001Nice. >> Mic on, please. This is an open meeting. It has been posted. Um, for Monday, February 9th, 6 PM. Crosby, do roll call. >> Jason >> here. >> Mike is virtual. Jake >> here. >> Jim >> here. >> Dale >> here. >> Eric >> here. >> Carolyn >> here. Greg is virtual. Crosby is here. >> Right. This is an open meeting and it has been posted. Please join for the p pledge of >> allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the stands nation. Right. Up first we have recognitions. Thank you. Uh tonight we have two donations uh wonderful donations. The first one uh that we'll acknowledge is from the Kiwanis Club. Uh the Kuanis Club has generously offered to purchase a Braille embosser for a 4K student with a
002visual impairment, providing a powerful tool to support her early learning. A Braille embosser is a specialized printer that produces raised Braille text on paper, allowing students who are blind or visually impaired to access written materials through touch. Having access to an embosser will enable the student to receive classroom materials, early literacy activities, and individualized instruction and braille alongside her peers, fostering independence, building foundational reading skills, and supporting meaningful participation in her educational environment. This donation will cover the cost up to $4,000 for the district to purchase the device. We are extremely grateful to the Kuanas for their support. The second donation this evening comes from Mara Perigini. We'd like to thank Mara for graciously donating $10,000 to the Maguano High School PAC to purchase to p I'm sorry to support the purchase of new lighting.
003This enhancement will play an important role in keeping the PAC relevant and uptodate. And again, we're very grateful to Mara for her donation. And we will send thank yous and acknowledgements uh after the meeting. >> All right. Up next, we have Prairie View Elementary School. Val, could you turn the mics on for them, please? >> And ladies, don't be afraid to grab the mic and put it right next to your mouth so we can hear you. >> All right. Good evening, everyone. >> Oh, yeah. >> Yes. I am Valerie Boss, principal of Prairie View. Thank you for having us here tonight. I am joined tonight by Kelsey and Alyssa Wernern, two sixth graders at Prairie View, who are here to tell you about some of the great things happening at Prairie View that we've done
004this year. And these two girls have been a part of many of these amazing things. So, they were chosen to participate uh because of that. >> Hold on one second. Any parents want to come up here and stand behind us and take pictures or video? Feel free to come up here. >> Yes. >> I thought you were telling me to do something. Got it. Okay, go ahead. >> Go ahead. >> Speak into the mic. >> Hi, my name is Kelsey Warner and I'm a sixth grade student at Prairie Elementary. I'm proud to be a member of student advisory playground pals and environmental club. In student advisory, we get to take on a leadership role, help plan and promote school events, and be involved in making our school a better place. We also work together to
005give back and support the community around us. Playground pals has also helped me understand my role as a leader and a role model for younger students at our school. We help students play games together and make sure no one feels left out or alone. Everyone deserves to feel safe and have fun at recess. One example of how student advisory helps the community is the coins for kids campaign, which is a fundraiser that helps provide Christmas gifts for kids whose families aren't in need. This year, we raised the largest amount of money yet. Every spring, student advisory members host Steam night, which allows students and families to explore science, engineering, and art projects. I have enjoyed being a leader at Prairie View and I am very thankful for my clubs, advisories and believing in me during
006my last year of elementary school. Thank you for listening and taking the interest in our fun things at Prairie View has to offer. Dear Muanica School Board members and administrators, my name is Alyssa Warner. I am a sixth grader at Perview Elementary. I am an enthusiastic member of student advisory, playground house, and environmental club. Pervy offers many opportunities for students to get involved and share their passion. One of the clubs I am involved in is environmental club. Our goal is to recycle 1,000 lbs of single-use plastic so we can earn a fully recycled bench for our school. This helps keep plastic out of landfills. And we are already over halfway to our goal. Another exciting project is our hydroponic garden, which allows us to grow vegetables indoors all year long. It takes up less space
007and provides healthy greens for our school. No matter what your passion is, Purview has a group that helps you become a leader, have fun, and make new friends. I want to thank our adviserss for their time this evening. for their time and supporting students as we explore our interest and see ourselves as leaders. Thank you for your time this evening. >> Do you have any questions? >> Anybody have any questions or comments? Last name is Werner. Are you related to Jill Wernner? >> No. Okay. She was a >> I like the leprechaun leprechaun traps. Is that something that you guys just finished or is that from last year? >> That was from last year. >> Oh, those are super cute. Awesome. >> But that's what they're going to do this year at night. >> Great
008job, ladies. You do the district very proud. >> All right. Up next, we have citizens comments. All right, for citizens comments, welcome to everybody that has come. We appreciate having everybody here. Every speaker is going to have three minutes to make his or her comments. Citizens who wish to address the board must come to the table, speak clearly into the microphone, and remain seated if physically able during your during the duration of your comments. We will signal you when you're at 2 and a half minutes to mark uh at the two and a half minute mark to begin the wrap-up of your comments. We expect all speakers to honor the time limit, refrain from using inappropriate language, and be respectful in their comments. Citizens who do not meet these expectations may be prohibited from speaking
009at future board committee meetings. Speakers are to address the board, not the audience. The school board does not endorse any comments made by members of the community here tonight. We like to remind the community members of the impact of their words on others. Our children are watching. We commit to listening to you in a respectful manner and we ask that you do the same. We expect the audience will be respectful of the speakers and the board and refrain from responding with verbal comments, cheering, applause or behavior that would distract from the meeting. If proper decorum is not adhered to, the board president can suspend citizens comments. Please note that no obstructions can be created between the board and the audience. Visual aids cannot be used in the area behind the speaker must remain clear during
010the public comment. Also, to respect our speakers and meeting participants, please silence your cell phones. First up, we have Stacy Marowitz. >> No honey, Stacy. I buy my honey from her in case people are wondering why I'm saying no honey. I thought she was going to bring some tonight. >> I know. I didn't have a chance. It's actually boxed up from the honey expo that was this past weekend. Um well, first I'd like to say thank you to Dale for meeting with a group of parents today. During that meeting, um I provided Dale actually a copy of a document that I'm going to read. It's a list of questions um for the board and I have a copy for all of you, but an email has been sent of a PDF of all of this.
011But for many many of the discussions and the Facebook posts I've seen and even from today's meeting, our community is searching for clear information. We want to understand the problem um regarding, you know, the whole band and orchestra um issue so that we can collaborate on the solution. I believe this list of questions will help us organize the data and provide answers necessary to uncover where opportunities lie to solve this problem outside of cutting the elementary and band and orchestra program. There are reasonable questions for anyone waiting wanting a positive outcome based on a legitimate process. So I'll start with the list of questions. One, what is the specific problem is this proposed curriculum change intended to solve and how was that problem measured? Two, in recent slide desks focus uh primarily on lesson pullouts,
012is the concern limited to the lessons or does it also include full group rehearsals? Three, what student outcome data indicated that the current music lesson model is underperforming or creating an academic harm? For example, were academic performance metrics such as elementary test scores or classroom performance compared between instrumental and non-instrumental students? Aside from declining long-term participation rates, what additional indicators were used to determine that a change in the program structure is necessary? Five. Did the district analyze academic performance trends for students with the highest levels of sustained participation in instrumental music to understand whether duration of participation correlates with the academic performance? Six. The most recent presentation mentions elementary classroom remediation for instrumental music students. Has that remediation driven by de demonstrated academic needs or primarily by scheduling conflicts created by the lesson pullouts? Seven.
013>> At two and a half minutes, >> were families of instrumental music students surveyed specifically about whether they wanted scheduling alternatives rather than program structure changes? You can see here that we're looking for detailed data and information so that we can all collaborate and like in today's meeting we all want to come to a great solution that benefits everyone. Thanks for your time. >> Thank you >> Carl. That I can actually read a little closer. So, thank you uh for the opportunity to read a statement from my daughter, Katherine Wilhelm. She's unable to be here because she along with at least four other young adults representing our district is rehearsing with the Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra's Senior Symphony from her. Good evening, board members and adviserss. My name is Katherine Wilhelm and I'm a senior
014at Mcuano High School. Firstly, I would like to thank all of you for listening to my comments among those of my peers at the last meeting. I truly believe that citizens and student representation is the foundation of this board. I would like to continue to see each member recognize their importance. This recognition can come from willingly meeting with students and parents or simply addressing emails or answering emails to show you that you are listening. As someone that is soon to be an adult, I would argue she's been one since she was two. Um, I would like the adults in this room to consistently recognize the voices of the students as valuable and listen with an openness to understand the many views they represent. I would also like to touch on something that I hope is
015not the direction of the conversation regarding the band and orchestra programs. Last meeting, there seemed to be a disconnect between the wants of citizens and the steering committee as demonstrated by the number of citizens that showed concern with cutting with cutting elementary board elementary band and orchestra. The slides posted on the board website present an argument regarding a recent decline in participation. I would like to remind all those present that COVID was not that long ago. There are real numerical repercussions to the music department due to this. My class is by far the smallest the band program has seen for years due to the timing of instrumental introduction with the pandemic. Any arguments made with those numbers tonight must take COVID and its impact into consideration. Otherwise, they are arguments presented with only half the
016information creating a bias whether intentional or not. Lastly, regarding a decline in enrollment from fourth and fifth grade to 12th, this is a natural progression. It is witnessed in sports, advanced academics, and all forms of art. It is not realistic to assume the majority of those who start in elementary school must continue to high school for the program to be a success. As someone who has had the opportunity, all kids must choose. I wish I had time to finish playing varsity soccer, to play trumpet, and participate in every extracurricular activity I want to. That just isn't possible. So, please don't hold fine arts to unfair expectations that other activities are not held to or judged by. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. Grace stole. Hello, my name is Grace Stole and I am a
017junior here at Mcuano High School. Tonight I will be speaking on behalf of Maline Maravic who is at performing at the who is participating in myo alongside Katherine Wilhelm and many other band and orchestra students in our programs. Um after reviewing the agenda for today's meeting I would like to address my thoughts on the points made and offer some suggestions on opportunities to solve the problems noted in the presentation. First, it has been made clear that expenditures are a significant reason for cutting elementary orchestra and band staffing-wise and overall expenses. Would it be beneficial to consider more fundraising opportunities for the music department expenditures outside of the field of flags fundraiser done by the marching band? I am aware that running concessions is a wellestablished system of fundraising for the extracurricular groups and could be
018applied to the department as a whole. I believe it will be most beneficial to have a sit down and brains and brainstorm these ideas and I would be more than willing to participate to be part of this planning for student perspective. Student interest and class retention was another reoccurring issue. For the data provided, I would like to acknowledge a key factor in student retention. As a high school student who chooses their own classes, I am aware how changes in teachers can cause uncertainty in students of how a class will be run as well as logistical issues. The majority of elementary schools in the district have had three different elementary teachers in the past five or six years. For band, it would be re it would be more realistic to take data on the retention once
019a teacher has been present for a longer period of time. In regards to the lesson scheduling, I would once again like to emphasize how the current lesson schedule has run successfully thus far. Assuming this problem has stemmed from a parent complaint, I would recommend that parents work one-on-one with their teachers rather than changing the entire structure of the program. I am confident teachers are willing to find workarounds to ensure students are caught up in their other academics. I would like to make a point, however, that despite only 3% of our current senior class participating in the band andor orchestra program, we have had four out of the six students of the months in the high school have been a part of these orchestra and band programs. Thank you for your time. >> Thank you, >>
020Lisa Stall. Hi, thank you for the time tonight to talk. Um, I wanted to say that I would reread um the presentation that was presented and I just had some additional thoughts and questions that I'd like to present back. Um, when reviewing the slides um on the participation rates that were listed, a lot of the participation rates that were listed were of required courses. um when you look at the participation rates and you look at when it was required versus when it was no longer required, you will see that the same drop off happens. Maybe not to the extent that you see with the music program, but you do see it. World language 10th grade you have 58%, 11 is 26, 12th is 14, most colleges require two years. So you're going to see that
021drop off after two years. Math 72% of seniors. So, you've seen it go from 100% to 72 because it's no longer a required course, although most colleges require four years. So, you see that it's not just the music program that's having that decline. There's more things that kids are having to share their time with. Um, one of the things that I want everybody to be aware of and to think through as they're looking through this is entrylevel music provides students with an opportunity to try all three options. They get a chance to try orchestra and band and choir. There is no other opportunity for them to try all of those. Once you get to middle school, you're required to choose one program out of all three of those. You have to make that choice. You
022don't have another option. Once you make that choice, you're kind of stuck into it. The kids that are currently taking elementary education for band and orchestra have come up with solutions on how to still maintain participating in multiple things. the kids are choosing to join orchestra but then also join jazz band or blue or marching band to still maintain that level of um participation and still be able to continue on with learning that music and that instrument and then when they get into high school they have the option of doing more. Um when we took at look at how many of the students that drop off when they go from elementary and on how many of those students had to choose between band and orchestra and pick only one. So you have a drop off
023that happens between elementary and middle school, but those students had to choose between taking both and only taking one. So what a number of students is that that had to make that choice. Um that is going to correlate into the amount of numbers that go from elementary to middle school because we see that the decline there. Um, when I'm looking at the future staffing needs, I noticed that at the middle school level, >> two minutes and 30 seconds, >> sorry, >> you have a two staffing needs for orchestra and bands and at the high school you only have one and a half and I'm wondering if there could be a shared resource there. I know choir only takes one and a half and their half resource is shared between the middle school. So, I'd like
024you to just explore those different options. Thank you for the time. >> Thank you. Andrea. Cool. Yep. Thank you. Sorry. No good deed goes unpunished is a common phrase and I believe it applies to this situation. This school district's administration and school board came to the public with a referendum request for financial support to build a new middle school. The taxpayers stepped up and supported this request and as a result, the thank you from the administration is a request to the board to eliminate fourth and fifth grade band and orchestra. Had it been shared at the time of the referendum request that building a new middle school would result in cuts to important programs throughout our district, I can only assume the voting results may have been different. At the prior meeting, this proposal was
025made as a line item buried under the heading of middle school staffing. Nowhere was it called out on the prior agenda that there was going to be a proposal to eliminate elementary school programs. And if it hadn't been for smalltown rumor mills, community members wouldn't have even known to show up last month to address this topic. I was deeply disappointed to hear the proposal, which offered its only solution to an apparent staffing challenge as eliminating programs. No other possible solutions were even brought up as considerations. Since our district already offers band and orchestra for fourth, fifth, and sixth grades spread across numerous different elementary school buildings. It doesn't even make sense to me why having sixth graders now in a different building would affect staffing levels. The same teachers that travel to our various elementary
026schools would now spend less time at each of those buildings since there would be one less grade level at them, but would add Park View into their travel rotation. If that wasn't the right solution, I'm certain that at a minimum, if the administration cared to do so, they could come up with some different ways to adjust the programs to keep them. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the goal. As I stated, since single not since not a single other potential solution was mentioned in last month's proposal, I and many others are well aware that other lower performing school districts such as Walkshove cut their music programs in recent years, not to mention their library and gifted programs in addition. I would like to be abundantly clear in saying that I have no desire for our
027school district to follow in those footsteps and decline to the level of other schools and I firmly believe the greater Mcuano community echoes that sentiment. It is my sincere hope that this school board will think for themselves and remember that it is the board's role to do what is best for the school district and the students in it, not to just blindly follow anything an administration proposes. As an outside observer, it sadly appears these past few years that our board has become yesmen to a heavy-handed administration by allowing things that to me defy logic. For example, public records show there was a $24,000 salary increase to one of our administrators received from one school year to the next. I was floored that our board would allow a 20% increase on what was already a six-figure
028salary for someone, but yet here we sit discussing grade school music program cuts because we allegedly can't afford them. >> 2 minutes 30 seconds. Personally, my children are well beyond grade school age. I came here tonight simply because I care about this community and the children we are raising in it. I ask nothing more than for our board to refuse to cut these programs and insist that the administration find some other solutions. Thank you. >> Thank you, >> Brett Forester. Good evening. Thank you for the time. Um, I'm here to talk about also about the elementary band and orchestra program. I am a 1995 graduate of Muan Go School District. I have three children, three sons who are 2023, excuse me, 2021, 23, and 25 graduates of which my youngest and my oldest were both
029involved in the music program. My youngest, who just graduated this last year, was involved in the marching band program all the way from COVID, which is the only marching band program that actually did anything during the COVID year in the entire southeastern Wisconsin all the way up until this last year. Now, we're talking about possibly eliminating elementary school music. We already have a small marching band program that I still volunteer with. Three years ago, 2023, our program was very close to taking the state championships in marching band. As a matter of fact, Greenale's director, Oak Creek's director, whom I knew are two of the most successful marching bands in the state of Wisconsin, called up our director to say, "You guys should have taken the state championship." Now, why haven't we? It's because of our
030numbers. Our group is small. You've seen them at football games. They're a small group. Why are they a small group? Because we keep losing kids throughout the se throughout the years. Why are we losing kids throughout the years? Is it a part that we put so much emphasis in this school district about going to college that we insist that kids take AP courses which interfere with those classes that interfere with the opportunity to be in band or orchestra? I think it is Now granted, we're talking 30 years ago, but 30 years ago, if someone wanted to say go into the trades or go into manufacturing and not go to college, they were told by their guidance counselors, "Oh, no, you would need to go to college." I had a friend of my of my brother
031who when he met with his high school guidance counselor in his senior year, he said, "I'm going to become an electrician." His guidance counselor said, "Oh, you need to go to engineering school. Become an electrical engineer. So, are we pushing kids now to go to AP classes because we're constantly pushing them to go to college, which means that then they can't participate in some of these other classes such as band, orchestra. Is this why we're losing the numbers? Are we asking ourselves these questions? Another thing I'd like to ask also or talk about >> seconds >> is that I have spoken to several former staff members of this district, both teachers and regular staff. Why is it that we as a or this school district will discipline a teacher for talking about anything that is
032going on in the district? These teachers have been told if they talk about these things, they could be fired. Is that right? I don't think so. to let somebody know to be a whistleblower. They're told that they're going to get fired. That's a problem. And I hope that you all see that that's a problem. Thank you for your time. >> Thank you. >> Hello. Sorry, my phone does not use my face. Um, uh, hello. Good evening. My name is Ella Warner and I am a sophomore and a member of the band program at the high school. Music has always been a constant in my life, whether I'm listening to it while I do my homework or if I'm making the music myself. I truly believe that so much exposure to music has made me a
033more well-rounded and cultured person. I also believe that it is a huge mistake to decimate the orchestra and band programs in elementary schools. By taking away orchestra and band in elementary schools, that could be taking away a student's safe place. In order to have a successful learning environment, students need to feel safe, and having a staff member that they feel comfortable talking to is an essential part of learning. For some kids, their trusted adult could be their band and orchestra teachers. By removing the program, these kids may end up having no one else to go to if they find themselves in uncomfortable situations or even if they just need someone to talk to. Um, additionally, in my AP psychology class, um, we learned about this before uh, semester exams. We had a developmental unit and
034my teacher u, Mrs. Amy Groyle taught our class about Rosenwig's experiment. This is an experiment about brain development using rats. And I'm not comparing students to rats for the record, but I'm just using this as an example. Um, so this experiment put a rat in an impoverished environment. Um, meaning it grew up all by itself with no rat friends and no rat toys. The other rats were put together and they had a tree branch and rat toys and rat friends. The impoverished rat brain cell was significantly less developed than the enriched rat. And the enriched rats developed thicker brain cortisees than the impoverished rats. The point I'm trying to make is that by taking away band and orchestra from elementary school students could slow their brain development and make them less well-rounded people as they
035grow up. Elementary school is a critical period for brain development, and it will define the rest of their lives based off of how they are treated by their peers and teachers alike. Music makes people more accepting of others and therefore makes the world a better place in the long term. So, I implore you, keep kids exposed to the music that they want to participate in. Thank you for your time. >> Thank you. Thank you, >> Marina Warner. Good evening. My name is Marina Warner and I go to Prairie View Elementary. I am in sixth grade and I have been in band for two years and just join joined orchestra on piano this year. I respectfully think that you are making a big mistake in cutting band and orchestra in elementary schools. It is important for
036you to realize that you are changing students lives with this decision. As people get older, they're less likely to want to try new things such as band and orchestra. This means if you cut if you cut it in elementary schools, you may lose lots of band and orchestra students in our district, which makes our district less appealing. Two of my friends said that music makes them smarter in math. Many of my friends feel very strongly about making sure music stays in all schools. When I told one friend she had some choice words to say about that. I care greatly about band and orchestra in elementary schools even though I won't be there because I looked forward so much to band and orchestra when I was little and all my family was in band. Let me
037tell you, it lived up to my expectations and then some. If it was cut then, I would have been so disappointed. I might have asked my parents to move districts. I'm sure I wouldn't have been the only one to move districts or not decide to go here in the first place. Also, in bandon orchestra, you get to make friends with people in different classes who you don't get to see very often. In middle school, you get to meet new people entirely who you may not have seen before. This brings more joy and happiness to kids. I also heard that it was a concern that um it would be pulling us out of our classes and I'd like to say that it would only be 20 minutes out because whole group sessions are during times where
038the teacher is not directly talking. I have also heard that you are considering to make marching band required. This is not a good decision as it would make our marching band weaker. More doesn't always mean better as I have been taught by one of the many wonderful teachers in our district. Although there would be more people, they may not enjoy it which will come out in their playing. Thank you for letting me talk about what I believe and I hope you don't make any reductions or cuts in music or change our already perfect marching band. Thank you for your time. >> Thank you Josh Horn. I feel like there's a lot of Warers talking tonight. It's not a conspiracy, I swear. Good evening. My name is Josh Warernner and I am a resident here in
039Maguano and former band teacher in the school district of Maguano. I taught here for eight years and I am talking tonight also about the music reductions, the potential music reductions in elementary. It's been mentioned a couple of times already this evening that the presentation that you are about to see uh states that pull out lessons harm academics because students miss instruction and teachers must retach content. That is a serious claim, but no MASD academic data was shown to support it. We were not shown evidence that students in band or orchestra perform worse academically. We did not see achievement gaps, growth data, or intervention rates without local evidence. This claim is an assumption, not a fact. Scheduling challenges are real, but a scheduling challenge is not the same thing as academic harm. Across the country, districts
040successfully manage pullout instruction without negative academic impact. If Maguano Schools believes our district is different, the burden should be on the district to show that evidence before eliminating programs that matter deeply to students and the community. Second, the access is not optional. It is a foundation. The district's own data shows that not that only 16 to 18% of students who begin band or orchestra continue through 12th grade. That tells us something important. The pipeline is fragile. But removing orchestra in fifth grade and band I'm excuse me, but removing orchestra in fourth grade and band in fifth grade does not strengthen that pipeline. It weakens it. Research consistently shows that earlier and sustained music instruction is linked to stronger e executive function skills, including attention, working memory, and self-regulation, which are critical for learning across subjects.
041A recent meta analysis found positive effects of music training on children's executive function, especially when instruction begins early and is sustained over time. When students are exposed earlier, they have time to build confidence, identity, and a sense of belonging before middle school pressures begin. When access is delayed, fewer students ever start and fewer stay. This is not just about music. It's about who gets access, when they get it, and how long they're allowed to explore something that could shape their confidence and connection to school. Once sixth grade moves to the middle school, eliminating elementary band or orchestra sends a clear message. Access >> two minutes later, >> 30 seconds, >> if at all. And historically, when access is delayed, participation drops, especially for students without outside resources. My ask is urgent and simple. Before removing
042early band and orchestra, please require decisions to be grounded in actual student outcome data, not assumptions. And in what we know about child development and and persistence once this these programs are c cut rebuilding them will be far harder and protecting and then protecting them now. Please choose access. Please choose evidence. Please choose what is best for students. Thank you. >> Thank you >> Jolene Palatino. Hello. Um, I'm Jolene Palutino. I'm a member of uh the community and I'm sorry I don't really have a nice speech prepared. I kind of fly by the seat of my pants. Um I'm 71 years old and I haven't fallen off the turnup truck. So just a few things that I want to say. Um, I looked over um everything um online today and I was looking at the
043data and it was interesting that it didn't look like you had planned for any new students coming into the band and orchestra program. Everything was kind of holding steady. And I was thinking about it and I thought, boy, we're getting new subdivisions, we're getting new apartments, and aren't any of those kids coming in there going to play an instrument? And I also was thinking about way back when because I'm 71 and I'm old and I remember when Park View had semester classes where you could take shop for a semester and then you could take Spanish for a semester. um you might take a different subject for a semester. That's all gone away. Now it's you know and and I know Parkville was always the place that was introducing you to other subjects to kind of
044find yourself to see what you were interested in. And I thought what happened to that? Another thing at Parkview when my son went there, they had a class just for seventh graders coming into band, never having played before. What happened to that? Um, I think if our district promoted band and orchestra as much as they promoted sports, we'd be doing really good. Um, as for the marching band, how come the dance program, which is a sport, how come the dance program, why don't they have the dancers in the marching band? >> 2 minutes 30 seconds. >> Why Why aren't they the color guard? You know, why take kids off of their instrument to put them in color guard when you've got dancers in the school? Um, I think that a lot of the kids, uh,
045you pled over 500 parents, um, to see how if music was really important. That's not even half a parent, half of the uh, parents at one elementary school. And you're going to take half the count of parents at one elementary school to decide this? That's just wrong. That's time. >> Thank you, >> Molly Fredericks. Hello and good evening. My name is Molly Fredericks and I'm a sixth grade student at Clarendon Elementary. I'm currently enrolled in band, orchestra, and choir and I'm here to persuade you to keep these programs in elementary school. For starters, there are a lot of aspiring musicians in elementary schools. And it is very often that they don't have musical education to pursue what they love and sometimes their schedule is a little too packed for their passion. That's why we need
046to step up and give them preparation for their future career as a musician. Second, music is the sole reason some people go to school. Some students use music as motivation to get themselves through the day. Something as simple as music has more power and wonder than words. Another reason music and performing arts is important in students lives is a positive effect on them. Studies have found that playing an instrument and learning music has an effect on organization focus and it also eases the mind. These statements prove how musical arts have a positive effect on growth and learning. A fourth reason musical education is essential in our schools is the teachers. Yes, the teachers have a positive effect on our day and their positive patience with students ease of stress. It helps develop communication and makes
047a safe learning environment for students. My fifth and final reason is we need these classes in our elementary schools is how many students you'd be affecting if they were removed. More than half of the students in my class alone, if not all, are enrolled in one of these music programs. This is proof enough that music has an impact on all of our lives. In summary, I really hope you consider keeping musical education in elementary schools when you come to your final decision. Thank you for listening and decide what is best. It was in our best interest wisely. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Very well done, young lady. >> And that is our last comment. >> All right. Thank you. Moving on to presentations. So, thank you. Um, there was a question uh that Mr.
048Schwarz brought forward uh regarding the use of student signatures in the school. So, uh, tonight we're just coming forward and we're talking about where and how student signatures are used, what students would, uh, what students would sign on on themselves, what the legal parameters are. Uh, just have a few slides, opportunity to take questions if needed, uh, from the board. So, this load. So, what do students sign? We do ask students occasionally to sign documents in the school district. These aren't legally binding documents, but these are more acknowledgement type documents. So, you can see that uh students would uh sign um documents related to student conduct and safety. So, for instance, students would sign on to the student handbook. Students would sign on to the athletic handbook. Expectations associated with courses. So, students and parents
049would sign a syllabus uh related to a course. um field trips uh codes of conduct for field trips and then again extracurricular activities. Students are also uh required uh on written statements generally in speaking of uh disciplinary conduct. Um if a student is going to make a statement, we do ask the student sign the statement. Uh because these are potential policy violations, it's important to note that it is a school policy violation that these are connected to. Um there are several reasons that we do this. Uh first with regard to documents related to student conduct and safety, student signatures provide proof that a student was given notice of such expectations. This practice assists in protecting the school district from liability in the event of a claim that the district did not properly inform students of
050important safety information or other district requirements. The practice also serves as the deterrent to student misconduct and a valuable lesson to students that are accountable in the school setting for honoring their word. With regard to written student statements in the course of an investigation, student signatures serve the vital purpose of authenticating the statements. And again, the practice reiterates it students to students that their integrity of words and representations matter. Uh the board has asked questions in the past about you know like if if what happens if false claims come up? Well, if a student makes the claim and signs it, they've stood by what their claim is. And then that is something that we follow up on students if they've made a false claim. Legal considerations. It's important to note that minor students do not
051have the ability to legally bind themselves or others with their signatures. Therefore, minor students will not be legally obligated by any document they sign. Nor are minor students permitted to sign official school records such as enrollment documents, permission or consent forms, or legal waiverss and releases. So, we still seek parent or guardian consent um on anything that is legal. And then the recommendations going forward, there's a lot of value in this and we're recommending that we maintain the practice of having students sign the documents and the types of documents that were mentioned in this presentation. Any questions? >> Any questions? >> So, I brought this forward as um as I've been through some some different things in the past here. Um, I feel as if a student is signing something that the parent needs eyes
052on it and they ought to sign it, too. And there's documents out there in this district that aren't getting signed by both. So, if one signs, then the other one ought to be the either they're witnessing them signing it and signing it themselves or they should be signing it together at home. >> Any other questions, comments? I think it's a good point. I don't have any other I read through this without the context of the your why, but I think that's a good point. So that's all I have to say. >> So from a logistical perspective, just having worked in a high school and being around athletic documents that both parents and kids have to sign, there's some logistical concerns that I guess I would have with requiring that to occur all the time. I
053think in certain cases I think it's good to have a student, you know, stick to their word. That's something that we need to teach kids, right? Um, and I'm just thinking like from a logistical perspective that could be potentially difficult. Now, if we're talking about, you know, a statement or things like that, then sure, yes, we should probably have a parent involved. But just to make a blanket statement that everything a student signs should be witnessed by a parent, I I I see your point, but I don't know that it's always necessary. Any other questions or comments? All right. Thank you. Moving on to finance and facilities. >> Can I I just want to go back um going on to that last presentation. Is there anything specific you want to put forward for the next
054board meeting to discuss? Like anything specific? >> Not at this time. >> Okay. Thank you. >> All right. Go ahead, Tom. Sorry. >> Consent agenda. >> Oh, consent agenda. I'm sorry. Looking for the approval of the school board meeting minutes of January 19th, 2026. Are there any questions or comments? Hearing none. That's approved by consent. Tom, finance and facilities. Okay, thank you. So, I will take us through a five-year budget projection. This is something that we do essentially in February of of of each year. So, I'll I'll take us through where I believe we are uh headed um in the coming year and where we'll be, you know, in the years that follow. So, um declining enrollment at times, you know, it's a it's a trend for it comes, it goes at times. Sometimes there's
055economic reasons for why a district may have decline enrollment. Maybe, you know, as we've talked many times in this in this room here, interest rates are high. People might have low mortgage rates and they're not willing to cash in or move away from their 3.75% interest rate. Um, in the past, we've had a number of families that move in each and every year at each and every grade level. And that current trend that we've historically understood and realized is is slowing down at the current time for some economic reasons here. So, um, looking when we define and we develop our budget, it's highly driven by a three-year FTE or full-time equivalent average of student headcounts. And, um, what I'm showing on this screen here are 11 uh, school districts in Walkshaw County that they had
056their fall 2024 to fall 2025 change in their three-year average. So those in red that are negative are are districts that have had declining enrollment here in the most recent third Friday snapshot. There's three districts, Elm Brook, Hamilton, and New Berlin that have had positive growth in their three-year average. Um not particularly large growth, but growth nonetheless here. So um I share this as we talk about our story and our budget and where we're headed. Um I want to provide some context that we aren't alone. We have some declining enrollments. We've had times in the past where we've grown recently and we find ourselves in a in a rate of decline at the moment here. So, um just want to share where other districts are at again and to show that we're not uh alone
057in this one. As a a feature of Wisconsin school finance and school funding is that there is a um a declining enrollment exemption. So, when your three-year average from one year to the next goes down, um, schools and school districts generally need some time to rightsize, um, it's hard to start the 25 26 school year to find out we are down 134 FTE. So, when your school financial picture is finalized, you're already two months into the school year. So, a feature of school finance uh, at school funding is a declining enrollment exemption. So here on the screen you see um districts that experience the declining enrollment exemption and it's a basically it's a way to say you are in a declining enrollment pattern at this time based on your three-year average last year to this
058year. So here's the amount of funding that um we will provide to you this year. You shouldn't have gotten it this year based on your three-year average, but we are going to give you time. and we're going to give you one year of a heads up that um this is where you are at. So, as you look here, we had just over uh a million dollar declining enrollment exemption. So, in an approximately 65 to 70 million operating budget, um this is funding we were provided here this year in 2526. Um that as we look ahead to 2627, we have to understand that a million dollars of funding we were given uh is set to expire. All things being neutral, Mosquo's in the same boat, Kettle Marine a little bit more than us. Um, you can
059see other school districts and and where they are at this time. So, uh, to put some historical context here, you know, going back to the 2015 16 school year and and the 10 years to follow, you can see that all those zeros, those are years where we had increasing enrollment. Okay, there was no declining enrollment exemption. We had some smaller values which are easier to navigate there in 20 and uh 2021 and 22 and 22 23 but our our three-year declining enrollment average is starting to show um based on the trends that we've had recently. So um I'm showing this just to show the school board as we build the 2627 budget where we are. Okay. Um again to show other districts we are not alone in this. our neighbors to the east are similar.
060Um, Kettle Marine, our neighbors to the north, they've had it a little bit differently than we have. Um, they've had a lot of decline in enrollment here and you know that forces some choices that the school board has to make. Okamwalk similar. Uh, New Berlin, um, they've had some declining enrollment exemptions in the past recently, no. Um, but they have had theirs as well. So, if I add each school district's amount um you know over that 10 or 11 year window there, it kind of shows you how declining enrollment has hit school districts in Walkshot County and to what extent. So, ours not as much. I'm choosing some of our neighbors um here in the southern walk county area for comparison purposes here. Okay. So just in summary of the declining enrollment exemption again it's
061a warning to school districts to rightsize their budgets. So failure to do that means you're going to adopt a budget that has a deficit and if you do this in a prolonged period of time you're going to have financial problems. Right? I think it's important that adopting a a balanced budget is a goal of the board. Some years like this one we adopted a budget with a deficit with a very particular school safety purchase in mind. I'll talk about that more on the coming slides, but declining enrollment is affecting most Walkshaw County school districts at this time. Do I think there will be an end to this? I do. Time will tell. All right. So, I'm going to look back uh at the four school years that you see on this screen. And this is
062really just a summary. And I'm going to put a particular emphasis on the surplus or deficit line. So fund 10, every everything that we code and school board members, I know you've heard this a million times for me, especially for those of you that have been here for a while. Um, fund 10 is our general fund. That's where the vast majority of all of our expenses and revenues occur. Uh, we do have other funds, but generally speaking, we focus on fund, aka the general fund. And in each of these years, we take a look at the the uh the revenues that we got, the expenditures that we had, and then ultimately was there a surplus or a deficit for that particular fiscal year. Um three of the four years here that you see on the
063screen, there was a surplus, we had a deficit in 2223. Uh school board members, again, uh we make decisions in June or July at the very end of the fiscal year. Sometimes we we transfer money out of fund 10 and we set it aside in fund 46 to pay for future building needs we know are going to occur and that's what occurred there in the 22 23 school year. So in summation the surplus that we have on the screen was just over $5 million. If we pay attention here I got to move this out the way. Pardon me. The fund balance percentage. So the fund balance again is a snapshot on June 30th of a given year of how much money do you have in the bank at that time. Our cash flow positions move
064significantly throughout the year and as you know we bottom out in the month of November. Some school districts are negative at that point and they have to cash flow borrow from their local bank. Fund balance as a percentage of expenditures here. This very last number there is a source of your district's economic health. When we went from a double A bond rating to a double A+, we um those outside people who um did that bond rating, standard and poor said Muano has a good fund balance rating. They're building responsible budgets. They set money aside for when problems come up. Um we can certainly set money aside from budget year to budget year. Could we ever set aside enough money to save up to build a new middle school? No. We we could never save that
065much money to make that happen. So there are times where we ask for additional funds but generally speaking from operating to operating uh operating budget to operating budget we um we try to build a balanced budget and at least have a small surplus and not a negative one. Moving on to the next three years here. So the leftmost year 2425 was the most recently completed fiscal year. The blue column is the current year that we are in. And then we have looking ahead to 2627. Um again at the end of the 2425 school year this past July we transferred 3.5 million to set aside for projects we knew were coming due. So we moved that money out of fund 10. We put that money into fund 46. I believe about $1.6 million was used to
066pay for the new roof at Clarin. Um, another significant investment was uh for another new roof section at Mcuano High School. So, we are using our operating budget again to pay for major building needs here. But that is why we have a negative number. Had we not made that fund balance transfer, then we would have had a more positive looking year for 2425. In 2526, you can see again we we adopted a deficit budget. Again, this is going to the one-time school uh safety purchase that we made back in September for all those prior years. I showed where we saved money for surplus. I remember saying before you right here saying, I believe that when you have surplus set aside, using it for one-time purchases to enhance school safety is why that fund balance is
067there. And so, we are using that money this year. But as we take a look at the 2627 school year, you can see that we're projecting a $750,000 budget deficit. Again, as you take a look at the uh the September membership, that's the third Friday count of full-time equivalent students. We have 40 4,325 students. Those are the res uh students who live in our school district boundaries and attend public schools. That number does not include open enroll in andouts, but we are declining by 85 students from this year to next year. And that's assumption we adopted back in December. Okay. We anticipate um getting an additional $325, sorry, uh $325 each year from the state bienial budget. We anticipate getting $742 of uh per pupil categorical aid. That amount is not going up. It's staying
068flat. And when those are the major things that drive school finance, headcount and funding from the state, okay? And with all the changes that we have, we see that we're anticipating we're going to have um a budget deficit. It's something that we can certainly manage, but it's there, right? It's it's certainly there. Um looking ahead to the past the 26 27 to the four subsequent school years, um you can see that our budget deficit grows from year to year. Now, what I I I don't want to stand before you and say we have significant problems. This is what it would look like if we do nothing. If we say we have problems, but we won't change our operations. We won't take a look at all the decisions that we have to, you know, take a
069look at as a school district here. So, um, the four-year budget, like why I say I I I put some weight on this, but not ultimate weight because both of the first two years and the last two years are dependent upon those bienial budgets. Those budgets will uh be highly dependent on who's the governor, the state assembly, the state uh the state senate, who's on the joint finance committee. I have no idea who the governor is going to be for those four years. So, a lot there's it's what I would say is this is a degree of evidence based on some reasonable assumptions of school funding and school enrollment as where we're going. So, I just use this as a as the time to say we should be wise about where we think we're headed
070based on the assumptions that we've made. Does that make sense? Okay. All right. So again, this is just kind of brings uh the current school year, the next school year in 2627 and what's to follow. So without rightsizing the budget or a substantial change to school funding, we are going to head towards some significant financial problems. So one year at a time, year by year, let's focus on what's in front of us um and and make the decisions that we have to make here based on your goals um and building a budget. So just to review at this time again, we're making a budget for next year, but we have to make some assumptions. You know, we're we're we don't know these things, but we have to take a best guess. And we've made these
071uh agreements here. We've adopted some assumptions here. So I walked through in December our third Friday count. Uh back in December, we we just adopted a minus 85 full-time equivalent decrease in student counts. We know that the state biianial budget will provide another $325 on our per pupil revenue limit. Uh we will stay flat at $742 of per pupil categorical aid and we're anticipating that special education categorical aid funding will go up by 7%. A couple more assumptions that we did at the back in January. Uh we revised our open enroll in counts and our open enroll counts and we use our second Friday in February uh excuse me our second Friday in January counts and we know how much money we pay uh or receive for students who open and roll in or students
072who open and roll out for regular education and special education. The last assumptions I used in the pro projections I just showed you. These are not assumptions you have uh adopted as a board yet, but we'll work on these over the coming months uh is a salary increase of 2.63%. So uh was public unions in Wisconsin can collectively bargain up to CPI as defined by the Department of Revenue. That number was announced last month at 2.63%. So for unions that are recognized as of July 1st in their fiscal year, which is how our teachers union is, um they can bargain up to a 2.63% uh uh compensation increase, but can't bargain for more than that. Okay. From a health insurance standpoint, uh we'll do a lot of conversation around health insurance over the coming meetings.
073Um we'll we'll we'll share some results from a survey here next week. uh back in March, we'll give you a state of the union on the financial performance and if there's any plan design changes, we'll adopt those uh talk about those in March and adopt those in April. So, these things haven't happened yet, but I to deliver this information tonight, I had to share uh start somewhere, I should say. And so, this is where um I landed. Okay. So, next steps um is we need to adopt a budget goal. My recommendation to you is that we adopt a break even budget for the upcoming school year. Of course, that that goal is for you guys to discuss and act on here to just help you see around the corner and what's coming up here as
074we move forward here through this uh spring, summer, and fall next month. We'll review our our health plan financials. We'll consider plan design changes, and we'll also adopt a 10-year buildings and grounds capital plan. Uh later in the spring, we will adopt potential health plan design changes. We'll build the staffing plan that's driven by student enrollment and course selections. Rachel will talk about that later. Uh in the summer months, we'll work to finalize employee compensation, review our annual tax levy, and then we'll adopt a preliminary budget that we share at the annual meeting and budget hearing. When we present that, our electors of the district can come and hear that and then vote up or down if they support that particular budget as we present it. In the fall, we'll finally in the month of
075September, we'll we'll know our third Friday counts. October 15th, we'll know our state aid amount and that will be uh given to us at that time. We'll finalize our tax levy and adopt a final budget at the school board meeting in October. So, step by step, here's where we are. The intent of this presentation right now was just to kind of let you see where we're going if decline enrollment continues and school funding doesn't change in a in a material fashion. Do you guys have any questions that I can answer for you? Jake? >> Jake, if you could go back a slide. The 10% incre sorry the 10% increase to health insurance. What are the drivers >> behind that? And does that include the stop-loss insurance being repriced? >> Yep. So, back in December, I
076believe was the month I I gave you some information. So, um you know, we we spent a lot of time in this room talking about the the the health plan that we provide our employees. Um we want to provide a plan that's valuable to them. Um so, we try to make sure that we manage the the amount of money that is deducted out of their paychecks every two weeks. whatever that amount is, the district pays 88% of that over the course of a year and the employee shares the other 12% of that. In addition to that, as employees consume health care, if they have doctor visits or procedures, whatever that might be, we pay attention to the co-pays that they have and what's their max out of pockets, right? Because we can certainly provide health
077care, but if it's really expensive to consume it, are we retaining our staff? How are we doing in all those regards here? um the 2425 school year. So what I would say is this that two things are are can be said right now. Um our plan is performing well. We use a lot of steerage to find the highquality medical providers that we work with. Um our clinic is actively referring for when our people need orthopedic surgeries. For example, we work directly with orthopedic associates Wisconsin. um we use that steerage as much as possible because they have great performance, high high rates of um quality and they also show us what their prices are going to be. So there's no huge surprises on the back end. However, we can't have a direct contract for every type
078of medical service that our people consume. Premature babies, uh heart attacks, cancer cases. We had uh approximately 20 uh shock claimants uh as they would be referred to where there's claimants that have 50,000 or more of medical expenses in a given year. So in 2425 as of June 30th, we thought this was a good year, but there's a six-month runout period that occurs. So while somebody may receive a medical service on June 20th, we may not see that that claim was incurred until September or October. So, there's a six-month runout period that follows June 30th. And as we work through the 2425 runout period in December, I said we had claims that came in much higher than we had anticipated. So, that can change from year to year. As a self-funded plan, what we aim
079for is to have four good years and one bad year in any five-year window. And I believe that in 2425 was that bad year. So that's why I I put that 10% increase on there right now, but next month in March, uh Megan Zimmerman and Sarah Hamus, who help us with our plan design here and other regional school districts, uh Burlington and Mosskele are examples, will come by to talk about the the financial performance of the plan and answer questions like you're asking, but that's a long answer to the question I believe you asked there. >> Yeah, I mean it feels so it feels like it's partially a correction. >> Yes. with it being a new program and not something that we would expect to see. >> Yes. >> Year-over-year on an ongoing basis. >>
080I would say this too, and this is this this is throughout the United States of America in every corner of the country. Whatever a knee replacement costs this year, it'll be 10% more next year and 10% the year after that. And medical moves at its own drum beat. It doesn't move with gas prices or housing prices or groceries, whatever it might be. It's expensive. I wish it would slow down. I don't have any secrets in that end, but we're doing everything we can. >> Thank you. >> Yes. Any other questions? >> Thank you. Okay. Thank you. >> You want the clicker here? You want following up on So, following up on uh Tom's presentation, um as he as he showed, there's a lot of school districts that are in a similar pattern of declining enrollment
081um you know, tied by that uh two-year bienium budget bienial budget um and the need then to uh look at possible strategic partnerships. And so, the the state of Wisconsin provides opportunities and school districts have gotten creative with how can they continue to provide high levels of service um while reducing what would be the local cost. And so I'm going to go through uh several slides tonight that just talks about what school districts are doing, what they're using, what we currently use in uh in McGuano uh in some of these areas. Um and then kind of talk about what some potential next steps could be uh in this regard. So um school districts use what's called a shared service contract. It's a 66 0301 agreement. And so it's a legal framework that allows school district
082to share staff and costs. Um there's some examples of this around like school psychologists, speech therapists, special education directors, um rural logistics. So Clark County, uh they share busing and co-curriculars. Uh you can also partner with your local CISA uh for purchasing some services. What this looks like, uh administrative and special ed, sometimes school districts share a business manager across two locations, curriculum directors, special education directors, and human resources. um listed some benefits there, but um you know when you're local to someone uh there's opportunities to partner um and and obviously share the cost of of of administrative services. Similarly with operational and support services, uh technology, IT, food service management, transportation, summer school consortiums. So some of them are northern and rural uh but they're coming together like the the Shiakton example there around
083uh around summer school. contracted services and charter consortia. So the concept is that one school district uh provides a specialized program for multiple regional partners. We see this example in virtual schooling. Um you can buy in to host the district's virtual academy. Uh some school districts have partnered around at risk programmings and that's the uh the example from the Oaklair McKinley Charter School uh where neighboring school districts have a need for one or two students but they share the cost of the overall program. uh so that it's meaningful um and much more costefficient for the for each individual school district whole grade sharing. So districts remain the uh remain separate but they do educate specific grade levels at one location. So for instance you might see uh a school district like a K8 school district
084that has um one area has a more substantial population of kindergarten through fourth graders. they have a building that was otherwise used for K8. They would maintain their students in that K4 setting, but there might be another neighboring school district that has a uh a 58 uh population, but a lower younger one, right? I mean, we we we see changes in birth rates, changes in people moving into communities and those school districts would come together uh for what's called whole grade sharing and and they maintain individual local control, but they do partner uh in how they provide that that educational service. And again, this is uh small districts uh will generally take advantage of this. This is not something like Maguano would necessarily be looking at district consolidations. We've seen this uh locally uh with
085the Holy Hill area and the Herman Neosho Rubicon School District. Uh but more and more school districts in the state is starting to incentivize this are looking at incentivizing consolidation. Um in the past uh I want to say it's been the past five years approximately 70% of the school districts in the state have passed an operational referendum um that is either a recurring referendum or a non-recurring referendum and they have to continue going back to their community for support. Our state representatives have have started to look at that and acknowledge that and um they are starting to propose increased funding for school districts to merge uh to share again share some costs and create some efficiencies uh when one school district is low. So what do we currently do? Uh we have a connect consortium
086with the Mosquo air mosqu Norway school district. It's a 6603 agreement and it focuses on students earning industrial certified credentials. Um Mosquo Norway serves as the operator of that fiscal grant. And this allows both school districts to keep more of the state aid provided. We had used to we used CISA for a while. CISA had a higher overhead cost. So we're able to to to maintain more money in our local school districts. Transportation, we do partner for students who attend alternative schools. And then we do share costs for homeless students. So if a student is living in the Mosquo Norway school district, but the Maguano schools are the home of uh origin, the school of origin, um we share the cost to bring that student from Mosquo Norway to Maguano and vice versa. In many
087instances, we do contract for itinerant services. So the Elbrook consortium, we partner with them for hearing and aiology. We do work with Elbrook uh because there is a there's a a a cost neutral. So if the staff member cost just for the ease of the dollar is $100,000 and four school districts partner for that. You pay based off of your usage, but you're not paying an administrative fee in that. We partner with CISA for vision, orientation, and mobility. >> Can you explain to everybody what CISA is? >> CISA is the Thank you very much. There's uh 11 12 CISAs in the state. It's called it stands for cooperative education service agency. Um and they provide professional development for teachers for administrators. Uh they also provide shared services for special education and this is one this
088is how we benefit from them. Uh we contract for interpreting services and then independent educational evaluation. So if a a family uh disagrees with the evaluation of their child for special education, uh they can request an independent education evaluation, an IE. Um and there's a process then that we partner with an outside provider to do those do those evaluations. And currently we do provide food service for the Norris School District uh and St. John's Lutheran Church and School. Um so these are some partnerships that we currently have. Sorry. So key takeaways right now that partnerships allow districts to reinvest savings into student programming. I gathered this information from the DPI uh school management services for official guidance. And what I'm asking and and I will come forward with this next week is to establish a
089committee of two or three schoolboard members to work with our administrative team to explore these options with neighboring school districts where opportunities might lie. >> When do you need to know um what board members? uh we'll come forward next week for an action item. Um and then if if that is something that the board is is interested in pursuing uh then thereafter um Mr. President you could appoint and uh we could move forward with the committee there. >> Okay then any questions any questions? >> So you had mentioned it was 70 something% of schools in the state have gone to an operational referendum from for those who don't know what that is. Can you just explain what the difference is between that and the referendum that we just passed? >> Sure. So, we passed a
090facilities referendum. Um, it's a designated referendum. Um, facilities referendums uh can be used for building a new school like we're doing, doing substantial referendum or doing substantial uh uh construction in your district or if you have large capital maintenance needs, you can go for that facility, that capital referendum to help with the buildings. That money is designated to a specific pro project. So in our case, the um the referendum that was just passed was dedicated to uh constructing and renovating the current Park View Middle School. So putting the addition on and doing renovations in the building and to perform capital maintenance throughout the district. So if we have roofs that are up, uh parking lots that are up, boilers that need to re be replaced, that money, that question was targeted for that. An operational
091referendum is money to help you keep your doors open and to continue to provide programs. Usually that is a set dollar amount. Um if you remember two years ago the Milwaukee public schools passed a $250 million operating referendum. Um that is one of the largest that I've I've I've ever seen. Um that actually had ramifications for many school districts across the state from revenue limit authority or for state aid, I'm sorry, for state aid. Um but then there are uh the operational ones that you see that will last three years. So a school district can pass a referendum to exceed the revenue limit by $1 million a year for three years and that helps then with those operational costs. Generally a very popular thing in propertyrich school districts where the cost of land a lot
092a lot of times that happens in Lake Country northern Wisconsin is a perfect example where they're living on operational referendum. um it is becoming more and more used uh in across the state um uh that you are relying on that generosity of your community every three or five years. So, just to follow up, historically, and maybe Tommy can answer this too, once a district, which we're clearly not in that position, which is good as you showed before, but once a district starts doing operational referendums, do they ever really get out of them or is it just perpetual? >> Unless you unless there's a substantial change in state aid or the district takes kind of one of those more extreme measures like consolidation, um you then become in that pattern. It's very hard to get out.
093I mean, as Tom's numbers presented, you know, you can you can see one million turns to two million, turns to three million, turns to four. That gap continues to exist. A lot of school districts that go to operational referenda don't get enough. They still are doing cuts along the way. So, programs uh go away, class sizes go up. Um, and that's the pattern that you get into and you live by it. >> Yeah. I'll point not to pick on, but I mean it's a it's understood what happened to our neighbors to the north, the Kettle Marine School District. They've I showed on a earlier slide that they've had the declining enrollment severely over the last several years. Uh they've had to make some tough decisions there. Not only did they have to make those tough
094decisions, but they also had to pursue operating referendums that I I don't know if they were additional funding for four or five years. But when those four or five years of additional funding, you know, fall off, if those operational referendums aren't renewed and approved by the community, more tough decisions have to be made. I guess what I would share, and I didn't intend to talk about this here tonight, but if you look at the history of school funding in Wisconsin up until about 2009, there's a the per pupil revenue limit amount for us this year, it's $1,650. That's the least amount per student in the state. We're tied for last. We've been last for essentially 30 years. that amount is growing by 325 per year uh currently but from 2009 through about three years ago
095uh it used to be linked to CPI so you knew all right if costs are going up by 3% we know that revenues will go up by 3% in 2009 that was severed um and we've had most years since then with a zero dollar increase I said earlier it's right sizing a school district isn't necessarily like real easy work Right. It's it's it's a lot of thought has to go into it because if you have a class of 24 kids one year and that becomes a class of 22 kids, you still have the same overhead cost. You still are providing buses, you're turning the lights on. Um all those things are still there. So it's like, well, where do we where do we rightsize? There's not an obvious answer as to where to go. So,
096enter the operating referendum to say from, you know, if you have that deficit like I showed, one way to solve that is to do an operating referendum. I'm not suggesting that. Is that an option for the school board? Yeah. Um, some districts do it and some don't. Any other questions, comments? Well, I think like moving forward, I think it'd be a good idea for us to look at different options to keep us stable and strong. So, >> I think that'd be a good idea to do. >> Make sure this is agendaized then for next week. >> Okay. Anybody object to that? >> Okay. Thank you. We're on to rolling hills roof. >> Okay. Okay. So, next month we're going to adopt our 10-year capital plan. And then what we're going to do in that plan,
097as we have in years past, is we'll identify here's the projects um that are coming due. You know, we we take a look at all those uh projects each and every year. We don't remove those projects, but when those Andy's here, thanks Andy. He's going to help out here. Um if we know a roof is on the horizon, we know it's due. Andy and his staff will walk on that roof several times a year. Um if we think we can get more life out of the roof, we'll live with that roof for a little more time. But there comes a time when um that roof is due. Thank you, Dr. Cook. Um and right now, um we know that the roof at Rolling Hills is due. We've had some heavy rainfalls or snowfalls here where
098we can tell, okay, there's water trying to get in. In some cases, a little bit has we don't want that to continue on. So, we'll take that and it's time to do this project. Um, this has been on the radar. Andy has gone out and proactively gotten bids already. So, Andy, thank you for doing that. Um, we are going to adopt this plan next month, but as Andy books his summer and gets contractors involved, uh, we'd like to move on this particular project sooner than later. Let's, uh, it be my ask that we don't wait until March for this. Um Andy has his bids in. He's done his homework and he'll talk about that, but we're looking for you guys to hopefully take action on this particular project tonight. Andy? >> Yeah. So, we had
099grid coverage on this uh with five companies coming back. Um we had a original budget in our 10-year capital plan of $1.3 million to do the roofs. Um and with that, you can see we came back with our base bid and the additives that I've added in there at $860,000. We put some contingency in there just because, you know, there's going to be something that pops up as we go. Um, there's a very close first and second and the highlighted nation roofing. I'm recommending to go with them because they have been our really premier company that's worked with our district since 2018. And they did some of the roofs at the high school section, part of Park View, Clariden, and now it would be Rolling Hills. Um, performance is a good company. We have not
100worked with them. The company that I use to research everything is Interstate Roofing Consultants and as they stated, they are a good company. We may see more change orders out of that company where Nations has been very much they stay to their budget for the most part. So, being that we are so close, I would be recommending that we'd work with Nations. Do you guys have any questions about this? >> None. Thank you. >> Jake, is is there ever an opportunity to bundle projects together and and get better pricing? So, if we have >> Yeah, I would say we do that. Jake, is on maybe not this roof, but we do bundle things. Now, when you're looking at roofs, we're looking in the millions of dollars generally when we're doing a full school. So, we
101historically have not gone multiple schools together because again, we're trying to get the life that we can out of the building. Um, this Rolling Hills was constructed in 2000. It was opened in that time frame. That roof was probably put on in and so we are now 26 27 years into this roof. I mean, that's a good life of that flat roof. Um, and but to your point, yes, I just put out a bid package tonight for summer work and there are multiple things in there that are trying to get together with uh some vendors that might do two, three, four things together or I have all eight schools listed there. So, there will be certain items that will be multiple. >> Thanks, Andy. Yep. >> Any other questions? Thank you. Thanks, Abby. >> We're
102on to student learning. >> So, thank you. Um, we uh will tonight we'll get into the 4K12 music program review. Um, want to thank all the people who have come uh to share their thoughts, their ideas, and their passion about music. Um, had an opportunity over the last couple weeks to meet with many good folks. Uh, they had a lot of passion, a lot of good ideas. I do appreciate them taking the time with me. um to lend me their perspective. Um I think one of the things that we had an opportunity to talk about uh was the fact that you know in opening this new middle school uh one of the things that we're mindful of and and and we keep coming back to is the fact that elementary education will look different um
103going into the future. Uh middle level education will look different as we go into the future. And it's been something that's grounded our conversation. It's been something that we've had to be mindful of. Uh we do have 4K uh going into all of our elementary schools. Um, our elementaryaries will end at fifth grade. Our middle school will begin at sixth grade. So, um, as we get going tonight, uh, Tom, if you want to advance, I don't have many slides here. Angela's got Okay. Um, so tonight we're going to try to cover, uh, questions that came from the board, uh, comments that came from the citizens as we go forward. So, explaining the staff staffing implications if we implemented a 2:1 model K12, if we kept everything the same, and then any other potential ideas for
104program delivery. We want to share out parent survey data around electives. Uh that survey was conducted in April of 25. We want to explain how music teachers have been part of the process and explain the lesson structure. What is it and what is the impact? And then we we're mindful of that, you know, students are more likely to feel uh known and valued by adults if they're involved with extracurricular activities, identify more strongly with their school, and build meaningful peer connections. We know this. music, athletics, arts, uh performance arts. Um we know that this does draw kids in and that we do see the academic benefits. Higher engagement and persistence, increased motivation and resilience, stronger time management and goal setting, improved collaboration, and higher GPA. The research suggests this and we do see this among
105our student athletes. We see this among our students uh participating in the arts, in music, and in theater. Um so we do see this as well. >> You could advance. So, I'm going to provide an overview of our current music programming and our district funded music activities. So, in terms of our academic offerings, general music instruction is provided during the regular school day for all students from kindergarten through 6th grade. We also do provide general music for our 4K students at our full day school sites. As a reminder that we talked about last time, we are required by state statute to provide general music instruction in kindergarten through sixth grade. So then beginning in seventh grade, students are still required to take a music course, but they have some options here. And those options include
106general music, band, orchestra, or choir. Our instrumental programs begin at elementary with orchestra starting in fourth grade and then band in fifth grade. Then in addition to that um we also offer a number of summer school opportunities that support student interest and skill development beyond the school year. So listed here are the offerings from last summer's program which include band, orchestra, and coral offerings. I do want to note that the offerings each summer can vary um as they are dependent on staff availability. So we are currently in the process of planning those offerings. So for this summer's program, that may look slightly different than what is here. In addition to our curc curricular offerings, the district also funds a wide range of co-curricular and extracurricular music opportunities. These opportunities occur outside of the school day
107and you can see those offerings listed on the right side of this slide. We have musicals, different clubs, various bands, and a variety of concerts. And again, these activities all occur outside of the school day. So, the district allocates additional funds to each of these areas beyond our regular school day programming um to pay teachers to organize and attend these offerings. >> Sorry. So, there we go. All right. I'm gonna take the baton here from Angela here. So, I'm going to uh over the next several slides is I'm going to attempt to provide some detailed data to you and and and you know, if there's several degrees that every story um use data to help you understand where we are right now with our music programs uh generally speaking throughout the whole district, what is
108our financial investment? What is our rates of participation, our retention rates of students who are in those programs? So, um I'm trying to answer some of the questions I've heard from the room and also maybe anticipate some of the questions that you might have here. So, we'll start by looking off uh looking at um studenttoteer ratios over the last three uh completed school years. So, this data here um is simply our sorry going to try to navigate this part here and I can't get this to hide. I apologize. Um the last three school years or I should say the last two school years along with the current school year. So in 2324 what we're looking at here is we are looking at teacher FTE which is full-time equivalency. A 1.0 teacher is a 100% appointment
109where they are working all school day each and every day. We do have some teachers who are less than a 1.0 FTE. Uh some teachers might be a.5 FTE where they only work half the school days. Uh those are rare uh uh occurrences but they do happen. But teacher FTE helps us understand how many employees, how many full-time equivalent employees do we have in a certain subject area. At the top of the screen there, you see it says MASD teacher FTE and function 125,000. Uh we use Wisconsin, all Wisconsin public school districts use uh what we call the woofer, which is the Wisconsin uniform financial accounting requirements. Every expense and every revenue that we record has an account code attached to it. So whether it's uh buying a chair, a desk, a copy machine, uh
110or paying a teacher salary, there's an account code attached to that. Uh every one of those account codes is going to have a six-digit function number that ultimately says here's the subject area where this expense was dedicated to. So it could be math, it could be elementary education, it could be bus transportation. When the lead number is a one, that is going to be an instructional expense, meaning that was money spent on a student in a classroom. A lead number that's a two is going to be something that is for the school district, not necessarily in the classroom. I mentioned school bus transportation. It could be a guidance counselor. A guidance coun counselor supports a student, but not necessarily in a classroom setting. Okay. So, um, art, those six-digit numbers there, art is 121,000, English
111is 122,000, world language is 123,000. Every subject area has their bucket. So, what we're looking at right now is function 125,000. And that incorporates our band, our music, our orchestra, all those um subject areas are in that bucket of 125,000. So, as we look at our teacher FTEES, you could see in the 2425 school year, um I should back up for a second. In 2324, we were at 13.74 FTE. In the next school year, 2425, we increased by two FTE. We increased our financial investment here. And inquire, you can see we added one full-time teacher and we also added another in orchestra. And then as we enter the current school year, we maintain those uh financial investments. All right. So, as we the data that you're seeing on this screen right here is all school
112districts are required to submit financial data. Our auditor came in in January talked to talked to you about all these things that we're required to do. And our our um our internal controls is a way to measure is Maguano coding their expenses correctly? Are they following the woofer as they're expected to? And those are the types of things that an auditor will look at. Not only will we submit financial information, but we also commonly submit all of our staffing information. So there's a Y staff report that uh Miss Sarah Sheil right here is responsible for submitting on our behalf. So we understand districtwide and statewide how many teachers are in subject areas and also with our student counts that we submit to the state. we are able to uh retrieve this data in a uniform
113manner across school districts. So on the screen here I have uh 10 the 10 K12 school districts in Walkra County. I don't have arrowhead on here as that's a 912 school district. So for uniformity here we have 10 K12 school districts in Walkaw County. This is the 2223 combined studenttoteer ratio for all of our teachers in the 125,000 bucket. So this would be general music at the K6 level along with our choir teachers and then our instrumental teachers which would be orchestra and band combined. Okay. So really you kind of have your out of 10 school districts you have your top three, you have your bottom three, and then you have your four in the middle. And what you're seeing right here is that we have we're one of the four in the middle in
114the 2223 school year. We had 378 students uh throughout the district for every 1.0 O teacher dedicated towards uh music, choir and instrumental um courses. Okay. Fast forward to the 23 24 school year. Again, we remain in amongst the middle four. So not in the top, not in the bottom. And then as we fast forward to the 25 2425 school year, this is where it's now being reflected. We did add two full-time teachers into choir into orchestra. And you can see that we have a low rat a lower ratio of students to staff. So we always prefer a lower ratio where we can provide as many teachers as possible to keep class sizes small to offer opportunities here. But obviously we have a lot of competing priorities in developing a balanced budget and doing all
115the things that's expected of us. But only Kettle Marine had a lower students to staff ratio than us. So we at we had 308 students throughout the district for every 1.0 teacher and function 125,000 the music area. If we unpack that and just look at the 2425 school year, now we'll take a look at general music, choir, and instrumental areas. So, in general music, we have five full-time equivalent teachers who teach our our six elementary schools, and they provide instruction to kindergarten through sixth grade. You can see here again, our staffing ratio puts us in the middle four of the districts. But when we look at choir, you can see that we have a very favorable ratio in 2425. And we also have a very favorable ratio here in the top three for instrumental music,
116band, and orchestra. Okay. So that again reflects what we've what we've invested increased our investment there. I'll do the same thing now to take a look at uh not just the number of full-time equivalent teachers and the number of students they serve, but then also uh the the amount of expenditures that we put into function 125,000. So again, same 10 school districts in Walkshot County. Yeah, you can see that we and we're going to see this number several times on the coming slides. We have 1 million500,040 was our investment in 2425. Um that's the second highest in the county only behind Waka Shaw. Okay. So as we talk about investments, um there it is for that particular subject area. So just conclusions from the couple data sets that we saw there is that we have
117the second to best student toteer ratio which is driven by uh a increasing our FTE and choir and instrumental areas only behind kettle marine and we have the second highest overall investment um of 1.5 million only behind wa any questions so far I have one question um with the state statute being a requirement for music until sixth grade. Is that different once sixth grade gets moved to seventh and eighth? I mean, is does this does it change anything or is it still a requirement for sixth grade? >> Yeah, the requirement remains the same. >> Thank you. >> Okay, so now um we'll take an internal look here at our 2425 expenditures. This is the most recently completed year. Um as we look back at last year, there's that $1,500,000 value again. We look at the
118prior five years and you can see that from 19 uh uh through 2425 you can see that we have invest increased our investment in our music areas. So there's over an additional half million dollars increase since the 1920 school year. When we take a look at the top 10 subject areas by function. So again, we're looking at instructional areas uh that that six-digit function number if it leads with a one, where are we placing our investments uh by subject area? So all teachers, our general classroom teachers at the elementary ed level, whether they're 4K, 5K, all the way through the sixth grade, they fall into a general bucket of elementary education. That six-digit number would be 110,000. in the seventh grade and beyond then you know we are able to break this out and for
119some specialty areas as well of we can understand how much money are we putting into math into English into science so on so forth. So if we take a look at the top 10 um we can kind of get a feel for how much are we putting into these subject areas throughout our district that one to the right that elementary ed kind of skews it. It's a little bit of an outlier. So if I just remove that, now I have nine of the top 10 subject areas by function. It gives the school board and the community an idea of where we are placing our investments and to what degree those investments are. Okay. All right. So then I'm going to review the survey data um that Joe referenced at the beginning of the presentation. So,
120in April of 2025, we administered an elective survey to families of students in grades 3 through six. And we did this to help inform future planning around elective offerings um and ensure that we're providing and developing the elective courses that are of interest to our students and families. We did receive 529 completed responses giving us a strong data set to really understand our famil family's perspectives in this area. And then in the survey, we asked families two types of questions. The first type of question was how likely their student would be to take a specific elective course. And then the second type of question asks them to rate the importance of each elective type overall. So in this first graph we are showing the percentage of families who said their child would be extremely likely
121or somewhat likely to take a specific elective course. And you can see from the graph, Spanish physical education and art were rated the highest, coming in at about um between 73 to 82% of respondents saying their child would be extremely likely or somewhat likely to take that course. You can see the music electives, which are indicated by the light blue bars on the graph, were rated significantly lower than those other areas, with all of our music courses being in the range of 36 to 46% of respondents. Then in this next graph, we are showing how parents rated various elective areas. So we asked parents to rank the elective area from one to five with one being the most important elective. So in the graph we have the percentage of respondents who rated the elective area
122either most important or second most important. So you can see that CTE, which is our career and technical education courses, came in the highest with 38% of respondents rating that area as most important or second most important. And then the other elective areas um were rated quite a bit lower than that with music being rated the lowest at 13% of respondents. And then this next graph was a duplicate. Yep. That's my fault. I apologize. I have the same graph in there twice, so apologize for that. All right. Thanks, Angela. Um, yeah, that that uh survey that Angela gave was given out last April to 529 uh survey respondents took it out of 141 available families. So, 38% of all families did reply with those answers there. Um the next couple slides I'll talk about our
123rates of participation over the last couple of school years and then also what our retention rates are in in some of these subject areas here. So in in orchestra, band and choir um what we did to like as a starting point to understand this data is every student is really a yes or no. It's one or the other. Did you take an orchestra class? Did you take a band course? Did you take a choir course? Certainly in some instances there are students who might take two or more but and and really just to say of the entire student body did this particular student yes or no take this subject area and so it kind of gives us a starting point as to you know what rates of participation look like. uh orchestra is offered in
124the fourth grade for the first time. Um and then it's continuous continuously offered thereafter. But about 40% of our fourth graders begin to take orchestra in the fourth grade year and then as they move on into the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth grades, so on so forth. You can see what those rates of participation look like. In band again is offered for the first time in fifth grade as an elective. And you can see between 32 and 40% of students in the last three years have started with band. And then again you can see the rates of participation thereafter. Choir is offered for the first time in the seventh grade. And we have about 25 to 29% of students in those three years that would participate in choir. To help bring a little bit more context
125like what do the other elective areas look like? Some I'll just note here some of these courses are uh are not electives at each and every grade level. At some of them they are uh required courses. So if you take a look at art in the seventh grade year and business in the eighth grade year you have you know 96 97%. So for the most part is universally required uh of our students here. So as we take a look at those rates of participation um early in those uh two subject areas there's a super high rate of participation because of the requirements but then it becomes an elective you kind of get a feel for how what percentage of the student body are taking those courses in art and in business. Um as I just
126kind of look at business here you can kind of see it's very high in eighth grade because business courses are a mandate there. Um, in the ninth and the tth grade year, students are really busy with their core classes, uh, uh, math, science, social studies, ELA. Uh, once students get through some of those requirements, by the junior or senior year, they have some more elective opportunities as they knock out those required courses. You can see that business then goes up in the 11th grade um, and stays high there in the 12th grade. In FIAD and world language, again, you can see, you know, FIED has it's um, at the I should say at the high school level students are required to take 1.5 FIAD credits to graduate. So some of those credits or some of
127those rates of participation are due to requirements. Some are due to electives. It's really hard to parse out which which of those years are speaking to electives. Um it's really impossible to tell that but at least it gives us a general idea of what the data says to us. And then likewise we can see what participation rates were in world language. Okay. Um the next two slides we'll look at the current freshman class and senior class. So again as we look at English, math, science, and social studies virtually students are taking each and every one of those subject areas which kind of validates what we would suspect. Um and then we take a look at the other elective areas to say where do our freshmen typically enroll um when given the choice. Fast forward to
128the senior year then um again those core areas English, math, science, and social studies. those students are meeting those requirements and then maybe have an opportunity to choose other elective areas. This, you know, we see business go up significantly from where it was on the last slide. Uh but we we get a feel for where our students are are taking these courses uh when given the chance to choose. Lastly, I'll talk about retention rates here. So, anytime you know on this screen here, we we take a look at a particular cohort of students. So if we look at the 116 students that were in the fifth grade in the 2122 school year, the following school year, they'll move to the sixth grade and after that the seventh grade, so on so forth. So the 116
129students in this instance that are in band in the fifth grade, there are 106 of them that are still remaining in the sixth grade. And of those 106 students in the sixth grade, 88 of them persist into the seventh grade. and we take a look at that particular cohort of students as they move grade level to grade level. So we can do this across each grade level to kind of look at you know retention rates to say when students begin how many of them persist on. Okay, this methodology that we're using uh is a cohort survival method. We use this when we're predicting enrollment. um actuaries use this to across a wide variety of year-to-year progressions across a wide number of statistical uh interests. Okay, the last slide uh to this slide shows what those
130same headcounts are but simply converted into percentages. So, of all the fifth graders who started in the fifth grade uh in this particular cohort, 91% of them uh continued on and persisted into the sixth grade. of those. As we go look at that next yellow box of 83% of those 91% who moved in and continued on in the sixth grade, 83% of those kids moved on and continue to play in the seventh grade. Of those 83% who moved into the seventh grade, 77% persisted into the eighth grade. So ultimately we can um look from grade level to grade level as to how what are the rates of persistence of the kids who start? do they continue on? So, generally speaking, if we just put these four years together here, um you know, we have 87%
131generally speaking in just these four years, 87% of fifth graders. And can I borrow the uh clicker here just so I can have the laser pointer here? Thank you. So this 87% there um that's for this snapshot of data represents the uh the persistence of on average of fifth graders who continue to play in the sixth grade. Of all sixth graders who who play the uh 86% of sixth graders will continue on to the seventh grade. Of all seventh graders who play 77 77% of them will continue on into the eighth grade. We can look at each grade level. And then when we take a look of all the kids who begin when we look at the survival ratio from this methodology, we can see that 16% of students that begin in the fifth grade
132will continue on it to the 12th grade. So when we do this for the subject areas that we're considering tonight, we can see, you know, what our retention data suggests. So um there is that. Tom, I have a question. Can you go back to this graph? >> Yeah. >> Hypothetical. If we get rid of the elementary school where kids are starting in band and we eliminate it from the elementary school and we put it into the middle school. What if we anticipate that high number going into the middle school? What is that going to do for staffing? Are we going to need more staff into the middle school? >> Great question. I'm gonna let Rachel answer that. So, I won't answer your question now, but Rachel will answer that in just a couple minutes. >>
133Okay. >> Is that all right? >> Yes. >> Okay. >> All right. So, then lastly, this is my last slide and I'll pass the baton here. So, just when we talk about like the the holistic nature of our music programs throughout the district and what our investments are, not just on uh the teachers, uh we talk about the classroom spaces and the performance areas. In in the 2016 we had the referendum project at Mcuano High School. In 2018 it opened uh and we dedicated 5.4 million of that $49.5 million project towards new classroom spaces for band, choir, and orchestra. What we used to have was not good. Um so we definitely improved those areas significantly. And then we also added a $10.7 million new performing arts center. In that performing arts center, we have two
134full-time employees. Uh we have one of them here now. Hi Cole. Cole's one of them. Um who operate that. Uh over the last two school years we have had 89 elementary, middle school, and high school performance concerts in that space. So about 45 performances a year for our students. So we really use the PAC. First and foremost, there's a couple philosophies on how to operate a PAC. Are you going to have outside professional performers off Broadway come in, things of that nature? are you going to dedicate your spaces to your student uh to your students in your community? And that's what we we've dedicated our space here to our students and to our community groups here um in Park View. As we look ahead here to the opening of the new middle school in fall
135of 2027 of the $89.1 million project, we'll have $4.34 million budgeted for new music classrooms and also an additional million will be dedicated to an additional performance stage in the cafeteria that will give us a second venue for when the PAC might be booked out. We'll have a second performance area uh at the middle school setting for additional performances to be um to take the stage. So with that, I'll pass it to Rachel. >> Thank you. So as we look at staffing ideas, something that we want to start with is just Tom Tom referenced that full-time equivalency and really what does that mean? So across our system, we have varying schedules. we have varying number of minutes that teachers teach and so we try to standardize what does a full-time teacher look like and so
136at the elementary level where there's there's no bells the minutes vary by content area um a typical teacher on average teaches between 1500 to600 minutes per week at the middle level a full-time teacher teaches either three of four 90minute blocks or six of eight 41 to 44 minute blocks Teachers at the middle school level also have a home room and they have an uh duty assignment and so they are anywhere between 1475 to 1610 minutes per week. And then at the high school, the high school operates on 30 62 minute sections per week and our full-time teachers there teach 24 of those sections for an average of 1488 minutes per week. And so I think this is important to note because no two teachers look the same typically in in what their daily right um
137what their day looks like, but we try to make it as equitable as we can in again the number of minutes that teachers are teaching to be considered full-time. So we're going to look at some staffing ideas for the 2728 school year. And so this what this looks like is in 2728 sixth graders are at the new middle school and 4K is in our elementary schools. So um here's just a staffing formula example. Um when we talk about staffing when we talk about keeping everything the same keeping everything thing the same is lesson structure is the same. So it's a pullout lesson model. If I were to have seventh grade 93 students in band, I would need four sections to teach those 93 students. That equates to 23 se 23 students per section. I think
138the music teachers would not be happy with me if I were to put 30 students into one class and ask them to teach that single-handedly. So 93 students equates to four sections. In eighth grade, if I have 50 st 56 students signed up for band, that would equate to two sections at 28 students each. With a lesson structure provided at 20 minutes one time a week on a 2 to 3 week rotation, I would need one full-time teacher to teach in this model. In a 2:1 model, so we're going to look at what that means. If I have 93 students in band, I would still need four sections with 23 students each. I would still in eighth grade need two sections with 28 students each. But because those music lessons, those individualized lessons are now
139provided directly in the classroom. I need two full-time teachers to teach this case load. >> Tom, you might have to be my clicker. It's okay. So what does this look like in actual staffing? So I want to go on record here as saying these are staffing and numerical projections. These are numbers based on historical enrollment trends. Students have not signed up for classes yet and so these numbers could be subject to change based on what students sign up for going into the 2627 school year. If however at the elementary level I have 235 students signed up for orchestra and we ran a model where our orchestra teachers delivered 30 minutes of whole group instruction twice a week. I would need two staff members to run that. I currently have two elementary orchestra teachers and so
140I would not need an increase at the elementary level. In middle school with our incoming sixth graders coming to the middle school, I'm looking at 162 students who would be in orchestra in middle school. I currently only have a part-time orchestra teacher in middle school. A part-time orchestra teacher cannot teach 162 students in a 2:1 model. And so to staff that I would need two full-time teachers, which would be an increase in one full-time plus a.26 staff member. In high school, I'm looking at 90 students enrolled in orchestra. I currently have one high school orchestra teacher. in a 2:1 model, I need to double staff some of those classes. And so I'm looking at a 1.5. So a one and a half teacher. And so the total increase for the 2:1 model across K12 would
141be a 1.76 increase in staffing for orchestra. Tom, can you click band? If I look at band, so band starts in fifth grade. And so you're going to have to stay with me here because this one gets a little bit more complex. Band based on historical projections, I'm looking at band at elementary serving 118 students. The problem with this is that it's 118 students across six schools. And so while I only technically would most likely need one full-time person to serve 118 students, there's not one person cannot travel to six schools and make that work. And so I would need two part-time people to travel to six different schools to make that scheduling work. At the middle school level with the band again, sixth grade band coming to the middle school. I'm projected to have
142251 students in band. I currently only have one band teacher at the middle school to serve 251 students. I would need to increase that to two band teachers. So I would be looking at that those two elementary band teachers I currently have splitting their time between serving those 118 elementary and then coming over and serving the middle. That gets a little complicated because our elementary and our middle do not run the same schedule. One starts earlier than the other. So scheduling wise we run into some hiccups but we usually can figure out a way to make it work. in high school. Then we have 96 students total enrolled in band. Again, I currently have one staff. If we run a twoto one model where we're doubling up on some classes, I would be looking at
143a 0.5 a half a person addition. And so total for band, I would be looking at a half of a person of an increase. Again, can be done. I think we all know with hard to fill positions, anytime we're hiring part-time, that does present a challenge. So now, what happens if we keep everything the same? Um, Tom, I think you went too far. Thank you. Yep. So, what happens if we keep everything the same? So, elementary staffing implications. So now everything the same. We're doing pullout lessons in um our elementary along with some small groupoup lessons as well as teaching general music. So I want to first draw attention because I think this came up again. These are based on right now projections. 5K you see 13 sections that is likely to grow. We have
144students who enroll between now and the end of the year. I anticipate that number growing. Right now, for general music, we have, like Tom referenced, five full-time teachers. If all five of those full-time teachers remain, in our current projections, each of those teachers would be teaching 1,164 minutes. If we reduced that to four full-time teachers, they would be teaching, 1455 minutes. If I had a crystal ball, I would anticipate we're going to see these sections fluctuate for next year. Again, our kindergarten sections are going to go up. And so, it's hard to put together a staffing projection without knowing final numbers, but I would safely assume, again, crystal ball, I will need all five FTE at the elementary to service all of our elementarymentaries. When it comes to traveling, we we need somebody to travel
145to Eagleville. And again, when you get down to four, traveling across six sites becomes really difficult. Band, if we keep everything the same in fifth grade, I'm looking at 118 students. Again, I currently have two full-time staff. I would only need one, but again, it's that I would need two part-time people because again, one person can't go to six schools to service 118 students. And then in orchestra, um, I'm going to have 143 fourth graders, 92 fifth graders to service that number. I would need two full-time staff. I currently have two full-time staff and so nothing would change there. So what is the total um staffing implication? It would be a reduction in band by one person. You'll see that when we get to now what that looks like at the secondary, that person is
146just going up then to the middle school. Tom, can you click? So then what are the K the six through eight staffing implications if we keep everything the same in band again in sixth grade I'm looking at 102 students 7th 93 856 the total number of students there is 251 I would need two FTE to service that and so that's a 1.0 0 increase. Again, I I would reallocate my elementary person to that position. In orchestra, I'm looking at 163 students total. I currently only have a part-time orchestra teacher. I cannot give a 74 orchestra teacher, 163 students. And so, I'm looking at two full-time teachers to service that number. That would be an increase of 1.26. two six teachers choir. With sixth grade coming on board, I'm looking at 258 students in choir. I
147currently only have one full-time choir teacher at the middle school. Again, I cannot give a one full-time choir teacher 258 students and expect that teacher to again deliver in the current lesson structure. So I would need to increase that to two full-time teachers which would result in a again one person increase. And then if we kept everything the same in both sixth and seventh grade music is required. So kids who did not take band orchestra and choir would be required to take general music. And so where you get the 81 and the 107 from is just I looked at what this total student enrollment was in grades six and seven. And those are the kids who are left. So 81 and six, 107 and 7th. And so that's 188 students who would be taking general
148music. I currently have a part-time a.5 staff member who teaches general music. And then her other.5 her other um part of the position, she goes to the high school. I I can't have a half-time person teach 188 students. that position would require a full-time person. And so that is an increase in a 0.5 position. And so the total staffing implication there is a 3.76 staffing increase. Again, if I reallocated the band, it would be a 2.76 staffing increase. Tom. So, what are some other possible ideas for band and orchestra at elementary? So, um, one is looking at an app. Tom, can you mess me up? Um, so one is looking at, um, an afterchool or before school club at our elementary level. So, we currently have our choirs um at our elementary level. uh some
149of which do this model. Another idea is to partner with our community ed partnership. So this is something that already exists in McGuano area school district and we have courses like yoga, art, cookie baking um that all run very successfully. Uh, I also want to point out that we don't have weight training that exists at elementary, but our um we do have over 100 students who participate in grades fifth through 8th in a weight training program that is run through the community ed and it runs very successfully. And so again, we know we can do this. Um, it's just a matter of getting it launched. We could look at using the general music time. So all kids again have general music at the elementary level. Uh what would it look like to take some of
150that time to deliver some of those band and orchestra lessons? And then we have a really robust summer school program and so what does it look like to continue to expand on the offerings there for band and orchestra? >> Hand it over to Angela. >> Okay. So I have a question. >> Yeah. >> Where would the funds come from for after school and before school? So for after school, before school, we would have to look at our co-curricular handbook. We do offer um stipens for most of the activities that are offered during that time. And so that's something that we would have to look at investing in um either through a reallocation of current funds or through the additional um allocation of funding. >> Thank you. >> All right. So next I'm going to provide
151>> question. Sorry. Oh, what is the advantage of the 2:1 model over what we're doing currently? So, I think a a a couple of things. I think one, um it keeps kids in the music class for their music lessons. So, when we looked at the new middle school, um and the design of the new middle school, we've designed spaces where we can have that pull out instruction right in the music class in those small spaces. So, it keeps kids in their music class. Um requiring less competition for again those competing priorities. Um the 2:1 model provides I think more um ability for contact time. So right now that lesson structure is at the elementary those 20 minutes one time per week and then the whole group is 30 minutes sometimes twice a week. This is
152a 2 to1 model is every time you have class you have access to two teachers. So your lesson structure is far more um is far more available to you than in a pullout model. Um, so I think I mean there's there's a lot of advantages to it. >> Doesn't it also help like being the kids being pulled from other classes? >> It that that is yeah absolutely an advantage. All right. So next I'm going to provide some more details about what our general music and our instrumental programming looks like. So, starting with general music at the elementary level, again, we do provide general music instruction to all of our students who are in our full day 4Ks through sixth grade. So, for our full day 4K students, they receive one 30 minute class per week
153currently. And then our kindergarten through sixth grade students receive two 30 minute classes per week. And the focus of our general music instruction is truly foundational. and it includes things like singing, rhythm, movement, listening, and those early music literacy skills. Students are introduced to music reading and basic notation, and they do introductory units with various instruments, including recorders, ukuleles, and guitars. The skills that the students learn in general music directly support their readiness for instrumental and ensemble participation in the later grades. Next slide, Tom. So, this slide um has an overview of how lessons and rehearsals are currently structured for orchestra, band, and choir from fourth through 8th grade. So at the elementary level, instruction occurs through pullout lessons and through scheduled rehearsals. So students receive one 20 minute small groupoup lesson a week and
154then they also receive one to two 30 minute whole group rehearsals depending on their grade level. At the elementary level, chorus is offered as a club and usually happens before school or during the lunch and recess period. Then when we look at the secondary level, our instruction shifts more fully into those scheduled class periods, but we have pull out lessons still occurring and sectionals that supplement that instruction. So, the way that students sign up for these lessons and how often they occur each quarter varies based on the course, but regardless of this, these lessons all occur in that pullout model with students coming out of other scheduled academic courses. Next slide. So then looking at the impact on instruction at the elementary level, small groupoup lessons operate on a rotating schedule. So you can see
155a sample of an elementary band smallroup lesson schedule on the right of the slide. So this is the schedule for band lessons at one of our elementary schools. You can see from the schedule that each instrument group meets with the teacher on a weekly basis for a 20 minute lesson and then the next week the schedule rotates so that students are not missing the same time each week in a classroom. What that looks like is small groups of students who are in those different instrument groups coming and going in the classroom throughout the day. That creates the need for classroom teachers to retach or provide makeup instruction to those students who have missed different parts of instruction throughout the day, impacting that overall instructional flow for both the teachers and the students. And then our
156whole group rehearsals at the elementary level also create some tradeoffs as students miss wind time once per week. So wind stands for what I need time and is a daily time that we provide for students that is designed for targeted intervention, reinforcement of skills and then extensions specific to what each student needs. So when students miss this time, it limits their access to those reports. Also important to note is that students at the elementary level are allowed to take both band and orchestra if they would like to. So for students who choose that option, that impact of missing instruction and the disruption to the school day is double. And then at the secondary level, students still out of other academic courses for their small groupoup lessons. So again, the impact is that the teacher and
157the student need to find time to make up for what they missed. Next slide. So just some other considerations around the work that's taking place. So none of the ideas that we are considering or that we will continue to consider are designed to reduce staff. Tom spoke to uh the increase in in staffing that we've had over the last two years and our intention is to continue with our staffing to continue to be able to provide a robust music program. Uh one of our other considerations is around band. So we've talked a little bit about our band numbers and we um have a model right now where students are not allowed to enter band after sixth grade. And so we want to start to look at ideas in which students can enter band um after
158sixth grade. But then what what does that look like? Does it mean offering an introductory band course? Um does it mean again a different model of instruction? But we know that we want to explore the idea of students being able to enter band after sixth grade. And then I think you know we've said this in every presentation. We know that our music program has incredible strengths and we want to continue to capitalize on those strengths. Um, I was in an elementary building this past week watching the music teacher greet every student by name at the door while playing his ukulele and it was the most welcoming, wonderful experience that I have seen. And so again, we we know we have great things happening and so we want to continue to again capitalize on those great
159things. So as we look at the work, um we as a music department, so elementary music teachers came together on December 10th. On January 12th, we met with our instrumental music teachers and on January 14th, we had the option for all music teachers to come together. January 26th, we brought the entire department together. So, Angela and myself facilitated um some discussion around different program ideas and we conducted what was considered a plus delta. So, just a positives and then what are some things that we're wondering as we analyzed our current model of program instruction. From there, from that meeting on the 26th, we u made the decision to form subcommittees. And so we actually have our first subcommittee meeting being held um on Thursday of this week, February 12th. And our subcommittees are focused on
160three categories. So one is metrics of success. We've heard a lot of conversation about right is it enrollment? Is it you know winning competitions? Is it what what are we going to define as a successful music program? And we want our teachers at the table for that discussion. And so that's going to be one of the subcommittees, crossdist program comparison. So we're going to have a subcommittee dive into what are other districts doing, are they successful, um what could it look like here? And then based on those cross district comparisons, based on exploration of other models, what are the staffing implications that we see? And so um we've invited all music teachers to express an interest on serving on those subcommittees. Um it is after school, it is compensated time and we had a really
161great um interest in from our music teachers in serving on that. And then the full music department is going to reconvene on March 6th and we're going to go over what the subcommittee has been doing up until that. We'll have had two subcommittee meetings by that point in time and we'll continue our planning and continue our board updates around that planning for you. So going forward, we're committing to monthly board updates and staff updates in this uh area. Uh the Parkview Middle School steering committee coordination that will continue uh over the next months. Uh we'll continue to hear from community members, students, and parents feedback uh as we present these plans. And then uh we'll be coming uh forward. I have a monthly parent advisory group and that advisory presentation uh will happen and we'll
162get input from parents uh on that parent advisory. What questions do you have, >> Rachel? When you were putting up all of the extra teachers that we we need with certain models, can you put um kind of like a price tag on that? >> Um I can I get that information to you? >> Yeah. So, you can just like next month. >> Yeah. >> Because I know you're busy. So, >> Yep. >> Next month would be great. Any other questions, comments? >> I have a question. >> Crosby. >> So, I think it's slide 48. I'm looking at the the pull out schedule. So, what potential classes are kids being pulled out of? It really is. It's throughout the whole day. So, kids are missing different things. They might be missing a piece of their literacy
163instruction. They're missing pieces of math, science, social studies, sometimes even other specials. Okay? just depending on what time of that day is. And again, this is rotating, so they miss a different chunk of time each day, but it's throughout the whole day. So, it really hits all of those areas. They do try um to ensure that they're not pulling the kids out of the first 15 minutes of instruction. But at the elementary level, for example, our literacy instruction is two hours. So any chunk of that is going to be an important chunk that they're missing, right? Has there been feedback from the teachers where the kids are being pulled out of that class. What does it do to the class as a whole? Like I know that student is missing class to go to Y,
164>> you know, band or orchestra. >> How does that impact the rest of the class as well? And how does that impact the teacher that's teaching that class? >> Yep. So, as this is occurring, as kids are coming and going throughout the day, there's obviously a bit of a disruption factor as that's happening. But then, if you think about one teacher and she might have kids in um a number of those different groups, so she might have a a child who misses a piece of literacy instruction. She might have a child who misses a different piece of that same literacy block. She might have a child who missed some math instruction. So now she has to find some time during the day to bring those students up to speed um while students are doing something
165else and it just creates a definite challenge for them in the classroom. I think there's also just like a the logistical that you don't always think about, right, from the teachers perspective, but right like we're in partners and my partner now has to leave, right? Because we're past the direct instruction, but now we're in group work and right as a teacher, you're constantly thinking on your feet, but now it's okay, quick, go join this group of three and now my partner comes back for shareout time, but my partner wasn't here when we developed it. So like it's little things like that um that can sometimes be disruptive to the learning as well. >> Any other questions? >> Jake, can we go back to slide 44? >> So Rachel, just looking at the numbers here, can
166you help me get a better appreciation for orchestra? why we would need two FTE versus just adding one and maybe having one and three quarter when I look at the numbers it seems like >> so yeah so by grade level is really why I'm would be looking at the two because I would be looking at sixth grade that would most likely be three sections seventh grade would be three sections and eighth grade would be one section so it's just a little bit more difficult to schedule that. >> I could pro you could probably again depending on how the schedule rolls out. >> I know it's a it's a quarter, right? But every little bit >> absolutely absolutely yeah and again that's where I that's where I would say again staffing projections not set in stone
167absolutely would need an increase whether it's a 1.26 or does it turn into a one point right 84. some of that lands in how you have to schedule the kids and where those schedules land. >> But already having some I'm assuming that's one person at three quarter >> one person at yes at seven point at 7 >> an easier >> Yep. Yep. >> Right. Thank you. >> Other questions? >> I have a question. So, if we're looking at the 2:1 model versus the keep it the same model, am I seeing this correctly that we would have less of a staff increase going to a 2:1 model than we would keeping it the same? Sorry, I'm just bouncing between a bunch of slides here. So, I just want to make sure I'm reading that correctly. So
168if we if we did the 2:1 model from 6 through 12th, we would not see a staffing increase. Those staffing allocations from elementary would go towards secondary. So if we just did it 6th through 12th, we we would remain staff neutral. Is that what your question was? >> Yeah. And then so well I guess now I have two questions. So then what would it look like? What does our staffing look like if we stay the same and we offer what we're offering now? Is there what is the staff increase like on that compared to what it would be in a two to1 model if we only offered it from sixth grade and up? >> So okay let's Tom, can you >> I need a summary slide. >> I need a summary. So um can you
169go to slideshow Tom? That's good. Okay. So, if I kept everything the same. Tom, can you move? Craig. Thanks. Sorry, Craig. >> Ber. So, if we kept everything the same, actually, I'm gonna go back this way. I'm gonna go back here. Oops. Tom, can you get me to orchestra? Okay. So, if you look here at the 2:1 model at elementary, you see that currently at elementary, I have two orchestra teachers. Right. Now, Tom, go to the um keep everything the same to keep everything the same in orchestra. If I kept everything the same with sixth grade coming up, I need to add an orchestra teacher. Minimally, to Jake's point, one orchestra teacher, right? So, I've got to move one to the middle school, which leaves me only one at the elementary. If I go to
170what my elementary orchestra looks like. So, Tom, go back to the purple elementary. Yep. Nope. Yep. that one. In orchestra, I've got 143 fourth graders and 92 fifth graders. I can't service that number of students with just one orchestra teacher. Does that make sense? >> Feel like that doesn't make sense. You're saying yes. >> To come back to your question though, if we did the two to one model, that would be the movement. We'd have to look at the the orchestra, choir, and band design at the elementary >> to maintain that or to shift that and that's the the neutral part of the the staffing model. >> Correct. Okay. But if I'm still understanding this correctly, if we keep everything the same, that's where we see the biggest staff increase. Is that correct? >> Yeah.
171I would sum it up like this. If we kept everything the same, biggest staff increase. If we do the 2:1 model, K through 12, staffing increase. If we do the 2:1 model 6 through 12 staffing neutral. >> Okay. >> And I will get that on a slide deck for you next time. >> And with the cost. >> Yeah. >> Jason, my questions to Tom and we don't really need to be on the slide, but I was looking at 35 and you were talking about measuring retention and then also participation rates. Do you have any mechanism to forecast what retention and participation looks like if we get rid of fourth and fifth grade? Because I mean, you already see a pretty dramatic drop. And we all know as you get older, as one of the citizens
172pointed out, as you get older, you're less likely to participate in new things. So, what does that look like? >> Yeah, I guess I don't like I couldn't take this data and extrapolate. I wouldn't feel comfortable trusting the numbers in that because that's a lot of guesswork on that part of it. I mean, there are examples of things and I think of neighboring communities that offer certain youth activities at second grade next door that we don't offer till fifth grade here. And by the time it all shakes out at the high school level, it all looks the same rates of participation. Um, I would ask probably to find other school districts who start at whatever grade levels we're con considering to say what does it look like at those districts. I wouldn't take our own
173data and guess with it. I'd look at somebody else to say what are their participation rates if they start at whatever grade level at whatever subject area. >> I do think from a participation standpoint, it was on one of the slides where it talked about we we don't allow kids to enter band after sixth grade. Um, one of the conversations I had with one of the citizens who's deeply passionate about music, I I said, "How do you how do you address numbers?" And the person said, "We offer marching band at the high school during the school day." It's common. I'm familiar with that. And so, you know, talked about that a little bit with with that person. Um, we don't offer marching band during the school day at the high school. It's offered after school.
174A lot of school districts that have large high school bands, they have marching band as a class during the school day. So, I mean, there's a number of things that we could consider that um may have an impact on the numbers that might not necessarily be something that uh would prevent a high school student, for instance, from taking the class. You know, build it into the day. Don't put it at night. Don't compete with work or maybe a a sport that they're interested in. Build it in as part of the curriculum during the school day. So things that we can consider as we build this out down the road. >> Eric, uh just a few things I kind of uh jotted down as we were going through this. What would the data look like if
175we just got rid of the mandatory class for music at seventh grade? Um maybe we could use the the seventh to eighth drop and kind of do a staffing projection for that. And then what would it look like if we did maybe a fourth grade orchestra? Could the general music teachers bring that on? You know, I mean, I know we talked about this last month and it's essentially, you know, how to assemble your your instrument and how to hold your instrument and just the basics, right? Um, can is that something they can take on? >> We do have that is one of the ideas is looking at what can happen in the general music class that we will explore with our music team. >> Okay. Because I think if we got rid of the seventh
176grade mandatory, I think those numbers are going to look significantly different and everything changes. >> Just to be clear on the seventh grade, is that a district requirement or a state requirement that they take district requirement? >> Any other questions? I just want to make a comment like so the community knows when I walk through the schools a lot of times I'll ask our teachers what can the board do for you and the number one and two things that always come back to me are more classroom time and classroom disruptions so it's a lot more complicated than just money as well and teachers will come up and they'll say hey why can't that aren't in music saying why can't I pull the students out of music to get more class time with me. So, there's
177it's a lot more complicated than just pulling kids and thinking, well, my my parents said it's okay. There's a staffing issues and like I said, those teachers have to go back and retach whatever they lost in classroom. So, just want to make you guys aware of that as well. So just to follow up with my request, um if we could do the 2:1 model, which you said isn't, you know, is like not the worst for staffing staffing implications, if we could do that with getting rid of the seventh grade. >> Thank you. >> Just ask the board if it's okay if we come back on a month by month with this. As you can see, kind of the number of things that we have packed in there. if it's okay. Um, we'll come back in
178March then at the committee of the whole uh take what we talked about tonight, take the comments from the community, continue to, you know, evolve with our plan uh as we move towards that June uh final recommendation, >> right? And so the community knows when we come back in March, there won't be action taken. This is just exploratory till we figure out a good plan. So please put your input in and if you have great suggestion for solutions, please email us. Any other questions or comments? All right, we >> Hey, I'm sorry. It's Mike. >> All right, Mike. Go ahead. >> Morning. >> Yeah, just one input. I think the idea at the end um where it mentioned having beginner band later in school is a great idea if that can somehow be a part
179of it. I myself didn't start playing trombone till freshman year and I loved it but honestly I don't think I would have ever tried it in elementary school. Thank you. >> Thanks Mike. Any other comments or questions? All right. Thank you. Going to curriculum council update. >> Yep. So just an update about our curriculum council. We had our second meeting on February 2nd and the primary focus of our meeting was to review our third through fifth grade ELA pilot. So Michelle Ziggler and I provided some additional information for the council um regarding the pilot and our instructional priorities around resources. Um we also had some pilot teachers who joined us as guests at the curriculum council um meeting to share firsthand their experiences and then share a little bit about the strengths and challenges that
180they're seeing in the materials. We had um a pretty robust discussion on the council with council members asking questions and providing feedback that they had regarding the resources. And so then looking ahead um we will be putting together a summary of all the feedback that we're collecting from the various stakeholders and we will provide that uh summary for both the board and the curriculum council. And then in March, we'll be bringing together all of our third through fifth grade teachers as well as our K2 literacy reps um to review the pilot in its entirety and determine what recommendation we want to make to the school board in April. We have set a community viewing night for the recommended resource so that um parents and community members can come out and view the resource that we
181will be recommending. That will be March 19th um from 6:00 to 7:30 here in this room. And then our next council meeting is scheduled for May 4th. We have some things that we are have slotted to be on the agenda, but we will post the final agenda as we get closer to that date. >> Any questions? >> One addition, >> Mike. Yeah, I I thought the meeting was really uh put together well and I really wanted to publicly thank the four teachers who gave very candid uh feedback on the pros and the cons of the pilot programs that they were using. Um, and I understand there's a lot more teachers that they're going to be collecting the data from. Um, but just uh very well done and thank Angela and the four teachers who gave
182their feedback. >> Thank you. >> All right. Thanks, Mike. Going on to personnel topics. >> All right. So the first one is around our um staffing substitute staffing agency. So this past year we have used teachers on call for the past ever since Tom would know but for as long as I've been on board and this past year teachers on call was acquired by Kelly Education. Kelly Education is a national staffing agency and unfortunately despite their promises we have just seen a really big decrease in the services that they've provided to us. So we have experienced um decline in the number of in our fill rates overall fill rates. We have had multiple issues in our substitutes being compensated appropriately which um has resulted in some cases of some of our substitutes leaving us and
183going to other districts. Um we have had just general customer service issues. So not responding to phone calls, not responding to emails. Um, I'm looking at Sarah over here because Sarah works directly with some of our um, substitutes who want to come and work for us who then are met with again just no responses and then eventually again end up leaving and and we we need substitutes. Um, and so we started looking at what are some other alternatives. We did meet with our Kelly Education and Teachers on Call rep to say we are we are not happy. we are going through this and not happy with the level of service. They assured us things are going to change. We're going to get better. The month of November, I asked all of our administrators to administer
184a survey to every sub that came in their building. What's going well, what's not going well? And then I specifically asked about their experience with Kelly. Um, we collected over, I think, 200 some surveys that all of our principles read and that I read. Um, and when things still weren't going well, we called back in our Kelly Education rep, um, and said, "You said it was going to get better. It's still not getting better, and at this point, we're going to explore some other options." And so, we looked at two other staffing agencies, Red Rover and Edu Staffing. Edu Staffing is the one that we landed on in terms of being um, what we think is going to be most beneficial to our district. Um, Edust Staffing offers personalized district support. So, we get our
185own representative, our own hiring manager, um, someone who will work directly with us, not just a corporate 1-800 line, which we think is very favorable. Um, they will do their own on-site onboarding and training with all of our substitutes. So, substitutes, um, the requirement to become a substitute is a bachelor's degree. You don't have to have a degree in teaching. And so that onboarding of making sure that people know how to be prepared to handle a classroom is really important. They do that right on site. Um we have seen their data from neighboring school districts and their retention rates um are far higher than what teachers on call Kelly Education currently has for our district. They have a lower contract rate. So granted it's only a percentage lower than what Kelly Education offers us but
186every dollar matters. Um, and then like I said, there's there's a stronger fill rate. I know that the question might come up like why don't we why don't we do this ourselves? Why don't we become our own staffing agency? One of the biggest hindrances to that is that in the state of Wisconsin um when you belong to the WRS, you have to wait 75 days before you can after you retire before you can work for another WRS entity. And so one of our highest substitute um employee groups is teacher retirees. And so when they work for EDU staff or Cali education, they can start working on day one. They don't have to wait that 75day waiting period. Another really big um factor is benefit eligibility. So all of these staffing agencies track and prevent the
187substitutes from working over that 30 hours per week so that we don't offer full-time benefits when we have to do that on our own. We can get that becomes a little bit cumbersome. And when we have long-term sub positions, which we do have quite a few, right, maternity leave, surgeries, things like that, um we are obligated to then offer health benefits, which becomes incredibly costly. Um, as Tom spoke, we have a really great health package. Um, and then obviously there is when you do it yourself, there is the onboarding, there's the training, there's the right, you're you're managing it. And right now, we don't have the staffing capability to take that on. So, there's there's quite a few reasons um why you don't typically see districts um especially districts of our size handling this inhouse.
188Um, Pewwaukee, Elra, Camelton. Right now, Waka School District is the only one that I could find in Wakasha County that does handle it in-house, but they have their own person solely dedicated to this task. So, um, based on all of that, I'm going to be coming forward with a recommendation to move forward with an EDU staffing contract for the 2627 school year um, in the coming week. >> So, doing it ourselves, they used to call that double dipping, correct? Mhm. >> Y, >> but now they have to go through an agency. So, you don't call it double dipping. >> Correct. >> All right. Any other questions or comments? >> All right. Thank you. Sectioning and scheduling update. >> Yep. So, I will be quick. You have seen me present on this before. So, this is
189just an update as we are heading into our staffing and scheduling season. Tom, you want to click for me? >> Um, whatever Laura linked it in as I have it as a slide deck, but I think it's a PDF. >> That's okay. >> That's fine. All right. So, um, like in past years, Tom, you can click. This is just I don't know why I keep pressing this. It's not working. Um, yeah. Okay. All right. Our staffing priorities have not changed. Our goal is to provide highest quality education, maintain rigorous offerings, meet the needs of our students, maximize impact of uh the impact of our employees. So again, nothing has changed around our staffing priorities. Go ahead and click Tom. So what is our process? So in February, we asked teachers to let us know if
190they are planning to retire or would like to request a transfer. So we want to make sure again we know what our staffing situation looks like. We then set enrollment. So students are currently in the process at the secondary level of scheduling their courses and at elementary we typically again know what our um numbers are going to be by the end of February, middle of March. We don't typically see a ton of new enrollments that come in between April and the end of the year. Um what we do from there is we determine the number of sections that we're going to run at elementary and then we determine the number of courses that are going to run at the secondary level based on student selections. You've heard me talk about this before that that scheduling
191at the secondary level is truly a dance. So we might have courses that run with 16 students. We might have courses that run with 27 students. It really depends on what our staffing picture looks like. We want to keep people full-time. That is our goal. and we want kids in the courses that they want to be in. Um and then we assign staff to teach those sections. So um again through that survey in the beginning of the February where we ask people what do they want and then um to the end where we assign them to those sections. So I think this is important to share because if you remember uh a few years ago we had some major staffing and scheduling glitches. Um and we changed a lot in the way we schedule. And
192so in 2023 24 we had 67% of our classes running at 75% capacity or above. And we have since increased that um this year to 77% of classes running at 75 capacity or above. This is a highly efficient again an impactful staffing model. And so we are going to continue to um increase this number as we continue to again get better at our staffing. But this is showing us right that classes are not running with one teacher, seven students. That is not an efficient staffing and student model. And so um one of the things that I was talking with the high school about they moved um from junior conferences to freshman conferences. So again, getting our students right when they come in the door to understand what they what courses they're interested in, what career
193paths they're interested in, and then getting them in the courses that they they want to be in. So again, changing how we do the scheduling is going to continue to result in our courses running at that 75% capacity or above, which we view as a strong metric of success of our scheduling process. And so um in closing, again, we're a high achieving district. We offer rigorous courses and we're going to continue to monitor our enrollment. Tom talked a little bit about our declining enrollment um projections, but we will continue despite that to again offer those rigorous courses. I told you I'd be quick. >> Nice. Any questions or comments? >> All right. Thank you. >> Yep. >> Moving on to policy information. So after several months of work, um we have in front of you,
194it's in uh it's in your docs, uh as well as up on the screen, um a recommendation both uh from the advisors and the administrators as to what they would like to see student government look like. You'll notice that the policy is short. Uh just covers the scope of what we do. Um the boxes that we checked, you know, would be the purpose and again these are recommended. Um, we will create administrative guidelines and this I think from the board who the questions that you provided and some of the feedback that we had. If you Tom if you'll scroll down please we get into the administrative guideline then the last statement is that the superintendent will uh create administrative guidelines. If you go into your doc, you can see um all of the red uh
195and then the boxes that are checked uh that spell out what they would like to see from auh student government standpoint. So uh the first idea that they had uh they took the feedback uh from the board, the samples that the board provided um that they would establish a written constitution in the 2627 school year that would be reviewed annually and reapproved by the student governments. um that elections elected positions will include a president, a vice president, and one representative from each grade level. President and vice president must be in the eighth or the 12th grade. Uh this is a common practice that they brought forward from other school districts that you'd be electing the highest grade then to kind of oversee the student government. Uh all elected positions will be for one school year,
196so you'd have to run again. Candidates must select one position to run for. The election process will include the following requirements. again to make keep this manageable. This was something that we heard from both the uh administrators and the the staff members that we would have a recorded speech, a digital campaign flyer and participation in an open forum. So, we'd offer three means to to get the word out for people um but not allow it to be a disruption to the school environment. And then members at large will be chosen through an application process each spring to allow for class scheduling. Uh this is does run as a class at the high school level, a formal class. um members at large remain eligible to run for elected positions. So, one of the things that the
197staff brought forward as a concern, if you remember during the presentation, we have about 140 student government members at the middle school. Um at the high school level, uh we have a a solid class of 30 kids uh involved in student government. They do a lot of school spirit service type functions and they didn't want to necessarily lose that. Um the principal shall ensure that all students have the right to vote and hold office. So the election process will be advertised to all students. All campaign materials will be approved uh reviewed and approved by the government adviser. Um if anybody saw Napoleon Dynamite the the final comment all of your dreams you know will come true. Uh we want to make sure that any promises are practical promises. Uh all students will have the opportunity
198to vote electronically. That was the recommendation from the administration to be able to capture as many kids in the vote as possible. All students will vote for the president and their class representatives. The vice president will be the candidate with the second highest number of votes after the president. Decision by the student government shall not be influenced by the faculty and administration uh but will be subject to review by the principal and the adviser. Student government organization shall be responsive to the needs and interests of all students and shall conduct open meetings to asssure maximum involvement of students. At the middle school, this would be held uh during home room time. At the high school, uh they would be held during lunch or before school. Uh students shall have the right to and should be
199encouraged to recommend guidelines for their own conduct. Uh these recommendations will be reviewed by the principal and student government adviser to assure they align with established policies of the board. Recommended guidelines will be in the constitution and approved yearly by the elected members and guidelines will mirror eligibility requirements and expectations for MASD sports and activities. I know that one of the concerns that the adviserss have was the school elects then what happens if there's no participation? What happens if the student doesn't meet the standard? And we then talked about well what does it take to be a member of a club? What does it take to be a member of a sport? what does it take to be member of of the band? Uh and applying those same principles then with student government. So at
200this point, these are recommendations. Um if there's more time needed to go back to staff, uh we could bring this back in March if needed. Otherwise, we can bring this back next week for final approval by the board. >> Um I know we had talked about this, um about the removal of a president or vice president that's not doing the work. >> Yep. and that would be under the guidelines that will mirror eligibility. So, you know, we want to make sure that we handle obviously the big things um student violates the the code of conduct. Um but then the the participation piece and we look at that similar to what it would look like from a like practice. If you miss a if you miss practice and it's unexcused, what does that look like? If
201you are withdrawing from the team, what does that look like? Similar process. Okay. Any >> other questions or comments? All right. Thank you. >> So, if this goes forward next week, if there's any questions, obviously reach out to me. But what we would be doing then is bringing you progress updates uh in the next school year as to how it's going. Have the students come, have the adviserss come and and do some presentations to the board. >> Okay. >> Thank you. We're down to student services. >> All right. I just have a behavior council update for the group here tonight. So on January 28th um the behavior council met for the second time. Uh that committee is made up of representation of parents and board members. So we do have parents that come K12. Um
202and so that group has um been engaging in conversations that explore the district's current behavior uh practices and then also how and when interventions are used. And so there are a few couple of things that I really wanted to bring back to the team um here as information. So this last time we focused on school safety. Officer Pettit came uh he is our SRO at Parkview Middle School. He talked uh with our parents about law enforcement and security and what his role looks like in our middle school. He talked about um public safety education uh what that informal counseling and mentorship looks like um in the schools and then also what that emergency management also looks like. Um we always conclude our meetings by talking about the next step. So what are we going to
203come back around to in April when we meet again? After our first meeting, I asked uh for feedback around some topics and what would be of high interest to the group to explore. So the things that came by back the highest um were social media and anxiety, the discipline process, uh school safety which we did uh which we did do this last time and then some other things around um vaping substance use and some of those other topics which uh are super important but not necessarily um at the top. we spent some time talking about what we already do in our schools that are really proactive um in each of our buildings. So, just some reminders that doors in our buildings are locked at all times during the school day. Um every entrance of our
204building has a locked vestibule. So, once you get buzzed in, then there is also a locked entrance that you stand in until you're buzzed through the remainder of the way. Um and then we also have our raptor identification system. So, if you are ever in our buildings, you have to provide your driver's license. They run you through a system. That has been extremely helpful if we uh ever have any concerns about somebody that shouldn't be on campus for one reason or another. That same uh Raptor identification system is also an app called Raptor on our phones. Um and we use that uh as an emergency management component. So, anytime a drill is done here or in the event that it's a um a live incident that comes through on all of our administrative phones and
205then also in the buildings to staff. So, if you have a drill coming through in this office, you'll hear buzzing everywhere, right? And it goes right. So, we are all on that network. We can take attendance on that um app and then we can also message. And so it is it is a great way to communicate in the event that we ever needed to really communicate something um in a in a really tough situation. We also have uh door alarms at our building. So if a door is propped open, uh this is especially important at the high school level where kids tend to maybe prop a door open, right? They're just running out to the car and coming back in. So we just want to make sure that those alarms are going off. Um, again,
206that's a safety precaution all the way around. It's also a good reminder for our staff who also like to prop open our doors if we need to carry a bunch of things in or if we have um coaches or after school um curriculars going on. We do have SRO officers at Parkview and MHS. Some of those things also include that we have those vape sensors in the bathrooms. Um, we practice our drills on a monthly basis. So um on the next slide I'll talk a little bit about that but our um students know what to do when something is announced in school and so we do that so we create that muscle memory so kids um are aware of of where they need to go and how they need to react. Um, some of the
207things also that we've done as a district just to continually be proactive in our safety measures is that we have uh pickup and go boxes that are prepared here at the district office. In the event that we ever had to evacuate a building, maybe it's for a gas leak or um a small fire or something like that. We have everything that we need from internet connections to um to tags to um vests to wear so that we can get up and move wherever we need to go and be able to set up efficiently. We want to make sure that the most important thing we're going to do is reunite our students with their parents. And so we have everything uh fingers crossed that we would need to take along. Um, recently back in September, we
208talked about purchasing a new camera uh system called Verata. And so, right now, if you're in buildings, you'll see people doing uh wiring and some work in the ceilings uh just making sure that we are getting where we need to be to be fully implemented. Uh we have again proactively we have a lot of staffing uh for student services. Uh we talked about just that um that really beneficial component of having a full-time elementary counselor and a full-time school psych in every one of our elementary buildings. Um and then also that similar uh higher ratio model actually with the middle school and the high school given the different populations of students and numbers. If you're in our buildings or if you're walking around, you'll see that we have um all of our rooms are numbered
209on the outside. So, in the event that uh we ever needed to have somebody accessing our buildings, whether that be a fire or police or whoever that might be, they can um take a look at that room number outside and know uh who is on the inside. And then we also have digital maps that are part of that uh safety plan. Also, I'll talk a little bit about um the anonymous reporting tool that we have as a district. And then um again just a small amount tonight on how we train and complete professional development on behavior threat assessments. So this was part of the topic that we this was all of it. It was a hour and a half two hours of time. So I'm giving you a really condensed version. So just going into
210that emergency um plan that we have. One of the parents on the committee um had asked, "Well, what if you're a sub in a building? do subs know what to do if we had to do this? And um one of the other parents who are on the committee says, "I do sub in the district." And she said, "The kids know like if a drill comes on, the kids know exactly what to do." And so she said, "Even if I'm not familiar with all of the ins and outs of the buildings, I don't have to because the kids are going to direct me and tell me where I should go, what, you know, like she said, you never have to worry about that." So, um, just to kind of give you a really quick, um, glance
211at what we practice, um, and drill on in the schools. So, we have a hold, which we would be using if we had like a medical alert. Uh, we needed to clear the hallways. Um, we would still be doing business as usual, but we do have the doors closed and locked. They're always in a locked position. Uh, regardless, we have secure. Uh if you are a parent at section, you sometimes might get notes home about um various farmers in our community um shooting at, you know, birds or wildlife or whatever. So a lot of times um that will end us up in a secure situation where we just need kids to get inside, but we can continue to do business as usual. Um, in the event that we had a lockdown, uh, that would be
212an active situation for a school threat. Our students, um, staff know what they need to be doing during that time. Uh, if we needed to evacuate for, um, any particular situation, again, a fire, a gas leak, um, Clariden a while back had a pipe burst in the kitchen and so we needed to evacuate at that time. Um, teachers were able to use that Raptor app on their phone to take attendance and message back and forth. so we could get information relayed in a timely manner. And then also that shelter um we learn a lot when we have to use our drills. So if any of you remember when the tornado came through during grandparent lunch week two week or two years ago um we learned from that that in our um shelters that we didn't
213have things for um like our diabetic students who were being in you know the the hold areas. like we needed to make sure that we had fruit snacks or something to keep kids stable. And so anytime we have to do a procedure or a drill in real life, I think we take what we need to take from it and learn and do better the next time. Part of our committee also reviews schoolboard policy and practices. So policy 8410 is our crisis intervention policy. um it has a very defined process to follow and that is where we work through um any type of threat assessments we would need to do during the school day. Policy 8420 um talks about school safety. So that is that comprehensive safety plan that Tom and Andy usually bring in the
214well you bring it to the board to be voted on and then also where our drills um are housed as far as when and how often we have to do them. uh 8462 is looking at threats of violence. So obviously the school board uh strictly prohibits any threats of violence and are targeted at schools. Um we talk about the fact that it has to be uh reported but then also that that mandated reporting role falls on all district employees. So whether you are working in the kitchen, if you are a building administrator, if you are a teacher, everybody shares that responsibility of making sure that we are reporting Okay. So, uh we also talked as a committee just what does a threat look like and how does that um how what is that spectrum from
215like a very flippant comment to a very serious threat. And so talked about social media posts and how that um in like comes into the school environment. We talked about notes. We talked about comments being overheard by a peer by a teacher. Um, we talked about how sometimes it really feels like somebody just said something that was joking, but we don't take anything as a joke, right? Like we have to explore every um every comment, every concern as if it was real. And so that's part of the that's part of the process. Um, we also talked about English class. Oftentimes we'll get threats out of an English class. um or not even necessarily sometimes a threat, but like just a maybe a a story that is just kind of questionable or like where is it
216going with intent. Um and then also anonymous tips and so talked about the importance of speak out, speak up, speak out, which I will talk about in just a minute. I noticed there's not much of a crowd left. So everybody really excited for this. Um so what happens when a threat is received? So a school team convenes. It's always led by a building administrator and that's in consult with district office and then our SRO. So we always are making sure our information is gathered. Uh we talked about just how much stuff we look at like what does the internet history look like? What is the witnesses and the people around the area hearing? We're talking to parents. We're talking to teachers. um and we're coming back together to meet and analyze that information. I think
217the biggest thing to understand when we're doing a threat assessment is that it is a team of people. So, it's not just one person's perspective. You have all of the right people in the room to really be talking about how they know the student um in multiple different multiple different areas and um aspects of their life with us as a student. And then we also talk about what is that level of concern? What? What? So, we have the comment, we've done the investigation, where are we now? And that brings us into the level of risk. So, again, we're talking from a low level to no concern being addressed through using exist existing support structures. Um having some behaviors that are exhibited but indicate a need for intervention. that high level of concern where um we
218are concerned that there's an uh an indication of uh an intent to harm, an escalation of a concern, um concern that they might have the capacity to carry out the plan. Is it credible? Is it not credible? Those are all the conversations we're having. And then of course, if we were ever to have an im imminent concern, moving right into that um whatever action that would be to prevent violence from occurring in our schools. And again, that's why all of those proactive measures I talked about at the beginning of the presentation are really important because it prevents us hopefully from ever getting to a situation where we have an imminent concern. So, the SpeakUp Speakout dashboard, um, it's actually an anonymous, uh, reporting tool. I know the board has heard me talk about it a
219few times, but I think it's really good for our community at large to hear about it, too. It was introduced in December of 2019. We get about an average of 50 tips per year. So since we started it, we've had 307 tips to date. Those really are very different from whether it's uh a social media post that's concerning to bullying, um there's drugs, vaping, all of those types of things fall under that that umbrella. Um it is anonymous so students can put in a concern about another student. Um if they have some concerns that maybe a student is harming themselves or they're considering um uh like a suicidal ideiation type situation, they can put in that concern and we're able to connect it to the right people in the schools. It's also monitored 247. So,
220if we're really concerned about a student, if a parent or a a child outside of school is really concerned about a student, they will dispatch um a police officer to that house um when the tip comes through. So, it is a um it's just really uh I feel like a great uh blanket to help no matter what, even if we're not in session, that we have somebody who's going to be responding. Um, and then as soon as a tip is made, uh, there's a case number assigned and then that case is monitored until it is closed. So, um, and they're very good, uh, the Department of Justice oversees this app and they're very good about connecting back with us until those events are closed out and they have been, um, investigated thoroughly. The other thing
221about SpeakUp Speakout is that people can upload images from social media. So, if there's a concern posted on Snapchat or Instagram or be real or whatever the new um social media pieces that are out there right now, uh that can be uploaded right up into that app and provide either the um DOJ, our police department, or our administration access to what that might look like. Um the next part is just talking about care solace. So again, information for the community at large. Careless is a mental health navigator tool. It is a um it is a means to an end when you're trying to get through the mental health network uh of trying to find a provider, getting in with somebody, finding out if they're going to accept your insurance, all of those different pieces. Tom,
222can you go to the next one? So, uh, again, Care Solace is the navigation tool that can help us get families um or staff in touch with the right um lead person if they want specific help with uh an alcohol or drug issue, if they want uh uh support with like anxiety or depression. So, when we started this in 2324, we had a total cases of 105 cases. So we had 105 students that were then able to get some type of support or direction um as a family. So the total communication is the amount of of emails, phone messages back and forth that have gone on for those 105 cases. So, if you think about even though we have what I would consider to be a pretty comprehensive uh student services program personnel, that's still
2235,624 uh messages that our staff didn't have to do. So, that's what it's designed to do on behalf of our families. And then out of those 105 referrals, we had 49 appointments that year. The trend is staying pretty even. So, in 2425, we had 114. Um again you see the communications and then we had 51 appointments. We've had 38 referrals so far this year and then we've had that many communications and 13 appointments um year to date. >> Means your team's doing a great job. >> So go to the next one. Um our future council topics include um social media and anxiety. Uh we're going to talk about mental health and then we're going to talk about the disciplinary process. So, that is what we're hoping to get through on our last meeting, which is
224April 7th. Um, it's a great group of parents. I really enjoy You never really know what it's going to be like right when you first get your council together, but it's been a really great group of people. Super great discussion. Um, lots of lots of good conversation. So, >> any questions or comments? >> Okay. I just want to say I'm so glad you brought this up because when you have a knucklehead kid that makes a silly threat like at least the community knows like how much is involved because what we hear is why are you having school the next day and it's because the police are involved and it's investigated thoroughly and I've never kept my kids out of school for this stuff because I know it's been thoroughly gone through. So >> y >>
225thank you. And then the last piece I think I have one more thing deal. So this is um actually it's a 66 uh.03 contract. So we uh have a contractual agreement with the school district of Elbrook. Uh we have we work with Elbrook. They serve as our fiscal agent and provide special education services for students with low incident disabilities. So for us, Muano Area School District participates in this agreement for our students who have hearing and aiology services. So I will bring that forward as an action item um next week, Monday, uh so we can get that contract resign uh signed and returned to Elm Brook for the following school year. >> Any questions or comments on that? >> That's a two-year contract for that one. Just one. >> It's actually a one-year. They do
226a two-year contract with who they hire, but we sign one year at a time. >> Any other questions or comments? >> All right. Thank you. Up next, action items, hires, retirements, and resignations. >> All right. So, we have a recommendation to hire Christine Perkins as our college and career readiness coordinator. Christine is currently a teacher at Park View Middle School. Um I if this is approved we would bring Christine to uh the board meeting on the 16th to do an introduction and give you the whole biography of Christine. Um and then we did have some notices of retirement. Uh Carrie G Carrie Gora a second grade teacher at Clarendon. Sue Hos a kindergarten teacher at Big Ben. Jeanie Olen a first grade teacher at Prairie View. And Jenny Summers a special education teacher at Parkview
227Middle School. Make a motion to approve the hire and retirements. >> Second. >> We have a motion to approve the hires and retirements. Any questions or comments? >> I just have one quick question. As we move Miss Perkins up into an administrative role, um what happens to her her classes? >> So, we will not fully transition her into the role until her vacancy is filled. So, she will remain in her classroom teaching position until we can ensure that the vacancy is filled. We're not going to disrupt students and and their learning until we have that position filled. >> Sounds good. My kids love Mrs. Perkins. >> Yep. Most kids do. >> Any other questions or comments? I have a question. When somebody puts in their resignation or retires, um what is the process that you
228go through with them? So, we um I take the I explain to them that I'm going to take their retirement or their resignation notice to the board. My lovely assistant Sarah Sheiel once the board has accepted. So, once you then make the motion to accept that, um Sarah sends them a notice saying that your resignation or retirement has been accepted. um explains any process of like returning materials, date of that taking place and then offers them an exit interview. Um staff are afforded that in person. So staff can request to do that with me in person or they can fill out um a Google form which is done um electronically. >> Every single employee. >> Thank you. >> Yep. >> Any other questions or comments? >> Actually have a followup on that. What's more common
229the inerson or the Google form? The Google form is much more common. >> Any other questions, comments? All right, we have a motion and a second to approve the hires and retirements. All those in favor say I. >> I. >> Those opposed say no. Motion carries. >> Thank you. >> You are welcome. Thank you. And we don't have any executive session. So looking for a motion to adjurnn. >> Like to make a motion to adjurnn. Second. Have >> a motion and second. Crosby, roll call, please. >> Jason, >> yes. >> Jake, >> yes. >> Jim, >> yes. >> Dale, >> yes. >> Eric, >> yes. >> Marilyn, yes. Birds, you still there? Go.