Board of Education Regular Meeting 3/18/2019

001Call the meeting to order this is the regular Board of Education meeting for March the 18th 2019 first on the agenda is a resuscitation of the vision statement every school would be a thriving school that prepares every student to graduate from high school college career and community ready tonight we are saddened to report the recent passing of a retired MMSD educator and superintendent Don Hoffman passed away on February 27th at the age of 87 his lifelong career in education with MMSD began in 1958 when he began working as a teacher and a coach and continued on to become a guidance counselor principal administrator assistant superintendent and then superintendent until his retirement in 1986 Don was a mentor and a leader to many and firmly believe that education is a path to the future he continued

002to advocate for children with the creation of the foundation for Madison public schools which provides funding for additional educational resources for MMSD please join us in a moment of silence as we remember former superintendent of Madison Public Schools Don Hoffman the board would now like to recognize both James Howard and Dean Loomis for their time serving on the board both James and Dean have served for multiple terms and have contributed greatly to improving our school district and making it a more equitable place for our students and family now I will read a resolution for both members beginning with James whereas James Howard Board of Education member for the Madison metropolitan school district has successfully served on the board since 2010 as a member vice president for two years and the president for five years for

003a total of three terms whereas for nearly a decade James have taken on major later leadership roles and has advocated for diversity and inclusion policies and programs that better serve students families and staff of color whereas James has been instrumental in the development and continuous improvement of a school discipline policy that is progressive and restorative whereas James is well known for his long-standing role as a community member working for equity and education being a father of two MMSD graduates while serving on the board and for being an enthusiastic representative for MMSD athletic programs now therefore be it resolved that the Madison metropolitan school district Board of Education recognizes and greatly values James Howard contribution and dedication to MMSD schools his work and legacy will continue to have a lasting positive impact in our schools our

004students our families and the community yet for the result the statement will be permanently imprinted in the Board of Education minutes for the meeting of March 18th whereas Dean Loomis Board of Education member for the Madison metropolitan school district has successfully and selflessly served on the board since 2013 for two consecutive terms whereas Dean has served as the chairperson for the educational resource officer ad-hoc committee and the instruction workgroup and served on the original Student Conduct and discipline ad-hoc committee whereas Dean has continually advocated for improving access to quality alternative programming and services for the most marginalized youth whereas Dean has often and most recently sought to advocate for permanent stable housing for families staff and students who suffer the most from housing instability whereas Dean is well known for his passion for MMSD facility

005and facility improvements including a commitment to renewable energy now therefore be it resolved that the Madison metropolitan school district Board of Education recognizes and greatly values Dean Loomis's contributions and dedication to MMSD schools his work and legacy will continue to have a lasting positive impact on our schools and for our students our families in the community be it FURTHER RESOLVED this statement will be permanently imprinted in the Board of Education meeting minutes for the meeting on March 18th 2019 Dean is on the phone with us so Dean congratulations and thank you next on the agenda is a approval of the minutes dated December 18th 2018 I will recommend that the Board of Education approved the minutes from the regular meeting dated December 18 2018 second all in favor aye opposed come on I'm sorry that

006passes 7-0 next up are public appearances as you recall we have made some improvements to our boardroom protocols to ensure the meeting runs smoothly thank you for signing up in the front hall thank you for keeping up helping us keep our aisles clear to ensure safety and thank you 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 mispronunciation of names and we apologize for any time that this has happened in the past we are using a new system whereby each speaker can introduce themselves speakers are welcome to speak on any topic at a regular board meeting but we would like the speakers in the audience to know that board action and conversation is limited to items

007on our agenda which means members of the board will not be able to engage in conversation with speakers we are here to listen carefully we will take your comments into account in our decision-making and follow up with you or appropriate each speaker is given up to three minutes to speak you must be registered to speak and cannot give your remaining time to someone else the lighting system will turn yellow and then red so you will know when it's time to wrap up if you've gone over your time I will ask you to immediately 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

008disabilities our accommodations in order to register and speak to the board will be granted such accommodation upon request other extensions may be granted only by the approval of the board thank you again for participating in our meeting tonight tonight we have 28 speakers signed up for public comment we will start with speaker 1 speaker 2 please make your way down either aisle towards the front and wait by the stairs until your time to speak and we would appreciate that that speakers next up also are prepared thank you what's up y'all my name is I'm tired of the school board shit I still AM alright I'm a PhD student study in education and I'm a community organizer with freedom Inc but this is really to the people behind me RG Laura warned us that black people

009were never meant to survive since blackness is not merely dehumanized but outside the scope of humanity we were also never meant to be educated schooling has therefore always been violent for black communities and students to attempt to keep us docile meek and inactive schooling has historically served as another form of policing designed to neutralize black radical thought in action black and slave youth had theirs eyes gouge for reading or writing Blackie's were arrested and beaten for creating their own radical educational spaces during the civil rights movement black youth were hunted down and assassinated by the federal government and local police departments during the Black Power movement for having a radical pedagogy in education and now in this movement for black lives we continue to have police and policing of schools not to strive to achieve

010the same goal destroy black youth communities and our fight for liberation community and youth organizing is a real problem in the odds of MMSD they only allow control and whitewash cultural images of blackness to be present like celebrating Black History Month while at the same time silencing black students through multiple forms of violence when they simply speak up or refuse this type of violence I'll go through some of the stats we already know about the multitude of stories and around the supporting that arrest suspension expulsion and abuse of black children not to mention the violence that black people face simply a school the issue is not proof or analysis though the issue is that Shah don't believe black people never will the issue is that black people were never meant to survive nor to be

011educated and it is your duty up here and Madison not large to keep it that way today mayor Soglin tells us that Madison is not a racist City on today MMSD tells us that the schools are not anti black we know that's a goddamn lie black children have to be emotional listen espaces having a bad day facing trauma refusing anti black teachers curriculum and school practices are deemed criminal so we are punished for refusing schooling and demanding education on our own terms don't be fooled Madison and MMSD have simply reorganized and repackaged their anti blackness and terror patriarchy clear phobia ableism all that shit they made announced over shit racism and anti blackness yet they do everything in their power to secure and maintain the anti black and oppressive order of this city and the

012schools they claim to be dedicated to inclusion diversity equity which are all impossible for black people in this state of the world and a well bling of black children but when black students rise up and demand change they attempt to mute us with a black Exodus plan which is again really a black death plan a death plan that reinforces anti black ideas of meritocracy or the idea that hard work overcomes all a death plan that relies on capitalist ideas of schooling a death plan that uses black bodies and stories to continually hurt black people a death plan that uses women queer as well as black and not black people of color to uphold their oppressive school structures a death plan that seeks to hop block youth organizing a deaf man that straps it in education

013with schooling a depth plan that is black students so that we don't disrupt those ideas but that's defending yourself against a racist teacher or administrator trying to pull here but excellence is refusing racist curriculum and testing please finish a skipping school against races attract by other students black excellence is demanding no cops who are policing in schools and investment in evil color black excellence is taking education into our own hands and defining excellence on our own terms black actually saying fuck the time limit imma keep going black people and those who want to stand with us as comrades at this time that would move away from the school plantation and began to envision education on our own terms we have done it before and it is a necessity now and anytime listen to what our

014goddamn needs have been telling us right the school board okay so I'm back here at another school board meeting I'm tired of coming here a lot of the black and brown youth are tired of coming here I know many of the people standing behind me are tired of coming here and I know damn well all of you are tired of seeing us here but we are going to keep coming no matter how tired we are until you actually all listen to and take cops out of schools and bussed in youth of color and let the community have decision-making power around what happens to our children I am so so scared of speaking in front of people so scared but honestly I can't sit back and not tell the people who have power and who are

015supposed to listen to the people they represent that they are doing wrong what what they are doing is wrong the people who are most impacted the black and brown youth are are tired of trying to convince you to protect them when I read about the little boy black boy who told his mom he didn't want to go to the school because he was scared of the police would lock him up I was truly heartbroken this is what police do to black and brown kids every single day that's the kind of fear they instill in black and brown youth and by they I mean the police or anyone who embodies the police like the security guards you have up in here in the school board meetings can you imagine if your child said that to you

016no you can't because you know damn well the police are going to protect your white children Mary at the last school board meeting you broke a rule and answered yes to seeing black and brown people as humans that was a lie if you saw a black and brown people as humans you'd listen to what they have to say you'd have sympathy towards their experiences with law enforcement you wouldn't have voted to increase police in Madison schools you and everyone on the school board should have voted to take police out of schools if you view black and brown people as humans it's easy to turn a blind eye on black and brown youth because you don't have to live in their shoes you just don't get it and you never will but I need you to

017believe me and all the black and brown people who come from for public comment the police harm black and brown youth show the world how great Madison schools can by divesting in the police take them out of schools invest in youth of color and let the community have decision-making power on issues that impact us I and everyone else would be back here at the next school board meeting at the meeting after that and the meeting after that until you take cops out of schools okay if this third speaker isn't it is and here we'll move on to the four speaker okay it's a new microphone or something it's all well okay so I'm monka you all know that by now yeah like reflecting on like all the time that we've been here and everything that

018we've told y'all it sounds like it seems like you still don't understand right it's clear to me how you don't understand the peace around removing cops from schools that you don't understand about investing money and resources into their leadership and their well-being it's clear that you don't understand that we need transformative practices in our schools not people who are supposedly experts beating our children ripping their hair from their heads it's clear to me that you don't understand what community control over school safety is because just last meeting you voted unanimously to add 30,000 more dollars to your budget for police that special school events well that's okay y'all don't have to understand y'all are going to be here forever in fact every time that each and every one of y'all up for re-election we're gonna

019replace you with someone else I want my people behind me to understand that we don't need cops and schools why because this is how they show up in the community and the spaces like the library where kids are supposed to go for safe spaces after school before school sit and read a book whatever hang out with their friends when five black youth 11 year olds are walking out after being told by the librarian let they're being dished up disruptive they get harassed and brutalized by police officers in the community when they're already on their way out 11 year old children but you don't have to understand that my people behind me have to understand that why don't we need cops in schools or anywhere else for that matter because this is how they show up

020in our schools we all know about the 11 year old girl that got harassed about her by beat and brutalized I rip her hair out but besides data tells us that black girls are 13 times more likely 13 times more of the arrests that MMSD schools than white girls and other girls black girls 13 times more that there are a hundred percent of all the middle school girls arrested right but you don't have to understand that that's what my people here to understand the ones who are going to replace all of y'all where your time's up why don't we need police in schools why invest in something different because they harassed our youth on and around school grounds and don't even serve their state of purpose these white folks be telling us that it's because

021they're gonna stop school shootings and shit our school resource officer has never not one time stopped us mass shooting where there's an active shooter and people have died never once and that's fine cuz they're people they're not like you know please finish up your comments you see such people today they vomit on birds and they pop their agenda all that let's finish up your comments we have 28 speakers who would like to share their thoughts also I am disappointed at the school board for not protecting black and brown students the system was not made for people of color you all had failed us there are so many emotions that I am filling I thought angry in mad that you all decide to put metal detectors in scores if pool if police candle shit what makes

022you all think that having metal detector is going to do this is not school safety this makes me feel even more like I'm on prison crowns grounds and my brothers have to come to school and get searched then I rather let them stay home and get home scored I don't trust these officers well if they sexually harass these students what will you do next obviously nothing this is why people who live in Madison rather take their kids there's elsewhere because you are making dumb decisions that are not helping kids with their education I thought you all were supposed to teach us and make us mark but instead you all destroy us and make us look dumb I'm tired of looking you all at you are grown-ass right with the people up there that always have

023the right to make this world the way y'all want it I am sick of this white ass country and state and I'm ready to make a change I am ready to take you all all of those seats and get people that they will actually care for us be ready be ready to get all the seats and I have a voice so the next speaker was in the bathroom when she called her name so she's gonna go now I was speaking number three so I'm here again today not because I don't have any other responsibilities and that because I just feel like I want to show up and practice my public speaking I'm here because I that's my responsibility as a good citizen to stand up for my children for my community I must be there

024again talkin to the same old school board members about why we don't want police in our schools I had been here many times with my community members asking for you to not vote for police into our schools but obviously you decided to only Rotella against communities of color mainly black children so at the last meeting y'all tried to shut down the meeting saying that we were all being disruptive so who can secretly have their decisions that I know behind closed doors which is not surprising to me at all I know in this start that this is how white supremacists work there's so much happening in Madison public schools and libraries all because of people like you people like you who support police our children but to those recent incidents the Vipers incidents which have grown

025old and who was a school teacher to be a positive behavioral and used to heard of justice committee this teacher physically assaulted the 11 year old girl it has but not been held accountable at all the other incidents just not too long ago a few weeks ago at the making a public library the police were called on some black boys for behaving like kids the police escalated - they came in there being violent towards our kids but then blaming it on both kids some videos of what happened just sickens me that this is how much medicine is a white supremacist liking you all I'm so sick and tired of not feeling safe for my children or any of the my community to be in public spaces like schools and libraries which were supposed to be

026rich was supposed to be spaces were children's are supposed to be safe they're supposed to feel safe if it's a learning space for children but not there are communities of color or black and brown children going to public places is like going to prison don't look down on our black and brown children just because you are afraid that we will succeed Thursday police out of schools never investing in them again and start learning from our communities and start opening your ears to Roby ones to better medicine for all people of color black children are harmed everywhere they go either it's police or races as white people they are harmed in schools the library even walking in the halls in the streets it's fucked up that white teacher that one teacher at Whitehorse middle school isn't

027getting prosecuted for beating up 11 year old black girl 11 year old black girl that only spray perfume in the hallway really what's the harm of that I shouldn't be afraid when I get pulled over by the cops making sure my hands aren't there within a steering wheel this case damn sure shouldn't be afraid in their own school but he's damn cops and wondering if they're going to be harassed or stopped the kids in the library had got the police card on them when police got there it only got worse that's how it is in schools the police don't stop shit they make it even worse investor 360,000 dollars that you're trying to invest in police invested in till youth of color and counselors that look like them we have demands invest then one of

028them is removing the races as cops out invest in our education leadership and health youth have bad days every day and the last thing we want is for them cops to put their hands on us your community control over school safety and their transformation justice model instead of pushing youth repeat after me I am tired of coming here I am tired of how uneducated you all are like how do you get onto these seats I have no words left you are corrupt this goal board as many times as we come here to tell you that our children are being hurt by your decision-making you all still don't listen the problem of course is cops in schools but it's also clearly you all you all know better but don't want to go to that extra mile

029to see what's on the other side of yours perspective who cares for their children's well-being in school the parents not the police have asking shit and harassing kids of color all of these black hmong and kamae parents care for their children's well-being but this is not the first time we have stood up both on our feet to you all and say what's up this is why you are part of the problem we are showing you all that the community wants change when you all up there but don't want change because it's the same meeting in same place we're at tonight I don't see why it's that hard to listen I don't see why you all give us numbers instead of asking how to pronounce our damn names that to me makes me feel like a

030gel a mate and their values me as a human being I have a fucking name no longer can this shit continue all your racism bleeds into the Madison schools and I'm tired of it and this is why nothing is progressing here you only care for your white peers if you all want these cops are badass girls we will shut you down on sight I don't not fucking care anymore stop fucking playing with youth like chess games the hate you give to little instance fucks everybody you don't understand the struggle you don't understand diversity if you came in listen to it untold story people in the back you see your drawing on my team pretty new squad we've been fighting this for two years nothing has changed by therefore passing policies on damn cop in schools

031they they know they threw away their white supremacy guard dogs they will lose so much money and the power over their seats we have to keep fighting we have to keep encouraging each other now you have to keep speak up we have to fight for each other's freedom because they will continue killing beating and beating black moneka my plan letting X votes this is for our children this is their future their school their learning face this money is not touching the students of color who needs it imagine what we can do learn our own history and not playing on a boring white history that we always got to learn we don't want to learn about colonizing shit imagine what we can do with that battered school lunch programs in classes to prepare our children's of

032school I might keep it a hundred police are put into schools to do one job to prevent violence which is to stop a fight from happening or to break up one or when they need backup basically police are brought into schools to do their job not to do someone else's look around you you see you for color but do you see what we face on a daily basis no you don't you don't see color you only see what you want how many problems have been solved for police in school nothing the same issues occur again and again either the school's not doing a job or you're not don't you think kids who quote-unquote act out have experienced significant trauma harsh but harsh punishments for criminal behavior increased likelihood young people will continue to offend themselves

033if you want to do your job Haram that's your money or to you for color better school lunches but sterling justice and helping with bullying and also LGBTQ community do something powerful do something that will make a change instead of temporary bullcrap do something that will only make a change don't just spend your money on what you think that will help spend your money on something that will help everybody else not just you you send in you send in the seats are comfy while everybody else sitting back with nothing nobody you don't have no good lunches you see the schools are bad and terrible but chalk continues to do what you want to do with your money but nothing else for no one else you see you for color that struggle on a daily basis

034you see poor people that sit outside with no money but you can't give money to them but you see all the wealthy you got but nobody else you look at yourself with all the color you see all you white people you see the black person sitting up there helping everybody else see how they light is going you don't see nothing but what you want there's a color of my skin define the choices that the school board makes for me take a moment to think about what I'm asking you will my voice be heard specifically about cops being in schools why bring cops in schools when they're already making us uncomfortable as we walk to our cars or as we're walking down the street minding our own business I know in my heart that black people

035don't want cops in school I go to the school board meetings just to get my voice heard they listen but they ain't hearing me now what I have to say not what we as a community have to say this is our community the school board doesn't know the environment at school they don't understand the everyday struggle of a black / brown student in the school so why do they get to start decide whether or not police get to be in schools let me tell you a story about a couple Kostov abused their power over us african-american students at a Louisiana middle school a 14 year old boy was manhandled grabbed by the neck and slammed to the ground soon the officers started making a punching motion towards the student and he wasn't done yet he

036picked the african-american boy up and and slammed him again yes there were people in the office that could have stopped that but they did it you thought it was over no another white cop comes in the office Jackson up and slams them on the desktop just to handcuff them I can't even go on and hurts that bad schools are starting to feel like prisons not safe places when I was black people come to school we want to be safe we know how police officers want were one slave crunchers we know that every day another black man could be falsely accused of having a weapon and being shy next thing we know we screaming black lives matter but you make us feel like we don't matter you make us students feel like we are unhurt but

037today I'm gonna make a change and you know instead of putting constant schools why don't you invest the money and more diverse counties invest the money on bus cars for kids that don't get them invest in social studies books tell us the history of our african-americans we are all tired of hearing that they were slaves and then they tried to run away can we hear about victories what I'm saying is investing money into things other than cops invest the money into teachers they are so underpaid maybe if they got pay how like they were supposed to there do their job right black opinions matter or do my name is M Adams and I'm an organizer with freedom Inc I'm here to support the young black leadership here today as they've been for the last several

038months to demand no cops in schools to demand in equitable investment into black life that matches the school board's current motto of black excellence and also to demand community control so briefly on no cops in school again as we've stated and demonstrated several times there is no evidence that cops the school actually increase the safety for black students we have a responsibility to act on behalf of black students as your board is not acting on the behalf of black students and so to that we we are saying that cops increase unwellness cops increase harassment for black youth we've demonstrated that time over and time again there's also the reports that were conducted by Madison home Police Department about their interaction with black youth so the statistics are there the evidence is there I won't spend

039more time on that the investment in black students and brown students it needs to match the it needs to match the talk if like Martin Luther King and many others have said budgets are moral documents so if you have a budget that has a big line item for police in it that's what you invest in if you have a budget that doesn't have a big line item for the intense or the specific leadership development culturally specific curriculum for black students then that demonstrates what your moral priorities are what I will spend the majority the rest of my time talking about is the demand around community control community control is a framework developed out of black liberation struggles and we use the framework given to us by the Black Panthers and other freedom fighters and community

040control comes from the analysis and awareness that the black community does not have power to make decisions about what happens to black people and in this situation what we are saying or what the application of that would be here is that the black community doesn't actually have any power to implement or make decisions about what is actually happening in schools over the last year or two years we have brought in countless testimonies by black folks we have offer also offered town halls and other engagement sessions with black folks we done research we have done several interviews dozens hundreds of unit interviews at this point we also have done we've also done research that looked at looked at the data a similar to you and despite all of this and despite also our very particular expertise

041and a harm reduction and violence prevention our expertise is going unnoticed and so I'm here today to assert and to demand that we actually walk community control over schools we no longer want people who do not represent or who do who are not black leadership to make decisions on behalf of black students that has been the case for far too long and the result of that is the disparities that we have it has been the case so far too long that non black leadership and I don't mean one single black things I don't mean that my partner is black or that my friend is black or I watched blackish on TV and I think it's funny what I mean is actual black leadership that is accountable to a radical black politic and that actually can

042increase and implement changes that lead to the actual excellence in black students and so I'm here to assert a demand community control our students deserve 10/10 schools where they are safe supported and respected school safety means the creation of supportive environments where students are free from physical harm and violence than in bullying that includes bullying from other students and especially from grown people who should know better state violence is not school safety state violence is the thing that got Tony Robinson killed today violence is the thing that got Jenelle Laird assaulted at the mall state violence is the thing that got an 11 year old black girl assaulted in front of her classmates state violence is a thing that got a group of kids assaulted at the library and terrorized state violence is the thing

043that hyper sexualized is black girls and tells us tells them that their clothes are a distraction state violence's of things then is the thing that makes schools unwelcoming for queer youth with officers asking them are you a boy are you a girl right and then citing them for being feeling disrespected and responding to their question with an attitude who wouldn't have attitude state violence in all forms police metal detectors behavioral education plans Eurocentric curriculums black excellence initiatives that don't do shit do not make schools safer MMSD is not participating in black excellence or racial justice y'all are not participating in that shit y'all are participating in state violence y'all are participating in white supremacy y'all are participating in the school to Prison Pipeline there is no amount of good intentions gin there are no amount

044of good intentions or initiatives that will make us feel better and I don't care who you are I don't care what your people have been through all of y'all participating in state violence you continue to choose state violence over choosing our children y'all want us to trust you with the decisions to keep our children but you won't even do basic research research national data shows while school funding for police has increased so have school shootings and SROs don't do nothing nothing to stop school shootings and I can give you a list of 50 resources that say the same thing and I don't care that Shaw how brown people sit up here and tell you what you want to hear it's not the truth so when y'all come to that meeting with us next month you

045bring your research and we'll bring ours and let's compare notes and as a matter of fact I will challenge any one of y'all on the school board to a public debate around school safety and we'll have one of our youth debate you and I guarantee you I guarantee you we will win and you know that we'll win too but yet you still continue to choose state violence over us over our people we have simple demands we're asking for basic things we're asking for our kids children not to be harmed by police in schools we're asking that you invest in them instead of investing in systems and people that harm them we're asking for it we're demanding that we have control although is safe good evening on behalf of Swan Creek we just wanted to thank

046you for listening to our concerns last month although the vote did not go as we had hoped we did want you to know we appreciate your service we still feel that the problem has not been resolved the percentage is foreign against the second petition in 2006 were the same percentages in 2018 and we will deliver the same messages to the Oregon School Board in person next month because we weren't able to last month because of the concurrent meetings but that's not why I came here tonight it has been said that there's a time for everything under the heavens there's a time to disagree there's a time to vehement ly disagree but there is also time to give thanks and so I'm speaking for myself when I say thank you for serving on a school board

047as I've said before we unfortunately are living in a time period where our elected officials don't show up to their own town hall meetings they don't meet with their own constituents you have not done that you have come here consistently month after month even when it has been tough even and when is difficult to find compromise among competing interests 'as you have done your best anyway I just want to personally thank all of you I wish you the best of luck with all the decisions you're going to face for the rest of the school year and I hope you are all are willing to continue to serve on a school board for the next 10 20 30 40 or however many years you have thank you good thing we went after him because the thing

048is you all were elected and are supposed to be here but the kids who've been showing up for two and a half years they didn't have to be here but they've been here every week and so I think we should thank them I think that had they looked differently than they do we would be giving them awards because let me tell you something about this city let me say it again had they looked differently than they do you here is the reason why the school board is talking about caps out of school the city the mayor election folks who are running for office are talking about schools caps out of schools why because these kids so they should be given some credit for that and I think that the conversation came to you not in

049the way that you know it and not in the way that you like it but yet it's come to you and so I think that we need to this is what investment looks like investment looks like two and a half years investments looks like putting resources where kids need to be educated to come to you day and after day even if you didn't even if you voted behind closed doors against them they still showed up that is courage and that is something I'm speaking to you tonight as a citizen as as a parent and I really want to talk about transformative justice and what that looks like and what that can look like in schools as somebody who works with victims and survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault I can tell you that many

050of our families do not use the police as a as a solution and so I'm sharing that with you tonight to say caps and schools don't solve violence and it actually doesn't stop violence but what can happen is we can think about transformative justice and what does that look like what look like for eleven-year-old who just got beat up by a 50 year old what does transformative justice looked like for her that's the conversation that we should be having if he's not going to be locked up how are you keeping her safe how are you keeping kids like her safe when you put cops in schools with weapons you don't ever think that they can use those weapons against those kids it's like putting someone who's armed with your kids who have nothing the other

051piece that I want to talk about is transformative justice and what does that look like for communities who don't trust policing like if we don't use the police in our own like daily lives to keep us protected why do you think that we would feel safe with them in schools with our kids we don't I don't have a lot of time but this kid wants to say something so I'm gonna let him say first no cops in schools all power to the people sorry I only had a few minutes so I would like to I would like to again say that this city is talking about an issue that these kids brought to the table and you should respect that and give them some respect that's due to them thank you go ahead sir thank

052you my name is Gary Mahoney I want to thank MMSD and the school board for your efforts towards the 2020 referendum I'm a West grad current president the West Booster Club and a proud parent of third generation Regents I've lived in Madison most of my life with the exception of two years in the Seattle area when we moved back I told my wife we need to live in the West district I absolutely have a west bias but I'm a firm supporter of MMSD my wife has worked in special education for several years in the district and I'm well aware of the district challenges that you face when I first became involved with the Booster Club a West alumnus reached out and shared some stories he informed me that my dad was the president back in

053the 60s which I believe at the time was an alumni club neither of which which I was aware of I learned that the club raised money to send legendary coach Willis Jones to Mexico City for the Olympic Games in 1968 and for my dad when he was sick my dad passed away due to cancer at the age of 48 when I was a junior at West he was a great athlete but he was a far better father in person I'm not asking for sympathy I'm asking that you don't underestimate the importance of athletics in our schools I had the support network of my family and friends my classmates and my teammates without them I would have been lost I'm certain there are thousands of other stories from alumni and current students at all four of

054our public schools the power outlet of athletics is that it brings together people from all walks of life regardless of ethnicity and socioeconomic backgrounds America is a melting pot and our schools reflect that with our diversity which is uncommon elsewhere athletics teaches our students to win with humility and lose with class those are the lessons that serve them well later in life as I said before at west bias West East to a lesser extent our landlocked according to the high school outdoor athletic facility matrix provided by rather corporation West has only 17 acres compared to 30 of these 256 in LaFollette and 76 of Memorial all our schools are well located but west need some relief we have a serious competitive disadvantage at West as several of our student-athletes must travel just to practice there's

055a big difference between schools whose student athletes can walk out of their back door to practice right after school 4:00 p.m. as compared to some West students who travel and or can't practice until 6:00 p.m. this is far from ideal from a time management standpoint we would like you to consider improvements to all of our fields and indoor facilities so that we can maximize the use and keep our student athletes at West in addition we would ask you to consider working with Madison Park to improve a field at nearby Hoyt Park another possibility is to consider an improvement to include a multi-use field at either charity or Hamilton Middle School's I want to make it perfectly clear this is not just a West coaster Club issue this is an issue for the entire West High

056community past present and future I first to support principal Ken bran and Affleck director Devin Peterson but they do not have the historical perspective of West as they are relatively new in their positions West High needs and deserves an advocate I would like to invite MMSD representatives to meet with the Westside community so that we can learn about the process going forward and help each other to ensure that this referendum is approved thank you hi my name is Tina Hogan and I I have a son who graduated from Memorial High School I live in the district and I'm here today because I'm troubled the district prides itself on making data-driven decisions as it should we look at all different kinds of ways of making sure that the decision we the decisions we make are based

057on reality and on data this is the issue of police officers in schools is one instance in which you seem to be ignoring the data I don't understand that and it seems to not be in keeping with what we as a district are trying to do we want to make sure that we take care of all children and yet we know that children of color are disproportionately affected by having police officers in school that police officers in school don't make it a safe space you've heard all of these things before you've heard the data you've heard the numbers you know what it is but it seems to me that you're ignoring the data and I can't understand why you would do that when you've been really good about paying attention to other data and I

058guess I would ask each of you to look inside yourselves and answer the question what is it that you're afraid of I know that Jim Howard talked about being afraid of a school shooting but we know that police officers in schools are not going to prevent a school shooting data tells us that right so what are we afraid of as white people the white people who make up the majority of the board we have been conditioned over hundreds of years to be afraid of people of color it's just something that our society has taught us so are we afraid of people of color is that part of this I'd really like us to each look inside ourselves very and really deeply consider this these are kids we're talking about and they deserve to be treated

059the the kids of color deserve to be treated with as much dignity and respect as the white kids who feel safer with police in schools the kids of color don't they feel traumatized and threatened by police so please consider what it is that you are voting for or against when you vote for police officers in school it's my understanding that the police chief refused to sign the contracts so maybe we have an opportunity here for for everyone to think again about this and to really think about what it means to care about everyone thank you sixteen just got scared yeah the next one is Robert Cooper my name is Robert Cooper I'm a West grad from 2018 and I'm here to talk about athletic facilities I was a four-year soccer player at West my final

060two years on varsity and a four year wrestler the difference between the wrestling facilities and the soccer facilities was a huge difference when it came to arriving at events wrestling was in the gym you were practicing at West all your home meets were at West you had the school spirit vibe with soccer we had to travel to the fields which were at various middle schools and elementary schools there were various cases where we had students on GDL driving seven or more other teammates to practices just so everyone could get to the fields on time for practice once we got to the fields the conditions are very poor they're super hard grounds they're uneven they're not consistently mowed and you just never know how much of the field you're going to be able to use every

061day my senior year we had two of our best players received shin splints just from like the constant on uneven ground background and it doesn't change once we get to our home stadium at Mansfield we share the stadium with foots football so the grass is always beaten up torn up uneven the field is under sized so we can't host home playoff games there due to sharing with football and the size of them my junior year we had a home playoff game and we played it at Bree Stevens which is East home field and we were playing East at the game so I just think that better facilities for Wes would improve this sports and just more students being able to show up to events thank you hi my name is Alison I'm the mother of

062an MMSD kindergartner whom I recently took to the doctor to try to figure out why her feet were giving her all kinds of inexplicable pain I was not surprised to hear the doctor's opinion of the likely cause of that pain anxiety i've watched as my daughter has gone from major school enthusiast to a child who sometimes prefers to stay home a culture of age inappropriate learning expectations set by distant technocrats interested mostly in building their future labor force is a reality for all MMSD students of course my child's race and class privilege shield her from the worst of this culture I at the very least don't have to worry that my daughter will be slammed to the ground on her face by school leadership and so some may think that I should be content with

063this relative safety that this is an inopportune time to mention my family's relatively trivial problems but I think it's an important time to bring up the fact that a system that allows it to black children to be brutalized neglected disrespected and arrested by the adults whose job is purportedly to protect them is a system that also doesn't care that my child has anxiety nor it's worth noting here is it a system that cares about teacher pay benefits or working conditions in 1977 Otis Madison said the purpose of racism is to control the behavior of white people ten years ago that statement would have confused me but ten years ago I was blissfully blind as an MMS the employee all add to the actuality of racism not to mention utterly ignorant of how the prison industrial

064complex is paramount and propping up the economic system that racism was invented to support what I've learned since thanks to voices from communities most impacted by capitalism estate violence is that these are inconvenient but fundamental truths the selling out of black people is the essence of the American deal signed and blood as poor rights were given the job of slave patrols when the rumblings of cross racial solidarity between indentured servants and African slaves threaten the colonial operation a job that of course became the modern-day police forces whose function continues to be to control the racialized class boundaries that give the real privilege to the super-rich please check the data if you think that's hyperbole these are truths that too many of us don't know in our ignorant makes us all unsafe because of it many

065of us persist in a dangerously inaccurate view of what safety is if you'da acknowledges on the one hand that black and brown are disproportionately harmed by police and police in prisons but that cannot reconcile this fact is mattering as much as a safety up on the other hand white people say some of the teachers and potentially dangerous situations or the students who face the minor but terrifying possibility of a school shooting what you I'm talking about to the liberal Madisonians to profess to care so much about racism fail to understand is that this is a false dichotomy there is no conflict here the police do not make us safe they make us all unsafe they don't stop assaults or school shootings they just don't they are the racism that controls the behavior of white people

066as long as they are allowed to uphold actively the oppression of black people you're privileged white life your well-being at the least is in jeopardy - until we realize how factual it is that our Liberation's are bound together until we remove the police from our schools for a start none of us will ever fully be safe Otis Madison said the purpose of racism is to control the behavior of white people not blacks for blacks guns and tanks are sufficient why are you guys making it so easy can you believe that Apple fell from this tree my goodness you guys have been very lucky you're very intelligent and well horn people here today I'm sorry could you speak a little closer than microphone well I'll introduce that then I actually do have a disability and I

067and my speech is not often clear can't write my notes things take time but I'm here because I'm an old white lady I'm a professional trained to work with children I'm here because I thought maybe I could say something language ooh that you'd understand maybe I'm the second one to try to do this from the same language but police and schools is wrong the only role that police have in schools is to intimidate that's the owner of the police really happen school period except when they go over that and they start to actually do physical violence but they're harmful why else would anyone think to put more police or police at all in schools they just and it their indicators of power and regulation they aren't trained to deal with mental health crises they are

068trained to understand trauma they aren't trained to understand their own trauma I'm not done sorry I'm just I'm an insect moment it happens with the disease so but I gotta tell you that my disease progressive Jatinder to disease at least I am not infested with liberalism liberalism liberalism which is a creed that says I give if I don't get back if I don't get gratitude man I am pissed off I'm gonna go take my ball and go home this city is so racist this liberalism is so noxious it's shameful and the inability to recognize that is shameful but back to the police and their intimidation and black to white people I mean honestly I'm so sorry people do have environmental sensitivities but a girl having a bad day at school is confronted by a woman

069who is sensitive to fragrances they make her eyes burn and they make her cough gee I was lucky enough to grow up in the first int desegregated School District in the country where the little black kids had to go to the white people's district in the white people schools eliska's got to be holding further went to the black kids schools where the tear gas rained down on us and it made us cough and he gave her eyes some irritation and we didn't shoot down the helicopters so this girl was having a bad day and she was using some fragrance and it wasn't an anaphylactic reaction but it was an irritation and that escalated the the stakes here we have to call in extra help and backup and that student who decided not to cooperate was

070having a bad day according to the person who eventually took it upon himself to try to control her physically that student her activities were offensive to liberalism as far as I can tell so this gentleman who's gone to a course taught how to restrain people now this is my business this is my work seems to think that once he gets himself out of being locked into a classroom that's empty now because it was appropriately emptied for safety this gentleman feels that he needs to show that he's taking that course he knows how to do person restraint well the one person restraint is inappropriate he had no back of me a union issue you want to take it up with the district but that was the police finish up thank you well the police didn't know

071zone these giant dildo robbers police are there to intimidate and control hello my name is Sarah Anderson and I have three children a junior of freshman at West and a seventh grader at Hamilton middle school as we all I'm going to speak about the referendum as we all can see from the reports there is over 102 million dollars of deferred maintenance in the referendum that needs to be addressed in all four high schools we have areas of our high schools that have been neglected for over 30 years there's countless areas of the high school mechanical electrical plumbing out of 80 a compliance etc that have been out that have outlived their life expectancy by decades this should be concerning to all families that have kids attending the four madison public high schools if we were

072to ask for less than the gold option for the high schools we would once again defer some much-needed overdue maintenance I have been volunteering at West High School and have witnessed this firsthand we have water fountains that have black garbage bags wrapped around them because they don't work we have multiple locker rooms that have lockers that don't open due to rusting broken pieces shifting of the entire unit showers sinks toilets and drains that don't work on a consistent basis for over 15 years because I have friends who have took took their kids to swim lessons when they were in third grade and the showers still don't work and they are juniors in high school with that being said the gold option is the only option we should be bringing to the referendum next I would

073like to acknowledge that West has land constraints and we are all aware of that I would like to point out that report the report done for West high school by Zimmerman states that there's a Fieldhouse we do not have a Fieldhouse we have a gymnasium that has a partition that does not work properly and makes it very difficult for multiple teams to practice at the same time because we don't have a Fieldhouse our teams are forced to rent space at different locations that fit their sports needs for example baseball and softball rent spaces with batting cages pitching machines etc the other high schools have this on-site I would ask that you consider the potential of a Fieldhouse at West High School in the future when finally is finalizing this 2020 referendum this could potentially change

074the layout that is currently proposed I'm asking you to look at this referendum from an equality standpoint just because the dollar amount and the referendum given to the high schools are relatively similar it does not mean the high schools offer the same opportunities to their student athletes the athletic budgets for all four high schools this year varied by merely a few thousand dollars the lack of facilities at West converts to more of our budget spent on travel space field rental off-site prac off-site practices and the inability to compete competitively in some of the sports as I will continue to do my homework and research I'm asking that you do also West has not had an advocate for our athletic facilities for over five years it is clear by the lack of leadership there has been

075little to no improvements done at West High School athletics facilities the three other high schools have had advocates within the MMSD staff and that has paid off for them as a Booster Club thank you hi my name is Joanie Messner I'm here to talk about the West High School athletic facility upgrade in the 2020 referendum thank you for listening today I have four kids one graduated two at West and one that will be coming to West my husband and I both graduated from West in the 1980s and the athletic facilities are the same as when I was there and they were even rated them in the past four years as Sarah mentioned we've had four 80s three interim 80s so there's been very little a consistent advocacy for our athletic facilities and our athletic programs

076I'm asking MMSD to please advocate for us now West High School students deserve at least equal facilities as the other high schools I'm asking MMSD to advocate for us by personally visiting all over the high schools including West so you can compare and see the conditions firsthand and then ultimately realize that the gold option in the current options there's bronze silver gold the gold option is just a starting point for West High School I think we all know that there's a direct positive relationship between participating on a team especially a high school team and academics and life lessons and I'm asking MMSD to please help West High School thank you hi my name is Jen Garnett Sookie and I have two daughters that attend West one is a senior that's gonna graduate this year and

077another that just started as a freshman this year both have enjoyed being a part of the swim community and have been on the swim team obviously my senior for the last four years and my freshman this was her first year competing at West and she really loved it I I am NOT a West graduate I don't have the longevity or the history of the school but what I do have to share with you is first-hand experiences as a parent and from the perspective of my children that go to early morning practices before the Sun is even up and they're greeted to turning on the lights and being greeted by cock roaches and silverfish and tons of disgusting things not to mention after and during a grueling almost hour-and-a-half practice every morning then they get to

078go to the locker rooms where the showers the shower heads are shorter than they are and most often don't work or the ones that deal work the water that comes out is cold there's I'm told that there's maybe one hot shower that works but you have to turn on a faucet to get that shower to work it seems rather complicated to get 36 swimmers through a handful of showers and most of them that don't work to be able to start their day at West academically and successfully I know that since they both started swim team my doctor bills have gone up in fact what I was told and I don't know how true it is but the air quality in the pool is so bad that they're required to keep the temperature of the pool

079a little bit colder which normally isn't so bad if you could keep the door open that's right adjacent to the pool and you have an industrial-sized to kind of move the air well this year the industrial fans were taken away to be used for the gym to have and our coach was left to purchase household fans that moved a little bit of air but really didn't do the job well the first cold day of us of a swim meet where we had the doors open and the temperature of the pool is a little bit colder and we had a larger meet which our deck doesn't accommodate a large team or allow a lot of parents to sit around the air quality was so bad that one of my daughters had to be hospitalized taken away

080by ambulance sight I ask that you guys consider nothing but the gold option and and do your research do your homework again tour the facilities you'll see first hand for yourself what they're like thank you hello my name is Devin Huey I'm currently a junior at Madison West High School and I'm here regarding the athletic facilities issue at West High School I'm here on behalf of my classmates the staff parents and overall just the West High community as a three year varsity hockey athlete and I've played baseball for two years at West and I've noticed that I don't have the same privileges that other schools around Madison around around Madison area have my my hockey I have to drive always more than I'm allowed to take as a driver still on GDL and all of

081my baseball practices were either at Memorial or on the field that West has which I hardly consider a baseball field the fence has holes in it the ground is bumpy the outfield is also a football field where there's people playing constantly and in the fall of 2018 as well West spent 50,000 on transportation which seemed seems like it should be enough but busses were still lacking as athletes were required to drive or parents elite left early to drive to events as far as Sun Prairie Baraboo those places so I just ask that you guys keep this in mind and keep in mind the West community take it hi I'm Alex DeAngelis and I'm here to talk about also the West facilities and specifics in terms of what we don't necessarily get at West High School

082so I'm here on behalf of the gymnastics team and also every other sport at West that has to deal with and jump through the hoops that we have to but specifically having been in gymnastics for the last four years I've dealt with having to put everything second to Memorial their gymnastics team and so we've we've always had to have practice from 6:00 to 8:00 which doesn't seem like that big of a deal but when you're trying to get there doing traffic time and you have to carpool and everything it takes out a good 45 minutes just to get to the school and then we have practice for two hours and then your carpool is to drive home so it takes another 45 minutes which impacts study time time for homework to eat dinner all of

083that so that's a big issue and we don't have transportation to Memorial which is a little bit frustrating just because having been a driver for the last two years it does again take me around like 30 minutes to pick up everyone I have to drive so that's a big issue and then we also never really feel like we're at home meets which may not seem like that big of a deal but it is frustrating just to be at Memorial all the time having that be our place in all of its just Memorial decorations and everything and we don't have a locker room like most teams do at their schools and yeah so that's that's something specific that I see as a problem and then we also like this year just had a few west booster

084chairs I'm given which was nice but that's that's not it's just not enough so we just are hoping for better facilities which would be really nice for all the sports at Madison West High School thank you um hello my name is Alexander lemon s I am a junior at West High School and I'm here to represent Madison West varsity boys soccer so one of the big issues that we have with soccer is not only the appalling field conditions but also just the general like safety aspects of the field so since my former teammate has graduated the field conditions have actually gotten worse the field is not watered there is no host key at Hamilton we practice at Hamilton middle school there is no hose ski there is no way to water the field the janitors

085at Hamilton are nice enough to mow the field once every season so as you can expect the fields are uneven unmowed there are rocks in the turf the goal posts are rusty one of my teammates actually cut himself on a rusty bull post lasts my sophomore season while I played with Robert we had two kids who had shin splints this year even with athletic trainers advice we had four and drink playoff season including myself and to make it worse we are not the only people that have to use Hamilton as our field all three West teams have to practice their West varsity West JV and West JV gold Weston both JV teams all have to rotate through that field every day so asking you can expect the field gets absolutely destroyed and just there's an

086extreme limited space that all three teams get to use and considering that we have 115 kids come out every year for the soccer program it's one of the biggest at West I don't understand why we have to have the worst facilities in all of Madison for soccer and also some days we have to wait for the Hamilton club Ultimate Frisbee team to get off of the field just so that we can get on to practice and like my friend Alex DeAngelo said about the how the fields are away from West it is a huge hassle to get out there I the Hamilton is about ten minutes away from West and everyone needs to get a ride there if you don't coach makes you run so I think the first day that I got my license

087my sophomore season I was driving three people every day to school which was and I didn't I I did that just because I had to there was no other way around it people needed a ride and so I offered so I think just having West soccer being forced to practice some such unsafe and just unacceptable conditions is not right for such a program that is so popular and continues to produce excellent results in state tournaments thank you hello my name is Charlie feller I'm a junior at West High School and I'm here to speak in regards to the athletic facilities specifically the swimming pool I'm on the West men's swim team and after three years I can say that the swimming pool has not gotten any better in fact it's gotten much worse two years

088before I was on the team I know that there was an incident in which the chloral II the chlorine levels became dangerously high and a great number of kids on the team actually their hair fell out because of the chlorine levels being too high a great number of my teammates have received respiratory issues from the poor air quality in the pool but besides the poor air quality and poor regulation of the chlorine levels there's also the issue of just we have too small of a pool we have we're a big team and we have a lot of big guys on our team the lanes simply just don't fit us we run into each other we get injuries running into each other and it makes it difficult for us to practice and fully improve I know

089that MSD budget is meant to be shared equally among the four schools but West High School's athletic facilities are simply just not equal in comparison to the other three schools in the district so I'd ask you to consider that when you look at the gold budget thank you hi there my name is Jane feller I'm a West mom I've been a West mom since 2011 that was my latest um and I'm here to speak about the 2020 referendum first of all I applaud you for pursuing this as a taxpayer I would vote for as much as I could for my taxes go to the schools I think it's an investment for the entire community so I applaud you for that I ask you to go for the maximum amount that is possible and specifically I'm

090here to talk about West and our really pitiful athletic facilities what my son's friend Alex just said really really got me he said we have the biggest school and the worst facilities and there's no doubt that that's true the thing that gets me the most is the disparity between West and its partner schools we have no Fieldhouse we have no tract we have a to say the least a substandard pool our kids don't get home-field advantage quite often and that matters that matters in sports and you know there are a lot of people here before me who were better spoken than I and especially at the last meeting that I went to last week and they just talked about the importance of athletics and how it can really draw communities together draw kids together give

091kids a really great feeling of self-worth and the student athletes at West are being are receiving the service they're not getting the equal attention that their peers at their other district schools are and I realized that a huge part of this is that we've had a revolving door of athletic directors at West I've tried to become more active by joining the Boosters and a lot we're doing what we can but the fact is we don't have a champion at West like they have at specifically Memorial the fact that the Memorial ad is the district ad is probably unavoidable from a budgeting standpoint I understand that but there's an there's an inherent conflict of interest that can't be can't be ignored so I ask that you please take that into account that you go for the

092bare minimum of the gold package specifically for West and and as my friend and neighbor Jen also said please take the time to take a tour of the facilities and you will see the disparity believe between the four schools so on please go for the gold when it comes to the referendum and we will do our best to support you on the school board and we thank you very much excuse me would you excuse me we'd like to be able to continue the meeting take a five-minute break we're going to take a five-minute break and so you'll have three minutes we don't have the lights or the timer I'll let you smoke let me know it's um I thought it was two so I won't have to talk as fast okay so this isn't on

093but the light is on so it's on okay okay okay okay all right good okay you ready thank you okay my name is Alison Volkman I'm the parent of a fourth grader at Thoreau and a sixth grader at Cherokee was also a long-term sta sub in 2016 with minimal training I'm also on Cherokees PTO board and full disclosure I'm also a Feld's backyard neighbor I am against tessaro's and I'm not here to talk about athletic fields first thrower and Cherokee staff have been amazing and handling incredible challenges despite having insufficient insufficient allocation for getting appropriate staff there are frequent unfilled subbing jobs for essays and sometimes even classroom teachers but our principals have done have built an incredible team who have nurtured strong communities but I've often wondered why are there so few people of

094color as classroom teachers this year from what I'm hearing from many educators and parents at other schools in the district children with unknown or undiagnosed issues and trauma histories are moving into our schools at the beginning of and throughout the year they come with no additional supports when I volunteered at Cherokee event last week I bet over the course of 90 minutes I heard 10 different staff people ask at least 30 different children to put away their cell phones pockets buzzed everywhere zero confiscations obscene language frequent outburst at teachers with nearly thirty eleven and twelve year olds in the room it goes from being PG to rated R overnight many children have profound obviously profound needs staff are requesting more support parents are requesting help I think the administration your staff is giving the message

095that our staff at schools aren't doing the right things to help the child pause it's alright it's alright from the chat okay just we got yes should I sort of just back up a sentence or two okay all right all right many children have obvious profound needs and the staff are requesting more support the parents are requesting more support I think that the administration your staff is giving the message that teachers aren't doing the right thing to help the children you don't send enough or the right kind of help and if you do it takes forever the child is ping-ponged around in and out of the classroom in and out of suspension up through the tiers of support weeks go by months why not skip all that and for the very few children who need

096intensive medical health supports at each school before they could even be considered to be back in a traditional classroom with their peers why don't we wrap those children with supports paid for by emergent emergency allocations or whatever it's called if you're satisfied with the BEP and corresponding budget for next year you are saying yes to 17.2 additional special education teachers social workers and psychologists to be spread out at 50 different schools that comes out to one third of a person added to each school guaranteeing incremental improvement barely moving the needle during my own three-day training in this district as a special education teacher it was a three-day training all three days taught me how to restrain and seclude a child demand something drastic instead it's like fighting a two-alarm fire fire house fire with a

097garden hose but it's the garden hose is full of kinks that's all okay start whenever you're ready okay my name is Lisa Anderson and I am here to advocate on behalf of West not just athletic fields but also the academic facilities and the improvements for the 2020 referendum I have a son who's a sophomore there and a daughter who will be a freshman there next year my first my husband is a graduate of West and my first exposure to West was a few years ago when I went there to visit and to walk around and it was very surprising to me the condition of the school I have to say I wasn't expecting it to be as rundown as it is and I think the the classroom itself and the school itself as well as

098the athletic facilities or complete lack thereof I think is something that just was very surprising to me so I would like to advocate on behalf of minimum the gold level funding that you're hoping to hoping that you'll ask for also there's a couple things too from an athletic perspective the bleachers in the Stevens gym are extremely unsafe Eve walking down then they wobble as you walk down them as a relatively fit 40-something year old I'm nervous walking down them much less my in-laws come to watch my son play basketball and they have to scoot up and down on there but by the levels because they're nervous about having an injury for falling so and I there's many facility or many competitions and whatnot and school activities that are held in that gym and they're just

099they're not safe my son's also a baseball player so he's played on the baseball field that I think we've talked about quite a bit that's on the grounds the field conditions are bumpy at best kids have lost their teeth getting bad hops in the mouth but also it's right next to the tennis courts and so when they have a game they're probably somewhere between five and ten foul balls go blindly flying into the tennis courts of Jason and everyone has to yell heads up and we just hope that nobody's going to get hit on the head with the ball and I can't imagine being a tennis player trying to practice my sport or play a game knowing that at any moment you know balls may come flying into the court and then the last thing

100I think that I just wanted to say is I think that there's sort of a meta message that is being delivered to these kids when they are to sort of endure or live with less than sort of safe or inspiring facilities I think these places these schools are supposed to be inspiring and nurturing these kids to their full potential and I have no doubt everybody here really wants that for our kids and believes that these kids are really worth it but I believe a message that they're getting from having to sort of put up with facilities that are less than is that they're not worth it and I'd like to change that message I think that we should really do what we can it's it's been sort of a long time and I think we

101really need to invest in sort of improving our schools and making it was an inspiring place for for all the kids thank you thank you okay so that ends our public appearances next on the agenda is the board presidents and announcements and we're going to do something a little differently this month and for the past six months at our board meeting we've had community activists telling the board that they did not think that we were doing enough with regards to supporting students of color this month we received a letter signed by over 400 parents demanding that we do better and tonight we heard more comments as a result we're going to use this time for the board to discuss in public its commitment to this work steps moving forward and how we can more effectively

102work in engaging the community I'd like to to share a quote from James Baldwin mr. Baldwin wrote this about our country in the 1960s but I think it applies equally well more than 50 years later to our Madison community a country is only as good only as strong as the people who make it up and the country turns into what people want it to become I don't believe any longer that we can afford to say that in say that it is entirely out of our hands we made the world we're living in and we have to make it over our schools play an incredibly important role in what we want our community to become as the Board of Education we are not satisfied with the status quo particularly for our students of color we are

103committed to creating welcoming and Safe Schools for all we're committed to an environment in which no school is ever no student is ever harmed at school we are committed to supporting our students of color into creating the environments for learning and excellence that all our students deserve we know that this is hard work complex and it requires a long-term commitment we believe that it is our responsibility and we are committed to working with our staff our families and our community partners to make our schools what the people want them to be we're going to start by asking Jen to briefly give us some informational updates on the action items in the parent letter okay do you think you can move that speaker over this way a little bit right yeah sure all right Dean no

104that's fine Dean can you hear me okay you can do this one and then just Beckham Euclid just yeah I'm not gonna bump in every time I can't hear you just focus on speaking louder than you normally do okay Dean all right thanks everybody I I know you know that we have a strategic framework it's got a very aggressive set of goals and strategies I'm going to limit my brief comments to the areas of the parents outlined in their letter and I'm happy to just put just a little bit of information in the room if it's helpful for the board the first area that the parents wrote about which we agree with entirely is the area of focus on diversity hiring as you know continues to be a major priority of ours and the research

105supports that students of color benefit greatly from having teachers of color and quite honestly all students benefit from having teachers of color and we don't have enough I mean that is just absolutely on a quitte unequivocal this has been an area of focus for quite some time now we have every year we produce a report the HR report which came out this past fall that shows that over the past five years our our staff has incrementally improved in terms of diversity over time across most job types including a 21 percent increase in african-american staff which we're certainly happy about but not nearly satisfied we are consistently meeting and in most cases exceeding availability of staff of color in our region across all job groups that includes teachers and administrators that said the overall composition of

106teaching staff and MMSD which is beyond the raw numbers has pretty much stated around 13% right well the numbers have improved that composition generally hasn't improved in any significant way but only 3% of our teachers are african-american which is obviously not anywhere good enough now what I want to lay out is that we have seen real improvements in hiring numbers right 17% of the staff the teachers that we hired this past hiring season we're teachers of color right we keep hitting new benchmarks better than we've ever done before in terms of hiring but one of the major issues is that we're not sufficiently holding on to staff of color so while our hiring rates exceed our separation rate thankfully it means that our progress is incredibly incremental year over year over year so I just

107wanted to remind everyone of that I don't think that's new information necessarily for the board but it's a big deal so again 17% of our hires this past year were staff of color that's strong for us it's strong for any school district but 14% of our separations for staff of color so we get ourselves stuck in this challenge of it just being incremental improvements what we have been up to is building the pool right you have to build a stronger pool we're doing that through creating we created several years ago our team Scholars Program which is about getting high school students to become our future future teachers we have invested significantly in our grow our own programs which includes getting more teachers in our hard-to-staff areas we because of your support we're able to hire

108a new recruiter and engagement specialist who's just getting started who will be focused solely on this area there are certainly best practices out there that we have put into play over these past years we're high earlier than we ever have before for example in April as opposed to in June and July and August but there are still practices that we need to put in play and to to make more robust but I think the most important thing I want to say about this is that we have to work on the culture and climate in our schools about a year or so ago you heard from some of our teachers of color who talked to you and advised you but the most important thing we could work on was actually not recruitment but making sure that

109our schools are places the teachers of color especially african-american teachers who we desperately need more of and need to hold on to we need to make some changes so that they're thriving in the workplace so that is the most important thing that we can do I do think that the board has done a lot in this area in terms of helping to invest and hold us accountable for improvement I do think there's more that we can do including a close look at the handbook process right when we surplus new teachers over and over again it drives them actually out of the profession it doesn't help them feel a deep sense of belonging so I think there are more things that we could do together that are in the board's control so that's the first area

110and we wholeheartedly agree that that's very big for MMSD the second area is on required professional development for staff on diversity equity and social justice another area that we're adamantly committed to we've been working with the national equity project over the last several years that is required training for school and district administrators school based leadership team members instructional coaches who in turn do professional development for staff at our professional development is the national equity project also works with a subset of schools that are called our cohort schools or they do deeper work that gets to the teacher level we have revamped as you know all of our induction programs we kind of recreated them four years ago now so like that with the support of John diamond and Gloria ladson-billings so that it focuses on

111culturally responsive teaching in the classroom that is required for all new principals and all new teachers in our district and we have been building the capacity of our district to work on facilitating discussions about race and equity through a big investment in our equity fellows we have 16 equity fellows and we're on a roll of educators that we have kind of in-house capacity to do this work which we think is critical beginning next year all of our educators will be going through required professional development at the school level on the history of racism in our country and what what we all need to do to interrupt racism and that is being developed and facilitated in partnership with the YWCA which we're really excited about we're focusing not just on what what the content should be

112for that professional development but it's very important that we pay attention to how it gets delivered delivering it like what is the context what does that look like when your staff is majority-white what does that feel like for the small number of teachers of color on staff right we're just really trying to think through with them how to implement that professional development so that it success successful over time which is a really big deal and lastly I'll say that we're trying to figure out how to make sure that it's not just professional development but coaching and accountability systems that are that are strengthened as well so we have an educator effectiveness system it's how we evaluate teachers and principals what changes do we need to make to that system to ensure that that not only

113teachers are getting the professional development but they're growing and apply what they're learning accordingly um I'll just make a quick comment on what this might mean for the board I I think the board has to do the same work that the board needs to do ongoing professional development around racial equity as well I'll offer that up the third area focus that the that was outlined in the letter was on specific anti racism goals for each school we have had a real keen eye on this the school improvement planning process is the way that schools set goals it's how they determine what their priority strategies are it's how they hold themselves accountable and we have been redesigning the SIPP process this year as you know we talked about this back in February we think that the

114SIPP is a very important process but it needs to be recenter de round the themes of race rigor and strong relationships and schools and and all schools will be required to outline their work in those areas and set specific goals for groups of students the SIPP will require an acid and needs assessment they will have to be executed in collaboration with the community that the school serves well I noticed that was something that was mentioned by the parents would you mind if I just really actually yeah SIB process and the people who have to fill out the reports is that just the administrators are that's the school community yeah yeah no problems already true and the last thing I'll say on what it means for us right now is that sip process the newly-redesigned sip

115but those focus areas will not be launched until January and that is intentional we want to align it with our decision-making around staffing and budgets right so all that stuff syncs up and we need to prepare people right to do it well so that it leads to meaningful and sustainable change so that was an intentional decision and what might it mean for the future board or for this board my future boards is the way we measure progress in our district we have some new metrics I think the board has to continually pay attention to how we measure progress so it can be holistic so they were actually capturing what students know and are able to do and that may mean for us moving well beyond the test over time and then the last thing I'll

116say is on on school counselors and not cops this is the fourth area that the parents described in their letter is an area of concern and investment we totally agree that counselors are critically important in schools the American school counselor Association says that schools should maintain a ratio of two hundred and fifty students for every one counselor that's at least a benchmark that we can use for our consideration our current ratios don't quite get us there although high schools the average is two hundred two hundred and sixty two students per one counselor so we've certainly made progress there over time there is a range though one hundred and fifty four students per counselor Capital high at the high end it's three hundred and seven students per counselor at West High School so there is a

117range but at least it's nearing that 250 ratio middle school however is four hundred four hundred and twenty three students per one counselor several years ago we decided to invest in a full-time counselor every middle school with the exception of Badger Rock it was a major investment that we made and yet it only got us to four hundred and twenty three students per count sorry so it's a pretty big deal we still need to make concerted efforts in this area I think it's also important to know it's not just about the ratios about the work that counselors actually do and who's doing the work you heard in the public comment and for diversity in the counseling ranks that is absolutely true and counselors if you look at the what's called the comprehensive school counseling model

118we need to make sure the counselors are actually doing the work that they are best positioned to do which is far beyond simply advising students on course selection right it's about doing individual and group work it's about teaching about social-emotional learning the job of the counselor has changed a lot over the years so we need to equip them to actually do their jobs and do them well I do want to say that the board while not making their best proposed investment in counselors right now we have been scoping out an investment in social workers psychologists mental health and that will help us meet the needs of students with disabilities better neat meet the needs of students with 504s wrap it up there I mean could you please put yourself a mute can you mute your

119phone please of course I think what it means for the board they're always trade-offs I'm budget investment yeah it wasn't me I can hear you okay thanks Dean and certainly counselors will be something they will want to invest in more over time so that's just a little information for you to use a spotter for you so those were the first four items that were in the letter the last item was new modes of board engagement and communication with the community so that's something create new opportunities for families and community members groups to engage face to face with board members on these issues and so the format that I'd like to have is to to start with the the first question is really how can the board carry out more strongly our commitment around these four

120issues the Jen outlined and diversifying staff equity training anti-racism and student supports around councillors and then second would be how does the board better engage with the community so the so the the fifth topic and I'd like to start off with with hearing from our board members who are board members of color starting with our our least senior board member Gloria and going with to our most senior James and I think then just really like this is there's no format other than that there than to hear from board members about what they think with regards to our commitments around these these issues thank you Mary so I wish we were having this discussion out at our regular board room I was looking forward to actually seeing people face-to-face and have this engagement that we rarely

121ever get to have surrounding such an important issue and discussion so I'm very disappointed that we had to leave but I know we had to I was hoping that freedom Inc and and the youth squad would stay in the room so they could hear us but unfortunately that didn't happen so we are here I think I want to really just set sort of a picture of what we have been dealing with and then get to some of the some of the points in the letter so since my election to the school board it's been hard to sit in this space where we hear public testimony testimony only to respond to a vote on a particular item so I do want to encourage us to have future school board meetings where we do have discussions on

122current events current issues and challenges you know I recently received a call from local pastor Marcus Allen and it hurt it hurt me to hear the pain and frustration in his voice while expressing his concerns about the events of Whitehorse I also heard from and felt the pain from the community about the recent racial slurs coming from teachers and classrooms and also the frustrations of our teachers and staff who are not given sufficient tools I feel and support necessary to deal with the complex challenges that our students are faced with today and to meet the demands of constant changes within our school district and community I want us to call out racist actions but let's not paint Madison in the school district as everyone being racist while we are busy pointing fingers at each other

123we are all failing our children we fail them when we allow our students to roam the hallways half-day school days causing chaos in our classrooms how do we expect them to succeed in the real world when we allow that to happen we need to deal with that behavior that brings in accountability for the behavior with compassion respect and dignity those very same children are struggling in our community with nowhere to turn struggling through challenges of poverty and trauma some are stealing cars involvement in burglaries and fights and libraries I was one of those students and I did not get to where I am today because I was allowed to continue that behavior in our schools I had principals counselors and teachers who held high expectations for my behavior and would not allow my behavior to

124continue they showed me a different way of expressing my frustration and trauma that I myself experienced as far as police officers in schools you know where I stand on that I want to remind every that a police officer led the transformation a restorative justices in our schools we have four great officers in our high schools it is not until we stop the violence and destruction disruptions in our classrooms in our schools that we will need officers in our schools that is an unfortunate reality that we are dealing with today I want to thank our youth who have come and freedom Inc who have come to speak with us just because I do not agree on your perspective on officers in our schools does not mean I'm not hearing you there is no reason we should

125have teachers causing harm to our children bottom line that is unacceptable however we need to equip our teachers with appropriate policies and tools necessary to respond to physical altar altercations disruptions and threats we need to support our teachers and staff by providing them with mental health supports to deal with the trauma they themselves witnessed and experienced every day we need to invest in our alternatives for opportunity youth and at-risk youth that is where we need to see increase investments and build capacity of professionals who can do this kind of work we are responding to years of generational trauma and poverty of our black youth and families it is time to make them a priority through investments in black excellence that includes advancing learning advanced learning special education of students particularly designated with emotional and behavior

126disability and mental health supports improved diversity of staff as Jen Cheatham talked about by preparing and hiring our local talent we need to hire and retain people from this community I know diverse professionals that we have lost to surrounding school districts that should not be happening when it is hard to find professionals of color to work in our schools we need more than just equity training we need inclusion we need to talk about how race is playing a role in everything that we do evaluate every teacher and every staff on what they are doing to to improve racial equity and inclusion in their work we need to conduct racial equity analysis on every decision that we make across the district and that includes the school board decision making process board engagement we as board members

127need to be out in our schools we can we are making big policy and budget decisions every day how can we make good decisions if we are not if we don't know what's happening every day in our schools each school board members assigned to our schools I know many of us have visited our schools meeting with staff parents and students I do recommend as I said as I started is to really set some time aside at future school board meetings to have these types of discussions even if it takes until midnight right I would rather have these fruitful discussions as a team in front of the community to hear for them to hear our perspective on current issues there is no doubt that we have a lot of work to do but I know out

128of any community in this country this community can make it happen as a board Bend remember I'm committed to this work and ensure and I want to ensure that we continue to hear from the community while showing and demonstrating outcomes for our work so that all children succeed I look forward to the discussion tonight thank you James let me very grease I think got on the board nine years ago so you although this is my last board meeting well miss you can and type the different things are really different than what they used to be and you know just taking all of this together we're in a lot better place than we used to be here in MMSD for those who don't think so nine years ago the conversations we're having here today and the

129conversations you have regularly now on the board and conversations we have with staff who are having those conversations we were not having these conversations and if you don't think that's the sign of progress I don't think you've been in a struggle on that than in the struggle when I listen to those kids out there speak I don't think they're not old and I did all of that I mean I was part of the marches in Milwaukee for fair housing when father James graph the a for anyone who really know anything about Wisconsin and the movement noble father James grouchy is if you don't go look him up and because he led most of those moves but here in Madison being here in the 70s it was part of the marches on State Street and University

130Avenue and the tear gas and and the before multiculturalism even came about when we are actually had separate facilities because we taught that for example african-american centers and these individual centers were the places that would really help us as a community but on the board there's so many conversations we couldn't have when I got on the board I recall trying to have relations around civil rights and equity and those types of things and and board members themselves weren't educated on those subjects I recall one board member while we were having a conversation on ratio equity basically state you know well what about white men yeah don't think about that if you're going right to the top of the pecking order for your with your concern and so I don't think we'll ever hear that statement

131a little everyone's important right like me too so that's not what I'm saying of course and I think everyone in the room here now understands that but then you know that was actually a point of discussion you know just nine years ago you know the significance of of white men and how we have to be concerned about them as a group and and even asking for demographic data on race was it was difficult I was told that we don't collect such things so now we can talk about all of this stuff and I sit and I look at board members and I say some time together look good you got it because you can have all these discussions now and you have staff that's educated I mean some of the staff we have now we

132didn't have that staff then and so actually I feel active feel pretty good in terms of where we are as a district and we're never going to if everyone's never gonna be satisfied but I feel good where we are as a district I think we're on the right path you know there's always gonna be hurdles you know but my position on Yeol's you know I just stay away from the conversation is so divisive but my issue is very simple yeah the data points one way yeah we do look at the data but I you know that doesn't mean I have to make a decision based on that data I will consider it and I know people don't understand that but I've spent I just recently retired I spent over 40 years in research so if

133you really want to have a conversation around research we can do that I stay away from my occupation but we can have a conversation around what research actually means and the data but but what I see you know this is an area where I make a decision based on experience on what I see and what I see is young people nowadays making decisions violently that's what I see I see young people instead of where we used to fight in Tulsa Oklahoma your parents get upset with you that doesn't happen anymore now you know we want to shoot and cut and very violently decide disagreements and my concern is that I don't want that in my school's I don't want though that you know I'm concerned that someone may think that if we don't do not

134have an arrow in the building that they the doors are open to coming in and and and making those kinds of decisions and settling other types of debates in the school house and look I'm gonna make a very selfish statement I'm happy that in my tenure I haven't had any serious issues in the schoolhouse like the boss of life like we've seen around the cut line around the country so you can disagree with my position all you want but when I leave this table tonight I will leave here saying hey you know we never lost the life in our buildings and so you can criticize me for that all you want but even less Steve never lost a life not to violence and and I'm afraid that yeah the data points that no arrow was

135ever stopped some kind of gun violence yeah may be true but you know I don't take one incident so change the data flow and so so that's why I am what I do your old thing yeah I understand where the data isn't what it says but I'm going my gut feeling on this one I've spent a lot of time in this town I came here in 71 I I believe in being on the ground with kids I've always been on the ground with kids I've I used to coach soccer in and over in Arbor Hills I mean I've done so much in this communities everyone knows me and the folks are coming in here talking by Wes I can tell you about Wes fifty years ago yeah so celery's was a bad thing we slipped

136and slid to all of the down floors so yeah I know all about West High School in four facilities and so we used to talk to Matthew bottom ourselves we used to go in for intramural sports so yeah we ran in the bleachers on the side and never been any room in West high school so board members hear that and we understand those situations so but yeah I've been an integral part of this community but I've always liked been on the ground with kids I mean I've coached so many kids sports in this town I've dealt with so many families and all and so a lot of decisions I make I make it from the gut and some just the fact that I've known people and talk to people over several decades in this town

137and again I like where we are as a district by no means where we need to be I will tell you that you know probably the thing that bothers me the most is how kids are color can't read that's the real problem for me we could talk about you know some of our math scores and always thinking we can get into the details of them but I think that we we do have the collection of people around the table now that really cares I think when I first started I don't think people care you know you can have all the academic credentials you want but if you don't care I think this word comes from the heart you can bring it as many PhDs if you want but if they don't care about the words

138and the people and the kids I don't think it matters and I do think we have people like here now and and we delete by the data and so I think we're in a better place I think we've got good people around the table I'm looking forward to reading and seeing the continued progress you all make and but I won't envy you so I'll leave it at that and again it's been a pleasure to be engaged in this work I think again I think we're in a better place and I think we have the right people to continue and improve the district Nick you wanna want to thank James first service trying to find one I'd like to thank James first service I appreciate his hard work I appreciate his desired equity and he's right

139nine years ago their discussions we wouldn't have had of this board on race on disability ten years ago I can tell you which is the first time I ever consider running for office I was told that the disabled don't run for office we're supposed to be behind the scenes and that's what good campaign workers is what I was told but we're not the ones that do the poor we aren't the ones that do the serving and I'm kind of glad to see parts of that change what I think we need to do and race is one we're finally having the discussions that I'm thrilled to have that and I would like more in the community but the thing that I want to focus on is something James said quite a while ago and that's hiring

140local we have uw-madison that is a stone throw away and I have Pete I've known many a student who says oh we don't interview MMSD doesn't interview people from Madison and I know that's not the case I know it isn't so we need to broadcast that we do we need to change the narrative to show what we do how we reach out and how we could increase it does that mean we only hire local no but do we do a preference I think why not I think that would be how it happened to be helpful but I think we need to do a better job of selling what MMSD is we often talk about the problems the equity those issues and I'm not saying we don't have them but sometimes we don't show the good

141thing and Gloria is right we need to be in our schools I'm on 23 I believe right now 50 schools that I've been to doing all 50 because I'm slightly crazy and I'm writing a blog on the first part you could ignore oh but very simply I was at Whitehorse today dropped off for Craig Oh PS I always bring food they like that but I saw kids were excited to learn I saw teachers who were engaged and we're excited to be there but Gloria is right we don't always provide enough mental health support for these teachers and when you're in SCA and working good special and which is one of the hardest areas there is you're not going to always get that kind of support and that's where we need it additionally we need to

142reframe the narrative on special ed to include how are we going to make sure everyone gets their needs met oftentimes it's people of color with disabilities who aren't getting their needs met that's price ed it in the paper last week and I stand by that we people with disabilities who are of color oftentimes don't get their needs met because it's complex and I get that and I understand that but I think as a board we can say how does this happen how do we help what supports work better so that way we don't have such disparities of that issue Kate you want to go and then TJ um there's a lot here and and and I'm looking down at my notes and he's trying to figure out what I wanted wanted to say kind of

143in response to things I heard from Jen and especially things I heard from Gloria my notes and Gloria's turn out not to be as good as they could be because they're like three or four things that I wanted to thank you for saying and I can only find like two of them here so I'm pump and also in response to James and trying to pull these things together I think one of the kind of themes that I hear James talking about things that we can't that we did weren't being talked about before Gloria talking about about kind of similar themes on that and I think that we need to I like hearing that a lot and I think that we as a board need to be very proactive on both on how we talk about

144things and what we consider one of the topics that's on table with this list of things tonight is about our hiring and our and and our and our staffing and things like that and though we've had discussions in different context of the budget the hiring port came out in December and it was never on an agenda we never discussed that publicly and we never talked about the implications for our district what we could do better as a board and I think that we need to be aware of those opportunities and we need to be aware of being one of the things in the letter that in some sense were responding to was about transparency around our hiring processes and so I think that as Gloria said you know if we're gonna be here to midnight

145we're gonna be here to midnight nobody wants to be here but we but those we have to look for those opportunities I think we have to look for those opportunities and all the things listed here so and I think that so we need to be as we look at the new SIPP ideas and new school improvement plans and Jen mentioned a role of the commune of community members who those community members are how they're selected what kind of power they're given what kind of autonomy they're given for their work is is very very important are they simply you know hand selected people there to give focus group type feedback are there people who are going to share decision-making with and how those structures work and I think is a board we've stayed oh we've stayed

146away from the school-based leadership team structures we've talked a little bit about what's in sips lately but I think that you know that that's where it is you know Nikki said in the school's Gloria said in the school's James said in the schools this is a place where I think that again there's not a right and wrong answer but we need to have an understanding of our of what we can do as a board to create the conditions within our schools where those conversations and those improvements place and so you know when you think about what's the role of the board which is you know kind of what I always try to think about is how can the board create the conditions what can we do I I'd point to the school based leadership team

147and what we're doing with those in addition to the sips um things as something that's very very important a couple of other things that and then I guess I will say a few things about police in schools that I wasn't planning on it on the anti-racism work I think we need to be very very careful about who is doing what and what they bring to the table and what their expertise and records are and I think that this is incredibly difficult work it's incredibly sensitive work it's just as you know the restorative justice work can which it's part of in many ways can service things that that are that are hard for everyone in the room to deal with I think that we have to take people where they are and you know and and

148and understand you know glory to use the word compassion at some point and accountability and compassion and those both have to be part of it and there are many people who do the work I'm not quite sure how many people do it well and and doing it badly can cause harm within school communities that can you can also it can also lead to you know loss of a loss of teachers and other staff members of of all backgrounds so I think that you know that that's one where I don't want to say I'm not saying go slow but I am saying be very very conscience conscious of how we're doing that and and make sure that compassion is part of it and compassion ever I've been in sessions that went badly and and and and

149yeah I've been in session still went badly and they weren't employment-related but had they been things yeah I'm gonna leave it at that reading James mentioned reading and I do think that we have done you know that that one of the things that when I teach it teach a course on pluralism taught a course in pluralism and identity in American education one of the things that when we look at this when we look at the anti-racism work we look at diversity work at that is that is this an end in itself or is it in the service of academic learning and you know the answer is both obviously I mean it is and then ourselves to create a more just society but we can't lose track and now I'm channeling Mary a little bit who

150hasn't even spoken we can't lose track of the academic learning that is also at the center of our mission and so you know how those interact with each other and and it's and and it's not you know they are both tools to get at the other but we but we can't lose track of that I want to be very clear about that police in schools people say that we haven't lived at the data people say that we haven't heard voices I can say that I sat with good people on the RO committee and we considered many many voices and we heard from people of color who were very very in favor of the ero as we heard from white people who are very opposed to them we heard from old people who were against him

151in young people who were for them we heard a great great great diversity of opinion we studied we looked at different data we sucked to understand how they function within our buildings and our schools and what the history is here locally we looked at state statutes we looked at the how often police are in our schools regardless of whether the arrows are there and we made hard choices and I want to say one thing about that is that I think when we talk about models of community engagement that the yarrow committee was a good model you brought people to the table we gave them some autonomy we took them seriously we asked them to work and they worked and once they made the recommendations we didn't you know just take them they would but they

152had some power tools there were recommendations the port has the decision and everyone knew that all along but ways of working D our committee did all this and did not recommend ending the program at this time I think it's the right to recommendation I think it was a carefully done one through a public process and I think that's all very very important and I also want to say that if our numbers jibe with the ones recently put out by the Madison Police Department that if we had what is it 36 arrests last year is that the number are according to 30 or 36 it might be our report will come out in a matter of weeks so our most recent one so we verify that look it is it is under let's just call it

153under forty which is a huge reduction and and impacting directly very very few students now the police and schools have an impact beyond the few students who were arrested and and beyond the larger number that are ticketed and these impacts are certainly racially and disparate and also disparate in terms of special education and disparate in terms of gender and a whole lot of other things and I'm and I don't like that but I think we're on the right path and and and I hope that we were able to reach an agreement with the police department in the city so that we can continue and improve the program and have the training requirements have the oversight and have all the other things that the the committee asked for so and I didn't prepare remarks I saw

154this agenda item with those triple date trepidation I'm glad we're doing this which I wasn't sure I would be Thanks okay yeah I didn't prepare remarks either actually and I am glad we're having this discussion and I'm really sad we're not having in other room to I think for me our discussion lacks a little bit of urgency I am thrilled we've made as much progress as we had we haven't made anywhere close to enough progress and and as we've heard you know a number of times it's not life or death for my kids it is life or death for a lot of kids alright we're talking about an education we're talking about the thing that unlocks every door in your entire life sorry and it's and I'm frankly pissed off that we and and that

155nobody in America has figured out how to move the needle enough so I am thrilled that the kids out there pushing us to be better and to do faster changes and to make harder choices because we have to I I think that's really tough I had maybe three comments and I'll start with with the one that's perhaps the most obvious but there's about resources right our values are reflected in how we distribute the resources we have we don't have as many resources as we might want but we have a lot more resources than most districts in the country both social capital financial we have a lot of resources in Madison to use to support our kids and to do something different than the rest of the country we don't have enough to have small schools

156in small neighborhoods with small class sizes with enough counselors and enough mental health resources and a revamped curriculum and advanced learning we don't have enough to do all of those things we can't have schools that are at 60% capacity and still invest as much as we would want in counselors and advanced learning educators both of those things are up in front of us right now we literally have talked about both of those things within the last seven days we cannot continue to make a new and different we've talked about an art school every two or three meetings I think I might be putting words in people's mouths I think there might be broad support for school focused on arts having dance and education and music and Performing Arts offered full-time in our schools I think

157everybody in our community would benefit from that if we want to make that choice we have to free up resources the only way to do that is be willing to cut bold programs that aren't working or aren't good enough be willing to talk about closing elementary schools or middle schools and repurposing them for a different type of offering and those are hard conversations race is a hard conversation to and we want to have a hard conversation that will make an impact we have to be willing to talk about how we spend resources differently so that was maybe one comment I would love to have that conversation I think there's so much Madison could do if we're willing to free up significant amounts of resources and reinvest them in something that we all believe our community

158needs right now the second is my sermon my second comment is on diversity hiring which is a topic I'm incredibly passionate about it's probably the only piece of research I've ever read about education that convinced me there was kind of an answer and I know that's too simplistic way to put it but if there's so much more we can do here right we haven't thought about pay structures and compensation I know that Madison can and can be and is a hard place to move to particularly as a as a person of color we can explore a number of other options that we haven't done so far we've been somewhat incremental I appreciate that we're bringing folks in we have a recruiter for the very first week right now okay sorry sorry Dean I'm just saying

159we need to do more on diversity hiring and I think there's concrete options in front of us again they take resources they don't take dramatic amounts of resources they talk you know if they're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars not millions of dollars here I think that things that we could do and then the last comment maybe going back to something that you said Gloria we're talking about schools here and to me that means high expectations every kid that's showing up in our schools in kindergarten wants an education kids are showing up with lots of different starting points and in kindergarten every kid is showing up wanting a good education and so for me there is a lot more that we can and should be doing again a lot bolder conversations that I would

160love to be having around and advanced learning around curriculum changes and and around the diversity of our program offerings around magnets and around offerings that we believe will speak to and resonate with different parts of our community so for me those are the I guess the three kind of reflections I had reading this letter I very much appreciate the community that that wrote it I'm not the right person to ask maybe the answer to this question but those are some of what I heard and saw in it and what I would hope to do as a board to to be able to support our kids and our families and so I appreciate all of the I appreciate the folks that have been coming to the board meetings and I've learned a lot from listening and

161and I mean mostly really impressed that kids the kids that are showing up are incredibly impressive so yeah okay there was a real interesting dynamic I thought with the speakers today that pointed out the comprehensiveness of what school board members have to deal with I was also a little surprised that no one spoke to the letters that was on our agenda today but I'm going to go through these five points that they made real quick first one was diversifying the staff and we know that there are systemic issues that make that difficult but one of the things I saw in there that maybe we need to consider is that alternative certification we've been offering provisional licenses to special ed teachers and categoric across categorical teachers for years because we can't get people coming out of

162school or coming to us qualified so we have to hire people that will take that job and then clean them up and sometimes that works out to our benefit sometimes people take the job just because they can get in the system and transfer Otteson they can so I think we have to consider when we look at hiring people if we have people that come to us that have working in the social service area with diverse experience already having a proven track record of being successful in working within a diverse community then maybe we should offer them a provisional license and just be regular teachers and get in here and maybe some of them will be the staff of color but maybe then maybe they won't but they'll have the experience of working with a diverse

163community especially children of diverse our diverse community and they'll be able to be get over a lot of those their own cultural differences because they've already got the experience part of the number two here is how to train them up if you can do all kinds of book reading and experience and stuff but if you don't in a classroom or in a training but if you don't have the experience of actually working with people of diverse communities and understanding and learning how to deal with that and then being successful at it you can go off to all the trainings that that that that we want and it won't be enough of five or six years ago we had Gloria and others come in here and give us all kinds of great curriculum and and it's

164in suggestions on how to give people trainings but I think people coming that maybe have a Social Work degree or working in homeless shelters with families those folks know how to deal with these folks so maybe we ought to consider those folks and hiring and then the training that goes along with it the community involvement in sip planning I think Jen described that a little bit earlier we're trying to do that it's always difficult to get community people to help us come to our schools and help us give us the insight in this perspective that that we want from them but not making attempts is not what we should do we should make more attempts so when we don't get what we want we should just not give up when I would just try more

165experiences cops in school was a was a discussion long overdue we started it I'm not surprised at some of the reactions that we got when we the committee that voted to send this to the board also did not just send contract recommendations but they sent policy recommendations was what we voted for GJ was right in who we heard from and the people that we had on that committee were exceptional and they and we pretty much agreed that right now the staff isn't ready to deal with not having them there and it's disappointing to me to hear that but I think with this contract what the policy changes were making which includes increasing the training and the quality of the our own security staff I think this if I would have stood on the board three

166years from now this would be the last contract I would vote for I think we could move for to secure our schools without this program and have a relationship with the police department that could have them there immediately if we need them within a couple minutes to ensure that stuff like James was talking about doesn't happen we could do that better with our own staff and all throughout the last 20 years we know who stopped these things and tried to end it it confronted shooters first was our own staff and giving them the protections that we had by the last date contract that we got with this money from think learning how to secure all of our schools not just there for high schools for high schools is only four out of over fifty schools

167that we've got we've got 48 46 others that have no protection except what we're providing on our own so I think we extend that to the four high schools and we can address their issues that the freedom folks are actually talking about what you've already been doing but they don't believe us the last one is really the board members meeting with community this to me triggered a larger discussion today is actually mentioned something about that that the work involved of seven board members maybe we should consider expanding our card numbers to perhaps nine and understanding how different the school board is as opposed to city city government and guttin County government we deal with the same type of issues but we are more like a nonprofit where we have a board of directors that no

168one really knows we're volunteer almost several years ago we were getting less than half of what alders and County Board supervisors were getting and dealing with a much more complicated and bigger budgets which is our two main responsibilities deal with the budget and supervise the superintendent there's no mayor here or county exec the seven of us actually equal near in county exec so this is a really complicated job and how often we can get out into the community is dependent on how much time we can cut out of our regular lives most of us have full-time jobs my when I was still working required I often work into the evenings and on weekends also because there was a you know I was a executive position I had a lot of responsibility since December when I

169left that job I've had a lot of time to think about this and I think that the board responsibilities and how we can compete deal with our communities perhaps we should set up some structures where we have I know the superintendent set up advisory committees maybe we should set up some advisory committees to meet with us on an ongoing basis so we can actually have discussions with community groups as opposed to sitting there being bombarded with three minutes question as statements from people that really are Sarge are really sincere and hot about a certain isn't and don't get a chance to hear from us at all so if this is complicated I appreciated James's statements earlier because we are historic we grew up at a historic time where were older than all of you and

170in looking back over the last this last two months I looked over the last fifty years of activism that I've been involved with longer than some of you are even old it's uh it's these issues have not changed they've I got on a board here to try to do something about it and all of us try to do that I respect everyone who's here and we've tried to do a lot of good things I think we've we're getting to get at the right issues I think the the statements we put out on our the strategic framework the their their goals and aspirational statements and the our our charge is to implement these things because it's easy to talk about how much we want to do these things but how we get our staff and how

171we can resource them up and support them in ways that we can actually do this and address these issues is really complicated I think that of the board but April in June may want to consider increasing the budget around mental health and around support and around supporting that support staff to our teachers I think that there's a perception out there that our schools are out of control they're not we've got we've got kids that are struggling and I'm actually thankful that they're acting up in school as opposed to anyplace else because we can address it there we can help them there but I'm not sure we're staffed up enough to do that you know and I'm also not sure that staff we have are confident enough in their own abilities to help some of our

172children so I think those are the things that were more my statements are at and going forward I didn't plan on not being around but things happen and I couldn't stay around and try to stay on this thing but I think those of you they're still here and the new people coming on got some big challenges are in front of us and they're not new I think that around the right direction about even having this conversation so I think that's enough on my end I know that there's a lot of frustration around out here around some of the people that come to us and talk to us and I think that we're frustrated too but you could let frustration turn into bitterness then you don't go anywhere so if frustration has to turn into determination

173around staying with it in making attempts and keep keep at it I think we're honor and say I think we'll be okay going forward I think might be okay thanks thanks Dean I think we're going to wrap it up with with Dean I think that was I would echo Dean's comments that I know I'm frustrated yeah I never thought I'd serve on school board I was working on the Boys and Girls Club avid/tops program and someone who saw me doing all this work in the schools said hey there's this empty board seat ever think of running for board and I'm like no yeah and and then I thought about and I thought you know the toughest part we have with after-school programs is we don't have the kids you know especially once they become teenagers

174and here the schools is where it is and if you really want to have an impact on changing kids lives and making them better you got to have great schools and I have the thing I'd never run for anything I thought maybe no one would oppose me and you know I got in a race and and one that that was seven years ago and it is frustrating that not that we're not further along and it's not because we don't have people who are committed staff in our schools every single day our superintendent the staff here the board we have our differences but I never questioned anyone's intention for why they serve on boards here and it it's for the kids and I think it's it's for the kids who really that we need to do

175better with but I also look and I say I think this is you know I I don't know how successful we can be as a board if we don't have more representation of on this board of leadership from the from communities of color and I put myself there you know I have no intention of running again and I feel we need to give we need to not give we need to make sure that that this is an organization that is able to weave the fabrics throughout our community because this work is difficult it's and there's no roadmap that we know recipe we just have to fulfill but I think we you have to have the the the leadership that that really feels that they are part of this and can and make sure that our

176leading to the areas where we so we can be more successful and so yeah I wish I I'm glad we've gotten a letter I'm glad that there's the the earth sense of urgency in the in the community and I think we do have to get more aggressive I think we've laid a foundation we needed to strengthen our core our foundation but I think now is the time to be able to to be more aggressive T and and targeted to take on the issues that we prioritize and I know as a board member I prioritize these issues for me that's what's most important as we move forward I made one comment to keep it short okay I asked me to make put some information in the room but not to actually comment on what's going on

177and don't want to thank everyone for their comments I this is one of the best it's not exactly a dialogue when everyone takes a turn but I've enjoyed hearing from each of you in this moment I think we are in a pivotal time as a school district I do think I'm very proud of the foundation that we've built I don't think we'd even be capable of having this conversation right now in the way that we're having it if that hadn't happened so you know I'm gonna be unapologetic about that and there's this question that is on the table about whose voices are we centering right when we make decisions right I feel like that is that is the question that's the question I'm being asked I think that's the question we're all being asked and

178with two seats changing over and another just one more month time I think we have an opportunity to to think differently about how we work is a team whose voices we sent her I think it's an amazing excellent opportunity that we have to take advantage of we have to take more risks together we've talked about that in the past in each of you have kind of put some things on the table to demonstrate the kinds of risks that we can and should be taking together so I'm looking forward to it let's do it okay so onto the just getting into the agenda here so I hope people will be respectful of time and we could move through this on the issues that don't need a lot of discussion so first of all the reports on

179the items that proceeded through the instruction workgroup Dean mr. Loomis okay well I will take over for Dean then and report that the discussion was around and I'm sorry can you hear me yep all right I'm sorry I'll make a brief I'm prepared so we had a brief discussion on the behavior of BP proposal and then we went on to look at the recommended changes in our behavior health expansion twelve schools a bounce-back program up to 24 and also began I would hope planning for the implementation of a health center which makes a whole lot of sense and again I can only say that we may once the budget comes out and following up on our discussion here we may want to consider increasing the budget in this area in June I'm sorry I haven't

180met with Lisa I'm meeting with her variety I'll be back in so Monday I don't have the agenda but anyway that's important okay thanks Dean Kate items every proceeded through the operations workgroup yep so we covered three different topics last week the first was a review of the current status of the budget as well as the priority actions and areas for investment which do include a significant focus around mental health counselors special ed etc etc the second area was also budget focused which was review of the current standing of healthcare negotiations and some input from the board in terms of where to go next with that and then the last area was around an update on our approach to facilities for several of our alternative programs namely Capitol high and which also prompted a little

181bit of I think some of the other facilities feedback that we've been hearing from West and other schools as we kind of take the next step forward in evaluating what our 2020 referendum looks like for facilities so those were the three topics and that we discussed last week and our next ops workgroup is also going to be on the budget and there's a couple of policies up as well for a review maybe just a reminder for board members the next two meetings would be the appropriate times to start bringing either budget amendments or very kind of concrete proposals around changes to the priority actions that we have proposed at this point in time and so that we can build that into the budget sooner rather than later that's thanks Kay so the then we go

182on to the action items that proceeded through the instruction workgroup which is the behavior education plan policy revisions I'll remind the the board and the public this work has been ongoing we in fact formed as a separate ad hoc committee around behavior and changes to the BEP Gloria chaired that committee Kate and James also spent a tremendous amount of time working very closely with our staff bringing in representives from different schools and programs so this has gone through and come to the workgroups before as well and so there's a lot of work that has gone into this and so I'm just going to and a lot of board discussion so I'm going to move that the Board of Education approved the revisions to the behavior education plan for the elementary middle and high school levels

183as set forth in the documents prepared for the regular Board of Education meeting dated March 18th second okay discussion what's that I'd like to amend rule number one and I guess that I'm gonna put the whole thing out there and if people would like it to be separated into three separate items then I can do that but I figured that one discussion one vote might be the easiest way to do it which would be to remove safe from goal number one goal number one currently reads goal number one increase the number of students families and staff who feel safe in a sense of belonging to be measured by annual climate survey I assume that means that it would be the safe question and the belonging question on the survey is that is that correct that's

184correct okay so to remove the safe question like I'm fine to have people to feel safe but to remove it and to add the resolve conflicts in productive ways and fairness in consequences questions again so that's kind of three changes we can take them separately or we can take them all at once or if there's no second we can just leave it no second okay okay any further discussion oh sorry I just wanted to publicly acknowledge the team that put this together I know you guys have been sitting here waiting for this vote and look like there's there's no perfect policy for what we're talking about and this isn't perfect and you you guys well know the areas that we're gonna keep pushing hard on to get better at and to continue to revise but

185I have to say I've only been on the board just just coming up on two years and I haven't seen a team with this level of insight into our kids and connecting the dots from kids to systems to resources and so I just I really appreciate the time you guys have dedicated to this and it gives me a lot of hope that people like you are involved in this so thank you all in favor aye opposed Hey okay so that passes for - oh I thought Dean what was your vote it wasn't I it was oh okay sorry five one okay the next item is we had no actual items through the operations workgroup so we are on to the consent agenda and I will move that the Board of Education adopt and approve all

186the motions set forth in Section 10 of the electronic agenda prepared for the March 18 2019 regular school board meeting exactly as said motions are written by voting affirmatively 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 school board second second okay any separations I'd like to separate ten twelve okay okay so all in favor aye aye opposed okay that passes six ear I'm learning okay then 1012 TJ you wanna its school security facilities upgrades I think that our investments are too much I choose to vote against it okay so then I am going to sorry to make you okay okay I will move on that the Board of Education Award

187a bid from Tri City Electric of Iowa in the amount of five hundred and seventy eight thousand seven hundred and fifteen dollars for contract a and four hundred eighteen thousand two hundred and fifty dollars for contract be totally nine hundred ninety six thousand nine hundred and sixty five dollars to complete facilities security improvements at select schools phase for using 2018-19 local security funds second okay any further discussion yes a question local security files are those the monies granted by the state no this is local money money out of fund balance in June and set it aside for security safety and security of us in addition to the ground okay all in favor aye all right opposed nay that passes 5 1 then we are next item that we have something for this meeting would be

188looks like other other reports and mod is not here so we will have to defer the Student Senate report for another time MSC our yeah I can report that they had 11 new applicants which is really good very encouraging to people that have been on there for over six years are going to step down so there's a lot of institutional memory leaving there so I'm encouraged about this process I encourage them to continue it next year as well and I really want the board to make sure that the assign board member states on this group to increase the memberships on this committee and particularly looking for diverse members it was a absolute zero representation on that the MICR Advisory Committee from our communities of color so I think that an effort that we really have

189to pay attention to going forward this is a good program that we need to pay more attention to going forward that's my report Thank You Dean Gloria the student behavior ad hoc committee yeah so we you know again as you know I want to thank our staff and all the principals and staff in our schools who came forward to engage us in this conversation you know I'm glad that we will continue to meet as we all know implementation is really where it's at so we will be again engaging with our principals and staff to get more feedback on implementation and so we made final revisions of the BAP and we will be meeting in April 15th is our next meeting that's it thank you there is no old or new business and so I will

190move to adjourn so yeah can I just I want to you know I know some of us think to James but I want to personally thank James you know I really looked up to you for many years in your current role and I'm honored to be to have served with you and I think Juan Lopez was the other one that I admired on the school board and all the good work that he did but really you stood out for many of us in our in the community and you know being that voice I received a message from Michael Flores who also wanted to thank you and so I think I speak for many people of color in our community who really have are grateful for all the work that you have done and for standing

191up for a lot of the issues that we encountered so thank you and Dean also thank you for your work and your voice on the school board you were another one who really brought this a different perspective really a real perspective that brought in the challenges and real-life challenges in our schools so really admired your voice throughout the years thank you both glory can i maybe second you and I mean James like I've had the privilege to sit next to you for the last little while and I have to say I don't come from a community of color in Madison but I have looked up to you tremendously and continue to do so so your wisdom of when to keep your mouth shut and maybe when not to is I'm trying to learn and I

192just having someone with kind of your research mind and focus on results on the board is going to be sorely missed so I just really really appreciated um be able to learn from you and Dean we miss you tonight so we'll we'll have to have a sending off another time but it's been it's been wonderful I love your passion for facilities and I'll try to carry I'll try to carry the torch for you I'll have my own chance Chancellor James but he was my board president for many years and I'm deeply grateful in partnership why see that there's that wisdom right there he's still a board officer and we still have a few more meetings to go so I'm not gonna say goodbye because I do not want him thinking that somehow it's over right

193now okay then I think we had a motion did we have a second second a second all in favor aye opposed bring Greek folk a Dean happy travels