001We'll start we'll start with the recitation of vision statement can you hear me hear me okay okay well go ahead and get started every school will be a thriving school that prepares every student to graduate from high school college career and community ready next we'll move on to the approval of minutes it is recommended that the Board of Education approved the minutes from the regular meeting dated June 24 2009 teen second all those in favor aye any opposed a motion passes okay well then move on to the public appearances well go ahead and I'm just going to read some instructions here I know I haven't read them in a while I'll just go ahead and reiterate thank you for signing up in front of the hall thank you for helping us keep our aisles clear
002to ensure safety and thank you for helping us ensure that every speaker has an opportunity to make their comments we also want to remind you that because of clear feedback regarding a mispronunciation of names and we apologize for any time that that has happened in the past we are using a new system whereby each speaker can introduce themselves speakers are welcome to speak on any time well particularly on this particular meeting we will have three areas of public appearances one will be on the proposed attachment detachment agreement with Middleton Cross Plains Area School District then next will be a public appearance our proposed wist o mundo DPI waiver and then the next will be general public appearances so that's the order that we will take yep and so again each speaker is given three minutes
003to speak you must be registered to speak and can I give your remaining time to someone else the lighting system will turn yellow and then red so that you know when it is time to wrap up if you have gone over your time I will ask you immediately to wrap up your comments speakers who require language interpretation support in order to speak to the board will be given up to six minutes to speak which should generally provide sufficient time for the interpreter to convey the speaker's message individuals with disabilities who require accommodations in order to register and speak to the board will be granted such accommodation upon request other extensions may be granted only by approval of the board thank you again for participating in our meeting tonight and as we are will just take
004a few minutes as we are compiling the names okay we will it looks like all of our general or all of our public experience appearances are general so we're going to go ahead and move to that area of public comment the first one we have 11 tonight and the first one is Sonya worthy hi my name is Sonya worthy and I'm here to oppose consent agenda about having approving an extra $35,000 to have police at special events I think after the last three years of hearing youth talk about how they don't feel safe at school with police officers I think that they're gonna say the same thing about having police at special events and how it's not going to make them feel safe maybe make them not attend school events which i think is the
005last thing that anyone wants and freedom Inc and the Safe Schools coalition has put together a really great um sound like frequently asked questions that people can can look to you about like how like why people don't feel safer on the police why people of color like queer people why disabled people don't feel safe around the police thank you so much thank you next up we have Noah Rhine Cooper hi I am speaking in response to the proposed extra money to have more cups at events and on police and schools in general when it comes to police in schools the discussion usually comes around to the topic of school shooters during the 1950's officers were introduced to schools in order to improve the relationship between law enforcement and young people and then this effort was
006again increased after Columbine out of fear of school shooters and thus fears not unfounded school shooters are scary topic but we need to look at the profile of these individuals they are overwhelmingly white men or openly racist homophobic and misogynist and these are all qualities of white supremacy and are intimately tied with the American culture of violence we've seen how police treat black students inside and outside the school system police forces are white supremacist institutions and we need to think about the implication of having them in schools they've shown through their actions that they do not value black dignity and black lives and their open displays of violence and bigotry also teach their young and impressionable appears that this is the way things work and are supposed to be it should be no surprise to
007anyone then that this environment is creating the kinds of school shooters that we were afraid of in the first place and this is just another reason why cops should be removed from schools and should not have additional money given to them thank you Savan good evening February is Black History Month and black lives matter weeks of action was a couple of weeks ago I want to share some stories of black students who has been harmed by a sorrow and why they matters I am invest in getting police out of school because of these stories Brian Bernie described a violent encounter with a school police officer while walking to the restroom without a pass quote I felt like Eric Gardner because I couldn't breathe I felt like I was going to die that day and of
008quote during the exchange Brian was punched in the face twice slammed it on to the ground and placed it in the chokehold by the officer black lives matters get cops out of school seventeen-year-old black female student was flipped it and body slam onto the cement floor of her school ground after refusing to leave the campus after his suspension the student has been sick and was on medication when the school staff accused her of being on drugs the student pulled away from the officer she was picked up and slammed it blacklivesmatter get school get cops out of school 11 year-old african-american girl and white horse middle school was push punched and had her hair pulled from her head waha SRO did nothing to protect the students cops don't keep us safe blacks live matters gets cops
009out of school police do not built relationship with students or provide a safe place for student they don't teach student how to learn what police actually do harm black and brown students arrest black and brown students kill black and brown students instead of spending money on police investing use of transporters justice restorative justice practices provide teachers and students how to build a transformative justice living practice in their lives and the lives of their peers restorative justice can teach students problem-solving and getting along with one another when giving the right tools training teachers and students about the restorative justice student will be more independence about their learning and their sense of belonging they can learn how to get along to hold each other accountable and worked things out among themselves restorative justice will also give teachers
010the tools to use in a healthy ways our black and brown youth are our future leaders and they their lives matters let's invest in their leadership's wellness and creativity let's take caps out of school give more impact youth parents and trusted adult real decision-making power over school because black lives matters and I also want to point out that there are other ways to ensure safety and provide security and crowd control that don't involve hiring more police having table presents actually harm students well-being thank you thank you sy you spend a huge amount of money on security in policing our schools which by the way profiles in our black students in students of color you are doing that rather than investing in black students and students of color our lunches are fresh students and teachers do
011not have enough supplies in reserves in our classroom bus passes are expensive in not accessible for all students our teachers are not paid enough and there is so much more I can say about what our school is school Chile needs but at the end you continue to choose to invest in cops you're pushing black and brown students out of schools instead of keeping them in school you allow adults in school to harm students for example the teachers using racial slurs teachers being perverted and cops walking around our schools harassing black and brown students and you call this safety but safety for who because for what it looks like you are not protecting black and brown students what you are doing is white supremacy your continued us go to Prison Pipeline thank you ay-ay-ay black girls
012matter did you hear me I said black girls matter we are just as important as white boys we are just as important as white girls we are just as important we matter I will advocate for us if nobody will I will come up here and tell you this every time I see you until you hear me clearly black girls matter when we go to school we are judged for what we wear and how it looks on our bodies we see kids that aren't white with the same clothes on but they don't get looked at as bad hoochies they get looked at as kids you never understand that because you aren't black when we were short short short shirts we are forced to cover up when we have short shirts we're forced to cover up when
013we have on tank tops we are forced to cover up we cannot change our currents we cannot change our bodies you cannot change ourselves school systems were built to break us down they were made to keep us out of the clear on what's really going on they don't want us to learn what we need to know y'all don't know y'all don't want us to see so you put costume school but white cops there are plenty of resources you guys could use cops return the shoot they don't have the skills to control a school climate us black girls shouldn't be getting tickets and charged it should be dealt with differently it should be dealt with as in the school and not a prison the amendment never said we needed cops to scare kids in school cops
014the amendment never said kids go to school so they can get sent to jail I know being a female in a place where black people aren't accepting it's hard where we had to walk in a room and not make a mistake because we know we're going to be judged about it for life when we have to change our image because it doesn't match what y'all like turn two up one every day knowing how hard it is to walk into school all about white supremacy no we weren't one in here knowing that every day we come here it's a possibility that the police will look at us as a threat to the school coming to a place where we are supposed to forget about the stuff learn a place where we're supposed to learn to use
015our voices knowing people like you will make it harder and discourage the use because you aren't hearing our voices correctly you aren't hearing what we have to say now what I have to say if we were always scared for our lives at school you guys take police out quickly I wish I didn't think like that let the color of our skin get in the way of what's really clearly happening and what clearly needs to change thank you empty 1.7 million children go to school in the US where there is police officers but not counselors 14 million students attend schools that don't have a nurse counselor psychologist or social worker yes they'll have cops study shows that it is more dangerous to have cops in your learning area than the counselor I was reading an article
016on black lives matter at school in Michael Larry president of Boston Police patrolman Association so that it is good that we want to have more counselors but the idea of spending less on Public Safety will make our communities feel better and safer is ridiculous students are feeling uncomfortable uncomfortable enough to be around them it is now ridiculous if students are out here scared that they have to come to school every day and the first thing they see is the police we want people who will help us grow and not push us down why is that we rather lock up students and not educate them why is that we are so easy to stop and lock up black students went bright students do the same thing and yet they get no type of punishment for it
017why are black students doing that is different from a white student black students are like any other student they have goals that they want to reach they have a future they matter this being said we have to stop the violence that the schools are doing towards black students and one of them is to stop police brutality in schools these cops are harming black students that are ticketing them for the small things they do if the kids get truancy tickets and can't afford it it goes to the parents and they have to pay for it let's be honest here if you are going if you're doing something towards black kids why can't you treat other people like that too we got to stop looking at skin colors and just in deciding who is good and bad
018in this society who is to carmelize and who's to not criminalize to stop this from happening we want you to remove cops from the four high schools invest this money toward students wellness creativity leadership having those impact most impacted be the decision-making power and lastly using transformative justice instead of punishing youth thank you you should know black children lives matter in school black children are treated so badly in school so what if they are hyper get upset you don't snatch up little Johnny when he snatched up little Johnny and throw him in a corner when he having a bad day so don't do it to our black children my onion little cousin had to leave medicine because the school system is so bad he is a wonderful loving smart kid but the teachers always picked
019on him and didn't put any faith in him I wasn't physically in school with him but I know for a fact that he was labeled as the bad black boy now he's in Alabama and he's doing way better than he was doing here if he would have stayed any longer they would have put him in an IEP when really he all he needed was a one-on-one in school with a teacher or a counselor that looks like him and put more effort in his education did you know that black boys are more likely than any other group to be placed in special ed classes 80% of all special ed students in special ed are black and Latin X males can you believe that that you will want to invest more money into police instead of education
020education into black children you all never see black boys as talented or gifted now we know more more of the children that has IEP are black but when we look at why they are there it's most likely because of ADHD it's just an excuse to take the bad black kids out of regular classes I know this because I've seen it and I've been through it we cannot keep doing this something needs to change what this is is a lack of understanding of black children and a trigger when it comes to disciplinary and removal practices this is not something that educators or school board members can sit by and let continue happen so why invest more money into police and not black children with this being said this is why y'all need to follow our demands
021get cops out of schools that means completely take them out invest leadership wellness and creativity for black youth and youth of color that that they what they need youth parents and community have real decision-making power over schools use transformative justice instead of punishing youth we believe in bringing youth up and not kicking them out of school there are other ways to fix their behavior in attendance thank you zon hello good evening so as Sivan has stated earlier this month is Black History Month I always go on the school district website all the time and it just so happens again this month the school district on your website you say mm st proudly celebrates Black History Month while african-american history is part of a year-long curriculum at all levels teachers and students will spend more time
022this month to further explore significant historical figures and events then I also saw on your Facebook that you all have been doing some activities around the black lives matter at school week of action which I thought was also very interesting because the black lives matter at school week of action actually has national demands which are n zero tolerance mandate black history and ethnic studies hire more black teachers funder counselors not cops now let me say that last one once more it's fun to counselors not cops I find it quite embarrassing for a school district to say that they care about black folks and black students and black lives and even participate in the week of action and yet continue to fund a cops to be in our schools it's very embarrassing to be a part
023of this district and over and over again for the last I don't know how many years we've been here it's been I've been hearing different things from people where they're like no we definitely need the cops and other folks are like well if we can think of alternatives we can keep the cops I mean we can get rid of the cops but what are those we'll turn I feel like we have our young people have come up with many alternatives our young people have done numerous research and have had numerous conversations with folks across the nation to provide alternatives but if you have forgotten I can you know kind of go through some points right so remove the cops what do we have in place instead transformative justice really let young people parents and resort
024justice experts and community intervention workers provide that's right provides support here in safety invest in the leadership of black students right so we need culturally affirming curriculum we need youth advocates invest in black students wellness that means culturally and specific holistic wellness right how are we looking into hiring black healing practitioners how do we meet the basic needs of black students in their families and then creativity what what what investments have the school district truly put in black cultural expression in the schools besides this month or this one week right and lastly we need community control let black and brown students and parents have real decision-making power because the school board is not doing it we need police free schools hi everyone my name is Monica Don Roy I work at freedom Inc I work
025with youth in the community specifically black youth kamae youth and mung youth and I'm here tonight a yet another school board meeting and not another school board meeting where you all are seriously considering because on the consent agenda to invest more money into police it was just last year that the then police chief koval wrote a blog post I said oh my gosh what was me what was Madison half of the police forces knew they're not trained up like they're supposed to be oh my god like we're all gonna like crash and burn we need like actually trained up police officers so what is the difference between these new cops that are on our streets so now you're looking at hiring so bring in to like be extra security and safety and special events and
026like teachers the other school personnel that you already have within the district that you could actually be training to provide more safety and support for students what is the difference each and every one of you actually needs to answer to that why continue investing in police when you have personnel already that you employ that you can actually train up and do this work from an outsider looking in on this board the only difference I can see that you all are interested in investing in is their ability to use deadly force that's the only difference it really is shameful because we know this is Madison we have tons of studies out we know how police usually use their deadly force in its own black bodies this is Black History Month and I'll be damned if y'all
027continue to keep like investing money into entities that are killing us it's shameful it's so sad if you continue to invest more and more time and trusts and resources into the police is really gonna continue to get harder and harder for me as someone that's a youth worker and for these community members behind me and out there and the people that I talk to on a daily basis we're doing a civic engagement work to actually believe that y'all actually care and actually are working towards that vision statement that y'all always read at us every month that vision statement says you're supposed to be supporting the students so that they can be well prepared for the outside world none of that says I'm gonna invest in folks they can use deadly hard deadly force on you
028if you're truly invested in seeing black students succeed and live well you need to take police out of schools not that you haven't heard this before but y'all acting like y'all haven't so I'm gonna say it again take police out of schools and get some accountability for adults who are using police against students you need to use restorative justice so you actually are responsible for addressing the conditions that lead to conflict and people being unsafe in schools not the police you're actually not sitting up on that board right now you are not elected to get youth caught up in fees in courts and eventually the prison system that's not what we put you up there for you actually need to be investing in their leadership their wellness and their creativity that means time and that
029means resources and that means results not oh it's 10 years later again that didn't work out let's try and get some more money out of y'all for something else it means actually follow what folks are telling y'all the insight and the expertise of these youth have sivan as young have already laid out and actually invest in them in a real way let them be the thought leaders behind the new policy and things that y'all have and lastly give community control over schools let us decide how to keep our children safe and educating it's possible to do both we have plenty of answers for y'all we have consulted plenty of people and done a lot of thought and to put a lot of thought into what it would mean for us students to be safe and
030educated it's possible it's possible for black youth not that Madison metropolitan school district has shown that ever but it's possible it's time to start relying on us on our expertise instead of your own because clearly on the consent agenda again is to invest in police which is dismissal it's despicable thank you JC maybe okay maybe school staff arranged to ensure protected and positive school climates for instance organized I for instance organized intersection workers peacebuilders direct interventionist hands permit accommodating dolls coordinators school partners consulates and other consideration staff can and do prevent and address security concerns and conflicts these - screen school paths in assurance in enticing space respond to the hinge drivers of conflicts and hazard inspectors prevent and intervene and stop intergroup in entered the inner inter nest Internet fixed rain in address under
031studies needs all those uncommon events when it's proper for a law on an organization to enter a school working their out to be conscious was Holies office that limited situations when law and implementation can be brought into a school with specifics defense setup to guarantee understudies privileges instructions and nobility are secured notwithstanding their protected rights to advise and fair treatment so gay cops other schools that means completely take them out of schools invest money into leadership and wellness and creativity for black youth you parents and community have real decision-making the power over school give black you for chance to gain proficiency with the history and other beneficial things about their people rather than things that separated us you Shantz formula justice instead I'm punishing black you get cops out of schools that mean completely take
032them out of schools and that's my answer leadership and wellness for creativity you you parents at community have real decision-making the power over school get black user chance to gain proficiency with their history and other beneficial things about the people thank you Bianca so I I don't know how much you all actually know about the history of the black lives matter movement freedom II was in purchasing freedom Inc was in Baltimore during those uprighted uprisings and have you know worked tire was obviously led to the actions in Madison after Tony Robinson was murdered by Matt Kenny of the Madison Police Department but it was started by three queer black women in response to state violence inflicted by police by courts by child welfare by prisons by schools and it evolved into hundreds of organizations around
033the country organizations and formations around the country including the movement for black lives which freedom Inc played a role in creating like other folks said this week this month is Black History Month and MMSD celebrated in the black lives matter at school week of action which is quite hypocritical considering that it was founded on dismantling white supremacy and ending police terror but the police are on the agenda and still in schools I don't know how many of you are familiar with Stacey Patton she's a a revolutionary child advocate and she talks so much about the fact that so much of childhood is about having to survive adults right you don't get to figure out the world you don't get to explore you don't get to make mistakes so much of it it's surviving adults so
034for black children it means surviving stereotypes surviving assumptions surviving getting their hair pulled out getting called the n-word in class the smaller more mundane microaggressions that happen in our school it means they are forced to survive the notion that they don't deserve respect love and dignity one one thing I hear from from adults a lot from teachers teachers that care teachers that or other people in the community that that care but they're like I understand what you're saying but these kids are bad right and I'm like yeah our kids I mean I don't want to get into what I was doing that as a teenager but yeah I get that I get that our kids are making mistakes I challenge them to to really think about this notion of badness and with that what implications
035that has on our children but let me tell you something even this even and especially the so-called bad kids deserve love dignity and respect and they deserve transformation they deserve restoration they do not deserve to be thrown in a cage our state and our in our county is investing in youth prisons they call them youth correctional facilities youth detention facilities but they are prisons it doesn't matter what color the walls are how the door is closed what resources are available in that place they are presence and our young people do not deserve to be there and what whose bodies do you think are going to be in there they're gonna be black and who is gonna play a role and putting their bodies there police in our schools and essentially our school board because y'all
036get to make the decision so we don't need excuses and we don't need backdoor meetings where you admit that the police are not the best option we need a public commitment to moving them out so the status quo in Madison in other places justifies the police presence in schools through claims of violence prevention and I'm quoting myself in an article I wrote following that rationale if we know that school resource officers and security statistically cause violence arrests criminalize abuse and terrorize black children and non black children of color on a daily basis why wouldn't we remove fr Oh sorrows of safety and violence prevention is actually the goal that logic does not add up to me that lot as a matter of facts or the matter of fact is that black children are and children
037of color are deemed threats and problems there's therefore your current vision of safety sees them as unsafe sees them as things that need to be controlled and that is not our vision of safety our vision of safety does not include police if if we are committed to ending violence in our school if we are committed to black lives matter at school the fear of white residents white parents cannot be prioritized over the lives of black and brown children thank you I really need to say this because I did not see this is that you will actually put out up down a resolution to support the Southeast Asian community in particular the Mon Lau and ethnic minorities of Laos around all the deportation talk and the Hmong Kirsten as somebody who has family members who have
038five orders I am just and all that you all can do this but refuse to do that for black students you cannot be against ISIL deportation and be for the police so where is your protection and safety for black students thank you thank you everyone for your public comment we appreciate hearing from you we're gonna move on to the board president's announcements we will start with an announcement from Jefferson middle school students who are creating children's books about environmental social issues seventh graders at Jefferson middle school designed in an environmental social issue children's book on how environmental change has disproportionate disproportionality impacted the most marginalized populations around the world the students researched the issue wrote and illustrated images to enhance the story afterwards the middle school students presented their book on elementary age students in
039our district to inform young leaders as well the board recognizes all of the students involved and we appreciate the hard work in engaging our younger learners on this and very important issues that impact us all so let's see it number honor applause now I'm gonna hand it over to Anandi who will read our resolution on in support of embassies Southeast Asian community thank you everyone thank you madam president and thank you song for your comment resolution in support of MMSD Southeast Asian community February 24th 2020 opening statement the mem St Board of Education has previously provided a resolution to support our immigrant refugee and undocumented students and families we remain steadfast in our commitment and I'll now read a resolution in support of our mong Lao Vietnamese Cambodian and other ethnic groups from Laos whereas
040the state of Wisconsin is the proud home of sixty 1287 Hmong love Vietnamese Cambodian and other ethnic groups from Laos and whereas many Hmong Lao and other ethnic groups living in the United States gain rights to resettlement after fighting alongside US soldiers during the American War in South East Asian and whereas Madison is home to over 2,600 Hmong Lao and other ethnic groups from Laos as of the 2010 census and whereas manga Lao and other ethnic groups are an important part of the Madison community as our students family members educators co-workers neighbors friends veterans business owners and whereas the rich diversity of our community including our Hmong allow and other ethnic groups make us a better community and where is the MMSD Board of Education and the entire MMSD family proudly stands by Ramon Lau
041and other ethnic groups students staff and families and whereas the MMSD Board of Education and the entire MSD family condemns condemns a recent proposal by the current presidential administration seeking to deport Hmong Lao and other ethnic groups from the US which could impact up to 4500 people nationwide and the separation of many families and whereas Hmong Lao and other ethnic groups from Laos and our residents who have lived in our United States for many decades and where's the presidential administration proposal has created fear among Hmong law and other ethnic groups in Madison Wisconsin and across our country where's Madison School District we affirm its commitment to be a safe place for its students and their families to seek help assistance and information if faced with fear and anxiety about immigration environment enforcement efforts under the
042resolution adopted in April 2017 where's number numerous community leaders and local state and federal elected officials have requested the administration we considered this proposal this proposal and expressed opposition to any action that results in a deportation of Hmong Lao and other ethnic groups living in Wisconsin and in the United States therefore be it resolved that the Madison metropolitan school district Board of Education reiterates its unwavering support for all members of the Hmong allow and other ethnic groups especially our students staff and families in our district and further strongly request a reconsideration of any proposal that would result in the deportation of any members of our community I say this respectfully thank you thank you another next announcement is a announcement on our referendum update we want to thank the community for their input on the
043board's potential November 2024 and a strategy between October and January the board heard from over 950 voices in 50 sessions during the January apparitions workgroup meeting the board discussed our feedback your feedback the board is very pleased with and thankful for the community input and engagement thus far as we consider those important steps for the future of Madison schools based on this feedback we will continue to evaluate the overall financial ask of our taxpayers and we'll discuss any necessary adjustments to our current thinking at the March 9th Operations workgroup in hearing general support for a two-question referenda strategy one on facilities and one on recurring increase to the revenue limits the board has scheduled a vote for the March 23rd regular Board of Education meeting thank you next we move on to the super attendance
044announcement reports thank you in June the board approved funding for efforts to lift up black excellence in our district tonight we will hear an update from Nichelle Nichols regarding the hard work that is being done by the black excellence think tank and the black excellence coalition Michelle alright I want to thank you for allowing me to have time to provide an update just because I know our board meetings are public just for the record I'm gonna state I'm Nichelle Nichols serving as the executive director for our newly named and functioning office of equity partnerships and engagement an aspect of black excellence has led from my department but I want to state that obviously one person in one department cannot lead an entire district for black excellence we expect that departments across central office and schools
045to embrace what it means to champion black excellence and so the purpose of tonight's presentation is really give you some visibility on the work that we've been doing in partnership with the community which we call our think tank and our coalition and the ideas that are coming forward to spend those funds that you awarded this slide really is just a reminder that in our current strategic framework we have three goals that outline our districts accountability for success our students that third goal african-american children and youth will excel in school is relatively new it's new for the framework although I do want to note especially in light of Black History Month that that goal cannot be separated from the long history of how african-american children have prevailed in this district this slide is more of a
046visual that I put together so what I've heard a lot of people talk about is goal three and black excellence as the same thing and what I want to just be able to distinguish is that the goal three as it stated in the framework has very clear academic metrics the the district is accountable for those metrics include child readiness for school third grade reading proficiency eighth grade math proficiency advanced learner participation rates grade nine on track advanced coursework participation and success rate and there was a new student climate power question that's what we call it added last year called I see my history and culture reflected in school so last year would have been kind of the baseline response those are the academic metrics for goal three black excellence is something broader than that it
047includes our accountability on the academics but it also includes the fact that our students need to be socially and emotionally well they need to be thriving we need to acknowledge the other ways that they express brilliance and it also black excellence includes a partnership with our black community students staff and Families we also will look at belonging and and kind of culture metrics around that but I just wanted to make a distinction that to me they're not exactly the same I've been asked a lot since we rolled out this framework what is black excellence and so I just wanted to include that if you were to go to urban dictionary and type in black excellence you will find that Urban Dictionary describes it as someone that is black and portrays great qualities and abilities that
048make the black community proud so what I'm also offering is that we did not define it by design because we want black excellence to include the multifaceted expressions of black brilliance that our students have that may show up in arts it may show up in athletics academic achievement activism them advancing and growing their self-actualization and I just like to kind of put that back out there because I know that's been one of the things that people have commonly asked well what is black excellence we've always led with some language for our educators and our community that black excellence does begin with a belief and we have to believe that brilliance actually exists in all of our black students that we believe in their creativity and the bright futures they can have we've always anchored it
049to the core values in our strategic framework particularly around belonging voice and racial equity and again it was a signal that the district had we had answers for helping our black students thrive and excel all by ourselves we'd be accomplishing it so we we knew that we needed the support of our black community and families and students themselves to help identify what we could do all right I also wanted to just let you know that in the words of some of our students last June we administered a survey out to all six through 12th grade students who identified as black and there are about 600 students who responded and in their own words when you ask students what does black excellence mean to you you see students lifting up black culture our people are amazing
050that even through the hardships we prevail it is about uplifting one another accepting who we are we love ourselves it's our history and the last quote by a middle school student black excellence says every african-american person it is not described by what they do but what they strive for and believe and then in parentheses this student wrote black excellence is just being yourself so I'd like to ground us all in that because I think it's important that yeah that we honor what our students are saying and the spirit of the work all right the other thing around our districts calling out to black excellence that I wanted to lift up is that we did bring dr. Bettina love to our district at the beginning of this school year and dr. Bettina love says in her
051book and her book is titled we want to do more than survive that we all have an internal desire for freedom joy restorative justice restoring humanity not just the rules and to matter to ourselves our community our family in our country with the profound understanding that we must demand the impossible we have to refuse injustice and the disposability of dark children so in many ways our calling out of black excellence in my opinion for this district is that we are saying black children matter and mattering should be at the center and so is their freedom their joy their liberation their restorative justice and our call for educational justice this is just a quick collage of when we brought her to the Alliant Energy Center I I think in her keynote address to this district she
052was very clear that our students show up every day already with assets and funds of knowledge that we don't need to teach them Grint they have it we don't need to teach them endurance many of them are persisting through all kinds of challenges and that we need to acknowledge that and she also said that if district was gonna be as bold to call out black excellence that we needed to also understand that we have got to set the conditions for our students to thrive not just survive in a survey response to that all-district rally back in August 80% of the staff who responded to the survey said that they understood MMS d's commitment to anti racism and anti-racist teaching and 78% said that there they had a stronger understanding of our commitment to black excellence
053and yet we know that we continue to have challenges so I am going to highlight one aspect of the black excellence work as I said in kind of my opening comments one department cannot do it alone I am going to give you a highlight on the part of the work that is in partnership with the community we also know our communications department has been working on new narratives putting out more positive images of our students and really that's been to defy stereotypes that are oftentimes and unfortunately negative about our black students we also know the district has departments like curriculum and instruction other departments around our student and staff supports like all of that work also has to happen internally as well as our schools and then lastly we must continue to have high quality
054instruction and support educators on becoming anti-racist and culturally responsive so on this slide you will see members of our think tank what you will see are an amazing group of community folks who are brilliant they represent organizations that have the they represent organizations that have committed to anti racism they are vocal they are persistent and demanding of our district and they are very very much focused on the way that the district can get better so we this group was invited by me last spring to come to the table because I knew that we needed their help we have UW faculty we have a current teacher we have a Community Programs researchers pre-college programs freedom Inc urban triage natural circles of support restorative justice coordinator so the full gamut of expertise on our think tank and
055this group literally said that they wanted to see a shift in our sense of belonging for our black children in youth as we should be considering multi-generational approaches that we needed to Center our youth their voices expand the resources share power with those who are impacted support our black families and staff commit to gender justice and protect and believe our black children and students so this group has been working on monthly on a voluntary basis to help us generate ideas we also have a group called the black excellence coalition which is slightly different composition so we send out emails robo calls and text messages to current parents of current parents of students who are identified as black in the district and so the group that shows up pretty much every month can fluctuate because its
056parents for the most part there's some community members but its majority parents and we have a variety of topics that we have discussed in that in those meetings we have brought several of the district's plans forward to get feedback from them like the referendum like the literacy adoption at the elementary level like human resources and our hiring efforts but what I love about this group as well is that they really help us get a pulse on what's happening or not happening out in the schools so they're able to tell us whether or not they feel like black excellence has made it out the schools in both groups as I kind of already stated there is a keen focus on centering the voices of black students staff and families making sure that we still have a
057culture of high expectations for the academic success of our students but also their social and emotional needs and one of the things that are both groups have I have identified is probably an area for us is to come up with a new set of metrics that we would use to really measure well-being of our black students they understand that we do the cultures culture and Climate Survey but that's once a year and we're thinking that we need other ways to really measure well-being so as dr. Bell Moore said right before I came up as a reminder you all should know this hopefully in June our members of our think tank and our coalition were in front of you and there were about 22 recommendations at that time that they had brought forward most most important
058to the think tank in the coalition was that there'd be some dollars put into black excellence right that like some of the recommendations were around district accountability others were around the way the district should work and in engage with community partners that they also wanted to make sure that there was some dollars to go along with it so of the three hundred and fifty thousand dollars that you all approved in June you will see just really quickly 29 percent of that is in our local fund 10 which means we can bring forward initiatives and projects that would impact our students really during the school day and 71 percent of the funding is in our fund 80 or community services fund which means that those activities and projects must sit outside of the regular curricular day
059so so a lot of the work that I've done with our think tank this fall has been kind of describing the differences between the two funds then starting to think about what ideas can we move forward based on the funding mix that we have we spent a lot of time this fall our think tank coming up with a lot of different ideas and the ideas pretty much ended up in like six big categories you'll see them here one was to uplift black excellence and students which I'll walk you through in just a moment one was to uplift and support our black staff and MMSD another one was to expose our black students or families to excellence that already exists in the community we wanted to support black families there was a focus on healing from
060trauma and ending criminalization and then the last one is more mine which is around recognizing that people are so questioning what we're doing for black excellence so I was like gosh we need like an awareness campaign so that was more my number six all right so to uplift black excellence and students are our group our think tank did look at quite a few data points we looked at the power question responses from last year around the IC mic history and culture reflected in school and we noticed at the middle school level that about just under 50% of middle school students that identify as black answer positive to the question I see my history and culture reflected here in school and 40% of black high school students responded positively we also looked at belonging data and
061and we did notice that in some of the middle schools where there were higher responses to that history and culture question and the belonging questions for black students we also noticed that those schools happen to have black administrators and/or we knew that they had staff there that it started a BSU but we knew that all middle schools did not have a black principal or a BSU so we became curious about like whom we wonder if there's like a correlation so to speak with what's happening in those select schools we also met with our black student union leadership groups from each of the high schools to also probe with them what they saw and we're experiencing at high schools and what they thought would help promote and advance ideas around black excellence we've also had another
062community partner called natural circles of support and one of their members is also on our think tank who's been working at the Rowan Hawthorne for a few years and had expanded to Senate and O'Keefe middle schools and they were also able to add to this conversation about what they're seeing in circle with black students and so all of those conversations and kind of data points left us with a couple of big ideas one being that we really wanted to pursue this idea of piloting a middle school BSU in some of the schools that didn't have them and we weren't interested at this point and we're not interested at this point in like scaling it we just want to see if our hypothesis kind of works so we're hoping that with these ideas being supported of
063black Student Union's at the middle school level supporting the ideas of our high school BSU's and giving some level of support to natural circles of support we're hoping that students will report an increased sense of pride in who they are their history and or talking about having more confidence to develop their voice as a leader so one of the consent items that you have tonight is it's a 10-point seven is for a contract of service with one of our community partners called urban triage I want you to know that that work would be to help us pilot middle school BSU in to middle schools that do not have a BSU and those principles are open and ready and that is white horse middle school and O'Keeffe and urban triage is currently already operating a BSU
064during after school at Sherman middle school in the memo that I submitted you also saw kind of a letter of recommendation or words of recommendation from Sherman middle school this contract will help us develop curriculum and the lessons that would be implemented weekly this contract will help urban triage also hire the facilitators because we do feel like it's important to have representation of your BSU leaders to be black led so she would be hiring those facilitators training them providing ongoing support for the two additional sites while also still running her own VSU at Sherman we've worked closely with MS CR as we know MSC are kind of is in charge of the after-school space they're open to this they have made sure that the principals are open to this and our after school site directors
065will help Shepherd in this idea and again as I already said I feel like we came up with this idea because we felt like we looked at the open comments from students we looked at the Climate Survey and we saw students even on the black excellence survey from last June reporting that what makes them feel valued is being in spaces with other black youth learning about their history learning about their culture and also being treated with respect and dignity and so we felt like this was a great idea to bring forward okay one of the other things that we have done since we last saw you in June is in order to uplift and support black staff in MMSD we have we did a survey through the black educators Network asking our educators what kind
066of supports they might like and many of the responses indicated they wanted opportunities to go to professional development outside of like the regularly-scheduled MMSD professional learning they wanted opportunities to be able to stay pretty much rejuvenated in the work to be in in collaboration with many of the other educators and so I am happy to report that we did bring the black teacher project which originates out of Oakland California to Madison for a one day Institute in August we had 22 of our black educators attend that and I can tell you from a survey that we had educators saying things like this work helped to reinforce the work and activism that's already in progress and it affirmed the work that I'm doing it allowed me to process some things that I often don't get to
067because of my school surroundings and one of the responses to what was the most valuable for you was the work on unpacking and evaluating internalized oppression in myself so our educators that attended that were really grateful we also just sent some of our educators to the Black History education conference that just happened over the weekend at Edgewood so we've looked for opportunities where we could send our staff to other opportunities and one of the people in the picture here who's on our think tank is camera Stovall who is a teacher at Frank Ellis he also has an idea that he thinks that some of the funds might be able to help our black teachers who are kind of funding classroom projects out of their own pockets right now could there could be some kind of
068a mini grant way for them to get some funding so we haven't executed that yet but that's one of the ideas that has come forward in the category around exposing students to black excellence we did send students in the fall and this is from every comprehensive high school the two cap high locations east and west and shahboz like students across the district we sent to the Wisconsin leadership summit and the thinking there was that that summit literally was highlighting all black and Latin ex leaders across every sector in the state and that it would be really amazing for our students to like be there to witness those workshops and to have opportunities to network so we did that and we will also be supporting later in the spring the black girl magic conference which will
069happen in May so that was one of the other ideas that our think tank definitely wanted to see get some support so far our our support of families has also been to support expose them to black excellence so we just sent a bunch of families from Oh Keith from the road home from some families that are at Chavez and Fulk who have older children we just sent them to see the color purple you'll see on the screen a quote from one of the families that it was she just really appreciated being able to go with her her children and appreciating black art and she talked about how we laugh together we cried together we talked back to the to the actors and that it really created this sense of belonging so that is one of
070the ways in which we've also have moved forward since the last time we saw you and then what I want a foreshadow for you is that in the the kind of one remaining category called healing from trauma and ending criminalization we've gotten some amazing proposals from freedom Inc our think tank one of our think tank members is still here in the audience and our think tank generally loved the proposals from freedom Inc they're innovative they kind of push our thinking in terms of how to really get to wellness and helping our students and families better understand their rights and so we will be bringing forward we meaning I will be submitting a couple of a board memo and contracts next month which I'm hoping you will support and the these will help us meet the
071outcome of black children in youth and family members feeling heard and having the ability to feel protected believed and supported through challenges in MMSD and the the bottom line is one of the things that we've talked about with our think-tank is that sometimes you have to use your community partners to do this work you can't do it within the district as well because we're just yeah we're more biased to want to kind of keep district protocol going and so using community partners is really important so in summary you know from June through about December our think tank has had several convenings really to come up with a pretty robust list of ideas for projects many of which I don't think we can implement this particular school year because they're they're just were so many but
072we really settled through consensus on a few ideas that we wanted to pilot and then we wanted to take some ideas that we knew had been started in the district already but needed more a little bit more investment like natural circles of support like the work that our black student unions at the high school level do right like we just wanted to infuse them with a little bit more love and financial support to keep that work going we are proud of like the outcomes that we've come up with so far we feel like we've done a really good job of centering voices and ideas that are coming from black LED organizations from our black students our staff and our families and that is where we are keeping the majority of our focus centering that and
073our next steps at least from my from my vantage point because I feel like I'm kind of responsible for helping to Shepherd in the work of our community partners is to bring forward the remaining contracts over the next month or two to see those ideas implemented and of course anything that needs your approval making sure that you feel well poised and set up to approve those contracts we we need to still figure out evaluation of our pilot projects so when I look at a lot of the work that like Oakland did with their african-american male achievement some of the early work that they did was very focused on stories and qualitative evaluation and so I think we I haven't discussed what the think tank yet exactly how we're going to evaluate but I do think
074we want to come back to you with with an evaluation of our pilot projects going back to kind of the organization work of black excellence I will say that I think we have a lot of great things happening there in departments we have schools that have I mean lifted up black excellence and our like rocking it but we need some way to kind of collect that and assess it so that you all have a better understanding of what all is happening and we also have a way of talking about it right now it's it's hard to synthesize everything that is happening and the last couple of points here are that one of the things I want to hold myself accountable to is getting the work into some kind of a written plan so that it
075feels tangible and visible for people I feel like a lot of the work that I do with the think tank they're not public meetings right like we're off meeting in evenings during the month the Coalition is more public but I want to make sure that all of these ideas sit in kind of a central place so that it doesn't feel like people are guessing so that's that's kind of my next step and then wanting to get more community support so that kind of concludes updates since June so happy to take any questions thank you Nichelle I mean this is amazing work I you know we'll open it up for questions here in a minute but I just want to say that just watching you work and and social media and you're out in our community
076and I'm just amazed right is it's a job that is tough but then also really rewarding and for someone that that has been able to navigate community and systems right I mean you're the perfect person so thank you for taking this on and leading us through this I'm confident that we'll get to the place what that we want to be with your hard work and dedication so thank you open it up for questions who wants to go first go ahead see you and some of your work with black staff can you talk about some of the challenges that our black staff face in the district sure I think so this is an interesting thing talking about our black staff because we also know that one of the key things that's come up through human resources
077when you've had updates from Deirdre steam right is that we not only need to get better about our recruitment efforts like we need more black teachers more black staff more just diversity generally speaking but we also need to need to do a better job of retention so I think although I'm not the work that we're doing to support black staff isn't really an HR strategy per se we are hoping that it's complimentary right and so what we hear from staff is microaggressions I mean some of the same things that our students will report we will hear from staff directly right so just microaggressions are really difficult to navigate for many of our black staff they may be the only person or one of a few in a building which can be very isolating so oftentimes
078wanting opportunities to just caucus together with other staff and educators is really in affinity is like it's needed it's it's not just nice it's it's necessary I think that folks generally feel can feel tired you know just kind of there's a lift of fatigue to the work and so I think they're requests for additional opportunities for like professional learning or going to things as also like helping to rejuvenate them like giving them that little extra juice that you need in the work so I could go back through and look for anything more specific but I also think that kind of aligning some of the feedback that Human Resources has heard I know that they were planning to do stay interviews with our black educators to really find out more from them like what's helping them
079stay in our district I think that would be something that we could come back with yeah thank you that's definitely uh difficult to hear I've definitely heard the challenge of being like pigeon-holed in a particular school as well or being pigeon-holed to being that disciplinarian or what have you and that you know especially in education you're tasked with helping children like imagine themselves in education and the fact that you know one black teacher can influence a black kids education career by so much that's you know this work is really important so thank you for doing that yeah I guess just a follow-up on that do you um in talking to our black students are you hearing anything about they're getting their perspective about their white teachers and how any feedback from them on how they
080can improve that classroom experience right with our white teachers yes yeah well yes so I mean but so let me just say that we've been hearing from students every month through freedom Inc so I want to just acknowledge that I also think that we have been working with BSU's and M sans students which may draw a variety of different students in and what we've heard from students is kind of going back to like the relationship factor and many of our students will say they oftentimes don't feel like they're white educators are just like culturally it's I don't even know if it's if it's competent or just like even they're just not culturally connected enough to actually build relationships that feel like authentic - for the kids and when when they do experience it they'll call
081that teacher out as like this is this has been somebody who's been amazing like she's great or he's been really good but it seems like they're naming like one non person of color like and I would say that you still hear a lot of students talking about teachers having low expectations of them and they feel it they can sense it they feel like they have more to contribute and they notice things in the classroom where they feel like they're not being asked to like kind of level up their their participation or their their contribution so those are the general themes now I appreciate that perspective I think I'm just in and in in hearing and getting that to feedback from students how we can translate that into future teacher development right and I know you've
082talked about how teachers are internally examining their own right racial you know issues right so is that do we continue to do that or is do we know of research or best practices across the country of really getting to the root causes of race in the classroom and how they respond to our students of color you know right it's one thing internalizing it right it's another thing and it's putting into putting that to practice every day yeah so I mean I think you're hitting on something that is like one of the the important components like black excellence in name will not it will only be a name it won't be achieved if we're not pushing on a lot of other things in this school district yeah um including curriculum including high quality instruction including anti-racist
083teaching including like breaking down and dismantling and being honest about like the things that perpetuate white supremacy so like those things like we're not gonna achieve black excellence if we're not pushing on all of these things and when it comes to like the professional learning of our teaching staff I feel like we are embedding a lot of racial equity topics and opportunities to go deeper in kind of our common learning venues so like every month we have principal meetings every quarter we bring school-based leadership team together in a Leadership Institute like there is not a professional learning space where we are not spending some of that time on racial equity and getting very clear and focused around the importance of focusing on our black students to help to help set better outcomes for them yet
084those are still large group venues right and so so the honest answer is I don't know when somebody walks out of a professional learning day what work they're doing individually right and I think as a district we did say this school year so we brought in dr. Bettina love and that same day that all school staff went back to their buildings we had asked them to take a two hour professional learning opportunity that was developed between our district and the YWCA to go deeper on issues of racial equity like we it's kind of like expected that all schools do that and I'd say I can't remember the exact statistics but I think I think it was like 80 something percent of staffs did say that when they went back to their school that afternoon they
085did partake in that opportunity which means we weren't at a hundred percent even when we had set the expectation which was curious but as far as the individual journey work I feel like that is something that districts generally I think are struggling with like you can set you can use common learning venues but how do you get the individual to do the deeper work to examine their own biases to become more familiar with their lens on the world to interrupt and pause and challenge the assumptions about how they just reacted to a student and then to reflect on that like I think we have some things in place but I don't know if we have enough to get to every single educator mm-hmm thank you for more to come on that I guess yeah awesome
086thanks I don't want to dominate the conversation sorry I'll pass it on here just one more question around evaluation and assessment so I'm glad that you will be looking at qualitative data around assessing progress as I think that's that's critical and most you know I mean we we do often times forget about the qualitative and really just think about the numbers but then also I think that what I will be looking for moving forward in in our budget decisions and funding is going to be investing in those organizations who really have the pulse of the community and freedom Inc is one of them right and I think that we have many organizations that are run by people of color right who understand and can reach the segment of our population that is often and you
087know forgotten and so I just will be looking at that language on how we really look to invest those organizations that can help us right during this journey so so just to be clear are you saying that you're looking for a more articulated evaluation plan for the investments in the community organizations yes that okay and also who we we invest right to join us you know to be part to be partners okay so let me yes and so I Nicky I'll get to you in a minute because I just so respond yeah no that's that really quickly so I appreciate you saying that and I would also like to just say that if there have been I want to just explain a little bit about our process so when when you all awarded the three
088hundred and fifty thousand dollars in June I then our department went through a reorg I had a new director of family youth and community engagement to hire so anyway our think-tank didn't get going right away over the summer okay that's just what it is but when we started up this fall one of the things I said to the think-tank was gee we have these dollars they're technically school district public tax paying you know taxpayer dollars we want to be able to move we want some low-hanging fruit we want some wins this year we want to impact students or families or staff all of the above and yet we have the majority of the money is sitting in fund 80 which means the best way for us to be able to use this money means it
089either has to be after-school evenings weekends or before school so let's try to figure out all of these ideas that we have and what fits in though that particular funding bucket and then how do we actually move forward now um I will say that some of the ideas that we came up with we felt like were school day activities but fortunately we did have some fun 10 so part of our process included a discussion on whether or not we should RFP should we RFP these dollars and come up with like a whole nother host of activities and we thought maybe we should but also if we look around the room and we look at who's on the think-tank we almost virtually have like the experts in the room and so could we not move forward
090with at least a couple of ideas that that came from the think-tank to test out what might work like I said even with the middle school BSU idea MSE are said that there's middle schools that have already started some we would only be taking a few that did not we're testing to see if using a community partner running the BSU maybe has some different results helps us advance a more common curriculum we don't know what scaling would look like at this point or if it's even needed but we definitely wanted to get going so moving forward I think that is one of the things that we will be addressing is like how do you generate maybe a larger universe of ideas and project proposals that could be coming from the community to fund but this
091was just to get us started so I hope that you'll be supporting great on the consent memo tonight good thank you Niki one excellent work especially in the black Student Union's I find it necessary and I think that it's a good idea my other question is can we have the discussion at some point in the group on the intersectionality on disability and and african-american and black black and brown students are still scoring the lowest that I'm listening to our speakers today who mentioned it about why kids are being being put special at whether it be because they need to Weatherby for emotional reasons whether that be I don't have any data one way or another or I kind of would like to see what the reasoning is and what can be done one way or
092the other because I don't have the data so I don't know yeah you bring up a great point I do think one of the things that would assist us moving forward is some some better data analysis and so I think that's one of the things I'll try to do is work with our research and program evaluation team to look at kind of how the data intersects where we have our largest attendance of black students in which schools where might we have greater impact by using our data to better inform so I appreciate that point any other great comments or questions okay am i calling on on board numbers I thought I saw Chris's Hey okay you guys who's gonna fight over this go ahead Chris um thanks also for the great presentation um I just
093wanted to bring natural circles of support into the conversation um you know this is a great program it's been in MMSD for a while we've got lots of documented evidence of success it's also a fun ten thing right yeah so I'm wondering if the work they're doing in addition to all the good progress they've made on both academic and social/emotional results if it could address some of the culture and climate issues you brought up in regard to black students and black teachers and is the fun ten money we've put out there like able to support natural circles of support coming in and doing that work yes thank you so much for asking that I thought I had talked about natural circles of support in one of the earlier slides so what you will see coming
094forward next month I missed the deadline for this month unfortunately is you will see a memorandum of agreement for a medium intensity partnership with natural circles of support to sustain their work at Hawthorn Thoreau Senate and O'Keefe because they actually explain into a couple of our middle schools as I just the ones I just named a year ago because those two principals were really interested there was an original board amendment made by anima it when she was on the board a few years ago to support natural circles of support that money is still sitting in our partnerships office so we will obviously bring forward that money to support the contract and then we will be adding a little bit from black excellence as well as the office of staff and student supports to round out
095the total contract amount so we're a big fan of natural circles of support again some of the work they did early on in our district became the foundation for the black girl magic conference that grew out of Hawthorne because of the work they were doing there in affinity with our black girls so next month you should see an opportunity to support them and just to follow that up is there any you know down the road is there any possibility to expanding this into more schools yeah I think we should um one of the things I would love to be able to explore with dr. Lewis and his team is what expansion would look like we did a early evaluation of them a couple years ago and they've been working in our district so I think
096what what we want to do is not necessarily just create new things to create it but to also see how we could support them to your point that would require more fen fund 10 money because they do operate during the school day and I have not come forward with a new budget request asking for more fun ten but you know to be noted that we would love to support them it would require a different funding pool yeah and also you had talked about you know the just a few minutes ago you talked about the challenges and changing mindsets and how difficult that is and I what I'm just kind of curious is the work that they are doing in our schools out you know it's it's more school-based it can be smaller is that actually
097taking those things that you're doing in the bigger PD's that may or may not be taking in the big groups and making it clique better at the at the school level so how about I answered that question when I bring their memo to bring the memo forward next month because I know that they have sent me also like some of their evaluation responses and the work that they're doing at the school level which I don't feel best prepared to answer tonight is that okay that would be awesome right yeah all right Ally yeah so I want to thank you and the community partners who have done this work and I think the the ability to support black student unions is is both fascinating and and thrilling I think in terms of including the all-city BSU
098that the high school students are organizing I think it's relevant for us as a board to consider how we provide space and support those students in doing that and I think one of the things to look to is what it means for students to have a central location to participate in a citywide BSU and similarly because both Sevilla and I work with the student senate at doyle being able to to support that in the same way that we support student senate which is not representative and representative of the demographics of students that go to school here I think is a worthwhile conversation to have so how do we as a board and as a district effectively support this process I think one of the things I am struggling with is kind of the lack of
099emphasis on elementary school students and I have said this before I think we create the achievement gap in elementary school and then we talk about addressing it in high school and so I I think the idea of BSU's at the elementary school level or activities that are specific to emphasizing and empowering african-american students and in elementary schools is is definitely some yeah that is is worthwhile to talk about I think one of my questions is really about how you all are making decisions and I think part of the reason folks talk about kind of monitoring or evaluating decisions more intensively is with a lack of kind of understanding of the specifics in terms of how the group is making decisions and I really appreciate that this has been a process in which the community most
100impacted the black community is making decisions in the interests of the black community however I think greater transparency around what that decision-making process actually looks like would allow for us to refer to it to a greater extent and participate in it appropriately yes so to your last point agreed it's like I think what we had a couple of different rounds of trying to get to consensus just so you know you know when you have a group that is I think as active as vocal as invested as the group that we've assembled is sometimes coming to agreement doesn't come without a great amount of discourse and-and-and like healthy dialogue so we so we did end up putting together like a chart of all the ideas and then we literally said there are so many ideas here
101though it would be very difficult to implement all of them and so those ideas that we think we want to discuss fuller please bring forward a proposal and so folks had to literally kind of write up a mini proposal that was more internal to the group and then we held a meeting in which everybody was to kind of I don't want to say pitch their idea but like literally bring forward like what what budget analysis did you do where did you think how did you think it was going to be implemented who would be delivering the services those kinds of things what would it cost and then we discuss those and kind of did just a voting amongst the group so that we kind of rated the the projects that we thought people had put
102the most thought and effort into really fully thinking through its kind of top of the list there's still a lot of ideas on that we could go back and say let's do another round of proposals or hey we haven't really touched on elementary schools what ideas might we have to impact students in elementary schools this was just literally to kind of get us going and as a frame of reference out of the fund $80 the two hundred and fifty thousand dollars through tonight assuming that you will pass the consent memo we still have a hundred and ninety two thousand dollars like of the 250 like and we're going into March of the fun ten we still will have fifty four thousand dollars my point being that it took several months like August all the way
103through December to even come up with project ideas what would the outcomes be and then how are we making decisions about which ideas are coming forward like that took several months just to get to the point where we're coming forward with kind of the first ask of the board so I can make that more visible but so thank you for that yeah so I think what you're describing is a really thoughtful group based process in which folks are voting and deliberating and really taking a significant amount of time to make kind of well-informed decisions about how to use funding and that being said have not used the funding in its entirety or even half of the funding at this point the other comment I wanted to make particular to Black Student Union's is because the
104fun the majority of funding is for after school and weekends is there a way to make to give those moments academic value or to allow students to have independent study credit for participating so is there a way to kind of bridge academic success and the the opportunities that this funding will go for I can inquire I don't have a I mean I like the idea I would I'd have to go inquire I don't know I know there's criterion around credit it ain't you know I mean so I I don't know enough about that to know yeah so like your thought I would think like independent study credit and credit specific to areas of leadership or humanities credit could be a place to start that conversation but really when we're talking about this how do we
105get the bang for our buck and how do students get as much out of this opportunity as possible it wasn't something that I'd come up to this point but that's a great idea so thank you for that I'll definitely inquire great Kate yeah thank you thank you for sharing an update and I appreciate the bias for action I so I have two columns they both resonate but leave with some of what you raised the first is in terms of kind of goals right so metrics I think I really appreciated your commentary on goal three and black excellence my read of going through the strategic framework process was that those two things were interchangeable and and I so I really appreciated kind of the splitting them out and the way that you're thinking about it I
106have to say that the the metrics piece makes me a little bit uncomfortable because the metrics that we laid out are very academic in nature they are not entirely academic right and black excellence is the the paragraph after that was very painstakingly crafted I could count for both academics as well as non academics and as you go about kind of redefining how you're gonna measure success I think the I would be reluctant to bring that too far away from the metrics we did lay out for goal three which which do have a healthy portion of academics in them not a hundred percent but and that kind of splitting those two things too much yeah it feels not like what we talked about during that phase of work and not was a that was a board
107approved set of metrics right that's all basically the only thing that we approve in terms of kind of goals for the district around this so I just wanted to say that out loud because I'm not sure everyone I think Nicky and I were the only two folks here when we do when we laid that oh and it's related to my second comment which is academics and I think we have a tendency and I we'll see the complexity of the work and in always all right not just about black excellence and want to infuse support for children in every way we can and there's a lot of needs and a lot of ways to support kids age 4 through 20 great and we haven't moved the needle in reading proficiency in the last five years basically
108right it's hovered 14 to 16 percent over the last five years for African American children at grade three reading proficiency and so I I just I'd love to hear you talk about how you are engaging with the curriculum and instruction team and the kind of academic nature of what our responsibility is and just talk about what that looks like for people in this building for people in schools what do you want it to look like does the funding we've provided adequately support what you would like it to look like yeah I'll stop talking okay so thank you for that so let's I guess here's my my response is this when we first looked at the metrics for goal three child readiness for school grade three reading proficiency grade eight math proficiency right advanced learner I
109literally said to our former superintendent what do I have to do with influencing these yeah I am happy to lead black excellence but I have to lead from a place of my own sphere of influence whether it was family youth and community engagement or now equity partnerships and engagement yet do I have colleagues that I can go to who are leading reading and literacy math advanced learner yes like certainly but I cannot say at this time that my position has been authorized or sanctioned to be like the internal accountability person for these metrics so you know I'm saying I so totally hear you and I think this challenge comes up back to Jay's Jay has heard me say that's probably more than once if he's in the room yeah this challenge comes up in a
110couple of our areas guys we have some pain points it is an organizational challenge yes that is our responsibility to fix it is not a challenge out in the world it's a Rolls team structure for grown-ups problem yeah and and I mean I had some of those conversations as well actually around this topic and talked very clearly around what that could or could not look like yeah I would just push back that it's our job to fix that and that collaboration in this building is a part of providing the kind of complex support that we actually live here and is absolutely not a reason to not engage in joint real work in buildings coming from both of you guys right so yeah so I hear you and I accept the challenge respectfully and you know
111you should know that I work closely with our chief of schools chief of schools elementary middle school chief of high schools we are all and lots of shared venues together where I think we have kind of mutually reinforcing voices and expectations about the work that will carry forward my response is really into what will make them move the needle move on the metrics and so I'm happy to talk with our interim superintendent I think more closely maybe about for the remainder of this year like how to get clear about the metrics because I hear your point you don't want to separate black excellence from goal three and at the same time when I've looked at the other districts that have created necessary spaces for our black students to thrive to learn their history to be
112affirmed in who they are all of their metrics are not tied back to academics they're not so ayah so I do think it's important that and I'm not moving away from goal three but that there is a small set of metrics that are really about the work that we're doing that's creating those necessary spaces for our students to feel seen heard respected that I hear that and I think it's why I started with metrics because maybe you commented on decision making and mmm the decision-making piece gets you to a goal and what I just heard you say is you're focused on the things that are gonna make the biggest difference to get to the goal yeah as long as the goal is still something that everybody is kind of aligned to because these these literally
113are the only metrics in the district that the board had oversight over right right so what we were hoping and I don't know if this is too far of a stretch we were hoping that some of the things that we are investing in and supporting would actually show up in the metric not the academic piece but the climate survey power question so more around I see my culture and history here or like the the reason that we've been watching black student responses to belonging so we were thinking that was or the metric that we were pulling or helping to impact more positively not necessarily some of the like the reading the math that maybe those things would be impacted later by our students feeling more engaged respected but like not in the immediate and I
114mean yeah oh god yeah I totally see what the kind of the the urgency around academic and I know with you know yeah I see beyond speaking of pigeonholing black staff um I was wondering you know and doing some of our work with high school black Student Union's speaking theoretically if they wanted to put together a proposal could part of some of your monies fund a citywide black student union at the high school level yes and right now we've already we have asked our black student unions to already submit a small mini grant proposal for ideas that they wanted to do most of them have submitted a proposal to do like a black Excellence Awards of program something that was more around on kind of amplifying elevating youth at their own school didn't get a
115proposal yet for the citywide BSU and I've been trying to support and not take over do you know I mean like yeah I keep going to our BSU leaders like hey is there anything you need from me like how can I help sponsor this but I literally don't want to adult my way in to their idea and so I've been I've been in a weird space with trying to figure out how to support without taking it up taking it over not that they would let me but you don't no I just wanted you know there are like the leadership if they demonstrated it's been yes yeah it's been great over the over the year so yeah sois keeping that in mind I just want to first acknowledge the I have a conflict with the circles
116of support since it was initiative that my grant has sponsored both here and throughout the state just three comments thinking of the plan for sustainability for the work that Brandi is doing what does it look like to actually train some of our staff to support including dr. Stephens comment including in-service teachers kind of thinking about the retention I heard a lot about uw-madison students like totally quitting the school of Ed because of their experience in our Madison schools and the last comment is like our proxy to talk about race as every race but whiteness and so how how can we support you elevate your work around actually talking about white culture in in our schools and how teachers can start doing this working of like unlearning whiteness great great okay all right okay thank you
117all right thank you so much appreciate you and if you happen to pull the memo as you get to the consent agenda I'll be ready to answer any questions on that I'm great thank you thank you - ah thanks - sure all right for president yes I'd like to make a motion to move to well I like to make a motion to get one of the consent items out of the consent agenda into the current agenda items and actually to move up to the next in our conversation and that item is 10.11 so could we move the entire consent agenda up I wanted to see console sherry and Barb had recommended we can just move that one item out could we meet a could we move the entire consent agenda up and just deal with
118all the consent items and then we'll go back to yeah yeah and the woman will go through the whole process so friendly amendment I'll make a motion to move the consent agenda up next Thank You second all in favor aye aye any opposed all right motion passes and I like to remove can I just read the main one she serves okay it is recommended that the Board of Education adopt and approve all the motions set forth in Section 10 of the electronic agenda prepared for the February 24 2020 regular school board meeting exactly as said motions are written by voting affirmative ly on this motion a board member expresses his or her affirmative vote on each of the motions consolidated hereby subject to any express separations that have been made by any member of the
119school district school board so we pull out the ones we have now yep sir second okay all in favor or what we're not I like to pull up 10.11 10.11 okay I'd like to pull out ten point four and ten point seven ten point four ten point seven any other separations okay we we are going to pull ten point eleven ten point four and ten point seven we're going to prove the rest of the items on the consent agenda can I get a second second all in favor all right any opposed okay motion passes let's work with ten points eleven is that the one you wanted okay are you reading the motion yep it is recommended that the Board of Education approved entering into recurring annual contracts with the city of Madison for the payment
120of special duty police officers to be assigned on an as-needed and as available basis to provide safety security and crowd management at events the payments will be made from funds of the school requesting the services with a total from all schools not succeed thirty five thousand dollars during any given year without further board approval I'm gonna get a second second discussion taken and I was first I was second Anna yeah I actually have point and recommendation for a motion okay do we do the discussion first do the discussion first so then I'll do the discussion first and then we'll do the well shouldn't start in the room I'll start as you may know I travel around the state to providing professional learning for districts are identified with racial disproportionality personally it is embarrassing that Madison
121black lives matter week of action have intentionally omitted our human rights demands articulated by the National Movement in particular in our t-shirts the end of zero tolerance the mandate black history and ethnic studies and the hire of more black teachers funds funds for counselors not cops and today is the last week of Black History Month and in the sentiment of making sure that Black History Month matter and the presence of black lives matter I would like to propose a into this motion okay any other discussion yes the reason I'm opposing it is because we have excellent trained security staff of our own that are well trained well done and well organized why are we paying $35,000 for outside surfaces when we know this is going to be a tough budget year I feel that that
122money can be better spent whether it being councilors whether it be on other equipment for students I really don't I think we need to use our resources we have better I do admit Ananda's point is also excellent I just did that what to take the point from her however I to understand the reasoning of that you can see why people would find it offensive and I get that my issue is we're also using not only it couldn't be offensive but we're also not using resources correctly which is also problematic okay Jane do we have any staff here that can answer some questions we have plenty of staff here that can answer questions so what are the questions I might be able to answer when I come up again I mean really the funds are for
123events that we actually do not have enough trained people to supervise oftentimes we have events high school games I'm sure Mike will talk about that high school graduation when we go to the Kohl Center we have to have it's required that we have security so it's really additional kinds of things that our staff really cannot provide for example when our children march to the Capitol when we have you know protest and we have to have folks who can support and provide security for them so thank you Mike for being here um so my question is I mean I often rely on our experts who are doing this work every day and there's a always a reason why our administration and our experts are recommending certain items so I think this is one of the areas
124that I would want some clarification on on why we feel the need to have officers from your perspective special duty officers assigned to special events is there another question to you or do you want me to answer that first can you answer my question I didn't know which order you wanted to take one min chair is your mic on yes there's multiple reasons why we we typically rely on the community officers to be at athletic events whether they're in house or off or off campus it's on okay you can move closer if you'd like can you hear me now I can do that sorry when we have these events typically we ask people to sign up part of them part of the question for our SSAS is the livable wages many of our SSAS work
125two or three jobs when it comes into the evening events it is not rare to have no or one or two SSA sign up to do evening work the security detail about we use the officers typically they'll be in the parking lots or one will be in the event and one will just be available in the hallways what not when we have contracts such as Breese Stevens we typically had to have two or three because one was posted outside in the community and they would just walk around the building because there wasn't well-lit for four dances for proms events because they're off-campus whether at the Energy Center whether they're at the Masonic Temple or at the overture we would have one or two officers there as well typically one come out to be the liaison
126with the event as well just in case if there was any issues great thank you i routed my question okay thanks so I support this I think that the reality of the challenges that we experienced during events such as games proms and so forth they think it's important to keep our students safe and I also think that if we are going to expect our security officers and elevate their positions that the board needs to invest and prepare our security officers and increase their salary we cannot expect our security officers to be placed in positions where you know with very little training to manage critical situations and I think that we need to look at increasing their pay and this board has not done that and I think in looking at future budgets if we are
127going to use them in in these types of ways we cannot we need to increase their salaries and and keep in mind that our security officers are the most diverse security officers a staff with an MMSD right right and I think it's important to elevate their and to increase their salary if we're going to use them in that way I think right now we don't have that and I think there has to be a plan and an approach that's responsible to keep our students safe and so I support this contract and will open it up to any other discussions Ali thank you for joining us Mike yep I think when we talk about safety we have to talk about keeping folks safe from specific things and I think when you look at the impact incarceration
128has on a juvenile brain there is a lot of reasons why we would want keep our students protected from things like arrest and incarceration Missouri banned juveniles strip-searched last year every single student who ends up in the dane county juvenile detention center is is strip searched as as part of them being there are we protecting kids from that by having officers in schools or officers at games are we protecting students from being targeted in ways that are racialized are we protecting students from the inappropriate behaviors of adults by having police at events I don't I don't think that we are and in 2014 2015 2016 we arrested a hundred and fourteen children at school ninety-seven of those children were black it's unconscious and unconscionable to to continue to invest in the incarceration and harass of
129children but particularly when we know that incarceration in arrests targets African American students and so we just talked about black excellence we've talked about the behavior education plan we've talked about disproportionality over and over again there's another element of this that I think we as a board have to talk about which is how the school district invests funding and we continue to shift resources into the police department the school district when we send teachers to work in the Dane County juvenile detention center the Dane County juvenile detention center does not pay for that MMSD does right so the expectation that the city take the responsibility for the police and use their the the funding that they have to provide safety to our community I think is is a really relevant expectation MMSD pays more for
130SROs than almost any other district in the state also we're investing a tremendous amount and we're investing more police than we are in black excellence and this is a continuation and expansion in that investment and I guess the question I would have is what what is the necessity of that and what do we hope the impact will be I think the impact is so I was only principal at East for four years but I can say in the four years that I was there in he's particular at all our sporting events or evening events we had no one that was arrested or was taking the Dane County and juvenile detention center and strip search I am in part of my supervision role is for the athletic department and it is I am 99% confident that
131we haven't had anybody arrested this year from any sporting events and taken to Dane County Jail and strip searched I think that part of this is when we have guests in our building and there's people relationships is important and we're often able to defuse situations or tense times with students that is not always the case when there's adults and it is nice to have some support if we need it mom during my time we've never really had to use them except for crowd control when we were oversold seats and people wanted to get in and they couldn't get into the and we had to have people hope mom I guess keep people in lines or in physical lines so they could wait to get in I'm I thought that this was for evening events and
132we weren't talking about the SROs am I is it one in the same because that's not the way that I read that this is especially well yeah but we are hearing statistics on arrows our sorrows this is for evening events for athletics and extracurricular activities yes okay okay okay okay first is there what is an alternative is if this doesn't pass tonight what's the next step what's the alternative well what is the alternative we could again go to our SSAS and we can go to our staff and ask them to work or evening events staff pay is nine dollars an hour I'm it is extremely difficult to get people to volunteer at nine dollars an hour to stay three four five six hours after work we could ask our SSAS they're abled they're paid overtime
133time and a half which can come out to be about twenty two dollars mom some are interested in this and some are also interested in going home I'm not sure what the plan would be to maintain the great example would be LaFollette East basketball game right we had roughly 1200 people in in there we had ten there was ten East staff and there was 11 LaFollette staff the way that they were able to get the staff to volunteer as they got to go to the game for free and they save seats for them it wasn't because I went and I spoke to almost every one of them asking we had two officers there was no issues that entire evening amam the alternative is we have to figure out another way to to get people to
134do it I'm just not sure how so there's your there's no alternative where we don't have some security staff of some sort at these types of events I don't know how we have some of these events if we don't have the right security zone so the alternative is we don't have those events or we I'm not saying we're cancelling everything I'm just not sure which might have off-campus events without the proper security to maintain safety okay it's easy to sit in an ivory tower in the say of this it's very hard when you're actually living in I'm trying to figure that obligation to keep people safe from simply crowd control and large items we have an obligation to keep people safe at large events from simply crowd control stop so we need to provide some
135method of doing that it that method will cost money some way shape or form whether it's provided from an ero or from somebody right we don't currently have somebody else to do it is that a fair I would agree with you yes I fully support this I also just want to there is a report on arrests and citations in our schools last year there were 45 citations there were 39 arrests I think we're spending a lot of time talking about this and I would love for us to talk more about school and I just want to add I mean I have been in I do know that our officers when they're working big events is that they're able to de-escalate you know situations if we think that taking officers away from events or you know
136that we're going to eliminate officers from responding to a big disturbance or fight a weapon call its naive you know things happen things has escalate and I think officers presence does eliminate a lot of these issues and I think we have to consider that unless this board and this administration comes up with another response to this I don't see how it will be responsible for us as the board please i ROG we took the time to hear you okay and so I think we have to really just have some common sense around this police will be called to an incident and if we don't have a presence and to de-escalate a situation officers are going to be called that's the reality if there's a major incident so Anandi so first I wanted to respond to
137your comment about ivory tower because this may look like ivory tower then I go back to the south side which is the mostly heavily police part of the city so I that's where I live I wanted to actually I appreciate more remember Nikki's suggestion to using our security staff and I appreciate our board president comments around the fact that they they're your payment their wage rate is is it's unreasonable the amount of work that they do what I and I'm fooling support to us having a conversation about better wages for them but my I would like to propose a motion that it's not aligned to what was said but I wanted to make sure that I you all know that I support that so the motion is for msg to engage in contracting community social
138workers mental health professionals and we sort of justice practitioners and other community practitioners and allocate the thirty five thousand to be a sign on an as-needed basis as available basis to provide safety security and crowd management at events the payments will be made from funds of the school requesting their services with the total from all schools nitrix seat thirty five thousand during to any given year without further board approval for the hourly rate so that's my motion for the hourly rate of fifty six dollars per hour the district would be able to hire community partitions and would be able to hire individuals with experience with at the escalation keep community singing in the escalating conflicts and prevent arrests in addition data location could also create a pipeline of community members with strong ties with our
139communities any additional necessary specialty training in de-escalation and conflict response my last point is I understand that for many Madison residents and school staff like yourself there is a belief that law enforcement is the only line of professionals equipped to address Public Safety and that is a that is a wrong and false myth I feel proud of the work that former Madison Police Detective and now our president of our board and myself have led to shift a narrative and to actually support investing with shorter practices and mmunity response you have loud that work Gloria however if we are committed to actually achieving the black excellence go to the district are in every school is a place where children and staff and families drive we must listen and respond to our students in ways they are
140contrary to fear of guns any form of violence and to treat them as they are about to engage in criminal behavior when you ourself Mike reporting that you have had few incidents instead investing practice of building community and Prevention and actually investing in our community who have been here months after a month really willing and ready to support us in whatever capacity the best way to make sure that we do not have arrest is to avoid police calls and to avoid police responses thank you there is a motion there is a motion many the second there's a motion just just a second here um sherry did you want to say something you have to have a second okay second okay in the discussion because we still have the original motion of the table okay go
141ahead Jane okay so these are mostly sporting events or graduations or we were at the Alliance and are the Kohl Center for events we have also adults who come into all of these events many many adults so it's not just our children and I certainly agree we need more services as you were talking about Anandi but this is not and if we want to do that that's another budget item but this is for specifically for events where oftentimes if we're called to have security we or we can't have the event in that space so I think this is a different item I think it's already been in the budget and I was going to ask Kelly to come down if we needed some clarification of that because I'm not sure what or what you might
142need if you're gonna change this time but thank you Mike on a point of order and I respect everybody involved but my point of order question is this I believe under Roberts rules are allowed to do a substitute amendment and any topic that is related to the original topic as long as it's germane in this case this would be germane to the original motion therefore under Robert's Rules I believe it is a correct motion and therefore should have a vote based on my reading of Robert's Rules Thank You Nikki but we are in discussion this is what I want to weigh in here Robert's Rules is one process but there are state laws and requirements around the budget so the vote tonight is to vote to support this ask yes or no if you vote
143no the money remains unspent in the current budgeted place you cannot move from one budget to another without a two-thirds majority vote which follows a whole state budget process when you adjust your budget we have a budget-- conversation coming up on March 9th which coincidentally is about strategic equity projects which I would kind of advocate is the right place for conversations around increasing investments whether it's security assistance security assistance or social workers or any other thing that this board wants to invest in March 9th is absolutely the right kind of opportunity if you vote this down tonight it means the money does not get spent for this purpose okay um can I ask a clarifying question so Kelly what I'm just want to make sure that I'm clear to the the we cannot relocate this
144budget line item there's thirty five thousand to anything else but law enforcement or can we allocate to see like for example a different stipend for our security staff it's within the security budget so it could technically be like a security assistant right security assistant staff so then thank you for that so second clarifying so security staff but not a community agency so my motion my motion is an alignment of safety my motion is just saying safety can come in many different ways it does not need to be in law enforcement it does not need to be with somebody holding a gun I know I ice here you're kind of cutting hairs here and I get it I think we would need legal and honestly I would recommend you look more into a table conversation for
145a month just a second and I just want to make a point of clarification some of our existing contracts that we have for upcoming events do require that we have security if we vote this down then we will not be in compliance with those contracts and we'll have to cancel those events that includes the graduation because part of that is that we have security just calm down clarifying question let's share just a second okay Nicki just clarifying question go ahead which is it says security doesn't specify police or does it special and specialized security agents of our own I don't know most of them require either police or security agencies which we are not so we'd still have to hire regardless of which type of security was called for but it does not specify our
146security assistance ok CBN so to conceptualize this let's say we want to host an event at building X and the owners of building X say an order to host an event here you need to have some type of security that's it and we also do sometimes require security in some of our contract with outside provider so it just want to be clear on that they're looking for bonded security right like trained professionals and so our security assistance won't typically meet that contract requirement Ali is there a list of events and the exact expense per event that we would be able to look at I heard you mention a basketball game that already happened I think like there's already a racialized connotation right you didn't say we need to have a police officer for a swim
147meet you said we need to have a police for for basketball right so can we can you tell me what the events would be and what makes an event more likely to need a police officer yeah that's that's an interesting question as you're asking if I'm making a racial comment about basketball not swimming no yes that's that's not what I'm swimming there is 20 40 people basketball the reason I brought that up is because it was a sellout it was a great game it had nothing to do with white black or brown at that game the events I know for a fact Breese Stevens it is on there as well as for graduation those are two events for prom I can't speak on the alliant I can't speak on Monona Terrace or overture because we
148never use them we need it we used the Masonic Temple and the requirement was to have one okay okay think that's wrong yet Thank You Sherri can you just i we're done with this discussion Sherri what is the process here we have an amendment at the on the table here can we go ahead and vote on that amendment so either we need to have it restate it so that it's clear what we're voting on I would ask the board clerk to state what she recorded okay can you so you read the motion and then we'll go ahead and vote on that motion so my understanding I just want to make sure that I'm clear is that as of right now the information that you know we cannot put this funds to community agencies for security
149measurements the purpose there's two things happening one is just the purpose of consent right and what's in front of you is it is a contract asking for approval we have no contract for what you're suggesting for people mmm-hmm and two I would want to look into kind of where the budget at but funds are currently budgeted where are you recommending they're budgeted to and if you table this to March we'll have an answer for you by that but I'm not going to guess on this stage I'm just pre warning you and when you change budget codes it does trigger some things with this date I don't have the information under Kimmy can you reread your motions so we can vote on it for MMSD to engage in contracting communities social workers mental health professionals and
150we sort of just as practitioners to an allocate thirty five thousand to be a sign on an as-needed base as available basis to provide safety security and crowd management at events and then as the motion weeds okay second do we have a second that's okay okay we already got it okay no okay are you suggesting that it's in addition to what's on the table or it's in a repellent what I'm saying is this $35,000 by localizing clear one for safety to pay cops and safety I'm suggesting that we pay another anybody else but cops to provide safety sherry sorry I know I know I'm sorry so if this passes sherry and it is not legal meaning it we aren't actually allowed to change the budget what does that mean well as Kelly stated this isn't
151consent which assumes there's a contract we don't have a contract for any of those services so I'm not sure what we'd be voting on because this is a consent item and and consent you're voting on contracts so so the motion would have to go somewhere else I was just trying to make it clear though okay let's go ahead all those in favor like to well here for a member and Nicki I don't know if I made to make it clear if we can't use community funds is it possible to say but the money 35,000 would be used to raise the staff of the asset of the security agencies to provide the necessary training so that they could provide the services I don't think it could be used for training okay but it could be used
152for stipend for our security staff we are currently paying security assistants are ready to attend these events this is an addition make this thirty five thousand dollars was in that budget if we needed use the security assistance that's kind of the lake so we were already doing it but what I'm hearing might say is that's assuming we have them available but you can't do tonight is increase their pay kind of util at early outside the budget process that's part of the budget process we can talk about that in our meetings okay all those in favor of the amended motion wait I'll let you remove my my amendment cuz it sounds like there is no it's not legally bounded is that what I mean there's no contract is there so there's no contract so I don't
153know what we'd be so she's really asking okay so do you guys want me to read can you release it okay it is recommended that the Board of Education approved entering into a recurring annual contracts with the city of Madison for the payment of special duty police officers to be assigned on an as-needed and as available basis to provide safety security and crowd management at events the payments will be made from funds of this school requesting their services with the total of from all schools not to exceed thirty five thousand dollars during any given year without further approval gonna give us that second favor discussion discussion again yeah I would like to ask that we table this conversation and look into alternatives to this plan and this contract okay so where do we go from
154here sherry I think we should go ahead and vote I think we remove it from the motion if from if a member asked to table it wouldn't we remove it okay so we can table it but the issue is that we have current contracts out there that require bonded security so because we meet thirty nine arrests last year in school and we're talking about cancelling graduation because we can't make a decision about this no like this is amazing that's we're not we're asking relevant information what's the size scale of an event that we would use the police what would the role of the police we're trying to have a proactive conversation when you say we arrested 37 students in school I mean I can under understand minimize that but if the majority of those students
155are black that is a problem and I think it is a relevant conversation to have and I think we are having it and I think we've had it and I think we have to make a decision to vote yeah tonight so cool so sherry where are we can we go ahead and vote all in favor raise your hands I'm not gonna say it all in favor aye any opposed motion passes passes for three all right so now we're gonna go and move into that was 1011 ready let's go on to 10 for ya it is recommended that the Board of Education approved the curricular learning materials purchasing adoption adoptions in the total amount of one hundred and forty five thousand six hundred five with funding from the 2019 2020 curriculum and instruction CR LM budget
156second alright so um at least I might have to come up to the table for this one if she's here I don't see her selves okay so I suggest completes out and want to elevate one item in the curricular agenda and that is the anatomage table and digital library this is almost the entire budget for the curricular expense this month it's a sixty eight thousand dollar incredibly cool piece of technology that allows students to do medical school type dissections digitally on a digital table it's listed in the budget as being for East High School pathways but then we were told in an email that actually is broader than that it's it two tables would be shared by the four high schools and it could impact up to seven hundred students in a variety of classes
157do they get that right okay um we were also told that the Kratt pathways curricular budget for the years about two hundred thousand correct okay so um according to this it's a hundred and thirty seven thousand and nine of that budget would go into these two tables I actually think there's a math error here sixty eight times two is a hundred and thirty six not 132 so somewhere it's either less than sixty eight or more than 130 two tables so we'll have to figure that out I reached out to the chair of the science department at one of our four comprehensive high schools and ask them what their annual budget is that person told me that their budget for all science classes at their high school for the entire school years under $10,000 and that
158they spend about $2,000 of that on dissection so if our science budget for for comprehensive high schools is say I don't know fifty thousand dollars that comes to about six to seven dollars per student and our high schools which is not much money and from what I'm hearing from science teachers and from students is that it's not enough money that they're often having to not do experiments or ration supplies to try to get through the year on the budget we give them for science so how do we justify spending a hundred and thirty-seven thousand dollars on a piece of medical school school type technology which is really cool when our overall science program is so underfunded you know if we're looking at purchasing this table even if we you know if we assume it lasts
159seven years and we look at seven hundred kids per year that still comes to twenty seven dollars per student which is four times as much as we're spending just on our regular science program so I'm I'm concerned about you know is this investment worth it before we're actually able to invest in every science class that every student takes and fully funded so that we can you know provide students just with the biology chemistry physics stuff they need to do their labs so we have a CL are my main tain at the district level that funds all of the curriculum departments across the district that CL RM budget when I came we actually added eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars to the budget because it was underfunded at that time it's well over I don't have
160the exact number with her right now Kelly might know but it's well over a million dollars and through that we we tried to take this out of the hands of the schools because it takes an incredible amount of time to order textbooks order the newest copyright buying textbooks get them repaired get them replaced on an annual basis we survey highschool teachers about the numbers of textbooks that they need do they need the new copyright are they up for adoption we try to take some of that work off of the schools and we centralize that ordering and replacement process on an annual basis for all of our k-12 curriculum departments the amount of money that schools have for curriculum is indeed it is indeed limited you're absolutely right about that and at the elementary and middle
161school level it's probably less than that in their formula budgets so schools do have a small amount of supply or materials budgets lots of times it's for consumables that they might need on an immediate basis but they request from curriculum and instruction the bigger materials and the bigger like microscopes anything they might need for labs and when we had this opportunity to buy this really great piece of equipment that lots of kids can experience we've been sort of planning out the phases of curriculum adoption for four pathways and also those higher level science classes and at some point we had to pull the trigger and make the purchase and this was the year that we did it with the money that we had but I if I were you and you saw that that small
162amount was what teachers had to spend on purchases I would also be alarmed but we do have what we feel like is a robust sea our pot of money i am very protective of that you'll notice i never offer any of that up for budget cuts because i think it's really important that our teachers and schools have the resources that they need to actually teach so I have just a practical question I'm not sure exactly which of the anatomage tables we're purchasing but depending which one we buy it's gonna waste somewhere between 500 and 700 pounds how are we going to share it between high schools it seems like a difficult piece of equipment to move around assuming it's delicate as well without knowing the exact answer to that I would assume we would be
163working with our building services and our transportation department to make sure that we are rotating that as needed it's kind of like what we used to do with the gymnastics equipment that's a lot it's really heavy and we put our building services folks on a rotation and work with Chad to make sure that we're protecting the investment the last time we were given a pathways budget I believe was in November 2018 and at that time it showed that the CNI budget for pathways this year 2019-20 was $100,000 not $200,000 and it shows the pathways budget at full implementation at 200,000 so I'm just kind of wondering when the decision came to double the CNI budget this year and does that mean when at full implementation will be doubling it as well I have ever an
164always known the pathways budget to be $200,000 and I can I can ask Kelly to take a look at the budget book where that or all of our department budgets are published every year okay that would be helpful I can share this one with you that one from 2018 if you want to see it I also went and just looked at what we spent on CNI from July 1st to date and it looks like if we approve this pathways expenditure fully 25% of our CNI budget to date will have been spent on pathways it's about a hundred and ninety one thousand dollars including this purchase if we approve it that's 25% of the budget going to what I calculated is three and a half percent of the students in the district are in pathways it's
165about 800 kids and a district of 27,000 that might be wrong but it seems highly disproportionate to be spending this much money on seven or eight hundred students you know 25 percent of the cni budget going towards that when we know we don't have all the curricular resources we need across the district so most of that CNI budget gets expended over the next couple of months this is big ordering time to get school set up for next year so you will see lots of heavy CNI orders coming through on consent over the next couple of months because we want to get everything spent down before the end of the year deadline and make sure schools are set up next year so but you said the total budgets around a million maybe I'd have to go
166back I'd have to honestly I just would have to go back and look at the budget book I can't remember I know when Mike and I worked on it we put a lot more money in it and we are always sort of figuring on how to stretch that dollar as far as we service after we if we approve this our total spending to the to date will have been about 750 1,000 so it's not like we have buckets of money waiting to be done C&I across the district I'm curious if how if and how we engaged the science teachers who will use this equipment across the district not just the pathways teachers in this decision and if they opted it said they would offer this as opposed to maybe a Chromebook app that would allow
167for you know human body dissection or Anatomy lessons like would they have picked this technology over something that's possibly less cost that would have opened up more money for other science I don't know the answer to that we can get you the answer to that club crest I think for a purchase this big staff voice and staff input is absolutely critical and then just a bigger picture question you know this is a very very big investment in pathways and we've been told that pathways is ultimately going to be kind of a cost neutral thing that purposing staff that ultimately it's not gonna cost us no money to run our high schools with pathways I'm just wondering given the fact that right now we are spending more money to run our high schools with pathways we
168have the coordinators we're spending extra money you know disproportionately more money on curriculum for this small number of students have we done any kind of cost-benefit analysis of pathways so the pathways coordinators were actually repurposed from existing professional development coordinators in the buildings and there hasn't been there haven't been did you have another question did you have another question okay all right okay say I raise your hand thank you okay good what can you do your amendment so I knew that the Board of Education approved the curricular materials adoptions excluding the anatomized tables in the total of amount of eight thousand five hundred and ninety six dollars with funding from the 1972 film an instruction budget second hey y'all I hope I'd and take a recess yeah okay there are two items on the consent
169agenda we have to finish and that's the 10.5 and that's their 10.7 urban triage we would like to we would like to vote on urban triage we think that's a very important partner so if you could let us vote on it we can otherwise it'll be deleted okay okay um so did you have did you wanna be redundant I move that the Board of Education approved the curriculum attorney curricular learning materials adoptions excluding the anatomage tables in the total amount of eighty five ninety six with funding from the 2019-20 curriculum and instruction cor LM budget second kenny discussion on that just wanted to add that given everything I said earlier I just I can't support this purchase right now we need to find all our says I need a razor I need you to raise
170your hands all in favor aye i okay we got two eyes in repose opposed so it's just a both so just raise your hand they're not letting us so let's do that okay what we're gonna move on to we're tabling the rest of the consent agenda items okay ready so I move the Board of Education approve a resolution detaching territory from the Middleton cross plains Area School District acacia Ridge neighborhood and attaching to the MMSD pursuant to Wisconsin State statute one one seven point 12 as provided in the document prepared for this agenda second I any opposed motion passes put 14.2 I know that the Board of Education authorized the district to which heís the responsive government of Public Instruction won a one-year waiver of the charter school louder preference provision to one-year waiver of
171their requirements of open enrollment and Wisconsin State statute one one eight point one five Kayla up to five Monona Grove kindergarten students enroll in 2020 2021 second a four-year waiver of the requirement to open ordained to allow all Monona Grove students who are enrolled at national mundo to attend remember without being required to apply for open enrollment second all in favor aye opposed motion passes