001all right i'll call this meeting pastor jenkins you're gonna take us through your suggestions for work groups and our agendas and then we'll have a discussion as a board are you ready okay we're going to go ahead and get ready to get started as we're going to do our of education workshop today but we're going to be talking about what we're looking to do throughout the year in the various work groups that we're going to have and what we want to try to accomplish so as i said dad i'm very excited to get started as we're looking out for the year hey y'all i can't hear you i don't know if you're talking barbie can you hear me okay yeah i can hear you but i can't hear dr checking i don't know if he's
002stood oh sorry you broke up a little bit say that again barb one second okay thank you nikki and sabian were you all can hear or just me i can hear you can hear you were able to hear dr jenkins yes yes i can hear you as well oh okay okay i can hear everybody now sorry dr mcgregor hello i'm finally in the first time in i had no um had no volume great all right well we were just saying that we're getting ready to get started with the workshop and so you're going to be controlling the powerpoint there dr mcgregor um i think barb is is controlling my my understanding but but we'll start we'll start walking through it yep and so um and and so let let's go to the next slide um
003we there are um two meeting objectives um review of um potential 2021 2022 topics and update the um board of education calendar we ground everything that we do in our strategic framework um goals um goal one is every child on track to graduate ready for college career community goal two is ensuring the district and every school in it is a place where children staff and families thrive and goal three african-american children and youth excel in school the um we think about our ground rules and we have our ground rules for um looking at things from the perspective of the individual where we assume positive intentions and on the impact that we are making on the group and individuals we strive for active trust building and empathy we acknowledge the impact of our decisions on real
004people and we talk about the responsible use of social media those are contrasted with the collective where we we try to ground our discussions and decisions and our core values we're also making space to address dissenting views and we try to model a positive cabinet and slt relation relationship and partnership with the board for the entire mmsd organization and in the final bullet point under the collection which i think is just so important we try to facilitate our discussions with the eye towards humanity we have to in everything that we do uh continue to strive to uplift human decency and so we're we're trying to be respectful for our community that that's that's tuning in trying to watch for um our meetings going too late and we also try to watch for an average serial
005tone in adversarial interactions because um members of our community our children our students um and our staff are watching us and how and how we interact shapes how they interact and that all has an impact particularly on goal two of our strategic frameworks go to the next slide give me one second uh in the message that the powerpoint is not on the screen it's just your note i can see the powerpoint i can also see it i can see it are you saying you can't see it uh outside the meeting in the youtube i'm like she's not looking at what we're looking at she's looking at youtube i'm looking at small angles so it should be everybody the fact that they weren't seen on youtube i had my personal job like double check i'll go
006ahead all right you know as we continue we we just a reminder in our process that the board acts based on the majority of board members the workgroup chair solicits questions and asks from the board and synthesizes these questions and asks into specific requests the workgroup chair meets with the lead appointed from our slt to discuss requests finalize content and protocols we review data during the board retreats and have a process for requesting supplemental information via the chief of staff we try to have three work group meeting elements um clear purpose concise presentations and authentic conversations and we believe that use of these protocols foster authentic discussion we can continue our um our key objective is to keep our agendas focused on strategies necessary to reach strategic framework goals we've um proposed um a variety
007of instruction work group topics related to recalibrating the 21 22 budget and academic plan discussions about our continuing um decisions regarding um reopening um black excellence as well as um um putting additional focus on goal three of our strategic frameworks um wellness our education and equity audits the assessment plan doing forward planning for 22 23 course offerings and in all of our topic areas and other issues that we that come up regarding instruction doing timely and consistent report outs some of the operations topics that we typically have considered and would like to consider this year are the budget enrollment projectives projections that is updates on our referendum progress our human resources plan the initial direction of the state budget and what we would say in initial direction that's an ongoing because there could be an
008initial an intermediate um a semi-final final and even a post depending on the directions that the um state legislature goes and then of course um in all of our operations topics we look at how all of this is supporting our academic vision that that is our formal presentation and of course we open it up for um for our board to um engage in discussion so uh you've heard our former presentation of the big buckets but in this you know all the big buckets you know we've had discussions about making sure that we're addressing the social emotional well-being the mental health for our students for our staff we're looking to do that we're going to be centering our goal 3 seriously this year is black children and youth will excel and we're trying to move our
009district to the next level we want to come back and when i say next level understand that's not even cliche it's just saying how do we drive through what we've just come through with the cola and getting ready and preparing ourselves for what may be coming so we wanted to open it up for the board members to have some real discussions but everything that we do we wanted to take the long view on it and work backwards so we've been having a plan that we're going to bring back to you once we decide upon the topic but how we're going to work backwards we're starting out with next august what's happening and work everything backwards from this particular meeting to the budget presentation in june and i've walked you through some of those things before
010the pre-budget those large consent agenda items the hr everything in may april those things that we'll be talking to along the way and just assessing you know she saw the assessment on that not just assessing what we do for children but our continuous formal assessment of how we're progressing how are we getting to those targets which we set here together and so that'll be spelled out a little bit deeper to you a little bit later but one agree on the topic first before we come back and spell it out the hr plan that you saw in here as well but we not only do an hr plan as a part of the hr plan we're looking at what we're doing with special education how we're going to have that plan based off that audit work
011that we've seen how we're going to be limiting some of the things that we know have been challenged i want to speak to some of your ideas in terms of moving through our agendas which was i'm sorry the agendas and the work i'll add are you talking i can't hear you at all and i was talking really quietly i'm sorry y'all okay can you hear me now okay um so i'm looking at the board meeting schedule and speaking i was thinking that was just an example of what we did this year as far as the layout it says 2021 so i'm not sure if populate that with our upcoming calendar based on the new discussion yes okay great point yeah so chris raised the question about what you see on there in 2021 we're talking
012about the cadence of what we've done we looked at what we have done this year we know that we have to make adjustments some of those large topics needed to be there and yes that would populate into 21 and 22 as we go forward if that's so what you desire there'll be other things that we can recommend once we know yes these are the big topic items that we're talking about and then we would come back and talk to those in terms of as an agenda how we approach them with the long view that was a great question and great actually ollie asked the question chris clarified it well what i was actually asking and i think chris spoke to it because we have the example for for 2020 and we're moving into generating a
013similar set of ideas in terms of what our conversations will look like i know you had a sense of what you wanted to see up here on those work group agendas and not our prime ministers in terms of moving it forward and i guess i was wondering if you wanted to speak to thematically where you want to see the board focus in terms of group and board meetings and if you don't listen to that now we can have board members speak to that and come back right let's have the board members speak to and then i'll come back to it i see your hand up certainly i didn't know sabian was ahead of me and i didn't want to cut in front of him again i apologize steven go ahead oh i did not have
014my hand up thank you though oh i thought you had your hands up i'm sorry um i was wondering if we could suggest topics because um the dress code has been an issue that i keep hearing from a lot of students and we say a lot about hearing student voice and that's something i get emails about quite a bit so i was wondering if they could be the jedi item at some point yeah so nikki our our press code is policy it's also mandated that we have a dress code not specifically what the desktop is in state statute so i'm wondering if davian and chris you want to speak to that as part of a larger policy conversation or a lot larger conversation around the seat of policies that we may want to address and
015if that is part of the policy conversation we want to have as a board in our retreat so i do have time right now carved out for the board to focus specifically on policy but nikki i also hear that that individual policy stands out to you so i don't want to derail what you're saying i just wanted to know if it falls into a larger umbrella in terms of areas of focus my other area of focus would be after the special ed audit to make sure that the ieps are being handled in a manner that it that the workload is being distributed and also that it's being translated currently we have a lot of ieps that have not been translated and so parents are waiting months to be able to read the documents for their
016child services and you know i don't know how they can be legal thank you so much for bringing that to the to the board and voicing that nikki i think that's incredibly relevant and i do think that a special education audit falls under you know a large scale area um i appreciate the nuance that you spoke to it about in terms of doing it on the needs of our families that i don't speak english but i also think that that's a large area that we we can have a really in-depth dialogue about so thank you so much thank you so much um for president muldrow and thank you so much nikki for opening us up with such a great sharp and important uh topics i um i i really appreciate dr mcgregory the way you
017you're framing our conversations i i do think that um i i i think often uh about dr laura lassen billings uh uh presentation to us regarding how sometimes we get into rabbit holes and become really granular and want to see everything and then we don't have time for everything and we just end up spending a lot of time and i feel like sometimes i don't even know like what like what is the policy implication what is the goal that we're trying to uh achieve and often uh because it becomes a transaction there's not a whole lot of room for um for us to engage into imagining or or a really or problem solving around the current educational inequities that we experience um so i i would appreciate uh potentially at the board retreat or in
018or some ways maybe maybe it's a little bit more flexible than that or more a little bit more um real time where we can propose or we can offer the administration some policy reviews uh in practice policy and practice reviews and they may not necessarily come all to a full presentation like i don't think we need a full presentation on uh dress code but i do think that we needed to look at how drax code is impacting our um uh you know our students in different ways and so you know i'm curious of like you know if you you know if there's some ways in which we can like have a monthly you know check-in where we propose like here's some of the things that we're hearing from our constituents here some of the things
019that you know that is coming up to our to our concern is is there work that has already started and then like having some sort of feedback on like he has this work had already started or has not started but we'll start or here's here's policy or practice implication um and then to the special ed audits i do think that they fit into the equity and educational audit it's right i think that we need to think about um you know special education services uh language services and advanced placement like all those services that we provide uh within with an equity and an educational equity perspective instead of just looking at them isolated so i you know i'm i'm not sure i'm not sure if i'm just interpreting more than what you're that i'm reading but
020that's kind of how i'm i'm taking this that there's a scope and sequence that it's going to follow instead of just being like you know different programs or different topics but there is a there is a broad theme throughout the year and i appreciate that thank you yeah so i will say me personally areas of focus i'd really like to see the board spend some time on is we haven't had a conversation in the instruction work group that is specific to the arts um and i think having a conversation that allows for us to highlight and emphasize what we offer as a district in terms of artistic opportunities and also where we want to strengthen and grow um you know opportunities in regards to the arts for our students k through 12 um is an
021area i'd really like to see us focus on i think the board has made it very clear to me as as chair through our last few conversations that we really want to have a conversation about assessment we really want to have a conversation around testing we really want to have a conversation around those snapshots of how our students are doing as well as an expansive conversation around how you know we get a greater sense of holistically how our students are performing um and so i think you know getting that on the agenda so that we can have a conversation outside of the consent agenda um makes a lot of sense to me so those are the two areas of focus i see in terms of what would be the most relevant for me looking at
022instruction for operations i think looking at you know our long-term reality and i think so much of in operations is dictated by the reality of kind of where we're contracting but i think we you know need to have real conversations about our insurance what our handbook looks like who we are as an employer culture and climate and i think that we could collapse that kind of dialogue into a larger agenda item in terms of operations but i am excited to hear from other board members where you want to focus this year um i think you know this is going to be a really a year in which we have to be both prepared and highly responsive given where we're at in terms of the pandemic and so i i think we both have to be
023prepared to have you know strategic conversations that speak to the long term goals we have as a board in the district um well also being highly sensitive to the nature of the pandemic so i i'm excited to hear from the rest of you in terms of how you're hoping you shape this coming year thank you ananda and nikki for for getting us started davian yeah thank you so much in terms of the instruction topics i'd like to see us covered um thank you for highlighting the arts ali um so just one second that um in addition i would like to see uh i would like to see us have a conversation about how we want to reinvigorate our pathways program in the district and more broadly um our strategy for experiential learning and project based
024learning for our students and providing students just good opportunities to learn out in the field outside the classroom but can still earn credit um i would like to have us continue to have robust conversations around restorative justice and instructional models for full day 4k as we move forward um and on the operations side um you know it is tough to predict state budgets we have a volatile state uh government in in in many regards um but having a multi-year budgetary perspective uh would be appreciated so thinking about how we uh find the resources to continue to fund and expand full-day 4k for our kids are things i would greatly appreciate thank you so much for speaking to that sport member castro i also want to say that we have talked about having the sort of
025justice be embedded in the board of retreats and something that we're committed to but i want to add on to the conversation about restorative justice which i think would land in instruction as well um that i hope that's a conversation about discipline and disproportionality and discipline so really allowing for us to examine the work we're doing with the behavior education plan as well as the work we're doing with restorative justice so that we're having an expansive well-informed conversation about the multi-faceted approaches we're taking to developmentally get prevention in terms of student base thank you savion for for bringing those items to the areas of focus maya yeah thank you um i feel like everyone has said most of the things that i wanted to say but i did want to just reiterate just so that
026there are more people that are trying you know that we can see that more people are focusing on this um art is definitely one piece and thank you ali for bringing that up um and then for me it's definitely looking at the behavioral plans and looking at discipline in a way in which we are using restorative justice and finding the best practices that we can utilize across the district um and then the other one would just again be how can we figure out ways to um ensure that um as savion mentioned about the budget and looking at in the future like how can we now start to really hone in on that because it will get worse before it will get better um and so being prepared is always important especially for trying to bolster
027our initiatives and be creative about that so those are some of the areas that i'm interested in working on board member pearson i saw a board member carusi and then board member gomez schmidt um i want to wholeheartedly second everything here um dr jenkins i have a few questions about the things you laid out to consider in planning my first one was um what is the recalibration of the 21-22 budget instructional what that's about the recalibration of the 21-22 budget and instructional yeah and looking at just like when you heard the relationship that ross explained today in terms of the world's budget were coming up 21-22 but we're also looking out and seeing if in there in terms of priorities how we're going to sustain them it's kind of here coming up in the board
028discussion when you're talking about the full day 4k you're talking about the arts so the things we have in our budget now we have to start prioritizing taking a look down the road are there things that we should continue to go in that direction with or are there things that we should stop so that we should be able to sustain i think that we want to make sure that 4 day 4k is here to stay we don't want to start it then stop it so we're going to have to have more discussion and that is why i do want to have it as a board discussion in our work sessions that you're talking about what's our short view what's our loan view where we're going and i do believe that that's whatever we start talking
029about our commitment to how we're going to look at um just our overall academic plan the first thing i start off with the finances and i'm glad that lost uh tonight to bring us all back to reality we're pretty happy and i'm so thankful that our community has to referendum right but the reality of it is with our new state budget we have to think about within how we're going to sustain our efforts and it is not just about what we have to stop doing what can we do to increase you heard ross again say about increasing enrollment the enrollment everyone in the state that you've led up with that has been impacted by the enrollment not just everybody mostly to a lot of people have right but we definitely have and when we look
030at our enrollment trends what things can we do we're hoping for the full day 4k that we invest in it appropriately and then we begin to see the return on the investment as i said 2021 but it's 21 22 22 23 and it's hard right now for anyone we used to be able to go out five years with a budget but that is so difficult to do that it's not even realistic so we have to look within the things that we have right now to start saying how do we calibrate our budget oh we invested enough we've talked about programs that we invest in in terms of additional programs like some of the things came up on uh agenda items are these the right investments for us to be making at this time understanding where
031we may be there on the road so that's what that means that's the conversation you're going to have to have throughout this year that's why i said the board the board needs to be in these conversations when we start talking about how will this financial shift impact you as a board because you're dealing with finances right we're talking about the budget that's policy so we need to bring forth what's going to be the academic plan what are the things that we're going to invest in to ensure one that our children are going to have the social emotion and our staff the mental health support what are the things that we're going to invest in consider to be best practices the early literacy and beyond and what are those things that we may be investing in
032and i'm not calling anyone but we're just doing a deep assessment of when we're having those discussions in the instructional work groups that's a great time to have those discussions before it gets to the point you see on the consent i think something that might go along with that is to bring back this stuff that's the stop dude let's actually i was speaking about that when i was talking about calibrating then that's the part that we always talk about the stopping list which came out of good degree which we all know page 142 143. um my second question on your list was what are the wellness check-ins with us doing that in terms of with one another with our students you're going to continue to hear me talk about the social emotional well-being we do
033we're starting to do that with one another right now we need to check on one another we have to check out our students check out our staff check out ourselves even with our community conversations paying attention uh because this whole new way of coming back our children have been a lot in isolation uh staff been teaching virtual now we're all coming back in how are people handling this a part of that the clear example when we went out the spring and heard staff talking about concurrent teaching and we're hoping that we come back that would do one way versus concurrent they had gone to about their max of what they could do so little things like that paying attention and we're all going to be doing that i just have a few suggestions to add
034to the list for both persons um i want to second the comments about pathways for instruction um and i'm assuming the curriculum audit is implied in some of that yeah an update on that on it and to go along with it um is this year we're going to be selecting a new reading curriculum uh no not necessarily right now we're focusing on the early literacy uh and we are looking at the artists we've looked at the audits this year and as we also talked about your other question the recalibration we're trying to see what has been the recommendations we have the other part that's coming up that we're going to bring to you in september it should be done the equity audit in october we're going to bring that back and take some of the
035recommendations from that we're going to really look at the others we looked at the hr how that we looked at the special education audit and the trends in the audit aren't things that just happened during cope these things were before cult but not how we move forward the other thing i wanted to bring up and i'm glad to hear you talking about the arts and we had a robust discussion i saw at our last meeting about adam full day 4k since then we've been having discussion what does that second half look like are we just going to add on more of the same or are we really going to take this as our opportunity to move in and lean in on the arts as we had that discussion it's been a very robust discussion i
036can't wait to come back uh to share with you in terms of where we are but we went beyond the 4k we started talking about throughout our district how do we get to this piece also with the equity length a lot large part of what we do right now we start talking about the arts there's a serious disparity together with uh our children based upon who can participate right now in the arts and who can two of our high schools tell marching bands other ones don't i mean that's just a starting right but we can have a whole lot of conversation and arts is not just instrumental a lot of people think that it's instrumental but it's not we have all kinds of parts our children can get advised and what we do to art
037is helping us live up to our goal three of again to ensure that black children and youth excel because children it is so well noted in the literature uh particularly black children pride in their hearts and a lot of times we take it away from our communities but when you get black children in the arts you get other children that are everybody coming up in addition to that um i think it would be helpful to talk about um only a continuing discussion about esta data but also how that connects to ti-25 and pi20 i think it would be helpful to start you got mentioned but to give plan of special education and then in the area of operations um this is we we visit the employee handbook every other year this is one of those
038years um enrollment absolutely needs to be a discussion item we need to get the questions report hopefully in a timely manner this year so it can help um he should be hopefully soon like once they're figuring out sr3 and through those funds but um and likewise getting updates on big ideas um and finally i think it would be great to do an operation just focused on solar panels on roofs or the the referendum that goes much more broadly into food into land use and outdoor education and it's preparing our students to go out into the world and face climate change suggestions thank you so much for the opportunity to agree so firmly with like particularly the last sentence what you said it's hard to even move on so just i'm like second totally think we
039should be having a conversation about sustainability i greatly appreciate that you brought that to the table this evening especially in terms of following up with our own policy right the board set a goal to be a carbon free district by 2040 and unless we're having ongoing conversations we're not going to achieve that goal so it holds us accountable to our our own i'm sorry not policy resolution in addition to that resolution sustainability is pretty heavily built into our policy so that's another policy and our referendum commitment thank you thank you so much for bringing this to the table i think that it will be an incredible conversation and i'm good to see it on on the agenda this gomes schmidt sl i'll actually do enthusiasm for the sustainability discussion and and we'll look forward to
040that um i think another thing that will add to that is revisiting our long-term facility plan and really taking a look we're doing the referendums and the high schools but really taking a look at our facilities in our other buildings our middle school our elementary schools and what is needed going forward in conjunction with sustainability but in conjunction with just making for our students in our community um i there's a lot of this has been mentioned already but i agree with the um trying to figure out the the special education plan the english language learner plan the advanced learner plan those kind of came to a standstill when covet hit we visited those or the board did in back in 2019 um and i i think it's really important to to figure out if we
041are going forward with a five-year plan with those or if those are or if we're completely redesigning how how we um approach um those different plans one of the i'm not sure if it fits under the academic plan so i guess that's one of the things as we're looking at these broader categories maybe those plans will fit under the larger academic plan to us um and then for instruction work group i also had um pathways um and how we are going to be looking at that going forward um the recommendations from the reading task force and the selection of the reading curriculum and that also makes it in under the larger umbrella of the academic plan going forward um i had for operations work through policy review and revising so i think starting with the
042policy on policies that itself is outdated and has a five year cycle for revisiting and updating all our policies so we really do have to take a serious look at that and figure out how we want to approach that work i have the employee handbook under um operations also which may fit under the human resources plan um i'm not sure if that's where it fits and then the last thing i had under budget was the process for decision making with the esser funds going forward and just the continued budget discussions given all the uncertainty um last thing i'll just echo from current is just the continuation of the discussion of our assa plan not only the designation but how we can connect the work we're doing the i25 and pi20 so i see i'm sorry
043but i agree completely um oh savion's hand anonymous hand and then mickey's handsome oh and i also see i'm sorry gordon i'm really having a hard time seeing your hand if it's on thank you yeah um oh god no saving you go ahead and then another then nikki yeah um you know when as it relates to instruction and particularly elevating sorry and particularly elevating goal three um i would really like us to be in the field more uh so long as it's safe and covert permitting i'd like us to be in the field more you know more observations maybe conducting meetings within schools um and i would also like us to try and solicit more student voice uh and um you know their experience in school i think sometimes in these these conversations we tend
044to have them in the abstract and sometimes in my opinion we use students or young people as you know specimens to be studied and analyzed you know these are real people uh and i would like us to honor their voice and agency more and so i would really appreciate if we can uh solicit more student feedback and voice in the presentations and topics you know especially as it relates to pi 25 things of that nature um and then on a budgetary aspect um you know one i think big inequity we have in the district is that east and lafollette are roughly in poverty or have students experiencing poverty western memorial about 40 percent yet uh budget and equity that we have is that when schools provide waivers to participate in sports and other extra curriculars
045those waivers are not reimbursed on the back end so therefore those schools have less budget resources to allocate to those programs uh that is a budget and equity i'd like to see us fix this coming school year um you know we have a lot of things to talk about so i'm sure i'll have other ideas um but that is it for me for now yeah thank you so much president mojo i think uh what what's coming up for me i really appreciate everyone's input i think two things is one is um you know we can't expect anything to change if we continue to want the meetings to be the same way and so i think um you know i'm not going to pretend to know exactly what we should be doing or how we should
046be doing or what we should be talking about um but i do think that we needed to to significantly uh shift the way in which we have our meetings and shift aways which we have carried the conversations we frame the conversations and which are the ways that we uh interact with with the content that is presented to us um that's my hope one of the things that i i love for us to continue to engage in is is is meeting it's the meeting protocols the long times that we spend uh in meetings uh for for you know for some of us is it it's it's hard in different ways uh harder in different ways um the you know what what does it look like for us to moderate ourselves to say like hey this is
047getting too granular or this is getting uh too deep can we follow this you know can we follow uh certain aspects of the conversation uh with the email or uh or or or just a follow-up meeting um the other piece uh president mojo that i really would like for us to engage in is having more young people's voice in our meetings that's something that um i heard last year and i i want us to figure it out i appreciate uh gordon allen with us here today i appreciate our you know our students representatives over the years i i i'm really i'm really curious of what it looks like for us to engage and start breaking through some of the uh what does it look like to be an anti-racist school board we're still far from
048being in a a an anti-racist district but what does it look like for us to engage into some anti-racist practice from a from a board meeting protocol from a committee media protocol and potentially incorporating some of the the restorative ways to have conversations with the restorative justice practices that our district is already taking taking it on so i love to to engage more on conversations like how do we how do we do that um and also i think something that i spoke to at the last meeting so you know this is a this is a very different board than a few years ago and so many of us share marginalized identities historically institutional marginalized identities so what does it look like to both honor and respect uh you know those identities when we are having
049you know dissenting conversation or even agreement conversations that it does not feel that you know the honors the humanity as dr mcgregor uh started out the presentation for today thank you so much for the time thank you board member of andrew mullen we can't hear you sorry i was muted hit the wrong button um and let me take my hand off sorry about that um i was also wanted to talk when we discussed assessments about non-verbal assessments especially for special needs students because we've been trying for years to find a pals assessment for kids who are non-verbal that just because they can't speak does not mean they can't have an actual assessment to where they are on the spectrum and we've never where they are learning-wise and we've never managed to do that and i
050think that could possibly be done in a cost-effective manner because there are the tools out there also um i think the employment handbook i think it has to live with both the board and the union is a collaborative approach those are the two things otherwise i think everyone's got great ideas and i think definitely we need to go out more i've been to all 53 i loved it and i want to keep doing it as often as i can and as often as kovit lets me because this is the one of the best parts if not the best part of this job thank you nikki gordon i am wondering if you are interested in speaking to things you'd like the board to to have on our agenda or anything student senate would like to see
051the board place on our agenda yeah um so student senate is really trying to pivot our government classes to include more engaging civic engagement classes uh we know that our youth in particular is getting more interested and you know governments community leadership and things of that sort and so if we could just have a class that is more dedicated to like being an active participating community and learning about the university's civics um that would be something that would be nice you know deal especially in our political climate live in the capital city of wisconsin um aside from that it turns to like um go throughout the strategic framework i think that's a very important going to know that we have been trying to do that go for like a couple years ago for a while
052now and i think the reason why progress might be so difficult is because uh we don't really i feel like a lot of the time we do a lot more talk than actual action and i think if we actually dedicate our task force with our faculty now and administrators to really come up with ways that we can best uplift empower black youth and make sure that they are getting equitable access to education they will be able to get a lot more things done and lastly i definitely agree we need we need to continue to uh include sustainability in all of our initiatives and policies uh because sustainability is being inside racist in my opinion and it also is ensuring that our education is preserved for the future jordan thank you so much for speaking to
053that and for joining us this evening and representing the student senate and what student senate would like on our agenda and please feel free to follow up with us you know if you continue to have conversations about what the board should be talking about because i'm hearing very clearly from the board we want as much student input involvement and voice in our agendas moving forward as possible and heard that from from multiple board members but i want to echo that sentiment and say that i support it deeply as the president of the board so gordon let us know what you all want to see us talking about um we could have this conversation for a really long time honestly i'm sure there's a lot of things we'd all like to see but we only have
05436 meetings in a year um or a little less i want to say maybe 34 about 11 for each fourth group and 12 for our our regular board meetings um and so i i think that we've we've gotten started with a pretty fantastic list the one thing i would add is that it would be really great to have a conversation and operate it in the operating work group about facilities um and an update in terms of where we're at in terms of projects we're doing with our facilities um and so i think that that's that's a dialogue we'd want to continue to have the community know that that work is being done and see what it means um to to have voted yes for that referendum and so that's kind of the last thing i
055i would add on for operations in terms of an area of focus i'd like to see the board embrace dr jenkins i want to give you a chance to speak to the areas of focus you'd like to see on our agenda this year yeah first of all thank you let's uh for having this particular meeting so that we can talk about what we want to see coming from more discussion parents just acknowledging this hand oh great uh just glad to have this discussion and how i try to frame things around face and face is an acronym that i come up with years ago i try to look at things from financial sustainability standpoint just heard the report tonight what does that mean right now or is it in the future we have to take the
056loan view if we get one-time dollars and i've always said this cannot base what we're trying to do just on one-time dollars we have to think about our students at the center so the students faces on everything that we do to keep us really centered to what we're doing and then we're looking at the academic time we have a scenario planning around academics and what do we really hope we have our strategic framework is it just in words or is it for real we talk about goal one two and three and i think when we have goals we have core values we lay these things out we have to ask ourselves are we really about this we say that we're a district on a journey of being anti-racist what does that mean what does it
057look like feel like face life so we think about the a in the face so it's that academic piece but it's also accountability piece for us what does accountability really look like is it okay that we have and we're not basing everything on data our children are way more important than data data absent of children isn't the data but children absolute data they aren't going anywhere so we talk about these assessments what assessment and should we continue to go with the standard assessments that's continuing to show these disparities in the way that they are versus really trying to understand what motivates our children all the children black children to do well brown children do well special needs children ell all the children are we also looking at accountability for our children who are lgbtq you
058know ai and the transgender students what's happening are we being accountable and standing up and advocating for all of our children or we're just doing some we have poor white children we have children so keep that in mind and then to see is the culture are we playing into a traditional culture we should be talking about this a culture that says that a child is good what the exact thing could that was successful what does that mean so we need to look at culture all the way around and how that influences outcomes from the way that our children experience our schools where our parents experience our school and then we have to look at it in terms of community how are we playing with our community in our school are that we're allowing communities to
059come in schools are we going into the community are we looking at the entire community are we looking just parts of the community i think the things that's being said those things are outstanding but at the same time are they getting us where we need to go are they going to just take a flight back then and then when i look at the e in the face what are the exceptions that we need to make that we've always gone with to get us there at the board level having a discussion about policy are we going to go with the same policy as yielding this same thing or do we say is it time for us to say hey you know what that's counter productive to what we're doing we think about seclusion and restraint is
060that really a policy that we need to support when we think about suspensions do we think that we need to go with suspension i'm ready to say let's put it on the table have a moratorium on suspensions pre-k fires our children have been out of school now for a long time why do we need to keep suspending them to get the point across we had all these children in virtual and we didn't have that suspension rate so coming back why do we have to let's think about that so the exceptions that's really something that we as a board you as a board myself a superintendent in our community we need to think how can we be the exception to the rules just because our district's demographic we have to yield certain results that's nonsense that
061gets us to excellence and if we set the bar at excellent for ourselves it takes us right back to the else the finances because your budget often reflects your values now we want excellence yes in dwindling resources that's where the stop list really comes in chris because we have to go in and we have a smart group right we have to go in but you do have to get the voices of the students you have to get the voices of the parents we can't change our children without engaging seriously with our parents and that means going on the north side going on the south side knocking on doors when allows us to okay or pick it as a phone we have to change our dynamics for how we supervise from central office to the buildings
062and being support and being servant so i think uh if we do this and we bring the arts back in strong and i think i hear the sentiment that people are talking about art what does that mean everything you said sustainability everything has to become its own priority because we cannot in 34 meetings focus on everything and get it done so what i would like to do is to take a scenario planning workshop for the board and we look out and say okay let's go 10 years out 20 years out let's work backwards and then set some realistic as we said smart goals set those smart goals and be realistic about what we have understanding that we're going to have some ups and downs in terms of where we are with our financial situation but
063even planning for a downturn really makes it sustainable it really does and understand that doing sustainability actions really is an investment that can reduce our costs in the future why can't we have electric buses you know if that's everything that we said we buy going forward one in five of the vehicles that we purchased would be an electrical automobile versus one i mean if we say we're going to get to our goal we're not going to take the action i don't want to say well that costs a little bit more than a short term we have to have long-term thinking that's what i would like to see and i was just dr mcgregor laid it out in terms of ways of working and just like even an earlier meeting the tone the way we interact
064it matters because our students are watching us and i hope you heard gordon gordon i've heard him several times in our students there are many guardians in our district that look just like gordon but one in four kids that look like gordon in our district will be labeled as special air and they will be suspended eight times more than their peers look just like gordon you know and i just think that's unacceptable and i think that if we can have real conversation without stumbling over one another our egos our own privileges and we can do what needs to be done for our students in matters then when i came here and i believe it but everything in my heart if it can happen it can happen in madison but i think sometimes we lose focus
065in our meetings if we ground ourselves in our leading protocols and we can remove ourselves and think about the face that we're dealing with every meeting we should talk about how the students doing and celebrate the students too at the beginning of the meeting we should open up celebrate students at the end of the meeting celebrating students but not forget the pain that they're experiencing on all these other decisions that were made that's what i think we should be doing i really appreciate what you just supposed to drink is that it made me realize that i want to bring black excellence back to the agenda and i also think a conversation about anti-racism and anti-racism and what it means right we have have thrown that were out there um but anti-racism is not a line
066item in our in our budget black excellence is a line-up those are conversations that we we need to having in terms of what informs our process thank you for speaking to that chris you wanted to speak to the procedural element yeah i just wanted to um quiet my next steps yeah so we have a retreat coming up in october october 15th and so that'll be where the policy bucket and restorative bucket restorative justice bucket land in terms of how we as a board want to have those conversations often also leaning into the leadership the committees have are yes so our word group work groups have been assigned to yourself currency so you'll be continuing as the chair of our operating work group um and this will be your this your second or this is your
067second year you have you understand how that kind of applies so we're using the same process yeah so how you're taking this process to afford the agenda maya will be the work group chair for our instructional work group and we'll be working closely with ananda to hand off that work group and generate the agenda we'll be checking in around the work group agenda in october so that we can have those kind of initial september work group um and our october work group meetings and then we'll we'll reconvene to kind of figure out how we want to move through the next the rest of the year with a little bit more fluidity and time um obviously it's hard to do it have this meeting attached to another meeting it's getting a little late so i don't
068know i'm like you're not gonna expensive conversation around how this fits into until we get to that october retreat so that answer your question any other questions in terms of next steps or any last remarks before we end this meeting i think we definitely have enough ideas right now to generate very full agendas moving forward and this is not your last chance to influence this year's agendas we will continue to have these conversations at our winter retreat our fall retreat and our spring retreat um making sure we're we're having ongoing dialogues and also also board members are encouraged to email and communicate with the chairs around the work group and also with the board president around our meetings and what needs to show up on our meeting agenda so those can can change as long
069as they do so with enough time for barb to give notice on the hopefully focus on meeting to the last minute yes one thing on next steps uh i will have ross as you've been meeting with he and natalie meet with you and then with uh both maya and ananda dr pryor and i'll meet with them initially and then we'll talk about how do we move forward on some of the things that were brought up you may as you said have some other things that come up but we're looking forward to getting with you right now and just hearing as the chairs how do you want to help continue to facilitate with the board and uh in our two teams i'll leave so to be lost right now until we get a permanent individual anomaly
070just as we've done in the past and be dr pryor with the instructional side of it and definitely i'm always available for either one of those discussions too all right hold this comment entertaining emotion moves by chris carusi i get a sucker second [Music] um sorry ali but you had cut out a lot can you please repeat the police i'm so sorry uh we have a motion to adjourn your advisory vote oh yes you can adjourn thanks gordon uh i'll just save your eye or raise your hand all right y'all thank you so much for the conversation tonight gordon thank you so much for joining us it was really nice to get to see you and thank you for adding to the conversation no problem thank you for having