001if you are going to restrict attendance at our meetings by not granting medical and or religious exemptions then it is incumbent upon you as a board to figure out how to be inclusive in fact the standard in education for those with special considerations is these perspective environments watching on youtube is actually the most restrictive environment because it's a one-way feed sit behind a gavel you do not read letters and you want to borrow me from this public place i'm gathering and as you do so 30 seconds and you look like red coats and speaking not only for me the metaphorical t is about to become others are afraid to be here and speak because of the bullying techniques of both some in this community and because of this administration so i am here though i
002would rather be home watching monday night football i'm here to speak for them your time is up mr rasmussen and my notes say smile breathe and say thank you tracy hannah is next on the list good evening my name is tracy hanna as you all know and i have a son who's in seventh grade i would like this board to review in action what is in their power to remove the mandate that requires the wisconsin dpi behavioral risk survey to be given at the middle school level as part of our second step curriculum as i feel the questions are inappropriate to ask our young children as we try to keep our children innocent more and more is being presented to them that goes against this effort i was grateful that i read the email and
003was permitted to opt my child out of the survey as though some of the questions were mundane some in my opinion have no basis to be asked in school as parents we were advised that this was an anonymous survey which i find hard to believe when the survey is taken on a school issued ipad a truly anonymous survey would have been given via pen and paper as we all know anything digital can be traced who in this room young and old the public or the board would feel comfortable answering the below in front of the entire administration during the past 30 days on how many days did you receive send or share nude photos or other sexual images have you ever had sexual intercourse during the past 12 months did you ever seriously think about
004killing yourself during the past 12 months did you ever make a plan about how you would kill yourself these are 12 and 13 year old children and my opinion should not be faced with questions like this in a school setting the dpi website even highlights that the survey covers sensitive topics it would concern me that a child with instability who may not have thought about harming themselves may now consider it has been put into their mind what value does this add to our students especially is as stated it is anonymous i personally as a parent went through the questions with my child to show why i was opting him out i hope all parents were educated on this survey as well before allowing their children to take it i still wonder what the reason is
005that the survey was given is it for metrics is it given to help a student who may be at risk but it's anonymous we can't have that both ways i don't think a sensitive survey should be given for metrics only if the school has a concern about a child i think it would be best course of action to talk to them or look at them you can tell a lot more from a child's face their eyes their behavior or their smile than you will ever see on a survey especially one that makes them uncomfortable thank you next on the list is dan dufour [Music] hello i'm dan deformer resident of janesville and i live within the milton school district i'm very interested in tonight's scheduled presentation on the second step curriculum which according to their
006website is a holistic approach to building supportive communities for every child through social emotional learning knowing of this presentation i went to the secondstep.org website is this the same second step which will be discussed tonight is the question i hope not because i read very concerning content the content included topics which have been widely identified as highly controversial by many parents and citizens across the united states here's what i here's the little of what i've discovered by spending less than 30 minutes on this website first the second step curriculum is supported and guided by some of the most left-leaning non-profit organizations in the country today many of whom have a distinct presence in the second step website itself and provide reference material for adults and teachers what i first learned was our current systems perpetuate
007inequity by design it goes on to say that these inequity systems were not created by accident and they will not be undone by chance they clearly state they want to transform the education system why does it need to be transformed perhaps we'll hear that tonight due to the time constraints here here are just a few brief examples of the controversial topics i mentioned earlier for example the group learning for justice one of these nonprofits provides training materials on the following facilitating critical conversations with students where you will learn how to communicate about such topics as white privilege police violence economic inequality and mass incarcerate incarceration here are a couple other lessons they offer let's talk discussing whiteness or how about this what about critical race theory what about critical race theory is and what does
008it mean to teachers also on the website i listened to a youtube video entitled cassell cares casella is one of these non-profits it's entitled sel as a lever to equit for equity and social justice it was presented by the president and ceo of casal in this video ongoing systemic rate in in the highlighted video ongoing systemic racism and violence against the black community we discuss equity and racial justice through the lens of sel that's social emotional learning in conclusion i will listen very closely to the second step presentation to see if these controversial beliefs and lessons will be taught to our children and why in the event these topics are not discussed tonight i would like to ask the three school board members on the curriculum committee why not perhaps there's a good explanation i
009just can't think of lastly to the parents and citizens of the milton school district i highly recommend you do your own research on this controversial curriculum by going out to the secondstep.org website and find out for yourselves what they're really planning to teach your children thank you okay moving on to item number two we have some ninth grade students from the high school here to talk to us about the avid program so we will we welcome you thank you for giving up your time to be here to give us some information about this program we appreciate that sure thanks so i had to talk to several of you uh probably about a month or two ago uh and we talked about doing some some program highlights a couple years ago we came with you all
010right or came to you with uh this new program called abbott and we were really excited to bring abbott to our school district and we've had some new faces now on the board so we thought you know what this would be a good time to bring it an update to you or but instead listen to me we thought we would do some more leaders here to tell you all about what it looks like in the classroom and uh all the great things that they're doing so first off i'm gonna introduce miss shawna who is our avid elective teacher at the high school all right good night everybody you're so excited to be here i'm glad that we got invited to come and this is my first year as an avid elective teacher um usually i
011have been teaching english and spanish at the high school but i have been trained in avid for the past couple years and so this is my first year really getting a whole elective class for myself we have 23 students who are in the program right now and three of them are going to be here with us tonight telling you a little bit about what are some of the strategies we use in the classroom things like that to really maximize learning [Music] um writing writing is used for organization of thought to reflecting learning and communication staying attentive and taking notes during the lessons allows students to review any needed information at a later date for me i take a lot of notes in my biology and biomedical courses citing and supporting many points allows students to
012deepen understanding while communicating clearly and confidently in avid in the seventh course this year we did a time format formative expository essay and i know this will benefit me in my late later english courses this year inquiry is asking big questions or asking questions about things that confuse you inquiry is often used in core classes such as english language arts algebra science and social studies these classes often require us to use costa's level of thinking there are three different levels gathering processing and applying application is the highest level of questioning that can only be found off the page it relies on your individual experiences connections and thought processes [Music] collaboration is the sharing of ideas information and opinions we all keep on and we all keep positive group interactions everyone works together putting in the
013same amount of effort because teamwork is a shared responsibility you listen to others attentively and work to achieve a common goal for example in my biomedical class everyone has to work together to test and get results in avid nine we also pitched and completed a community service project trash and collection to melt them [Music] okay the oh of wicker is organization what is organization it's more than just staying organized in your class and having everything where it belongs um not only do you have to manage your materials but you'll also plan and prioritize goal setting is a big part we recently did some things with goal settings um strategy and taking responsibility is another thing that ties into organization and you develop and use this use a process for avid our process is our binder
014and our notes we have special ones that we try out every once in a while like recently in class we tried out the sketch noting which is easier for people who are more visual where you draw pictures instead of actually like write notes we also another avid requirement and thing that i think everyone really needs is a planner it's paper planner is usually best um it can be you it can be personal and school related to time to both and you have to have organized goals and smart goals or short mid and long term goals we we recently our timed essay like riley mentioned was um our short term our long term and our midterm goals and we basically just picked a few and we summarized them um organization is also a lot of self-reflection
015planning on what you can do better and just whatever you can do better on and stuff we have summatives of that just to reflect and see how well you think you're doing um reading is the r of wicker and what is avid's take on reading avid really wants you when you're reading to be interactive with the text really like think about it mark it up highlight it circle things it also builds on vocabulary summarizing and rhetorical thinking no taking graphic organizers we also do that while reading and another big thing is after you take notes or read a paragraph or an article of anything you summarize it basically group all that information together at mhs this year we've been reading of mice and men in english and in my english class we've done some reading
016in the avid nine course to prepare for socratic seminars so credit seminars is not your normal like speech circle um it's usually two circles but on friday i believe we did on where it was three you have the main group of kids who are talking and the people behind them are passing them notes so if you want to add something you pass them a sticky note they can speech it and whatever um and then the last circle is um like basically grading the speaker so you mark up how many times they reference the text and stuff like that [Music] all right so as far as the value of avid i have a few questions for you friends you ready yeah all right can you tell me a little bit how how you feel like avid
017has made the transition to high school better or easier for you it's kind of like a good way to wake up in the morning i guess instead of just like going straight to like one of your core classes you're just going to avid and you're just you're getting your thought process ready for the day and then you're going into school so it's more of like an easier transition from going straight to classes yeah they're with me starting at 7 35 in the morning so it's awful early for teenagers anything else transitioning to the high school um i feel like people that are new to avid this year it's really helped them like because high school like in middle school all the teachers say they're not going to hold your hand which is true and i
018think avid is kind of like a wake-up call and if you do need that extra help it is there for them yeah yeah how do you believe you are preparing yourself for what comes after high school organization that's been huge for you yes okay i don't i have organized chaos and so avid has like helped me change that to more of like a medium of organized chaos to actual organization you're organized neutral now yes so it's gonna like it it's gonna help me in college when i have to like take organized notes because i'm not really good at that so let's give you all ready for that riley how about you what about for what after comes um planning ahead so you know like you're not running behind or being late you're always prepared and
019just ready awesome how are you becoming the best citizen that you can be um well this year uh the picture on the board the third one the last one on the bottom there's actually a few of our classmates pitching like community service ideas which i guess kind of ties into the next question but we are doing things around our community like for instance we picked up trash and later in the um school year we were planning on doing like a collaboration with the humane society because they're looking for people to like adopt pets like really badly so it's just preparing you and giving you like help with your community because lots of jobs um one of our guest speakers who we've had this year already has mentioned that um he's like the owner i guess
020of a company and one of the things he looks for when he's hiring is having to be involved with your community okay that's awesome thank you all right so i know you guys were just thinking all of us who've been i have the teachers of course this is my first year as an avid but we also had miss took who was with you for both years um and then of course ms harvard also started with seventh grade last year so you didn't get to have her as a teacher but you know that she's been serving the program which is awesome um and then i know y'all are willing to take questions so anyone at all for the girls that have been in there for the three years or whatever do you feel like your um
021academic progress has been better than maybe it would have been or i feel like you guys have gained a lot of confidence you know what um it's your first year but uh academically how is it hands-free sorry um it's just overall it's been helping me be more prepared more organized and then i can get like [Music] um just better manage my classes um for me i in sixth grade when they came to us with avid i was kind of unsure about like what it was but i think evidence really helped me because i was never a note taker i absolutely despised taking notes but now i realize that like they helped me and stuff so yeah i feel like i've been doing better in school what is the criteria for choosing students to be a
022part of this program oh that is such a good question it's kind of complicated students actually apply to be part of the program and so then we do wind up actually starting in the middle school to go through some of those things do you want to answer that question a little bit better that might be easier so there's the application process because part of avid is the individual determination part so uh students need to have that internal motivation to want to go to that next level um so there's several different criteria points it's a little bit different from district to district what we're looking for is kids that uh might be a first generation college student and again that that might be a little more prevalent in a highly urban setting or a highly rural
023center versus where we are right now uh but that's that's one of the things uh often they are students that are historically underrepresented in college um they might be more in the academic middle or a kid that as we're talking with teachers i said boy this is a this is a good student but with just that tad bit of support or skills would be just college bound so those are the kind of students that we that we target for ramen how many students do you choose every year i believe that we can have up to 25 is that what we yeah the goal the goal is an average class size so it would be 25 um and so we we we're gonna have that cohort every single year and so this group will will grow
024up all the way up to seniors so within a couple years we will have an avid elective group in every grade level from 7th grade through 12th grade um i i will say beyond just our avid cohort of students that so 25 at each grade level um both the middle school and the high school if you walked into any classroom right now you would see evidence of avid all over you would see it on the walls you would see it on the desk it is part of their their school improvement plans so we kind of look at it for two two different ways we we want avid for this cohort of students to help them be college ready help them move on uh but we also want it for all of our students to teach
025them these these college readiness skills and the students the elective just are going to get it in a in a bigger dose i'm just going to ask one more thing is it a highly competitive application process or do you or is it more like teacher recommendation and then the student applies it's [Music] sometimes the students are nudged a little bit on on on application so we will reach out to the students about hey you know we think he might be a good avid student and we'll present to a wide variety of students and then from there they have the choice of whether they want to apply or not uh so yes we end up turning kids away uh and we maintain a a list then that if if a student would decide hey it's down
026the line they don't want to continue on with avid that that we would have some students that we know that might be a good fit to come into the program very good thank you all right thank you so much so ryan just a quick question do once the students are in from one grade level do they automatically progress to the next grade level and stay in avid uh they have the choice every year um and also they have to maintain certain standards every year as well so a student might go on academic probation or on a contract if they're not meeting the grades or if their behaviors are not of that of an evid student thanks any other questions thank you so much for your time appreciate it moving on to our our next presentation
027um we'll invite susan jen and john lyon to the podium for the presentation on second step thank you for giving us this opportunity to talk about second step uh jen and john and actually tara sirwinsky will answer questions after a brief overview by me and then we have a 10-minute video to share with you okay second step is our universal curriculum for social and emotional learning uh second step has been in the district longer than 10 years i don't know exactly when it started but i know when i came to the district we were using it what we've done over those years is we we've expanded it the the administrators student services as well as gen ed have worked together to create it as the best predictable environment within the school by using same the
028same type of language second step addresses skills that fall into a number of categories including self-awareness relationship skills responsible decision making and self-management units include things like problem-solving strategies goal setting and recognizing bullying second step is as much about staff learning how to be consistent with their language is it is about teaching students strategies to pick for problem solving so they can pick the strategy that best fits the situation uh we have a 10-minute video that was created by east learners north side learners and the middle school learners and when we finish our three administration administrators are here to answer any questions that you might have resources for second step have been shared by either the administrators in their newsletter um grade levels or um individual teachers sharing with their parents so that they know
029what's going on all right thank you [Music] in august of last year i discovered that i would be able to be covered teacher if i may work with counselors i was fortunate enough to have mrs martin co-teach second second second start blessings give her these things to our students on what are feelings what do they feel like how do you deal with those releases of puppets role playing dancing singing [Music] children practice in a variety of ways that are incredibly engaging and developmentally appropriate they practice with songs we've heard lots of games and second step there's stories the most impressive part of the sentence program the the strategies that they've learned through sentence stuff for instance that they have difficulties with another student asking if they could go and talk to each other to work
030things out how impressive was it my time spent in the classrooms going through the critical second step i not only became very familiar with the four units [Music] and how do i control my emotions when they start to get too big and the curriculum wraps up with problem solving it's not just the units that are well thought out but the lessons within are so developmentally appropriate and things that sometimes we don't think the explicit teaching during the day for example in kindergarten there's an entire lesson on waiting patiently how often are our computer partners expect to stop the great patient it's important that they're taught in the classrooms because that's where they get reinforced and that's where they get practice there's a powerful commitment program such as second step it provides common understanding and expectations
031and common terminology throughout our entire building which also makes our building an amazing place see when you partner explicit instruction with a universal curriculum that's research based then you could take that shared learning and spread it across the building we train everybody in the building romney's common language and around common strategies then we cultivate an environment where students understand what the expectations are and then they have strategy to be able to meet them and guess what we just find every state in our building to be ready [Music] is [Music] listening [Music] um they're like their bodies showing you what they are doing and what they're saying [Music] their face and their body [Music] oh [Music] number [Music] i would say like help to them because [Music] for all of us [Music] this curriculum has in
032helping students develop a common language around academic skills for learning managing their emotions developing kindness as well as problem solving [Music] um looking at setbacks and challenges and mistakes that i choose for learning and growth from kindergartners through more centers have been really neat to see additionally the common language that it gives us to be able to problem-solve and navigate challenges of students is exceptionally helpful on solving your concepts and problems so one example that i highlight is the step process where students are taught to state the problem without blame in a conflict to think of solutions um they're both safe and respectful to explore the consequences of those as well as picking the best solution so really has had a positive impact not only on primary students [Music] by discussing social and emotional needs
033and strategies early on i believe it can equip students with those resources that they can access whenever they need it and this awareness can become natural so they have these strategies and are able to help in a productive [Music] middle school we are in our second year of using the second step curriculum to meet our students funding fees or sclps one of our eighth grade teachers shared some feedback from the experience using second step allows for great conversations in my classroom i use the lessons to help guide further discussion and personalize the lessons learned to reflect a part of my own life experience second text provides the framework for constructed seo in the classroom without it as a guide i would not really know what to be doing specifically with my teaching to students in
034the area of social emotional learning second step also provides background information on what each of these things are as well as examples to guide them through decision-making processes and personalize reflection that is geared toward the lives of the students is the personal connection that kids really learn from applying these concepts to the lives that they live rather than just hearing other people's lives thank you something similar to myself is that it's better to be kinder strength than everyone and hurt people and including people is what they've ever paid to do and make them feel left out some skills are used have been helping others related some skills i've learned have been that many kinds of people a long way and that you never know what someone has going on you should never judge me i
035think second step is important because people can find ways to help others when they need it is also important because some kids might not know how to stop eating people or how to not judge other [Music] that there is people a trusted adult therapy through these lessons i've learned that i am capable of great things and then in order to do that and use calm down and refocus on the task i feel that middle school is a difficult time for many kids we are all experiencing changes and are completed by situations that challenge us second step gives us the chance to refocus and learn useful skills that we can use in our everyday lives so [Music] do you have questions for any of the principals [Music] yeah um so i had a conversation with mrs
036ruggles earlier today and i just was wondering if i could get your take on how are the lessons chosen are they are they set are they yeah so the way that the new digital materials were because there's the four big units that were highlighted in the video and each one of those units has five digital lessons that go with it okay so it's fairly prescribed and easy to use for teachers to guide those conversations with their students okay um so is there any room for teachers to add any lessons that they wish or like are we set on those topics and just those lessons that are within that the universal curriculum are those lessons that john just spoke about um but there are examples like in the video you know pure conflict let's say there's
037a bunch of problems happening outside in second grade just to pick a grade um we might dive a little deeper into problem solving conflict resolution revisit some of those things uh but just the focus would be about that language from the universal curriculum okay yeah sure 30 to 40 minutes continuously but teachers are going to seize upon that teachable moment throughout the week was describing there's a problem at recess maybe we can revisit this as a class sure those kind of natural opportunities present themselves um and i guess my last question do do we use so according to the website there are resources that um that could be used to teach about things like racial justice white privilege anti-racism is that what we use second steps for or is it primarily just for behavior issues
038you know to mitigate those within the classroom i think really it's about teaching life skills and it's been called a lot of different things over the years right but seo social emotional learning and life skills are really one of the same so teaching like empathy and perspective taking is certainly part of the scope and sequence of second step your question specifically i have not seen at north center media school same cool thank you thanks guys i was wondering if you could um just talked about how second step meshes with what guidance counselors do at the at the lower levels um does it does it coincide with that does it match with that and then just also second step is taught by classroom teachers correct yep and i am going to let jen take this because
039she'll give a lot more detail but when i when i first started in the district our guidance we call them school counselors now spent a lot more time in the classroom doing the teaching but what the students were starting to do is saying oh when the counselor's here i have to behave a certain way when the teacher is here i behave a different way it's not much like probably kids at home versus school when mom and dad are there i behave a certain way and when i'm at school i try on a few different behaviors so we we moved to have second step implemented by gen ed teachers which was what it was designed for because if the teacher teaches how to be a good friend and then during math class somebody isn't being a
040good friend the teacher can intervene right away and talk about what did we learn about being a good friend um instead of having to call the counselor down to try to have the conversation about a good friend that then allows the counselors to do to assist teachers with some of the coaching when they're when they're doing some problem solving but they also get an opportunity to to do some tier two so you have four kids in a classroom that are really struggling with grasping the concepts that counselor can now spend some time in reteaching in a small group and reinforcing those skills but i bet jen has something to add what she said [Music] no the only other thing that i would add to that is the benefit of having that school counselor they have
041a deep understanding of that second step universal curriculum so that when they do that tier two type example that susan had given they are familiar with that vocabulary and what the students have learned from the universal to then re-emphasize that um you know tier two [Music] thank you they're a good check for each other because we know the development developmental milestones of a four-year-old or a five-year-old change throughout that year and so those teachers can check each other the counselor and the teacher can check each other to make sure we're not expecting too much from somebody at a certain age and that we push them hard enough because we want them to be capable so i as a teacher in my last years of teaching had we had just started implementing second step in seventh
042grade in eighth grade and sixth grade at our school um and our guidance counselor can't get to all the kids in the middle school so it was easier for us to we did it once a week 30 minutes and i noticed that in the five lessons of each unit there was a lot of repetition so there was a few reminders of what was going on you know stress relationships examples of what was going on within the classroom or maybe within the school um different things like that and then when they went to the guidance counselor with issues they followed through with the rest of it because they just couldn't come into our classrooms anymore and um there's a lot of rope sitting scenarios and it's got the kids to really talk in my room um
043sometimes too much you know because everybody wanted to talk and participate in it and they've got kids who normally wouldn't speak up maybe to share with the partner or share with the group and then come back as a whole group and it went really fast in those 30 minutes so sometimes we could have used more time but we only had it once a week but it seemed to be working just like opening up the dialogue with kids [Music] thanks shelley any other questions for the team thanks very much great video thank you for your time tonight [Music] moving on to item number three on the agenda human resources committee uh um report i will turn it over to mr mellon okay thanks mike the hr committee met last week on wednesday the sixth first item
044on the agenda was the benefits advisory group meeting review and i'm going to ask chris to give me a hand with this one absolutely right so the first thing that the benefits advisory talked about was started a staff lawsuit for the 21-22 school year and we are planning to meet uh four times throughout the year the team has made up of 13 staff members and hrs sorry all right let me go back so we started off a wellness group uh for the 21-22 year and we're planning to meet four times this year we the group is made up of 13 staff members dean representatives and the hr team we are planning to hold four meetings the in october november march and april the next item that we talked about was a wa trust life insurance
045the human resources committee reviews the district insurance on a yearly basis throughout the through this review we look at our current benefits compared with other school districts that are similar in size and geographically located near milton this review is done with al jaeger and the usi team as our third party administrators for the 21 22 year we'll be reviewing the district's life insurance benefit wa trust is the insurance policy holder and they have issued a two-year rate freeze for the school district of militants life insurance plans and this freeze will end in june of 2022 the district will review other school district life insurance plans and also consider other companies life insurance bids the next item that we talked about was the school district of milton's other post-employment benefits and in this conversation the item
046was focused or this conversation was focused on the education of the benefits advisory group members and their uh retiree health insurance and at a future benefits advisory group meeting we will talk more about district comparables reviewing the cost as well as the district's unfunded liability the next item that we talked about was a staff wage discussion the number of payments that school year staff are paid on a yearly basis school district of milton staff that are school year employees have two choices on the number of payroll checks that they receive we are considering stepping back from the two-year choices to improve efficiencies and be consistent amongst our school year staff the business office and the hr department are aware of the impact on financial planning for our school year employees and additional conversations will be
047had at future benefits advisory group meetings the last item of our benefits advisory group was our school wellness clinic the school wellness clinic has been operating since july of 21 and serves seven other school districts and their families that's for our benefit eligible employees and their families the school districts include cambridge edgerton evansville stoughton whitewater fort atkinson and milton as of mid-september 70 individuals throughout the seven school districts have utilized the clinic and as of october 4th the school district wellness clinic began administering the pfizer kovitt 19 booster shot to staff we don't have any kind of numbers yet but we're hoping at a future meeting with the dean representatives of that clinic we'll have more of a idea of how many people are utilized in clinic for those boost your chance your fisa boosting
048threats and that's the benefits all right thank you chris anyone have any questions or comments about any of that [Music] thank you chris um next item on the agenda was the 2021-22 nutrition team staffing in the past few months there have been 10 new staff hired for the nutrition team however that does leave us with five current vacancies still hr team is still looking out i'm still trying to hire people to fill those vacancies that hasn't been going super great so they have reached out to a couple staffing agencies to help the hr team fill things such as leaves for medical purposes or long-term long-term absences the hr team is uh currently working with these agencies to get tour schedules of the facilities and we are optimistic that these will help fill these vacancies and
049we will keep the board updated as to how this is going any questions or comments about that or chris you have anything to add to that all right chris have we been able to deliver lunch assimilating so many additional employees and five openings and lunch going on as planned or is it starting to present some issues and just the delivery um we've had uh with being short staffed we've had a number of members of the district office team hr the business office payroll have helped serve food um and i've tied it with a few meetings that i've had at the high school and pitched in to help do some dishes in between meetings so we've uh when mr gazdeck is short we try to help out where we can from the district office level in
050addition the high school administration has stepped in to help serve as well so we are feeling confident that once we are fully staffed those needs will not we won't need to have our administrators from the high school or from the district office head over there sincere thanks to you and the other administrative staff that have helped out to make lunch happen successfully thank you worries any other questions thanks so much chris thanks rick moving on to item number four uh first item is a new business is discussion and possible action on the 20 21 22 milton high school extended field trip requests mr billhorn all right well good evening everyone the first item i have there are the extended travels so in your packets you have uh the list of the trips uh that are
051planned for this school year uh and each of those uh they are with a different sewer organization uh each of them have the appropriate number of chaperones planned or and in some cases they've been working on some fundraising for some time if some of the larger trips that are the summer trips they start working ahead of time on fundraising activities we bring them in the fall of the year that they go some of the overseas trips we've actually backed up a little bit because of colbit and and to that point too with all of our extended travel uh well uh board policy does require that uh you approve us to take these trips this year uh we've added another uh layer this year each of these trips um the the advisors meet with rich and
052i we review where we are at with covet safety procedures and for example the history club trip that's going to be going to philadelphia we review the copic uh the the uh the presidency numbers that are in that area the vaccination rates in that area and we have a determination rich and i determine uh if that's going to go so while we're approving these tonight this year we are also having another layer that we have a set date where we review all those numbers as well work with brittany uh coots our district nurse to review uh if we can take that trip uh we have those dates set so that if we do have to cancel that trip we can do so at a time where there's a full refund for the students as well
053what are the requirements for students to be able to go on these trips given the current situation with kovid so uh with regards to uh where the where the cover the safety mitigations are the being able to participate in insurance yeah i mean are they required to have their vaccine are they so uh no we do not require vaccination we follow the same rules that we have at school and that's kind of our mantra uh we do require masking except when they are eating uh we overnight trip on the bus we do allow them obviously to take the mess off while they're sleeping one item that we have actually added is that before they get onto a bus we're actually going to be taking temperatures uh before they get onto the bus as well uh
054but that's the one added procedure that we put to put into place this last week uh but otherwise it's following the same safety procedures that we have for the regular school day because the strips are an extension of the classroom or extension activity so we follow generally the same the same procedures any other questions i'll make a motion to approve the 2021-22 milton high school extended field trip request as presented a second there's an ocean on the floor made by rick seconded by leslie to approve the 21 22 milton high school extended field trip requests as presented any more discussion on that hearing none all in favor respond with i i an opposed nay motion carries thank you thank you next item discussion and possible section on early graduation requests all right so uh per
055board policy students have the opportunity our seniors have an opportunity to apply for early graduation they're able to do so at the end of the second trimester the students in your packet the 21 students that are in your pocket have all met those requirements they've met with their school counselors and have applied they provided all things go well first and second trimester they'll be able to uh graduate in the first week of march now they have the opportunity to get their transcript that indicates that they have graduated that point they also have we welcome them to participate in the graduation ceremonies in june as they walk across the stage as well is that while some students choose to apply to graduate early uh there's it does happen every year some students will say you know
056i part way through second trimester i really do want to go out for that spring sport i really do want to finish with my class can i get a schedule uh we always allow them to do that sometimes they do wish to finish the year out in which case we give them a schedule they're able to do that even if their early graduation was approved any questions i'll make a motion question a second [Music] motion carries and mr billhorn lastly early college credit program start college now all right thank you very much and this is for information for the board uh this evening uh but twice a year i bring to you the start college now and the early college credit applications those students are wishing to exercise those state programs starr college now is
057an opportunity for students who have exhausted our curriculum to take courses at a local technical college bangkok big our region or through the start college now or excuse me the early college credit program through the uw system or university of wisconsin whitewater at rock county as well there's another location where they can develop both cases students will have to have exhausted our current curriculum they have to apply by a set date they also have to maintain a certain grade point they have to pass the classes but we do pay up up to 18 college credits per student who qualify for those programs that's it done on their semester system so we do work that in our schedule because we're on the trimesters but these are the students who have applied for the second half of
058the year for both of those programs i've indicated they're both with a number of college credits that they would be earning and also the high school credit that they earn as well [Music] would you say this is a typical number it is it's a little bit less we actually with the wired program uh and edmentum we actually have a few more options of courses that sometimes students would not have been able to we would not have been able to have the course and sometimes students took that at blackhawk tech we actually have uh like sociology some economics courses we have those available now online and they're available for students all right any questions for jeremy thanks so much mr billhorn thank you moving on to item number d third friday in september student count mr
059dahmen i'll turn it over to you thank you there are a couple of things that i want to share uh regarding the third friday count we we did get the official numbers uh from dpi uh over the last week and uh kim i think we'll start uh we have a few different uh documents inboard docs let's start with the the 917 2021 number in buildings document the rainbow and there's a couple different things that that the documents that we're going to look at track one is the actual number of students who are in our our schools in our in our uh classrooms uh and the other is the the the count for dpi purposes um this one this chart shows our total count in each building you can see listed down the left-hand column are
060the different schools down the right or across the top uh are the different grade levels and then on the far right column the totals in each building and then in that bottom right hand corner uh that grade total across all of our schools uh and this is from this includes uh preschool special ed 4k and then all of our grade levels from kindergarten through 12th grade and you can see that total is 3425 students i'll look at another document that shows a comparison to previous years but that's one of the things that we look at those are broken out at each grade level and at each school by the number of resident students those are students that live within our school district non-resident open enrollment students those are students that live outside of our district
061but choose to attend our school district and then jedi residents are our residents of our school district that are are doing our online programming through our jedi program so again there you can see each of the different schools at each grade level the number of students that we have and i'll i'll circle back to any questions after we've looked at all of the different pieces of data then if you want to do next kim the resident dpi count chart this is like excuse me this is a little bit different this uh shows all of the schools across the top uh the different grade levels down the side and this is what is actually our third friday count and this is the number that's used by dpi to determine funding uh for future years you can
062see if you look all the way again down in that bottom right hand corner the total dpi count is 3467. again that's for preschool through 12th grade and the september 21 total in the building is that 3425 number again in that bottom right hand corner uh in the boxes down below on the right you can see some descriptions of of those numbers and for comparison's sake in the bottom left hand corner you can see the 2122 number reported to dpi this year that 3467. last year that number was 3553 so that's a decrease of 86. students in that count from last year to this year and then you can see that broken down by each of the buildings in the bottom right hand corner that's the number in each of our schools again that comparison
063between september of last year and september of of this year there's also a document included there that we won't reference but it is last year's uh chart that shows the dpi count people can reference that for comparison sake but the other item that i do want to walk through [Music] is the september totals yep kim has it up on the screen now and what that does is takes a look at each of our grade levels from last year's september account to this year's september count and notes the difference so to make sure that uh that's being interpreted correctly this is this just lists kindergarten through 12th grade so it doesn't include 4k or or special ed uh preschool but it has listed in that first left-hand column last year's number of students at each grade
064level and that total of 3 337 students in kindergarten through 12th grade uh in the next column it's the this current years as of september of 2021 number of students at each grade level from kindergarten through 12th grade that total of 3 280. and then in the far right column it shows a cohort plus or minus so what that's comparing is what happened at each grade level from last september to this september so for example last year's kindergarten had had a total of 226 students those same students this year in first grade there are 224 of them so there's two fewer first graders than we had in kindergarten a year ago it's a way to look at gains and losses from year to year looking at the same group of of students we know that
065as you look at that entire list there's some ebbs and flows from one grade level to the next uh so comparing this year's fourth graders to last year's fourth graders isn't that always the best way to compare because each grade has a different number of students but comparing this year's fourth graders to last year's third graders the same group of kids gives us that look at what those changes are from year to year in that far right hand column you'll see some of those grade levels go down some of them go up kind of in the middle grades there you see some increases of 8 8 and 16 students from last year to this year and other places it's gone down third grade into fourth grade is a decrease of nine students another place where
066it decreased was last year's ninth grade into tenth grade but overall if you look at that right hand column you'll see an overall increase of 23 students in that kindergarten through 12th grade from last year's kindergarten through 11th grade becoming this year's first grade through 12th grade a logical question then is if those cohorts overall went up why is our overall attendance down and you can also see the answer to that on this chart if you look at last year's senior class we have 301 students so a large group that at the time was our largest group of students that graduated out of our system and if you circle to the top of the next column at the incoming kindergarteners it's 219 incoming kindergartners so just taking the graduating senior class compared to from last
067year compared to this year's incoming kindergarten class uh there's 82 fewer students and that's a bit of a trend if you look just in general at this year's numbers you can see uh the highest numbers actually the four largest classes are are 9th grade 10th grade 11th grade and 12th grade currently over the upcoming years those larger classes are going to be gradually not graduating out of our schools and the trend is that they're replaced by smaller groups coming in now we do take a look at and try to anticipate how many students are going to be in that incoming kindergarten class and those incoming 4k classes we never know for sure how large those groups are going to be but we can get a pretty good idea but in general we can anticipate that
068unless we have new families moving into the district or additional students choosing to attend our district we can anticipate that our enrollment is likely to continue to decline based on those large groups at the high school graduating out and typically smaller groups coming in to replace them we know from our work with our budget that that the the fewer students that we have long term that means fewer revenues coming in from the state so we have to look at ways as we're planning for the upcoming years look at ways that we can mitigate that decrease in revenue we do know that when there's fewer students there's fewer expenses too some of our programs are based on a cost per student obviously in our classrooms if we have fewer students there isn't as need for as
069many staff so those are things that we want to continue to keep an eye on so any questions comments thoughts on enrollment and third party count rich at what point do kids who attend appropriate or private schools and that kind of k-8 range at what point do they i guess signal their intent if though if their kids would be coming to the high school to is there generally an uptick in the freshman class to see if i'm reading this right there was one this year a little bit is there any kind of projection with the the change or balance or whatever that is anticipated in the future typically do pick up some students at a couple different grade levels you mentioned ninth grade is one uh where we'll we'll oftentimes add students to the to
070the cohort uh in particular because of some students that go to uh may choose a private school up through eighth grade and then and then uh public school for high school uh i think in the past uh sixth grade seventh grade in that range has been a time when uh some students who have had other have uh chosen other options up up until that time will transfer into uh our school district so we look at we look at the history of that and try to anticipate uh what that will be from year to year any other questions for rich carry none thank you mr dalman we will move on to item number e action on 20 21 22 open enrollment alternative applications which are in board docs removed to approve the 2021-22 open enrollment alternative
071applications as presented there's a motion on the floor made by leslie seconded by rick to approve the 2021-22 open enrollment alternative applications as presented any questions hearing none all in favor respond with i i and oppose nay motion carries moving down to miscellaneous item a action on staffing reports i move to approve the staffing report as presented there's a motion on the floor made by leslie seconded by rick to approve the staffing report as presented any discussion on that hearing none all in favor respond with aye aye and oppose nay motion carries upcoming board and committee meetings mr dawman [Music] i know we have a curriculum meeting on this wednesday the 13th at nine o'clock correct nine a.m for the curriculum committee on on wednesday the 13th that'll be in the second floor conference room
072uh we had talked about but hadn't finalized a finance committee meeting we'd talked about october 21st uh at noon for that meeting i know that joe isn't here tonight but for the other members of the finance committee maybe we can circle back and see if that date and time does indeed work for everyone uh the next regularly scheduled board meeting is on october 25th two weeks from tonight here at 6 30 p.m and then we'd like to schedule an hr committee meeting for the week of october 18th and i see chris walking up can maybe share some information about that upcoming hr committee meeting so uh finance committee members did did uh the 21st at noon was that going to work [Music] do we have to have it that week is that the goal if
073we could have it earlier in the week so this is the preparation for the levy okay okay and what happens [Music] meeting when the is right correct yes could we move it to the wednesday is that too much from surrounding movement well i don't want to arrest you [Music] okay after let's cancel omni to leave uh but pennsylvania and kim will circle back with joel and then reach out to the finance committee members so just just to clarify that's wednesday october 20th at one o'clock for finance yes okay and how about hr committee members the week of the 18th could you do the 22nd at 7 30. does that work for the rest of the committee well i don't think i'm not sure about uh check with joe but [Music] but [Music] i'll have to
074oh yeah okay all right so we can check on that date and time friday the 22nd at 7 30. wow chris if you end that um let me try to work on that now okay well okay i think the tricky thing with that friday is that our board meeting is that following monday so you would need to have a really quick turnaround on any agenda items and make sure you get them in the board docs i think he could do it depending on what the what the agenda items are going to be but if there's something that needs to be prepared for for that following on days forward meaning it doesn't give us much time to make sure we get that in board box by the end of the day friday okay let me reach
075out to you and i'll touch base [Music] sounds good [Music] that covers it thank you last on the list is the adjournment all in favor respond with i i and oppose caution carries thank you [Music] oh [Music] you