10-25-21 Regular Board of education Meeting -

001oh [Music] all right i'll call this meeting to order we'll start with the reciting of our vision statement every school will be a thriving school that prepares every student to graduate from high school college career and community ready vice president castro do our recognition resolution thank you uh whereas the reagan's family and loving memory of karen and thomas reagan's have generously supported the community of madison and madison metropolitan school district students and the community throughout their lives as parents educators and volunteers whereas the reagan's family has donated up to 1.5 million in support of the west high school pool to augment the funds available through the 2020 facilities referendum whereas the donation provided by the reagan's family will allow the pool to be of greater use to the community students educators athletes coaches and community

002members whereas this gift will have a profound and lasting impact on the madison community now therefore be it resolved that the madison metropolitan school district board of education honors and thanks the reagan's family for their inspiring leadership contributions and true generosity the madison metropolitan school district msd be it further resolved that this statement be permanently imprinted in the board of education minutes for the regular movement of october 25 2021. thank you board vice president castro we're gonna move on to public comment there was one i know that melinda is here too and mr raggett's is here so i just wanted to recognize their presence here at the moment for that and then we will come back to the west pool naming item at the end of the agenda oh thank you so much for highlighting

003that melinda and uh the reagan's family is here thank you all for joining us would you like to speak to the gift before we move on well i'd just like to say uh first off introduce myself so i'm uh eric raggett's i was a west high graduate of and my whole family went through west high school both my brothers did my father at the school and the district has meant a huge amount to us both in terms of our education and my mother in particular's work in the school district so we are honored for uh to to make the gift and just really grateful for all the work that is done by all of you particularly in these difficult times of cobit and all the work that gets done so thank you thank you so

004much for supporting our swimmers melinda would you like to speak just uh gratitude to the board of education to the west high staff and alumni who've been working on this campaign uh the support of the foundation board and most especially of course the raggeds family for their profound impact not only on the west pool but tom senior eric's father was one of our founders so 20 years into our existence we're so proud and humbled to be a part of this family's legacy to this community so just thank you to all concerned and val chesnick i think i think she may be on later but uh val was a former foundation staff person in west alumna who was the person who made the initial contact with eric so i want to recognize her role in this

005as well so thanks everyone oh thank you all so much for joining us this evening and for supporting our school so thank you so much for your generous gift moving forward we're gonna jump to public comment there was one written statement submitted for this meeting opposed to agenda item 10.6 rewarding the bids on mechanicals for the south side elementary and madison memorial high school to a company that was not local or that is not local public appearances we have we have we have five public appearances starting with first one is scott works let him know hi mr bartz whenever you're ready you can begin your statement sir okay um i'm just i'm just calling in to i'm scott bartz i'm with the sheet metal workers local 18 um i'm speaking on behalf of all of

006my members that live in the madison tax district we would like you to pull the pull uh memorial high school and south side elementary school from consideration tonight until more information is gained one of our local contractors that pays taxes madison metropolitan school district didn't even get an interview and we don't we haven't been able to find out why that even is our contractors do a lot of outreach into the schools and our members do and the unions do um trying to work with the madison school district to give opportunities and apprenticeships that type of thing all of our members get paid equal equal pay for equal work um and the contractor that's been pre-selected here um does not do a lot of those things that we're talking about there is no equal pay equal

007there's no contract that that guarantees that i think that's about all you have to say i know there's more people speaking you know you're gonna hear the same thing over and over we're just i'm just respectfully asking that those two schools get pulled until we get more information on on make sure these these proposals are actually apples and apples thank you next speaker is jack white jack white's all ready to hear from you all right hi jack hey are you ready for me we are so ready for you awesome um hey everyone uh my name is jack weitzel my pronouns are she her and hers and i'm the executive director for the building trades council here in madison i represent over four thousand union construction workers i'm here tonight to talk to you about the

008approval of the next round of bids in the school referendum that's on your agenda tonight i'm asking that you table two of the schools for later approval at your next meeting at the southside elementary school and memorial high school we believe that they don't follow policy 5000 which is very important language for our working folks in this community we've reached out to the administration asking for the bids and scope of the projects but we're not given the information to ensure that the policy was upheld the policy states that if a local union contractor was within five percent of the lowest bid they would get a second chance to match the bid on top of this the district also made up scorecards to score each contractor on various aspects of the work they'll be providing for

009example an interview was worth 10 points of the total score and some of our union contractors didn't even get an interview when there were only three contractors in the mix our union contractors only missed the boat by three or four points so we're also wondering if the school board even knew about these scorecards we're also asking that before this board approves these bids that you request the same information that we have and have time to look everything over to make a fully informed decision we're also fully aware that this year alone we're on to the third building and grounds director and we just want to make sure that there is full transparency in the process after it's been handed down three different times lastly i want to talk to you about chavez elementary school a

010non-union contractor was hired for this job and you ended up having to rip it all out due to mold which cost the district over a million dollars and about 70 workers comp claims all because that non-union contractor didn't know what they were doing the reason policy 5000 exists is because we do we have over 80 of all construction apprentices in the state of wisconsin our apprenticeship program in some cases are three times the amount of training hours compared to the non-union apprenticeships a recent study showed that our union apprenticeship program is the equivalent to a bachelor's degree which is 100 paid for by the unions the tuition cost for a non-union apprenticeship becomes a big barrier for women and minorities trying to enter this career path i know this board is also talking about wages

011and being an equitable district so we make 40 percent more than the non-union which includes employee paid health insurance and pension a huge priority for us is helping women and minorities get into the union trades i'm a 26 year old queer woman who has one of the biggest seats at the table in our union construction trades and i'm a direct product of our union values and what i believe you to all value as well so if these issues are important to you i just ask that you please consider tabling these two schools for further discussion uh thank you for your time thank you jack our next speaker is kb amador baby amador we are ready for you unmute hello can you hear me here you are okay sorry um hi i am here representing the

012local 601 steam fitters union as a madison resident and as a family member of current and retired madison public school employees i would like you all to consider hiring a union contractor over the non-union north american mechanical inc otherwise known as nami the reason why is simple it's opportunity and education speaking from experience i'm a female hispanic out fifth year apprentice here at local 601 i went to weld school at madison college where quite a few of our other apprentices have attended before joining the union i reached out to several non-union contractors not once did i receive a call back as you guys notice i go by kb amador now when i was applying for these jobs and i do not know if that's the reason why i went by kimberly um i i do

013not know like i said if that was the reason why that i wasn't getting any callbacks but i joined my local union and was working two weeks later it's important to note this because local 601 wants to diversify their workforce which in turn benefits the madison community local 601 is here for and built from the people of madison in dane county local 601 tries to engage the community and in november i'll be attending a career fair in park street to encourage the youth and young adults to join a union they do this because they want to give the community a chance to make a living wage and have affordable health care local 601 does this by giving every steam fitter apprentice the opportunity and education to become more than a basic equipment installer this five-year

014apprenticeship is designed to turn out the best steam fitters in the industry steam fitters who will each be able to tell when an installation is incorrect steam fitters who will produce the best mechanical systems because they know when correct installation is done and they do this because they teach us related sciences trigonometry for piping basic electricity hydronic systems down to proper use and care tools i've taken over a thousand hours of education for this job what this means is that any journey worker on the job who will be skilled enough to know when something is not being done properly union workers are trained to think we want to make sure the customer gets everything that they paid for and we want to make sure it's properly installed the first time so if someone asks us

015to do something that we know is not correct we're not just going to do it so if a general contractor tells us to do something right away because it needs to be done we're going to stop and say hey that's not how it's supposed to be done we're going to need some more time and i think that's the difference between union and non-union that's it thank you thank you that two more speaker is dave branson you branson we're ready for you okay thank you and thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak my name is dave branson and i am the retired executive director of the building and construction trades council of south central wisconsin when i was in the position of executive director i was contacted by madison schools foundation and asked if

016i would serve on the vote yes to invest committee i had reservations about doing that because i i did come out of western wisconsin i was in western wisconsin before i came here and i worked with the building trades out there there was a project with the building trades out in in western wisconsin in eau claire where the building trades went in and we spent many nights until two o'clock in the morning at both city county council meetings and county board meetings to get a project approved and you know we were assured that we would get a fair shake when at getting to work after that project was approved but in the end we did not get the work they they turned around they gave the work to a non-union contractor but then they turned

017around and they said we have a school referendum coming up and we'd like you to help us get that passed well you know that had left a sour taste in our mouth and and we didn't do it so i had some reservations about it serving on the committee but i was assured that they would be using policy 5000 and i was told that i should contact chad weezy i contacted chad wheezy and had a long talk with him and i set up meetings with chad wheezy and the building trades and fendorf was in those meetings and we were assured that this work was going to be awarded using policy 5000 on this nobody objected in the meeting at that time everybody knew in that meeting that we were going to be using policy 5000 to

018award these bids and you know we went ahead the building trades in a good faith effort because we felt that policy 5000 was going to be used and we felt that our contractors would have a fair shake our uh building trades all got on board with this project everybody uh contributed money to and and worked hard to get the uh the referendum uh um approved you know the building trades has had a long history of uh working with the madison school districts you know we've held our our careers in construction event for like 19 years up until the time we had that pandemic and madison schools would come to that careers in construction was an interactive career fair where we would uh have the students do hands-on uh activities and work with the different members

019of the building trades to learn more about the trades we have also worked with the woods committee and the medal committee with the madison school district we've gone to career fairs in in that they've had in the schools and we've talked to the students we've partnered with wrtp big step wrtp big step has worked with the the uh technical uh education and we've brought the trades in there into the tech ed classes and they've worked with the students and talked to the students about becoming union building trades members so that they could provide for their family get union building trades jobs that are family supporting jobs and that pay pensions and and and health care and we also the the building trades also has a collective bargaining agreement with the madison school district we have

020plumbers steam fitters electricians painters and carpenters that work right for the school district and maintain maintain the schools so you know we've worked hard over the years to build a relationship with the schools and uh you know we would like you to make sure that policy 5000 is used when they're doing these projects the one other thing i'd like to tell you is the benefit of hiring a union contractor we always say is they're going to use a local workforce even if a union contractor comes in from out of town he calls the union and hires a local workforce to come out there and do it these are the the men and women that are in the community working with the community uh coaching soccer you know little league baseball working with the boy scout

021troops and you know they're pillars of the community they stay in the community and work with the community and uh they also have kids that go to the madison school district thank you so much thank you our final speaker is annette alex hello thank you for um taking the time to listen to me tonight i'm here to speak on reading i am 150 in with the science of reading and what you're doing at the elementary level to um teach all children to read i think we're 20 years behind um but let's start i think where the problem becomes more difficult is at the middle in high school and i'm here to speak about the inappropriate use of achieve 3000 at the high school level i do not think that tool is appropriate for high school

022students i think regardless of reading level children have very advanced intellectual levels and that program is um kind of insults their intelligence on june 28th the board approved spending 856 000 on expanding that to 10 000 students including grades 9 and 10. that program was not six is not successful at the middle school level um so i don't see it working at the high school level i asked for data after that meeting and i was told there was no district level data so the decision to expand that was made without data i did later receive one school based data for one middle school and that data has scant proof that most of the struggling readers appear to disappear by the end so you have students like my daughter who has a very high lexile because

023her mother's saying put up and shut up it's a pandemic do what your teacher tells you she does it and her her alexa is going to pull up the average the averages don't increase very much based on the data that i saw and now we're going to apply it to the high school level it is um not an appropriate tool the person administrator who put that software at the board meeting on june 28th i later saw appeared in a virtual uh infomercial for achieve 3000 on um july 22nd where she used her title with the madison school district and implied that that software has been successful in madison i'm not against using it in some context but it has not been successful as far as i can see i am opposed to using it at

024the high school level and then that same administrator is scheduled to speak on november 9th again and achieve 3000 um funded uh i don't know what those relationships are but i just have a question about how those decisions were made to use that at the high school level and i would like to review whether that even is applicable to the high school students i think we do those students an injustice whether they read well or not they are very smart kids they are very highly involved they have lived through a pandemic george floyd a a culture that is packed with news and you're asking them to read artificial intelligence watered down weekly reader articles and be engaged in that so i don't see that it's working and i think it's inappropriate and counterproductive at the

025high school level and possibly at the middle school level i don't know what to do to bring those readers up but um i think it's a different issue at the middle in high school thank you for your time thank you i move that the voice of the facebook the minutes for the regular regular during i moved that the board of education approved the minutes from the regular meeting dated september 27 2021 second nicki van der rohe any discussion all in favor aye oh my your advisory vote i news from around the district uh we are gonna start with the gifted education proclamation from board member gomes schmidt thank you october is recognized in wisconsin as gifted education month by governor tony evers and state superintendent jill underley the proclamation from governor evers can be found

026linked in our agenda in the board president's announcements for tonight's meeting in mmsd we are striving to meet our responsibilities to provide gifted gifted education under the larger umbrella of advanced learning instruction our focus on advanced learning aims to provide appropriate instruction for students beyond grade level expectations while identifying and supporting the talent potential that exists in students from all backgrounds and in every school in our district in addition to academic subjects advanced learning also recognizes talent and potential in the arts leadership and creativity these changes provide a proactive approach to addressing historical disparities by race and income that exist in traditional gifted education we know that talent potential is not determined by zip code in mmsd we want to ensure that advanced instruction is available in all schools across the district for students who

027need additional challenges to meet their learning needs thank you board member gomes schmidt all of us in the mmsd community continue to be energized by celebrating our colleagues accomplishments this year the wisconsin health and physical education association awards also known as the whpe awards were awarded to two exemplary mmsd staff members ian lacasse health teacher and department chair at west high school was awarded the whpe wisconsin's health teacher of the year award and ashley riley mmsd physical education health and wellness coordinator was awarded the whpe wisconsin health and physical education coordinator of the year award and last but not least capitol high marianne matt received the 2021 wisconsin school counselor of the year award and is one of the five finalists for the american school school counselor association counselor of the year national award the

028board congratulates and celebrates all three award recipients and also recognizes the daily accomplishments and endeavor endeavors of all staff working in this district universal mental health day october 22nd i would like to acknowledge that for the first time this past friday we had a universal mental health day that allowed for our entire faculty and staff to celebrate and recognize the need for well-being and mental health as a focus of the district it's a first step in the right direction and hopefully we will continue to work together to promote the well-being of our students faculty and staff and we will now hear from the superintendent so dr jenkins your announcements dr jenkins here on mute okay thank you like the echo board chair in terms of the universal wellness and health day for all of our

029staff just want to say thank you so much to all of our staff for actually taking time out for yourselves to take care of yourselves because we know that's very important as you're coming back and meeting the needs of our students had an opportunity this past weekend to be with our very own board uh student representative nama uh pendy and also gordon allen they participated in a think tank uh convening national convening and i want to say i was so proud of our students how well they represented us and the voices of students as they stood toe-to-toe with uh national scholars and actually talked about how do we move forward and what are some of these barriers in terms of some of the disparities and opportunities that we see within our school systems not only

030here in madison but throughout the nation very proud of them also want to lift the voices of the students that i had an opportunity to meet with over the last two weeks at east high school as they had a very challenging uh situation that the students took and became very much active in letting their voices be heard around us in our community and just across the nation how we deal with sexual violence issues those students stood in and had some very tough conversations with adults in the room and i really am proud of them and i ask that other students that we have throughout the district continue to lift their voices as i've heard from the students at memorial and they leaned forward as we wanted to have our homecoming activities and told me that

031they could do it in a very safe way and i want to thank those students and the other students at other schools as well as we put forth the mitigation strategies and we're able to have a safe home coming so we're very excited uh looking forward to this budget book uh discussion that's going to come up tonight and i have to tell you ross mcpherson has done the job once you see it and we're going to talk about some of our priorities a little bit later but thank you to all of you in the last word i would say thank you to the individuals who came out and spoke up about item tonight 10.16 on our agenda um as you will see come up later we have heard from you and i am recommending and

032we will look at pulling that item for us to have more information i have been talking to the individuals behind the scene but thank you we appreciate when our community members feel safe that they can come in this space and share their thoughts thank you very much all right we'll move on to words on items that proceeded through the instruction work group held on october 4th 2021 board member peterson thank you so during our instructional work group meeting we had some technical difficulties so therefore i just wanted to just note that um if someone is reviewing the meeting that there are two videos to watch um and it should link you to if you're on whichever video to link you to the other video at our meeting we had updates update presentations on early literacy

033and beyond special education and student services and restraint and seclusion um these presentations sparked um robust uh conversations um and then in addition to that we discussed the policy four two two two which is reporting uh child abuse and or neglect um which we will be voting on tonight in addition to policy uh four two two two um we got a policy update and had discussions on policy three three five zero which are field trips um and we are still working on that we will not be voting on that for our november 1st 2021 instructional work group meeting our proposed agenda items are as follows um continuing with the wellness check update on academic plans so english learn language learners advanced learning and black excellence and recommendations from superintendent's academic advisory committee and then state

034of the arts which i'm really excited about um an equity audit updates back to you chairman i very much look forward to that meeting thank you so much so much board member pearson report on items that proceeded through the operation work group held on october 11th 2021 board member carusi carrici thank you the operations recruit met october 11th we discussed changes to our policies on age of students and security cameras we will vote on updated versions of these policies tonight as well as policies discussed in september um those include amending the bep to place a moratorium on elementary suspension transfer policy and our locker room and we discussed our final vote on the 2021-22 budget and tax levy also tonight i want to provide our voice deep gratitude and thanks to ross and his staff

035of her work they've transformed the board and administration's ideas and priorities into a budget that upholds the values in our strategic framework the state handed us an extremely challenging biennial budget and the mmsd budget we are voting on tonight would have no operating increases without the operating referendum that voters approved last fall we are grateful for this investment by our community and our public schools to help control the impact of this budget on property taxes and we are not taxing to the max this budget is 2.57 million dollars under our total revenue limit authority and holds our tax levy increase to just under 2 percent during the course of the referendum we heard from our community that citizens want us to invest in equity and our staff and we've put together a budget that reflects

036the feedback the budget includes a full base wage increase of 1.23 percent and fully funded step and lane increases for employees it maintains stability and health insurance coverage with ghc and dns providers and no increases in employee health insurance premiums it also includes investments in excellence and equity designed to close opportunity gaps highlights of these equity investments include full-day 4k at eight high needs elementary schools with the greatest percentage of low-income students curriculum updates professional development in evidence-based reading instruction daily world language instruction for 7th and 8th graders in all our middle schools restorative justice as part of a holistic approach to safety in our high schools competitive wages for mscr seasonal workers free menstrual products for students an investment in student social and emotional learning including more middle and high school counselors and expanded

037mental health supports at the elementary level this budget includes nearly 19 million dollars in federal covered relief funding including instruction and continued mitigation strategies to keep everyone safe and healthy finally this budget reflects growing enrollment in independent charter and private voucher schools which impacts our ability our ability to serve students in mmsd schools this year over six million dollars of our budget will go directly to these choice schools without an equivalent increase in per pupil revenue i'm not going to hand this over to ross to provide details about the revenue side of the budget good evening everyone uh thank you chris this fall budget is aligned with the voices of our community the community has told us they want the referendum funds to support the needs of our students and facilities as chris mentioned we

038have a deep focus on early literacy and will be providing the district's first ever full day 4k program while investing in high quality diverse staff and social emotional and mental health supports for students last year was very challenging for all k-12 districts across the state and in the country we entered our budget planning in the spring understanding that our enrollment had shifted and we needed to adapt our level of services across the board to continue providing instruction to all of our students it is true that the november referendum is our only stable reliable recurring source of revenue for this year this budget relies on re-evaluating prior year budgets and repurposing existing funds to new uses it also invests operating referendum funds and federal esser funds towards student learning and social emotional needs additionally the budget

039we're discussing tonight is balanced and keeps the fiduciary responsibility to the taxpayer by holding our tax increase to under two percent the fall budget for operating funds funds 10 and 27 for the 22 21 22 school year is 479 million dollars net of interfund transfers when including our other budgetary funds including our debt service food service and community service funds the district's fall budget is 537 million dollars net of interfund transfers a 1.5 percent increase from the 2021 fall budget the fall budget document includes the average impact of the taxpayer in the appendix due to some adjustments and state valuations for equalized value our district total valuation has fallen 0.43 despite the housing market increasing at an average rate of 6.3 percent for the city of madison the impact on our mill rate is an

040increase of 27 cents to dollars and forty cents the average homeowner will see an estimated increase of three hundred and twelve dollars on their tax bill while we have no control over equalized valuation we continue to work with the city of madison and the department of revenue to identify the cause of this trend in future budget years i'll hand it back over to chris thanks ross the next operations workgroup meeting is scheduled for november 8th and our agenda items include an update on food service class size and enrollment thanks thank you board member carusi i moved that the board of education approved the revisions to board policy 4222 reporting child abuse or neglect as set forth in the documents prepared for the regular board meeting dated october 25th 2021. second nicki van der rohe any

041discussion remember commissionet yes there was just one thing that i was going to request um that sherry had um in all of these policy revisions that we're doing we are adding references um to wisconsin state statutes and our own procedures and and other policies that reference these and there was one um that i think we meant to add that that got missed here and it's the the procedures the mmsd um sherry maybe you can get the title actually i had to pull it to actually um come up with the title is the child abuse and neglect guidance reporting uh phone numbers and procedures and you are correct i forgot to add that to our reference point so i'll add that jerry do we need to amend in order for you to add it or yes

042yes so remember gomez schmidt do you want to amend language to add that moving forward yes give me one second and chris if you're just looking for the actual title of it before you make the motion so you can state it um you can just reference what i said and i can read it again okay is it the child abuse and neglect reporting guidance is that what the document is called it's child abuse and neglect guidance reporting phone numbers and procedures okay um i would like to make an amendment that we add to policy 422 in the reference section um reference to [Music] the child abuse and neglect one more time sure terry can you help me one more time child abuse and neglect guidance reporting phone numbers and procedures reporting guidance phone numbers and

043procedures second second nicki van impe any discussion you know my year advisory vote hi all those in favor motion carries seven zero all right [Music] we voted on the amendment and because the amendment passed it changes the motion i think you have to read the motion so do i need to read the motion again with the amendment and we vote again it can be done together and i think that was your intention so that was my intention on the amendment and then go back and vote on the original option as amended if you want to vote twice okay or if you can eat twice or you can just have the friend i think the friendly amendment okay guys ali accepts it yeah you're right good idea you're right so the friendly amendment is what um

044chris offered and you accepted it and so by accepting that friendly amendment to your you don't need to vote you don't need to vote as yeah you don't need to vote twice are folks comfortable with that if we move forward would folks like to vote on the original motion it's a friendly amendment yeah all right i moved that the board of education revised policy 6061 budget transfers as set forth into the documents prepared for the regular board meeting dated october 25th 2021 second thank you board member astro any discussion number your advisory vote aye all those in favor all right motion carry 7-0 i move that the board of education revised board policy 6702 surveillance cameras including uh middle change to security cameras as set forth in the documents prepared for the regular board meeting

045dated october 25th 2021. second nikki randomly one any discussion board member vandermellen thank you thank you and thank you for amending this there's no reason ever cameras in our schools and we finally have it codified so they will not be and it's greatly greatly appreciated thank you so much board member vanderbilt i appreciate it as well any other conversation or discussion remember gomez schmidt yes and i'm just trying to pull up on board docs here the the proposed final um there had been a proposal um to add the last the last paragraph this policy specifically prevents the forbids the placement of hidden cameras and then there was some additional language that had been added around there around staff performance but i don't see it in the final draft um i can read it to you

046i think i know what you're referencing um it's in the last sentence and the third paragraph it says notwithstanding the mmsd's ability to place security cameras in public places the district will not use surveillance cameras to appraise staff performance [Music] yes that that was something that i'm also going to propose a friendly amendment um i think one of the questions around that was um the word surveillance cameras was in there and also i think we need to to clarify a little bit more um around the the staff performance because i i think the suggestion for that was specifically around um educator effectiveness and within that framework so i'd like to propose that we change that to the district will not use security cameras to evaluate staff within the educator effectiveness framework security or surveillance security

047because i don't i i think we changed all of the language in this policy to be security cameras um and i don't think there are there are any surveillance camera references in this policy that is correct board member carusi thank you um so i was the one who recommended the sentence i think i'm comfortable with the use of security cameras instead of surveillance cameras because we've pretty much banned these of any surveillance cameras through this policy however i disagree with [Music] performance review and we also are performing our evaluating staff based on their cultural competency now for example and um i don't think we should be using security or security cameras which are not a good means of capturing a record of somebody's performance to evaluate staff performance at all it is possible that we

048would need to use a security camera to investigate staff misconduct and i don't think this policy prohibits that so i would argue to leave staff performance in place and not change it to educator effectiveness because i think it's too narrow so i just want to say that uh foreign does not have a second for the amendment uh board member morelli oh i'm sorry i thought i thought i saw your hand up amanda apologies any other discussion do you accept that as a friendly amendment i can't accept an amendment as a second and i'm not seconding the amendment if the amendment is not seconded it dies on the floor so i i'm going to read the original motion um i'm sorry fordham foreign no i just wanted to ask if um um talking about the the

049educator effectiveness the cultural competency part is included in the educator effectiveness evaluation at this point it's not just isn't it um educator effectiveness is a program put up by the state and by dpi and cultural companies its competency is something that mmsd has added okay so i wouldn't necessarily assume that those two are the same thing okay what made it too narrow in the way i was it's part of uh performance overall it is part of performance overall yes absolutely the performance might sound better it'll be better so i still don't have a second for the amendment i am going to read the original motion if we don't have further discussion of this motion i'm going to ask folks to vote i move that the board of education revised board policy 6702 surveillance cameras including

050a title change to security cameras as set forth in the documents prepared for the regular meeting dated october 25th 2021. second second commander all those in favor motion carries 7-0 i move that the board of education revised policy 4013 age of students as set forth in the document prepared for the regular board meeting october 25th 2021 second second chris christie any discussion nominal your advisory vote hi all those in favor motion carry 7-0 i moved that the board of education revised board policy 6710 locker rooms as set forth in the documents prepared for the regular uh any discussion i remember carusi i think there is a typo in this policy that changes the meaning of it slightly so i want to get some clarification on that it's um the first sentence under item number two

051it says accept is provided herein no cameras video records wireless recordings dot dot dot it goes on i think it should say video recorders not video records is that correct sherry um yes it should be recordings you are correct i can make that change in that case i would like to propose a friendly amendment to change that sentence under item number two in the policy to read video recorders second any discussion normally your advisory vote i all those in favor [Music] motion carries 7-0 i move that the board of education revised policy 4502b behavior education plan as set forth in the documents prepared for the regular meeting dated october 25th 2021. second nicki vandermeer thank you board member vander millen any discussion board member for russia um so i want to start by saying that

052i firmly believe that this change of the bep is the right thing to do and at the same time i'm hearing concern at the school level that while this change is a good thing to do and um there's we're making it at a time when our schools are understaffed at many schools our social workers and psychologists are currently filling in for other staff vacancies and they have less time to support students who may be facing trauma or who otherwise might need [Music] one of the many criticisms of the bep when it was first introduced that it was a really important change that was not backed by adequate resources um i think it's not enough to say that we will stop doing something if we're truly centering this decision on students we also must ensure that

053every child who needs support from a psychologist or a social worker or another professional gets that support um this change to the bep goes into effect tomorrow i just want to ask if you [Applause] support every child who is struggling with trauma or other challenges at this time but remember lucy are you directing your question at the administration yeah this is just a question for the administration before dr jenkins would you like me to jump in uh just a second uh yes i would dr esther in just a moment but i want to say first of all thank you for raising that um particular perspective of some of the staff members but i've had a conversation as early as uh this morning with some administrators just about where we are in this pandemic and how

054we're going to try to lean forward together respecting the fact that we know that we have a dual pandemic going on but we're trying to lean forward together and get to another space uh that said we don't see ourselves coming out of this pandemic any time soon and how do we continue to ensure that our students and staff we're taking care of their social emotional mental health well-being but leaning forward together because also during these times we want to make sure that we don't have a culture in place climate in place but those students who are also being harmed by this pandemic are continuing to experience devastating a devastating response from us just because we have not made the necessary adjustments and i think dr esser can speak to it now in terms of some

055of the things that we're trying to do we had shortages before the pandemic and we were adjusting and i don't see the shortages given the national situation right now stopping tomorrow or next week so if not now then when will we start to appropriately create environments so that all of our students can feel safe our staff can feel safe and we can do what's in the best interest of all so dr ansa if you could follow up please yeah thank you dr jenkins uh very well said i appreciate your leadership um i wanna also um just uh help ground us in volume and scope right now there are so few out of school suspensions at our elementary school level that i can't even report them um that means we are less than seven out of

056school suspensions right now so i just wanna i wanna connect us and remind us that we are talking about a very small number of suspensions that are occurring in the first place i also just want to remind us that while yes we are facing staffing shortages which are impacting our our responsibilities as social workers and psychologists as we work all hands on deck to ensure students um can be safely served and can engage in deep academic and social emotional teaching and learning the behavior education plan and support around behavior doesn't just rest on those two individuals behavior systems are built as a crux and a foundation of a school deeply rooted in the the work of a school-based leadership team and the overall work of developing a high quality culture and climate where students feel

057safe and that they belong so yes we are facing this double pandemic and as a result we are facing the need to do our work differently and pitch in in different ways but we feel so strongly that our schools and our students have our schools and our staff have already been doing this work and that we have the communication systems the professional development systems the reciprocal feedback systems and support systems in place to make this work and again we're talking a very small number of kids thank you so much for speaking to that dr esser board member vandermeelen um sorry i have to replug in my computer so one second um basically i'm gonna argue on two different points one covid if we low out of school suspensions we just had the kids home where

058they we can't track them necessarily that means we can't track where they are we can't track covet exposure that provides more work for contract tracers and puts more kids at risk that's number one that's the logical one now i'm gonna go what i'm normally doing which is the emotional one and that's this it's taken 31 years for the ada to pass that it's still not been carried out completely i'm not willing to wait any as many years as necessary before we decide that children with disabilities children who are black and brown children who don't fit inside a box are able to be able to get the accommodations they need so they fit into a general school building there are going to be some teachers there are going to be some staff will never accept certain

059students it doesn't matter what is done they will never will i i'm sick of giving to the minority of teachers who will instead our schools are designed for everyone that's what the law says everyone gets a free appropriate public education it's what we say in disability law and everyone deserves this education and it needs our students need to feel safe the best way to do that is we can't treat them in a way which they are treated as a criminal where 48 are suspended at one point it was 64 and that doesn't even take into account those with uh who are black and brown and disabled very simply times now where it's not going to happen [Music] and seem like that thank you so much for speaking to the intersectionality of the issue board member

060van der meulen uh board member castro yeah thank you uh i am in support of this um as dr esther appointed two you know this is a well this is a one step of money to start to dismantle the school of prison pipeline um and begin to end the disenfranchisement that our black and brown students experience in our school systems um and you know as we have our upcoming budget uh build our budget for next year the uh appropriate responses to trauma will certainly be a theme in those budget discussions um and from the existing research i've read um sending someone out of school is not the appropriate responsible trauma um and so we will continue to invest in uh trauma-informed responses uh to meet the needs of our students further discussion about my schmidt

061yeah thank you and um i wanted to thank um bryn martinez sarah kennedy and dr lee ester for the memo that you provided um that was attached to this policy update um one of the things that that i noticed out of this memo is is that it says that to actualize this change which we are striving for and you know the elementary schools have been working on this for a long time and so like dr esser i appreciate you saying that this is a very small number of students um per year that this that this will um affect um but it says in here that to actualize this change our schools need support and i appreciate the the survey that you did of of principals and and staff in in our schools um of the

062responses you know the number one response was that adequate staffing with clearly defined roles was needed and also in their support and communicating the message of how this is going to be implemented to families and support with addressing the severe behaviors that may happen you know just occasionally and so what i i'd like to know is how how are we responding to those staff concerns as we move forward with this and i guess that's a question for bran or for dr asser dr jenkins i see your hand raised so i want to defer to you first no you can go ahead i had it on another point okay sounds good thank you um so chris i think i think um that our our approach to this like like everything we're doing um even our work

063in our schools is is multifaceted right we think about what we can provide to all all staff and folks in buildings that will help meet their needs in order to understand this moratorium what their options are reminders of the universal practices and tools in their toolbox all of those concrete and tangible supports and resources that we've provided throughout the years that we continue to lift up so for example using a train the trainer model to support um our our student and staff supports team to reinforce concepts that we have been talking about for the last several years around universal systems supports and how we promote and manage behavior at school from there our schools still have in place robust uh systems of support where they can access additional support through their ssit problem solving intervention

064team our student and staff support team in central office is deeply connected back to those those student and support teams and are available for support and consultation so our social workers and psychologists know how to access the leaders in central office for problem solving and support additionally our intensive support team is ready prepared and willing to support in situations where there are intense behaviors and and more as needed the great thing about brin's role is that bryn serves in this sort of intermediary role where she gets information very fast from schools as well so some of these supports that i talked about require time or just coordination whereas brynn has real-time information when very serious things are happening and is able to make those connections back to our department as a whole and we can

065get in those spaces and get on the ground and support staff schools and principals in order to really address very serious things that might emerge and so i guess i'll just follow up again so with that adequate staffing and clearly defined roles have our um each one of our schools have had the time to define those roles within the guidance and resources that they're being given and they're ready to do that tomorrow chris i think this is where we do have to acknowledge the double pandemic that we're facing and the fact that role clarity and role alignment is not something that we're able to provide as consistently as we would like to in our elementary schools but also recognizing if the time is not now when is it and it whether we have to it's

066really making that decision and balancing which it's the urgency it's really i mean it when it comes down to it it's balancing that urgency our our school-based social workers just today are telling us we're ready um we can do this um in their professional development so while not not the individuals that that spoke can't necessarily speak for the entire group what we are hearing um across the the group is that that we're ready to take this on and that this isn't more than we can handle right now but but i would be remiss um and i would be inauthentic by saying that role alignment is an area where with the pandemic it is a challenge yeah i would just like to add to that and i think i said it earlier if not now than

067when dr king in one of his quotes talked about our tomorrow is today uh we're in the midst of a pandemic we realize that we're in the midst of a health pandemic that just came about right over the last 19 months we've been in a social justice pandemic since the beginning of america's time and it's time for us to address some of these issues we don't have everything perfect and i don't think everything is going to be perfect two years from now but i think what nikki was saying in terms of our students with disabilities we have situations we're working it out together and i have to commend the many staff who are working it out and i'm offering up those staff who have the best practices in place to share their knowledge with other

068staff but we can't keep holding off our students are getting harmed every day that we push things back in this particular part in terms of the role alignment we're pivoting i think we can do better we can give a little bit more of a forecast now to what we could 18 19 months ago but in terms of dealing with this issue and talking about a moratorium on suspensions we are ready to move forward we have been working collaboratively with everyone there will never be a hundred percent of people saying yes pull the trigger today to get it done but i as dr esther has eloquently stated we are at a space right now where we can move this forward and i think it's necessary for us as a district to move forward because we have

069some other things on the horizon that's coming too and we don't know we hope we can stay in school with all the mitigation strategies we put in place but i would hate for us to go out again being virtual and have not done everything we can to advance the amount of minutes that we have with personal contact with staff in our school so the time is really tomorrow as dr king said is today we can't keep doing this board member castro and then foreign oh i just wanted to say that you know as as we're looking to approve this budget you know when i when i'm asking the questions about adequate staffing i i want to see this work and ready for this change to be made but i want to know as we start

070another budgeting process how are we going to determine what that adequate staffing is and how we need to move forward so i guess as we look to approve this what evaluation pieces are in place that we're going to see this coming back to us to determine if we have what we need to make this work well remember castro yeah um again just want to emphasize the current literature and research um on this issue that out of school suspension is not an effective tool to uh improve behavior and so we know that we're about to start a new budget cycle and we're going to find out what it takes board member morelli thank you so much president modro um i been listening into this conversation i wanna i really appreciate a lot of what my colleagues

071have shared so far but i will say that if there is no other lesson that this pandemic has uh given us or provided an opportunity for us to engage in is this uh attachment that we have to get it right to get it perfect um we know that that you know we had to let go a lot of that uh during the pandemic which we're still are on and so i really appreciate dr esther's pointing out to us um the fact that we are not uh we're not tricking our staff uh and we're not tricking and lying to our community to say we know what's going to happen we know how to do this right we're saying uh you know we need our staff and our community and our our students and and our families

072to to engaging with us in this in this period of of growth in the spirit of of a high level of engagement in the spirit of healing and also the spirit of grieving what's no longer uh uh supportive of of our district and our staff and our young people and so i wanted to just remind ourselves to the characters of white supremacy which includes perfection you know perfectionism which includes uh this false binary of right and wrong uh and i i just wanted to say this to you you know when we um when we engage in this uh going to to do this virtual uh enterprise and any and going you know staying at home and working from home and learning from home which many individuals in our community engaged in we uh we had

073a lot of unknowns and we're still in the space of a lot of unknowns so i just wanted to highlight that uh and uh and appreciate this moment of growth that this that my colleagues and also this team is engaging thank you so much president mojo for this opportunity to speak on this thank you board member morelli board member thomas schmidt yeah thank you i just wanted to clarify that i am definitely not looking for poor perfection in um that we're trying to implement but i think when we have a survey that says that our staff number one is concerned with adequate staffing and fully defined roles in order to implement this successfully that we really do have to look at that and so that is what my my questions were to make sure that

074our staff are ready to do this the professional development with the um counselors psychologists social workers pbs coaches happen today and so i'm glad to hear that there was a consensus that our schools are ready to move forward on this just wanted to make sure that everybody else in the school is ready to move forward on this too thank you so i will chime in because i think we've had this conversation in a lot of ways for a long time and the primary question i've asked when we've talked about suspension is what are the benefits what are the good results promoted by suspending and particularly disproportionately suspending black children and children with disabilities and black children with disabilities and i've asked brynn that question in front of most of this board over and over again

075over the years and i have never gotten any answer so if we have something that is not working for students that is not promoting any positive outcomes in terms of in terms of behavior and is in fact making things worse not just for the students who are suspended but for the students to observe the disproportionate suspension of their black classmates and their classmates with disabilities and their black classmates and brown classmates with disabilities that is harmful um so i think we have to stop engaging in a harmful practice um in 2016 every single student that we suspended from 4k was a black boy and that is addressing we're talking about kids ages four to ten we're not talking about the entire district talking about our youngest learners um and i think that it is going

076to take a tremendous amount of work to do this and so i really appreciate my fellow board members who are emphasizing supporting staffing and supporting the needs of our teachers to make sure this is successful um i think that needs to continue to be an area in which we focus on but as far as the ma the moratorium on suspension um i am in complete support of it i think it's the right thing to do and i think it is important that we continue to listen to our educators um as we move in this direction and that's that's all i'll say so if there's further just discussion i'd i'd love to hear from y'all otherwise i'm gonna bring us to a vote remember castro yeah thank you you know i think it's kind of it's

077it's interesting how concerns get elevated to individual board members um the primary concern i heard was why is this even a discussion we aren't going big enough i mean we're talking about a key component of the school of prison pipeline which goes on to affect people for the rest of their lives by disenfranchising them from an education um and so when we're talking about trying to improve healthy behavior in our schools we have to go deeper than just kicking someone out or even just the the perception that uh for some reason black boys uh have uh a disposition of more unhealthy behavior in general you know this is deep like we gotta go deep here so yeah thank you board member castro board member i'm sorry board member morelli and then board member being rebuilt

078i'm in full support of our president and vice president i would like to call to question to a vote thank you so much for for getting us to the vote board member morelli uh board member vander millen i think you're the last person we're going to hear for i just want to elevate what savion said because it's an important voice in this conversation because frankly that's a voice i can't speak from and most of us can't speak from and i would like to elevate it very simply behavior is communication and if we continue to punish communication we will only strengthen the school of the prison pipeline there is no other way about it now imagine if someone's non-verbal what are you gonna see that behavior as you're gonna see it as a threat are you

079gonna see that as someone to be helped unfortunately stereotypes do play a role in this i'm not discounting our staff who are working their butts off and i understand and i want to do absolutely everything possible at the same point i can't i don't think any of us can afford to wait that's all i have enough all right i'm going to read the motion again and ask someone a second i move that the board of education revised policy 45 02b behavior education plan is set forth in the documents prepared for the regular board meeting dated october 25th 2021. second sorry nama your advisory vote all those in favor aye motion carries seven zero all right i move that the board of education approve and adopt the 2021-2022 as presented the materials for the october 25th

0802021 regular board meeting in the following amount total revenue for all funds net of inter funds transferred million six hundred thirty five thousand seven hundred and seventy six total expenditures for all funds net of interfund transfer 537 million 995 501. second nicki matara second board member val vander muelen any discussion board member carusi and then board member again thank you so um i actually have four questions two are about staffing and two are about fun balance um i'll start with my staffing question the budget we received on thursday has a 7.7 fte increase in non-union professionals from the june budget based on the notes in the staffing plan table it looks like the increase is due to the reorganization of omge into the cni the curriculum and instruction department and that's a pretty significant increase

081in non-union professionals tell us about those new positions and how that through reorganization certainly uh so let me start by saying that yes i did flag that in the the table for the staffing plan in the budget book on page 39 i believe you're looking at unless you're looking at the summary on page 36 probably 36 if you're a reference like the non-union uh you're correct the main change in that area is due to the fact that we had a number of teacher leader positions identified in the omge department or what was formerly the omg department that moved over to the literacy team in cni and some of those changes did indeed result in a changing classification of staff to uh teacher leader to non-union professional if if you need uh i don't have my

082all my notes in front of me at this minute but i can certainly outline what those changes were at a later date if you would like to see that that might be nice thank you okay certainly my second staffing question um let me see the increase in nurses and social workers in the budget however i am concerned to see that um special education early childhood and pst staffing appears to have decreased by 7.3 fte since we voted on the draft preliminary budget in june um special education is an area where where we are chronically understaffed um i was just wondering if you could tell us more about the decision to reduce the number of staff in this area are you speaking to the table on page 39 yeah let me i can double check so

083yeah i i anticipated that question as well um one of the issues with the teacher table is that the way our student services staffing plan is put together is we give the authority of building level staff or building level administrators excuse me to flex their teacher allocation with sca allocation and depending on the year and the number of identified ieps in a building a principal may elect to have more teachers or more seas depending on their building makeup so while the teacher complement in special education on this page appears to be going down i know that the special ed total fte has not gone down um at the same level this is just reflective of the teacher change on this table alone it's a little confusing because the label for this line is special ed

084and cross categorical and i assume cross categorical with cc teachers that's correct that's correct so are the i guess my question then would be if they're flexing are they flexing with regular ed teachers or cc teachers cc teachers and then would that mean that that would shift into the top of the table or would that shift or would that flexing stay on it it would shift to the at assistant line which in again if you if you go back to page 36 you'll notice that assistant line appears to be going down as well that is that's not exactly the same impact as that line contains seas eas parent liaisons nurse assistants and the entire complement under the ea group i'm just saying that the the line on page 39 in the budget table this has

085special last categorical and early childhood and pst that line appears to have dropped by 7.3 fte and if i just assumed if they had shifted into cc teachers from sca's then it stayed on the same line there so that's why i was confused okay again if we'd like if you'd like to we can look at the uh over under from the june budget i have those all uh itemized if we need to go through them in more detail at the end of the day i just want to ensure that we have adequate staffing for special education built into this budget understood yes um then my questions about um fund balance the first one is about the additional fund balance that's in this budget over what we anticipated in june i think we're about 18.8 million

086dollars higher um where are we at um in regards to the 15 policy ceiling specified in um the board policy 6071. correct and um i do apologize i have a memo that i owe the board regarding year-end financials and fund balance um that outlines a lot of this question but i'll go through it for this discussion just so we're on the same page um at year end this year we did add approximately 20.5 million dollars to our fund balance however we identified and predicted a lot of this excess in june and actually leading into june discussions and started to prepare our assigned fund balance discussion in advance of that eventuality uh last year as we all knew and expected there were a number of things we wanted to do and a number of things we

087couldn't do we'd had supply chain problems we've had staffing and hiring problems and last year we drastically underspent several areas of the budget as a result of those factors um excuse me while i change to a different chart here so for year end june 30th 2021 we did at approximately 2.5 million dollars to the general fund about two or three three-quarters of that excess is due to either unfilled positions or uh temporary positions that were unable to be spent due to a number of reasons mostly to school closings so for example we budget millions of dollars on substitute teachers last year and we had almost no capacity to hire substitute teachers for many of the positions that we had last year we attributed about four million dollars to unfilled teaching positions throughout the year uh

088just about five million dollars in employee benefits uh two million dollars was directly attributable to substitute teachers we were unable to fill that year and two million dollars was attributed to custodians at ea vacancies and uh unused temporary time in addition to that there were a number of non-personnel savings throughout the district that i'll go through and brief here we had a utility savings of approximately seven hundred thousand dollars due to one-time savings due to school closures and not need to keep the set point for heat as high as we normally would transportation savings of approximately three million dollars due to covet 19 and bus routes not running as expected and approximately 960 000 related to 4k provider payments that did not occur due to off-site provider closures and reduce student counts uh that result

089in the year-end puts our fund balance at year end last year at approximately 22 percent which yes is too high so we've been working on a plan and we did discuss this in june about addressing a lot of assigned fund balance knees due to things we either couldn't do last year or need to accomplish this year that involved an additional million dollars in curricular materials um and this is all listed at the bottom of page 156 in the budget book by the way uh school formula carryover for unutilized funding the buildings had at their disposal for last year but couldn't use because we didn't reopen until fourth quarter uh approximately 2.1 million dollars for an hvac project at kennedy elementary science curriculum that we were unable to get filled by the end of last year

090at approximately 966 000 uh trucks and equipment back orders of approximately four hundred and fifty thousand dollars that we were unable to fill due to computer chip shortages and unable to get them through the dealership in time about um 200 2.5 million dollars in building services projects we did not get accomplished during last fiscal year and in addition to school formula budgets in the fall budge in the fall planning of about 950 000 dollars specifically for school principal use to address reopening and covered mitigation needs that were unforeseen at the time of our reopening uh there's a second item on the list you'll see here too that we're going to be discussing later this spring um we're i'm working with natalie roo our comptroller to put together and pma our financial advisors to put together

091an additional debt defeasance plan out of an assigned fund balance to get rid of the remainder of our wrs debt under fund 38. so if all all those things considered we have about 18.9 million dollars in identified assigned fund balance needs in the fund balance table on page 156 so for the ending year ending next year june 30th 2022 we are aiming for approximately a 17 fund balance which yes is still above board policy but we are anticipating and hoping to get our number back down within board policy very soon thank you for that detailed explanation for us i really appreciate that um just out of curiosity [Music] i'm sorry chris i missed most of your comment i couldn't hear your microphone i'm sorry um the 22 figure that you gave us earlier does that

092not include a signed fund balance our policy says that the signed fund balance doesn't get included in that ceiling calculation so you are correct i am including everything in the fund 10 fund balance so if i were to just use the unassigned fund balance that would be off of the 70 million figure not the 156. i would need to quickly pivot and try and calculate that percentage on the fly here but i can do that if we have a minute here sure i can ask something as well that's fine i gonna ask do you want me to move to dr jenkins because not your jenkins says had his hand up in response sure i do have one more question about fun balance though i'll come back to you dr jenkins if you want to speak

093then we'll come back to you then we'll get the percentage from ross actually i had dr mcfenter who wanted to speak when she was asking the question relative to the special ed flexibility that ross explained at the billing level and those fte so dr will fenty if she could thank you very much dr jenkins and thank you very much for the question about special education funding um special education staffing and i just wanted the board of education to be aware that in student services and special education funding we have a variety of funding sources which i'm sure you're all aware and one of them is flow through funding and we have flow-through funding available this year to support our schools that don't have adequate staffing so since third friday count we have been adding staffing

094at multiple schools both special education assistants as well as cross-categorical special education teachers so i just wanted people to be aware that we have been working to respond to those needs myself as well as the rest of the special education administrative team has been going out to schools some of that subbing and some of it visits and meeting with principals assistant principals and our program support teachers so we have added quite a few special education assistants and cross categorical special education teachers to our schools using the flow-through funding that we have available in student services so i just wanted people to be aware that we are working to respond to those needs thank you so much for that that helps a lot i appreciate that chris do we want to see if ross was that

095fast in terms of calculating i i do um so uh chris i may need to clarify this with our existing board policy so i'm gonna give you two figures one is the percentage of the unassigned fund balance against our operating funds 1027 which is what we would typically use for this measure uh so the 70 million against the fall budget of 2021 which would have been 446 million one hundred and forty seven thousand eighty eight dollars would put us at about fifteen point seven five percent of the fall fund balance for the fall budget if i use just fun 10 and do not include fund that would be about 19.4 which would be just fun 10 excluding fun 27. thank you for that math on the fly ross i appreciate it um the board policy

096uh our board policy on fund balance states that should the unaudited year-end sun balance of the district grow above the maximum general fund balance of 15 the board shall develop a plan and timelines to budget equally to properly restore the fund balance to the maximum so this is something we need to work on um clearly for now we're going to continue to be over and i think this is something we need to take up during the course of this year um i also have a question um this is more just a statement i think about a signed fund balance i just noticed in this budget that you had added the additional 9 million i think it is for um wrs debt defeasance which i think is a great thing to do it's a good use

097of our fund balance and on the other hand um i'm wondering if we need to put something on the agenda to revisit um policy 6071 because i'm a bit confused about how like who has the authority to assign fund balance and is this actually potentially going to turn into a situation where fund balance can get assigned without board input like we haven't actually had an agenda discussion about um using fund balance for that death defeasance and yet we're it's it's in the budget it's printed that we're going to do that um which concerns me a little bit i feel like we might need to look at our processes for um assigning fund balance and maybe like formalize it so the board has to have a conversation about how we assign fund models before it gets

098voted on understood and yeah you're correct that was a discussion i had hoped to bring back um but i'm putting a little carpet for the horse here on this discussion but that is that is fair we'll bring that to a future operations work group further discussion thank you that's all my comments thank you board member everyone yes i'm very concerned on this budget i'm voting for it my concerns are as follows one our teachers need a lot of help they are going through a lot of stress and i have known quite a few who have quit i worry about this greatly two we have numerous special ed issues one that was just covered on um channel 3000 today about not providing iep services which probably isn't going to help us any in making sure that

099services are met i worry and on a lot of things what i wish we could do and i hope we could do is to create a fun balance plan that helps us that one make sure our ieps are not only translated into language they need to be so that way everyone can understand it two make sure they're done and three provide a statement especially those for bilingual educators and educators who are bilingual specialized educators as well they have some of the hardest jobs and the hardest jobs to kill those are the ones that i'm really worried about i'm also worried about our staff that both east and lothal that keep getting emails saying they're feeling overwhelmed money can't fix everything and i understand that but we're gonna have to build in wellness days not just

100mental health days but also a few more wellness days as well because staff are afraid they're afraid to take them they're afraid it will fact negatively and we're losing them so i'm voting for this budget but i'm saying if we don't take care of our staff if we don't make them the priority if we don't make sure that things like cost of living steps and lanes and things that they rely on are covered we're not going to have a staff left and then i want a anti-racist school i want to be one of the most diverse best schools systems there is but i can't get the best of the brightest i can't get teachers of color if we're not willing to pay them what they're worth and right now that's not what we're doing and

101so that's what i'm really concerned about thank you for allowing me to speak up said topic board member vandermelen i greatly appreciate your remarks i do want to just uh just for the the sake of kind of the factual reality of this budget acknowledge that this budget includes steps in lanes and this budget pays cost of living to the max that is legally allowable i meant for next year i'm sorry i misspoke and i apologize i meant i just think it's important to be clear yes we are passing tonight open steps and lanes and includes cost of living to the max allowable by law and i appreciate that now let's hope we can continue that and i know we've done a heck of a job frankly what board is working better as a group than

102we would ever have and i've been on four hours thank you so much for remember vanderbilt other discussion remember goldman schmidt yeah thank you um baldur i just wanted to make a quick comment again um focusing on the staffing plan i in just reviewing that i just wanted to acknowledge that when we were back in june we were predicting that we were going to have to decrease our fte by 30 and where we're landing in this budget we're actually increasing the fte or remaining stable and so i i just wanted to clarify with ross that's due to a stabilization using esser funds and being able to maintain our staffing um you know despite the pandemic and despite a loss of enrollment just that that we have been able to um stabilize our staff in our

103schools and as board president mulder pointed out provide both the steps and lanes and the the maximum allow allowable cost of living adjustment for this year so ross is that is that accurate with the staffing fte that is accurate so what you're seeing a lot of the june to now changes involved plans that were in place in our june budget for a vote and discussion materializing into positions that were uh conceived but not yet set up at the time of that discussion so you're seeing a lot of the ft coming into place for social work supports nursing services i've been working with dr esser and wendy to identify our lead coveted nurse communicable disease nurse mscr nurse to ensure that we have uh contact tracers all those ft are now materializing in the budget whereas

104they were not in place in june but the dollars were so you are correct a lot of what you're seeing is federal dollars creating some of these um temporary or at least hopefully not temporary roles for uh stabilization for our staff thank you for that clarification and just want to say thank you overall for all the work that has gone into bringing us to this point where we are approving this budget this is the first time i've been through an entire budget process um with this board and um with the mmsd administration and i just want to say i i truly appreciate how much work goes in to making this happen for our district thank you any further discussion nama your advisory vote hi all in favor function carries 7-0 i further move that the

105board of education certify the 2021-2022 all funds tax levy in conjunction with the 2021-2022 budget in the total tax levy amount of 356 million nine hundred and three thousand ninety five dollars which consists of the following subs suspect specific i'm so sorry oh specific sub components fun 10 general fund 171 7715 fund 38 non-refundable debt service i'm sorry none referendum debt service three million six hundred sixty seven thousand seven hundred and eighty three fund 39 referendum approved debt service 18 million six hundred thousand twenty two or six hundred twenty two thousand eight hundred and fifty six fund forty one capital expansion fund five hundred thousand fund 80 5 million my bad uh fund 80 community service fund 13 total tax levy 356 million 900 and 395 and 95. let's get my second board member pearson

106nama your advisory vote i all those in favor motion carries seven zero here we're going to move to the consent agenda all of the motions set forth in section 10 of the electronic agenda prepared for the october 25th 2021 regular school board meeting exactly as said motions are written by voting affirmatively on this motion a board member expresses his or hers or their affirmative vote on each of the motions consolidated hereby subject to any expressed saturations that have been made by any member of the school board second second go by schmidt any discussion remember correctly i need to separate 10.19 and i also want to confirm that 10.16 has indeed been pulled and i want to make a request that we do receive some details about that pulled motion including all of the bid information

107that was specified by our speakers tonight so my understanding is that that motion has been full barb if we vote on the motion i just made is that gonna include 10.61 so do we need to pull it right now it will not be included because it has been pulled by the administration so that means it's like really not even there all right all the old snack will include everything but that so the motion i just met just read does not include that and i agree completely board member carusi that it would be great to have follow-up information i really appreciate the folks who came and spoke to us uh you need to pull 10.19. oh and i'm like 1019. thank you thank you uh board member morelli thank you i would like to pull 10.8

108please all right so we have pulled 10.8 and 10.19 and then we have confirmed that was previously pulled i'm sorry i know this is semantics we are separating 10.19 and 10.8 and 10.16 has been gold we have separated 10.19 and 10.8 and 10.16 has been pulled thank you mama your advisory vote i all those in favor motion carry 7-0 all right so then we are going to speak to uh on the motion 10.9 okay y'all 10.8 yes i'm going to read the motion i move that the board of education agreed to enter into a contract for consulting using virtual learning platform technology support and facilitator training for the justified anger black history for a new day course 700 staff members hundred hours of professional development for both fall and winter cohorts in the amount of

109two hundred and thirty thousand with funding from the 2021-2022 essers big idea funds second sorry i don't actually know where the second came from second uh board member morelli any discussion remember morelli yeah thank you so much president mojo i just wanted to speak to uh this large investment not only to elevate the importance of black history but also to have factual history uh and also fill in any gaps that our educators may have in regards to uh to the the specifics of racialization historical fact and racialization of this country i also wanted to elevate that given our past conversation on elementary school suspension and how disappointed i was with that conversation that i would like to invite our board members and senior staff and anyone that is not going to benefit from this investment

110to also engage in this level of professional learnings i think that uh the this investment needs to be congruent to the level of our discussion and to the specifics around being an anti-racist uh district being an anti-basis district is not just around lip service and in a statement it's also reflected in a way that we have conversations the way we vote uh what questions we ask what we elevate and then what this item is specifically saying is also and how our financial investment is online too i think that is uh is a beginner a beginning uh to uh to how we're going to continue to uh support our educators and support our families and students in regards to being an anti-racist district uh i wanted to thank everyone that has uh submitted uh the big

111ideas and participated in that grant process i wanted to thank uh the team mmsd staff that uh have worked diligently to look at all the proposals that were submitted and to make sure that this proposal in particular uh is now being brought to this board and for vote so thank you so much uh to the entire mmsd staff that worked on the big ideas grant and thank you so much president mojo for uh providing me an opportunity to speak on this item thank you board member morelli board member vanderbilt there's no question for administration is there a possibility we can find publishers outside of the state of texas because mcgraw hill is out of texas and every time we get books from there ten to one either black history disability history is either omitted or

112it's wrong if their possibility that we can find a different one so um i think that's a very valid question but i'm not exactly sure yes and i don't think it is connected to this motion um because this motion is specific to justified anger and that curriculum is actually provided through a local noun for profit you're right thank you for for raising that nikki um for tonight we've gotta table it yeah justified anger well i just want to go quick shout out to dr christy clark fujiera at the university who works really hard to produce um accurate history that this professional development utilizes and um a great asset to our community um but yeah thank you four number one person just real quick not just only accurate history but history that most people don't know

113right now and um i think that that is a a very important point um and it goes in depth into points that um a lot of people don't even think about um so i i am in 100 agreements of the work that she's been doing um in the work of justified anchor and there have been hundreds of people um have gone through that training so i'm excited thank you so much for speaking to that i do want to recognize the work that mti has done to pair our educators with this opportunity um as well as uh you know second the banks that comes from board member castro um specific to the the team that allows for this professional development to be possible within our community um so so thank you all for for this robust

114and engaged conversation about this specific item before we move on dr jenkins it looks like you want to chime in yes and you almost took the words out of my mouth the chair mulder because i wanted to thank uh carrie who's with us here tonight in jorge and just the big ideas team when we read over this it was just like so powerful i've been hearing so much about justified anger in the community and then to know that as a board when we talk about being anti-racist we talk about the work and investing that we're actually taking this on but there carey i want to thank you jorge uh we've had conversations with mti about this we said we're going to go on this journey together i am so proud right now of this particular

115moment in this discussion i thank the board in advance for supporting this initiative thank you so much for highlighting the tremendous leadership from a variety of people working with this uh district in a variety of ways that it took for us to both have this conversation and reach this point and also provide this professional development to our staff thank you all jorge uh and folks for for jumping on the screen and i guess before we vote did you all want to to chime in carrie i'll defer to you i just wanted to thank everybody i would i could thanks i i actually i was going to thank jorge again also but i just i think the only thing that i would like to say is the immense pride with which i feel of being in

116the position to affirm and lift this amazing community partnership that we have with nehemiah that actually i just want to elevate that the connection between the district and nehemiah and mti really was started by our own educators in educators actively working towards anti-racism so i just want to lift that activism of our educators who asked us to begin to meet with nehemiah as a union and find ways to bring this into our system and find ways for every educator to have access to this meaningful professional development and just the the purposeful use of the esser funds to really live our principle of being an anti-racist organization so this really is the best of the union and the district uh lifting the work of a community partner uh with the brilliance and talent that exists among

117us so i invite all the board members there's a winter cohort i would gladly create a place in the grant you are part of the district and it is for all staff members in the district currently so i invite you all to participate i'll send you an invitation thank you carrie and jorge well done thank you for joining us i think we are ready to vote on this item so nama your advisory vote i thank you all those in favor motion carries 7-0 all right and then we are going to 10 19. all right i move that the board of education accept a donation in the amount of ten thousand from american family insurance to support lakeview elementary school's improvement plan goals and community school priority areas okay thank you board member gomez schmidt any

118discussion i need to recuse myself from this vote because i have a interest thank you any further discussion all right well i want to thank american family insurance before we vote uh and nama your advisory vote hi all in favor carries 6-0 all right folks and i think that gets us through this meeting although i'm like we have other business 13.1 city of madison committee remember morelli or board member castro yeah thank you so much president mojo uh we have we had a very important discussion around the final report and an inclusion task force which i love if board member castro can elevate a few of the highlights of that final report that includes some specific recommendations we also continue to work with the school district and dr mcgregor is our liaison for the committee

119uh in regards to alignment and also elevating the priorities of the committee which is youth employment housing mental health uh the digital gap and transportation uh we're going to be following up on the on the items of the big idea grant and continue to identify gaps in funding we have been really uh grateful for the support that the county has has done in regards to the investment and the work of many county supervisors in regards to investment on youth employment and with that i love to pass to board member castro thank you so much um a lot of the um discussion and recommendations from the final report of the uh digital inclusion ad hoc committee include recommendations to improve the physical infrastructure of our broadband infrastructure here in madison uh we simply have uh some

120dead zones so to speak uh with regard to internet connectivity uh where internet simply isn't accessible or speeds are very much delayed and we also have to have some capital investment in terms of getting devices to people but maybe maybe one of the most important things was developing a internet ombudsman uh someone to work with communities to help them just navigate the internet to find resources that they need um with regard to things like relevant in their life like financial assistance rental assistance jobs searching things of that nature um and so you know we're we're hopeful uh we have a few few older folks introducing an amendment in the city budget to develop a internet ombudsman position to help folks navigate the internet um you know the district continues to put heavy resources in terms

121of internet connectivity we still have about 2000 hot spots out to families um i'm sure we'll be talking about that in the upcoming budget too so um that's that on internet and broadband yes thank you nama can you update us on student senate yeah of course um so last our last meeting we onboarded the eighth grade nominees and we introduced them to student senate so that was really exciting to just see young faith and student senate and kind of getting them introduced and we also got um we introduced them to committees and we're displaying to our committee groups at our next meeting so we're excited to start our work and kept the years started on our feet mama i think you and gordon are kind of the dream team um and we are so proud

122of the work that you're doing to make sure that younger students have the opportunity to participate in student senate you all are doing such a beautiful job um this year so thank you for for all your work and your leadership madison school community recreation mscr advisory committee you remember vandermuen um we had our first in-person meeting since the pandemic because people couldn't really have the wi-fi connectivity um we discussed um renewed uh the minutes from august we updated our chair our new chair is erica janet and we have are now focusing on member recruitment by drafting letters targeting outreach and connections with mmsd and sending emails to mscr participants as well as on facebook he also went over the 2021 mscr summer program overview i gave a brief report on the status of the board

123of education and then i was the liaison for this upcoming year and the warner park advisory committee has has nominated cheryl dietrich to leave that committee and then in january is our next meeting thank you so much for remember vanderbilt all right dr marvin pryor will provide an oral report on the progress of the ad hoc committee's work to date with respect to the citizens relating committee regarding proposals to rename memorial high school thank you so much dr pryor oh thank you madam chair um yes i am delighted to come forth to provide you with an update as to where we are in this process um as you will all recall on march 22nd 2021 the superintendent in the board of education received a formal proposal from a former memorial high school student meyer berry

124to rename the school after velvia uh valvolia still excuse me as a result an ad hoc citizens renaming committee was appointed by the board of education and on april 26 21 the board gave the charge for the committee to move forward following board policy 6700 and moved the proposal through the renaming process during the period of march to 23rd through april the 23rd 2021 proposals were sort through the district's uh web page as well as a special email address that was uh set up for james madison memorial renaming committee as well as the board of madison uh email as well so totally uh we received as of this date 750 comments and over 80 unedited proposals were actually submitted of the 80 proposals that were familiar there were several duplicates so that we were able

125to resolve those duplicates down to 26 different names all 26 names were researched and vetted vetted to ensure that all submissions met the requirements as outlined in board policy 6700 the ad hoc committee or renaming committee i should say held this first meeting on july the 7th 2021 they made introductions they discussed the test that was given in ways of working the committee reviewed all 26 names and the rubric that was to be used to uh prioritize those names or rank those names of the proposals that were submitted the group decided at that point to work independently in ranking the 26 names and that they would come back to and convene a meeting and have a robust conversation to support their rankings since the initial meeting they have reduced that list down to 26 names

126that took place over the course of five additional meetings and so we're went from 26th name to four names the next meeting which will be held on october the 27th the 5 pm the committee will come together and their sole purpose and their goal is to reduce the four names down to one soul name to present to the board according to board policy 6700 if they are unable to reduce that list to one name they will submit all four names for the board to consider i would also like to personally thank every board member that's i'm not board member excuse me every committee member that would took part in this process i have to commend them on their commitment and their transparency they held each other accountable and they made certain that they followed the

127board policy to the t uh special thank you to the committee uh chair mr julian walters and i think the entire committee would say he did an outstanding job keeping everybody honest and keeping this process moving forward again it is their goal to present to the board during our regular november meeting the sole name for consideration i would also remind our public that that meeting will be held in person at james madison memorial high school and this will be a hybrid meeting some will attend virtually and some will attend in person this will provide an opportunity for the memorial high school community to uh provide final commentary on the process or the final naming and so again i want to thank you and we look forward to coming back for you next month to reveal

128uh the soul name hopefully and if not the final four names that the board will make a decision on thank you so much for those updates dr pryor you're welcome i move that the board of education allow the west pool expansion to move forward in light of west fundraising committee having 1.29 million dollars cash in hand a signed donor agreement for up to an additional 500 000 minus any additional funds that wes receives for the pool expansion between now and march 1st 2022 and a signed agreement from the madison public schools foundation that they will financially back the donation of up to 500 000 if for some reason it is not received from the donor second second chris carusi any discussion i want to acknowledge that white high school's principal has joined us karen would

129you like to speak to to to this motion um good evening everyone thank you thank you for allowing me to speak i i had not thought to speak but i will tell you that um our journey when you approved our work in february and in march to go forward it was an extraordinarily ambitious process and we've learned so much in the meantime the pool expansion opportunity for west for the west community and the greater madison community to increase our instructional um competitive and recreational offerings um uh aquatically will be awesome and um uh we're really really excited about this opportunity thank you i am incredibly excited for the west high school community and our entire community for this opportunity so thank you so much for joining us and speaking to what this means for our

130young people linda did you want to chime in as well i nothing further to add and again just thank you for your support i know i had a lot of communication with all of you over labor day weekend when this gift came together just the perfect storm of wonderful things uh and thanks to the generosity of the family you know here we are tonight uh hopefully you're accepting the gift so thank you i want to thank the families who contributed and made this gift possible before before we move forward and bring the board to a vote is there any further discussion all right nama your advisory vote hi all those in favor motion carries 7-0 thank you nikki all right high school pool naming i moved at the board of education except the donation to

131renovate the west high school pool and to name it the oh you y'all i feel bad thank you the raggets family pool in consideration of a donation of 1 million with an additional gift of up to 500 000 available from the regex family to support enhancements to the west high school pool above and beyond the november 2020 base scope facility referendum in alignment with board of education policy 6701 second second go mitch schmidt any discussion [Music] um i just want to thank the rugged uh rigged family again for this gift and point out that even though the pool will be located at west this will benefit children across the district um it's the only diving well we will have in mmst students from around the district will be able to take swimming lessons and a

132really nice pool now and not in a cold and kind of scary pool um so the benefits of this gift will reach far beyond the walls of west high school and we're grateful for that well thank you so much for speaking to that board member carusi any further discussion how about your advisory vote hi all those in favor aye motion carries 7-0 all right i'll entertain a motion to adjourn so moved second um all those in favor all right we will adjourn this meeting and i am going to give us uh until 8 11 to start the next meeting so if folks can log off back on right around 8 11 8 12. thank you so much yes is the future though