001Mhm. >> Mhm. >> Gwen just called the meeting to order on Monday, May 11th, 6:00 p.m. Crosby, can you roll call, please? Jason. Here. Mike. Here. Jake. Here. Jim. Here. Dale. Here. Eric. Here. Carolyn. Here. Greg. Here. Crosby, here. This is an open meeting and it has been posted. Please join me for the Pledge of Allegiance. All right. Up first, we have recognitions, years of service awards. Thank you. So, each year, we recognize employees who have worked for the Mukwonago Area School District for 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, and 40 years. I will read through the names and we could just give a congratulations at the end. This These great list of individuals who have served us for a very, very long time. 35 years of service, Dawn Vanaise. She's a teacher at Big Bend.
00230 years of service, Deb Casper, special education paraprofessional at Big Bend. Shannon Korth, interventionist at Parkview Middle School. Catherine Shay, teacher at Rolling Hills Elementary School. 25 years of service, Sue Bakoven, special ed teacher at the high school. Christine Boller, teacher at Eagle Bluff. Krista Christiansen, teacher at Rolling Hills. Amy Gruhl, teacher at Mukwonago High School. Kim Hinze, teacher at Rolling Hills. Lyle Becky, associate principal, Parkview Middle School. Bonnie Matson, special ed paraprofessional at Parkview. Kristen Maxwell, psychologist at Mukwonago High School. Shelly McLean, teacher at Section. Kelly Kosznieski, IT Services Director. Marty Phillips, teacher at Clarendon. Tracy Ports, teacher at Clarendon. Amber Raymer, teacher at Clarendon. Laura Stroika, administrative assistant at the district office. 20 years of service. Melissa Barton, teacher at Rolling Hills and Prairie View. Julie Bennett, teacher at Section. Kristen Bradford, teacher
003at Clarendon. Jamie Zarapata, teacher at Big Bend. Kelly [clears throat] Einen Eineckner, teacher at Park View Middle School. Wendy Fleck, health services. Gary Gora, teacher at Clarendon. Mary Johnson, teacher at Big Bend. Megan Johnson, teacher at Clarendon. Renee Lang, teacher at Section. Joanna Vick, teacher at Park View. 15 years of service. Kathleen Cassio, teacher at Mukwonago High School. Matt Dorman, teacher at Prairie View at Park View Middle School. Lori Everett, food service. Amy Johannes, special ed paraprofessional at Big Bend. Jennifer Kimmenau, teacher at Park View Middle School. Bonnie Libby, special ed paraprofessional at Park View at Prairie View Elementary. Erin Lindsey, teacher at Park View Middle School. Chris Loice, teacher at Mukwonago High School. Tara Nale, teacher at Section. Matt Sherbarth, teacher at Mukwonago High School. Lindsey Smith, teacher at Clarendon Elementary School. Stephanie Steib,
004teacher at Eagleville. And Allerdale Dale Wimmer, teacher at Clarendon. Eagleville and Section. So, please join me in congratulating all of these educators for their years of service. Okay, up next we have the Park View Middle School student report. Parents or teachers, if you want to come stand behind us and take pictures or record, feel free. Thank you for having us tonight. Um I brought four students with me tonight, Reagan, Gwen, Haley, and Alice, and they're going to lead us through the presentation. So, um Mr. Caruthers, if you could move forward one more slide. And then, if you could just speak in the mic, you can even grab it if you need to, so you get it close to your mouth. Thank you. The floor is yours. Every year, we have a spirit You can just
005grab grab it and hold it like this, so it's easier. Every year, we have a spirit playing race where our students can earn points for their homeroom by participating in different spirit days. Teachers count how many students dress up, and we calculate the percentage for of participants for each homeroom. Throughout the year, there are also monthly activities like decorating doors, making cards, and other fun act challenges to earn even more points. At the end of the year, the six homerooms with the highest participation gets a reward with a trip to the zoo. It'd be nice as a month where we focus on being kind and making everyone feel welcome. We take part in fun activities like making cards for people we appreciate to show kindness to others. We also have a lesson that teaches how
006to include everyone and help create a positive school community. The coin war was a fundraiser where our school collected money to support an important cause. This year, we donated $1,754.90 $0.69 to the Ronald McDonald House Charities. We It was also a fun competition between home room alliances to see who could raise the most money. Dollar bills counted as positive points for each alliance while coins counted as negative points. So, if another alliance added coins to your bin, it lowered your total. It made a fun made fundraising exciting while helping others at the same time. WASC conference. The 2026 Wisconsin Association of School Counselors School Counselors conference was an amazing experience. Everyone had a great time meeting other advisors and student council members from across the state. This year, we were especially proud to have Ms.
007Pasolinski recognized as the Region 4 Advisor of the Year. We also had students serving as Region 4 officers. Hayley Hendricks as president, Gwen Dueck as vice president, Reagan Bergman as secretary. PVMS participated in many competitions at the conference. We were excited to earn state awards for our scrapbooking project and for our top project, the Spirit Point Race. Spring participation. Track had 143 students, tennis 41 students, school musical 62 students, engineering club 25 students, string choir 24 students, solo and ensemble 63 students, Guys in Ties 17 students, Voices 23 students, jazz band 22 students, Girls in Gold 17 students, and student government 136 students. Alice in Wonderland Jr. A total of 62 PVMS students came together to bring Alice in Wonderland Jr. to life. Showcasing an incredible range of talent both on stage and behind the
008scenes. From acting and singing to set design, costumes, and technical work. Their teamwork and dedication made the production a truly memorable experience for our school community. We are grateful for the strong support from students, families, and community members who came out to enjoy the show. Every year we hold an eighth grade celebration to recognize the end of our time at PVMS. During the event, students will have the chance to watch a movie, play games, dance, eat, and most importantly, spend time together. It will be a great opportunity for the eighth graders to socialize and connect with the people they might not have known before. The celebration will give students a chance to look back at their middle school experience and celebrate all their hard work with a fun and memorable night. Two weeks ago, our
009sixth graders toured PVMS. A few eighth grade students guided them around the school and gave them a tour. After the 20-minute tour, they attended the short a short class where they learned helpful tips and tricks for succeeding in middle school. Then, the sixth graders had their lunch on their own without the seventh and eighth graders so they could feel more comfortable. The students really enjoyed the experience because it helped them get familiar with the building and better understand when they what to expect next year. Just to conclude, I just want to highlight a couple things that the girls talked about. So, first of all, on the WASC conference, three of the girls next to me here were elected to region offices. So, I believe there's four offices in our region and Parkview has three of
010the four officers in the entire area of our state, including the advisor of the year so and the advisor of the region. So, I'm congratulations to those young ladies. The participation numbers were pretty proud of. If you add up track, tennis, and the school musical that got done on Saturday, um that's about over a third of our school is involved in track, tennis, or the school musical. We we think athletics are a huge in and activities are a huge part of the Parkview experience. And then, the last slide here, the girls didn't know I added that one, so I thought I would just share that one cuz they didn't probably even know about this. Um but last week Park View and the district was awarded a Project Lead the Way Distinguished School for the ninth
011year in a row. So, we are the only middle school in the entire state of Wisconsin that has been recognized for nine straight years uh and one of only eight in the entire nation that have been recognized for nine straight years. So, um thank you to Mrs. Perkins as well as our CTE STEM teachers at Park View there for that honor. Now, if you have any questions, the young ladies would be glad to answer them. First of all, congratulations. That was awesome. Um anybody have any questions or comments? What did you think of uh showing the sixth-grade sixth-graders around? How was that? Um it was the eighth-graders, but it was like I remember when we were in sixth grade, it was really cool cuz it like helped us a lot like knowing the school. So,
012yeah. Great. Any other questions or comments? All right, thank you. Job well done. Thank you. Good job. All right, we don't have any citizens' comments tonight. So, we are going to move down to consent agenda. We are looking for the approval of the school board meeting minutes of April 20th, 2026. Are there any questions or comments? Hearing none, those are approved by consent. Moving on to finance and facilities. All right, so I got a few things for everybody tonight and I'll I'll do my best to go through this quickly so we can keep the meeting moving along here. First thing we have is a an a procedural requirement as as school boards are required to designate an official newspaper of the school district uh where we'll uh post our legally mandated uh posts. And we'll
013also need uh are required to designate a bank depository. So, I'm proposing that we just keep everything the same and we use the Walk Shoppe Freeman as our official newspaper and Citizens Bank and the local government investment pool as our official depositories. Any questions about those? None. All right. So, the secondly then, we have a food service update here. So, um I'm going to provide the update here tonight. So, for food service here, I'm going to go through each each level. Start with the elementary level. So, as we make plans for the 2026-2027 school year, uh I am proposing and and um along with Chris Oswald here for purchasing some new equipment. So, the the equipment of choice is a combination oven or a combi oven as it's known, which is a dual purpose oven
014and steamer. Um this type of equipment will help with the freshness of food while allowing for more variety on the menu. Combi ovens cost approximately 20,000 each, but they require plumbing infrastructure to be in place prior to installation. At this time, only Clarenden is currently set up for immediate installation of the combi oven. Um so, we are proposing a a long-term goal of bringing in a combination oven into each of our elementary buildings. However, in the short-term, uh for the other non-Clarenden schools, we are proposing to bring in a micro steamer at the cost of $5,200. Once the combi ovens are in place, those that short-term solution here, the the steamer, uh will continue to be used. So, it's not just purchasing equipment for a short-term use and then having no further purpose. >> Yep.
015What do we use now to keep food warm as there in the elementary schools? >> So, the food is prepared at the central kitchen at the high school and then they're put into serving trays and those serving trays are put inside a tall metal um it's like I I forget the exact name, but it's like a heat con- it helps contain the heat. Okay. So, it's not a heater, it's just containing the heat. Yes. Okay. Um Do you want to ask me if it does a really good job? Nope. Okay. So, I think despite it's our best efforts to keep everything warm, it's just inevitable when you make food and you don't have it actively heated, um you know, that's you're going to lose some temperature. You're going to lose some freshness of the food.
016So, through the results that we heard from, you know, the the student surveys, getting better quality and and freshness of food at the elementary level seems to be like the biggest theme here. So, our solution to that is is what we're proposing here. So, um short-term is they get a micro steamer at all of our schools. And uh to but except for a Clarendon where we would go right to the combination oven. Okay? I do want to note Eagleville cuz Eagleville's space limitations in their cafeteria make it hard for either one of these pieces of equipment to come in. So, I don't have a solution here at this time. So, this proposal is for the five other elementary schools. I need a little more time to figure out what we can do there. Okay? So,
017um what will benefit all schools including Eagleville is bringing three meal offerings per day to the elementary level starting next year. All right? And let me think here. All right, so that's the basic direction for the elementary level. If you have any concerns, I just I'd like for you to let me know of that right now. And if not, I can certainly wait until next week if you need some time to let this these thoughts marinate on the brain, no pun intended. But if not, I will build a budget for food service that addresses uh uh purchasing these uh pieces of equipment. We have $930,000 of fund balance available in fund 50. Fund 50 is our food service fund. We cannot use those funds to purchase textbooks. We can't use those funds to purchase anything
018but things that will benefit the food service program. So, those funds are highly restricted, uh and this would be a perfect place uh for those funds to be used. Okay? So, I'm going to stop there at the elementary level. Again, what we're proposing is bringing in new equipment to address the quality of the food. Um, in addition to serving three having three lunch offerings each day. Do you guys have any immediate feedback or concerns? Jake? Uh, what was the cost impact on the third Is there one on having a third option? No, so we've gotten pretty good at I we I should I got to give the credit to the food service team. Chris Oswald and her team do a really great job of knowing that if it's, um, any any menu item, uh, it
019could be uh, chicken patties, it could be spaghetti. They know what participation levels are going to be. At the elementary level each day students, when they get into their into their classroom, they they mark what they're going to do. Cold lunch or if they're going to take hot lunch, they choose which option they want. Those counts are then relayed to the central kitchen and then they make those that exact count and add a couple more just in case. Um, but there's not a lot of food waste there because of that. So, they know how many lunches uh, are required because the students are entering those in each day. I don't think that there will be, you know, food waste by bringing a third option in where you're making a lot and throwing a lot of
020it away. That's definitely not the case. Did I answer your Aside from the waste, just overall cost associated with providing the third option. You think that'd be cost neutral? >> Yeah. Okay. Yes. Yes. Why >> Cost me? Why do we want the third option again at the elementary level? To increase student participation rates in in the school lunch program. So, when you the the kids know it's, you know, um, the first question of the survey that we launched was um, how often do you participate in the in the school lunch program? And the elementary level it's pretty light. In the for those who did not uh, who rarely or never take food service said the menu just simply doesn't interest them. So, we're trying to offer something that kids if the first if the standard
021two options aren't of something that interests them, then hopefully the third option will. Um but this will hopefully increase student satisfaction levels at the elementary level. Okay. Any other questions there? Okay. Um at the middle school level, as we make plans there, um this one's going to be pretty short here. So, once the new middle school opens, the new middle school cafeteria will allow for us to really offer a food service program that looks a lot like the high school. So, there's a lot of room for improvement that's going to come with the building. So, as we look forward to March or April of 2027, um the program between now and then is going to be a little bit of status quo with the exception of um bringing in an a la carte more a
022la carte items that's fall in line with the smart snack requirements. So, we're really just kind of in a holding level as the new building comes out, but we are uh going to move forward and unless you give feedback to the contrary, we're going to move forward with offering more a la carte items. Um our students indicated in the upper 80s to low 90% that if we offer those things, they would they would use them. They would buy those things. So, we're looking to have a few more smart snack items along with bottled beverages. Do you guys have any feedback or concerns there with any of that? Rice Krispy Rice Krispies are a smart snack? They meet the definition there, Mr. Verts. I was surprised as you sounded there in that comment. Do we have
023any concern that we will have even more food waste if kids are also allowed to purchase these smart snacks? Is there any more food waste? So, when they buy a standard lunch, you know, there's certain uh nutritional requirements that have to be on the tray for any school that participates in the National School Lunch Program, and that will serve a little bit as our segue to the last level, which is the high school level. So, whether there's, you know, fruits and vegetables, or whatever is on that tray, we have to meet a standard requirement there. And if the students don't like what's on their tray, they may not eat that. That does lead to waste. That doesn't make anybody happy. Um if there is more a la carte items, will lead to more waste? I
024I I struggle to I'd have to come back and answer that question, Crosby. I don't know. I don't know. Cuz that would be my concern, right? You get your tray, and you don't like 75% of what's on it, so you just toss it, and then you get a bag of chips and a cheese stick, and you call that lunch, right? Can I bring an answer back? I need for Crystal to weigh in there. Um And so, I'll come back with an answer to that question there, okay? Thank you. Middle school, anything else? Any other questions, concerns you might have right now, Carolyn? >> I do like the snack idea for the thought of kiddos that have track after school, or whatever sport they have, and they need a snack before. They don't bring it from
025home, or that's kind of where they're picking it up and getting that snack. I don't know. I could see that a lot of kids doing that. Last Thursday at the track meet, my son came up and said, "Dad, do you have any food?" No, dude, I don't, actually. Anything else at the middle school level? Yes. But, to Crosby's point, um I mean, the kids are buying the lunch anyways, right? So, if they throw it away, it's kind of on them, and they should their parents should talk to them about that, right? You know, if you don't like what's on the tray, then you know, your option is to bring something from home. If you don't like what the school is offering, your alternative is to do something different. Now, if kids are hungry and that
026standard lunch does not meet what fills you up, then we're giving you the option of for like another dollar or so to buy more food, and that's voluntary. You don't have to, but I think for the most part it's going to be kind of addressing those kids who are looking for a little more than what the standard meal is providing. Sure. So, I mean like for instance, like green beans. If it's mandatory to get green beans, kids are going to throw them away. And the kids probably do throw them away. Unfortunately, you're completely right about that. Yeah. Okay, anything else there? If not, I'll go on to the high school. So, um there's a rather larger decision here. So, some of the the information I've gotten from the board is just inquiring about leaving the
027National School Lunch Program. So, again, the National School Lunch Program has, you know, uh funding sources that if we meet the nutritional standards, we receive funding. Um leaving the National School Lunch Program would lead to a loss of $165,000 in in revenues annually. So, I'm not aware of any school districts that do not participate in the National School Lunch Program at the middle school or elementary levels. To my knowledge, it's universally participated in. The high school is where it's a little more optional. Um regionally, I I mentioned Muskego and Elmbrook as two school districts that do not participate in the National School Lunch Program. So, if a leaving the program would allow for uh would lead to that loss in revenues, however, it would alleviate the school district from having to meet some of these
028nutritional requirements. Uh portion size, you know, restrictions go away. Sodium content, certain things go away, and you can kind of start to cook more to what the kids perhaps are looking for. Now, with that, um it's going to lead to that loss in revenues, and those would have to be offset through increased lunch prices. I'm currently working with Stephanie Blue to coordinate a small contingent of students to visit the Muskego program and to visit one of the high schools in Elmbrook. So, Brookfield Central or Brookfield East. Um Brook uh Muskego has an outsourced program where they have a third-party vendor named Taher who provides their food service. Um and Elmbrook has an in-house model where their district employees uh mirror what we have. So, we're going to take a look at both. Now, Chris Oswell
029is a former employee at uh Muskegon um is a former employee of Taher. She knows that program as good as anybody. Um but what we're looking to do is get some students over there to visit each school and say, "What is your feedback? How do you feel about this?" And then we can get a little bit more direction there. But my question to you right now is what is your timeline? Um we could implement something by 2026-2027 by late August when school begins. Or we can take students there, get some feedback, um and delay this until the potentially start of '27-'28 if that's what you want to do. But I'm kind of asking you right now, what timeline are you looking for? I don't have a timeline, but I would like to check it out.
030Okay. My I guess my personal If you had asked me 3 years ago if we should get out of the school lunch program, I would have said yes. But now knowing that the nutritional guidelines have changed and we don't know what that's going to mean for school lunch, I think it would be smart to hold off for this upcoming school year and wait and see what those guideline changes are before we decide to leave the program. Okay. Thanks, Crosby. So, Chris Chris Oswell is is the expert. What is her recommendation? I don't think she has one at this time. This is There's a lot of different ways to deliver food service and this is kind of direction we're looking for the from the school board. So, we can do it in either direction. I think
031going back to those food service survey results and and listening to what the respondents said about just being cognizant of price on the students, on the families, uh Uh, and balancing that with providing more food that they want. There is no vegetable or fruit requirement that's going on the tray. So, leaving the program will help you alleviate that waste cuz kids are only going to take what they want. Nobody's saying you have to take this or you have to take that. Kids can take what they want. You can do larger portion sizes. It just is going to cost a little bit more. It can work. Um, no matter what, if we decide to go this route, it's going to take a take a little bit of a leap of faith cuz you can leave the
032National School Lunch Program and then go back to it. But, you know, you don't know once you increase the meal portion sizes and you make all those adjustments, how many kids are going to participate cuz that's going to drive, you know, revenue and ability to cover that gap of that loss of federal funding. So, it's going to say, "Hey, let's give this a try and see where this goes." That makes idea to wait for guidelines. Okay. I also I think like to plan, I think we should start looking at that in case we do want to move. Well, we'll definitely keep the momentum going now that we have this baseline of the survey and we'll take this field trip with students. I'll let you all know when we do those if you want to tag
033along. Come with us. And please wear blue and gold. Couple of things just kind of thinking out loud here. The $165,000, that's a subsidy that's provided like on a per meal basis, right? Yeah, so there's two ways that funding comes to us. Um, yeah, there's a subsidy, a direct cash subsidy where we're being reimbursed for every meal that meets the guideline. We receive a a dollar value or a a dollar equivalent that accumulates and we get $135,000 annually. And then we get a we get $30,000 in free commodity. So, there's a US Department of Agriculture website based on the number of meals we like kind of accumulate points. You could think of it that way at least where then you can go and redeem that and get, you know, 10,000 lbs of chicken five different
034ways, you know, on the bone or chicken patties, whatever you have. So, it's commodities and a cash reimbursement. And um how does free and reduced lunch factor into this? Or is is there an effect? No, that's that's a part of this. So, like the all-in number is what you're seeing right there. >> a part of that. >> Yep. Yep. Yep. So, there's a loss of revenue there as well. So, that's embedded in that. And then the other thing, just again thinking out loud, if we're going to be offering more than one option anyways, can you do a hybrid? Where you you you have like option A, which is meets all the requirements, and then you have option B, which No, because you can't offer Call it a la carte option. Yeah, you can't offer anything
035if you're in the National School Lunch Program, you can't offer anything that competes with that food offering during the day. So, basically it's one or the other. Okay. Thank you. Yep. Okay. Gooch, I I agree we should just wait on this. Um we're in no hurry and depending on how what the new pyramid that just got turned upside down and how they're going to, you know, I think we got a good system right now. Just keep it. Board member Gooch, Rice Krispy Treats. It's all you have to say. You'd get in line and take them all. So, at this time, if um we'll move forward with planning uh to get the new equipment for elementary levels. I do think that'll be a really um well-received um purchase of equipment there for the elementary students along
036with the three items there, and we'll move forward with expanding our a la carte options at the middle school. And that's where we're moving at this time. Does that work for everybody? Any concerns? Okay. So, when I bring the food service budget back in, we We look at the entirety of all funds, all the proposed budgets in June. If you guys agree to that, then we will come back um and present that to the community in August at the annual meeting and budget hearing. Because we're buying one we'll aim to build a balanced budget. However, those one-time equipment purchases will make fund 50 not a break-even budget. So, we're going to use some of our fund balance for some one-time uh equipment upgrades, which I think are wise. Okay? Okay. We're good there. Thank you.
037Um the next thing on the uh agenda then is the before-and-after daycare. So, we went through a a committee of administrators, parents, uh principals. We went through some um uh evaluation of three RFPs that were submitted. We have uh requests for proposals for before-and-after care in the upcoming two school years submitted by the YMCA, Kids Connection, and a new entity um in Wisconsin called Innovation Learning. So, the recommendation right now is to keep the status quo in place, and the status quo is having the YMCA provide care at Big Bend Elementary and Prairie View. And the other four elementaries would be um operated by Kids Connection. The new bidder, Innovation Learning, submitted a strong bid. They have a very detailed uh before-and-after program. Um but there was a little bit of apprehension from the committee
038that they're new. They They exist nationally. They exist in Illinois. The Swallow School District is bringing them in uh in Hartland coming this fall. So, there's just a little bit of apprehension of if they'll be able, you know, their staffing abilities and it was a little bit of a leap of faith that the committee wasn't really um super confident in taking. So, that's why the status quo is in place here. However, the committee wants elementary principals to further evaluate Innovation Learning uh for the next uh cycle of RP RFP evaluations in 2 years. And for of district to create and administer a survey that we administered to parents who are enrolled in our before and after programs. It'd be better if we could get the feedback directly from parents uh rather than feedback from what
039the vendor is putting in their RFP as a way for us to evaluate what's going on in before and after care and are parents happy with those. Uh the the committee would like to see the district implement their own survey and just measure quality and satisfaction levels um directly on our So, as a part of that um cuz ultimately you'll make this uh approval yay or nay next week. Um as a part of this I'm suggesting that with our before and after care providers, we charge them a rate to use our spaces just like any community group or any outside entity for using our building spaces. Um we currently charge the YMCA and Kids Connection $7.35 cents per hour per building. We haven't adjusted those rates during my tenure here, which is over 10 years
040now. So, I am proposing that we adjust the rates charged to $8 an hour um and we we typically just adjust it for um from September 1st to May end of May. And that I'm proposing we go from $7.35 to $8 per hour, an additional $2 per hour um for uh June, July, and August for air conditioning purposes. When we cool those spaces, which we normally wouldn't do, but we do it for the kids in the building. Um it's just a little added cost there for that. So, do you guys have any questions or concerns about that? But other than that, the recommendation is to keep the status quo in place for the next 2 years and then to adjust the rates charged. Any questions or concerns? Okay. So, then I'll move on to the
04126-27 budget. So, this is just an update for your information. Back in February, um the board, you guys, adopted a goal of building a balanced budget. And the good news is is that we are on track to hit that goal. So, when we bring in the budget next month in June, it will be balanced. Okay? My intent here is the and just giving you this verbal update is to demonstrate how we did this. Overall, largely, we reduced uh elementary building teaching FTE um by matching our student counts that are have declined, unfortunately, with the number of teachers there. So, there's eight FTE that we reduced at the elementary level, excluding 4K. So, we didn't have to do pink slips. We used retirements and along with the expansion of our 4K to make this happen. And
042I want to say that this was a big deal um because when you have a $1.1 million deficit, um doing that as painlessly as possible, um it's it's a credit to our elementary principals and Rachel Herman, um and Angela and everybody that helped make that happen. So, um but there was a reduction uh in our elementary FTE as we head into next year. Okay? At the middle school level, we reduced one FTE. At the high school level, we reduced 2.9 full-time equivalent teachers. Uh here in the district office, we did also reduce by one full-time equivalent position here. So, uh overall, when we come back next month, the goal to build a balanced budget, we're going to do it. Okay? So, um what I will tell you though is that in the manner in which
043we balanced this budget, so we you know, we're down four uh sections of five-year-old kindergarten throughout the district. That's not necessarily a good thing. That's you know, it's it's bad. The possibility exists next year that we rebound and we have to regrow our 5K to meet like right now we have an incoming 4K class that's rather large. That's good. So, we may have to adjust and say even though we cut um five, excuse me, four five-year-old kindergarten sections, we may need to bring one or two of those back next year. So, the reductions that we took place largely at the elementary level um is a one-time card that we played. We're not going to be able to reduce future budgets in the manner in which we did right now. So, what I'm telling you is
044that um in the future if our enrollment trajectory doesn't change or if school funding does not substantially improve, we will have to make difficult decisions in this room. So, we're good right now. But as we we're talking about the 27-28 budget and we'll get to September and I'm going to turn around say guys, time to talk about um excuse me, we talked about 26-27 budget, I'll start to shift to 27-28 and we got to do this all over again. I see the excitement in your eyes already, guys. But there's tougher things. The way we did it this year, we will not be able to replicate it using the same methods. We're going to have to do different things and it's not going to be easy. So, I just want to let you know that we're
045going to hit the goal, which is good, but we have work in front of us that won't be exactly be fun. Okay? Tom. Yes. I know there's a reduction in enrollment, but how does the reduction in FTEs, how's that going to affect classroom sizes? Are they going to grow, stay the same? So, you have um And Joel, please hop in if there's anything you want to Joel, do you want to take a crack at that one first? Yeah, we are we are riding the declining enrollment pattern down. So, what you're seeing is the the number of kids for instance in the kindergarten classrooms, we have 100 I think it our 4K class this year is 177 students. Our kindergarten class this year was I I'm sorry, I I off the top of my head I
046don't know. It's light though. Yeah, so when we move up, those classes are the the number of teachers is going to go down, but it's going to be commensurate to the enrollment in class. So, we are going to stay within the class size policy that we talked about a year ago. We're not one of the school districts that's pushing class sizes way up. We're just decline riding that declining enrollment pattern downward. And that's what you see in these numbers here. Both from classrooms to elective areas, that's how we're we're addressing this. Thank you. So, one thing I just want to th- to add here before we go to the next um I have a question Jake. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Real quick. So, I see the reductions here. Um later on, there's a resignation that's
047not being backfilled. Correct. Is that a part of this already or is that above and beyond this number? That's going to be above and beyond it. And we'll talk about that more as we get into the subsequent meetings. And then Tom, just one more thing. Um I know it just happened today, but on the news they were talking about a bipartisan deal that's going to affect school funding. Yes. Is that a positive thing? Have you gotten any details Yeah, for the next few years? Sure, I can give you a couple details here. Um So, there is an offer on the table uh that will be voted on Wednesday at the at the state capitol. Um the agreement right now is basically twofold. One is to increase school funding on and special education reimbursements, and also
048to provide um to provide property tax levy relief, uh also to have uh no tax on overtime, no tips on overtime for I believe 2 years, and then to also issue $300 uh uh single rebates uh for all taxpayers in Wisconsin who file single, and $600 for everybody who files um married. So, I think that the objectives of, you know, the Republican legislature, the the assembly and the senate, and the Democratic governor, I think everybody can claim victory here. So, I think it's a really strong compromise. Um the details aren't completely out yet. Um but what is ultimately going to happen is in terms of school funding is that there's $300 million of school funding that will be made available for all public school districts in Wisconsin. My back of the napkin mathematics tells me
049that will be in the range of 1 million to 1.5 million dollars. Had we known this information earlier, you know, all things would be different. Um I don't I couldn't tell you if this funding is one-time in nature cuz subsequent biennial budgets are going to affect this. So, I don't know if this is just, "Hey, one-time help. Here you go." This budget surplus is certainly a one-time source of funds, so I don't know that they're going to sign on for future budget years to say, "Hey, we're going to give you this increased funding and we're going to keep it." I think for to build smart budgets, we should regard this as one-time help and not indefinite help. But all in all, I think with school districts getting additional funding um along with property tax relief,
050I think that it's good for for everybody. Um I applaud Madison. That's just my opinion. It's been a while since they worked together. Yeah, it's good to see a good compromise here. The one thing I want to add I'm sorry, is there anything else there? That I just want to add one more comment then about the '26-'27 budget. >> care this will not affect our taxpayers? Uh like like what sometimes when they give they give our district money, it affects our taxpayers. This will not, correct? No, so let's say we uh issue a $32 million tax levy. Uh this is going to basically say, "Let us uh here's some extra state aid." So, that 32 million if we get a million and a half of that, uh it's going to reduce that down to 30.5
051million instead of 32 million. Okay. So, what everybody's property tax bill show up to be at the end of 2026, it should shrink. This should help. Okay. Okay? So, when it comes to building budgets, just as a reminder to this room, there are three ways to build a balanced budget. If that's And that I would assume that's pretty much going to be a goal here from now until the end of time. When it comes to building a balanced budget, we can build up a budget with a deficit where expenses outweigh revenues, and we rely on fund balance to plug it up. I don't recommend we do that. Um second way to build a uh balanced budget is to go out for operating referendum. I don't think that we're going to do that anytime soon as
052well, but that's certainly something that you could direct us to do. Um but if you don't have enough uh revenues to cover your operating expenditures, an operating referendum is an option. The third way to build a balanced budget, and this is painful, but it's the cut or reduce programs, leave vacancies unfilled, or increase class sizes. All around Waukesha County and throughout Wisconsin, that's a combination of those three things are taking place. We have to really pick what path do we want to go? Absent building budgets that rely on fund balance or absent going for an operating referendum, um if there is no change to our enrollment trajectory or there is no change, substantial change to school funding, we're going to have to look at, you know, reducing programs, reducing FTE, leaving vacancies unfilled, um or
053increasing class sizes. None of that's fun. So, when I say if, you know, as we move forward, and once we get this budget adopted, we'll have to start engaging in those difficult conversations in this room. So, I guess at that same time, though, don't let the good work here go on not go unnoticed and unacknowledged that we will build a balanced budget here. Okay? All right. So, then um next thing then is uh our health insurance here. So, we projected a $750,000 budget deficit in January, and then when we uh revised our health insurance assumption um from a 10% increase to a 15% increase, that deficit grew to 1.1 million. So, that is the deficit we closed. Um but, now we're at that point right now where we need to make a few health insurance
054adjustments here. So, um there's two things that I'm going to ask the board for permission next week to to uh vote to approve. Um the first thing is the the amount of single and family premiums. So, we identify an amount of money uh of that amount, the district funds 88%. The employee funds the other 12% through payroll deductions. And I'm proposing that um we we need a 15% increase onto both of those. I don't take that lightly. It's not easy to ask for that. Going to 15% or a 15% increase? Say that again, Dick. Are you going to 12% to 15% or a total 15% increase? Um our 88% share will grow by 15%, and the employees' 12% share will grow by 15%. So, if you take a look at the memo there, and let
055me just bear with me here while I pull that up here so we can all look at this together here. All right. And I'll make that bigger. Okay. So, the single and family premiums currently uh if you're on the single plan, the total cost is $11,400. A family plan is 20 just over 25,000. We're going to increase each of those by 15% to the two values that you see there. The reason for both of those is that simply medical inflation runs beat marches to the beat of its own drum. Medical costs are expanding everywhere and that's a national problem. We really got to wrestle with that some somewhere. But that's beyond, you know, the the ability of this room. Um our utilization rates are high. We have a very good health plan. If there's one
056thing that we can point to the Mequonago Area School District district saying we are a destination district for employment that we have um we have strong compensation offers and we have a really good health plan. A really good health plan. I would compare ours to anybody and feel good about the odds of saying ours is better. Okay? With that though, it does have increased utilization. So just between the general cost, the inflation of medical services along with the utilization of our folks addressing the health care needs that they have, uh where I'm asking for this increase here. Okay? So I have [clears throat] this built into the budget currently. Um additionally then I have So when our people go and seek uh care outside of our medical clinic, outside of the clinic at Mequonago High
057School, we have that primary care copay. There's currently $100. Uh we are proposing to increase that to $150. Primary care, there are free options. The clinic does exist. We encourage our people to use the clinic as much as possible. Nobody's saying you can't see your doctor. We just need to increase the cost to do so, but there are free options in terms of primary care. What I would encourage people to strongly consider is using our clinic for as many things as you can. Should you need antibiotics, should you need a physical, should you need labs drawn, go to our clinic and get it for free. You can still see your primary physician um if you have one that's attached to a large hospital system, um but we need to move the needle on that from
058I'm proposing anyways to move that from 100 to 150 for a $50 increase. Our specialty care copay, so when you see a doctor that has a special that's regarded as a specialist, we're proposing moving that from 150 to 175. And the urgent care copay would move from 150 to 200. We need to situate that urgent care copay to be more than the primary care or else people if they were priced the same, people would just say, "I'm just going to urgent care." And that's an expensive situation. Sometimes if you go to an urgent care and they're really busy, they'll move you from urgent care to the emergency room. And now the cost went from one thing to something completely different. Greg? So, when you you talk about urgent care, we talked about this today at
059work. Ours is 1,200. That seems like a pretty good deal. When I said it, I would compare our plan anybody's, like I get it, a teacher's never going to get really rich working in this district. That's that's not a secret anywhere. You know, there's But in terms of the benefits, if there's one thing that is strong, I would point to this right here. We do like telehealth. Cuz we just switched. I'm just talking about like our home insurance. Like the telehealth we do, they don't even it's not even video anymore. You're just basically texting back and forth and So, we currently use Doctors on Demand, and that's a free option as well. Certainly that has limitations, right? If you're actively bleeding, telehealth is not your option. >> Right. But you can do it for certain
060things at certain times. Sore throat, you know what I mean? Like >> Yep. I'm just saying the advantages like I try to look at the positive. Who wants to go to the doctor and sit in the office urgent care for an hour or two when you can just pop on telehealth and you have your prescription in 30 minutes? Yeah, I mean if you got a child and you know, hey, this is a rash, this there's an antibiotic that's needed. Um and our clinic isn't open till Monday, Doctor on Demand's the way to go. Again, it has a time and a place. And and there's times when that So, we do have a a free virtual option. Tom, I don't see emergency room on there. We're not So, the urgency copay is 500. We're not uh
061proposing to adjust that. I'm just simply showing you what is uh the changes on the screen right now. Thank you. Um so, for So, I I took us through the urgent care copay. The chiropractic copay is currently 25. Uh we're proposing moving that to 50. We do have a a number of free options. So, those tier one options where we get better prices um by moving that chiropractor copay from 25 to 50, we feel that we can get more people steered into tier one options where we get more favorable pricing. Not all chiropractors bill the same. So, we we find those that we like, whose rates are good, whose quality of work is effective, and then we want our folks to go there. So, by moving the copay, we think we can get better steerage
062um without taking away choice. You can go um to that's you know, chiropractor you have a relationship with, but you're going to the we're asking for increased uh uh commitment of funding there, a share of the uh cost there um from the person seeking the uh chiropractic care. Physical therapy copay, likewise, we we have a really strong relationship with Freedom Physical Therapy. Um they have multiple locations throughout Milwaukee area. We use West Cole Cott and his team here down by Badger Burger a lot, and they do really good things. I can speak from personal experience there. So, we do have $0 options, but for those who want to seek a non-$0 option, we're asking to move the copay from 50 to 100. Likewise, with MRIs, we have uh two entities that we work with strongly.
063We work with MH Imaging, and we also work with Smart Scan. Um the current copay for MRI is 500. We're asking to move that to 750, knowing that our people still have zero dollar options. So, even as we move these some we're really just trying to create better steerage into our tier one options, where we control the cost much more. And then lastly, outpatient procedures for, you know, your in and out surgeries. Um you know, it's not an overnight admission. Moving those again, we have a lot of tier one options for outpatient procedures. Um moving that copay from 500 to 750. In all of the above examples, I think that there are a lot of zero dollar options. Um so, this creates for Olivia's job to say, "Here is your options." Um we think more
064people will take tier one options. So, in total, that's what I'm proposing to you right now. Do we cross me? Oh, sorry. Do we incentivize our staff to not take our insurance? Yes, we offer a $3,000 cash in lieu offer. So, if you decline the offer of health, um that's an additional $150 per paycheck. Would we consider potentially increasing that to move more people off of our insurance? So, there's a number of different ways in which we could save money as a school district. I would ask that we really consider like what the end game looks like. So, for I'll answer that question, but let me bring up a different example. Many of you are maybe familiar with spousal carve outs, where hey, we'll insure you, but if you're if you have a spouse, they
065cannot be on the plan. Some districts do that, and I don't think those types of things make teachers say, "That's a good place I want to work." Now, if we are in very dire situations, we could water down the quality of our health plan, make spouses leave, and that's one route that we could go. As a self-funded entity, um with the rates that we that I'm proposing up top here, so the 13,000 for singles and the 28,800 for families, um for every single and every family, we have about 100 and some odd singles and about 280 family plans. When we look at the mathematics of the num the rates of participation and the rates that we're funding, we need to basically generate $9.5 million to handle next year's costs. Um if we were to say
066move the number from 3,000 to 4,000, what would likely happen is a lot of healthy people would say take the 4,000, we're out of here, and then we find ourselves saying, "We don't have enough money." Um it's a slippery slope balancing act of saying we need to target $9.5 million, um and we're kind of hitting that equilibrium points. We would move our equilibrium point off, um so that we could offer $4,000, which more people may take, but then we would find ourselves saying, "Guys, we got to increase rates by 25%." And I'm making that number up to cover the people who do remain on the plan. And that might create a health plan that's just really really really expensive, as if it isn't already. And that's just a general statement on all health care in
067the United States of America. Um but I I I we could certainly study that, but I think that that ball keeps bouncing and and the ramifications might be there that we don't necessarily like. So, you think you're saving money on one hand, but you're turning around and increasing rates onto existing people who need your health care saying, "Holy cow, MSD, I can't do 25% increase in 1 year. I know we need the health care, but it's a consideration that we would have to keep in mind. Does that make sense? Mhm. Okay. So, if there's any other questions, let me know. If not, we'll bring these back for approval next week. Okay, last thing then is just um Andy Wagner has has a memo in here. The Village of Algonquin is looking to bring a tornado
068siren into uh the northwest side of the village. They're asking us if we would house uh uh a tornado siren on the campus at Algonquin High School. Uh that would kind of point north and west. Um people in the town might even hear that and that's I think by design. So, um there's a a county uh uh right-of-way and if the final area that we want to use isn't in that county right-of-way, uh the Village of Algonquin simply wants to know, "Will you house this and do it like an easement agreement that allows for the the village to um have a tornado siren on our on our school district grounds?" >> with it. Can we charge them rent? Anything we need from the village? If you all just as a reminder, if you if you
069remember, we are collaborating very very well with the village. Um the most recent example is using our fiber optic network. Um we get it for free now at SOAR. We gave them connections. >> He got it. We're good. It's all good. It's all good, man. Relax. We're good. I'm answering your question. Board member Verts. Okay. So, if there's no concerns, we'll we'll move forward with um for next Monday there. Thank you. Thank you. Moving on to student learning topics. Okay. We have a number of topics tonight. Tom, if you can pull up the music presentation. So, we'll start with uh update around music. So, tonight um I'm going to present a revised proposal for the district's music program starting in the 2017-2018 school [clears throat] year when we make that transition to the 6th through
0708th grade middle school. Um so, the um revised proposal tonight is going to reflect input from a variety of stakeholders. So, we'll start out by just reviewing the proposal that was presented in April. Then we'll go over that revised proposal and review some challenges of the revised proposal. So, on the screen you can see what we are calling proposal number one, which was the proposal that was presented in April. So, I will just briefly review with you what this proposal is. In this proposal, um orchestra begins at the elementary level in 5th grade. And then our entry point for band and choir is 6th grade. We discussed in April the reasoning behind that. Our orchestra team felt that it was very important for a variety of reasons to begin orchestra in elementary, whereas our band
071team was comfortable with a 6th grade start. In this proposal, um our elementary orchestra would have two touch points per week. They would have one pull out lesson, um which would be 20 minutes per week. That would occur coming out of academic time, and then they would have one large group rehearsal, um that would occur during the lunch recess. So, for the pull out lesson, we did put some additional parameters in place in order to minimize disruption to instruction. Then when we move to the secondary level, band and choir would be taught in the two to one co-teaching model. There would not be any pull out lessons. In this model, the students would receive their lessons for band and choir during the regular class time. For orchestra, we would not be able to provide the
072two-to-one teaching model due to prioritizing elementary orchestra lessons. So, lessons would occur in a pull out model three times per quarter. Again, we would have parameters in place to minimize loss of instruction. And then we are continuing to recommend making seventh grade music optional. As a reminder, we are required to provide that through sixth grade by the state. Currently, we do require music at the seventh grade level, but are proposing to make that optional. And then finally, based on feedback from some board members, we can explore the club option at the elementary level, as well. Next slide, please. Can I ask a question like the club model? Like if we do an elementary school, does that really need to be like on the slides or is that something that is done on their own? How
073does that work? I think it could be either. So, it just depends. I think when we're talking about the club level, we've been talking about it as something that occurs outside of the school day. So, there are a few different ways to do it. Sometimes a club model could be something that is taught by an instructor that is a community partner or someone that is not one of our teachers. It could also be that we're providing it outside of the school day, but with our school staff. So, I think there's a number of different ways to do it. Are they willing Is our Is our staff willing to do something like that for the elementary school? Just to keep band in elementary school because I really do think it's so much beneficial when they're starting
074young. So, when we met with the team and we worked through the process with with our teacher team, the preference was to not utilize the club model and to have it be curricular. So, when it is a club model provided by someone else, they are not controlling the curriculum that is taught. So, their preference was for it not to be a club type model, but rather to be instruction that is provided by our teachers. And they're willing to do that? Before and after school? >> Yes. Um I think that is something we would have to see their interest in that if they're able to do that with other commitments they have. So, we could have guidance on this and then you could find out and we could just like put an amendment on it if
075we come to a an agreement like tonight, we could add an amendment and action item like that. And we can look at the the proposal that we have does have um does have instruction before school, the revised proposal that we're going to look at, um but is provided by our staff. Okay. Okay? Thank you. Okay. Next slide, Laura. Okay. So, after presenting that first proposal, we did receive several questions from various stakeholders. I'm just going to review those with you. One of the questions was, "What does it look like if we had no pull-out lessons for orchestra?" Because the recommendation we had given still had those pull-out lessons. So, this is something that can be done. Um however, there are some significant barriers and we'll talk about that tonight cuz we do have that proposal
076for you tonight. Another question was, "Can we explore a partnership with with the community education program?" We absolutely can explore that and we'll do so. Um another question was, what proposal do the teachers um, recommend? So, the proposal that was presented in April, which I just reviewed, was the recommendation of the teachers. That recommendation was made after an extensive collaborative process, um, over the last 5 months with the teachers. And then the final question was, are all the proposals staff neutral? So, not adding any staff and not cutting any staff. And the answer to that is yes. Everything we have presented in April and then the things that we're presenting tonight are staff neutral. Next slide. Okay, so this is the revised proposal, um, that we are bringing with some feedback from some of our
077stakeholders. So, in this proposal, we have no pull-out lessons. So, we have the same same start points in this proposal. Orchestra starting at grade five. Band and choir starting at sixth grade. For elementary orchestra, this proposal would have the same number of touch points per week. So, they would have two times per week with the teachers. Um, the key difference here is that one of those would be before school and one of them would be during the lunch recess. The before school would be taught by our teachers and would be using our curriculum, um, but it would be more of a club model in the sense that students would have to arrive before school in order to access that instruction. The other key piece of this is because of the staffing that we have available,
078we would not be able to provide orchestra at Eagleville. We just would not have enough staffing in the time frame that we have um to go to all of the schools. At the secondary level, we would then have band, choir, and orchestra. All three of those utilizing the two-to-one co-teaching model. So, no pull-out lessons there. We still would be um recommending that music be optional at the seventh-grade level. So, you can see the key differences on the right side of the screen there. Um just to review those quickly again, with this proposal, there would be no pull-out lessons, so no missed academic time. We would not be able to provide orchestra at Eagleville. And then elementary students would have to arrive early um to participate in orchestra. Jill, would you be able to touch on
079the Eagleville? Yeah, so you know, Dale you and I had a good conversation last week. You asked some really good questions about this. Eagleville um if the students wanted to attend Eagleville for school, they would be able to access the morning time for uh for orchestra instruction. Um they would that would allow though for only the morning time because during the middle of the day then when, you know, the for instance, the section students would be having orchestra, the Eagleville kids would still be at Eagleville. So, if a student from Eagleville wanted to access it and their parent was willing to drive them, we still could make that morning time available to them. So, morning time at a different school. Correct. So, for the I think it's a dozen students at Eagleville that participate in
080orchestra, they could go to the next closest school as an example or they could go to their attendance area school. Well, why does Eagleville have to do that? Uh the staffing component of it. I think the other part of it is Eagleville is a charter school um and by choice, there are certain things that families accept by going to that charter school. Eagleville uses a different instructional model. Um given that, it is a choice, you know, and and we're right now pushed up against the staffing piece of can we provide it there or not. And in this model and this option here, we are not able to provide it at Eagle Hill. Thank you. I just wanted everybody to hear that. So, Thank you. >> what's going on. Thank you. Okay, next slide. All right.
081So, as I had stated earlier, this proposal does come with some barriers barriers. So, we're going to talk through those now. Um, and in doing so, I just want to explain to you the scheduling process and show a couple mock-ups of schedules so that you can see, um, some of the challenges that are presented to us when we, um, have this proposal. So, at the top of the screen, you can see kind of the the general steps that we go through in the scheduling process. So, at the secondary level, um, our first step is that students select their courses. Um, then the administrators work with Rachel and I, um, to evaluate the selections that the students have made to see what how many sections we need for each course and then determine the master schedule.
082And then staff are assigned based on that schedule to courses, grade levels, and buildings. So, that's kind of the simple, um, way to explain it, but if you take a look at all of the bullet points underneath there, um, there are numerous considerations that go into building the master schedule. First and foremost, we are always looking at the priority of maximizing instructional time. That's our first priority. Then we're looking at common planning time for teachers. That's very critical, especially with the professional learning community work that we have been engaging in. Um, we have interventions and enrichments that we have to think about. Some of our students need to access those options, so we have to schedule those. At the secondary level, we have some classes that are what we call singletons, so we just have
083one class, one section that runs per year. So, that's only offered at one time, which can create create some scheduling conflicts with other classes. We have building and space constraints. Some of our courses, especially some of our lab courses, can only have a certain amount of students. We have co-taught classrooms and have to work out schedules between regular ed, special ed. Um we want to make sure we're balancing our classes, um minimizing student conflicts. We have to think about what teachers are certified to teach certain classes, and then we have certain requirements by the state that we have to consider. So, all of those things go into building that schedule, and the more constraints that you put on the schedule, the more difficult it is to create a schedule that meets those considerations. So, that's
084just something to keep in mind as we talk about this proposal. So, if you go to the next slide, so we have um just a mock-up of a schedule. This is just an example of what a schedule could let look like for this proposal. It's not a final schedule, but it just kind of shows you what this would look like. So, for the elementary level, for orchestra, that's what the schedule is displaying, we would have two teachers um that would co-teach together. So, you can see that they would start their day with orchestra club, that before school offering, at one of the elementary schools. They would then travel to Parkview. They would teach a couple of sixth grade sections. And they would need to travel again to one of our elementary schools to teach the
085whole group ensemble. They would then have their lunch, some prep time, travel back to Park View, and then they would have another section of orchestra at Park View. If you go to the next slide, Laura. Then at the secondary level, um we currently have one part-time teacher who is currently servicing the middle school only, and then one one full-time high school teacher. So, in this proposal, they would work together to co-teach in that two-to-one co-teaching model teaching the eighth through 12th grade orchestra classes. So, you can see in their schedule, again, just an example, not a final schedule, um they would start their day at the middle school with eighth grade. They would then travel to the high school, teach some of the high school sections. Um there would be multiple sections that they would
086teach across the different days. Um our part-time person then would leave on most days around 1:45, and then our high school teacher would be teaching AP music theory. So, in this schedule, with the traveling and also in the schedule that we showed with elementary, the traveling just locks in where we can put certain courses, um and just creates additional challenges for creating the schedule. Okay, next slide. So, some of the barriers to this proposal, um this may result in an overload for the high school staff. So, in the mock schedule that we made, our high school orchestra teacher would be down three prep periods per week, so we would be paying an overload for that staff member. As I had pointed out, there's quite a bit of travel that is involved in this model. All
087of the teachers are traveling to various buildings, especially those elementary teachers are spending a lot of their time traveling. Students would have to be self-transported to that elementary school and arrive before the school day in order to have that second touch point with their orchestra teachers. As we discussed, we would not be able to provide instruction at Eagleville for orchestra. The orchestra teachers would have what we call five preps, so they would have five different courses that they have to plan for each week. Um common planning time for our co-taught classes would be essential. However, the challenge that comes with that is that that now takes priority of over some of those other schedule considerations that I talked about. And then, of course, course conflicts when we're limited and when we can offer a course,
088um we're likely to see more conflicts and are not able to get students into all the classes that they want. Next slide. So, some of the possible solutions to some of these barriers is that if if we had an overload for our high school teacher, we would need to provide overload pay to the teacher. Um our traveling teachers, we would need to be thoughtful in building those schedules, um looking at proximity of buildings to one another. So, for example, we would likely not want to service Prairie View and Big Bend the same day. They would be traveling more during their day. For Eagleville students, as Joe had mentioned, they could attend their home school for that morning orchestra section if they wanted to do that. Um for course conflicts, we would have our counselors and
089our team meet with impacted students and families to discuss alternative course options. And then we would want to make sure that we are protecting common planning time for our core area teachers and our co-taught co-taught classrooms. So then just a final summary of the revised recommendations. So for elementary again, we're looking at a start for orchestra at fifth grade. Lessons in the whole ensemble would be provided without missed academic time. General music would be taught in 4K through fifth grade. Next year we are expanding 4K with those 10 sections. Um so we would have general music taught at those levels. And then Eagleville would not receive orchestra or band instruction. For the middle and high school, both of those would use the two-to-one co-teaching model for band, orchestra, and choir. Um for the middle school,
090our general music would remain the same. We are still recommending not requiring music in seventh grade. And then we would be looking at offering an intro to band class in seventh grade to offer additional access to band. At the high school level, we are also recommending um allowing students to earn a half of their credit toward their physical education requirement um through participation in marching band and show choir. Next slide. So finally um next steps here. So one of the things that we are going to continue to work on with our teacher team is finalizing the metrics of success for the music program. This is going to be really important um for us to have those metrics as we make any adjustments to our program so we can make sure we're still having a positive
091impact on student outcomes. We have some curriculum work to do with adding our 4K. We have scope and sequence work to do there and then we have some alignment work to do K5 through 12th grade as we transition our middle schoolers, our sixth graders, um and transition some of those courses. We would need to develop family communications um around these changes and then update our course guides to reflect the program changes. What questions do you have? Anybody have any questions? Crosby? So, option two seems like a little bit of a scheduling nightmare. Little bit. Yes. Um >> Yes. what kind of an additional workload does this put on our teachers? Like this just I'm looking at this and this I appreciate the work that the committee has done but this seems awful. Like I wouldn't
092want to teach this. Yeah. I As I said before, the traveling definitely does add an element for the teachers. They spend a lot of their day doing that. Um so the traveling is definitely a bit of a challenge with how much is in there as well as the number of preps that they have, the number of different courses that they need to prep for. So it's definitely a challenge. And then to follow up on that, so they're not they're going to do one before school lesson and then one lunch recess lesson. If they participate, are they going to be required to participate in both or are we going to see a lot of kids just showing up to the one lunch recess lesson and not showing up to the before school lesson? I think that's
093something we would need to discuss as a team if this was the proposal that went through. Um, I think our recommendation as a team would be that they need to participate in both. Um, because again, the curriculum is such that it would be difficult for them to have some kids that aren't there. It's going to create a very unbalanced ensemble. >> Seems like a mess. Yeah, that's really going to impact participation then. Correct. Okay. Jason. I feel like this is somewhat of a rhetorical question, but is there a preference by our music staff on these proposals? Yeah, I mean, our the committee that worked put put proposal one together, and that's >> we talking 90/10, 99/1? You know, I think just like we saw with the what came out of the state today, you know,
094I mean, I think that the the proposal was collaborative, and there were compromises made to get to number one. Um, and I think that the staff that it was engaged in that felt that that is something that they could live with or that they were in favor of. I, you know, I think that that's where we were most trended. I think there were some that still had reservations about it, but option one was the option that that team put together. Thank you. Jim, are you there? Yes, sir. I'm going to go around, and I cuz I think we need to give like a good direction. Do you have any questions, and what option would you like to see? Me personally? Yes, sir. Option one. Do you have any questions on that? Nope. Okay. Gooch. Well,
095I'm not thrilled about the latest version of the no pullout one. Um, I wish there was a better way to do it cuz it does sound like a nightmare. Um, a couple weeks ago I was for option two, but then I was thinking, what if option one could have something like instead of two times per week pull out lessons? Go to the three times per quarter. Would that not be enough? Is that a compromise that, you know, less interruptions in the classroom? I don't know. I don't know how that would come out. >> like the general feeling around like the frequency given the younger kids was that twice per week at that skill development level was very important for them. They're just learning the instruments, just learning how to hold them. All of the things,
096so I think definitely the team would say that they need those two touch points at the elementary level. Yeah, that's what I suspected, but I don't know. I have to think on it some more. Okay. I'll come back to you, Verts. Uh I'm option one. Any adjustments or as is? As is. Carolyn? I don't >> [clears throat] >> I don't really have any questions. It's uh Yeah, I don't like the back and forth that the teachers would have to have, but I don't want to share how I feel right now. I don't know. I need to think about it. Okay. Crosby? I think option one as of right now in the situation that we are in is the best compromise. Jake? I agree with Crosby. And of the two options, I prefer one. Schwartz? Undecided
097on the option. I'll tell you and share you a little story that I went to Prairie View Palooza this past week, and it was fantastic. The fourth grade orchestra did a fantastic job. I mean, you couldn't I couldn't really tell between the fourth grade orchestra and the fifth and sixth together. So, that said, I mean, obviously it's important for these kids to get out there and get their their touches on the music. Um I I think the option one is going to be inevitable in the end. However, I would like to see that we push summer school, and I know I've said this before, but if we can get the the incoming fifth graders in the summer school and get them those touches on that the instruments then, I mean kind of cater to them
098for the fifth grade incoming and then the the sixth grade would be the sixth grade incoming. Then for band, I think that would be instrumental and I think that would make the whole thing a lot more attractive for a lot more people out there. Just my thoughts. Jason. Um option one, no questions. I've had a number of conversations with different people about it and uh as is already been expressed, you know, it's it's the result of a lot of compromise, but everything that I've heard, one was the way they wanted to see it go. I think option one, too, and I think I would just because I really think it's important for the kids to start young is adding on like looking at a club model to get kids in earlier. The one thing I
099will add about the club option uh after having some conversations with some people, it was just uh the concern about going backwards because you don't know who's teaching these things. >> Yeah, but I'm talking about with the district doing it, not going outside the district. Okay. You know, I've heard interest too, just to share, you know, about getting to a place where there would be a elementary community orchestra, elementary community band type experience for kids. We We utilize Grace Notes Orchestra, for instance, comes in and and uses our high school space practice. Uh they'll put out a they put out a great um uh a Christmas program. Um they do a great spring program. Um and you know, to have something similar where kids were very invested in music could come in in the evenings.
100Um I was just last I think it was last Friday out on the middle school property. Um they're putting in the performance stage at the middle school right now. Very large space for kids to practice. Um they've got the steel for the roof staged over where the music classrooms are. Those music classrooms are going to be similar in size to what we have at Mukwonago High School. So, we will have spaces that people could use if there's interest in putting this together at the elementary level where kids could get more practice. So, I was talking to some other staff members that we're talking about compromising and about scheduling the pull-outs. Like to minimize like the distraction in the classrooms. They're like, well, if it's well planned where they're not getting up in class and they're
101just going right to music and then they're just entering the class, that stops one of the distractions. And I think in this model, given kind of when things are going to start, um you'll see fewer distractions, particularly with that band adjustment, um how choir is being taught at the middle school and the high school in that two-to-one. I think you'll see fewer disruptions in that regard. With elementary kids leaving for pull-out in orchestra, there'll still be a little bit of it, but I think it could be timed better and I think Angela and Rachel and the team have had some really good discussions on those disruptions and how to minimize those. Anybody? Yeah, I I just like to add, I agree with uh Eric's proposal to potentially, you know, hit it harder in the in
102the summer school. And I'm also really happy that we're allowing the uh entry level at later grades. Uh I I have personal experience with that. Never played a musical instrument until freshman year in high school. Ended up being first chair, band president, loved it, but I would have never had that opportunity if I had to start in sixth or seventh grade. So. Thanks. So, is that good enough guidance from the board? So, it sounds like it's option one. >> Yep. Based option one, we will develop that and have that in a final proposal for next week. Um and then if the board, uh you know, takes action on that in whatever form, you know, then we can either move forward with option one, or if there are some amendments made to it, we can work
103through those amendments. Okay. You good with that, Jim? Yes, sir. All right, thank you. Okay. Next item, um for student learning is an extended trip proposal um for students from our Health Occupations Students of America, also known as HOSA club. Um the the proposal is for them to attend the HOSA International Leadership Conference in Indianapolis. Um we had students in this club who competed at the state level, and a number of those students qualified to compete um in this international conference. So, Kristi Peterson, who is one of our MHHS teachers, and also one of the HOSA club advisors, is organizing and chaperoning the trip. The trip is set for June 17th through the 21st, again in Indianapolis. All of the details have been provided for you there, and then we will be looking for approval
104of this trip next week. Are there any questions that I can answer regarding that? Good, thank you. Okay. All right, the next item is just an update regarding our curriculum council work. We had our final curriculum council meeting for this school year on May 4th. We had a number of different topics that we discussed at the meeting. Most of them were updates on work that is happening in the district. So, we reviewed um the work that's been happening around elementary literacy with our third through fifth grade literacy adoption, and then our K-2 pilot, which will be coming up next year. Um, we talked about elementary progress reporting. I'm going to share an update with the board on that tonight and some recommendations. We also gave an update on some work we are doing around our
105gifted and talented programming. We shared where we are with our 4K expansion work and then also, um, did an update regarding the middle school transition work. So, the council provided some great feedback on all of those things and some suggestions for us, um, to consider as we continue that work. The minutes of that meeting have been posted and we have our dates for next year. Any questions on that? None. Thank you. >> Okay. Um, yep, Tom, that's the presentation. All right. So, I am going to give you an update on some work we've been doing around elementary progress reporting and some recommendations that we are making, um, for adjustments to our elementary progress reporting. So, at the August Committee of the Whole meeting, I shared an update on this work. We have been reviewing our
106reporting practices, um, to make sure that we have clear communication for our parents on their students' progress and to make sure that we're accurately reflecting, um, progress. So, I'm going to review the additional work that we've done and our recommendations for some adjustments that we will be looking, um, for board approval on at some point. So, for just going over timeline of the work, this really has been, um, work that has been occurring over the last couple of years. Um, we started in the fall of last year really reviewing our current practices. And then as we moved into winter of last school year, we collected feedback um from our cat chairs, which are elementary teacher leaders, as well as our parent advisory, collecting information from them around what they saw as strengths and challenges in
107our elementary progress reporting. Then in the spring and summer of last year, our cat chair leaders made some initial recommendations for adjustments that we put into place. And namely, that included um creating and utilizing a standardized conference guide, and then making sure that we are providing detailed and specific comments on our report cards. Then in the winter and spring of this school year, we collected additional feedback from our parent advisory, and then also from our curriculum council, and then we are bringing our recommendation to the school board tonight. Next slide. So, I'm just going to quickly give you a review of what it currently looks like for our current um progress reporting at the elementary level. Specifically, we are really looking at first through sixth grade, how that looks now um for the 2017-2018 school
108year, obviously it will be first through fifth grade. Um kindergarten and four gate 4K look slightly different, and we are not recommending any changes to that at this time. So, currently for first through sixth grade, we have a number of different ways that we communicate progress with our parents. So, we have conferences that are held twice a year, in October and February. We have progress reports that occur three times per year, which is a shorter report of their progress, and then we have more detailed report cards that occur three times per year. In addition to that, we also have district screening data reports. So, we have um district screening assessments that occur three times per year per year, and those reports are sent out to parents. And then in addition to that, we have Act
10920 screening reporting. Um again, that's that early literacy legislation that went into place last year. Um and that occurs three times per year for kindergarten through third grade. And then students who receive interventions, um parents receive additional reporting regarding their progress. Next slide. So, as we looked at our elementary progress reporting, this was some of the feedback from our teachers and our teacher leaders. In regards to the progress report, the information that is provided on the progress report is minimal. However, the progress report is very time-consuming for them to fill out. Um the timing of the progress reports is also challenging. So, for example, the October progress report comes up at the same time that they are preparing for their parent-teacher conferences, and then the early February progress reports come up with with report cards
110following quickly behind in March. And then parents of students um who qualify for personalized reading plans um per Act 20 end up with more communication points, many times with that coinciding with the progress report time. So, there's some duplicate reporting that occurs there. Next slide. The feedback that we collected um over the last couple of years from our parent advisory, and then recently from our curriculum council, were that they very much value um the information that they get at the fall conferences. They enjoy talking face-to-face with their child's teacher and really learning about where their child is. They also shared that the information provided in the report card companions that we have developed is helpful in understanding the grade level expectations and knowing where their child is performing. The parents in both parent advisory groups,
111as well as the council, shared that the information in the progress reports is not as as detailed and does not provide as good of a picture of a student's progress. The overall feeling of the parents was that the frequency of the reporting is not as important as the quality of the feedback they received and they really emphasized that personalized and detailed feedback on the report cards is something that they desire more than having multiple reports. Next slide. So, based on all of that work that we've done and all of the feedback, our recommendation is to sunset the progress reports that occur three times per year in between the report cards and really focus on providing quality feedback at the conferences and on report cards. As I discussed, we did come up with a standard standardized
112conference discussion guide for teachers to use to make sure that conferences are consistent with the type of information that's being provided. We also worked with our teachers around making sure that the comments on the report card that is given three times per year is customized to each child's specific progress. And we did receive feedback um from our parent advisory group and our curriculum council that they have seen that improvement and appreciate that. And then of course just ensuring that regular communication is occurring throughout each trimester um whenever there are challenges or concerns. Next slide. So as I said before, um that is our recommendation that we will be looking for board approval um either next week or in June based on um what questions you have. Any more questions? Comment? Uh as the representative on
113the curriculum board for the rest of the board members, uh it's a very accurate uh description of what they've been doing. I'd like to point out that not only the staff, the teachers, and the parents that attend those meetings, um they're very energetic and it and they're very into what they're trying to accomplish with the curriculum and the feedback process. And it was overwhelmingly they agreed that that's that proposal should be accepted and I would vote for it the way it is. And the last thing I'll say for taxpayers and uh they touched a little bit about the 4K curriculum and setting up classrooms. And of course I asked who's how we paying for all this furniture, but they're scavenging every building we have for furniture and repurposing it. They will have to buy tiny
114little chairs for the little kids, but that kind of stuff uh so the taxpayers should be knowing that they're doing their best to save us some money. And thanks Angela, you and your team for doing a good job. Thank you. I think Gooch puts on a proposal next time. Yeah. Yeah. Any other questions? All right, thank you. All right, Next item. Um we have Christine Perkins here tonight. Um maybe can you share your mic with her? This one seems to be dead. Um so Christine um is going to share an update with you for academic and career planning and education for employment. Um Christine took over as our college and career readiness coordinator in February um and has jumped right in and really dug into the work. So she's going to share that update with
115you tonight. All right. Hi everyone. Hello. I think I've been full-time for 6 weeks. So it hasn't been too long, but um I've learned a lot and I've been able to work at elementary schools, the middle school, and now I'm I'm at the high school and it's just really um incredible to see the opportunities we're providing for kids there. And you thought you got rid of my kids. >> I know. >> [laughter] >> I did not. All right. So tonight I'm going to provide an overview of the academic and career planning or ACP and education for employment known as E for E with the Mukwonago Area School District. Um Wisconsin school districts are required to provide academic and career planning services for students in grades 6 through 12. The purpose is to help students explore
116their strengths, interests, and future opportunities so they're prepared for life beyond high school. So the core of academic and career planning is um helping students answer the important questions: Who am I? Where do I want to go? What career pathways and educational opportunities are there? And how do I get there? Ultimately, our goal is to help students better understand themselves, explore career pathways, and develop a plan for their future. For some students, the future might include entering the workforce directly after high school. Others may pursue technical colleges, apprenticeships, military service, or 4-year universities. So, our responsibility is to ensure students are equipped with the knowledge, experiences, and skills necessary to pursue the pathway that best fits their goals. So, um I have here a a slide of workforce trends in Waukesha County and neighboring counties
117um so that we can see strong demands in several key career areas. Um these hot jobs are careers that pay above the median wage and are projected to grow faster than average and have high numbers of openings. So, um many of these opportunities fall within health sciences, information no technology, and manufacturing career clusters. So, on the next slide we're looking at how Mukwonago High School is addressing these needs. Um they are actively addressing these workforce needs through a variety of career-focused opportunities. Our youth apprenticeship program allows students to gain valuable work-based learning experiences directly with these high-demand industries. Students are able to apply classroom learning in real-world settings while developing professional and technical skills. We also have an Academy of Medical Professions pathway built into Mukwonago High School and our incredible advisors provide students with
118required health science classes, opportunities for job job shadow experiences, and vision screening training as well. This pathway is preparing our students to step into some of those health sciences hot jobs in that that field. These experiences give our students a significant advantage as they transition into post-secondary education and future careers. All right, so one of the most impactful ways we prepare our students for future employment is through our work-based learning opportunities. These both include our youth apprenticeship program and our work release program at Mukwonago High School. Uh these programs allow students to build workforce readiness skills, develop professional communication abilities, and gain meaningful career experiences while still in high school. And as you can see, they're also making pretty good money, too. Our youth apprenticeship program would not be possible without the support of our
119local businesses and industry partners. Through these partnerships, students gain authentic workplace experiences while while they help develop the future workforce pipeline within our community. This slide provides a breakdown of our students participating in youth apprenticeship pathways. One area of significant growth is our health sciences, where students are gaining hands-on clinical experience. Several students participating in the Academy of Medical Professions have earned their CNA licenses and are already working in healthcare settings within our community. So these opportunities are providing students with meaningful real-world experience while helping address workforce shortages in critical industries. I just think it's really cool the Mukwonago barn is going to be torn down for people that don't know, and our high school students are going to help rebuild it at Phantom Junction. I think that's pretty cool. >> I know, that's so
120cool. We're working with the art club. I don't know if you know this, but they they want to have the people who originally painted the barn to to create the the new sketch or whatever, and our art club is actually looking at helping paint what they come up with. So, so cool. Yeah. >> Okay. So, beyond our work-based learning, Mukwonago High School offers a wide variety of opportunities to support college and career readiness. Students have access to AP classes, career and technical education courses, industry-recognized certifications, and dual enrollment opportunities. In addition, students can participate in numerous co-curricular organizations and career-focused clubs that help develop leadership, teamwork, and technical skills. Together, these experiences help students build both academic and career readiness. Slide. Thanks. One example of an industry-recognized certification opportunity is our summer CNA program through
121Gateway Technical College. Through this partnership, approximately 40 students participate in CNA training each summer and earn their certification. This program not only provides students with valuable healthcare credentials and career experience, but it also supports the district through the eligibility for the CTE incentive grant. Many students who complete this program continue on to youth apprenticeships and graduate from Mukwonago High School with both certifications and meaningful professional experiences. These photos highlight some of our outstanding career and technical education co-curricular opportunities available to our students. Programs such as SkillsUSA, FCCLA, DECA, HOSA, robotics, and the industry competitions allow students to extend their learning beyond the classroom while developing leadership, collaboration, and technical skills. Another important component of ACP at Mukwonago High School is the Muk Ready Capstone project. Throughout high school, students build a portfolio that documents their
122academic, career, and personal growth experiences. The capstone project includes curricular and co-curricular artifacts, post-secondary experiences, career exploration activities, future goals, and reflections on transformative experiences during high school. This project encourages students to intentionally reflect on their growth and future plans. Um and this year, actually, um AJ, um Paul, one of the counselors at the high school, um set up a pilot of students presenting their ACP capstone projects live. So, some of the administrators in the room had got a chance to kind of sit in on those. And it was really amazing to see um the high schoolers that took full advantage of the opportunities at at our Mukwonago High School and just share about their experience really candidly, so. What doesn't she do? I know she does everything. >> Amazing. She really is. She started
123her own club. I mean, it was her presentation was amazing, so. Very cool. Next slide. All right. Another important ACP initiative at the high school is Muk Ready Day. Um this is intentionally designed to provide developmentally appropriate experiences for students at each grade level. Freshmen and sophomores participate in career exploration presentations from professionals um among very um a variety of industries. Juniors attend sessions aligned to their interests, including presentations from post-secondary institutions, apprenticeships, and military representatives. And seniors participate in Educators Credit Union's Project Reality Check, which helps students better understand financial planning and independent living responsibilities. Um at Parkview Middle School, academic and career planning is supported through the use of the Xello platform and structured career development lessons. All seventh grade students participate in ACP lessons through their life and career skills class, while
124eighth grade students continue the work in business and employability courses. These lessons focus on career exploration, self-awareness, planning skills, and understanding post-secondary opportunities. Our Parkview Middle School also hosts an annual career day experience. More than 40 career speakers visit the school, allowing students to explore careers aligned to their interests. Students are able to self-select career sessions and spend the afternoon learning directly from professionals in a wide variety of fields. Academic and career planning also begins at the elementary level within the Mukwonago Area School District. All K through six students participate in ACP-related lessons through Xello and classroom guidance activities led by school counselors. Students explore career clusters, goal setting, personal strengths, and interests through their age-appropriate activities and discussions. Many of our elementary schools also host high interest days, which expose students to a variety
125of of careers and hands-on learning experiences. Additionally, some students participate in Junior Achievement's BizTown program, where they engage in simulations that teach financial literacy, workplace skills, and entrepreneurship. And then I also wanted to share, I know Mr. Spielman also did this, but um, Parkview Middle School was recently recognized as a Project Lead the Way Distinguished School for the ninth consecutive year. And um, for the first time ever, the Mukwonago Area School District was named a Project Lead the Way Distinguished District. Um, these recognitions reflect the strength of our programming and the dedication of our students and staff. And then, my next slide is just, uh, kind of our next steps, which I put everything in in a big plan and I linked that to the memo, but this is just kind of like the overview,
126so. Anyone have any questions? Eric, moving forward, I think we talked about this before, but what new courses are going to be added to the new middle school as far as like CTE? Is it going to be like woodworking or anything like that? >> There's a lot of possibility in the future. Um, as we move students in there and we start to look at what uh, what courses, what things kids are interested in taking, we'll start to build what that new looks like. Uh, for the time being, we're moving the sixth graders in. Seventh and eighth grade will be there. Uh, we have courses for those students to explore and then there's an opportunity to expand after that. Working out the kinks the first year. Correct. We're working out the kinks, but we're also, I
127mean, as we've talked about with staffing across all of the other areas, we really want to be able to tie the course offerings to the interests of the students. So, my only concern with that is then with the extra funds that we're going to have available from the building of the middle school, we could use that to purchase equipment, right? If we don't do that right away, then is that opportunity then gone to use those funds then? We have that access to that funding. I think it's for 5 years, correct, Tom? So, our referendum was for 89.1 million. We've borrowed 82.1 million. We are delaying the borrow of the $7 million uh, simply because once we receive those funds, we have 3 years to spend them, so we're kind of slow playing that borrow, so
128that once we get it, that 3-year clock begins at that time. So, we'll have some time to do those things. Thank you. Any other questions? You guys have any? Thank you. Well done. >> Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Christine. Moving on to personnel topics. Okay. So, um tonight Luke Spielmann and I are going to provide um the board with an update on our continued progress on the Parkview Middle School transition work. Um we are continuing to work with our steering committee um on all things that come with this big transition. Um tonight we're going to focus um most of our presentation on a couple of things, um namely the schedule and the course requirements um that we will be recommending to the board. Next slide. Whoop, and Lee's here, too. Hi, Lee. Congratulations on 25
129years. >> Yeah. Hi, Lee. Okay, so this is just some rendering. Um you can see the the building um right next door starting to take shape, um and soon it will um look like this. So, we are very excited for this and lots of work to continue to do it um as we get to this point. Next slide. So, just a high-level overview of some of the work that has been occurring around the transition. We have formed and have um been working with our Parkview Middle School steering committee all year. Um we have met monthly with this team. The makeup of this team is that we have 12 Parkview Middle School teachers. These are teacher leaders within the building. We also have three sixth-grade teacher representatives. We have one LTS, two instructional coaches, one guidance
130counselor, and then building and district administration. So, we have a good representative group there. Um we have been meeting throughout the year with our K-12 specialists with this transition with sixth grade moving from the elementary um to the middle school. We have some curricular work that we need to do there. So, we've been working with that team. We have met several times with our elementary teachers who are interested in coming to Parkview when that transition occurs to talk through with them what that looks like and what that process will be. We have presented updates on the work to the entire Parkview Middle School staff. We've also presented these updates over time to our administrative council and then also to our teacher advisory committee as well as the superintendent's parent advisory. And then finally, throughout all
131of the work that we've done, um we have been conducting research to support um our recommendations. That has included research around best practices in middle school education, as well as really studying the practices of other high-performing middle schools. Next slide. So, when we started our work with our steering committee, and we've shared this with the board and the community before, one of the first things that we did was to develop our instructional guarantees. So again, these are experiences and outcomes that every student at the middle school will have access to. And what is very important to remember about our instructional guarantees is that we use these to prioritize our decisions and ensure that we are focusing on the most important priorities for student success. So, you're going to hear tonight, as we go through some
132of our recommendations that we have, how these instructional guarantees have played into this. Um so, real quickly, our instructional guarantees are The first one um is coordinated supports for student success. We are in that guarantee looking at providing a cohesive and responsive system to meet both the academic and behavioral needs of our students. The second guarantee is rigorous and engaging instruction. We want to make sure that we are challenging and engaging our students through tapping into their interests um and also cultivating um critical thinking, communication, and collaboration. In regards to our elective offerings, we want to make sure that we have provided access to a variety of elective offerings and then structured those offerings to allow for student choice while also prioritizing our core instruction. And then our final instructional guarantee is a positive and
133supportive school culture. Um with this, we want to make sure we're fostering positive, respectful relationships between students, staff, and families um and doing that through using a consistent behavioral framework and then providing opportunities for students to have voice and leadership opportunities. Next slide. So, our team this year has spent as Angela said, most of the year looking at other schedules and comparison districts. And where we are currently landing with this proposed schedule that we're sharing with you tonight, I think is actually similar to what we shared with you last time we presented. Um but a schedule that contains 90 minutes of math, 90 minutes of English, um 90 minutes of science and social studies every other day, home room for about 25 minutes, and then elective and exploratory classes for 45 minutes every other day
134for a semester. Um so, that includes your elective classes as well as your fine arts, music, world language, etc. Um, when you look at fine arts and music, um, those classes would be for a full year. We're not just going to have music class first semester and then take a semester off. When you sign up for those classes, those would be a full year classes. Tom, if you could switch, please. Um, that schedule is very similar to what we're currently doing, actually almost identical to what our current sixth graders are currently doing. Current sixth graders, um, do spend 90 minutes in math, 90 minutes in English, and then have science and social studies roughly every other day for 90 minutes. So, we're looking to carry that forward and bring that to the middle school. Um,
135as we talked about the beginning of the referendum process, one of our goals was to increase academic and extracurricular as well as, um, instructional opportunities for students at the middle school level. So, we're excited about the opportunities that we're going to have for sixth grade students. So, as bullet point number three there says, sixth grade students will have increased access to music, STEM, world language, and family and consumer science opportunities. Um, the third bullet point there is we currently at the middle school have three elective exploratory opportunities. We're going down to two. I'm going to talk more about that in a couple slides, um, but that shrinking is resulting in the increased math and English time, which we're trying to prioritize there. Um, and then the last bullet point there is most elective classes will
136be open to seventh and eighth grade students. Um, and those could potentially be mixed classes, most likely will be mixed classes. At Parkview, most of our or I shouldn't say most, some of our elective options currently are seventh and eighth grade classes, um, combined, and we've had absolutely zero issues with that. Um, it should be pointed out that it's not currently a check mark up there, but sixth grade classes would remain sixth grade classes only. And then when students get to seventh and eighth grade, those classes would be open to seventh and eighth. The reason or rationale behind that is we want to provide as much scheduling flexibility for students as they can. So, if you don't get to class in seventh grade that you really want, we want to give students that opportunity to
137take it in 8th grade. Tom, if you could switch it, please. Um when we look at home room options, home room comparisons, um as I said and I think Angela shared as well, we looked at a lot of neighboring districts. Um 29 of our 31 neighboring middle schools included dedicated home room or advisory or intervention period within the schedule. One of the things that is a I guess emerging trend that we've seen when we looked at schools is some schools are even doing two periods pulled out of the day um for home room advisory and then a separate period for enrichment and intervention. At this time, we are not proposing two periods. We are standing here today, I guess, proposing one period of a daily 25-minute home room period as part of the master schedule.
138Hey Luke, excuse me. Is Is this uh the 25-minute period similar to flex at the high school? We will share. Can I go on to the next slides and we'll talk about that and certainly we'll answer that question at the end if you still have questions. Um so, when our team sat down and talked about home room and what is the purpose of home room? When I say our team, I'm talking about the roughly 20-person steering committee. Um we kind of came to four buckets here that kind of tie back to Angela's instructional guarantees that she discussed at the beginning. The middle school that we're creating, I think it's important to point out and Joe has reminded of this a couple times is this is going to be a new school, a new building, but
139also a new school culture. We'll have roughly 100 or 1,100 students when we open um going between eight classes and three floors in a rather large building. But, home room allows us and more importantly, I guess, allows students to have a daily checkpoint, a daily home base that they can go to and a teacher that they would see every single day. Um academic support up there in the top right, um I guess I want to reflect what I said earlier in um earlier in my student presentation is one of the things that we're proud of is about a third of our students are involved in extracurricular opportunities. Another high percentage of our students ride the buses to and from school. Those things are wonderful, but they also at times can limit a student's ability to
140get extra help. Um so that academic support during the day is really important for a lot of our students. Um community and belonging, you heard a little bit about that from our students when they presented earlier this evening. And the last piece is skill building and future planning. Um some of that Mrs. Perkins just got done speaking about is at the middle school level we have some state requirements for academic and career planning, our McReady lessons where we help prepare kids um for high school and beyond. So Tom, if you could switch one more. So looking forward to middle school built. All the extra space for all the help the kids are going to need, all the space out in the middle. Yeah, so each what Dale's referring to is each of the academic wings
141um will have six um academic pods um and classrooms are around a common space um that will provide a lot of flexibility that we don't currently have. If you walk through the middle school now, and this is probably true for the high school a little bit, you'll see kids sitting in the hallways working on homework or sitting with their computer with a peer. Um we look forward to them having a seat and being able to supervise them easier as well. Um so home room, going I guess to Mr. Vert's question, home room takes place 25 minutes daily um currently at Parkview as well. The school operates a blue gold alternating schedule which we'd like to continue um meaning students follow a different class schedule every day. Which while home room um occurs each day, its
142purpose and activities vary based on the schedule. So currently blue days focus on school-wide lessons, activities designed to build community, set common expectations, and address shared topics. And the goal is organic dedicated instructional time to provide opportunities for academic support, extension, and targeted learning. Next one, Tom, please. Um so this is just more details again for you about blue days and gold days. So blue days, um these are some of the things that we do on blue days. So for example, um it says we do Mustang Way lessons. Some examples of Mustang Way lessons at the middle school level are things like reminding students of bus behavior. Or we did one last week or the week before about keeping your hands to yourself, which is a timely reminder at this time of year. Our counseling
143lessons include things like organization. Things like at the middle school levels, grades look a little bit different than the elementary school. So students um become very familiar as you do as parents with Infinite Campus. So teaching kids how to check Infinite Campus and see their missing assignments and their grades. Academic and career planning Mrs. Perkins already spoke about and student government activities and elections are things that the board has previously talked about as well as our students earlier this evening. Mr. Curthoyser, please. Thank you. The purpose of Gold Days is to receive extra support from a teacher, make up a quiz, test, work on homework, check Infinite Campus, Google Classroom, Gmail. To answer your question a little bit more detail here, Craig um Flex looks a little bit differently I think than my understanding of
144what it looked at the high school. At the middle school level, what it looks like is if kids need support, they have to go to the teacher and the teacher schedules them in. Kids do not have the choice to choose where they go. They have to go to a teacher. The teacher says, "Yes, I want to meet with you. We need to make up a test, for example." And then the teacher schedules the kid in. Next slide, Mr. Curthoyser. Okay. Um so course requirements, we had last time we updated the board, we did share our course requirement recommendations with the board. We have made just a couple of adjustments to our recommendations based on the work that we've been doing with our steering committee. So again, as we looked at these course requirements for these
145elective areas, we really focused in on that instructional guarantee number three, which was robust elective opportunities, remembering that we were prioritizing student access and choice. So the requirements that you see on the screen that are marked with an asterisk are state requirements. Anything that does not have that asterisk is um a requirement of MASD. What we are requiring at the middle school. So, I'll kind of talk through those quickly. Um looking at the right column, this is what we are proposing for course requirements. Um so, for music and art, both of those are required by the state in 6th grade. Um we are proposing that for 7th and 8th grade, both music and art would be elective, would be an option for students to choose if they would like to. For physical education, that is
146required by the state um kindergarten through 12th grade. So, that would be required of all of our grades, 6th, 7th, and 8th. Um the only adjustment here um is that we are adding a health component into physical education. So, this is not new curriculum. It's our current health standards. Currently, they are taught in different places um and our recommendation would be to bring them together in one component in physical education. Then when we move down to STEM, um we do we are recommending a required PLTW STEM course for each of our grade levels, 6th, 7th, and 8th. And the reason for this recommendation um is that these courses provide prerequisite skills for some of the courses that are taught at the high school and really expose the students to those major career pathways um as
147Ms. Burkins was speaking about earlier. Um additionally, um these courses are essential to meeting the math, technology, and engineering standards that are required on our state exam. So, when we originally presented this proposal to you, we had our course sequence for these courses slightly different with design and modeling at the sixth grade level and computer science at the seventh grade level. Um, we have switched that recommendation. Um, so that doing so will allow us to have our students be able to access a couple of our other elective courses um, that need some of these prerequisite skills. Namely, um, our app creators course that will then be able to be open to both seventh and eighth graders. And then in terms of other requirements, um, we are looking at moving world language exploratory to sixth grade
148as well as our life and careers class. Both of those are currently taught at seventh grade. We would move those down to sixth grade. And then a final adjustment to our recommendation is that in seventh and eighth grade, we are recommending that our business and employability skills class be an elective. Currently, that is a requirement and we would like to recommend that that be um, an option for students. Why are we making that change? For business and employability skills? >> Yeah, so the committee discussed that was one of the things that we looked at cross district comparisons. Um, there are not other districts in the region that we looked at that are requiring that. And again, back to our instructional guarantee of offering choice to students and allowing them to select the courses um, that
149are important to them. Carolyn. With the ability to take the world language language in sixth grade if you take Spanish in seventh grade and then Spanish again in eighth grade, could you potentially end at a higher level of Spanish than we're currently offering? That's a great question. So, because we are adjusting the time for classes going to 45 minutes every other day from our current structure of 90 minutes every other day, we would not be able to offer a higher level. It would take both seventh grade and eighth grade in order to complete level one. That is our current high school level one. So, right now in eighth grade kids can take like the Spanish honors, which is equivalent to the high school level. It's Spanish. Yep, Spanish level one or German level one is
150what they can currently complete and they complete that in their eighth grade year. But now it would take them two school years to complete that. >> Correct. And And Spanish teachers are cool with that? That is something that we have been working through as a team. Um, that is the model that we would have to use with the time that we have available to us. It is a common model that is used in middle schools. Any other questions? Okay, next slide. >> Greg, I just I I I don't I think business and employable skills are pretty important. Just my thoughts, that's all. With that said, what's taught in that class? We had a lot of conversation about that class as well as the ones above it, educational technologies, app creators. Um, those classes are all
151classes that are currently required at Perkiomen Middle School. One of our goals when creating a schedule here was to provide students with as much flexibility as scheduled or sorry, as much flexibility as possible so that they can choose the path that they want. To answer your question about business and employability skills, they do things like interview skills, application materials. Lee and I both actually had students in our office today doing mock interviews where they come and meet with a a principal or Mrs. Perkins had interviews as well today. So, it's it's just as as business and employability skills. If they don't take it seventh and eighth isn't available in ninth. Yes. There are business courses at the high school, yes. Thank you. One of the things that this schedule allows us to do that I
152don't think is on Angela's next slide is by opening up flexibility for students, we also open up the flexibility for students to possibly take multiple music classes. Currently at Park View, our schedule is tight and you can choose one music class. In this schedule in seventh and eighth grade, you would be able to choose two music classes. Again, that flexibility comes from making some of those other classes elective options. Not getting rid of them, but making them elective option for kids. Okay, yep, next slide. So, just a summary of the key points there. For sixth grade, students will enroll in core and exploratory classes. They will not have elective choices other than choosing their music selection. So, they would choose between general music, choir, band, or orchestra. And that is typical with what they currently
153have. They don't have choices in in the things that they take for their studies and that is typical at other middle schools as well. For seventh and eighth grade, students would have five semesters of elective choices that they could make each year. Um as Luke had spoke about earlier, most of our elective classes will be open to 7th and 8th grade students, again providing more flexibility and choice for them. And then with the additional grade coming to the middle school, we are planning for three lunch periods. Next slide. And so then our next steps in our work with this transition, um we are working on realigning some of those elective courses that we spoke about to make sure that those um are aligned to be offered for both 7th and 8th graders. Our steering committee
154is going to work on the sequence of home room lessons, exactly what those lessons will look like um for those various topics that Luke had discussed. Um we will be analyzing our intervention structures and supports, working very closely with Christine and her team um to make sure that we're meeting the needs for our students with disabilities in the schedule. Um we have a lot of curriculum development to do as we switch courses to different grade levels um and make some adjustments there. And then we will be coming back to the board um at the board meeting next week requesting approval of the proposed schedule and the course requirements. Carolyn? Is there currently an option for study hall in the 6th, 7th, or 8th grade option here? So currently we You asking current Parkview for the
155>> Well, how about current and proposed? Good question. So 6th grade is my understanding does not have study hall. Currently we have study hall options in 7th and 8th and we're looking at keeping that the exact same. So 6th grade schedule is full with classes. Students in 7th and 8th grade would have a study hall option. And as when you have a study hall as your option, is that every single day or is it every It's gold days you would have it and So, I'm here because I'm the I do all the master scheduling. So, it would be a opposite. So, you might have phy ed opposite study hall or you might have app creator and then study hall like one day So, it'd be 45 minutes every other day would be for a semester.
156Um we haven't gone past that point. We're looking at cuz a lot of what we showed you was any changes similar to what we have now and you could do the same study hall options basically for 7th and 8th grade. And is it currently a 45-minute like a half block? So, for a lot of our 8th graders, yes. Unfortunately, just the way our current schedule is, some of our kids have 90 minutes. So, that's one of the things we want to kind of reduce down is we think we feel 45 minutes will be adequate at least every other day. We can We always have options to explore if kids need additional support to give them more, but 45 minutes every other day. Yeah, I agree with that. I'm leading because I'm going into the flex
157because flex is a hill I will die on like I did it for the high school cuz I think it's a waste of time and I I I Not for everybody. I think there are kids that will miss school for a family vacation and adequately use their flex time to make up their work. But then 98% of the remaining time they use that flex time to flex into their friends' classes cuz that's what my kid does and that's what my kids' friends do and that's what they all do and the teachers allow it to happen. And then she comes home and has all of her homework to do at home because she didn't use her time adequately because she was allowed to waste 25 minutes. Now, and I get to go I could also take
158a study hall so then I would have 70 minutes or even more. I'm like, well, that's great. I don't want that to happen. Can we allow parents to opt their kids to not have screw off time? So, they have to use their time appropriately, please. So, I guess let me answer that in two ways. So, first of all, I'll reiterate what I said to Craig, that students do not have Students do not choose where they go. They have to go to a teacher, and a teacher has to um to get information. I guess my second answer to that question, Carolyn, would be if a parent would want a kid to stay in their assigned um home room teacher during those days, I think we'd we'd respect that wish of a parent. Um I guess we'd
159also want to work with that family that if a kid does need that support, that they'd have the flexibility to leave though. But certainly, if a parent doesn't want them to leave to get that support, then we would respect that wish. What is our high school doing right now with our flex? Because as far as I'm concerned, I thought Stephanie eliminated it. Now we're just down to that whatever the Yes. SEL classes are. The high school is on an as-needed basis right now. So, they might schedule a um I think it was last Wednesday they did the uh Advisory. Yeah, with the They'll schedule the advisory as needed. So, the the advisory was the uh scholar-athlete program. So, 400 kids in the gym. But their regular schedule is the schedule that is most days. Um
160If they need an advisory, they schedule an advisory day in. So, it's not It's not happening as frequently as as it did in the past where it was something was every day, and then some days of the week had more. I go to high school pretty often. Doesn't look the same. No. There's a flex time before they made the changes, kids were everywhere. Everybody's in class. Everybody's working. Yeah, I mean, there's a silent study hall in the library that kids can access. There's a a low-noise study hall in the commons, but there is not a a flex 45-40 minute flex period that that had existed at the high school. That is gone. I'd love to see an option for middle school where that is eliminated and increased in you pick it, Spanish, business, employability skills,
161math, I don't care. But, it's it is a absolute free-for-all, and I I do know that the kids have to get permission to leave their classroom, or they'll sneak out. But, this is the staff that's giving them permission to do this. I apologize if that's your daughter's experience. I want you to know that that isn't the experience that I think most of our students have Parkview. We met with um our student government students, um roughly 20 students, four that were here earlier tonight, and asked them about Flex, and I want you to know that 100% of them said that it was necessary to keep because they need it for academics. >> I think it might be important for maybe the sixth graders cuz they're not offered a study hall, but when you're offering kids the
162ability to take a study hall, I don't I think it's awesome for kids that really really need it and need extra help because it's free help built into their day. They may not have that ability to get to school early or stay late. But, it's a free-for-all. It was at the high school, we eliminated it, scores are going up, and it's been great. We're here to teach these kids time management and academics, and it's just a waste of time, in my opinion. But, I have to share that repeat it over and over every single time. This is not judgment on you guys. You're fabulous, just so you know. This is not judgment on you or your staff. But, I'd love to see that cut out. And to clarify, I guess another piece about study hall,
163is their teacher is not available during study hall. So, their ability to get help from their teacher Yeah. likely does not happen during study hall cuz their teacher is teaching a class. >> Somebody's running the room could probably answer a question if a kid had a question on their math homework or whatever they're doing. I would hope. And if not, you know. Or they don't take a study hall. If study hall were not an option, and the home room were was the lessons that Luke talked about plus um the homework time for students, would that be more palatable where it's built in as a 25-minute period instead of a 25-minute plus a 45-minute or whatever it might be. Just asking for questions that they could go back to the team and go back to the
164team and talk about. >> I would I would love to just to see an alternate proposal where we eliminate flex. altogether. If if it is state requirement that we have the whatever you call the SEL lessons in home room that we force them to take. We have to have that. The academic and career planning component is is required. >> Okay. The SEL lessons I just kind of given the our PBIS lessons are are not required but highly recommended for us to be able to talk to students about why they should not be bullies, why they should hit their hands themselves, why they should walk in the hallways. Yeah, there there is need to be able to address that with students at the middle school particularly more frequently. I know Luke and his team have had
165to go around classroom to classroom and those have been good times to do that at the middle school. Yeah. So I think it was stated earlier that at least for the first couple years sixth grade is going to kind of stay in its bubble kind of how it is currently. If things are going well when we move them into the new building could we potentially open them up to more electives and then could we then make the business and employability skills class required again? I just think that one is so important. I mean as somebody who has done a lot of hiring and some firing um I'm interviewing graduate level health care professionals who can't function in society, right? And that is terrifying to me. So the sooner we can teach these kids these skills
166the better. I really would like to see that stay required if possible. I understand if it can't be, but if there's any way that we can work that into even the 25-minute flex, whatever the case, I would love to see that stay cuz I think it's incredibly important. We can certainly work on on on all of those suggestions. I think that, you know, we have a 25-minute period built into this schedule right now, and if we're given some flexibility as to what could be what could go into that where it would be more rigorous, but I think we could we could utilize that time a little bit better, Carolyn, so that it isn't, you know, a blow-off period during the day. Um where is a period where it could be meaningful for academic and career
167planning, for employability skills, for study hall on certain days, however it's needed. Um I would be more apt to come forward and recommend that study hall not be the option cuz 45 minutes of study hall in classes, you know, where Luke and Lee, they've got 90-minute math and lit blocks in there, there's a lot of guided study that can happen in those. And those study halls are being accessed. I would say, you know, especially with a 40- or a 90-minute possibility right now, that is a lot of time. That is a bigger downtime than is a that is a home room period. So, um obviously [clears throat] we're talking about music, and from what I heard you say, really pre- piqued my ears is that kids can take multiple musics per day or per period
168or whatever you want to call it. Option two of the music program, does that have that built in to where kids are taking more than one each day or each semester or quarter? Because if it is, then if we scale that back to where they choose one, what does that look like for option two? Because I think that changes a lot of things. I would sure hope so. Um I don't think either of the options that we presented um change anything with that. It's the the selections that the students would make. So, as we stated in this proposed schedule, they would have five semesters of elective options to work with. So, if they chose to use, they would be using four of those semesters if they took two music classes, then they would just have
169one semester of an elective choice left. >> And that would take away from world language or career and tech ed. Those kids would be choosing music over, um, another curricular area. Right, but they would be pulling the teachers from another area, right? Instead of just choosing one and rolling with it the whole year, choosing and and we're pulling the teachers in all different directions. That could could have an impact on staff, you know, it would have to be something we're looking at among the approximately 1,100 kids there. Are we looking at five kids that are doing it? Are we looking at 25 kids? Are we looking at a number that would impact staffing? Say 50, then we might have to then talk about where do where does staff come from at that time? And is
170it, you know, a one-for-one? Is it a career and tech ed teacher because we don't have the interest or world language because we don't have the interest and it's going to music, then we'd be looking at that staffing transfer that way. Got you. Okay, just as we go into vote it to next week, um, I think that would be a really good piece to talk about. Yep, happy to I mean, happy to have these discussions. Just for reference, Eric, I think in eight years, um, we've been asked that question probably less than 10 times in eight years. So, I don't anticipate that it would be a lot of kids that would be interested in taking both, um, but certainly we we try to have I know that we try to have we have probably one
171a year or one every other year. Thank you. Any other questions? All right, thank you. Thank you. Oh, just one recommendation. I'd highly recommend poaching Mr. Wright. Um, I think he's currently teaching 6th grade, right? Yes, that's right. be interested in coming to Park View, we would certainly be interested in having him. All right, thank you. All right, up next, student services. I have an update on um our behavior council. So, our final um council was on Friday, April 28th. The topic was social media and mental health. Stephanie Blue, principal at MHAS, joined us that night, which was nice. Uh we were able to discuss as a small group our current cell phone policy, the impact that it has had on our students, um as well as how social media continues to be a contributing
172factor in disciplinary incidents at the high school. We finished off by looking at some resources to continue to work with. One being um a uh digital format called Screenagers that we spoke about. Uh both all of the parents were interested in reading either the Anxious Generation or the Digital Delusion, which are um newer books. And then also we talked about um the next community education event, which will be on June 2nd at Brook Life. We have a Para Olympic Para Olympian coming, three-time Para Olympian. Most recently, he was in Milan, so he is going to share his story and his life experiences, and um as a cliffhanger, how he ended up um being in the Paralympics as a athlete. What time will it start? Like 6:00? Yeah, doors will open at 5:30, and he will
173start at 6:00. Thank you. Any questions? Ouch. Hi. Hi. >> Um the meeting the meeting minutes. Well, this is the first time we've heard from you today. This is true. The meeting minutes. Let's see the paragraph where Stephanie mentioned how it's very rare. Uh here I Google Google Chat is somewhat monitored and more teachers are having students put Chromebooks away when not in use. I'm not saying something we should act on immediately, but I'd like some more thought going into does the board need to tighten a policy that does not give a a teacher a choice when they're not used? Because I hear a lot about I brought this up before about the Google Chat. And they're not only just communicating with themselves, they're talking to people all over the world, you know? And I'm
174just wondering if it's time to kind of nip it in the bud and say all teachers, if you're not doing a an actual um if you're not needing to use the the computer right now for whatever the lesson is, you must have it shut off. That's >> sound reasonable or I I just think certainly something that we we can look at. I I'd like to talk to some teachers to find out, you know, how big of a problem is this? I mean, teachers have always had the ability to say close them up and put them away. I mean, we do that with teachers when we bring them into meetings. We do that with our administrative team when we bring them into meetings. Like, you don't need your computer, put it away. Um so, you know,
175that they would still be out would be you know, a question that I would have. I think the other part of that is and it's it's some work I think we talked about it back in April. Uh we are looking at instructional technology as a whole. Uh we have had a one-to-one device, you know, environment. Um Angela is going to be leading a team that is going to look at uh the the devices that we're using instructional tech, but also AI. And we're going to be coming forward with some recommendations. We have talked from a financial standpoint that Chromebooks are not sustainable into the future. Um when we first purchased them, they were 300 bucks a device. They've gone up to about 650 now. Um they will continue to go up in cost, and that's
176a budget breaker for us. So, we're at that cusp of one, we know that instructionally they have purpose, but they are not the bang for the buck that they were once promised for. And two, we have the financial responsibility, obviously, to live within our budget. So, we will be doing some work on that, Mike, into the future. Um but I would like to talk to teachers. I think we have our teacher group in next week, if my memory is serving me correct, and I can bounce that off of them. Okay, I I really appreciate looking into that. Um and again, it's just because sometimes, even if you expect the teachers to tell them to close it, there's always, you know, even the subs. Oh, I don't really care if you have it open. But if
177we have to make a mandated policy, then it's out of the teachers' hands. They say, "Hey, our hands are tied. You have to close that book." If it comes to that, you know. We'll work on that. Yep. I like that idea. Any other questions? All right, thank you. Moving on to policy information. One second, please. Try to take Mike's notes down here. More exciting topics every time. All right, so policies. Uh we have a handful of policies in front of you. We uh we again, we're bringing these forward at committee. Um ask that you take a look at them. We can have them on the agenda again in the May board meeting under uh information, and then we can bring them back to you in June. I know that this is a little bit longer
178of a list than we'd like to. Um but we have had some changes in law, and we also saw that there was an update coming in recently um to further clarify some of things that we will have to come back and make some adjustments to our policy. So, uh as you go through this, you can see definitions, particularly to student support organizations, orientation when we get new school board members, uh just making sure that we touch on the proper topics with the new school board members. Board member behavior, communications, and code of conduct. Includes communication that individual board members, other than the board president, do not have the authority to act on complaints or investigations. It's important because it establishes a clear clear chain of command. District administrator board relationship. Talks about how the district
179administrator is held accountable by the board and in turn all administrators and all employees are held accountable to the district administrator. The development of administrative guidelines. There's optional new optional clauses regarding the district administrator consulting with stakeholders and the publication of administrative guidelines and handbooks on the district website for transparency. It's important to note that all of our handbooks and all of our administrative guidelines are on our website. Want to make sure that the community knows that. Evaluation of the superintendent. Provides revisions including new options to allow the board to make decisions regarding the superintendent's contract renewal, salary, performance-based incentives, and assess progress towards the district's goals. Reading instructional goals and kindergarten assessments. This policy now includes inner interventions required by law, so this updates it by Act 20. For the Act 20 standards. The
180entrance rage entrance age revisions includes clarification on days school days and includes a new section on age verification and its adoption is recommended. We always in the summer time get requests for early admission to school. Sometimes those are things that we can assess and accommodate. Other times the request comes and the child is too young. This just gives us a little bit more guideline on that. Third grade promotion and retention. Again, this some of this is updated based off of Act 20. It includes appeal and appeal process and timelines for appealing the decision to the district administrator. Again, this is uh uh for the student to be promoted to fourth grade regardless of any other fact, circumstances, or analysis. Student fundraising, the policy protects students from coercion, ensures transparency and accountability in fund uh uh
181management, and aligns fundraising with educational goals, and ensures compliance with legal and health standards, and also maintains the integrity of the school environment. Crowdfunding, uh it adds crowdfunding platforms, so this would be GoFundMe. Um accountability and oversight of fundraising and crowdfunding distribution or disbursements. This This is a new policy. Provides additional accountability for fundraising and crowdfunding activities. It's strongly recommended that we adopt it. Non-district supported student activity accounts, uh it adds an accounting requirement and includes technical corrections. Again, rec- recommended, but not required. Student supported student activity accounts, this is a new policy. It's recommended for comprehensive policy language regarding student activities and finance. Again, if we've been involved with music, athletics, clubs, whatever it is, there's fundraising components to it, we want to make sure we have the proper protocols in place to address
182that. Gifts, grants, and bequests, the revision includes additional accountability to for and protections for the board and the district. Um the school support organizations, this policy is being rescinded uh to replacement policy 9215 for better alignment with the numbering used by all states in the NEOLA network. Uh so this is just a change, it keeps it in line for future revisions. Again, 9215 policy has been ratified by NEOLA legal counsel. It's a re-adoption. It's strongly recommended as it contains important text that satisfies state and federal accountability requirements. Relations with non-school affiliated groups, it's being reissued with one revision. The policy is referenced in several of the updated policies in this special update. Uh we made us uh we may want to just confirm that the original choices are part of the update. We have gone
183through and reviewed this with our consultant and the policy that you see in the guideline or in this uh section in this policy section is what uh we are recommending we adopt. Uh 9700.01 advertising and commercial activities policy contains expanded restrictions and the option uh option for political advertising. In addition, the policy is referenced again in several of the updates. So, um everything you see here, nothing here is you got to get it done by next week Monday. Um I know that there's a handful of policies here that we can certainly get back to in June if if the board needs. >> [snorts] >> Any questions? For 144.5, is there something we can add in there for the vice president in lieu of the president if the president's like on vacation and something needs to
184get done, just to have that clear in there? Uh we could. I would ask to talk to our legal counsel about that before we made that addition in there. Just a thought. >> Yep. We will make note of that and get back to you next week. Any other questions or comments? All right, thank you. Thank you. >> Moving on to action items, hires, retirements, and resignations. We actually have two things tonight. We have the >> [snorts] >> um action for hires, retirements, and resignations, and then also teacher contracts. So, the following staff were offered a full-time contract for the 2026-2027 school year. Missy Burton, grade four at Prairie View. Melanie Erickson will be a second grade teacher at Claredon. Eliza Felder will be a special education teacher at Big Bend. Erin Godfrey will be joining
185us as a special education teacher at MHS. Sophie Cab will be a school psychologist at Big Bend. Emma Seymour will be a grade four teacher at Clarendon. Shannon Sonnenberg will be a special education teacher at Clarendon, and Gina Tramonte will be a special education teacher at Clarendon as well. Then the following employees submitted a resignation. Jamie Dabner, secondary program support coordinator, effective June 30th. Uh Jamie will be taking the director of student services in Oconomowoc School District. So, congratulations for her. April Frankman is an instructional coach at Park View Middle School, um effective June 30th, uh 2026. We will not be replacing this position. And then John Strobusch will is a social studies teacher at Park View. Uh he will be uh resigning effective June 30th. Greta Docken is an elementary teacher at Section, and
186she will also be uh resigning effective June 30th. No employees submitted a notice of retirement. I'll make a motion that we approve the new hires for the 2026-2027 school year and the resignations. Second. We have a motion and a second to approve hires, retirements, and resignations. Any questions or comments? Hearing none, all those in favor say I. I. >> I. All those that oppose say no. Motion carries. Moving on to warranty deed and easement. Uh we have the teacher contracts now. Um Yep, just one more section. It's okay. There is one edit on that. Okay. >> wanted the board just uh approved the resignation of Greta Docken. Uh that came in after this packet was put together, so you will see that that will that is an amended list minus Greta, just so you're aware.
187So, for the 2026-2027 school year, you will see a long list of teacher contracts. If you'd like, I could read them all. That'd be fun. Um uh, we would just ask that you, um, approve those. >> I'll make a motion we approve the teacher contracts. Second. We have a motion and Oh. Just wanted to point out that I'll be abstaining on this one. Okay. We have a motion and a second to approve teacher contracts. Are there any questions or comments? Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed say no. Motion carries. Now, we're moving on to warranty deed and easement. In April, uh, we came forward as part of the new middle school project. Um, there's two pieces, uh, of property that we need to transfer over to the county. Uh,
188the first is, uh, 5,771 square feet, and that is for the deceleration lane into the property. Um, and then 1,400 square feet for the traffic signal. Um, so, we we brought that forward in April. We're asking for approval approval of that tonight, [clears throat] so that we can expedite the work going into the summer. I'll make a motion we approve the easement. Second. We have a motion and a second for approval. Are there any questions or comments? Do we have to do a second then for the warranty deed, or can we add that onto this? Yep, it is for the easement and warranty deed. Yep, I want to make Thank you. Are there any questions or comments? All right, all those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed say no. Motion carries. All right,
189up next we have executive session according to Wisconsin Statute 19.85. I am looking for a motion to close the open session and go into closed. Motion to close open session moving to closed. Second. We have a motion and a second. Roll call, please. Jason. Yes. >> Mike. Yes. Jake. Yes. Jim. Yes. Jill. Yes. >> Eric. Yes. Carolyn. Yes. >> Greg. Yep. Cosby, yes. All right, open session is closed and we'll take a 5-minute break. >> Mhm. >> Go. All right, we're back in the open session at 9:33 p.m. Um, we're looking for a motion for what was discussed in closed session. And just as a reminder, that's the final notice of non-renewal. >> Correct. I make a motion that we approve the final notice of non-renewal for one certified teacher based on declining enrollment and
190budgetary constraints impacting staffing allocations for the 2026-2027 school year. Second. >> Second. We have a motion and a second. Any questions or comments? Hearing none, all those in favor say I. I. All those opposed say no. Motion carries. Looking for a motion to adjourn. >> Motion to adjourn. Second. Motion and a second. Roll call, please. Craig. Here. Carolyn. Here. Eric. >> Yes. Yes. Dale. Yes. Tim. Yes. Jake. Yes. Mike. Yes.