Board of Education Regular Meeting 6/26/2017

001Lots on the agenda tonight so like to get started and let's get moving here first item on the agenda tonight as usual will be the recitation of the vision statement which is every school will be a thriving school that prepares every student to graduate from high school college career and community ready okay first item on argent tonight and we am going to appeal to everyone to please adhere to the rules of three minutes because there's a lot of speakers tonight a lot of interesting topics and so if you could really stay within your three-minute guidelines those of you that have registered to speak it'd be much appreciated so we'll get started here and we'll get started on our public appearances which is always the first item on the agenda and I'll call up the first

002speaker and the second so please second speaker be ready to come up as the first speaker departs so our first speaker tonight will be Amelia Ramirez and she will be followed by Michelle Hetzel please come for you have three minutes maximum and please adhere to your time frame thank you and listen up three good evening my name is Amelia Ramirez and I am a teacher at Tokyo middle school I am also the mother of a gay son in the most recent school Climate Survey 54% of responding students reported being bullied specifically thirty-one reported being bullied bullied due to gender identity gender expression or sexual orientation it is important that LGBTQ and welcoming school issues be inter woven in the anti-bullying work we do as teachers and as administrators because LGBTQ issues are one of the

003major reasons kids bully and get bullied it is important that staff be intentional about having conversations around identity and how identity impacts bias respect safety and learning identity involves characteristics that affect how we see ourselves identity provides the stepping stone from which we react to others this characteristics include race ethnicity sex sexual orientation gender gender expression age education language physical ability and many more in order to understand how identities are formed at the intersection of these personal characteristics we need to address the topic of bias it is important that educators receive professional development on how to have intentional conversations about identity and bias with students incorporating welcoming schools into our schools provides professional development and allows teachers to learn how to incorporate and practice inclusive language and practices every day in the school classroom by

004learning about bias and inclusive language students learn how to be allies to each other our current anti-bullying programs do not address bias nor do they give students the skills they need to be allies to each other when we give students the necessary language and teach them the skills needed to understand bias learn how to respect differences the transformation that takes place in our schools and our students is amazing when we embrace all families talk about the impact of gender on all kids talk openly about the beautiful diverse identities that exist within our school communities and teach students the skills to be allies the cultures of our schools shift and become more inclusive and safe for all kids I urge the school board to retain and expand the funding for a full time welcoming school's position

005to help create supportive school environments that embrace family diversity avoid gender stereotyping and end bullying and name-calling funding this position does not take away from professional development for positive behavior interventions and supports in fact funding this position enhances such professional development because LGBTQ issues must be interwoven into the essence of existing positive behavior interventions and supports thank you Thank You Michelle followed by Sherrie Holmes hi everyone my name is Michelle Hetzel I've worked in the district for 18 years I want to introduce myself to all of you I also work for welcoming schools nationally with the Human Rights Campaign and so I work with many other school districts throughout the country that are also doing this work of welcoming all families in our schools I am also the educator who worked with Liz lafe's to

006bring welcoming schools to our district we've been doing this work for seven years primarily out of the love and hearts of teachers who care seven years later were asking you to fund a position for this work that we love so much we are already doing this work in 12 of our schools we have four more schools signing on for next year I come in and do I have the honor of doing professional development with teacher around this program consistently throughout the United States I've been into Charlotte North Carolina recently many Madison schools just about every time I come in teachers who we know have so so much professional development and it's not often to have a teacher say thank you could I please have some more professional development right it just doesn't happen what I

007go in they say Michelle thank you I have wanted to make my classroom welcoming for all families including LGBTQ families I didn't know what to say I didn't know the right vocabulary I didn't get a chance like I did with you to practice what to say I didn't know the proper vocabulary to welcome all gender identities in my classroom I get now that not only are we supporting trans and non-binary students we're also able to support all of our kids around gender cuz we want more girls to be engineers we want more young men to be loving parents and get lifted up and honored for doing so I also just want to end today by saying I would love to have coffee with any of you and talk about welcoming schools TJ and I already

008have a coffee date which I'm looking forward to Cherie Cherie snob I've worked with Bonnie Liz and Sheree they provide direct support to our kids that we are losing we have lost students over the past few years we are losing our LGBT students I know we don't want that to be happening in MMSD I know we don't and I know we all care I don't even question that for a second but what we are doing Cherie is supporting students in crisis individual students old staff members and Families we need to get in there those are our flowers we need to get in there and start working on the soil and that's what this program is gonna do it affects climate it changes climate and it may schools that welcome every family and I do mean

009every family not just the queer families I want to welcome all of our families in Madison and you can ask schools that have been doing welcoming schools for years and just talk to educators it is happening I could bring in many passionate families to talk to you about how they felt welcomed and gained the skills to embrace other families in their community too so I thank you for your time I hope that you support this position I will be supporting this position as a national coordinator I'm actually gonna be on leave this year but you'll see me because I love this school district I love our finish thank you thank you so much and if you have any questions I will send you my email thank you sherry followed by Dale and Ibaka hi everyone

010my name is sherry Haas and my pronouns are she her and hers and I am the lgbtq+ social worker for Madison schools I have been doing this work through the last three years ten years prior I was a school-based social worker it's so exciting I have a very important role of supporting all the lgbtq+ students in MSE their families our community organizations all of our educators and administrators and I also support the welcoming schools program on top of also advocating for policies and practices that are inclusive and welcoming for all it's like the hardest job I've ever had in my life but it's also the best job so thank you for being here tonight thank you to all the board members who already are on board and ready to make a position for welcoming schools

011I also want to commend all the educators families community professionals students etc who are in the audience tonight or who have emailed the board to advocate for inclusive education welcoming schools is a highlight of my role to me it's the absolute proactive vehicle that will help our district ensure safe inclusive schools not just for our students who are LGBTQ plus but also for all of our beautiful diverse students in welcoming schools gives educators allege the language and the training to talk about identity and difference visible eyes as populations of people who have been historically marginalized and historically invisible eyes this is fantastic because our students love talking about identity they love talking about who they are they love talking about what makes them unique they love talking about their families so with welcoming schools we

012give them books we give them lessons we train their teachers they have teachable moments to be able to have the skills to be allies to skills to intentionally embrace all families to discuss the impact of gender on all kids and to challenge by us face bullying we coach and support our educators on how to respond to bias language and specific ways to be inclusive in the classroom and guess what this work transforms our schools it transforms our students and it makes more learning growing learning and growing safer for all kids we're thrilled to have a dedicated person to take on this work of strengthening and coordinating our welcoming schools work and MST it's the right time and we are ready so let's get ready our welcoming schools lead will be in charge of district-wide implementation

013they will support our 16 partner school teams they will coordinate our 15 welcoming schools facilitators who are training this summer and they'll be responsible for resource development and communication it's a huge job but I can't wait to bring the great work of welcoming schools into the spotlight if I'm MSD again a huge thank you for those of you in support MMSD has historically been on the cutting edge and responds to the needs of LGBTQ plus youth enacting my position way back in 2001 when it was unheard of now dedicating a position for a welcoming schools lead will ensure that we will be at the forefront of inclusive education once again in this difficult time of increased homophobia transphobia xenophobia and racism we're biased face bullying is on the rise I believe welcoming schools is the

014antidote to fear and hate in our community thank you thank you to all speakers so far everyone's been over we really appreciate it if you get back on time or get on time we're to appreciate it okay so next speaker is Dale under baki followed by a news good evening according to the timeline in our plan for students at risk for not graduating from high school we are halfway through the first phase data review identifying fifth grade and older students who meet at risk criteria it's my understanding that dpi first sounded the at risk warning toll in 1986 Madison's Board of Education adopted our at-risk plan in October of 2016 thirty years separated these two events it is time for us to complete a collaborative and responsive rollout of our at-risk plan that clearly communicates

015our acknowledgment of address barriers and our support of evidence-based customized interventions we have already highlighted research-based interventions and our current behavioral education and special education plans what we need now is to move past talking about these evidence-based tools pick them up and start constructing viable durable customized plans that will result in meaningful progress for our at-risk learners at the June 5th instructional work group Advanced Learning director Ethan Nutter strum responded to some questions about the advanced learner Plan Update as part of this discussion I heard Ethan encouraged the Board of Education to support the momentum behind the successful rollout of our advanced learner plan I understood Ethan to say to make a plan tell everybody about it and then fail to follow through is worse than doing nothing at all I saw several heads nodding

016in solidarity should we be using this same cautionary message to reflect on our at-risk plan I see the successful rollout of our at-risk plan working hand-in-hand with our smaller class size and welcoming school initiatives imagine the benefits to all of an identified at-risk student participates in a smaller learning community supported by a customized intervention plan I'm confident our current innovative alternative data indicates that simply focusing on smaller instructional groupings without individualized at-risk interventions will fail to address chronic gaps and at engagement and achieve are we on track with our at-risk timeline are all doyle and building based staff prepared for their rollout responsibilities i continue to encourage the district to amend their plan to avoid the use of snail mail and notify each at-risk student in face-to-face discussions in addition each student should be provided

017a hard copy of our at-risk plan coupled with district assurances to help them prepare to be college career and community ready we need to show our at-risk learners that they matter thank you thank you three minutes mr. Hughes followed by Katie Wallace hi I'm ed Hughes it's good to see you all last November Madison voters overwhelmingly supported our school referendum that authorized the school district to exceed revenue limits by up to 26 million dollars over the next four years it was my privilege to represent this board and advocating for approval of the referendum I emphasized that the referendum was kind of a defensive measure it wasn't intended to support new initiatives but really to protect us in the event that the state really took it out on us with respect to revenue limits I said

018that if it turned out that we didn't need the extra revenue Authority we wouldn't use it and I said that in any event this board would act responsibly with its spending and taxing authority the referendum materials that Mike Barry and his team prepared last August showed that with a successful referendum the tax levy for 2017-18 was projected to be 298 million dollars a three point nine percent three point nine seven percent increase over this year I'm pleased that the budget you're considering this evening also projects a tax levy of 298 million dollars a 3.97 percent increase it would be nice if it were less but to my mind the fact that it's not more or shows that you are keeping faith with the voters who supported the referendum last member this brings me to my

019point I understand you'll be considering a budget amendment tonight that could increase spending up to a million dollars in increased Betty and also in use of increased revenue Authority and tax levy increase and that would push the tax levy above what the level we project it if not promised last November when we went to the voters I think that would be a really serious mistake we have worked so hard to earn the trust and confidence of our community with the with the board's management of the school districts finances please don't squander that confidence with a last minute amendment that will increase property taxes more than we said when we went to the voters last November that's a bad bad road to start heading down in my view if you have continued concerns about class sizes

020and by all means take a look at it I'd really be interested in seeing what the correlation is between larger class sizes and map growth figures but as far as I know that it's not data that's available now but please don't give our community reason to distrust what board members say when we go to referendum more specifically please don't make a liar out of me I please please don't adopt any amendments tonight that would push the tax levy above three point nine seven percent thanks for your consideration Thank You mr. Hughes Cady wash wallace followed by Pedro Pedro do you can correct me when you come up Pedro okay I'm here to talk about the class size issue but before I start I want to voice my support for welcoming schools this is such an

021important program and it makes an impact that is felt by all our students all of our families and all of our staff I just want to be really clear everything those two said about welcoming schools is true it's so important for schools please support it back to class sizes okay at the six schools I've had the privilege of teaching I've had class sizes between nine and thirty-two as we know many of the fet many factors go into deciding those numbers including data around low income these schools who have more needs should have smaller class sizes and many have the just right numbers but there is a disparity across our district because while there are some classrooms are just right numbers are also classrooms with way too many kids my main schools been Randall for the

022last eight years Randall had a double whammy large class sizes sometimes up to thirty I think I had thirty to one year and physically small classes just the physical space there's not room for them there are at least two third grade classes in to fourth grade classes in addition to art and strings where there just isn't the physical space for these kids in the art room this year students walked on top of the stools to move around my room not real safe besides the physical limitations it's important to factor in the student to t-shirt teacher ratio I'm not the same student for the class of eighteen that I am for my class of thirty there's no way I can get to each student and in fact my students have told me that they've been frustrated

023they've told me I raised my hand forever you never get to me I think there are students that don't that I didn't talk to for weeks at a time because I just didn't get to them between trying to teach just normal teaching and addressing behavior issues for failing students this way I feel that I failed my students but we are being set up for failure at the same time you can't pit teachers and students against each other and expect to win you can't take money from the insurance savings from walker and put that towards the class size issue either do not think that this is a choice between addressing those 1819 class sizes and the 26 to 30 class sizes it's not in either/or this is a both my middle classes at 1819 feel unsafe

024my Randall classes at 26 are just physically impossible to teach I'm not sure this is the right amendment to addresses issue but we do need to start somewhere and know that none of us are going away thank you okay go followed by Jeanne green wall hey Joe followed by Jen greenwall hello my name is Pedro and I worked as a bilingual reserve specialist at chalice luminary a full-time building works of specialists over the last year and I want to talk to you about the importance of having small classroom sizes in my experience at Chavez but also in something that goes a little further back because I didn't grow up in Madison I grew up in Venezuela my classroom size was 11 and in that setting I can tell you I didn't have classmates I had

025friends friends are still my friends I didn't just have a teacher who was a figure of authority who checked my pocket but people were still my mentors and people without whom I don't think I'd be here tonight if I hadn't been in that small classroom where they made me believe that I could go fine and indeed I went you know from Venezuela to here now in my experience at Chavez luminary couple things I can tell you as a bilingual resource specialist we do a lot of translational interpreting but every second that I was not translating a document I tried to be in a classroom because I could tell that those first grade teachers of Skinner caring teachers with 22 kids in their classroom it was very difficult for them again I just don't want to

026see schools I don't want to see the teachers at Chavez begging you know come to my classroom cuz it's you know it makes such a difference to have that extra person there make such a difference to have the SES to have all the extra support so it is excellent you know that you can have bilingual with some special lists who can join the classrooms and support the teachers when they're not translating but the reality is that that is not sustainable you need classrooms that your teachers can be comfortable in that your teachers feel happy to go teaching not classrooms that they have to be no struggle to manage I had to reach out to many parents to us in P volunteers because the classrooms were unmanageable are the current sizes and so I want to

027ask you as a support staff that you consider the importance of giving teachers the conditions that they need to the work that they were trained to do and if they can do really well when they have the classroom size I also ask you that you please do not betray the trust that teachers gave you during the the change of the insurance benefits I hear that there's talk of using some of those savings boosts classroom sizes and I ask you that you please both with those classroom sizes and respect the promise you made to yourself thank you very much thank you followed by noah nobel perez hi i'm a madison teacher I teach second grade and I'm a mom of a very recent West graduate and a incoming West freshman i reaiiy want to sincerely thank

028you all for your time i know you work tirelessly i actually listening to pedro i really don't have anything else to say except on that last point i've been thinking a link you all know how I feel about class size and you don't need you don't need me to tell you why we need class small class sizes but I've been thinking a lot since Friday night about using the savings the additional 400,000 or 500,000 in savings because 65 staff members dropped their health insurance because we changed I didn't have to change that wasn't painful for me but I know that it was incredibly painful for a lot of my colleagues and the message I heard all along was that that the health care savings was going to be put back into compensation if you don't

029do that I think the message is that it's either it's a choice between what's best for my students and what's best for me and and that is of course I will always choose what's best for my students but that that doesn't feel right so as you've told me budgets or choices I think you can make a better choice than to use that money I know there are some some other positions that maybe you wouldn't be funded because you'd be using that money to reduce class size so that's what I'm asking you to do thank you thank you nobo Perez followed by Luke good evening my name is Novell I am a fourth grade DLI classroom teacher and I've had in these last two years the experience of teaching in a classroom with 19 students and

030then in a classroom with 27 and so I can compare easily back to back the experience and haven't taught in both I'm here to tell you what this means how this how classroom size and affect all the areas of what we do and what we call quality instruction in terms of quality instruction our literacy our math groups become diluted we cannot meet with all students once I had 27 it was very difficult to meet independently with all students during literacy and math we doubled those students in literacy for those who are struggling and that also became diluted so our quality of literacy instruction and also in math targeted groups dropped because of the Navon increase of number in students another measure of teacher quality is communication with family with families when I had nineteen I

031was able to call families at the very beginning of the year talked to them about every positive thing that I saw in their child and start the year correctly with the right foot but once I had 27 the list was overwhelming to try and just call each family personally and extend and reach out to them became increasingly hard and therefore communicating with families having an outreach having that school home connection became even harder another measure of teacher quality is a assessment in DLI we teach in two languages and we in literacy we meet with each student by themselves independently and we hear them read this can take between 15 minutes to 40 minutes this means that I set 54 times with one student heard them read read and assess them and had to do this

032three times a year this took away in a modest approximate this took away more than 27 hours of teaching time because I was assessing that much and in the last point and one that is very important as well as teacher morale and retain meant my morale as a teacher this last year just was very detrimental how I felt as a teacher at 19 students and how I felt as a teacher at 27 contributed to my choice of leaving the classroom I am now teaching as a classroom I'm in a classroom support role now and so our commitment to retaining - recruiting and retaining teachers is something that we need to you know that we need to put at the front of of what we do here because that's important keeping our teachers retaining our teachers

033and so just feeling less effective as a teacher contributed to my choice and it has to many other teachers thank you thank you Chris Cruz II hey everybody good to see you again I'm not gonna really speak to why I think class sizes are important do you all have heard that and a lot of other great folks are gonna speak to that but I want to speak to a couple of other things found out just from Friday's proposal very short time ago that quite a big decision has been made in the new proposed budget which is to use almost about half a million dollars in newfound savings from health insurance changes that have impacted over a thousand MMSD employees shifting health insurance as a way to increase FTE for class size reduction and this was

034really upsetting to me for a couple of reasons one is the premise of broken promises it's you know well documented in lots of emails to staff school board meetings all of the savings from that was promised to salary increases to not go along with that it's just on his face doesn't seem right not sure why you would do that but moreover I mean I think if you are going to get into the nitty-gritty and say well this is a newfound savings from these 65 folks who decided to just not even have MMSD health insurance because the switch wasn't right for them the fact is all along it's been very clear that whatever the savings is it was going to be to this so in a June 11th letter to the board Doug Keeler wrote that

035well not exactly quoting because I don't know my phone's not working but wrote that that there is expected greater savings than they were originally thought from the switch and that that he was encouraged would be rolled in to staff compensation so there's at least fin MT is thought all along and if you all haven't been communicating that's not that what you meant like that's just disingenuous I think and at the end of the day it's um our problem and it's a problem of not you know investing in your teachers I mean is not even in in in your words and your promises then then I'm not sure where where you know we can go from there and I think it's really divisive to use that for class size reduction which is also a workers rights

036issue and something that teachers have been arguing for to try to make that an either-or is kind of a classic divide-and-conquer strategy it's both possible to keep your promise and reduce class sizes I think TJ has a great amendment I thank him for bringing that forward I encourage you all to find other savings and I guess there's a quick aside welcoming school seems great as a former you know queer MMSD student I'm glad that y'all are going with that and it's good to see you again thank you Chris followed by Chris followed by Julie Olson hi first and foremost I want to thank all of you for the time that you have been taking to read email and listen to lots and lots of parents and staff and community members talk about class size it's

037time consuming in his heart and I really appreciate the time and attention you're putting into this really important issue you've heard from staff you've heard from us for since April I'm not gonna go more into the research and the reasons why we need small class sizes um and also you've heard a lot about concerns about how we're gonna pay for the extra half-million dollars that the district has you know very thoughtfully put into the budget and I do want to thank the administration for putting that extra half million and those extra FTE into the budget um you've heard very clearly from teachers that they don't want health insurance savings used to fund those positions I also looked through the budget book and I'm not completely well versed in the budget but it looked like there

038was going to be savings used from SCA and ei positions that were being eliminated to cover more teaching positions and like health insurance this feels very divisive to me I don't know all the details but I sincerely hope that some staff at some schools won't lose their support staff so that we can have other sex at other schools that doesn't feel right so how do we pay for this one possibility a month ago we were here voting on early priority actions and the board declined to vote on five FTE that were in the early priority actions that came to about half a million dollars about the amount of money we need to put the first amount of money that TJ's put into his amendment that the district has put into the budget to cover at

039least the beginnings of the staff we need to make a dent in the class size problem we have those positions are all back in the budget and will be approved and voted on unless they get pulled out and talked about again and I urge you to pull those positions out I felt like there were very compelling reasons not to support those positions it was different for every position and to just like put them back in the budget without and it sort of seems to disregard that debate in those comments so that feels like one possibility for covering smaller class sizes in a way that doesn't pit teacher against teacher it doesn't pit school against school this is a unifying issue we've got staff and parents and students from all over the district coming together and

040asking for this we need more unity in our world right now and so I encourage you to do this in a way that unifies thank you thank you Julie Olson followed by Andy fault good evening my name is Julie Olson I've been teaching at Hawthorne elementary for the last 28 years the first 12 as a regular ed to three teacher the last years I've been teaching art and I can tell you that in the early years of horror and we were very committed to keeping class size small and then came saige and it was even better one to 16 over the last number of years we've been adding numbers to those k3 classes and we were up to 19 in many of our sections this year and I can tell you it was extremely difficult

041to teach in our very heavy touch school with very high needs and a high transitioning population of students at the 3:5 level we had 27 and when we're talking about at-risk students and a plan for the future it we really need to keep those numbers down it it it just it was impossible to meet needs provide that equitable opportunity to do culturally responsive teaching it's too many kids you just can't do it now I understand the numbers issues and there are people very well-versed in that and I hope we can find a way to support lower class sizes where we can meet needs without having to cut into month's monies that were promised for salary increase and other things I will say this right now at Hawthorn in summer school there are 36 kids in

042a grade three through five class right now and it's unsafe you can't teach you can't learn and these are the kids who need it extra education extra time in school the k2 class is at 27 and there are only 30 computers for those kids to be in so I I found enough stools for the kids to actually sit in the art room but in the in the computer lab we don't have enough computers it shouldn't happen it can't happen we were doing better years before we've got to be committed to the kids again so thank you thank you bye Rebecca hi good evening everyone you're going to get a double dose of hawthorn today when I teach at Hawthorne as well currently 4 K but I've also taught kindergarten and first I would like to

043reiterate what my colleague before me and Julie Olsen was talking about as far as numbers at a school like Hawthorne I understand there are schools out there can't hear me sorry oh that's better there are schools out there suffering from the same issues that we are as a high poverty school however I feel that we are trying to meet the needs of students that are in trauma and crisis every day of their lives I currently as I said work with 4 K students and five of which have been homeless this year that is a new reality for our school dealing with our homeless population and the needs that come with it making sure that their clothes making sure that they are fed almost impossible to do when you get classes higher than 18 in my

0444 K situation I had one class of 19 one class of 18 that's 37 families I can't do 37 families in a way that I could do 18 when I was doing kindergarten and hopefully less than that for 4 K you know 36 would be great so again I just want to ask you to consider this class size reduction but not on the backs like of the health insurance issues that we've had in this district and promises that were made as well but thank you for your time and consideration and all this and have a good evening thank you hello my name is Rebecca cut forth and I'm a sophomore a Morial high school I'm here to represent Student Senate we have been hearing a lot about the discussion happening around class size and thought

045that this would be a great opportunity to provide student feedback today I'll be reading a resolution Miro based on our own experiences as students whereas small class sizes are essential for fostering a thriving student community and a focused learning environment and whereas large class sizes negatively impact student concentration and engagement and whereas the MMSD has large achievement gaps between students of different backgrounds and whereas not all MMSD students receive the support that they need and whereas the MMSD stage program which reduced class size has been shown to reduce achievement gaps between students and whereas many MMSD class sizes are currently far exceeding ideal maximums now therefore be it resolved that the MSD Student Senate recommend that the MSD Board of Education amend the 2017 2018 budget to reduce class sizes thank you Don Cunningham hi

046I'm here again to talk about class sizes and of course the priority being I wish you could say it back at me k3 high-poverty I will echo what some of the teachers have said about not if there was money promised to them please don't use that because you know when momma ain't happy nobody's happy I would say the same thing is true for our teachers morale is my next go to but for now k3 high poverty in the past ten years or so I know some people have talked about sage and I may be repeating myself but I'm gonna do that in hopes that you remember and it sticks and you like fight hard thank you for the work that you did this weekend I know you did a lot k3 high poverty has been

047hit with the budget cuts I think at a higher percentage than a lot of other issues we started sage with 15 students then it increased to 16 then it increased to you could go to 18 with a waiver then it increased to 18 hard caps and last year we were giving the flexibility I'm sorry to go to 20 and it is not acceptable that's not where the research lies and that's not what feels good in addition to that there used to be an equity funding formula that funded non non FTE budgets for schools I'm guessing that most of you with the exception of maybe TJ aren't even aware of that or don't remember it so that's another area we were in last year title 1 funds were reallocated among schools in our poorest schools on

048the east in the east attendance area Hawthorne and Sandburg elementary schools were hit hard classroom sizes of 24 k3 in a high poverty school where two out of those 20 will be likely homeless and fifteen out of the 20 or a lot of stress it's unacceptable in addition to the changes and decreases constantly hittin budget it feels like those students that are labeled as free and reduced are harder off than they used to be meaning more stress at home this year every year the homeless population starts out at zero by October it was 10% Andy Funke talked about having five homeless students it is it is difficult and the the things that the teachers have to do to keep up it's overwhelming if you could measure other things such as how many kids have homeless

049family members staying with them depleting their already limited resources and the stresses that causes I think it would overwhelm all of us and blow your minds please do not can i I don't care if you do it as a budget I think you have to consider it as a budget and a policy but change your policy to take away that flexibility of plus-2 students thank you thank you that concludes our public speakings for tonight we'll move right along the next item on the agenda tonight of the president's announcements and reports ok Memorial student received United Way volunteer award congratulations to Memorial High School's alfred freddy lopez daniel for been awarded the United Way of Dane County community youth volunteer award he was honoured among other volunteers at the celebration on may 2nd Freddy was nominated

050by Memorial multicultural Services Coordinator join brown who has been working with him to apply for scholarships that will help make his dream of attending our school in San Francisco a reality this award is helping him achieve their goal he received $500 for college and another $500 to give to his favorite organization congratulations to the outfit congratulations to LaFollette graduating DL iCLASS congratulations to our fine to our very first class of dual language immersion graduates from LaFollette high school in 2005 this group of students became the first kindergarten students to learn at nutria mundo community school now many also are honored with the Wisconsin seal of biliteracy for demonstrating proficiency in two languages and global and socio cultural competency the students received their certificates at LaFollette senior breakfast On June 2nd congratulations to those students to

051educational resource officers are moving on after multiple years of service and we would like to thank officer ken Mosley and officer chorus effort for honorably completing their years of service as education resource officers after serving at our high schools for nearly a combined decade officer Mosely has been a leader and a visible presence in the hallways and classrooms of La Follette for four years he has demonstrated a positive attitude while serving as a role model for countless students the officers effort who began working at west of the security system in 2007 joined the police academy and chose to serve as an educational resource officer at west in february of 2013 officer Sandford is known for going out of his way to provide educational support in the classroom and to personally connect with staff and students

052to improve West climate now both officers mostly etc will be starting new assignments this summer we thank them both for their dedication to the safety and the well-being of our students over the years officers that adhere to tonight will please if you could stand would like to recognize thank you for your service and they're gonna be hard to replace appreciate appreciate the time you've given the district okay Sanna Davis love and legacy has changed medicine we would like to take a moment to recognize a beloved community member saina Davis miss Davis has been a tireless advocate for Madison's children as a community leader social justice advocate co-founder and leader of mothers in the neighborhood active leader of the allied Neighborhood Association and champion of the Allied Drive in Greater Madison community we extend our heartfelt

053gratitude for a lifetime of extraordinary service to Madison a city that has been forever changed by her remarkable work and her indelible love thank you again so much miss Davis from the very bottom of our hearts and that concludes board presidents announcements and report next one agenda is superintendent announcer their reports like to thank you for president Howard I'd like to invite Mike berry and Lisa quiz dad to join me on the stage all right we're gonna go ahead and dive right in tonight we're pleased to present to you the preliminary budget for the 1718 school year this is the strongest budget that we proposed since I've started and I think it's one that sets us up for a strong school year ahead I want to thank the community for its support on the referendum

054to exceed revenue limits that was voted on this fall if it hadn't been for that vote and the support of our community we wouldn't be in the stable financial position we are today and I think you've heard it from me many times but school districts cannot do their best work without financial stability so I'm incredibly thankful for that because of the community support we are not having to make cuts for the first time in several years I also want to thank our employees and union partners for the hard work that we did together on the health insurance changes I know those were not easy this year it affected me personally but I am glad that we were able to make those changes in part not only because they help us increase compensation across the board

055but they were a that decision helped us make some targeted investments in compensation like summer school pay like beginning teacher pay which have been needed for a long time I want to thank the city for their support in making the 225 funded available for us because of their support we have a new revenue stream that will allow us to do things to accelerate our progress that we wouldn't have been able to do otherwise I want to thank the Board of course for all of your help we started this budget development process nine months ago and I think with early input from the board in particular on our priority actions we are in better shape as a result and then lastly I want to thank the staff who have worked so diligently on putting this together

056for all of you I know we'll be making some final adjustments to it some tweaks to it tonight which I look forward to discussing with you but before we do that we wanted to just make a few highlights because we've incorporated changes based on your feedback since we presented the draft preliminary budget to you back in April so with that said I'm going to go ahead and pass it over to Mike berry and Lisa who will offer up those highlights and then we'll pass it back to you James okay citizen comments public comments and we were thinking that we feel like we've walked from Venezuela this budget process so and you've heard plenty from us so we're gonna be very brief and just hit the highlights when we've talked about the budget since October and

057we've talked about basically four categories we talked about priority actions talked about the compensation plan if that staffing plan and we've talked about the financial mirror image of that the financial consequences of that and so this little presentation essentially follows that same that same logic and apparently there's not enough money in the budget for a battery maybe we should press the arrow on the not switch here we go all right turn it on like and so that purchase order for a battery all right so we're gonna start out talking about the priority actions then we'll get into the other areas so this is a reminder one of the major lifts early in our work we talked about this a lot in November December in January where the the priority actions and we've used this different

058classification system this year for the over five million dollars of priority actions that are in this budget foundational actions this is all about executing on the strategic framework accelerated actions we use that term new this year to really kind of separate and draw out attention draw attention to our work around early literacy and the ninth graders and then finally we use this third category called innovative actions and that's because its new it gets back to what Jen mentioned just a few minutes ago i 9.2 seven million dollar fund essentially that comes from the city's surplus in tid 25 a very successful Downtown Development it was nice to see a hue seer today as you know ed when he was on the board was a real champion for that 225 loan arrangement so we've used these

059three different categories to talk about priority action the major part of our budget pages 25 through 38 in your presentation have the details now since the April budget was originally published there's been a lot of activity in Prior reactions and in other areas of the budget as well we want to draw your attention to those tonight as you know there is a June 26th version of the preliminary preliminary budget in the online portal board Docs and that that is meant to capture these changes that have occurred between the April 2 knife window so as two priority actions you might remember that in May we and some of our initial feedback initial input we received regarding the April draft led to this idea of increased advanced learner staffing and increased supports for the BEP the behavior

060education plan then and those two changes are incorporated in this June 26th budget also in June as we started talking about board amendments to the budget these three items surfaced circles of support now incorporated in the June proposal a decrease in some principal professional development as a specific strand of professional develop - 25,000 and lastly decrease in a middle-school planning effort is it really a timing adjustment for $100,000 a total project remains the same over three years is that the timing was slowed down to reflect just fifty thousand dollars of effort in the 1718 school year these are all incorporated now in the June proposal okay I should mention also that in addition to these specific priority action changes we had a discussion at the May regular board meeting about early approvals we identified those

061parts of the priority action list that we felt were important enough to bring forward for approval in May rather than wait until tonight and as you know the board approved most but not all of those early approvals as Chris I think identified during the comments section there were five FTE that were not approved early and our treatment of that in the budget was that not approved early referred to the earliness it was not a vote on the merit underlying merit of the proposals themselves so those five FTE are in this June and and that is free for the board obviously to deal with but they are in there now okay so that's early approvals so priority actions at over five million is the biggest lift we've ever had and priority actions and hopefully it's as

062impactful as some of the other priority actions we've had in recent years now my next major section compensation we view this is a really big win especially relative to recent years this budget funds the traditional elements of compensation step advancement in the lane advancement on the existing salary schedules across all employee groups and the maximum base wage increase allowed per wer C rules which is one point two six percent if you were to combine those elements and express it as a percentage overall it equates to about a three point two five three point two six percent across-the-board increase in compensation for existing staff it's an average people experience all sorts of ranges within that average we're also able as you know to improve summer school pay improve beginning teacher salary to forty one Oh ninety

063six which was really low it was really trailing the county and this is a major step forward for us adopt a fifteen dollar per hour minimum wage across the board for regular MMSD employees effective July 1 and much of that came from the last bullet on this screen at three million dollars to healthcare savings which was cooperatively arranged we could be the district and our major employee groups now it has been mentioned here a couple of times that the actual results now that we've finished the transition period and health insurance the results will be about three point three three point three eight million dollars in health insurance savings one caveat on that is that there's open enrollment window yet to occur in October where some where choices can still be made between plans and so

064on but we think it's a reasonable number three point three eight million and with we've talked about that in the context of using it for funding additional unallocated we should also mention here that as the board knows that the may consent agenda you approved a change in long term disability carriers which saves two hundred and fifty thousand dollars at least a change in life insurance carriers which will have some projected savings it's just hard to quantify right now under fifty thousand were projected and then today was officially announced at the Wisconsin retirement system employer and employee contribution rates are coming slightly less than we budgeted for it's actually good thing but we knew that about two weeks ago so my point is that at your direction we have been aggressive in all lines of benefits

065over the last couple of years and including this year if you're uncomfortable with how we've used the health insurance additional savings we have other ways of accomplishing the same thing whether it's the Ltd or the life which were changed without any change in the underlying benefit or the WI RS savings you have options yes don't don't feel like we've painted you into a corner there and of course this is all new since the April budget we hinted at this in the April budget we expressed it as a theory but it all came to fruition after the fact so maybe we shouldn't have an April budget meeting anymore I know that would crush your hopes the highlight of this spring okay final a major area and an expenditures in the budget has to do with a

066staffing obviously it's a huge part of the budget our staffing plan allocates about 26 hundred teacher FTE about 4,000 total FTE for all categories of employee it is work that occurs as early as November December the planning stages it's executed in January February and March when we do this individual workbooks for each school so that work is designed to be driven by our class size guidelines and Lisa will get to some slides in a minute that show how that really turns out in reality at least this year the some of the highlights on the staffing side the overall staffing pen will grow by 24 FTE not a lot overall but in comparison to some previous years we were doing some reductions it is a positive we've had reductions for two years in a row prior

067to this budget for really two reasons the first is an enrollment decline if a couple hundred students that obviously many enrolled many positions float with enrollment and then other otherwise is generalized budget pressure so those two factors were at play this year it's more positive a couple of late actions a million dollars was added to the staffing reserve in to $500,000 increments one was done in April the other was done in June this brings us now to a total of unallocated teacher positions of 18 FTE as of June 20th it's already change by the way and that is the regular ed piece as you can imagine the special ed Department keeps its own large roughly 20 reserve of unallocated staff because it's very student dependent and they need ability to to respond so since the

068April budget this too has changed and that million dollars is now reflected in the overall proposal with that I'm going to turn it over to Lisa for a closer look at our section sizes okay thanks Mike okay so to start with over the next couple of slides I just want to emphasize and actually celebrate the fact that we support low classes I just want to say that we actually do have a long-standing commitment to and actually reputation for low class sizes in the district and we plan to continue on that plan to continue to deliver on that commitment and provide evidence of our dedication to that to unite so over the next couple of slides what we want to try and illustrate is that the problem we're we're trying to solve is not one of

069class size but really that of outliers and those outliers crop up they are actually out there we know that when we address outliers we actually lower class sizes across multiple classrooms so when you get to one class that is a higher higher enrolled than the other classes you actually end up reducing class sizes across multiple sections of that grade level so we acknowledge that those outliers exist and we just wanted to show you a couple slides to show you how that plays out so this is really our broadest look at class sizes at the elementary level and it's as of May 23rd so just so you know this is a snapshot that could reflect throughout the course of the year some mobility both in and out in our k5 classrooms so as you can see

070almost 74 percent of all of our elementary classes k5 have 20 students or fewer so the two bars on the left only 18 classes out of 649 have 26 to 28 students and this does represent our current standards and those standards just as a reminder or right here so we use these to generate this line so moving on to our next slide this emphasizes our class size data by grade in AGR or former stage schools so if you look at the bottom at the class size averages I just would like to start there you can see that in our AG RK 3 classes there's an average size of 16.4 with a k3 size of 18 or less you can see that we have 229 classrooms that are actually at or below our sage limit you

071can see that 19 or 20 plus 1 or plus 2 we have ass much smaller number of classrooms that are there and we have outliers you see the 5 there the 21 or 22 those would be some of the outliers at 4th and 5th grade you can see we have a preponderance of classes that according to our class sizes are 27 or less within our standards and then a low number of outliers as well so what I want to explain here is that when we actually allocated elementary teachers in sage schools that were a gr when we put the workbooks together we allocated at 17 we didn't use that flexibility of 18 plus 1 plus 2 we kept that in our back pocket as the flexibility measure and we gave schools of quotient at K

0723 and we started out at 17 so this data does bear out that what we meant to do was something that we accomplished in our workbooks so the next slide is our non-ag our schools and again if we can refer to the averages at the bottom at k1 we have an average of 18.9 but that doesn't mean that there aren't outliers as you can see we have a couple classes that are more than 22 I'm in an outlier but most of those have been at 22 or less at second and third grade our average is 19.8 as you can see and at 4th and 5th grade our average was 21.5 so again this is to acknowledge that there are outliers that are here and to acknowledge that we believe that holding a robust pool of

073unallocated in reserve is a way for us to get at some of those classes that we know are above what our we consider to be ideal standards okay to financial summary slides to wrap this up regarding our June preliminary budget proposal state and federal really here so the state budget for the next two years is undecided and k-12 funding is part of that at the wrong along with transportation funding so our budget assumes that the governor's proposal back in February it's going to hold which was a $200 per pupil increase in state funding and that's positive for us the other assumption is that equalization aid which is a second major source of funding for this district of than copy Texas will decrease by fifteen percent net so kind of worst-case scenario a worried about an

074equalization aid it's just it's a tax issue in Texas Niko's they should move together equals Asian aid losses don't necessarily mean layoffs or program cuts it just means more tax pressure so those are our two major assumptions on state federal budget yeah federal budget ten percent loss for title one will it will hit in 1718 fortunately we were careful in our sump shion's and that will not have a major impact for 1718 but it's going to catch up to us the year after and then title two of the decrease is actually closer to twenty 23 percent and that may cause us to rethink some of our title to spending come October when we drew up this budget so yes this budget will be back in October and sorry to tell you and then Medicaid school-based

075services Medicaid the issue here gets down to the definition of eligibility if fewer students are deemed eligible then that will obviously our budget as well those are to come so and then I guess one last overall summary slide the big numbers in the budget balanced budget 390 million dollars of Revenue and expenditure when we say operating budget we mean the general fund and the special ed fund combined the all funds budget which includes food service and debt service and community service and so on four hundred ninety four million the tax levy increase is three point nine seven percent that was intentional we kept it there the total levy in dollars is 298 million four hundred ninety five thousand five hundred and eighty eight dollars tax rate goes from 1192 to 1203 impact on an average

076home is about seventy four dollars and fifty seven cents and this is all premise done in under levy of two million dollars we not using the board's full levy Authority and why would we not do that to the extent that you do use it you will see your tax rate increase from 397 upward which is I think the point that that use is getting at earlier and I think that's it just a good question in the title one when you said that we're into spending ten percent cut last year we got a little over seven hundred thousand dollars in late this year we budgeted for without that is that the ten percent or is it a ten percent in addition to that not getting that 700 plus thousand so the 10 percent reduction that we

077saw was 10 percent over the entire award last year including the 700 we wisely budgeted off of the low number six point seven so we're going into next year in good shape that's that's what it sounded like thanks but it will catch up so Jones will pass it back to you all right thank you thank you for your report we're gonna have to take a look at the amendments and I'd like to go through them as quickly possible we seem to have about three classes of amendments did you have a question you'd like to ask before yeah yep I just wanted to add the budget processes here was way different in weight better it started informing us way earlier than the previous year's are I'm here and I think it might have helped getting ahead

078so far with the two members that joined us in April so your team did a great job Jen and that should be set out loud and you might be wondering why are we still playing with it well this is preliminary and in from my mind I said well you guys did a pretty good job I want more so we're gonna figure this all out today it's a no way of reflection that you didn't do enough you guys did way more than probably school boys have ever done of course or your so thanks for all that work that all your guys did and we're gonna hash this out and still we're not done with it we understand that we can change this between now and October and that but we're gonna get as far as we

079can tonight and we're gonna still gonna leave with things I'm gonna leave same hmm and where can I get more after tonight so like we all will so this is where I just wanted to say that upfront before we get into this all right thank you blowing illuminates okay we seem to have at least three categories of amendments and that is those have been included in the preliminary to implement every budget those that have yet to be built into the budget and then we have some open items and so I want to try to get through here without having to go through all of these if possible so I think obviously we gotta go to we have to discuss the open items obviously but for example item one here servers of support it's been included

080in the preliminary budget so the question I have for that particular item is that do we need to have any discussion there we're good can we move on sounds good I'm not gonna ask those questions to means have here a lot of things on the table tonight as Polly you have a look on your face do we need to I'm actually just wondering about process a little bit if we shouldn't make the main motion and then leave it to the board members who are going to raise their amendments to make their amendments and that way it will naturally funnel through the ones that will be made by the proposing board member instead of going through all nine pages so you suggested that we go ahead and in motion for the adoption of the budget within

081I do you mean right because then each amendment would be on to that main motion and then only the ones raised will get an up or down vote okay seeing no objection I'll move that the board approve and adopt the 2017-18 preliminary budget as proposed in the amount of 494 million six hundred fifty two thousand and twenty five inclusive of all funds with SayIt proposed budget having been identified in the document entitled the P I preliminary budget adoption format dated June 26 2017 second been moved in second so so I will move on to amendments at this point before exporting mr. Burke's a suggestion of how we deal with the amendments which is that we take three categories or two categories and begin with say you know any amendments that would be cutting things from

082the budget then go to anything that would and and anyone that you know and assuming that everything that's already been folding the budget is there and then if anyone wants to take it out that's the time to do it then anything that would be added and then anything that's left over in terms of I want to pay for this from that instead of that kind of thing any kind of miscellaneous thing at the end and that way kind of just moved through them and I don't think all the budget all the amendments that have been floated and or incorporated and or early approved and not early approved are going to come back I think it's going to be relatively quick if we if we do it this way I don't know that's that's one suggestion

083I want to go through them because I don't know if all board members are on base yet so yeah I would suggest that too and I know there may be one that's not on this grid that I'm aware of but so I don't get woman's a chance to so that's right in then if a board member doesn't want it forward with some McGrady just asked us to skip it so okay let's get moving here we don't want to get bogged down and so first remember that has already been included in the budget and that was so the proposal of that amendment do you have any okay so that's that one and we'll check as being included okay the second amendment the right uniform amendment and that one not yet built into the preliminary budget I

084move that we allocate $45,000 and that will add to the amendment the previously submitted from Ted 25 revenues to pay for six approximately six thousand three hundred dollars in uniforms for right staff and the remainder for right students second it's been moved in a second any questions or comments mr. Loomis yeah we got a communication from the Union today that I just read once and I believe they're challenging that and or something can can I get can somebody help me out here yeah I can address that there the union has a concern about requirement that staff purchase and wear uniforms they believe it's in violation of the handbook we have communicated with the Union with principal at rights and are an agreement that the uniforms will not be required but encouraged in the upcoming year

085allowing more time for that discussion to take place so purchasing the uniforms with still we would encourage you to do that but know that the staff won't be required to wear them but they would be encouraged just to clarify that's a change from the waiver we passed in February no the waiver we went back and looked at the language of your waiver and it was very specific and exclusive to student uniforms yeah do you want to withdrawal this why do we need it now well staff there were two pieces behind this with this initial amendment one was that my understanding was that staff were required and that requirement was a violation of the handbook in which case unless because the handbook says if you require a uniform for a particular position then you had then

086the district has to provide it and so that was the one piece of this now we are learning the staff are encouraged but if we if if the right community believes that to make this work we need to have staff and students doing it I believe that that that purchasing the uniforms will be with the spirit of both the handbook and the idea that this would be how to make it work so that's piece number one piece number two is the students and and I've said this from the very brief thing is that you know I've never supported the idea of uniforms in any school but especially with right being one of our believe our highest poverty school my best understanding of the experience with uniforms and other in other districts and schools is that

087though clothing expenditure savings to families are promised they are not realized and therefore this is an admin bird added burden to one of our lowest income communities and if we are going to do this I believe that we should subsidize it and we believe in us we should subsidize it as a district so that's the piece for students my issue is very simple which I said stated when I discussed the students earlier his ticker says you do not give up a student does not give up the rights at the schoolhouse gate and I worry about the free speech issues especially worried about it on the teachers given all of that if we're going to have uniforms to have a high poverty school like right middle school be able to put that on the backs of

088the teachers and the students is without even talking to MPI on that issue I think is a little much and therefore I think that we should at least fudge until something can be formally worked out well that's what the amendment does we have we're financing the uniforms for both staff and students and this is what was brought to us by the administration of their school and with parent and everyone's input and so I'm gonna support it I've supported from the beginning if there's staff and and the administration of that school believe this is best for that school and we have the financing for it I don't see that for me I'm gonna be supporting it we have to rely on our principals to know what's best for their schools and and so so I'm in

089strong support of it we have this amendment that finances it so it's not on the back of above anyone so I'm whatever speaking for the amendment so it's not on the back ok so any other comments you know the comments saying that so the member on the floor do we need a motion here I made a motion he made a motion seconded by the second I second it okay so any further comments seeing that all of Laura you have wisely vote please yes all in favor aye in opposition okay motion carries 7-0 okay welcome to grants are the first vote so the next item on the agenda is our class size amendment and so you know we've had a lot of discussion on this topic consoled like to not spend any more time one of

090the need to be so what I'd like to do is mr. Murchison administration mr. Murchison talked about this amendment administration can talk about we basically have two class size approaches on the table the amendment here and one for administration so if we can have that discussion for a few minutes and then we'll give the board a chance to weigh in and then we'll move to vote the Mr Bandt available could we possibly go out of order and the fact that the motion that I worked that Ana has created would actually address that issue regarding class size if it so passes or is that out of Ward right on that yeah I said it wrong they said it on a strike that motion I strike that straight that I said that the change with your permission

091I'll make the motion and then we can have it on the floor for discussion sounds good I'd like to make a slight change from the motion that was in light of the fact that $500,000 has been incorporated in the June budget so the motion is printed in the agenda - the phrase from allocating an additional $500,000 to expand the number of unallocated piece of teacher positions to dependent on the per pupil categorical aids so the beginning reads amend the 217 18mm st preliminary budget dependent on the per pupil categorical aid provisions of the biennial state budget allocating up to an additional 1 million and takes it from there Dylan do I need to read this whole thing or can I just take it can I just do that you see what I did make sure

092Dylan's on the same page and then we can go from there yeah I don't want to read all that essentially I took out the $500,000 in the first in the first paragraph and left the amending the two hundred seventeen eighteen preliminary budget why don't I the document entitled jjigae - done it is attached to bird for docks I can lend you my copy if you want I don't have poor jobs I'll use paper - mines clean if there's a second I'll do a very very brief walk through this - okay first off I want to thank the administration for not only in April but also in June recognizing the actually wants to protect his administration period for the over the years struggling to maintain smaller class sizes and then particularly this budget cycle in April

093and June both recognizing the importance of what are now being called the outliers and and their existence and so that is very very much appreciated the responsiveness around that as well as the long term commitments that have been in evidence there are essentially two pieces three pieces left of this one is if state budget conditions are what I consider favorable we add an additional million up to an additional million dollars which would still leave us in an under levy situation but would increase towards targeting these larger class sizes which we which remain the second piece of it is setting some more exacting and different guidelines for how things are prioritized guidelines not hard caps but encouraging that these be used to address the class sizes and the highest property and the lowest grades first the

094highest poverty in elementary school next and so on and so on and also redefining the high poverty schools because I believe that the current use of the AGR as the measure really does a disservice to some of our students and schools particularly I want to point to Kennedy elementary school which by one measure is 45% poverty and Stevens elementary school which by nut which by one measure is 43 poverty and these are schools that I believe belong in the high poverty category adding to that Lincoln which is by anyone's definition the high poverty school but because of the way AGR has worked is not in Ag our school according to our designation so changing the definition of high poverty prioritizing among poverty and then that the third piece is is is how is this working

095what happened to these allocations and one of the things is that I think that through this process and through the discussions we've had in the community activism and the Q&A back and forth is that I think a lot more light has been shed upon the process by which we do our allocations and I think a lot of more thinking has been done about what's in the community and among the board and and among the administration about how we can do this better and where our priorities are and how the priorities weigh against each other and I think that in order to continue this process and to get better out of it and-and-and-and and I hope to inform a revision of our current class size policy I think that we need reporting out for how these

096have been used and so there are requirements for three reports in here of a baseline report to be issued as soon as possible which is where we are today or a week from today or two weeks from today a start of school report which can be defined either by the end of registration or the very start of school and finally when we get our enrollment reports the traditional enrollment reports we get after the third Friday things are compiled and the board receives those generally at the end of October sometimes not until November that we also have what happened to those unallocated allocations be included in that report or at the same time as those reports simultaneous with this voice so that's the three pieces I think that you know our community has spoken very eloquently

097to how people experience larger class sizes this doesn't target average class sizes though it will have an impact on them it targets the largest class sizes what I personally consider unreasonably large sizes for the some particular schools and classrooms I'm done thank you very much superintendent and his staff I'd like to hear about your positions on on I basically our position is that though your position is that you have these outliers and we have an approach so could we hear about that yeah thank you for the opportunity and TJ I think you know how much I appreciate the spirit of your Amendment which is why we built in the additional unallocated I think I've just there are a couple of concerns I'll put out for the board to think about as you deliberate on this

098amendment and Mike feel free to chime in on this we we definitely support the additional unallocated which is why we built it in the budget we do think that especially in this last few years with budget challenges we've had an issue with more of these kind of outlier classes which do make it difficult for teachers to build strong relationships with their students and families and we want to address them I think the second paragraph of TJ's amendment which is the section that goes into kind of dependent on the outcome of the state budgets increasing the commitment unallocated for up to 1 million dollars our main concern here goes back to the the levy we made a commitment as I recall it to not going over 4 percent for the tax levy and I'm worried about

099locking ourselves in to a tax levy that's high at this point so let's put that out there that that is a concern and when it comes to the guidelines again appreciate the spirit of it we always want to find ways to prioritize how and when we double out the unallocated throughout the spring summer and early fall I worry about creating a new definition of poverty through a budget amendment to me that is a important discussion to have it has all kinds of policy implications way beyond how we how we distribute on allocated positions I think that's my major issue which is more of a process concern I hear TJ you saying that this is sort of a foray into a larger discussion that you'd like to see the board an administrative team with community input

100have about class size guidelines and I would invite invite that discussion which I think needs to be had certainly in advance of the next budget cycle which will get off the ground in October before we know it so I just I think that's my major concern it feels less about budgets amendment and a little more about process and policy which is a concern when it comes to the reporting requirements there certainly doable for us and TJ TJ and I had discussed possibly building in a section of our annual enrollment report to hold ourselves accountable for how we distributed those additional allocations so I'll leave it there unless you have anything you would like to add Mike okay apps they can help clarify some things that sounds good okay okay we'll let TJ chime in for

101a minute then Boyd you'll have an opportunity to chime in and then we're gonna be moving to vote without Connor we've had a lot of time on this already so everybody around the table would have an opportunity I'm gonna keep this very very brief first in terms of the million dollars from the front from tax increase and in relation to the referendum in the referendum campaigns you know I understand the hesitancy there the levy Authority is granted tax levies depends or depending on the lots and lots of different things some of which we can control on some of which we can't control this takes into account some of the ones we can't control um it doesn't levy to the max and also I think that as we talked about the referendum one of the things

102is what's people you know many people us what's this for what's this for and we said that this would be done through the regular budget process and through our processes and I view this amendment as being part of this of the processes and that and you know and there's been wide support and I and I have certainly done my best to explain to people that this does deviate and not hide that fact from from the 3.97 I mean I've tried to be as as forthright as possible on that in terms of the setting a new definition for poverty and new priorities you know I view this as you know this is a budget or met this is for the purposes of a budget amendment and not a permanent definition that we're going to be adopting

103that that this is the wrong place to do that completely I do think that it is proper in a budget amendment to hone in and and and and and move towards a more deliberate implementation of existing policy and that's what I see this doing within the context of a budget that's already been taken this far this is - this is in order to amend the budget that these are where I see the places where the amendments are most needed and and in that way and secondarily I think did also that it provides a structure for the reporting and I think that that's it that's a crucial piece so I think do the ministry when I had anything before we move to a board comment I would just want to supply the actual number around this

104based on the paragraph per the proposal your Europe tax levy and your June preliminary budget is three point nine seven percent increase that would be modified to four point three one percent levy increase hey I guess close I said four point three okay that's what the four million all right yes thank you Mike okay uh uh like to open it like to open it up now for a board comments mr. Vandermeer I respect what my predecessor mr. Hughes said about keeping one's word and I intend to do that one of the ways that I tend to do that is the fact that from the conversations we had earlier that the on the early priority actions that we agreed that those amendments will you were not going to fund them and that any insurance money any

105money from the insurance was specifically stated would go to the teachers not some of it but all of and to me to go back on that promise is something that I just can't do so I just wanted to put that out okay any comments around the table cause that anyone want to comment here Bert I also appreciate TJ bringing this important issue to light the work the administration has done along with the emphasis that in priority has put to be able to address the outliers Madison does have one of the lowest class sizes teachers student pupil ratio in the state and we should take pride in that but we also know that it is something that plays into the effectiveness of a teacher and being able to support relationships I think that we have done

106a lot in terms of additional positions that were already put into the workbooks so it addressed some of the issues rather than starting at eighteen starting at seventeen now we've added additional positions to be able to address the issues when we see them coming when we actually see where students are enrolled that to me is where we should be and we do have a I feel a commitment to the taxpayers who had said that this was three point nine seven percent that's more than most people's paychecks are going up and there are it is a burden it's one that luckily a lot of taxpayers in in Madison support our quality schools but I think any further investment needs to get a lot more detailed and researched and supported before we go before we go further

107and I think that what TJ has proposed beyond what has been incorporated in the budget does get into power see and this while we've talked about it a bunch it's basically been June this should actually be a topic that should take up most of the school year in terms of a long term strategy not only for May main classes but a lot of what we heard tonight was from some of the specials the art teachers right so we can't just address this just in this one way so I would strongly urge that we adopt the budget that the that the administration has put forward that we put it as a top priority for as we start the work on the budget but also the instruction workgroup and saying where does class size fit in to

108our priorities and where do we want to be and let's make sure we have the thoughtful conversation the research around at the look at how do we tie how does our district look when we compare class sizes to to how our students are doing so I I support the additional resources in this I support the the emphasis and the concern around it but I'd like to support where what is in this budget support the commitment to the taxpayers that we made when we went to referendum and then put it as a top priority for the next school year for this board miss Burt of the board member comments I think it's sweet I think you have to push it up Nikki I guess can I just ask a clarifying question but sure bitch I didn't

109fully understand your comment earlier in terms of your position around this amendment I mean it is it for you dependent on how we make other choices or yes okay um I actually have a Amendment which is a amendment that would address and where to get the money from but I'm not sure if this is the right time you know we have a minimum we have but most so that's why I can't motion on the floor here right now I want to clarify Mike said that there are ways to get this money rather than through health care savings and which is why and I think that we will return to that before this meeting is over which is why I didn't mention it in the context this amendment respecting James that's wish to go to these

110amendments one by one so just to clarify that and I think that addresses some of Nikki's concerns yeah I think Kate has a soul so I guess I'm startling a little bit with this as well because there are really four choices in this amendment I'm sorry pull it close there's there's there's four choices in this amendment the first has I think been mutually agreed already and baked into the budget which is to commit another $500,000 to unallocated positions which I think we're all very supportive of the second it has to do with the tax levy and how we would interpret to the state budget and then the the next two are really policy decisions around the priority in which unallocated would be decided and then this last which it is around which schools are considered

111high poverty or not I guess I'd kind of look I'd love to split them up and and to be honest I'd like to take the two that are policy choices and move them to a policy dialogue I have not yet had the opportunity to discuss at all I don't think this group has discussed at all which schools are high poverty how we determine that when we determine that and it's a pretty important choice it's actually the biggest material choice in this amendment if we pass this as a whole it's the single biggest driver of where our unallocated go and I don't know as anyone here has had the opportunity to look at that and I think we should so I don't know exactly the right point of order to do that it's similar I guess

112to Nikki's question which is when we do what things but I'd like to take the choices separately if we could wait but we have a motion on the floor and and I just like to hear from other board members if if partners have anything to say before we address that miss Moffat in mr. Loomis okay mr. Loomis well it's important and I'm glad you use the phrase up to an additional it doesn't mean it's gonna be the full million so that should be understood here because we might not need everything what there's no disagreement dead more researchers should go to higher poverty schools and then the the curious issue I'm going through is the the way they're defined and I don't know if we've really flushed that out there as Kate were saying so I

113can support the money here because we're not lacking in a million so we're now going up to four point three right now we're saying up to after we get some more data what we're gonna what we're looking like against in with an enrollment figures come in and also we've got a solid eighteen that we can plug in right now we might not do we don't know how many we're gonna need to get the outliers taken care of and in which school we're gonna prioritize this high-priority most of them are known a couple more that seem to be an old gray area but not that that much so that's the only issues I have with it we've heard enough compelling information in examples of why it's good and where it's not working so how do we

114I don't want to lock us in right now to where it's gonna go I guess that's where I'm saying I think this is good that we're gonna do this so this ensures that everybody classes that are too high are gonna get addressed particularly starting first with high poverty schools there's not much disagreement among around the table here on that issue all the other issues are are we clear that that's what we how we want to do right now as far as the policy implications over there are we defining it right now or is it still up for debate between now and September okay thank you mr. Loomis for me I I appreciate all of the commentary we've gotten from the public appreciate the amendment from TJ we also have an approach from the administration I'm

115gonna support the administration's approach because I think we do need to take the time to have the policy discussion and so this is not the place in my mind to separate the policy out start having that discussion unless we're willing to be here two three in the morning I just don't think this is the place for that I think we have to run it through our operations workgroup to have the policy discussion the idea of which of our schools are high poverty schools I'm not going to sit here today and debate that with anyone I'm not going to say mr. Mercs is wrong and I'm not going to say I agree or disagree with that I think that some we need to talk about and discuss the the process of determining that whether or not

116this method of that issue proposed for high poverty schools is the one that we accept you to me that's a longer term discussion and it's a more of a policy discussion also so we haven't talked about is uh some of these says not to exceed a certain amount of students we haven't used the word caps here and I know that this is not considered caps on class size but if we have a not to exceed in my mind that's a cap and one of the things that I'm concerned what is our personal flexibility you know we give principals the leeway to really make decisions in their classrooms which you know they think is best for their schools and if we in a way then aren't we taking this if we say not to exceed that

117sort of taken away their control and their building and I'm sort of concerned about that and I haven't heard from principal as much on this you know I would like to take the time here from principals so I don't know that we've taken the time and in terms of the policy access of this if we've taken the time to really vet this through a lot of our stakeholders I like to hear what principals have to say about this also and so you know we've up to 18 unallocated and I mean there's a lot of questions remaining you know how are we gonna use the unallocated we've had unallocated before so they're questions but for me is this the place for this is a these are budget items and and so a lot of this is

118policy and I have a hard time pulling them apart at this place and to have this discussion and so so I'll be supporting the administration's position on this but I do think we this is the conversation that we need to have down the road so I'm gonna leave it at that for now we're gonna go to miss Moffat we're not going to go around the table 20 times for board members so please you know we've been here before so so we're here miss Moffat and a superintendent has her Hannah I had a question in regard to how much we could spend in the upcoming year and not exceed that 3.97 with up to a million it sounds like it would be four point three percent that's that's that's correct as dean I think we're saying

119up to a million in additional spending or allocated funds means up to a four point three one percent levy they move in tandem if you were to spend only it's a half a million then your tax rate would be your text but the increase would be approximately four point one five percent for example so does that answer your question I know so if we spend three hundred and fifty thousand dollars would that be about three point nine seven no okay which includes the 1 million dollars and unallocated okay I appreciate that because I do want to be mindful that promise that was made during that referendum I just also want to be mindful that when I did that advocacy work behind the referendum one of the big pieces was his promise to the community that

120we would focus on class size because that was a priority that we heard time and time again let's remember there's a lot of promises to communities and they were you know and I've got let me say this and be perfectly clear when we talk about community there's a lot of communities in math so which part of the community we talk about it it's not one community there's a lot of voices out there and I'm not sure we've heard for them from them all so we need to take the time to hear from all of these communities we love to talk about the community but there's a lot of voices in the community have we really appreciate hearing from students today again we haven't heard from principals and and there are other demographics in our communities

121that I haven't heard from and I look in the audience I don't see them present here so let me just be perfectly clear when we start talking about communities so we need to take the time to hear from everyone on this and so superintendent thank you James I I wanted to if it's okay with you circle back to this question of funding source for the additional $500,000 and unallocated and I heard the testimony I get it and I agree with it and I wanted to give Mike a chance to maybe talk a little bit more about that because if what I'm hearing from the board is support in investing in the an additional 500,000 for a full million dollars in unallocated in order to address the issue of outliers and what I think I'm hearing

122is a commitment to doing the policy work that we want to do next year to make sure that our class ID standards meet our expectations teachers can do their best work that if the hang-up might be the source of money that we're using for that 500,000 and I don't that that shouldn't be our hang-up I think we need to address that is that all right if mike addresses yeah yeah 20 seconds or so I think that that we can both fund the $500,000 that get you to the million that builds your unallocated pool you can do that and and you can also do it in a way that that does not rely upon additional health insurance savings so what I would propose is if we simply designate a different source and as I mentioned earlier

123to a couple a couple possible sources there including the rebidding of so many other insurance lines that come in no expense to any employee so we'd simply identify different source that then leaves the issue of the health insurance savings currently we figure about three hundred eighty thousand dollars it would simply be I would say this the savings would be in the budget the board could designate what it intends to do with that whether it be additional compensation or you know whatever your values lead you to you'll be you'll be free to make that decision I think that should hopefully cut the Gordian knot okay mr. Bannerman ahead of handle actually that just answered it so okay teachers okay right just under finding poverty I understand the frustration and again I just wanna precise that this

124is a one-time definition that's being used and I also emphasize that the current definition of poverty we use we use is the schools that it seemed best to allocate sage to something like five years ago and to me that is a very inadequate definition and I would you know go head-to-head with anyone saying the definition using this amendment is a better definition than that and so I'll just you know lay that out there that that you know and because allocating sage was based on many many things and not necessarily needs of schools and and those decisions were at a time when we used local funding to reduce class sizes much lower than we have them now very very different context that the sage could contracts were given so but that's our current definition is who

125we gave sage contracts to some years ago yeah I mean I guess yeah I guess what I'm what I'm hearing from this group is broad support for continuing the policy dialogue at a separate point and and support for additional unallocated potentially even past what's been baked into the budget as long as we remain within our commitment to our community to stay within under 4% fair tax that's what I'm hearing I didn't say that okay I said I supported what the administration has in the budget and that we're not talking about an additional okay fair enough but now we all heard what we all said is it possible to split this amendment and that's yeah I mean the next process would be an amendment to amend the amendment and dog chasing its own tail at some

126point but right I mean each amendment gets voted up or down and then you're voting on the last thing as amended so you could make an amendment to remove X Y or Z or add a B or C and then we would vote backwards to giving to the original language so I guess I would like to make a motion to amend to take the policy pieces of this amendment out is that if I need to say something else to make that accurate oh yes well I would like to just so looking at it so we moved in with referenced it as attached so would that be to make a motion to modify TJ's amendment to end at if it is $200 or more and striking everything thereafter establishing right over the end so to add

127a paragraph to what is the new paragraph one because TJ moved it without the first paragraph these are not touchscreen business not working so to end the motion if it is $200 or more period suppose that I'm not gonna vote foot so I feel best to see the guidelines as the basis for reporting so the motion would be to menti Gees motion to strike the paragraphs beginning with the word establishing through and following right middle school leaving requiring the public reports or the edge November enrollment reports so leave a motion that quite frankly reads depending on per pupil categorical aid of it provisions of the biennial Wisconsin state budget allocating up to an additional 1 million dollars to expand the number of budgeted and allocated classroom positions proportionately with no additional allocation if the categorical

128aid increase is $100 or less it's up to a million if it is 200 or more and requiring that public reports be made to the Board of Education as well which include the amount of funds remaining from this allocation the number of sections of classrooms had it to date from this allocation each of the listed priorities the number of sections of classrooms remaining that exceed the guidelines for each listed priority based on current enrollment with a minimum of three reports of July ports July 14th 2017 of his 21st and then the third report after October enrollments no wonder you hate me James if I make you do this every week I'll second it's been moved in second to amend the original motion second yes Dean is second it question is on the floor yeah the

129problem I have is then you actually don't stay with the commitment to taxpayers to stay at three point nine percent the this basically makes a commitment that you will go above that based on the state budget so this is this is a this is basically a go-ahead to go up to to exceed three point nine seven and I I certainly don't support that and I I think I've heard a number of voices around the table they have some concerns that that we do that so I won't be supporting you know I think what happens here is what we've talked about time and time again you know these types of motions need to be thoroughly vetted before they get to this point because this is what happens we sit here and we start I think there's

130misunderstanding and all types of things that happen here that leads to the wrong conclusions and I I'm gonna definitely stick to 3.97 because that was that promise that's where we are and and so I'm not sure that all board members really miss our creation part you know we really know where we are at at some point and so so I'll be sticking with my original support here and so we do have a motion on the amendment on the floor and it's been seconded so any other comments on that yes please that's great so okay any final comments here okay so we have a motion and a second and so we'll be voting on the amendment and so commit to the amendment Kayson of it I wanted to be click okay yes it's hard it's important

131Laurie your advisory vote please all in like to show hands on this all in favor all opposed okay so the motion does not cure so we're back to the main motion so I don't know if we need any more discussion on the main motion pardon which just to clarify the TJ's full amendment proposal yes so the so we're back to the main motion and to be clear this is the full amendment as outlined in the original motion and so that's all the policy stuff and everything so all in favor of the original motion say lower your visor please no all in favor show of hands please hi all the polls so that motion carries for three next item on the agenda is withdrawn the next open item is the the education English language learner recruit

132you know I think that it is an open eye yeah I can propose 2.50 FTE for a recruiter in the areas of PLL and special education at this point I would move it back to the point five I know additional allocation what's made on top of it I think moving into the staffing community I would like more information around that before making that type of investment got any comments on this I would just like to get a clarification on the status of this nothing has been built into the budget at this point we have an initial amendment for a point five we have a discussion in the job description that led to a point 1o and Anna is now moving the initial 0.5 a and which is not in any way incorporating the budget is

133that set the lay of the land always good definitely not just make sure we're all on the same page here and so the Job Description is no longer is only partially yeah okay any other comments or you advised me hope all in favor say aye please opposition so motion does not carry okay next one are its in with okay the next open item is the provider and attorneys for students expand the ruler yes very very simply this is an issue that's very important to me I understand that we have steps to provide students who do not have legal options in exposures and suspensions however the majority of people don't know that step is there and I worry about that additionally I think that there have been group I've heard from when I worked at step

134and I saw it myself of procedural errors in fact I won to the cases through the API through appeals not procedural errors and my question is and why I'm raising this right now is if we have these kind of errors and a layperson is a son and we don't provide money for an attorney I'm afraid we're going to ones that only get appealed but - we're opening ourselves up to an incredible lawsuit for not providing due process to students I worried that when I was an attorney but when I'm still an attorney when I did step work I worry about it now this way we can provide and make sure that students rights are protected there's nothing more important than due process very simply we often focus in the legal world and elsewhere on winning

135and losing but this isn't Lombardi's world football this is like these are the children's rights and due process is the most precious out of all of them and I think that we need to fund to protect those rights that I don't feel we're doing enough all right thank you yeah I asked Nikki to be added as a co-sponsor this and I'm gonna echo and expand upon some of the things Nikki said and I think that when we look at our role as a district and how we stand in in relation to our students that you know we have certain legal obligations to protect their rights particularly through disciplinary and exclusionary processes and expulsion and through you know human errors and misunderstandings on there have been occasions we have not done everything we could do about

136that and that will happen regardless of what we do and yes as the administration pointed out there is a pro bono attorneys system but the pro bono system requires students and their families take a positive step to contacting the pro bono attorneys and many of the families that are in most need of this of this service are hesitant and or less able to do that than the families that need it less and so what I envision would be something along the lines of appointing attorneys to say that you know that too and I don't think that you know we're doing so few expulsion zs-- I don't see the expenses being large but to say you know you're going in an expulsion process just as we randomly pick hearing officers we have a pool of attorneys

137and we say this is your attorney and we give the attorney the students contact information and we give the student attorneys contact information the tuning has arrived this student has a right to refuse that attorney services but they are available and that we are being proactive to make sure students rights are protected um you know in the cases I'm particularly a relatively recent one where we did not respect the students due process rights I lost sleep over it and I think we did wrong I think we in and and and this was not the most attractive of students but due process is something that goes beyond the end of it is a fundamental part of our system and so I am happy to co-sponsor and and and will be supporting Nikki's amendment thank you okay

138the comments I want we support this because I think that we have pro bono attorneys I think it's a communication issue I think we need to do a little better job of making sure families know you know where their service and where the turns are that provide the assistance that they need I think they have communications this issue and so so I won't be supporting this particular amendment so anyone else miss muffet yeah I appreciate bringing you both bring forward the amendment I share your concerns however I feel by funding attorneys that we put ourselves in an awkward position and I feel like we can make improvements and do better by other systems and somewhere mentioned James you mentioned a few so I won't be supporting this amendment Dylan's always welcome to weigh in if

139she says I think there are three things that have been raised I would agree with Anna about just the potential for conflict and really identifying the the client when we are paying and assigning the attorney and that isn't an issue that I have fully researched just hearing how it was fleshed out tonight that is a concern I have a concern about the point in the process when assigned although we have not gone to hearing that is because of restore that's because of manifestations and so our numbers that have gone to hearing are not reflecting our number of recommendations and I have concerns about the cost if we're going from the point of recommendation versus the point of actual hearing and it's just not clear to me there and then you know I would we do

140have this vet program I think we can always improve communication about the step program there are also other attorneys and that list is provided to every student when I served as interim explosions coordinator there were at least two cases where we sat in my office I removed myself after dialing the step program and so I know we go above and beyond and many times to make those contacts but we can always improve it and I do think that that outside provider of the resources is the better way to go I know what we pay our hearing officers and an hourly rate we would not get attorneys at that rate on a regular basis and so I think the cost would exceed what is here also I guess that was for reasons that I we should

141not move forward with this at this point anyone else just weren't fighting the confrontation alright clarifying the car I would like to clarify one thing sir um my understanding would be that that the consultations if they were done on restore referrals would be very very brief and a billable hour or two per student and we're not even doing that many ones I would not see these as being appointed for manifestation and knowledge hearings so I haven't I guess that that's and so that would be the two pieces I would see discovery no just one other clarification when we're talking about attorneys rates I'm talking a public defender rate which is currently $40 an hour which is the current public defender rate all right thank you learn your advisory vote all in favor aye all opposed

142opposed motion does not carry I can tell you which ones that I have on my personal list too much what a front for leadership has been its gesture than the budget yeah so the question is do we need to talk about no okay thank you the next open item is bilingual transportation so no we don't need to talk about it so that's what drawing yes so we're never never Alfred never fish we never moved in middle school report cards not gonna be moved welcoming schools not gonna be moved to the women what's you mean - withdrawn Lilly drawed yeah I withdraw and welcome welcome in schools so let me make sure I understand withdraws it means it's go for the budget correct pathways all right this one I am going to move and so I

143will move it I move that for the 2017-18 preliminary budget we removed we decrease pathways development funding as described in the priority actions from $200,000 to one hundred and six thousand dollars and further move which was not in the original amendment that that one hundred and six thousand dollars be funded via 1025 it being an innovative activity ask for clarification from TJ furnaces can you say that again TJ which one the last thing the whole thing the tit 25 I move that we reduce pathways professional development from $200,000 to one hundred and six thousand dollars and that that one hundred and six thousand dollars be funded via tid 25 I believe it's currently out of out of either fun ten or perhaps title to I'm not I believe it's funds still reducing still reducing yes

144and offering a different funding source yes the new pieces the new is the funding source since I'm hearing this for the first time let me explain that that I think that the discussions said earlier today about funding sources for compensation in relation to the the healthcare and the amendment we're going to come too late or about the 2:25 reserve which is one that I that I will be moving also said that you know what we will be spending from 25 and this seems a proper I took thing to do with it and and and so just kind of trying to rethink the role of 225 in building this budget and admittedly some of this is you know I mean this is thoughts that have occurred to me since reviewing the budget documents received on Friday

145okay so my response continues to be strong opposition to to any reduction in this budget line for pathways professional development for teachers we have I mean it's such critical work we want this new group of pathways teachers to be set up for success and I think it would undermine this group of teachers before we even got started that said the 225 funding source might you have thoughts on that I'm worried that I mean we we have competing priorities for the 225 resources so as we pile on there without having sufficient time to analyze I don't know what we're taking away from which doesn't feel like the budget process to me so generally I'm opposed to making a last-minute change without having the opportunity for sufficient analysis yeah without knowing what the other side of the

146did spending proposal would be increase commitments or increase to total spending and kid if you're trying not to do to balance out spending over there of course of the forty years if I could just discuss a little bit about the tin in general number one is that motion that's still alive is to reduce the twenty five reservation for innovations to eliminate that and this would be and that's two hundred thousand dollars and this would be a hundred and six thousand dollars and so that would be more than balancing it the tailor also has three hundred thousand dollars reserved for instructional space renovation not defined at this time when we queried the spending for the twenty seven sixteen seventeen twitted twenty five there were a number of places that there had been initially budgeted that where

147it's anticipated that it will not be spent so I think that there's that and then finally the big piece of 225 is that the Morris um I don't think we need to always spend 225 to the max and that you know as we talked about worries about equalization aid and how it affects our property taxes its the spending that affects our property taxes and that if we you know if this actually the combination of the two amendments around 225 reduces to twenty five spending by ninety ninety four thousand dollars and that would be that would impact not our equalization aid this cycle but wouldn't but if we don't spend that and whether you put that into fund balance it would impact our equalization aid in mine in a minor way the following you because equalization

148aid is based on prior year spending to some degree and and a lot of other factors and so what I'm so I think that you know I understand the value of having this source that we can call on for one or and not ongoing spending with 225 but I don't think we always have to max out on and so even though I'm referring to to add something here more generally I think that that we can you know keep that as a part of the fight and I think you know to some extent that you balance it over cross years by moving it between categories and things like that with the projected budget this is probably not the time in place for this discussion no obviously not um so where we are here is that we

149have two ninety four thousand dollar deduction ah I move that we reduce actually I moved already in the second so that never mind up withdraw the second okay so I don't know if we need any more comments at this point your advisor please okay all in favor hi all opposed motion is not here principal leadership coaching and I am NOT going to move this one but I will encourage the administration that both in the handbook discussions and in the work on the new MOA with forward Madison to have these mentor positions done via the co-curricular and extracurricular in future years so I'm not moving it the reservation for innovation last one I moved that we eliminate to two hundred thousand dollars designated for reservation for for innovation opportunities in the twenty five budget for the

1502017-18 Madison metropolitan school district preliminary budget I think I already discussed that I think that if there are exciting innovation opportunities that the administration wants to come back to the board to fund I think that the that that means exists I think that designating it at this time is not good budgeting we moved a second in any comments I want to remind the board that you've already committed some of this funding to badge Iraq in Spring Harbor middle school for their project-based learning work so portion of this has already been committed and you voted on that through the consent list maybe last couple months ago I can't remember exactly when but I just want to remind you of that case and then and just to encourage you to we're not asking for a huge reserve

151but this 200,000 will still flow through the board via the consent process so you'll get a chance to approve or not approve those expenditures but we always know that there are opportunities that arrive and then you give an ear and too often we have to to pass on those opportunities because we don't have the kind of flexibility we need it's one-time funding we think it's a great use for trying some things out because of its unique qualities and we did encourage you very much to keep it in the budget thank you it was set up but I didn't I didn't imagine it to be something that go through like consent and that it was these Oh $25,000 to try this or 10,000 to try this that becomes like a little pot of money for for

152that I I really thought it was innovation that would that would be more meaningful and as such I think it has longer timeline so I didn't see it as necessarily having a different accountability structure and I am concerned about it just being a pool and oh now - Orie is using it for this or that I guess I'd really like it to get some board attention or approval before it just hits a consent at that point I almost feels like it's a done deal people have been working on it yeah for quite a while there's already been an RFP perhaps to do it I certainly wouldn't support it being that type of yeah and I I mean I don't know that we have any like clear vision yet for what that process would look like

153consent is the process that's available to us if the board wanted to work that through the operations workgroup we certainly would be open to that we just want a an opportunity to have some flexibility in the budget of one-time funds to do things that are innovative so that's our ask process were a bit agnostic that's the process Mike Mike if you have some root of this originally was Mary's which was you know we could not anticipate two three or four years down the road what the needs might be this was rooted in a 10% hold back roughly eight hundred thousand dollars we split it up over the years just for merely to kind of balance the spending I would and we thought this was the part of who was part of it did money was

154the innovation part the rest of it you know and what maintenance things like that so if you have concerns about how you know is to be directed fine but I've certainly hope you keep the reserve and attacked two pieces of information one is I don't think that eliminating this here eliminates the possibility of using 225 monies for innovation opportunities I think it just doesn't have a twenty thousand dollar reserve that is just as Mary said gets nickeled and dimed in some way um the second piece is the second piece is that the it looks like the I believe the spring harbor and Badger Rock RFP was for $25,000 in April and I'm just looking at the memo now and account number budget is the 2017-18 development redesign of secondary alternatives to 25 which is a

155separate item as far as the priority actions go I mean that that that's a different item for starters the party I'm just reading this now that you called attention to it but that's a different item as far as the the priority actions now maybe this was mislabeled I don't know our request remains the same okay any other comments seeing down lower your visor oh please okay all in favor aye any opposition okay most end up back here hey we're on middle school project yeah and the next one is wrong so so like that okay all right we have one amendment to be offered to the table yeah I'm sorry about that I sent it out earlier today for the language I move that we removed 2.0 FTE for personalized pathways coordinators and $172,000 1.0 FTE

156for the OMG teacher leader leader at 97 thousand dollars and 2.0 FTE for the BEP specialist at one hundred and eighty thousand dollars from the 2017 18 draft preliminary budget previously removed from the pre-approval list for a total of four hundred forty nine thousand dollars these may be reconsidered after we receive confirmation on the per pupil increase included in the annual education budget from the state second removing the second comments I assume that this is maybe misunderstanding or not a lack of clarity when we talked about removing these from the priority action list whether they will be permanently removed or not so so I guess your amendment then would allow these to be brought back at a later date if necessary so comments I just want to make sure that the board knows that when

157you voted back in May wouldn't we do this every year you voted on what we would move for it as an early approval but it wasn't an amendment process where you were voting on making cuts from the budget proposal so just want to make sure we're clear unprocess and I certainly apologize if there was any confusion about that part of our annual process and you know we we haven't changed our minds about the need for what we've built into the budget with priority actions I fully respect the request of the bore Anna's amendment and what the board decides but we do feel strongly that the pathways positions which are not full-time FTE they are time from staff meant to support the academic and career planning process support for students in their experiential learning opportunities so

158we'll be challenged to to get the work done plan for next year we included the additional two and I realize you voted in favor of an earlier approval for one but those two positions for our office of multilingual and global education because we severely cut that office several years ago and have struggled to provide the high quality services our school to execute on the eol plan so again we're we're not proposing it as a nice-to-have but I think we believe it's I have to have and last but not least we included a couple of positions specifically committed to the secondary level implementation of the beauty of your education plan again we cut back on support from this office a couple of years ago we've invested heavily in school-based positions but the central office team less

159so serve reminder of why again we'll respect what the board decides to do on this issue and appreciate being able to potentially circle back to it once we know that the budget numbers later on but but still want to advocate for the importance of these roles any other comments okay lawyer I just want to say that there is you know that there was some confusion and there was a fusion with folding these back in the budget is completely reasonable thing to do not folding them up back in the budget would've been a reasonable choice - and an amendment to pull them back out again is reasonable I mean I think that it's all part you know that there were you had to do something with them and what she did was a reasonable choice and

160then so no objections on that at all so just from my point of view just because I know that Mike and is private backwards I want to really make that clear that I wasn't like to propose an amendment to withdraw the two pathways position from Europe there's a motion for for two minutes we have Secretariat so we have a motion on floor to amend the motion in the most nice pathways originated five there are five 1.0 FTE for OMG teacher leader and 2.0 afternoon for BEP specialists to Athena's suggestion for the two pathways back in so it's been moved to the second it is that correct can we get a second yes okay any other comments on the amendment the amendment to the amendment and I guess this good is directed at Dean and Kate

161is that this started out is five you'd be restoring it to five how would you get by how would you feel about your sewing it to four or you want you want to go all five that's five seconds okay Laurie advisor go please okay all in favor I'm gonna vote to keep pathways moving forward so we have four votes all opposed this is Reid motion carries okay back to the original motion so amended yeah so now you're gonna just to remove the 1.00 MGE leader and the 2.0 special do you have any other comments on Anna's motion as amended just one clarification with the the point of postponing the funding would be to wait until the state budget comes in yes there are some unknowns about the budget and you know Mike to comment on

162it but there's one knows about the budget and so and the longer we wait more known the budget becomes so the poem postponement gives us time to find out more information about this permanency of the budget so yes okay James I'm so sorry No yeah the postponements just would make it if you were to move forward with filling these positions just makes it increasingly hard to fill it with people and certainly the people who already work in our schools because we don't want to pull people from positions so close to the beginning of the school year or after the start of the school year which this could be for all we know all right thank you okay oh yeah buyers repo okay all in favor up in opposition okay so this kid carry six one

163okay any other further motions to be no any further motions Nikki did you want to make a motion about your sis no I just asked if they're afraid of the motion no he was helping me out and I appreciate you I understand we all try to help each other out but I had to question those on the floor so point of order please so that concludes superintendents and a very important notion if I can finish our move at this point that the board approved the preliminary tax larry's by fun with the sale every approval before we move on this I think is their adjustment to be made here with this levy now no and first we still have to vote on this motion as so this motion is still pending it's just been amended by

164the three approved amendments so we're still in the first motion yes so we just need to finish voting on that as amended it's been moved so so that's always on the floor and then second and also okay Laurie Advisory both you know the first post which was that we adopted 2017-18 everybody yes yes all in favor aye opposition okay motion carries 7-0 okay now I move that the board approve now do we have any adjustments to be made to this motion numbers so the numbers feel do we have as to the levy itself at this point I think there's one item to be clarified and it has to do with the board amendment that was approved around the unallocated and the class size unallocated issue that is an if-then situation right so I think one

165way to approach is that this motion stands and would have to be reopened if you know depending on where the state budget turns out to be that any budget is what's your will anyway which we will anyway but that would mean that you know that the levy would be yet my recommendation would be at this this motion could and should stand for now with the idea that we would be coming back okay okay then I'll move okay thank you I move that the board approve the preliminary tax levied by fund was the Santa every approvals being for the purpose of enabling short-term borrowing by the district under 2017-18 fiscal year to subject to modification by the board prior to November 1st 2017 in conjunction with certifying the final levy amounts based on van current status

166of the 2017-18 school district budget considering such alterations and meant amendments as may be made prior to levy certification fund 10 general fund 270 million 23 thousand and 93 fund 38 4 million one hundred seventy seven thousand five hundred and sixteen from 39 eight million three hundred thousand eight hundred 25 front 41 four million four hundred thousand 180 11 million five hundred ninety four thousand one hundred fifty four to four tax levy of 298 million Florida nine to five thousand and five hundred and eighty-eight second it's been moving a second lawyer you abide to vote please abstain all in favor aye any opposition motion carries 7-0 I believe that now concludes the tennis announcements area so we will move on to the consent agenda and I'll move that the Board of Education adopted approve all

167the motion set forth in Section C of the electronic agenda prepared for the June 26 2017 regular school board meeting exactly said most of our written by voting the furniture Leon this motion of water expresses his or her affirmative vote on each of the most is consolidated hereby subject to any Express separation have been made any member of the school board thank you guys thank you money pick Ben Moses right in it in separation separate six point one six purchase of COAG at anyone else okay seeing none fatigue and I hear so vizor evil please Loree abstain all in favor aye position in a position okay motion carries 7 0 TJ six point one six uh you know I think with it this is actually kind of a tradition that I always pull Co get

168off and vote against it I think that a recent discussion of the advanced learner plan I think that any review of the data in the disparities within the advanced learner plan I think the recent email from Karen what school she's from all points to the tools we are using to identifying gifted learners are culturally and perhaps racially biased and also linguistically biased in ways that I don't think we want them to be and I don't think they need to be Co get is one of the primary tools in the spirit of Lauren Michael who annually testified to uh to the bias against Kogut and warned us against using us as I said at the instruction workgroup I urge that we use nonverbal testing particularly with our younger students but also with older students to identify

169and therefore I will be voting against the Coquette one on this and then could we please take a 5-bit bathroom break please but the first thing I will also be voting against this the individual interested in autism research and working with autistic individuals language is not the best way always to just diagnose both advanced learners there are many people who are non-verbal who are also academically advanced that that basis I'm voting against it super tip um I I just wanna quickly say that Ethan has been working hard at scoping out what package of assessments and tools as you know we should be using in the future that will be coming to the board in the fall I think Ethan and I know those because we talked about it would would not support not approving the

170Kogan at this point without having a clear plan for screening students in the future so I just want to make sure to say that on his behalf yeah you know this is a conversation we've had for a couple of years actually you know we've always had some problems with coquettes and disagreement and but one of the big problems is we don't have anything to replace it with and so we need to come up with an alternative because we they have this discussion every year and so so it's one of the things that's really so all right okay I mean that take learn your values revote please yes okay all in favor aye all opposed oh let us go back put the motion on the floor yet that's right that's right we gotta yeah we had

171it backwards sorry okay I move that the Board of Education approved the purchase of the Taunton mifflin harcourt in the mouth of forty nine thousand two hundred ninety four dollars and seventy cents for the coal gas screener assessment for the 2017-18 academic year with front and from the 2017-18 officer assessment administration local budget provided a vote please yes all in favor aye all opposed the Coquette you uh well okay we have income let's start start over okay what's my shorthand all - let's practice if this is okay all in favor of show hands please 1 2 3 4 5 okay opposition okay motion passes 5 - okay we should for 5 minute break sir and that concludes include items for this evening and will take up please keep it to five minutes because there will

172be going on a five minutes you we have to vote on each year news ratification is that correct yes so I'm gonna move that the Board of Education ratify the massive teachers in collective bargaining agreement so base lady do I have first 2017 to June 30 2018 second we'll move the second any questions or comments ques Laurie for it magically yes all in favor aye in that position and Christmas reduced so motion carries 601 okay I moved like the Board of Education master teachers educational assistants you're an intellect at bargain agreement for the base wage increase what a period of July 1st 2017 through June 30 2018 ii removed a second in the comments I'm recusing Laurie Vidal oh hi oh hi the opposition what's in here 601 move that the Board of Education ratified

173at Madison team to fake school security assistance unit collectors borrowing a beautiful bass way he greets look through our first one 17 June 30 2018 second question comments vital oh hi favorite position most accurate 700 moved that the Board of Education ratified I'm a Cintiq to think supportive education employee unit collective bargaining agreement for base wage increase for the period of July 1st 2017 through June 30 2018 second movement second all right course the comments hi oh favorite I ran a position well secured 7-0 I move that the Board of Education ratify the master teachers eat substitute teacher June collective bargaining agreement for base wage nutritional accretive July 1st 2017 through June 30 2018 SEC I kept the move in a second question comments lawyer by the way I owe the favor I carry seven

174zero I move that the Board of Education ratify the building and construction tape trades council of south central Wisconsin collective bargaining agreement for the base weight increase would appear to do that first 2017 through June 30 2018 second it moved and second questions or comments seeing none graduate favorite I a position one secure seven zero okay that concludes the business section and we move on to items that proceed to work groups first one is direction workgroup mr. Berg on June 5th we discussed updates on the advanced learner plan and met our new director of advanced learning this will be ongoing work with target for a September October approval of a new on advanced learner plan as far as our next meeting we will not be having a July meeting we are scheduled for August 7th

175at this time there are no items agenda for that meeting thank you okay June 12th we had reviewed the proposed parliamentary budget review which we spent some time on tonight no need to go over the details of that along with the affirmative action plan there was quite a bit aboard input on that action plan and that will come back to us with edits sometime in the near future yeah it actually have already come back to you Smith yeah you can vote on it tonight if you're comfortable with that is our next this is an action item is it not yes then it is an action item and it is recommended that the Board of Education approved the affirmative action plan for the period of July 1 2017 through June 30th 2022 as set forth in

176the materials prepared for the June 26 2017 regular meeting with several versions to take effect on July 1 2017 our friend sent us an email today with some nice comments and one struck me eyes who does this position report to Aaron Cheston who is our a AEO title 9 officer is in the legal services office who is just in here Erik Casten who presented during operation right look I I'm gonna have difficult supporting affirmative action plan we use the term community today I'll use it but I'll use it loosely but the community that I know does not support the plan the problem is the broad categories they the broad categories if you have six categories of the most populous positions in the district it's be good to be able to talk about who the the

177different demographics in those particular areas and and so the category of women for example category of minorities we're the front of action plans it's supposed to be the basis for our HR our policies and how we move forward in HR I have just have difficulty understand and how we do that for example we talked about hiring more teachers of color than with you know we want to break down with you and talk about how I mean african-american teachers male or female we have but I don't see how we can even get to that conversation or develop a policy in a chair with when we talk about teachers of color so you have to explain I mean I the categories are way too broad and we need to be able to speak specifically I think about

178the subgroups in those categories and I'm gonna I mean I'm gonna call to discuss that but the general continues to be that those are the categories as defined by the federal regulations and are used by the federal regulations as are the categories used across affirmative action plans and we've got to remember what the role of the affirmative action plan is versus a role of our HR goals as well as our recruiting plan but isn't the role of the front what is the road there's the role too and I know it's been outside assembly and I can't support it and I've worked in you know I should have brought some examples I don't want to sit here and talk about further action plans either but every affirmative action plan I've seen for example for the Department

179of Agriculture one that I worked on for 20 years we have topless missions also on each of those population positions we break down our categories by male-female Latino every group that's designated and the federal government I understand the federal point about 43 years so when I go there but so I understand that the whole idea of of these different categories and I understand that certain things are law but the law does not prevent us from adding subgroups the law does not say you do not have to you you should not add subgroups what I'm saying is that if the community the community and Madison's been asking for teachers of color they've been asking for african-american teachers so it seems to me that I need to be to go to community and talk about what our

180strategy is and that should be the first line of that strategy should be our firm ative action plan that's just my viewpoint on it and and so then for me then HR can develop their strategy off of that so that's can I make a suggestion because I don't think we need to have a long conversation about this tonight but I want to yeah you certainly can but let me just put out there what I suggest to James earlier today this is your policy right there we're not this isn't driven by a federal mandate or we're the board as a policy on affirmative action plans and if you aren't feeling comfortable voting on this tonight Dylan can describe what we have to would have to do exactly but we certainly could delay to give ourselves more

181time to discuss and work on it and yeah so what you're saying if I just have like other things that we don't vote on tonight wait a month of this nothing in the world Wow our current one expires yeah you'd have to extend all we could continue to extend that one discussion to the extent because we do it we have an affirmative action plan because we want to have one and we have a policy and I think that was Jen's point we're not mandated to have one and therefore it should be a plan that serves two purposes and if we've missed that mark we can continue to work on that we would withdraw the current pending motion and just extend what the understanding that would bring back so that's just my position of reservoir motion

182that doesn't mean we don't appreciate your work Eric thank you very much for what you've done to bring it this far I move that we extend the coverage of our current affirmative action plan by is three months okay or do you want six Jen and I were briefly talking about it the HR report comes in the fall so I think it makes sense to do December knowing that we will try to till January first how's that till January first pending it and just to echo James is that I did I respect that you know this this work does have to begin using the federal categories and the federal things doesn't have to end there by very you give those include all right all right other reports to the board city of Madison Education Committee no

183meeting held we do not have quorum so there's no report our next meeting will be held on July 12 2017 thank you we looked at the health survey which was surprisingly positive and we worked on our year-end video all right thank you reports from the medians Hill native I'm not sure what this is personalized pathways yeah oh where are we okay Anna sure we held it I see yep our meeting was held on Wednesday June 21st 2017 we continued our discussion and discussion and feedback around exploring diverse perspectives this time we heard from individuals that were supportive of educational resource officers in our schools we discussed summer meetings and also volunteer planners for the committee our next meeting will be held on Wednesday July 19th 2017 at 5:00 p.m. so we have to do the

184arrow at Hawk chairperson so I'll move that the Board of Education approved changing the chairperson of the education resource officer ad-hoc committee from animal for the de minimis it's been moved in second question comments Laurie of what book all in favor aye opposition motion care 7-0 all right so you know government agreements so where adds the Verona Area School District and the militant crossplane there is good this we have established a 4k program to serve eight of the students and whereas the Verona and milk across plank area school districts recognized potential educational benefits right and family options for 4k or four-year-old programs as authorized by the Department of Public Instruction to meet the needs of students eligible to participate in 4k program so therefore I hereby resolve the pursuant to section 66 point old 301

185of the West Council statues the school boards the middle and cross playing school district Verona Area School District agreed to establish and maintain on a cropped of basic 4k programs are set forth in agreement prepared for the June 26 17 regular meeting second been moved and second question comments vote all in favor aye position secure 7-0 I move that the Board of Education extended time line for the approval of business Montessori Academy Charter School contract to no later than July 31st 2017 quick explanation please the moon a sec a quick explanation of the extension so everyone um our administrative team needs a little more time okay thank you removes a second any question comments other than that Laurie divided to vote on a favored position most interior 7-0 revisions to board policy 3540 graduation requirements

186I move that the board of education through awarding one English credit per class to students who successively complete the following sheltered English courses for the purpose of meeting the graduation requirement set forth in Section two eights of three for policy 3540 English fundamentals entering the English advanced English English for academic success second removed in a second any question comments lorry out of favor hi in that position question carrier 7-0 I'll move that the Board of Education for students in the 20 17 18 19 20 graduation cohorts except the completion of the following shelter courses in lieu of English 102 for the purpose of satisfying the graduation cry to set forth in Section 283 of positive 3540 English fundamentals intermediate English advanced English English for academic success second we move the second any questions coming Laurie

187all in favor aye evolution motion carries 7-0 I'll move that the Board of Education approved the addition of a new section to board policy 3540 graduation requirements distribution of credit requirements may be waived for student in accordance with the individually developed differentiated education plan IEP second the move the second question comments Laurie advisable hi on favor hi in any opposition motion carries seven zero the regular meeting dates for 2017-18 school year later so I'll move that the Board of Education approved the following Monday's were holding a regular board meeting at 6:00 p.m. over the 27:18 school year 2017 where are we in 27 July 31st August 28th September 25th October 3rd of November 27 December 18 28 een January 29th February 26 March 19 April 30 from 8:30 21st June 2015 second the moving section

188question comments Laurie viable motion carries 7-0 I'll move that the Board of Education approved the follow date for summer 2017 meetings July 10th special meeting or the seventh special meeting of the fourteen special meeting and operations workgroup second question comments lower your visor vote all in favor hi I'm in a position which can cure seven zeros and the older new business we brought for the board tonight sure about that okay then I'm mobile Jeremy you