development of a timeline of how we're going to solicit feedback from not only our students staff and faculty but also our community members one of the new tools we have in development right now is our let's talk platform we're going to be using simple language from the dpi to start soliciting feedback on what types of ideas we can use on sr3 over the next two years we're going to be establishing a website presence including all of the requirements and planning that we have to date by use of google sites we have the desire and need to schedule public input sessions either via facebook live or in-person stakeholder input and of course we have our board meetings where we can uh disseminate and discuss

019other priorities on sr3 that we want to discuss during the budget development process as dr jenkins mentioned we have a requirement on the grant to identify 20 of our award to implement evidence-based strategies and interventions to address learning loss just for some examples that were listed in the guidance from dpi some things we could do are additional summer learning or enrichment establishment of extended day or extended school year services and after school programming this is not an exhaustive list this is just some of the basic examples provided in the language maintenance of equity is another new requirement of the sr3 requirements that is new and we talk about equity it's important to distinguish that equity has many different definitions across the country locally as well and when we talk about maintenance of equity for ester

020three the tests we're attempting to meet here are a very narrow definition of equity we are required to protect the top quarter of high poverty schools in our district by meeting the following two tests and these graphics start to assist um identifying what those look like the fiscal test in a nutshell states that our spending per pupil must be higher or equal to the previous year and our staffing test meaning our fte measure at a given building in this in these uh top quartile the ratios must be higher or the same as the prior year in general these aren't necessarily difficult tests to meet we would never put ourselves in a situation where we would intentionally reduce spending per pupil or staffing per people at a given site any anomalies we would identify would either

021be due to valuations of set fte or perhaps a cost differential based on individual staff members again that would be a very rare example but just some ways of how we would need to be monitoring that impact so that we don't um fail one of these tests use of esser three again direct response to and mitigation of covert 19 but the grant itself is structured on the wise grant portal in five buckets for lack of a better term and they're listed here preparedness and response some examples of that are fairly self-evident personal protective equipment ppe sanitation indoor air quality measures outreach services for special populations addressing needs for ells english language learners ieps and learning loss educational technology devices software infrastructure cyber security addressing long-term school closures lte needs sub needs food service and software

022needs and finally and not like not at all least is mental health services and supports for student staff and students and staff before we move on i just want to point out the reason that we have two topics in this presentation is because the budget process for this year is going to be different than any other year we're going to be running two essentially large budget processes in parallel from the january all the way through our april and june timelines for preliminary approval that being said we still need to follow some of our similar procedures on how we frame the budget work and how what our work is going to be after break in january we have an operations worker meeting where we're going to be discussing a lot about what goals and priorities we

023need to establish as a administration and a board and how we're going to frame our budget priorities over the next several months at the same time we need to start identifying what are some one-time costs on s or three that we can discuss again in parallel with a lot of our budget process understanding that this is one time money and then we only have two years to provide meaningful use for that for that uh across the district as a reminder i do want to highlight some of the budget factors that we've been stating since the this last july when the state approved the biennial budget we do have some challenges ahead of us namely we know that we have zero dollars per pupil in the current budget year and the next budget year we have

024significant declining enrollment and we're currently set to generate approximately 12 million dollars in emergency non-recurring exemptions apologies that should say 12 million not 12 dollars i would love it to be 12 but i know it's not so again these are not unique to madison districts across the state are encountering these challenges right now where we know that uh we we will have inflationary costs in the coming year and there's going to be many things making it difficult for us to do our planning appropriately other local and state factors that are occurring right now we know that we have system-wide staff shortages we're having transportation challengers again staff shortages in terms of drivers and an increased need for technology and instructional solutions as we move forward in navigating our dual forms of instruction either in person

025and in virtual environments once once again i want to provide some context to some of the challenges we're looking at right now this is a graph of madison's enrollment there's two lines here there's a three-year rolling average indicated by the green line on this chart and a one-year current year enrollment change in the yellow line which is the lower line the reason i put this graph on the on the screen is because there's there's there's how we're funded and how we're actually uh seeing our enrollment change in the state funding model we're funded based on a three-year rolling average so our mitigation of the significant enrollment challenges we've seen the last two years are reflected in the green line and we're adapting in the funding model to those changes but on a one-year basis it

026is easy to see that we've seen a massive decline in our one year enrollment which is having significant pressures on not only our staffing needs but our capacity needs in our buildings and once again this is a graph of how the state has treated k-12 education in terms of our inflationary costs for people under the revenue limit since the early 90s we've seen a relatively stable increase of about 200 a little more than that per pupil for what looks like 15 years but in the last 10 years we've seen significant deviations and even one negative adjustment of course following the enactment of act 10 back in the 11-12 school year and finally i do want to highlight the challenges that we're facing right now in regards to the revenue limit itself so in a declining

027enrollment situation and zero dollars per pupil the state funding formula is producing some rather anomalous results more specifically we're projecting approximately a loss of another 150 students going into next school year in the revenue limit formula we're generating those two non-recurring exemptions i keep talking about declining enrollment of course which is which is a normal exemption in a given year and this whole harmless exemption which occurs when where our base revenue limit is calculating below what our revenue limit uh was let the prior year in the formula though what's actually happening is a little bit of a paradox when we say we're going to go down 150 kids we're generating approximately 11.6 million dollars in non-recurring exemptions but even a slight deviation in that one-year enrollment shift moves our three-year average in such a way

028that if our enrollment goes down more than we're projecting than that 150 students per pupil in this case i have two examples here if we say if we actually end up going 200 pupils down our exemptions under those categories actually increase and vice versa if our enrollment improves in this situation and we only lose 100 students next year our exemptions decrease so i'm currently following our revenue i'm sorry i'm currently following our enrollment projections for purposes of modeling what we're going to discuss in january but i want the board to be aware how volatile this number is going to be over the next several months our enrollment is going to matter significantly we talk about what types of challenges and gaps we need to address as we begin in january all the way through the

029april june time frame that being said i just wanted to highlight these factors for you today as an update because we are going to be doing a soft launch of some of our communication around sr3 and start soliciting feedback so that we have something to discuss in operations work group in january and maybe even the board meeting and at the regular board meeting in january so with that you have any questions please let me know thank you so much for that presentation ross yeah i have about uh four of them one thank you ross this was incredibly thorough and i really thank you on that one and this is my biggest fear can the legislature get a hold of these funds and block them the way they have with other parts of ebert's budget is

030that possible are you referring to sr3 nikki i'm sorry yeah oh yes um so the old the the department of education at the federal level has approved the majority of wisconsin's plan for sr3 so the only i'm not aware of any way that they could reallocate s or three at this point once the awards are given to the states at this point the amount that each district is eligible for has been published and short of a non-compliance issue i don't think there's any way that that award can be pulled short of massive sequestration where the federal government would have to prorate their awards but that's that's pure speculation on my part that's good to know secondly you said that there's a maintenance of equity is there maintenance of efforts similar to disability law and how

031much we provide with sr3 i'm glad you asked that because i think the only reason that they called this maintenance of equity was not to directly confusing it with maintenance of effort a major effort of course is specific to special education so they're held separate in that maintenance of effort for special education is still its own set of tests and maintenance of equity is only a test for sr3 eligibility that makes a lot of sense um now you said staffing is a problem when we have a problem with our ft and not having it and having staff shortages this is not a coveted question can we do a general sick leave bank totally so that we could possibly attract more staff with us or three dollars i i guess i would need you to elaborate

032on your question if you're talking about establishing a sick bank and its impacts on hiring i would only be able to speculate on that impact okay then never mind i was and then just um one of the questions on the assert funds do they say that it can we could use it for you said summer programming we also use it for maintenance equipment like ramps for individuals with disabilities that are out of compliance outdoor classrooms etc i'm sorry i mean interrupt uh so the five categories i mentioned in the presentation are really where we should be framing uses of how we want to use sr3 again the esser awards are are given to districts primarily to address and respond to the impacts of covet 19. so accessibility if we could make an argument under one

033of those five areas where that would be applicable possibly keep in mind that whatever we put forward we have to submit to dpi as part of our sr3 plan and dpi has every right to look at that plan and approve or reject it so it's something we can consider but i can't make any promises until we have dpi sign off on our plan understood yeah the reason why i'm asking on whether to consider is the number of specialty students who have significant learning loss especially in special needs that are requiring extended school year options is quite large yes and so um because that will be a financial burden to the district financially there is a possibility i was wondering if to recoup that through that through lesser three i guess all i can say is

034it's possible but i can't answer that question directly without uh with a plan to submit to dpi perfect thank you thank you um ross thank you so much for this presentation this is great preparation to go into our conversation in january um so we're ready um i have a couple questions about the maintenance of equity first of all what is the start date for that when are they going to start calculating maintenance of equity so though i may be headed up too quickly the tests will be the base year is this year so 21 22 and then for next year planning we will be implementing those tests uh for that top quartile of buildings and um part of the the the challenge for me as i try to navigate those requirements is the test point

035the measure point of when the top quartile is established is still not clear in law uh so right now uh we we know that we have some variation each year in our student populations that move those those measures of of high poverty right so as we prepare for next year i'm only watching probably a little bit more in the top quartile with the expectation that those demarcations may move between now and the measure point and that was um in a couple of listening sessions around understanding this provision in uh dpi seminars that i'm just trying to be cognizant of but again as we as we talk about our regular budget process i don't consider this to be a particularly difficult test to meet in terms of our budget process as we do build in inflationary

036costs into many things we do so as we we put that together i i'll be watching it closely but i don't anticipate that we'll be able we will not be able to meet those measures thank you um my second question is related so um it basically sounds like we've got two different sources of non-recurring funding coming into mmsd next year one is esther three and one is our non-recurring exemptions and from what you just said it sounds like our non-recurring exemptions are potentially more volatile than sr3 because we don't know our enrollment um and it also is potentially going to have the the non-recurring exemptions are assessed and sr3 is a grant from the federal government so i guess my question is um do we have flexibility with non-recurring exemptions to not assess to the

037maximum with those if we have adequate um one-time funding coming from so3 to to reduce the burden on the taxpayer especially since we don't know what's going to happen with equalized property value and if we did that what would happen to our maintenance of equity okay a lot to unpack there let me see if i could so we were to not take some of these non-recurring exemptions would that reduce our people spending to the point where we couldn't meet our meetings of equity requirement potentially but a lot of the cost that would be part of those tests would be fixed long before we set the levy you know what i mean so we're talking about our our staffing plan for the coming year and we're talking about meeting the staffing test and even the local

038spending per people test eighty percent of our budget is on people so when we're talking about establishing those ratios in planning for next year we would have a lot of those costs established before we even got to fall so if our enrollment did shift we may have to make other one-year adjustments in the budget to accommodate what happens to those non-recurring exemptions but to your point would they be included in the ratios yes but by that point i would think we've already had met those tests and and passed them such that we wouldn't have to worry about that volatility at the end of the end of the budget process that's helpful to think about i'm also just wondering if as we go through this budget cycle we should be thinking about um not taking our

039maximum um recurring exemptions as we did this year if we have adequate funding coming from sr3 to meet all our needs in terms of long-term funding yeah and that's a recommendation i i gave you you all in the fall as well because again in this odd scenario we find ourselves in where if our enrollment is worse than we predict those exemptions bubble up to the point that we haven't planned for those expenses again if we had any inflationary increase on the revenue limit this would not occur we would that declining enrollment exemption would kick in and essentially put us where we thought we were going to be in june right so last fall i'm sorry last spring when we were planning the the budget for june approval we were skating right at the line where

040hold harmless would have kicked in understanding that if we went worse we'd have to think about this over the summer now that we're in the thick of non-recurring exemptions and hold harmless i'm preparing for a much more volatile swing once that enrollment number comes in in september so if we find ourselves in that situation again i would certainly be looking at suggesting under levy because that funding is coming out of a formula that wasn't designed to work this way thank you that's all my questions that's really helpful ross i appreciate it those questions that was really helpful for members thank you so much president monroe thank you so much ross for um it's really important conversation i wanted to go back a little bit on um you mentioned i'm trying to find the slide that

041you were speaking to uh the how the scaffolding of the supports needs to happen in particular in regards to the schools that you know that meet the top quarter of um don't you remember exactly how top quarter of high poverty schools did you can you tell us again what how many schools are we talking about what's the percentage oh okay i'm sorry it's not uh it doesn't address what threshold is qualifies for high poverty it simply takes all of your schools and in rank order looks at the the ones with the highest poverty measure and starts placing them in rank order once that's done the top fourth or top quarter of those buildings would be subject to this test one thing i didn't mention when i brought this up before is this does not mean

042that we have a higher spending per people at the high poverty schools per se such as for example a smaller school may have a higher measure uh that i'm sorry a higher cost per pupil just by virtue of overhead whereas a large school that may have a high poverty measure may have a lower spending per pupil this isn't about establishing that the highest poverty school spends the most per pupil and down the line it's that at a one school basis from one year to the next that ratio must not move and then um is this is it also uh making sure that we are um does that also include that there's particular strategies that need to be happening with those schools or is just saying we need to make sure that those schools are are

043um are having our target approach in regards to our so to to clarify this is an eligibility uh test that madison has to meet to access its s for three funds it's not about spending the s or three funds and the tests themselves don't even include sr3 funds it's just identifying that the federal government has said for those students that could be considered on a numbers basis higher need than others we want to make sure those buildings are protected one year to the next that that that strategy is something we can define locally but this is just this is just a way to determine eligibility for esr3 for our district got it i think i i think i'm connecting now what so let's go to that place where you're just saying have we identified how

044are we going to uh what is it going to look like for those top quarter high school high poverty schools i would not be able to speak to that specifically but um i we we have a steering committee in place that's going to start looking at use of these dollars that can be used to lift up those buildings through some of the the 20 hold back we have to identify for learning loss but the targeted strategy as a district is something we're going to be talking about as a group over the next several months that's exactly what thank you so much for answering the question for not asked uh really well um uh i just have a comment on the slide that comes right after that regards to the use i would really love to

045see a comprehensive strategy around credit recovered in particular for english learners and students that are receiving special education services uh with the last two years of you know in-home uh virtual uh students have you know had a lot of opportunity to to make sure that their grades and their uh instructions are in alignment and the students that have a post-secondary plan that might have also been impacted by how you know this last couple years have been so i'd love to see a targeted strategy around credit recovery particularly for els and students with ids thank you so much thank you so much you so much for your questions and morality for your discussion yeah thank you and thank you ross for this presentation i'm i'm wondering that as we as we start to grapple with the

046funding that we are going to receive for for sr3 and start to get community impact i'm wondering if we could get a very high level summary of the the spending that we did for sr1 and sr2 to sort of put into context what we've already invested in and where we may have i don't want to say miss something but where more investment is needed and i guess basically what we've already done um yeah thank you for that i uh this actually came up i believe at um the meeting last month as well i'm in the process of cleaning up those schedules right now i hope to put those out in a weekly update for all of you so you can see i i know we had a schedule that we were providing last year at

047a periodic basis and i have not reestablished that cadence um in my head yet so i will certainly get that out to you as soon as i can that would be great i think the context of that would be fabulous and then i'm looking at the sort of five bucket list that you gave us and wondering in the context of trying to get community feedback on on investments i'm just wondering if the board needs to have a conversation around okay here's where we spend it already here's these five buckets of what we're eligible for and at some point i i think we're going to need a baseline assessment of where we're at where students are at and where i mean we keep talking about um mental health is very different from before kobed and um

048you know some people are calling it learning loss i i'd like to say new baseline from where um we were when we would have expect where we might have expected to be um before kobed and so i'm sort of wondering if it's if it's possible to do that before we start asking for community feedback to sort of um give more context um to the community as we're as we're starting does that make sense it does although i i still think there's benefit to soliciting um unmitigated feedback from the community just to get the dialogue going as i said this is not something we're going to have one conversation of and be finished with so i'm certainly hoping to get feedback as soon as possible so that when we start this discussion in january we could

049start to funnel down a lot of our our needs as we identify we did spend x amount per per students on technology that you know do we really need to hold back that type of amount of sr3 perhaps not those are the types of things that we need to explore as a group but we if we wait too long for feedback we're probably just going to miss other opportunities we might not be thinking of right now okay sounds great just try to to figure out how the conversation is going to go when the conversation is happening in tandem with the board at the same time so i completely appreciate that um and then i have a question on the the declining enrollment and hold harmless exceptions and just to clarify sort of in my head

050they're designed as an early warning to give us time to adjust our spending over multiple years and if we continue to have declining enrollment and take these exemptions we sort of bring us to this i don't say fiscal cliff is is that an accurate way to say that um we somehow have to adjust it that's correct so i mean you're correct and that i've even myself framed the exemptions as a early warning system the way declining enrollment is calculated in the revenue limit formula is is to allow districts that breathing room to adapt as either their service levels or spending decrease from one year to the next the danger in the current situation is that the hold harmless exemption continues to erode our base revenue limit on top of that so it's happening much faster

051than we normally would think we do have some mitigation in the fact of our operating referendum but it is true that we're going to start to see that revenue factor slide until the enrollment patterns start to stabilize or at least provide a straight line as opposed to a dipping line in that graph um and then i would i would just like to remain hopeful and optimistic that after this we get through this biennial budget that we're working under that um the state will see the importance of investing that per people funding and investing in our public schools for the next biennial budget um i think that's all the questions i have right now thank you so much for speaking to that board member of homelessness i see your hand and i want to recognize that

052i also want to let myself name them first ross i i think uh piggybacking on the comments you were making with crisco michenet i i think the truth is is that we know that we're going to continue to see a decline in enrollment um the lowest rate of birth was 2019 that was the lowest birth rate year since 1987. um that group of children starts 4k in 2023 and they start kindergarten in 2024. looking back to the last time we faced this kind of decline in enrollment that was driven by birthright um you know that's going back to 1992. what are what are some of the things that we can do to kind of adjust in this current moment um to the kind of inevitable decline we're going to continue to see as it relates

053to birth rate and i guess do we have any indication that 2020 2021 would be higher birth rate years um that that we would recover some of that enrollment um i i'm not able to speak to the enrollment patterns right now but i do know that uh as we we try to navigate some of the the last times we were thinking about uh low low birth rates and um what happened to state funding we also have to remember that the state funding formula was in a much different condition we had we had an inflationary cost per pupil on the revenue limit so even under declining enrollment the uh the losses or the exemptions that we were dealing with at the time were much less than they were now and in many cases that inflationary cost

054per pupil outpaced the decline impact in that declining enrollment exemption it truly is a perfect storm that we're dealing with right now that is is putting us in the situation thank you so much for speaking to that ross board member i just wanted to follow up actually on what chris gomez schmidt stated um i think that the board i'm all for community feedback i really am the issue is when we got into the big ideas it almost felt like it was hard for the board to collaborate with the big ideas because they were almost like parallel tracks that never met is there a way to do more collaborative with feedback so that way decision making is still shared if that makes sense if it doesn't i'm sorry i'm going to ask that you direct that

055question at the second lieutenant okay i i totally know what you mean when we get the big ideas even right now looking at a budget in the timeline ross and i have had conversations by when we move have that's the three i stated earlier calls for us to have feedback so by opening it up now as he's trying to do we want to come to you with real feedback that we already received and so in january we can have a more informed conversation and i also what um appreciate what ross said uh not leading necessarily the public in terms of their thoughts we're having a wide open a new community and today we're going to continue to work together but i appreciate the thought of let's be revelative about it but we do want to

056have free thoughts from the public and we want to share the information what we've done i think the question from uh remember going the question what would be doing the updates and what loss it's going to do to share what we do with one two and three and he began to mention some of those things and as we do that we as a group as a whole community the board the community administration everybody our mti principals can collaborate on this process that's what we're hoping that we uh co-create this as we move along but not ahead of learning thank you thank you so much for speaking to that dr jenkins further discussion yeah i just wanted to say that in addition to the declining birth rates i think just the pandemic of covid had a

057really large effect on our enrollment and so whatever we can do to make sure that we are addressing the needs of students and families moving forward addressing the the needs of our staff and in doing this all collaboratively to make a really strong um school district you know that's that's what we need to do um together as a board as the administration and and with our our staff and our families speaking to that board member gomes schmidt all right there's been a little discussion ross i want to thank you so much for joining us this evening and for all the work you're doing we look forward to you know having this conversation with you thank you [Music] i see your hand up dr mofenta so i'd love to hear from you you very much i

058just i wanted to take just a moment to address board member morelli's comment and question about our scholars with an iep just to make sure that the board is aware that based on the known potential impact to each individual scholar of the pandemic and virtual primarily having virtual services last year we asked our special education case managers to conduct an analysis after first quarter progress reports of progress toward annual iep goals and progress in the general education curriculum and so we will be analyzing that data over the next couple of weeks and we'll have by mid-january the set of our scholars who we will need to provide additional slash what dpi is calling recovery services to for the remainder of this year and into the summer so i just wanted you all to be aware

059that that analysis was conducted and that we will be looking at that data over the next few weeks thank you so much for for joining us and board member morelli yeah thank you so much dr montana it's great to see you here um can you give us a little bit of a timeline on which group of students will be then benefiting from whatever strategies you are implementing is this a 22 23 school year our students current students are going to be able to take some advantage of some of the findings and the strategies that you are putting in place yes absolutely so what we have asked is we have asked for our special education case managers to either convene an iep team meeting prior to the start of second semester or connect with all iep

060team members including parents to talk about what services we would offer and then ask about when it would work to provide those so asking scholars and families knowing that some of our scholars are are able to kind of beef up their special education services and intensive services right now for second semester for the rest of the school year and others um just sort of don't want to um come you know compound services and want to wait until summer to have additional services or recovery services so really it will be an iep team decision but working with scholars and family members about what will work for them so second semester will be an option but we realize that some may prefer to wait until summer i have a follow-up question um in regards to parent advocacy

061on that how are parents even i mean i know as a parent i did not know that that was an option for my students so how are they learning that this is an option that they can advocate for how is that working sure yep that's a great question so um the we've talked about it a couple of times at the special education advisory council but recognizing that that's a small number and so i have prepared a letter actually a couple of weeks ago as the analysis was being conducted by case managers to go out to parents and we're currently waiting for the interpretation on that so there will be a letter going out to all families to explain that includes the questions that were used for the analysis and the option thank you so much

062dr mckenna thank you so much president uh mudra for allowing a more expensive time for for this particular item i think it's incredibly important i want to thank you so much for raising that and thank you for engaging in decisions reports on items that proceeded through the instruction work group held on december 6 2021 so i'll review last week everybody bye um so our conversation on december 6th was a very lengthy conversation but um a very good conversation we had a lot of things that were packed in um so as normal we had our wellness check with the updates um of the number of folks that were vaccinated and i think dr jenkins mentioned earlier it's like of our staff um and then it also included the next steps for those who were not vaccinated

063um next we had a presentation from the literacy the joint literacy task force and the recommendations the task force is a partnership between the uw-madison and our district that took on the charge to do a couple different things so one was review the best practices um and effective literary uh literacy um instruction um and developing our teachers also looking at literary um achievement data um as well human data and then also they examine how literacy is taught at uh top two teachers at uw-madison um in the school of education and also analyzing what um possibly future teachers are going to learn about literacy and how to teach that um they also crafted recommendations to the school district um and to uw-madison um and we received a a pretty lengthy report that at the time we

064didn't have a chance to look at but um it was definitely um very eye-opening i should say um the next thing that we had was a restorative justice and social emotional learning update um about culture and climate um i thought you know that this was a very great presentation because it had a lot of data from directly from students and staff um and so we definitely got the voices of our students and staff and then also like what to expect from each other and uh the next steps for restorative justice in our schools and social emotional learning um we also got the advanced learning update um about the sorry so the advanced learning update um that we had the presentation that talked about our equal opportunity schools and data and then also about rigorous instruction

065for everyone and opportunities across further opportunities across our district um lastly we had um our safety plan updates so um and i'll just read this and so the board of education budgetary and policy decisions connected to keeping our schools safe are reflected in our district safety plan our safety plans and other requirements are provided by the department of justice on an annual basis as follows one safety plans and most recent date board of education reviewed and approved revisions and school safety plans to most recent blueprints were maps three dates of the school violence drills held previous years in certification of board of education has reviewed four date of most recent school safety training in number of attendees five dates of safety assessment and conducted with low or with local law enforcement something to note is

066that during these three quarters of 2020 and 2021 uh school year and moving from virtual to in person the department of justice provided school districts recommend accommodations to conduct required school safety drills the board of education members will receive an update to review the requirements in the next in next week's board of education weekly updates and then our school district's office of school safety school leaders and school safety teams will conduct school safety assessments with local law enforcement uh with our teachers union and other community agencies uh this semester which i think is super important to note so as um we as the board of education look forward to updates and recommendations to strengthen our district safety plans in may and june um that was lastly but um just some things that are coming up

067in our next uh possible topics of our next um construction work group meeting is uh the use of uh assistive technology and then summer acceleration 2022 and then more advanced learning and the policies possibly the health health and wellness and then also the age of students so it's a lot going on and we're getting work done so thank you thank you for your leadership board member peterson there are no action items that proceeded through the instruction work were held on december 6 there are no action items this month that proceeded through the operation work group there was no meeting held in december for operating um remember carusi can you please speak to our next meeting and it's possible agenda i would be happy to do that so um our next meeting is scheduled for tuesday

068tuesday january 18th we will be launching our 2022-23 budget development process with a discussion about our budget goals our budget values and um digging into our equity-based model for school budgets um and which is different from maintenance of equity and sr3 we will need to address both of those things um we will also talk about sr3 yet another update and finally we are slated to talk about policy 5011 which is the transportation policy um specifically in terms of middle school start times thank you so much for speaking to that i look forward to that meeting all right i move that the board of education adopt and approve all of the motions set forth in section 10 of the electronic agenda prepared for the december 13 2021 regular school board meeting exactly as said motions are

069written by voting affirmatively on this motion a board member expresses his or please or or their affirmative vote on each of the motions consolidated hereby subject to any express separations that have been made by any member of the school board any discussion or separations i i would like to separate ten point twelve and ten point thirteen remember uh please separate ten point eleven number one schmidt ten point eight all right show me your advisory vote hi all those in favor all right motion carries 7-0 all right uh we'll start with 10.8 yeah this is the um recommendation for core instructional materials for science and there's a number of things that i just wanted to clarify on this consent item um one is where we are in the process um it appears that this is planning

070to move us beyond the early adoption cohorts and into full implementation at k to five and i guess one of the questions that i have is i'm 100 behind new improvements in science and figuring out the curriculum that our um schools need in order to effectively teach science what i'm excited about this is the um the narrative around the fact that it works well in combination with our early literacy initiatives um i guess what i'm concerned about is that i i see some quotes in there for teachers but i'm wondering if we have an early cohort implementation analysis and results from our own district um and then i'm also hoping for some clarification on how this curriculum and training fits into the overall pd plan for elementary schools along with letters training other curriculum and

071other schedules i guess one of my concerns is um we keep talking about how schools are um overloaded and and and trying to move forward and we are still in a pandemic and i'm just wondering if i'm going full out on implementing this next year is the right decision when we are really focusing on that that literacy component great questions um go measurement i'm actually going to ask patti schaefer to come on screen as she is the director of stem and has been behind um this planning and implementation so she can speak specifically to the data that we're seeing from our schools as well as the professional development plans i see dr bell is also on the screen so we can talk about the pd and the science of reading hand in hand this will

072speak first to the first question that you posed in regards to what data we have on our own implementation so as you may have noticed in um kind of the timeline for where we've been with this project we began implementation in the 1920 school year and if you think about what has happened since then really the availability of data is pretty limited for our own students from an academic outcome perspective and the impact that this implementation may have on literacy outcomes as well as as you know that we do also some science assessments as a state in fifth grade so we don't have that data particularly and i think that's why we really wanted to lift some of the qualitative data and what teachers were already seeing in their classrooms overall okay i just i

073uh thank you i no i appreciate that and i want to contextualize this and say that i completely am not looking for student outcome data um based on this initial implementation i guess what i'm looking for is process um process implementation and how how this actually worked for the teachers given that we are in a pandemic and and how it is working to make the switch and the the time that is required at the same time that we're doing the literacy implementation thank you that's a great clarification to help me make sure that i'm responding to the question that you're posing so i would say actually that that's been a key emphasis and why we did an early implementation we really wanted to work with a select group of schools right a more smaller set

074so that we could learn early about what would be necessary for the implementation so we could really scale that across schools before going um right across all grade levels across all schools as we're proposing to do and we've actually had the teachers coaches and principals from those schools informing not just the work that we did with them but then helping to inform where we're going next overall and what we've learned from that first the sort of getting started professional learning is relatively light in comparison to some of the other work that we've done right especially in comparison to the number of hours that we're asking for the commitment with letters training and other pieces around early literacy and i think it's because what we're learning from teachers is that really navigating their curriculum is not

075a heavy lift for them once they're introduced to it you may have noticed also in the information we've provided that the curriculum is a significant kind of shift for us from where we've been at for some time in our schools with foss in that the curricular resources have flexibility to do both in person and virtual so it's actually been a huge benefit for uh schools that have already been using this over the last right few semesters as they've been working with students in a virtual learning environment we also worked with the madison virtual elementary teachers this year to get them training and implementing it with their students because we knew that was the better choice for the virtual learning environment and that was an easy shift for them to make so we're also learning with

076them and the flexibility of it so uh dr gabby bell and i are working hand in hand in planning professional learning but starting at the leadership level ensuring that the work that we're doing in learning about the science resources really lift the literacy strategies that are built into the resources themselves so that these don't feel like separate efforts but they're actually really linked overall and i don't know if uh gabby if you wanted to add anything to that you said it beautifully i get i guess one of the other questions i have is um even looking at the motion i'm uh i'm a little confused because it it talks about that we we approved uh like a 900 000 expenditure last march um and there was an eight hundred thousand dollar one in a previous

077fiscal year and now the request is for an additional six hundred and seventy four thousand dollars um but the motion is for the whole 1.6 million um yeah so i will clarify best i can about each of those particular dollar amounts that appear in the consent memo so previous year expenditures was really focused on um the early implementation right so the select schools and teams and grade levels and that happened in two phases starting in the 1920 school year continuing last school year working with those schools including the madison virtual elementary schools then last year in march we were intending that we would be beginning an implementation with grades 2 4 and 5. you may recall that some of our early thinking around the implementation of the letters professional learning had a grade level specific

078plan that was sort of threaded in what grade levels would be in which cohorts to get started with that and how we would implement curricular resources side by side with that so at that time we thought we were going to be planning for a three grade level cohort this year with the other grade levels to follow in the following year right which would which would have still brought us to this conversation but for only that subsequent dollar amount because of the shifts that we made with the letters training we decided that this year wasn't the right year to start um right a partial grade level implementation and at the end of last fiscal year the board approved carry over a fund balance of that approved amount to then be used and on that expenditure this

079year instead so that's the sum hundred thousand dollars the additional ask then is to ensure that we have resources at grades k one and three to go with those funds so that we really um can finish the implementations for all grades k through five for teacher resources and kits that are all needed so we so we haven't done the implementation at grades two four and five yet correct that was what was approved last year but the implementation was paused and so the funds were asked to be carried over in a fund balance so those are designated funds in the curriculum and instruction budget that's included this year so the full dollar amount 1.64 million and change is for the full purchase that will make that includes what was intended to be purchased for this year

080it is now all for implementation in the next school year so i worked with a comptroller and ross's team to ensure that the language we were using for the consent memo tonight fitting with what needed to be up for approval in order to move forward so so how many schools have implemented this and how many are we moving to i guess it's part of my um part of my frustration here is i feel like we're doing scaling up decisions in memos instead of looking at our piloted process and um and making decisions from there um i i don't know how other board members feel about that but i just feel like we're it's a lot um in within this consent thanks so i'm sorry go back to my question how many how many schools have

081implemented this and what are we going to this year so we have nine schools that have already gone through implementation and the uh purchase that we're requesting right now gets us to scale um there are a few of those nine schools who are not yet at full k5 implementation um but we're moving so that all of our students in elementary schools next year would have the same aligned resources and that our professional learning right and the links with our literacy early literacy and beyond priority focus can happen with all of our schools rather than again right kind of piecemealing that out in terms of our professional learning remember morelli then i saw a board member vandermuellen the national board member thank you so much president mudrow thank you so much patti for for walking us

082through this memo a little bit more i my question is a little bit different um given the dissenting views of what science is how are you all navigating uh the alignment of y'all's work um the perhaps not as progressive approach that the state has been taking around science um that is my opinion um and the what's you know what's curriculum is available and how are they being updated to to be in alignment to how we want the standards that we want uh to offer lmsd so i'm trying to think about like uh to what to speak to directly so in terms of what you're really asking for in terms of like how are we ensuring that this is really uplifting um sort of our values and priorities in terms of what science education is as

083a both links to that literacy piece and how are we ensuring that we can actually implement that with teachers um in classrooms so our students are really experiencing it in that way so i would say that that yeah it was more the first part of uh your interpretation than the second part but the second part seemed really relevant so i would say that that actually um was a really critical part of what led us to selecting amplify science as the direction forward for mmsd the work that we've been doing that led to that early implementation in the 1920 school year really began with k-12 group of teachers who were um volunteered to be part of an early learning about the shift then um that was in the 1415 school year what was then a national

084like conversation about shifting science learning across right our country overall and really having ensuring that going from where we were in science education that we were really paying attention to societal issues that were really um part of our science work certainly a lot has happened in society since then that it has right connections to science but i think the same is still true and one of the like really i think key places in thinking about where science education is now compared to where it was prior to the that shift in standards is this idea that students really learn not um by approaching science as a figuring out rather than learning about so that we're really developing that critical thinking and that their knowers and doers and creators of um understanding rather than simply being told

085really what to know and how to think about that and um how the world works that they're actually really engaging in that overall and that um early conversation with a k-12 group branch then into grade level specific that has right carried forth in different directions or really i guess continued progress in each of the grade bands so a relatively small group of elementary teachers that were part of that k-12 group continued with us and expanded to include more members across more schools and greater representation of diversity from our staff and a representation of diversity of who our learners are from across schools and those teachers really lifted the critical importance of the connections between science and literacy as well as some of the early learning that students do about kind of important science themes like

086climate change which was really relatively not at all present in our past and right kind of continuing science resources across schools and that's just one example that's actually come up a number of times in the time since then overall and i think some of the comments that you see from teachers in the consent memo i think really lift the new energy that teachers and students themselves are feeling about science education as we're bringing in new resources that really connect more to kind of engaged ways of learning about science that position students to figuring out real world phenomena and taking on roles that really position them to think about themselves as scientists engineers and again people actually engaging in the figuring out the way in which the world works around them so i think that those

087being really key themes have really carried then into our implementation and what sort of teaching and learning science with an equity focus has really meant for us and connecting to students both the experiences they have in the world but also expanding beyond what the world might have right what they might have experienced so far thank you so much i think i i can see the passion that you have about this um i have a i have a follow-up if it's okay president monroe and maybe that's a that's a dr bell's question i'm curious on how um how this curriculum and then this this implementation is being translated into our dli schools both spanish and hmong and uh this connection with with like with sort of alignment literacy and science how um have have we pressure

088tests for some unintended consequences in particular for students that are not accessing you know literacy in um in the ways that they can access than assignments content i know that's a question that is a delicious question if i may say so yes we have done some really great thinking around that um so do you remember when i speak about the simple view of reading and word recognition and language comprehension and how we speak about language comprehension as the ability for us to be able to engage with text not only at the vocabulary level but at the syntax at the meaning making level to be able to really go in and decipher for meaning making what is truly exciting about these resources for science is that the texts are so rich that they allow us to

089be able to do that and to experience that level of rigor and that um in in in that um that complexity of conversation that serves the master of literacy within a content of science one of the markers that were very very important as we were looking at resources that were worthy of this conversation and worthy of our students um was the conversation about accessibility so we also looked and ensured that i'm inspiration i love the art uh where that um that the resources are available in spanish now hmong is a it's a it's a different pony hmong has been romanized um so using the you know has been transcribing to the um the roman alphabet um from the 1960s to now it is an infant language in its literacy approach so up to date we

090have not been able to find publishers that do that i am hopeful i'm a praying woman i'm hoping that somebody's going to do this one day for us but right now today um that that doesn't exist uh we continue to use all of the resources that we have available to us we are fortunate in medicine um as we continue doing um to um to invest in people and we are arming ourselves with um brss and and um central office staff to be able to help us make sense of it i'm explicitly connected to the hmong bilingual program because i believe that that is a conversation that you're trying to get to um science is start in english in the hmong bilingual program so our children in the program will have access to the resource social

091studies is what is studying hmong so a great level of intentionality have gone into it did i answer your question yeah i i think so so you're saying that for for the dli spanish uh so you mentioned the hmong i think you spoke really well to the hmong i feel like i understood but what's happening for the dli spanish schools in regards to that are they are they also having science in english or is curriculum is in spanish that part i wasn't sure we have a progression across the grade levels and we have something that is called the content language allocation table so content is taught in the dli in the dba programs in science in some specific quarters in spanish in some specific levels the same thing happens in english and the resource um

092provides us for access in spanish as well as in english okay so if you have a parent that's wondering if science dli is different than science in a non-realized school you say no we are working on thank you that's the that's the question thank you so much thank you remember yes um i'm going to actually agree with um chris gomez schmidt i respect all the work of our team i'm not an educator nor am i a teacher and i respect their hard work however when it comes to decisions of money and scaling up i'm wondering if it could set bubbles really the best way to do it or if we do a consent memo and a board discussion i'm wondering if it could be an end thing so that way we can do full collaboration

093with the experts who understand it and the board who's making the decision in a way that way we couldn't have both work together seamlessly so i do want to acknowledge that consent agenda doesn't actually prevent us from having a discussion we've actually been talking about this item specifically for about a half an hour and our team is rolling really deep tonight i mean i see dr bell from gabby jackson or sorry i know your name so i think i think our our team is at the at the table right now if folks have questions and want to engage in the conversation i do understand what you're saying mickey um but i think if we want to workshop this conversation that's really up to the chairs of our operating committee and um and our instructional committee

094um so following up with them around that probably makes the most sense anything else board member vanderbilt that was it thank you so much remarks member for lucy thank you so um i want to um [Music] go off on the comment that this curriculum is very adaptable to online learning um on that same thread i think that the biggest criticism i've heard of this curriculum both within mmsd and reading about its implementation in other districts is that it is far less hands-on than past science curricula have been which is probably why it works well online because you don't have to have anything at home to do the experiments but the flip side of that is that kids lose out on the experience of actually doing science with their hands in the classroom it's mostly engaging

095through the screen and some of what i've read about amplify science is that districts that supplement amplify with hands-on learning um it goes better it's it's just a richer curriculum if kids get to watch it and they get to do it um and i'm wondering what our plans are to incorporate hands-on learning into the amplify rollout are we just going to be following this curriculum as written or are we planning to supplement with more hands-on activities in class to get kids excited about science by doing it yeah thanks for uh raising that chris right that has um as you noted that's been part of the conversation in mmsd and a lot of that actually um started not specifically from our elementary implementation but amplify science is also the new curricular resource or relatively new curricular

096resource in middle schools and in our team's review of the k5 versus six eight resources when we they they are there is a slight difference in the design both in terms of right the ways in which text um and the types of texts that are um movement in how those sort of like are fitting as sort of [Music] the learning progression within the units as well as the number of units per grade level all of those things take into account the developmental levels of the students as well as kind of the sophisticated or the sophistication of the science phenomena that students are studying so [Music] uh in all grade levels there certainly are still what i think a lot of us see as the hands-on components right so there are things that students would engage

097in that require materials in the classroom those certainly get scaled back when we're using a fully virtual environment right as a number of things have to shift so when i um mention that it has that flexibility it's certainly still with significant limitations you don't end up implementing the full units in the same way that you would in classrooms so what it looks like this year for students and staff is different than what it looked like last year as we were in a virtual environment that said the implementation both at the elementary and the middle school levels has continued to be a partnership with amplify science since the first um early implementation we've done we've given them continual feedback as they've also heard from other districts that they're working with across the country and what they've

098done is they've also worked to add additional hands-on components within each and all of their units across right grade levels so that's partnership that we're continuing with them from what i hear from our teachers in our elementary schools they aren't feeling that same right at least not at the same scale they aren't feeling that scaling or the hands-on issue to the same extent and i think it has to do with just again how the units and lessons themselves are designed because a lot of the activities are a little bit shorter so that it fits within the instructional time within the elementary environment and um hand-in-hand with the teachers who've been using amplify we've gotten their input so that we're ensuring that first of all what resources are already built into the units we're really lifting

099those for engagement as well as continuing to look at ways that we can extend that and be providing support for resources so i would say that it's kind of an ongoing conversation um and i don't know that we would say up front that that means that we're supplementing it's really just looking for ways that we continually enhance it and that also is some of the work that we're doing in partnership with the advanced learning team dr sharon alexander and her team have really started to learn with us about their resources so that we're looking at it kind of from a full scale in that way so might may i add some commentary here um and again i i accept full responsibility of any confusion tonight but as i explored this uh consent item with the

100team you know i i reviewed this document heavily and saw that this initiative started uh back in 2014 uh it went through the entire process of being vetted by the board approved to where we sent out an rfp we made purchases uh currently it has been implemented in nine of our schools since 2019 we had many of our schools who were asking and requesting uh science materials and supplies um we we had the money in the budget i have the money in the budget we thought this would be a great time to be able to provide those resources to the schools who have been asking for these as well we realized that there's a lot of training etc to go along with this which we will do and so i wanted to lift that to

101say that this is not like we're doing something to schools we're answering the bell if you will for what they've been requesting um the the total amount for this entire implementation has already been improved approved you know uh original plan was to roll this out in stages and as someone inquired earlier tonight whether or not we piloted the program yet uh yes since 2019 has been implemented and sure we may not have enough data to determine determine the impact for us in mmsd um yeah and that is yet to be seen but i just want to articulate again that this was already vetted already presented to the board and um i i'm very thankful that we're having this conversation about science because we've talked about early literacy and beyond for so long we negate the

102fact that we have math uh numeracy if you will and we have signs and um when that question came up earlier tonight you know what is our plan what is our plan to accelerate learning for our students after the pandemic you know this is a part of that planning process so therefore on the back end of this we don't have to wait to complete this process you know and so um i just wanted to lift that tonight but i definitely welcome all of the questions that are coming out and i was just sitting here just taking it in uh and i trust trust me the team and i we will go back and um if you have additional questions we'll be more than happy to come back and have that conversation with you but again

103i take full accountability for it i i use my professional judgment based on uh the historical data that i had around this initiative and we um acted on it so i just wanted to share that thank you along i moved that the board of education approved the purchase of online licenses and instructional material for teachers and students from amplify science using 1 million six hundred forty thousand two hundred nineteen dollars and sixty cents from curriculum and instruction funds crlm phone second request real conflict uh we'll call vote i'll start with myself uh board member muldrow i'm board member morelli hi board member schmidt hi board member vander millen name board member pearson aye i'm so sorry your advisory vote no worries i closing carries five two thank you all right moving right along the next

104one that was pulled was 10 10. for both tli and world language students testing i'm sorry i had 10 11. 10 10 also okay i think so 10 times i pulled 10 11. 11 12 13. i pulled 12. there's no 10 on the list i moved at the board of education approved paying the 2021 2022 educator effectiveness system fees and the amount of 232 dollars to the department of public instruction as part of our participation in the educator effectiveness grant okay okay board member go schmidt any discussion just recusing myself due to a conflict with my employer thank you so much board member morelli nama your advisory vote i all those in favor hi amanda you are refusing oh yeah i am i'm a knight okay i'm gonna do the vote okay all those in

105favor aye any opposed [Music] right comprehensive energy command i moved to the board of education approved torah contract to be a master's agreement for consulting services to create a comprehensive energy plan cep using facility maintenance funds 160 000 100 000 reimbursement via grant funding upon completion of the plan second nicki mandering thank you board member vanderbilt any discussion so i pulled this one and first of all it's very exciting to have funding for comprehensive energy planning and mmsd so um thank you very much to the administration for seeking out this grant funding and getting it um i do however have a question about the voice of vendor and the fact that this was not sent out to bid um my first question is is there a matching requirement for this grant hundred thousand dollar grant

106do we have to provide any match from general funds yes board member carrozzi um um and barbara if you could unblock me from the camera um but i have mike start here to to go over the process for the comprehensive plan as well uh right so the answer to the question chris is no there is no match thank you and in that case um so our grant is a hundred thousand dollars the bid came in at 160 000 and there was not a competitive bid the reason for not sending out to bid was because we have a master architectural agreement with the company that is going to do this for us but that agreement does not say it's an exclusive agreement like we can still send stuff out to bid even though we have this

107agreement in place and i'm just wondering if we'd sent it out to bid we might have gotten a company who came in closer to the hundred thousand dollar amount that's covered by the grant which would have saved us some money so i'm fully in favor of this and i'm wondering if we need to take a step back and send this out for a competitive bid to see if we can get a bid that's closer to the hundred thousand dollars we're being awarded uh thanks chris so yeah let's expand a little further upon the process for the grant so mmsd narratives that we've been supporting documentations and applying for the grant we noted in there that our approximation for the study is 150 000 and uh ten thousand is uh of of the hundred and fifty

108thousand dollars there was ten or twelve thousand dollars of that that we were qualifying as mmsd staff um cost and the the remaining balance would be to a consultant so um although the grant was just for one hundred thousand dollars our description and narratives did um elaborate that we were expecting 150 000 um so to answer uh that part of the question second question of putting out this out to bid i agree chris i would have uh liked an opportunity to put this out to bid and find additional um vendors that have qualifications and uh evaluate those and i think that would have been a betterment here for sure as it happens with the timeline of the grant um and uh the deliverables that are required for the grant uh we actually uh there's four

109deliverables for the grant the uh final deliverable is a report and so the four deliverables are progresses uh progress reports leading up to uh just the timing of working with um to uh sign the uh grant uh agreement um the first deadline had already passed they were they recognized that it was collaborative and are trying to uh sort out the the agreement so um that neither fault of neither party it was just a function of uh working through that so at this time our first deliverable will be actually the second and that's due mid uh january so just as a function of uh the grant timeline um we utilized our announced master agreements which as the board knows those were competitively sought so if we were to postpone this for a month would you be

110like jeopardizing this grant and this project ah that's correct any further discussion give me your advisory vote hi all those in favor motion carries 7-0 all right it is recommended that the board approve construction manage manager findoff contract amendment increase signing of the guaranteed maximum price gmp of seven million five hundred thousand five hundred one dollars so yep thank you for a number of yourself any discussion yes um i thought we were considering pulling this because of the amount of information the 7.5 million is an extreme amount at this time as much as i'd like to keep our buildings on track this was an additional expense with the contractor and i just not real comfortable with changing terms after the fact and that's why thank you so much for speaking to that board member vander

111mill in further discussion yeah so i um dug into this and it's a very complicated memo and i appreciate the level of detail that he provided us um i was perplexed by the um the notes where it says that um we're going to potentially send some of the trade packages out rebidding and then it goes on to say that findorff might be can now bid as a general contractor could you elaborate on what that's about what's going on at this point with these changes hi chris uh oh sorry cedric go go ahead i was gonna also allow chris to let you all know that fendorf is also here to assist with any specific questions that you may have thank you mike uh great yeah so chris thanks for uh for noting that you're right yes

112there are some uh intricacies to this memo um and those two that you named are related so the uh the board and at the start of the referendum under leadership of chad and brandon the approach that we uh went uh that the referendum is being done as is a construction manager approach um so with that one of the conditions or concerns was although it is typical for a construction manager to bid on their own projects in this case from transparency standpoint chad and brandon and i assumed leadership and likely the board had established that fender would not uh bid on the projects and hope there was or the idea there was just in furthering transparency furthering um competitiveness and making sure that say fendor um you know we're not just handing fendorf we do would

113like this to be a competitive process obviously we certainly want the community uh to benefit and uh so from that end of things it um it was um in good spirit that though that we didn't weren't going to have fender bid now the way we've arranged these projects the first one which is before you tonight of capital high school uh is the smaller of the six referendum projects it happens to be the last in this in the schedule um there's an entropy to this schedule uh but the point is we put this smaller project first and i think we maybe noted this before and one of the goals of bidding this project was to understand the bid participation so in the consent memo we outlined uh various things that we did to stir bid participation

114which is important uh for the the uh capital high general construction bid uh fendorf was not allowed to bid rendorf as our construction manager was not allowed to bid as a general contractor and what we found from that despite uh findorff on their end doing uh calling trying to stir make sure there was awareness of the project to be bid over at building services we also have been calling making calls to contractors and making sure they're aware of bids uh that this process is starting we had an open awareness meeting uh to stir um that as well we published in the paper so the name of the game is we would like a lot of participation and uh specifically to like i said this is a smaller of the six projects so the dollar amount

115was such that we could canvas this understand what it was and then decide what's the best interest of the district and uh being that it's uh i guess i don't want to get in too much detail the specifics of the bids and the amount of participation just knowing that we have bidding to go but i guess the statement is that we didn't receive the bid protection participation as much as we would have hoped and and um for capital high that's okay some rebidding of some of these scopes are all right for the schedule but for the other projects for instance la fala is currently being bid if we have the same conditions that existed for the capital high school uh so for instance if we had any scope pat any trade packages that had zero

116bids this would be a big problem for our projects uh and in some cases if we just have one bid bid participation of course um we want them to align with our budget so um for those reasons for bid participation and because we use capital high school to find out how what's the bid environment which includes how busy contractors are and then the arrangement of projects the type of projects we at building services in order to maintain budget and schedule we need fendor to be another bidder in the process we need them to uh bid in order to be sure we have coverage as well as stir competition uh amongst other bidders so that there are enough bidders and i guess as far as uh conditions that we're putting in to be sure as i

117said at the beginning it is not unusual for a construction manager to be bidding on their own scopes to work this happens all the time uh the school district in this case happened to set it up that we wanted that separation and we've gone through the checks and balances to find out the best interest of the school district is to have fendor be bidding um so they are very they're a separate team from the uh construction manager team the general contractor team is a different team um they are sending all of the trade packages that are being bid on in which fendorf is also a bitter uh vendor better as a general contractor to building services specifically there's a separate bid form it's transparent in the bid process so the other bidders are also aware

118i've even had bidders calling me to clarify they say well when i'm looking at the fallout bids it appears to me that fendorf is also bidding on this project he said yes that's confirmed so i'll pause there because i think i walked all over the question there chris so that was really helpful i guess my follow-up would be um are we allowing fendorf to bid on everything at this point or is there a like a cut off like we only received zero bids one bid where findorff gets to jump in like how are we deciding when findorff gets to be bitter given that our original plan was to maintain separation yeah great question so uh before we got to the general construction even for capitol high school i was um we were as we said

119we were stirring bid participation so we were making calls so with some degree of measure we had an idea if there were going to be trade packages in which we had very low coverage or no coverage and so at that time we had a decision to make as well and we had considered the idea of letting fendor bid however making it a sealed bid and making it such that we would not open that unless we didn't have any other bids or unless we only had one bid for any particular trade package and that would be some criteria in which um we would use so that's how we were considering to proceed for capital high school but as uh as we've said uh chad and brandon were very thoughtful in setting up this process so we

120didn't want to walk forward without kind of making sure so i gave chad a call and my conversation with chad led us to make the decision that we did not to allow them to bid on the first project um but now that we've seen this uh that that that has changed and the chad in my conversation with him of course i don't want to speak for him but um the was of the agreement that this made a lot of sense that we'll measure and then we'll adjust so chris you said are they allowed to bid on everything uh yes right now we have some re-bidding to do for capital high school the guaranteed max price has some items that we're proceeding to sign a guaranteed max price that with just allowances we don't have the

121bidder for that scope that was qualified and or we didn't have bidders for this particular scopes um and so um they will be able to bid the re-bid for capital high school as well as moving forward uh as we noted those are larger scopes coming up so uh we need them to bid those scopes and uh and to ensure that we're gonna you know have budget um if we had decided um say we don't say right now for whatever reason we just continued that we would not allow fender for bid we are in a bidding period right now for la falla and they are eligible for bidding but in the event that we didn't um and we had received the lafollet bids and had no coverage or maybe there was just one bidder in a

122particular scope and they overbid you know excessively and it put the referendum budget in jeopardy we would have nothing no recourse at that point then other than to say this is unfortunate it costs more money and we now need fender for bid on everything because at the end of this we're just gonna have you know we have to pay more money um so it's been an evaluation chris i guess to the point of the idea of how would we do this and um when i thought of that just sealed bid process prior to capitol high school we also considered the idea of what would this say to other prospective general contractors in in um in the area and just them hearing that fendorf is eligible to bid or knowing that they have a sealed bid

123um we tried to consider the politics around that in the construction arena as well and ultimately decided it just made sense to let them bid and that way it's not confusing it's straightforward and bidders aren't wondering which scopes are they or aren't they it's just straightforward do you remember vanderbilt yes so currently there is not a delayed la follow project correct that is correct and we don't anticipate one do we uh we do not then how exactly is that related to this contract on whether or not on capitol high i'm just really confused on how whether or not a a fictional scenario that we don't expect to happen is going to have any effect of this decision i'm just very confused that i hope the tone isn't effective i'm losing my voice so it's about

124ready to go so please forgive me if it sounds off but i just i'm i'm really confused and hope you can help me out on it nicky yep i'm sorry yeah right so i did talk about several hypotheticals because i was mostly going through the analysis of con swaying the considerations of when we would or wouldn't do this so the question of is lafollette um right now we're in a bidding period so prior to the bidding period uh was our decision to allow fendorf to start bid to bid the project that was uh indeed for us to protect the project uh the entire referendum not any one project so by allowing them to bid we thought that it was the best protection knowing that we did not have great bid coverage ideal bid coverage on

125capital high we did not want the same situation to happen on a much much more expensive project of la falla that makes more sense thank you thank you so much for speaking to that any further you know about your advisory vote hi all those in favor i'm sorry if you are in favor keep your hand up for stuff or motion carries uh any objection are any extensions i'm abstaining i'm sorry let's do it again who's opposed yes two opposed yes and one abstention on whose part i think chris thank you listen carries that is it for our consent agenda city of madison education committee for member morelli yeah thank you so much president modrio uh we had a really great and important meeting this past week um getting some updates from the city uh we'll

126be hiring a a digital well that's not the official title but someone that's going to be responsible for the digital inclusion efforts for the city so i think that is a phenomenal opportunity for for further collaboration the committee continued to look at gaps in fundings for particularly for our school district and how both the city and the county can align in the ways of supporting with uh allocation of resources or policies uh that can support our work uh internally i'm looking forward to um to having you president mujuro thank you so much for accepting the invitation to join us for next month's meeting uh as we are i think having some really important conversations in particular our priority one of our share priorities around uh supporting the mental health of our students thank you thank

127you board member morelli student senate nama can we hear from you yeah of course so student senate has been working in their committees for the past few weeks um we've made progress as we're having discussions with other clubs around the district and getting those um representation from schools such as shahbaz and capitol high working with clubs there along with the fallen east to work in our anti-racist committee along with our civic committee and trying to kind of expand our horizons on the discussions that we're having so we're excited to launch more into like the discussion based um work that student senate does um for the next year and the next few weeks of the rest of the december month thank you so much for your leadership madison school and community recreation mscr advisory committee board

128member vandermeela our next meeting is december 15th unfortunately due to a conflict i cannot be at that meeting um if someone would like to attend in my place it is via zoom and i can send them the link um we are planning on again discussing how to get more members and possible discussion on the school force thank you so much i'll follow up with you about that meeting specifically i move that the board of education directs representative chriscoma schmidt to vote in support of the wisconsin association of school boards 2022 resolution items 0 1 to 22-10 at the january 2022 state education convention delegate assembly meeting okay second board member pearson any discussion board member morelli i would like to pull a few for discussion um 22.05 and 22.06 which i'd be happy to discuss

129together and 22.08 22.09 and 2210 which i would be willing to discuss as a group okay um so 22.05 and 22 sex are both um they're both about broadening the scope of um mental health interventions basically and staff that are eligible for state reimbursement which on a surface sounds like a great thing and i'm just curious um would this actually benefit mmsd or are we already like maxing out our reimbursement as it's written and while we can diversify things that can get reimbursed without more state funding it's not actually going to increase the fund coming into the district if i'm actually curious what the impact of this um these two resolutions would be on the district clarification is it 22.03 five and six i think ross is joining us to speak tonight i will take

130a stab at this uh chris because i as i read through these as well i had some some thoughts on these um it's important to know that the categorical aids that currently exist for mental health services are based on a some certain appropriation of the state level meaning that the state declares i'll make this up 10 million dollars to be distributed to districts based on um the claims that are received and if the re proposed reimbursement cannot be met with that sum that the awards given to all districts are prorated until the 10 million dollars is exhausted in a reduced fashion this is exactly how special ed categorical aid works as well which is why when they they tell us we're going to get 30 percent as an estimate by the time we're all said

131and done we get more like 26 because they have to dial it back to meet the pro-rated claims of all district applicants now the mental health services i believe in here says 12 million dollars under current law we'd be looking at a similar situation where the some certain appropriation would be prorated down to the number of claims against that 12 million dollars for msd i believe overall the claim is um not a lot i want to say it's less than 250 k which is currently budgeted our categorical aid reimbursements right now so what i would rather see in this category is um a little bit more of a push for a some sufficient appropriation for these types of claims such that when they tell us they're going to give us again using special education as

132an example and they say we're going to get 30 i want to expect 30 because the one thing that drives me crazy about these programs is they tell us what's going to be 30 but i i know by the time we get to year end it's going to be more like 26 25 24 whatever it is to match the some certain appropriations said the sufficient thank you so much for pulling that chris and thank you for speaking to it ross do you want to speak to that at all yeah i was just going to ask if that's i mean when i go and represent the board on this you can make amendments on the floor um is that something that the board would be interested in doing or investigating i mean having a commercial language

133or yeah i think that talking about some sufficient funds in terms of mental health is really relevant to this current moment and i appreciate ross for introducing um an alternative that may help american communities any other discussion perhaps based on your comments i see no harm in supporting these emotions i would agree again there's no harm in the motions it's more of a i would like to see type of situation on here to be to help us with not only our planning process but reliability at the state level for these programs awesome thank you sports members do you want to speak to your other items yeah so 22.8 22.9 and 22.10 these are all about wasbee pulling out of the national school board association i do not think we should support these three amendments because

134the desire to pull out of this association is highly politicized it's highly politically charged it's coming down on republican versus democratic lines or conservative versus liberal lines and i don't think they should go that way i think wesby should stick with the national association i think all districts should stick with the national association this association made some statements about um difficult school board meetings during the time of covent where things were getting out of control they felt that there might need to be protection of school board members and the comments they made were inflammatory and it did they apologize but it did leave many school board associations particularly in red-leaning areas to say we don't want to be part of this organization anymore i think it's really important for school boards to have a voice

135nationally i think if school boards start pulling out of the national school board association and gravitating towards more polarized associations that represent districts that just sort of think the way they do and don't represent the nation as a whole is not healthy for school boards and for school board associations so i would not support any of those and i'm open to other perspectives or conversation from my fellow board members you remember castro thank you yeah i do support uh us withdrawing support from uh eight nine and ten um the past year and a half or so um debates at school board meetings uh there's been a manifestation of what board member carusi alluded to of uh partisan arguments debating masks or covert mitigation strategies or vaccines or you know history hysteria over critical race theory

136um and you know we have been blessed to have a community um that has been very understanding and graceful uh but other boards across the country have come under a severe threat and that is not okay um and so yeah i i support withdrawing support from these three resolutions so i'm gonna ask you board member castro or board member carusi to uh then um in order to in order for us to vote in that direction i do similarly support the republicans [Music] seven and um this item it's really critical uh in particular during this you know past couple years and the heightened of hate crime towards asian american and pacific islanders what i was a bit confused is that there is wisconsin legislation that already supports that it's online to um to a comprehensive comprehensive

137ethnic studies um which is not exactly the language that they're using here but i was yeah i wasn't sure why they didn't bring uh language from act 31 just because 31 into this conversation but i don't know if um if anyone from curriculum and instruction have looked at this and um have any you know any analysis on either um to strengthen this this resolution or to expand this resolution what number normally i think you might be wanting to direct bailey schmidt to further investigate what interests that sounds a great idea it's okay just because i'm like i don't think our staff actually don't play this okay thank you for that they did oh okay they did okay i'm not sure if they're ready to respond immediately to that but certainly can follow up with chris

138yeah thank you so much and since this is the first time that i'm noticing a very specific call out around curriculum and professional training and we already have state statutes that are calling out uh for a similar language for black and latinx communities so you know yes i'm curious if like probably strengthen this and also expand to include black and latinx as also a part of this link the language of this resolution thank you so much and we can talk offline yeah that would be great so we're okay in supporting this and we want to know what else can be done to strengthen us yes okay yeah let's talk i think that we're getting into a space where we're directing crisco michigan to do a lot of things of emotion um and i think that

139that i guess i want to ask do we want to vote on this motion amend this motion vote this motion down and direct chris differently and how do you succeed in doing that i think it's best to remember so you don't meet as a full board um until after the convention so it really shouldn't happen here you can you know and then the emotion here as you see fit the emotion right now is just saying that like direct her to vote doesn't say like yay or nay or anything like that just vote on um items one through ten it says vote and support support sorry so we'd have to call out anything we don't want and support on us the three of the two inventions we call on chris christie to not to vote day

140on in those three years go ahead and the vote is representative of the board yes that's not risk and voting on um actually before i met i would like to get clarification on one more resolution that is 2202 annual inflationary or greater increases and for people spend resources on the surface this looks good but ross i'm wondering if you could tell us how this would actually play out certainly so um this resolution is speaking directly to the mechanisms by which current law allows the state to increase either revenue limits or categorical aid in fact it mentions in three different scenarios the rationale list number one is increasing by increasing per people revenue limits two by providing an increase in per people categorical aid which is outside revenue limits or three a combination of either one

141the only context i would want to highlight here is those three scenarios are not equal and given our current situations of declining enrollment and non-recurring exemptions um addition to the purple categorical aid is actually more harmful to our long-term base revenue situation another revenue limit than actually putting on putting money on the per people revenue limit increase itself so if we were to look at amending this language my only suggestion would be to favor the first option over the other two because it would allow us to preserve our base revenue under the revenue limit for longer term thank you ross so ross just to clarify that um is this a big enough change or chris that i would need to add to our amendment that you would would you recommend that chris vote yes for

142this if an amendment doesn't go through it or would you recommend a no vote on it if it's not changed i'm sorry you're asking me i'm asking you oh yes no i would certainly vote if an amendment were not agreed upon i would still recommend voting for it as any increase to our inflationary costs would be appreciated i just wanted to highlight that these three situations are not equal got it okay in that case i'm ready to amend um so my amendment is i move that the board of education direct board representative chris gomeshmit to vote in support of the wasabi 2022 resolutions items 2201 to and against 22 8 to 20 to 10 at the january 22 state education convention delegate assembly meeting paulie muldrow in further discussion mama your advisory vote aye all

143those in favor aye aye aye luke and carries seven zero no business or new business so i will entertain a motion to adjourn so moved second all those in favor i'm sorry nama your advisory vote hi all those in favor aye losing carries 7-0 thank you all so much have a nice night and happy too we'll see you next year thank you