Mukwonago Area School District - Committee of the Whole/School Board Meeting - 05/12/25

001here. Here here is here. Uh this is an open meeting and has been posted. Uh, please join me for the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America to the standy for. All right, up first we have recognitions. Okay. So, uh, Eric, would you mind coming up, please? So, uh, this month's employee of the month is Mr. Eric Kirch, and his welcome. Are they like getting pulled into pulled into service before the meeting starts uh to get the cameras up and running? Um, uh, so as nominator said, I would like to nominate Eric Kirch for employee of the month for his exceptional work ethic, leadership skills, and unwavering commitment to excellence. A proud 2008 graduate of Maguano Area School District, Eric has been an invaluable asset to our team for over

00213 years. Recently promoted to tech operations manager, he continues to demonstrate outstanding technical expertise and management abilities, playing a key role in the success of numerous high impact projects. Eric's extensive knowledge across a wide range of technical areas has consistently set him apart, ensuring tasks tasks are completed correctly for the first time. His ability to juggle multiple projects while maintaining a high standard of quality and attention to detail is truly remarkable. As a leader, Eric excels in clear communication, meticulous planning, and fostering a genuine care for the success of those around him. His contributions not only showcase his technical expertise, but also reflect his deep commitment to our organization's mission and values. It has been a privilege to lead someone as dedicated and capable as Eric. His consistent work ethic, leadership, and pride in his

003work have been widely recognized by students, staff, and teammates alike, making him the perfect candidate for employee of the month. [Laughter] Congrats, Eric. Congrats. Good job. Up next we have citizens comments. Citizens comments. Each speaker will have three minutes to make his or her comments. We will signal you when you are at the 2 and a half minute mark to begin to wrap up your comments. We expect all speakers to honor the time limit, refrain from using inappropriate language, and be respectful in their comments. Citizens who not do not meet these expectations may be prohibited from speaking at 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 would like to remind our community members of

004the impact of their words on others and our children are watching. We commit to listening to you in a respectful manner and ask that you do the same. We expect the audience will be respectful of speakers and of the board and refrain from responding with verbal comments, cheering, applause, or behavior that will detract 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 and the area behind the speaker will be cleared during public comment. Also, to respect our speakers and meeting participants, please silence your cell phones. Uh Mr. Tim Flurry, who is silencing his cell phone. Uh Tim, you'll have three minutes and I'll give you a warning at

00530 seconds. Okay. And talk and Yep. There you go. Room. Perfect. Uh good evening school board and citizens. Uh it came to light recently that the uh due to the police station uh expansion that the current Veterans Memorial is going to need to be removed. Uh I formed a steering committee uh consisting of some American Legion members and some VFW members and uh I spoke at the April committee the whole meeting. At that meeting, I raised the awareness of Dale Porter. Were you there? And and I raised the awareness. Oh, he just walked out. Uh, so I got a lot of positive nods and looks and comments about uh in instituting or initiating a new veterans memorial. Few weeks later, we had a meeting and Dale and Joe showed up and they showed us some

006renderings, preliminary renderings of a new veterans memorial located on the northwest corner of the Parkview Middle School grounds. Uh, I was very impressed by the looks of the memorial and it's only appropriate that we have a veterans memorial located on Veterans Way near the edge of the village. So, I was very impressed by the uh renderings that the guys had and I hope it pleases the board going forward and hope they approve a veterans memorial on school grounds. Does that cover it? I think that covers it. U Can I ask if anyone has any questions? Sure. Does anybody have any questions? Okay. Right now, honestly, uh I think it you were a veteran. Absolutely. What What branch? I'm a 22-year uh veteran of the United States Air Force. Thank you very much. Yeah. So, go

007Air Force. Thank you. Air Force, are you a Legion member? Uh 30 seconds. Is that Was that for real, Craig? Uh 45. Yeah, keep going. You're good. So, as far as as far as uh funding for the memorial goes, I mean, it actually it's up to the both the school board and the village board uh to seek uh public donations, sponsorships, corporate sponsorships and that sort of thing. I mean, really, we we as far as sponsors go, I mean, the the American Legion, the VFW, we should just it it would please us more if we were simply a steering committee as far as providing funds. I'm sure I could get donations from my group and from the VFW and other civic organizations, but right now, this is more of a uh village of Mcuano community

008project than it is anything. Thank you. Thank you. Time's up, Tim. Thank you. Up next, we have our food service presentation. All right, so uh Chris Oswald is uh in her first uh wrapping up her first year of serving uh as our food service director for the school district. So, she's joining us right now. I will pull up her presentation. So, she'll present um just bear with me for a second here. She'll present uh on our food service program. If you have any questions at any point, please let her know. Bear with me for one second here, Chris. All right. Check. Check. Sorry. Good. All right. You're Let me start at the beginning here. Okay, Chris, it's all yours. All right. Thank you very much, Tom. Um, and thank you, board, for Absolutely. Uh, thank

009you for having me here tonight. Um I think it's been a few months since I've seen you since uh July when I took over. Um so I'd really just like to give you kind of a state of the department update. Right. So tonight I would like to talk about just some menu changes past, present, future. Um some things that we've done, some things that the USDA will insist that we continue to do. Um, we're also going to talk a little bit about the financial health of the department, maybe some highlights of things that have changed for 2425, then what we can expect going into next school year. Okay. So, before I started um after looking at some of the menus, we talked about um you know, processed entre kind of dominated our menus. And when

010I say processed entre, a lot of those are the USDA commodity items that all school districts are offered. Uh we're using a lot of canned fruits. There were a little bit less vegetable choices. Um, chips were be being served regularly, K through 12. Um, there seemed to be some added calories from what I like to call unnecessary condiments. Um, our cycle lacked variety. Um, and the special diets, those are the children that have allergies or other food intolerances. Um, they were offered um a very plain menu. Um, and we've tried to get away from that. And then portions of the elementary schools had been split between K5 and then sixth grade were getting additional food at no additional cost. So what we did differently is we've really started doing more scratch cooking. Um a lot

011more recipes are being used every single day bringing in ingredients instead of pre-made items. We've added a lot of fresh items, salads, sandwiches, and wraps, which have gone over incredibly well at our at our high school level. Um more fresh vegetables are being offered. um a lot more fresh fruits seasonally of course. Um so winter not so much too expensive for the program, but in fall and now here in spring we're um really adding more of those fresh fruits back onto the menu. Um appropriate side dishes that um that added some flavors um and and ethnic flavors have been added. Um aligning condiments to the menu offerings. um our new special diet menu actually follows the other menu. So those kiddos are getting offered um items that look like their peers. So instead of just

012having a burger every Monday if we're offering chicken nuggets or the cereal snack pack, we're buying those gluten-free dairyfree items. So what the menu or that they're walking away with looks just like what um their peers are getting, which I think goes a long way to helping the mental health of those kids that already have some health issues. Um and then elementary students are all receiving the same portion for the same price. So what that means is we're not giving a smaller portion. Everybody's getting um actually the largest of the portions which was the sixth grade portion um in order to make sure that all of our kids are being fed. Um as the USDA likes to do, they like to change things up. So starting um in fall of 25, so just next school

013year, our breakfast program at the high school is going to have to change. Um less added sugars have to be in the program. Um especially in cereals and yogurts. We have started adding in more protein items this year in order to get the kids ready for those changes. So when we take away their donuts and all of the other things that they love, maybe there won't be quite the revolt. um by 27 um those same added sugar um requirements are going to be um affecting our lunch program. So in a couple more years, we're going to see some of those um items changing for the lunch program as well. Starting this July, all of our chocolate milk has to have less than 10 grams of sugar. Most of our vendors are working diligently to make

014sure that that can happen. So I don't think the kids are going to notice much of a change at all when it comes to the chocolate milk. We've done some taste testing between the two and there's really not a significant difference. And then as always, whole grains are front and center, which 80% of all grains offered still have to fall under that category. Um, and just really quickly, sodium is also another thing that will be changing for 27. For the next two years, we don't have to worry too much about anything changing, but man, in 27, they're going to take even more salt out of the program. So vendors are again working non-stop to try to make those foods still taste good yet meet those new sodium targets that the government has put in. All

015right, let's talk real things here. Let's talk some real money. Um, all right. So when I look at meals, I can't look at just how many breakfasts we're selling, how many lunches we're selling. So we what we do is we have formulas called meal equivalents. This gives us a better overall view of how the program is fairing. Um, so right now our breakfast is up about nine meals a day, which is a little bit higher than what we saw last school year. Um, but our lunch averages are down about 300 meals less. Now, we realize that there's an enrollment issue, but there's probably a few more things at play here. And I think one of the biggest things is making sure that our cashiers are properly trained and they're not ringing up reimburseable meals when

016they don't qualify. Okay, we have to make sure that the students have the correct um, servings on the tray. That means the right amount of grains, the right amount of meat meat alternates, and of course, fruits and vegetables. Chris, can you just explain that? I guess we have some new school board members here. Talk about reimburseable meal. What does that mean? So, a reimburseable meal has to meet a certain guideline that the USDA sets forth. So, what that means is it has to have like at least an ounce and a half to two ounces of meat meat alternate. So, that's that's your burger, that's your chicken, um things like that. So, it has to have that and it's all based on grade level. So there's a particular amount for K through five. There's another for

0176 through eight. And then finally our 9 through 12. Okay. So they have to have three or five components. So what that means is they have to have grain on their tray or they have to have the meat meat alternate fruits, vegetable, and milk. Those have to be offered to every student every day in particular quantities. They don't have to take all five. They have to have at least three. If our cashiers aren't doing their jobs quite right, that means that they might be selling a meal that the government then says, "We'll give you money for when it doesn't necessarily qualify." Does that make sense? Okay. So, if they don't have the 305, we're not supposed to ask for government money for those meals. We sell each individual component all of cart. Very, very good.

018Well, okay. Uh but but so as you can see our lunch our lunches are trending down but our alle cart is trending up. So what that means is maybe those meals weren't qualifying after all. Maybe they didn't have the right amount of fruit or veg on that tray. So now the the cashiers have been trained to then charge separately for that milk or that piece of pizza and not ring it up as a reimburseable meal. U so as you can see the alle cart sales are significantly higher really um almost you know just under $1,300 a day. higher. So, we're selling more in alle cart, getting less meals, getting less reimbursements, of course. Um, but the next slide will kind of talk a little bit more dollars and cents. But what was really significant to

019me is as I was looking at these, um, it's very cyclical your your kiddos here in the district. Um, it's, you know, and I realize some of it has to do with days in the month, but other times I think it has to do with um, family finances. If you look like November starts trending down, then obviously we only have 15 days in December, but that's significantly down. Then as soon as the kiddos come back, then they start spending a little bit more. So really that same trend, those same um bars are very similar between what was happening and what and what happened this year. Um when I look at that, I always think it's kind of a good thing considering the fact that we raise prices. I don't think that those raise prices necessarily

020had a significant impact on the amount of meals that we're selling or the amount of food overall that we're selling in the in the department. Okay, this and I know that the font is really small, but um this shows you exactly where we're at. And actually um I sat down today and probably put even more detail into this because I because I'm kind of a dollars and cents person, I wanted to know exactly where we are trending. Um so actually this is probably the first time Tom saw this slide too. I have um updated it since I talked to him this afternoon. Um so this right now through March contains all of our sales, all of our expenditures. Um and as you can see right now, we're operating in a deficit of just under $60,000.

021So if you look on the far right, the very far right bottom, you're going to see yeah, a deficit of 59 something something something. My glasses are good. They're just not that good. Um, I know that looks bad, but right now our budget is um we were budgeted to lose about $160,000 this year. When we made the decision last year to kind of increase prices in a twostep process, we said, "Okay, we're willing to lose some money this year and then try to get closer to zero for next year." Um, but what this shows me, if we're only at 60 right now, that I would like to say that we won't exceed what we thought we were going to lose this year. That really gives us kind of a $100,000 buffer going into the summer,

022which is great because there's always those indirect costs that we we budget for, but they're kind of an unexpected. We never know exactly what our gas, our water, our electric bills are going to come in at. And typically if you know and Tom correct me if I'm wrong but I think that those items get added in the summer once you get that and then we Yeah. So it's nothing that we that we track monthtomonth. So just for again for some of the new schoolboard members that joined us mid year um when we adopted a budget you know we have 12 funds. Fund 50 is our food service fund. Our general operating budget doesn't offset any of those costs. It's a self-sufficient fund meaning the student revenues support the whole program. And uh we have when

023we started the school year uh a $1.1 million fund balance surplus. So there's ample funds inside of fund 50. Uh rather than raise the costs um as inflation pushed food prices higher uh last year. We decided to implement um a a slight raise in food costs at the beginning of this current school year, which will likely, but not for sure. We'll figure that out in the coming uh month, but we'll raise prices once again prior to 2526 so such that we'd have a break even program. But having the deficit, we adopted a budget with $160,000 deficit just kind of using some of that fund balance to I guess uh absorb the cost increases onto our family. So Greg, is that what you remember? Oh, yeah. Okay. All right. Yeah. And then if you look up

024at the revenues, there is a line um called catering and another one called out of district schools. And those combined right now are, you know, trending over $50,000 so far. Uh which is wonderful. I mean, so our catering um is something that we've been growing and can and will continue to grow um because we really feel that that's a good revenue source to kind of help offset those costs instead of passing it on to parents and constantly having to raise the prices of lunches. You know, we just try to find new revenue sources. Um question for you. How many how many free lunches involved? How many free lunches we have? Well, we have roughly um 700 um students on the free lunch program right now. Um I don't have the figures in front of me

025as far as how many we're selling every day at the high school level. Um but I will say it's under 200. Oh, so 700 districtwide. 700 districtwide. Yeah, it's yeah, it's not it's not a significant um amount of our of our demographic is is is free and reduced. Um, one of the other things that I decided to look at this year um is the age of our equipment. So, I actually worked with Belter, one of the um food service um suppliers here in Milwaukee. and we walked around to all of our schools, did an entire inventory, then they took that back and researched model numbers and serial numbers for me to come up with um the age of each piece of equipment. Um, and we have 21 pieces of equipment within our schools that are

02625 years or older, which is probably meeting or exceeding the life that's expected. Replacement cost for that alone would be the $300,000. Um, and that's not every piece of old equipment. That's only those pieces that are 25 years or older. Um, so we really need to formulate a plan so we're not always being reactive. You know, we can't wait until something breaks because that's really going to, you know, be a detriment to our program, especially if it's something at our central kitchen. Um, so one of the things that we're going to have to look at as we start putting the budget together for the um 25 26 school year and beyond is how much money we're going to budget um in order to just start replacing those pieces of equipment with newer, more efficient models.

027Um, talking about meal prices, and this is something we'll talk about more in June, but I just kind of did a quick cost of what a meal is actually costing us. So, right now, per meal, um, our labor cost is just under $2 a meal, which is actually a little bit more than what we're spending on the food that goes into that meal. Supplies is going to be like your paper and chemicals. Um, your other is everything else. That's our indirect costs that we talked about like utilities. Um that's the cost of training. Um that's our gas and um maintenance of our vehicle. All of that comes out to about 27 cents a meal. So total we're looking at um our out-of- pocket cost per meal is $4.16 and we're not charging anywhere near that

028because we do get reimbursements from the USDA. Um so right now I'm looking at the total as around 327. Right now we're charging 320. So that's something that we need to look at. That doesn't include what happens with food costs go up. what happens when everybody needs raises in our in our department because again none of that comes from any other um fund except for what we make within fund 50. So that's why we're looking at how much do we have to raise prices going into 2526 which will be a conversation that we have within the next month so we can um bring a really thoughtout proposal to you um at the next um board meeting. All right, what are some of the things we did in 2425? Uh we added a lot more local.

029One of the things I really like to do is if I'm going to be spending money um on food, like why not support small businesses at the same time? Um so this past school year I um we partnered with Bossi's Farm in Mosquo just because at the very last minute they were still able to support us um and they brought us seasonal fresh apples straight from their orchard um throughout fall and into winter. Um, which is really fun for the kids to see all the different varieties and then be able to know because we had signs up that those were local apples. Um, obviously if there's places here in Maguano, we're going to start partnering with them as well so we can again kind of spread that wealth because why not spend our money in

030the community where we live. Um, somewhere else that we um that we use as Catalana Produce. They're again small business here in the Milwaukee area and that and it I didn't start that one. Pam's been using them forever. they've been servicing schools. Um, so I've had them in various other districts that I've worked in. Um, great little company. Um, and again, they're able to bring me those local um, things when I can't get them like as close as Mosquo. Um, so when I tell him that I want other local items like we're going to be bringing in some asparagus soon and things like that, they'll get it for me. Um, they bring it in and it's just great to um, kind of have that, you know, served to our students. And then um we have

031an um Alakart coffee machine that is brand new this year. Um Miss Harris bought it at the end of last year. Um and so we are actually using a local coffee roaster um roasted actually again in Mosquo. Um if there's somebody roasting in Muano, tell me who that is and I'd be more than happy to bring them in as well. But I again I just think as long as we're spending dollars, let's spend it um you know with our neighbors. Um the fork farm was a purchase that we received um grant money through the Maguano Education Foundation. Very excited to get that. Um and we've been using um lettuce and fresh basil within our high school program. Um since I think we got it set up over Christmas break. So this entire semester we've been

032able to grow romaine lettuce, leaf lettuce, um and basil, um and make salads, do margarita pizzas. Um, and the kids are just really excited about it. It's actually set up right in the serving area. The kids see it as it's growing. Um, sometimes we don't get to harvest in time and it starts growing over the top of it, which is just it's really fun to see. Um, the staff is really excited about going o going over every Thursday picking the fresh basil so they can put it on the pizzas. And it's really just been kind of a really fun um like kind of conversation starter as far as you know it doesn't get much more local than growing it like right next to where you're checking out at the at the serving line. Some of

033the other things we did this year obviously we talked a little bit about catering and that has really grown. We've had some fun promotions and theme days and I've been able to go in and work in the culinary classes um help them with um a contest they were doing with the DPI. Um I went on a field trip with them to um visit some local farms. So that was really fun. And my intention is to continue working with the culinary class um and the culinary club and maybe do some collaboration with some of the catering so they can kind of learn um right along with us um you know and right in the school so they can start serving you know whether it's at the district office um other caterings that we do at the

034high school. But I think that it would be a really great way to show them the kind of that collaboration between what we're doing just down the hallway from their classes um and how we can use that almost as a training grounds to help them when they go out to find jobs. So, as I get ready for 2526, we need to finalize those meal prices and um you know, as we as we said, we're hoping to have that ready for you for the June meeting. Um, we're going to be creating the equipment replacement schedule, which I think is again is a very responsible thing for us to do in order to run fiscally sound program. Um, and I need to start planning our food service training. One of the biggest things is we're going to

035have a safety presentation by M3 Insurance. Um, I had asked him to come out and do a safety audit. So, he was in my um, department probably about six weeks ago. um did an entire walk through. Found like little things that could add up to workman's comp claims and things like that. So things that we need that we could change, little things that we don't even think about because I think it's just kind of become status quo. This is how things just are. And he has some suggestions for us. So I think anything we can do to make our department safer, um cut down on any workman's comp claims that we have, any injuries, um I think that that's an important thing. So we're going to be doing a safety presentation. We're also going to

036be talking about food safety and having more of our department become food safety certified. Um, and then we're going to be kind of honing their kitchen and culinary skills. I'm going to add just one thing on to that there if you don't mind, Chris. So, our our work comp uh rates that we pay to cover our employees, it's highest for our food service workers because that when I learned that it struck me as I guess uh interesting, but it's the most physical position um in our district and therefore injuries can happen because of the physicality of the of the job. So, I don't know what the perception always is of what food service does, but uh it it's a very very physical demanding job. Yeah, it can be. And I think people are surprised when

037they come into our kitchens to see just how much, you know, on a daily basis is being moved around in cases and boxes and um wet floors sometimes and a lot of heat and you know so so there's a lot of things that add to the workman's comp and that was one of the reasons that I reached out to just say hey you know I think the responsible thing to do is you know let's see what we can change so we're a little bit more proactive than reactive. All right what's next? I'm hoping to offer field trip meals at all schools. We started doing some of this this year um at just one or two elementaryaries, but I think that this is a really big thing for families, especially those kiddos that are on the

038free and reduced program. All of a sudden, there's a financial burden to those families that have to now pack a meal for their for their kids. So, if we can offer that at the same rate that they're paying, so whether that's free, reduced, or paid, um and it meets all of those reimbursements, why wouldn't we do that? It's just another extension um of the lunch of the lunchroom. We're going to continue to add scratch cooking. We need to implement some marketing strategies. I think the the thing we don't do very well in food service is toot our own horn about what we're doing and how we're doing it. Um so we're going to try to figure out how to get u more posts on social media. We want to increase some of um our presence

039on the website um and work with there's like a video marketing team or a class that happens at the high school. So, I'd like to collaborate with them so the kids have a real buy in to the kind of things that we start promoting around the district. Um, we're hoping to grow our catering business and that includes the um addition of a chef. Um, we're hoping to partner with more local farms, add another fork farm at um the middle school. I think that that would be very exciting. Um, and explore more revenue sources. We have been approached by a couple outside school districts. Um, so we're kind of in the in the planning stages of that if that's something that we're ready to implement for 2526 or put on hold for another year. Um, but

040we have had a few districts reach out and say, "Hey, what can you do for our program?" Um, so that's a possible revenue source. Something else that is again in the planning stages as we're putting together the plans for the new middle school kitchen and serving area, we have already built in some allocart areas. So, we're hoping to implement some alle cart offerings at those schools. Um, that way when they come to the high school, it's not like so exciting that they think it's just a big free-for-all. We kind of ease them into the world of alle cart. All right. Thank you. Do you guys have any questions for me? Jake, does equipment go through fund 50 and what is the maximum uh balance that we want to maintain? That max balance was relaxed. It

041used to be three months of operating expenses which was about $600,000 our annual doubled it. They've doubled it. Yeah. Yeah. We can have six months now. Okay. So I think ultimately when we had too much fund balance the United States Department of Agriculture would say you cannot raise prices. You can't raise prices. You have to come up with a spending plan. So yeah. So um we felt really comfortable with our budget status. So we said um ultimately if taxpayers are the ones who are providing the funding that the USDA gives out then let's just kind of subsidize meals take a little bit of a loss and spend down that fund balance. Yeah. And that's what a lot of districts did for the last couple years. But now with the rising food costs and things like

042that we're kind of like reexamining it. And then again looking at the age of a lot of the equipment here in Maguano you know unless somebody you know feels like gifting us anything it really does have to come out of fund 50. So, we need to figure out how to how to make that happen. We do have some grant proposals out and I did get noticed today that we that they are still considering our grant proposal. It hasn't been an outright no yet. So, I am still hopeful um that we could get, you know, somewhere in the ballpark of 15 to $20,000 from the USDA as well. Thank you, Christina. Yeah. Thank you. Jason, I have two quick questions. First and foremost, um is the aim because I'm I'm new here. Um is the aim

043No profit. Yeah. No loss. No profit. Absolutely. So fund 50's aim is always a break even. Okay. Yep. Yeah. So, so they don't we definitely don't want a loss. A loss means that um that fund 10 has to transfer monies in to help us pay our bills, which is never what we want. Okay. Um so that's why it's good to have a healthy fund balance and not spend it all in one place, right? Um but um but yeah, a little bit of a profit is always good because then it does help you when those unexpected things like you know this year we spent just over $40,000 on a dishwasher that we had not intended on putting in. Um but things break and they must be repaired. So got it. And then second question, you know,

044Mcuano is a community of farmers and yes, agriculture. So for anybody who might be listening, if they wanted to approach the school as a possible supplier, Yeah. What does that procedure look like? Do they come to you? Do they go to Yeah, I Yeah, I think starting in my department would be um number one. I mean, because if they are selling a product that we could use, whether that's meat, produce, um you know, absolutely I would love to have those conversations um and then, you know, kind of take it from there. Many people are concerned right now because on the news they heard that funding for local farmers is being cut by the USDA. Um, but that's only if you wanted those particular funds. Um, we're allowed to use our regular fund 50 funds on

045any food source that we deem safe, which does include small businesses and farms. We just have to have a few conversations about food safety and how they handle their food. Um, but it doesn't mean we can't buy local foods. We're just not getting additional funds to do so. Followup question on that. Do we does the district solicit any of those relationships or is it always somebody from the outside that's soliciting to Oh, no. I walk around farmers markets all the time and I and I introduce myself and hand out cards and see if they're interested or have the ability to to service our programs. So, no, I'm out there all the time and if I think that it's, you know, a farm that that could easily service 2500 students worth of, you know, fruit in

046a day or something like that, I absolutely will approach them. Got it. Yeah. So, thank you. Hi, thanks for the presentation is very u enlightening. Uh basically the pieces of equipment that need to get replaced is the is the idea or the plan to get them all replaced within one year or over a period of years? It would be over a period of time. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. We would have to prioritize um you know which schools would need it. um kind of the you know like right now I I could definitely you know point out probably five pieces of equipment that are going to be numbers one two three four five on my list um just based on um how much money we've spent on repairs or things like that just over the course of

047the last year. Um but yeah, no there's really I think it would be irresponsible to be like okay let's just in one swoop do this and then all of a sudden it one of the pieces of equipment that are 10 years old breaks and then what do we do because we've spent our money. I agree. Thank you. Yeah. Oh, equipment, not mental. Okay, good. Okay. Um, that's the next question. Um, yeah. No, actually quite a few. So, um, we've had dishwashers go down just this year. Um, more than once at the middle school, more than once at the high school. Um, obviously the dishwasher at Big Bend um was down. We replaced that over winter break. We replaced that over winter break. Yep. Yep. That one was definitely one that needed and replacing those is

048pretty labor intensive. Right. Right. So far. Well, yeah. Some of it I mean every dishwasher is anywhere between 40 and $80,000 depending on which which machine it is with electrical hookup as well. So electrical all of it. I think in our past practice, we we did a good job of really squeezing the life out of each machine that we had and then on the flip side of that is why didn't we replace this sooner? Um, you know, there comes a time when you just kind of say enough fixing and let's replace. So again, we try to be as fiscally responsible as possible, but there comes a time when you have to make a judgment call that says, um, let's not fix this, you know, every six months. let's let's just get a new one um

049and put this issue to rest because it's very disruptive to a singular school when they don't have their dishwasher available. Okay. Um yes. Yeah. And and unfortunately some of our breakdowns um the two dishwashers that I cited at middle school and high school actually aren't even old machines at all. um they're just not built as well as some of the others. So those um have actually cost us quite a bit of money and um like the one at the middle school for instance will not be transferred to the new kitchen because it just doesn't make fiscal sense. We've spent too much money fixing it already. We need to just put a better piece of equipment in. One of the other things that we're looking at is the boiler at the high school. The boiler um

050that's located in the kitchen actually provides steam to all three of our steam kettles. Um, and there are definitely some parts that are going on it. And it was a conversation that I've had with Mr. Wagner as far as what do we do and how long do we limp along or do we find some smaller steam generators to um, service our steam kettles. As soon as those steam kettles go down, um, that affects everything we do districtwide. That's where we do all of our pasta, all of our sauces, all of our hot vegetables. I mean, those things are are are in use anywhere between one and all three of them on any given day. if that boiler were to go down and we would be dead in the water on a lot of our um

051on a lot of our cooking. So, those are the types of things we need to look at that we haven't had a breakdown yet, but it's just a matter of time. It's it's it's when it's not if. You also mentioned that there studies on this you know it is a high stress job. You do realize that like this department has to be on 100% 100% of the days like No, no, no. It's not students. I'm talking about my staff and sometimes me. No, the students as far as Oh. Oh, yeah. We were talking about so special diets. Okay. So, it's sometimes it's really hard. you know, kids have um they have they have medical challenges, whether that's an allergy that could cause anything from hives to swelling to death, right? So, so you're always a

052little concerned about can I eat that item? So, we need to make sure that those items are safe. Okay? So, we have students that have dairy allergies. We have students that have um celiac gluten allergies, right? So, um if they were to ingest gluten, it would cause them discomfort for the rest of the day. sometimes more than discomfort. It would cause them to have to go to the health room and then have to leave for the day. So, you know, I think anytime that we're talking about somebody that has health challenges, you always feel a little bit um of a stigma. You're always going to be a little bit different than your peers and they're able to enjoy all of those foods that we put out. So, we have nachos and we have cheeseburgers and,

053you know, all of these things that have gluten and have dairy in them. Um, and the old menu was very much gluten-free, dairy free, and dairyfree usually meant just no cheeses at all. And I think it's important that those students get offered something that looks like their peers, so their peers aren't sitting next to them at the lunch table wanting to know why they never get to eat nachos or they never can have the pizza that looks like this or, you know, and so what we did this year is we developed recipes and we get in ingredients that don't contain wheat and other gluten. um containing items. They don't contain dairy cheeses. We buy plant-based cheeses for that. So therefore, that their meal looks just like their peers. So they're not feeling stigmatized and have

054to like sit down to a meal that is entirely different. And I think that that goes a long way for making them feel comfortable and want and having them want to use our program. Any other questions? What are the chances of putting together like a um a survey just you know these are because a lot of things changing right this year maybe there's certain items out there that kids are just not feeling. You know what I mean? They want to put an X on that item not not taking the hot lunch that day. You know what I mean? Absolutely. Absolutely. And and you know and and when we put together a menu we try to pair those items that are maybe new um or a little bit different with something that we know is very

055popular um in order to retain that participation. But yeah, we absolutely should sometime this summer put together something that's for parents and students. Um, typically in my past schools, um, I've done that at the high school level. Um, unfortunately, we don't let our kids carry their cell phones. Um, like, you know, happened in some of my other schools. So, they were able to come into my cafeteria, scan a QR code, and it would ask them instantly what they thought of a particular item, especially if it was a new menu item. Um, so, so that's just, you know, something that I can't do. um that we would have to kind of just come up with a new channel. But when I talk about kind of marketing strategies, that's exactly what I have in mind is like

056how do we not only, you know, sell what we do, but how do we get feedback from our customers to make sure that we're kind of, you know, barking up the right tree. Y I just want to take a quick uh opportunity to uh thank Chris for all her hard work and her in her first year for taking over for Pam Harris who was leading this for 30 years. Uh Chris has a department of 50 employees. Um at 5:00 a.m. they're rolling every day. Every day that kids need to eat. So I've called our food service program, the largest restaurant in Wisconsin there. Uh excuse me, in Maguano. They are serving 2500 meals a day for kids who need that food. So it's um it needs to be acknowledged and thanked. So thanks to you

057and your staff, Chris, for all that you're doing. Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you, Chris. Yeah. Thank you. to agenda. [Music] So, uh, Mr. Flurry was here tonight. Uh, he spoke of this in, uh, the public, uh, comment. Um few weeks back, maybe a month ago, uh Dale had approached me after the village board meeting, um shared that the um that the veterans uh memorial is in need of our relocation. Um as we just started brief briefly with the conversations, um we uh there's a perfect site. Tom, if you could you refresh the page, go up to the sur. Oh, yes, we'll do. And I did just add it as Mr. Flurry was talking because we did have a presentation um uh with them just a short meeting uh where we showed the intersection

058view of um Veterans Way and Highway 83 uh and then the placement of the building. So Tom, if you could zoom in just on the block of the school, just the the first one. Yep. You can see just for perspective, we've showed this to to to the board. We the community has had a chance to see it. You can see there's a sidewalk leading from uh the intersection there onto the school property. And you can see that we've we've already designed this. So this this wasn't a result. You're correct. Right there. This this was designed prior to the conversation uh with the VFW and the American Legion. Um and so when Dale brought that to me, it just made natural sense. Tom, if you scroll down a little bit then to the next image that

059we had already set up this nice area. It has uh uh the flag poles that we are going to put on the property. They were part of our initial design. Uh we have the circle. We have the grass area there. We've got the little stone wall. We've got some benches. Uh so we presented this uh to the two groups last last week. I think weeks are kind of blending together uh last week and uh just said, "Hey, you know, guys, take a look at this. This is what we already have in mind. Would you be interested?" Uh we got great feedback at that meeting. Um there's some steps that need to be taken, but you know, from a from the standpoint from, you know, my standpoint and recommendation, uh is th this is here. This

060is something that the school district is already going to maintain. We've got to mow the lawn. We've got to pick up garbage. We've got to pick up the leaves. We're already putting flag poles there. Uh this essentially would be the location then that we would be proposing uh if the board is interested in um in in allowing the Veterans Memorial to to to be on our school site. So happy to, you know, answer any questions, have any discussion. I think there was a little wrench put into that when he was saying the schools should, unless I misunderstood him, should do fundraising for that. Yeah. So, we're not in the fundraising business on the project. Absolutely not. But, but we are also not, you know, looking at this is already in the plan. We have concrete

061in the plan. We've got a little wall in the plan. We've got flags in the plan. That portion is what we would be contributing. Um, from a fundraising standpoint, I'm not saying that schoolboard members couldn't fund raise, but the school district has its eyes obviously on making sure that one, we're running the educational program and two, getting this school built. Uh so I did talk to uh Brett Octenhagen, Octenhagen seasonal services about maybe design some design or helping and and of course anything like this he said of course we'd like to help. Um so I think there'd be other community partners that would probably want to help because it's a pretty cool thing. Any other questions or comments? Schwarzy, I I would just add that I I think it's very interesting and it's kind of

062exciting that this could happen here. I agree. I think Joel had that picture out when I went in his office in 30 seconds. Yeah, it did. It just made it made really good sense. Andy Wagner, any other issues you see from your side? Mr. Bennett, do we have any idea what the C I mean, not that the school is going to or the school district is going to absorb cost, but any idea what the cost is going to be and why are they moving it to begin with? There's a shed being built. Oh, sorry, Dale. I apologize. Go ahead. There's a the police department wants to get get their vehicles out of the weather. Okay. And so there's a shed being placed on the property on the police department right to where the the Veterans

063Memorial current currently is. So that's why they need to relocate. Plus, it's run down. It needs it needs a facelift. Yes. So it's not really much of moving what's there. It's reconstructing the memorial. Yes. And do we know approximately what what they're looking to We offered them to come in and help with the design of it, but obviously they would have to pay for whatever additions that are going to be to our drawings. And so for perspective, just for some of the conversation, uh it was mentioned that, you know, they would get a stone type thing representing, you know, a stone memorial representing the veterans, that they would have the plaques for the branches of service up. Um that there might be one or two memorial benches out there. Um again, that is separate from

064what we're doing from a a referendum standpoint, a school construction standpoint. We did offer to sit down and meet with our architects on this only because there is certain, you know, there's there's architecture that is going into the building and the property. We just would want to make sure that there was a coordinated piece that, you know, the layout would look good um and fit onto our property. And there were a couple requests for making sure that American flag is large. Yes. [Music] We we I don't think we can rival the Coler Company. Yes, we can. I think you're looking for the Acuity company. Acuity. I'm sorry. Acuity. No, Tom. We can't ri have enough property. Does that flag stay up all day long, all night or somebody pulling? If it's lit, it can. Okay,

065got it. We will have power here as well. And with that, we did talk uh to the VFW and the uh American Legion that you know the property uh would be available for any of the you know respective memorial services that happen Memorial Day, Veterans Day. Um the only thing that we asked was just a a heads up as to what they were preparing is we do not uh not that we don't want a a gun salute on the property, we just don't want that unannounced. It might cause some problems. Any other questions on that? Comments? Okay, thank you. And moving on to the discussion on naming of park view. So there over the last I'd say year uh that we have been uh working on this project, there has been no serious conversation but

066just some floating around of the idea is you know does does Parkview Middle School stay Parkview Middle School or does it become something else? and and uh there was one name that was thrown out there just Mcuano Middle School for instance. Do we do we have Muano Middle School? It is in Mcuano. We have Maguano High School. Um the other name uh that we have talked about would be because it's on uh Veterans Away. uh if we relocate the Veterans Memorial to it, uh would would it be appropriate then to look at the name Veterans Memorial Middle School um to, you know, in honor of those that have served in our country? Um but then also to just more appropriately name the school. Um the uh the building Park View Middle School um as I

067understood it, the name was as part of a uh a discussion that happened when our school district formed as a school district and then when the area senior high school went from what is the current building to the new Maguano High School in the beginning of in the early 1970s. Greg, I'm looking to you a little bit from memory on this. Might be our historian. I wasn't on that committee. I I you might have been in kindergarten back then. Um but but so from a name attachment standpoint, I mean there there have been generations of students who have gone through Park View Middle School now. So um not that we would want to make a knee-jerk decision, but I guess just some discussion if the board is willing on, you know, would you be opening

068to us uh considering this? Would you be opening open to us surveying uh our community uh to get some feedback uh as to what would be the appropriate name for this? I think that's 100% what we should do is involve the community. They're paying for it. Um put out some names, maybe take some suggestions and yeah, have a winner. Have a winner somehow a name the middle school winner. Maybe a third grader at Big Bend Elementary or something would be cool, right? I mean, yeah, just just to be prepared, like we'll get some names submitted like Skoolie McKoolerson. That has been a popular one uh for uh uh any naming. Um I saw they named an ocean they tried to name an ocean liner after that. Uh the Madison school district actually had somebody submit

069that as a name for one of their new buildings. Um but yes, we can. So, do you not like that idea, doctor? No, no, I'm okay with it. I just I when we bring that forward I I I want to grab the most ridiculous name that came to mind just so that the board knows that you know we will see that type of feedback. So we can put we can put that out there. I guess the the and we can have more discussion next week. Uh so between now and next week if there's names that you would like considered, you know, Park View as is, Veterans Memorial Middle School, Maguano Middle School, if there's some names that the board seriously considers that we can survey, uh we can put those out there and then we

070can column for other as well. Perfect. Any other questions or comments on that? Just to be clear, are you asking us right now um the Veterans Memorial if that's a serious candidate for a name? Because if you are, I'm saying yes. Okay. Who asked you, Mike? All right. I think the village could follow suit and change Village Park to Veterans Park as well. Just a thought. All right, I am going to excuse myself. Greg Virt is going to chair the rest of the meeting. Thank you. Like Dylan has a concert, so I don't want to miss his last one of the year. See you Dale. Good luck. Break a leg as they say in theater. You excused. Uh policy number three, intercolastic athletics, elementary and middle level athletics and activities. So in uh April we

071brought forward as part of the policy revisions um intercolastic athletics policy uh coming forward tonight. Uh we have the intercolastic athletics which would be essentially those things that are governed by the WIAA and then we have an elementary and middle uh level athletics and activities policy coming forward that would cover our elementary and middle school programs. So, um, this would be I I would say kind of back to a first reading on these policies. Uh, we can bring them forward for approval next week if there are no questions or if the board would like to have discussion tonight and have me do some followup. Anybody? We're good. All right. Okay. Moving on to personnel topics. Wellness. We got Mr. BS, we have another section of policies here. Oh, yeah. Yeah. number four. Good try. More

072policies. So, these are these are all first reading just for the perspective of the board. Uh because it's May, we will have these on from May until June. Um, district organizations, school sponsored trips, student privacy and parental access to information, job related expenses, uh, grant funds, internal controls, cash management of grants, cost principles, procurement, disposition of personal property, property inventory, transportation for field and other district sponsored trips, student technology acceptable use, staff technology acceptable use, and free and reduced price meals. So, these policies, we will have them on uh they're on tonight. They'll be on the agenda, but not for action next Monday, and then we will have them on again in June. If there are questions after you review them, please reach out to me. We can discuss them at the future meeting. Uh

073I can provide clarification as needed. Can I ask a question on one of the policies or do you want to wait till the next meeting? Happy to answer if I can. So on 2416 the student privacy and parental access to information. Yep. Um under the section parents rights to inspect surveys instead of making the parents request to see the surveys. Can't we just make them available? Can't they just be on our website or they are we wouldn't do that? The surveys have always been available in school offices for parents. Okay. We just want to make sure that parents always know that they have the ability which I'm looking at Christine. I know that they they've done the youth risk behavior survey in the past. As part of that, Crosby, we always tell parents survey is

074available in in the school office during this window of time. You can come in and take a look at that survey. So, would there be any harm in posting them and just making them easily available so the parent doesn't have to find the time to come into the office to come and review it? We might have to look at some copyright information on that. Okay. where if we were distributing that, I don't know if we could distribute. I think that in some parents can always come in and view, but I don't know if we can send that off. We'd have to work with the respective agency doing the survey. If we can look into that, I I'd just prefer that they just be posted and available and let's just be as transparent as possible. Um,

075but obviously if there's copyright issues, then we can't do it. Yeah, a quick question on that. And I'm not an expert in the leg legal ease in the IT stuff, but if it could be posted like readonly, you know, some blocked way where they can't I mean, I guess they could take a picture of it with their phone, but I'm all for what Crosby brought up. Also, we will look into that. Thank you. On that same note, we are not actually administering the youth risk behavior survey this year. we opted out of it. I know I've done it years in the past, but this year the data has been so lagging in results that it hasn't been especially beneficial. So, we decided not to move forward with that this year. Well, sorry, one one more

076follow up with that. whatever surveys are out, it would be nice if we do get approval to put them online and that's how the board votes that they're easily accessible like in one area, not got to go down five different pages for each survey kind of thing. Thank you, Mike. If you were computer liter, it wouldn't be a problem. I'll hold my comments for you. Thank you. Anybody else? All right. Um, personnel topics, wellness committee. All right, Tom, can you pull up the Thank you. All right. So this year we initiated a wellness committee and that was based on policy thank you policy that has been in place around our wellness initiatives here in the district. And so this is just an update on the year's worth of work that this committee has done and

077some of the results of that work and then where we're headed. So, our goal of the wellness committee was to cultivate a supportive workplace culture that values employee wellness that ultimately led to higher job satisfaction. Our goal was to establish programs and resources that support the comprehensive wellness of all employees encompassing physical health, mental health, and social well-being. So our team this year was comprised of two administrative assistants, three elementary teachers, three secondary teachers, one school counselor, and one support staff. And so because we were focused on all employees, it was really important to us that we had representation from as many employee groups as possible. Moving into next year, we are looking to expand our team to include representation from each of our elementary schools. We're looking to expand to have two members from

078each of our secondary schools, two student services reps, and then two uh support staff. So, what did we do this year and what are some of our celebrations? So each month our team would put out some sort of wellness activity and that was paired typically with information that staff could look into to again promote their wellness. Some of the highlights around this work uh in November we launched a staff gratitude form and we had over 800 participants. So it was a simple Google form that said, "Hey, do you want to give one of your staff members a shout out? If so, type it in here and we'll deliver it the day before people leave for Thanksgiving break. Uh we have only 750 staff total and so the fact that I think we were almost close

079to 900 uh staff shoutouts was just remarkable. One of my favorite things about that is they were all sent from my email because I did a mail merge and some people responded directly to me thinking that I was the person that wrote them and they said some pretty funny things and then I had to email back and say this is actually Rachel Herman and I think you meant it for somebody else. So um but it was all in good fun and again people were really appreciative. Uh we did several wellness calendars and again just a huge level of participation. So we had over 200 participants in our January wellness calendar and again just some anecdotal uh stories. One of my favorites was a person handed in his calendar and attached to it was four sheets

080of looseleaf paper where he not only documented what he did each day but he did a reflection on how that impacted his health. And one of the activities in our January wellness calendar was to connect with someone um whom you haven't talked to in a while. And this person connected, he is in his 60s, connected with an elementary school age friend and then talked about how he talked to that person for hours that night and it was just one of the highlights of his whole month. So again, little things that you're kind of like, "Wow, I was just kind of maybe thinking you would call up, you know, grandma. I haven't talked to her in a month and this person right went out of his way to do that. Um and then we did our

081stepping into spring March challenge. We had again over 200 participants which was just again a really exciting um thing. One of the one of our goals as we progressed through the year was to try and infiltrate what we were doing as a district team into buildings. And um what we started to see was that our building principles were really starting to help us and take ownership over some of these wellness initiatives. And that really helped us to create a cohesive effort. One of the things we always say is we can't shape culture, we can't shape climate, we can't create that healthy employee workforce from a district office. And so when buildings are on board with this work, it really helps the work to move forward. And so again, that was a really big celebration. Um,

082in fact, today all of our building administrative assistants and principles helped to spearhead our May wellness challenge. And then ultimately, I think one of our biggest celebrations is we have created a healthier workforce. So again, one of the goals is to create a workforce that wants to come to work, wants to be here, feels supported, and again is healthy. And so in just looking at some of our more recent months, we have seen significant decreases in our absenteeism and that is one of our indicators of success. Uh December we were down about 10% in January. Um I didn't I can't I didn't see the report. So um but again some really good indicators to be down you know 29% in March, 26% in February. February is a month of illness. If you if you are

083not familiar with school age children, they carry a lot of germs in the month of February. So again, this is a really good indicator for us that we are in fact impacting the workforce in a healthy way. Uh so I think I skipped. So looking ahead, where are we where are we going? So, one of the one of the real areas that we want to start to dive into is using data to drive our decision making. And so, what we are what we've essentially done is taken a general goal statement and we've narrowed it into four priority areas around wellness. And so, the pieces that we're focusing on are community and connections. So we want a staff that feels like they are part of a collaborative culture where they feel respective, respected. We are in

084a workforce that teamwork is valued. And then we want supportive and professional relationships to exist. We want to promote a work life fit. So we want to make sure that staff understand that we respect the boundaries between work and home time. And then we want to continue to encourage that physical and emotional wellness so that people aren't getting burnt out. We want a culture where people feel like they matter at work. Um, teaching is sometimes a thankless profession and so we want to build that culture of gratitude and um, appreciation. We want to make sure that people know that they're valued and then obviously a sense of security. So making sure that people as they're at work feel physically and psychologically safe and then offering wages and benefits that promote financial and um, physical security.

085And so what we're going to be doing next year with the expansion of our team is really looking at each of these indicators and deciding a what are some measurements around these things that we can start to monitor and then b let's move beyond some of the activities and into some of the more again impactful action steps that we might take to again move the dial on some of these indicators. And so I'm excited about where the team is headed around those those pieces. Um so again, what's next? We're going to expand the wellness team. We're going to become more data driven and then we're going to create some measurable goals. Um but again, overall really excited. This is a team that was completely voluntary. So um people were asked, do you want to join?

086Not really sure what it's going to turn into. And uh Sarah Sheals, one of our members. And it's just a really again collaborative group that when they come together, they've got great ideas and they're all about wanting to make again a healthier workforce. Questions for me? Thank you, Rachel. No questions. I just want to make a comment. You know, when I came into uh the board, I wasn't expecting to be as encouraged by some of these different things on an administrative level as I have been with this whole team. It's just awesome to to see and read and hear all that. So, thank you for your hard work. Of course. Anybody else? I second what he just said. All in favor say I. Uh, student service topics. No, sorry. Student learning topics. Education for employment

087update. Yep. So, we have Dustin Layman here tonight. Justin is our coordinator of college and career readiness and he's going to give a brief update on our education for employment plan and then talk about some of the great things that are happening um within the world of career teched in our district. Good evening, Dustin. All right. Hello everybody. Um, again, my name is Dustin Layman. For those of you that haven't I haven't had a chance to meet yet. Um, each year I give an update on PI26, our E fore plan, our education for employment plan. Um, it should be you should have a copy of that. uh just to take a look at um it's a technicality that we have to have that posted on our website each year. So we have that posted on

088our website. Um and then all of the things that are going on in that plan. Um what I'm about to show you is a result of that. So through the work that we're doing for our E4 plan, I want to show you some of the highlights and some of the updates from this last calendar year uh in our career and technical educa technical education program. All right. So, first I'll start off with the high school. It was a great year at Mcuano High School in regards to our career and technical education. As we kind of look around, you can see students from all over the uh the program, whether that be in our building trades, in our healthcare, in our culinary, our business and marketing classes. Um lots of great things going on. Um there's

089also a lot of great events that happen this year because of some of those programs that we have like our research symposium for our healthcare program and our academy of medical professions um that you can see over there on the left. And then uh like Chris was talking about her involvement with our culinary program. Um our culinary team has done a great job this year uh bringing in a lot of guest speakers. You can see here they brought uh members in and they did an MRE challenge with um some service members. So, a lot of great things going on um with our students there. Uh in the fall we had our muk ready day. So, our muk ready day is our kind of a big career fair as well as a um a chance for

090our students to learn about different career paths. Uh we had well over a hundred visitors in Mcuano High School for that morning um for freshman through seniors. is a great that's something that we offer at the middle school as well. We had our career day at the middle school just uh about a month ago and so it's really great that our students 7 through 12 really get um that exposure for the different careers. When we look at Parkview Middle School, lots of great things going on. Um whether that be in our STEM classes or our business classes. Um, you can see in the top left there, um, every year they always peg a business in town and then they carve a pumpkin and they take it over the jackalanter jaunt that the Rotary and the

091sisters put on. Um, you can see our Rockstar CT team up in the corner uh for Halloween was they were the Starbucks baristas and looks like they were actually drinks. Um, but you can see they do a great job as well posting on social media and a lot of these are clips that you see um on our social media with all of our kids working with either rockets or um different robotics and things like that. Um, and then all of our students in our business class do mock interviews. So, I have the privilege of doing that each quarter and you could see um Mr. Luke Spielman interviewing one of the students there and that's a great experience for not only the students but also for us being able to uh see how awesome some of

092our students are. When I look at some of our clubs and our activities that we have because of our career and technical education program, uh they're called CTSOs. So you have Skills USA is our teched related club. We have first robotics, which I know you guys are very familiar with. Um we have our HOSA, which is our healthcare program. Uh and then we have DECA. All of them performed really, really well this year. Um if you look in the bottom right, that's our entire group of HOSA students that attended the state conference. Uh multiple of those students qualified for the national event as well. Um DECA, we had six students place at the state level and one qualify for nationals. Uh and then our first robotics team um they won the one of the big

093awards that they won this year was their um first impact award which is the most prestigious award you can earn um for the first robotics by giving back to the field. So they were honored to receive that and that qualified them for the world championships down in Houston. Um, and then some of our clubs. So, Chris mentioned it today, our culinary club. Um, just this last week, that's the spread that they put on for our staff. So, it was a dessert bar. And then, as you see in the wall, those are all handwritten notes from our students to our teachers thanking them for the great things that our staff does day in and day out for them. And let me tell you, that was quite the spread that they put on, whether it be cream

094puffs, um, all different flavors, the lavender cupcakes. I mean it was they did this for about two weeks preparing for this event and it was pretty awesome. Some of the awards and recognitions that we won this year. So fe every February is CT month. You can see that's our entire CTE team um 7 through 12 over there in the upper corner. Um if you look down on the bottom left that is the greenhouse project. So, for the first time ever, NARI put on this really cool competition where seven different school districts from around the area competed to build a greenhouse and then there was um there was like a poll at the trades show at the state fair park and people got to vote on it. So, ours at Maguano, we won first place, which

095not only gave us the little golden tool belt that you see there that we get to keep for a year, but also gave us a $1,000 um check towards our program we keep putting back into our program. And he also made the N the Ner show on WISN radio Saturday morning. Did you hear about that? That was pretty cool. They talked about it. It's awesome. Um I'm not going to steal Mrs. This is Northard from the middle school asked me not to steal her thunder. So, I'm not going to talk too much about the middle school project lead the way program. Um, but we did for the ninth straight year get distinguished status which is the only school uh in Wisconsin to receive that and one of I believe 13 in the nation to receive

096that and they're going to speak on that next at the next board meeting. And then you can see some of our students uh for the first robotics down in Houston. And then um pretty neat down in the bottom right those four students are all HOSA students and they competed in an ananim anomage competition which is basically a virtual anatomy competition that they do. Um that was at the HOSA event and out of 75 teams they placed in the top three which qualified them for nationals. So they will be going to Las Vegas at univers uh UNLV at the end of this month to go compete. So, they've been practicing and I know they plan on going to Carol College to practice on their machine because that's like a it's about a $100,000 piece of equipment

097that this um virtual like anatomy thing is. I don't even really know where it is. Dustin Hosa again, that's our health occupation student organization. So, all of our healthcare students. Okay. Thank you. A lot of acronyms in education. CT at the national level. So, like I just said, our our middle school project lead the way program was recognized nationally um for the work that they're doing. And then this last year at the um at the national workbased learning conference, I had the privilege of leading a student panel. And right in the middle in the pink shirt is Avery Schwagger, one of our 24 graduates. Um she got to present in front of over a thousand people in the conference center at the Barrett Center this last year. So that was pretty amazing. and the amount

098of comments that I had of people coming up to me and asking me about her just just because of how just um professional and how awesome she did there. Uh she really represented Muano really well. All right, some CT donations that we had uh we had somewhere o in the ballpark of over $45,000 in equipment and money donated to our program this year. um a new team at Milwaukee Tool. They're working as a community impact team. They have been just rock stars for us and they they've donated somewhere in the ballpark of 15,000 plus just in tools and some of their new Packout gear for our uh teched program. It's been pretty amazing. Um and then as you see on the top, we were we received that thousand donation from NARI. And then the Ed

099Foundation was gracious enough to give us a $20,000 check that helped pay for our Wazer water jet in our manufacturing lab. Um if you look on top, that's our department chair in teched, Jason Johnson with Eric Gulla from Eaton Corporation. He received a um he he received award from the Wisconsin Technical Education Association for Community Impact. Um, Eric and the his team at Eaten have donated over six tons of metal to us, uh, which is amazing for our welding program. We don't buy any metal when it comes to all of our welding coupons and everything that we have going on. And it's because of great people like Eric and his team over at Eaton. Um, and then Super Products up in the righthand corner donated $500 for our Skills USA, and that's our teched student

100organization. So, lots of great things and the community is really um, really helping us keep the needle moving forward. So, I want to talk a little bit about our CT certifications that our students earned. These are just some photos of all of our grad like CNA graduates from this last summer. Um, so we had 188 unique seniors in the class of 24 earn over 250 certifications that count towards the CT incentive grant. Okay. So there's certifications that count for a grant in Wisconsin and then there's certifications that the students just earn um that aren't necessarily on that list. So 188 students earn 252 that qualify for the grant money. But total we had 267 graduates and 24 leave with an industry recognized uh credential or certification. That puts our total at 67.9% of graduates leaving

101with a CT certification. um with our strategic goal, one of the benchmarks we were trying to hit was 66%. So, we finally got it in uh 2024. So, it's pretty exciting. Our work-based learning this year, we had 171 students complete a work-based learning experience. So, either a youth apprenticeship or it's just a general work experience that they they can participate in if they take our work seminar class. Um in that work seminar class, they earn the employability skills certificate and a leadership certificate as well. So, of those 171 students, they've worked over 60,000 hours. Their average hourly wage is $15.7. They've earned over $945,000 this year, which puts a total economic impact of Mcuano and the surrounding communities of $6.6 million. So, our students are out working kind of burying that myth that kids don't

102want to work these days. Most of these kids are also athletes. They also are in our musicals. they are working on weekends. Um, pretty impressive things happening when you have that many students and look at the money that they're earning. That is just uh it's it's great to see that. Okay, the last thing I want to talk about is our alternative funding. So, through those different grants that I write and some of those programs that we have, this is the amount of alternative funding that we were able to bring in this year in the 2425 school year. So the youth apprenticeship, all of those students that are working and completing youth apprenticeship, we get to double dip on those certifications. Not only do we earn youth apprenticeship grant money, but then we can also uh

103get CT incentive grant money with that as well. So every youth apprenticeship student is bringing in somewhere between 1,700 and $2,000 of alternative funding for our school um that we can then put back into our programs. So this year we brought in $75,000 in YA money. Uh we haven't gotten the final numbers back yet, but every year with the CT incentive grant, they can earn up to it's up to $1,000 per student. It's never really $1,000. At once it all averages out, we usually get about $700 per student. So just doing the math on a $700 per student will be in the ballpark of somewhere around $120,000 of CT centagram money. Uh the Perkins grant that I we write every year, uh we're usually between 21 and 25,000. this year was 24,000 with the donations

104of $45,000 and then other grants that some of my staff have applied in one adding $8,000. We brought in over a4 million dollars of just alternative funding through our CT program alone this year. So, it's pretty exciting stuff. All right, I try to be quick. Any questions? Nice job, Dustin. Um, Dustin, are you do you also do the financial um piece in the in the in the gym with all the talk about that for one minute because I always it's always a blows my mind that what these kids learn in three hours. Yeah. So that's called reality check. So it's basically students are given they're kind of dealt a hand. They say they want to be a lawyer. They're told this is how much money you can make. They're also finding out that their student

105loans are x amount of dollars and now they have a house payment and oh you have to replace the tires on your car. You said you wanted to have a dog now you have a vet bill. So it's really a dose of reality that the kids get. Um we did that during Muk Ready day and we plan on doing that again. Citizens Bank actually just came out with their own version of it. So we hope to partner with Citizens Bank this fall to do that again. It's it's just a great um kind of a life lesson um that you see a lot of other school districts are doing. We've done it for the last four or five years with Educators Credit Union and plan to do it again. They're always looking for board members to

106help and uh it's funny when the kids come around and they they buy a Corvette and then they they go out and they buy a cool cool cool house somewhere and then they they don't have money for insurance or groceries so they have to come back and buy a Chevet versus Corvette. Yeah. Anybody anything else for Dustin? The kids who choose Diesel Mechanic always come out way ahead. Yeah. They're the ones doing real well. They have the extra fun tickets. Anybody else? Greg. Yeah. Oh, Jim. Just to ask some feedback because I'm in the local community managing a business and I can't say how important it is for our company to see these kids come through and be educated while they're still in school. Um, have four, which we no longer call them youth apprentices

107once they're out of high school. They're just apprentices as automotive technicians. And these are by far uh the best candidates that we see that have been through a career education with a high school. not necessarily Mcuano because my uh store is in Burlington, but whether they come from um regardless of the high school in our area, which I know they also work in the Mcuano schools, um it it's incredible how important this program really is to the community and and providing um the future workforce. It's been an amazing change for us to see technicians that are coming in young uh already educated and they're coming in at a level where we see much older technicians starting and they're ready to work and very very capable. So just as managing a a local business, I can't

108tell you how much we appreciate the opportunity to see these kinds of employees coming in and ready to work. Awesome. That's great to hear. It's also we're very thankful that businesses like Lynch take on these students because our like I said our kids want to work. Um and it's it's starting to get to the point where it's hard finding some employment for some of our students. You hear that there's a worker shortage but um some um some places struggle to hire someone that's under the age of 18 or if they don't have a high school diploma yet. So we're always trying to be as creative as we can to get as many opportunities for our students who are still in school. So, and speaking of that, um, one thing that I didn't mention, I forgot

109to say, um, so some of our autos kids going out, they they have a little they have a leg up on some of the students that their age because of the programs that we have here. Um, just found out that one of our former graduates uh, won the top gun award at WCTC for the best welder in the program. So, our kids are leaving our program with skills that um, kind of exceed their peers. So, it's really awesome. And actually a previous winner of that was Andy Wagner's son, Austin, um was a top gun award winner at WCTC as well in their welding program. So great things happening from Mcuano High School graduates. It can't be the genetics with Andy, but nice job. Thank you, Dustin. Anybody else for Dustin? Oh, sorry, Jason. Yeah, I

110just wanted to say that I had an opportunity to go and do a tour at the high school and I got to meet with the shop teacher when they were constructing the greenhouse project that they were working on and just sheer coincidence, my son was also in his class when he was in the high school and had taken on some of his initial uh interest in carpentry and my son's a full-time college student but also has started a business here locally doing carpentry and uh it all started there in the high school. So just I wish I could remember the guy's name but the teacher. Yeah, Marky. Yeah, that's him. Y and uh yeah, just great teacher, great connection with my son and uh I was thankful for that. Great to hear. Thanks for sharing.

111Thank you, Dustin. Thanks everybody. Uh next up is uh secondary ELA resource for adoption. Yep. So this year we have been piloting resources at our secondary level in both science and ELA. Um, in April, we came and gave you an update and provided our recommendations for this science resource. So, tonight, Michelle Ziggler and I are going to walk you through the process we used for ELA and our recommendation for moving forward. All right. So, anytime we do any sort of curriculum adoption, we follow this eight-year adoption cycle. So tonight, Angel and I are going to walk you through um what was done in research year, which is year one, which was um last year. And then um we're going to walk you through the pilot, which was this school year. Okay. So in year one,

112we typically um try to evaluate the current program so that we look for well, what went really well? What are we looking for in a new resource that would align with what we currently have? And we also look at what are the deficits? So, what are the areas that we know the current resource isn't really hitting um that we would want a future resource to do? We also look at current best practices, instructional strategies. Um we look at professional organizations and see their recommendations. We talk to other school districts to find out what they're using. And that's all part of the research year. All right. So, last school year, Stephanie Blue was still our director of student learning. And so she started this research cycle um with the instructional coaches at the secondary level um

113along with um some department um chairs as well. They reviewed the best practices in literacy instruction. They worked on an instructional framework that we are still fine-tuning um this year with the secondary and elementary coaches combined. They had vendor present uh presentations. So when they were reviewing the resources, they had a few different vendors come out to sort of sell or um share with us what they liked about their products. And then we also um had the instructional coaches along with um one of the department heads, they came up with a list of secondary literacy priorities. So things that they were looking for in a resource included things like strong standards alignments. Um I talk a lot about that essential standards work and we'll be talking about that a little bit more tonight. Um but

114that was one of the biggest things that they were looking for. Also looking for a resource that lent itself to um teacher modeling, interactive readalouds. Um something that was also very important would be um something called close reading, which is a resource that provides students with opportunities to engage with the text. Can they write in the text? Can they highlight? Can they take notes? Um offering opportunities for a student to read the text more than once and every time they read they're looking for something different with a different focus. Um they were also looking for a resource where the assessments were really assessing the skills and not just the text. So some resources you'll you'll buy and it'll you know the kids will go through a text at length with a teacher and then the

115assessment is based off that text. And so not truly getting a good picture of what kids can do and if they've learned the skill, but it's testing more the actual text itself than the skill. And so we were looking for a resource that did all of these things. So some of the resources um that were reviewed were into literature, amplify ELA, my perspectives, wit and wisdom and study sync. Um the rationale for selecting my perspectives was that out of all of the resources that they looked at and did a deep dive into my perspectives um just clicked all of the boxes that they were looking for more so than others. um there were some resources that just didn't even come close um to aligning with the priorities. And so at the end of the day,

116my perspectives was chosen um because it does align to the standards. Um it offers opportunities for teachers to model um for interactive readalouds, thinking aloud. Um the my perspectives text for the students is a giant looks like a workbook. Every single um text is in there and the students can interact with it. They can highlight it. they can write notes in it along the side. It'll give the kids prompts um for each read it has a different focus and so that was something we were really looking for. Um the vocabulary piece is embedded throughout the resource as well. Um and the assessments um out of all of the resources, in fact, this is kind of one of the deal breakers between two was that the assessments really were based off the application of skill and

117not just assessing the kids knowledge of that specific text, which was really important to the teachers. Um, embedded in my perspectives are little quick checks and exit tickets so that teachers can be responsive to their students in live time as opposed to waiting till the end of the unit assessment and being like, "Oh, they didn't get it. Um, but now we're moving on." They have those opportunities throughout to stop and do um, small group work and to intervene as necessary. Um, their writing tasks utilize common rubrics and student checklists and there was opportunities for differentiation in this resource as well. Um so you have heard me talk about this every time I'm sitting before you and we do a pilot adoption. Um one of the most important things that we can do from the start

118is to look at the essential standards. So in ELA there's about 30 plus standards for every single grade level and that goes across reading foundational skills, reading, writing, speaking and listening and language. Um we know that in a given school year there is no possible way for students to master 30 plus standards. Um, and so what we do is we sit down as a system and we look at what are the essential standards. What does a first grader, a second grader absolutely have to know to move on and be successful in the grade coming up next. And so we took our our teachers through a process um called the real criteria. And Tom, if you could click on that bottom link. So if you look on the left hand column, all of the standards for

119sixth grade we listed. And so what we had the sixth grade teachers teams do is across the top there are criteria. And the first one is readiness. It's basically just asking um would our students be ready for the next grade level if they had the standard mastered. And what we did is we had a vertical um sheet where all of the standard were across grade levels. So they could look at if I'm a sixth grade teacher, what will they need to know in seventh grade for this standard? So, do they have to master the standard in sixth grade or do we have some time and they don't have to master it till the end of seventh grade? So, that was one of the criteria. Um, the other criteria piece was endurance. So, basically, is this

120skill something they will need outside of this particular unit? So, if I'm in an ELA unit one, is this skill going to be really important for them to be successful in the following units? Um, assessments is another one of the criteria. So Ben Casso is amazing and he put together a list of all of the standards historically um across the forward exam. We can see which standards are asked on the forward exam, how many questions are there and how historically have our students performed on those particular standards. So that's a criteria piece that we looked at. If the forward exam has historically never asked that type of question ever, is that going to be a hard-hitting standard? or is it one where we typically see there's four or five questions and our students either don't

121do very well, so we want to make sure we're hitting it harder um or they perform pretty well. And then the last one is leverage and it's basically does that standard um help a student be successful in other content areas. So if I'm teaching informational text um skills, that is something that they would need in science social studies. So those would be standards we'd want to look at more carefully to see if that transfers not just in ELA but also in the other content areas. Um, so Tom, you could click out of that. Yep. Yep. Yep. That one. Perfect. Um, so we did that with our K6 teachers and then we also took that and did it with seventh and eighth grade. Um, and then we brought our sixth, seventh, and eighth grade teachers and

122we did vertical alignment. So we looked at if the sixth grade team thought the standard was essential, what did seventh grade say about the similar standard in that strand? And so we looked and we identified gaps and we filled them um accordingly. So, we've just done a ton of work over the last school year um to really make sure that we are picking the correct standards and that the resource that we are choosing aligns with those standards. All right. So, then moving into this year, we moved into year two of our curriculum renewal cycle, which is the pilot phase. So in this year we are continuing all of that work that Michelle talked about really um then adding in the piece where we are trying out materials and in this case we were piloting the

123my perspectives resource um but I want to emphasize what Michelle talked about. It really is about that curriculum piece. we're really looking at those standards and then we're looking to see does this resource fit our needs in terms of the standards. So this is an overview of the work that we did during this year which was our pilot year. So starting back in June in summer of 2024 all of our ELA pilot teachers came in and did training with SAVIS. um they really taught them how the resource works and how to best utilize that. And then they also engaged in some summer unit planning work with their teams and with the coaches so that they would be ready to hit the ground running. Continuing into the fall and winter, the teachers started digging into the

124resource and started with their pilot units, working again very collectively as a team, working with their coaches and Michelle and I. Um, we had additional pilot trainings. The literacy specialists from SAVIS came in a couple of different times and worked with the middle school group as well as the high school group. Um, really targeting specific things that were coming up as we were starting to pilot the program. Um, and then we continue to meet with the teachers, check in with the teachers, lots of planning meetings, feedback meetings, um, and working with the teachers to make sure that we were really seeing what this resource can do and how it can fit into our curriculum. And then throughout the year and especially coming up to this meeting in the spring here, Michelle and I have thoroughly

125reviewed all of the content and shared those review notes with the board. Um, as we were reviewing that, we were look really looking for that alignment to the standards. Really looking for does this fit and meet the district goals that we have. Um, and as we have said before with any resource, we are really making the resource work for us. So, we're really looking at again our standards and the curriculum we have and then making any adjustments we need to make to make that fit. So, this is a list of the teachers that pil piloted the My Perspectives resource. It was all of our teachers who teach ELA in sixth through 11th grade. All of them participated in the pilot in some way. Um, and I want to again just take a moment to thank

126our pilot teachers. I have said this before, but piloting a resource really is a heavy lift. It's a lot of planning. They have a new resource to learn. Um, lots of work with their team, with their coaches, with Michelle and I. a lot of extra meetings. So, we really appreciate that because it is really helpful for us to actually see um the resource in action. So, thank you to our pilot teachers for all of your hard work. We have shown this before as we have given updates on our pilot, but this is just a list of the units that were piloted this year. um in our sixth through eighth grade, they had planned to um utilize four of the units and given the pacing and some of the other things that they were doing within

127the year, each of those each of those grade levels ended up piloting three of the units. And then at our high school level and the freshman and sophomore level, um each of those grade levels piloted two units and our junior English department piloted one unit. So we really had um a indepth look of what that looks like in our district with our students. All right. So part of any pilot is feedback. So we created a pilot feedback form for the teachers that included all of those priorities that I mentioned earlier so that they could rank the resource um so that we could determine the strengths and the challenges that are presented. Um, so for the strengths alignment to standards, so I want to explain actually. Um, so basically the percentages at the end there are

128any teacher who ranked this item a four or a five, which was the highest they could score. Um, and then in parentheses next to it, it would be if they received no one or two ratings. So um, an alignment to standards. Um, it included opportunities for close reading, which we had said was really important. It provided the opportunity for kids to do those physical annotations. Um we felt the assessments were aligned and also based on application of skill. We felt that the texts were developmentally um appropriate and that there was a good balance between online learning and physical test texts and tasks. Um the scope and sequence of the lessons um was good as well. We have the challenges. All right. So some of the challenges that came up um then and this was the

129percentage next to that would be if a teacher um the percentage of teachers who scored the item one or two which would be like the weakest scores. So writing grammar were the two that stood out and when we had conversations with them they just didn't feel it was as explicitly taught as they would have liked. Um and then the assessment materials including guidance and the rubrics and checklist. They tend to prefer the rubrics that they had created in the past. um and so they chose to use their own teacher created rubrics. Um anytime we come up with challenges, we give the teachers the opportunity to brainstorm with us what are some things that we can do to solve those challenges. Is this a dealbreaker or is this something that we can overcome? So for the

130writing and grammar, um we had been supplementing writing and grammar for a while and the teachers were pretty happy with the things that they had had for that. Um the sixth through eighth grade instructional coaches are also reading a book called Writing Revolution. Um, and so they've been doing a lot of professional development and have already started using that book to help write um, writing lessons and they feel pretty confident that they can do that with this particular resource. And the high school already has a grammar team in motion that is continuing their work around the grammar curriculum. And then, as I mentioned, the assessment rubrics and checklists. The teachers already really enjoyed and liked the assessment rubrics that they were using for writing and so they're just going to continue to use those moving

131forward. All right. So then given all of that in terms of the feedback that we received from the teachers and in working closely with the administrators and the coaches um we are making the recommendation to adopt the my perspectives resource um for grades 6 through 10. Just a note about that. Um we are not going to utilize this resource for our honors 10 English course. Um, our team is going to work closely with the AP English teachers to revise their curriculum to be a pre-AP curriculum. Many of our honors 10 students will then go into an AP course. So, they're going to work together and make sure they are aligned. So, those students are well prepared. And then we will not be using it for 11th grade. Um, the 11th grade has a solid standardsbased

132curriculum in place. So, we're recommending moving forward with six through 10. So we have that strong standards alignment, that literacy alignment from grades 6 through 10, guaranteed viable curriculum and that we are able to really shift our focus to focusing on learning and not continually building um our curriculum. In the past, the teachers have had to supplement quite a bit. So this resource will help us with that. Um, for the plan for adopting, we are looking at using this in collaboration with some of the other things that we already utilize. So, we're looking at using about three of the units. There may be some pieces from the other units that we use as materials within some of the other things that we do. We want to make sure we retain those novel studies, book clubs,

133and of course, students will still have opportunities for independent reading. And then we will be working closely in collaboration between coaches and teachers to really develop those units. Um we are working right now at really digging into our standards and seeing which units will best align. This is a breakdown of the cost for the adoption. This is for a six-year adoption. So the main cost here is really there is that consumable workbook. It's it it contains like Michelle said earlier all of the texts and then the additional activities and resources that the kids need. That was one of the strongest pieces of this program. So the cost includes that consumable for six years as well as the digital license for both teachers and students. So students will have access to everything online through their digital

134portal. Um and then it also includes all of the teacher resources that we need. Those were all included free of charge um from the company. So the total um for the adoption is um three I can't read that that far away. 354,000. just over $350,000. Quick question on that. The shipping cost is is are we forced to use their shipping? Because by my quick edition, it's like $14 a book. I'm just curious because it it sounds like um you buy it on TV and then pay shipping and handling. Yeah, the shipping shipping and handling cost is something um that they that is always included there. I don't know where these are being sourced from exactly, Angela. I thought we looked at that. I thought it was like Arizona. It was far. So, if anyone wants

135to hop in and go and it's remember this is a six-year cost. So, this is for the books every single year for all of those students. So, roughly 1,800 is the quantity every year for six years. Okay, that makes a little more sense. Yes. Yep. Thank you for clearing it up. Yep. I have a question on Crosby. How many how many units are in the books? There are six. So, we're using about half the book. We're using three full units and then we are using other pieces. They they really um the resource includes a ton and so we want to make sure that we are um really utilizing the pieces that work best for the standards. There is a lot in there. there's no way that you could get to all six of the units.

136They have a lot of different pieces covered there and they repeat the standards um within each of the units because you cannot get through all of it. But that way you can pick and choose the ones that work best for your district. Just on a side note here, um last year, the year before, I can't recall. I think it was last year, Stephanie Blue, when she was in Angela's role, she left, um about $360,000 of funds in her budget and did not spend those. We rolled those funds into fund 46. That's what will fund this purchase here. when we adopt uh a revised budget and we see there's some cost movements uh you'll see that this will be one then so this was not a part of our original adopted budget begin the year I'm

137just throwing that out there so you know there's any concerns let us know but these funds have been saved for all right and so then um as we always do when we are recommending a resource we held a community viewing night that was last week Tuesday. Um we had just two parents who attended our community viewing night and both parents who attended had positive feedback regarding the resource. Um one of the things that I just want to remind you of is that um back in October we did do a viewing night and held a presentation for parents regarding the pilot as we were just beginning the pilot and we had pretty good attendance there. I don't remember the exact amount, but somewhere around 15 to 20 um families there. So, I think that may have

138been one of the reasons that we had a little bit lower of a turnout here. So, then next steps, we will be bringing this item back at the board meeting next Monday. Um requesting approval to move forward with the my perspectives resource. um pending board approval. Then we would purchase the resources and begin all of that work that we were talking about. Um summer curriculum work, working with the coaches and the teams um to start sketching out those units. What questions do you have? Anybody? All right. Thank you very much, Angela. And we're going to jump right into the next one, right? Yep. Uh number three, grades three to five, ELA pilot update. Yeah. So staying with the same theme of ELA, um again in our curriculum renewal cycle this year, we were in the

139research phase and Michelle's going to talk a little bit about that. Um but we had given you an update earlier in the year and now we're back to tell you a little more about our process that we've used this year with third through fifth grade and then our plans for piloting next year. Oh, Tom. All right. So, it's a little bit like deja vu here because I'm showing you the same slides that I just showed you. So, again, this is our uh curriculum adoption cycle and I'm going to talk a little bit about what we've done this year, which is the research year for the elementary literacy adoption. Right. Okay, I think we can skip over this one too because I explained to you what we do in year one. Okay, so this is the

140timeline that Angela and I used this year in October. We gathered the instructional coaches and the elementary principles together and we um chose teachers who we felt were literacy leaders um from all the different grade levels and from all the buildings because we wanted um equal representation across all of the buildings and grade levels when we started this process. Then in December, we brought the K through um second grade team together in the morning and the three through five teachers together in the afternoon. Um we also included some of our special education teacher leaders in this process as well. Um in that December meeting, we created a survey to push out to all of our teachers asking them what do you like about your current resource? When um do you feel comfortable piloting? Because keep

141in mind, we are implementing math this year. We implemented social studies last year. So, we really wanted to know where the teachers felt comfortable in this pilot process, if they were ready to pilot something new or if they felt like they just couldn't because this is a huge lift. Um, and this is probably one of the most important adoptions we can do at the elementary level is with literacy. Um, so we created the survey and then in January during one of our district professional development days, um, everyone was given the survey and given time to answer it so that we had as much participation as possible. We just thought if we provide the time we'll get as close to 100% participation as we could. Um, that survey gave us the information that we needed for

142creating a look fors document. Um, because we took what the teachers said they were looking for in a resource together with our instructional framework together with knowing what our standards say and we created this look fors document that I'm going to have Tom just click on quickly. Sorry, Tom. Through that survey, we also found that our K2 teachers were fine waiting. They said, "Can we just research for two years?" Um, one reason being that our super kids resource that you know our kindergarten, first and second grade teachers love, um, is not ready for a pilot at second grade until the following year. So, we thought if we could hold off one more year, that way kindergarten, first and second grade could all pilot um, the newest version of Super Kids. So, K through two through

143that survey decided they want to wait. Third, fourth, fifth grade teachers were overwhelmingly, we know it's going to be a lot of work, but we really want a pilot next year. um we just we've been keeping an eye our eye on the data in those grade levels and also getting teacher feedback that we just don't feel the current resource is doing what it needs to be doing. Um so what we did was the instructional coaches and I together with um um teachers, the look for survey that we did and help from our CISA 6 coach, we created this look fors document that basically goes through everything you could possibly want to look for in a resource. And even though we're not choosing to pilot in K through two next year, while we're looking at resources,

144we're keeping kindergarten, first and second grade in mind along with our 4K. So what we did was we basically asked the instructional coaches um and I afterwards to do a deep dive and we all used this particular form as well. So Tom go back to the slideshow. We had vendors come out as well in January and at that vendor's presentation we invited some of our teacher leaders our instructional coaches and all of our building principles. After the vendors presented, we asked everyone to use that look fors document during the presentations to take notes and then we asked them to vote. We had five vendors come out. We asked them to vote for their top three. So that's one of the um ways we were able to whittle it down and then in January through May

145we've been working on the essential standards work and February through May we've been doing pilot planning. So of the resources that we had come in we had amplify CKLA benchmark advance um H Hotton Mifflin's inter reading I Ready Savis my view wonders and witten wisdom. Okay so as I mentioned earlier we selected the top five from that list. Um I had had a ton of vendors just send just tons and tons of um samples for us. We selected the five that we wanted to come in and do the vendor presentations. After that, we whittle it down to the top three resources. And then after that, the coaches and I used that look fors document. We spent a couple days and we dug into each of three resources and we ranked them based off of all

146of those criteria, which goes on for about, I think, nine pages. Um, and from there, we chose the top two. We had um meetings with the ELA research team and we also had virtual visits with the school districts nearby us that are using each of those um products so that we could ask them like what do you like about it? What don't you like about it? Um and it was just very interesting to gauge whether they were being polite or if they were like genuinely enthusiastic about the product. Um and so that helped us also make our decision based on those conversations. Um and so the top two resources that we selected to pilot next school year are Amplify CKLA and Benchmark Advance. Okay. Um throughout the process, I sent out um weekly updates to

147the entire staff because one of our goals is to make sure that even teachers who aren't involved in the ELA research team or the pilot itself that all teachers feel like they have a voice. And so as we were meeting um the vendors were great about giving us their presentation notes. And so week by week I let them have access because I didn't want to throw that all out there at once. So each week I gave them an update. Um and then we had a resource viewing night just for the teachers so that the third, fourth, and fifth grade teachers could come in and take a look at the top two resources. Um it was one of the best days ever. In fact, I think I grabbed Rachel Herman out of her office that day

148and was like, "If you need a pickme up, just come and see these teachers um and how invested they are in this." Um, and so we've tried, like I said, to just keep the communication going and we've been sharing everything with the research work and the pilot updates with all of our elementary teachers. All right. So then moving in next into next year, we're going to move into the pilot phase. So again, as Michelle said, we're going to pilot two resources, Amplify CKLA and Benchmark Advance. We are piloting these with our third through fifth grade teachers. So, I'm just going to talk a little bit about how we're setting up that pilot to make sure it really helps us to see which resource is going to work best for us. Um, as a note, Eagleville

149will not be piloting next year because of their unique structure um with their combined grade levels. We are going to hold off and loop them in the following year um when we pilot with uh K2 um so that they can all pilot together as a building. So, we did really a lot of work um with the coaches, Michelle and I. Um and we're just very intentional about our pilot design. Um when we do a pilot, we're really looking to see what is going to be the best fit for us and we also wanted to keep in mind that we want to maximize our collaboration. As you know, we have been working on professional learning communities in the district, really strengthening our collaboration among our grade level teams. And so we wanted to ensure um that

150our pilot would fit with that. So for our pilot design, every school except for Eagleville um who is waiting to pilot will be piloting both resources. At each grade level, there will be two teams piloting each of the resources and all the teachers at the given grade level within the school will be piloting together. The purpose of that is so that they can collaborate and continue their PLC work. Um, as they are doing the pilot, each team will be piloting just one of the resources. So a lot of these things that we have come up with in our design are things that we have learned along the way from other pilots and also feedback that we've received from teachers. So in the past sometimes we have had teachers pilot both resources. That is a very

151heavy lift for teachers to do two of them and it also is a bit of a disruption to the student experience at times. Um so we are being very in intentional with this decision of having each team just pilot one resource. Um we do have some things in place so that they can see the other resource and then of course our special education teachers who support in those grade levels will be included in the pilot as well. This is just a look at what the pilot looks like. So you can see um for each of our buildings and each of the grade levels which teams will be piloting. You can see that there are just three teams um across these grade levels that are not piloting. So, we are working um with our principles and

152coaches to make sure that we have opportunities for those teams um to observe in the classrooms of their colleagues who are piloting so that they can see the resources in action. As Michelle said, all along the way, we have been very diligent about making sure that we're sharing information with all of the teachers, not just the research team. And we will do the same thing with the pilots. So we will make sure to share information with them and pull them into those conversations. This is just an overview of some of the pilot teacher commitments and some of the things that will be occurring um within our pilot. So we will have summer training on each of those resources. We also have built in time for the grade level teachers and the special education teachers to

153sit down as a team with their instructional coach and begin planning for those units that they will be piloting during the year. They will because they are piloting as a grade level, they will have the opportunity to continue planning um during their PLT time and they will have the support of their coach along with that. Um, for each of the teams, we are going to have them um, observe at their grade level in another building the opposite resource. Because they are not piloting both resources, we want to make sure they have a solid look of what the other resource looks like. So, we will be arranging that for them. Um, of course, we will continue to do check-in meetings with them throughout the pilot. And then those feedback pieces that we have talked about um

154are always the same in our pilots. We will have that feedback survey and then a final meeting um to discuss the resources as we look at this pilot. Um we've identified some specific pieces of evidence that we want to collect. Um, again, really the purpose of the pilot is to make sure we have a complete picture of what this resource looks like within our district with our students. So again, we have that teacher survey. We have those look for documents that we've created that are very thorough and really match up with the things we are specifically looking for and our standards. We will collect some data in some form from our students. We will use the assessments and formative checks um that they have within both of the resources to see how aligned that is

155to our standards. And then we will also collect some type of feedback from our parents and finally of course feedback from our coaches and principles. So, next steps for our pilot, um we will be placing um orders for the materials. Um we will be setting up summer training that's kind of already in the works. Um and that planning work, we are scheduling dates right now for the teams to get together to start that work. Um Michelle and I will hold a parent viewing night for these resources this summer so that parents can see um what what their child will be um having with with these resources. So we'll target that to the specific classrooms. Um but it will be open for everyone as well. And then um parent letters for the classrooms that are piloting

156will go out in August. Are there any questions for us? Anybody? Thank you very much. Well done. Morphology. Did I see Did I Morphology? Never mind. Okay. Thank you very much. Anybody else catch that? Morphology. You know what that is, Crosby? I do, but I'm not going to tell you. Uh, number four, extended. Thank you, Michelle and Angela. Number four, extended learning field trip. Um, yes, we have a proposal um from the high school marching band for an extended trip. Um, this trip is to attend the drum corps international prelim preliminary finals competition in Indianapolis. Um, this is a trip, I believe, that our band director, Emma Angelie, has arranged in the past. So she and one other person will be chaperoning the trip. It is scheduled for August 7th and 8th. Um they are

157using a travel company to assist with the arrangements. Um the main purpose again will to see will be to see that drum core competition but they do have a couple of other um things that are planned that was all provided in the itinerary. So, I will be bringing this back for approval at Monday night's meeting. Are there any questions regarding this? Uh, I'm not sure if there's like a a ratio of chaperones to how many people go. So, how many how many folks are going because I only see two chaperones. Yep. I don't think she has the full numbers. She she has it listed as 18 right now, which is her max, but I don't believe they have completely registered as of yet. So, I can get the final number for you. All right. Thanks.

158Any other questions? Thank you, Angel. Uh, student service topics, school safety update. All right, you guys stick with me here. We have a uh threat assessments um behavior and then I'm sorry but you have to end with Tom um on tax levies. So um tonight I just wanted to bring back to you a school safety update. So this is really regarding our um behavioral threat assessment. Um, I wanted to bring you an update tonight because this process has recently uh been updated from the Department of Justice and so as those forms get updated so does our process in our schools. So this process originally was designed um by the United States Secret Service. Um, and this process then specifically was created in 1998 from the National Threat Assessment Center. And from there they began they

159began providing training um and guidance for the Secret Service along with any other public agencies that have a responsibility for public safety. And so the primary um reason that we would do a behavioral threat assessment in a school is to make sure number one that we're preventing any types of violence and number two that we can intervene, educate, and then support our youth who are demonstrating some concerning behaviors. So I also think it's important to talk about what a threat assessment is and what it is not. So a threat assessment is systematic and fact-based. It incorporates a collection of analysis. So, we're looking at multiple sources of information when we're doing a threat assessment. We're also looking for patterns of thinking and behavior. So, what has changed in a student's behavior over over a period

160of time? And the best people to ask that it ask that question of are the people who see these see our children every single day, right? um along with families and um partnerships. Some some of our um students also see people in the community for therapy or counseling. A behavioral threat assessment uh takes into consideration an individual and then some dynamic factors that I'll talk about in a little bit. At times we see some escalating behaviors and then that pauses and and we have to ask the question, do these behaviors uh pose a threat? And if so, what are we doing to examine that threat? The process looks at three levels. Whether it's a low, medium, or uh imminent threat to safety. Those are the three categories that it looks that it falls under. And

161that drives our reaction, our um next steps. It is also based on the goal is risk management. So if there is a pathway or some type of planning, we want to make sure that we're interrupting that um pathway. And then also uh the last part is to make sure that we are progress monitoring. If a student is flagging for us under a threat assessment, that we are going back even if it's a low threat that we want to go back and make sure that we're circling around that student and that it's not just like a oneanddone conversation that they had some a significant enough comment, behavior, etc. that we needed to do a threat assessment and we want to make sure that it's not something that we've forgotten about. Also, looking at a behavioral threat

162assessment, um it is not adversarial, so it can be uncomfortable. It's an interview process. So, we talk to parents, we ask some hard questions. We ask some hard uh questions of witnesses, of the student, um of other family members. It's not meant to be adversarial, but again, it it is awkward and it can be uncomfortable at times, but it's necessary and part of the process. It is not the same as a disciplinary process. So, it can result in a discipline consequence. Um, that's okay. Um, but the assessment itself looks at whether the behavior or the incident should be determined again that threat level. It is not a educational evaluation. It's not special education. It's not mental health. Again, it is specifically around a situation that has occurred. It's not the same as a functional behavioral

163assessment. That's something that actually Jen Tyson will talk about in a little bit when we start to talk about behavior. It is not that either. It can trigger us to look deeper at a student's um behavior and that root cause analysis, but that's not what this assessment is specifically for. Um it's not used its purpose is not to exclude. Our purpose is to define and understand and look at that root cause. Um it is not used to predict future behavior although we are always trying to gain insight on what that is. Um and then it is not limited to the physical security measures that are in schools. That's a whole separate topic and we do a ton on our buildings and ground side and as a district under training and guidance around um safety measures.

164So it's also to remember that there is no profile of a student attacker. They have been male and female attackers. They have been high achieving students and they've been students with poor grades. There are students who can be isolated. They're students who can be loners. They're also students historically speaking that have been popular and well-liked. So this process is designed to gather the most relevant information, any types of communications, stressors that might have happened in a student's life and then also looking at what is wrapped around that student for support potentially. If something negative is happening, are there the supports in place? Who do they have access to? So that model looks at the individual as a whole. We look to identify, investigate, assess it, and then manage it. So, what does our follow through

165and follow up look like? On this next slide, I'm going to talk through. Um, this was one of the pieces that was recently updated and it starts in that ye in that top yellow part when we're starting to look at a wheel of uh what types of behaviors might start to be concerning or triggering or we hear something maybe a social media uh is posting something um a student reports something. These are the kind of things that we're digging into. So, when you're looking at that deepening despair um area, we're looking at any um communications that are unusual. We're looking at a a fixation perhaps of like a really hard time for a student regulating their emotions and they might just um have more of a negative outlook. Um might just be really struggling to

166find any type of positive um expression or outcomes. we start to look at a change in behavior. So, an unusual unexplained deviation from an individual's prior behavioral pattern. So, sometimes we might see a student looking or acting very different than what we would be used to. Maybe a teacher is starting to notice, a parent might be reaching out, a friend might be reaching out. Um, and I'll talk about that towards the end when we start to talk about our speak up speak out tip line. That is also a clue for us to be taking a look. Um, when we're looking at pre uh like preparatory behavior, we're considering what is the individual's attempt to get physically close to the target. So, are they coming into a building or a school where they're not typically there,

167maybe coming to an event that they've never come to before. Um, are they proceverating on being angry about something, being upset with someone or some type of situation? um they might be researching or have an interest in past attacks. So on our network, we have that Bark notification system that sits on top of our student information um or our student uh software. So on our side, if a student starts to um starts to look up Coline, starts to look up, you know, how to buy a weapon, how to all different types of triggers, that's going to um send an alert, a flag on our side, and then our administrators know to look into that and find out like what why were they looking at that? What was the root cause? So it's just kind of

168like a flag for us to be aware of. Sometimes we get flags like for instance we're studying World War II. We tend to get a lot of flags during that time for a variety of reasons, right? Holocaust, mass murder, those types of things flag also. But when we're looking specifically at an interest attack like a school attack or school shooting, that's going to um certainly notify us. Um again going through into that fixation. So an extreme preoccupation or pre being preoccupied with a person, a place, a belief or a cause. We see that a lot. I feel like in the news when something really tragic happens later on a manifesto will be um released or there'll be some type of past information that that will come out. You might see an unusual amount of weapons

169or collection of items that you hadn't known about. um or they find in the aftermath. Um sometimes they might have an expertise in a particular area and we see signs that they are starting to research that or they're really in um particularly engaged with learning something that would be unusual. When we're looking at novel violence and aggression, the key here is really being new. Is there a new pattern of violent behavior or aggressive behavior? When we get up to again, you're like looking at this wheel as like more intensity, right? So, as you get up to the expressed or implied intent to harm, this is all about the threat. So, what's being communicated, what's being posted, um what's being commented on, and then that shifts into like a directly communicated threat. So, these might be

170verbal, written, in person, but it's going to give you some insight into what this person is thinking. planning or planning on executing. And then that last part obviously is going to be our most tragic situation, right? So at the end of uh at the end of whatever event is being planned, what does that person look as look looking to themselves to be doing? So are they looking for death by cop? Are they looking at um you know committing suicide? Are they okay with ending their own life? Right? So that might be you might see a a a student not a student could see a situation where somebody is um maybe really depressed, suicidal, suicidal ideiation, those types of things. This next part here is a process that I know is kind of hard to see.

171Um I tried to make it as large as possible, but I do have all of these in paper handouts, too, if you guys want a copy. Um, but this is really looking at what we do in our schools. So, when we get a threat, you start right up there at the top that we've received something um about a threat, a potential um situation that could be elevated uh quickly. And so, if you follow down to that right hand side, that if if we hear something and it's an immediate action that we need to do something, all of those things happen immediately, right? We're securing that school. We might be calling 911. we'd be talking to students. We're going to be um at all costs protecting, securing, buckling down. Um that is that that part and

172I think Joe could speak to this too, like that happens very quickly. On the flip side, if we're hearing something and we're not that's not that imminent immediate threat, but we have heard something that um we're concerned about, then we start to follow the flowchart on the other side. There are three phases in a threat assessment. So the first phase um we're always going through and that's really looking at like the witness statements, what did the actual students say? And then from there we're determining whether we need to head to that second phase or if we can stop or do we need to go all the way through to the the backside where we are really coming up with that progress monitoring plan. So, uh, tonight I just wanted to also update you that we

173are continuing as always to refine our system. So, we're going to be doing some mock reunification exercises, um, over the summertime. I've been working with Ben Cassell to talk about our website. So, we have some things about school safety, but I also think we could do a lot more when it comes to making parents aware of even if it wasn't like hoping that it's never a tragedy, even if we needed to evacuate for some type of for some type of reason. Maybe there's a fire or a gas leak or any of those types of things. What does a parent need to safely pick up their child? Right? You need some ID identification, right? Um and just what that what it would look like from the beginning to the end is something that we want to

174spend some time talking with um community about with our parents about and starting first and foremost with just updating the resources that are out there. I mentioned this already but just that that process has been updated. So we'll spend time this summer working through that from our administrative um level with our uh building administrators. We continue to unfortunately prep if we need to ever evacuate a building. So, we've put together um boxes where we can literally take what we need to whatever site we're going to and have lanyards, clipboards, internet access, anything that we might need to be able to pick up and move and um create a uh an interim place that we can work out of. And the last piece is that speak up and speak out. And so I just met actually

175recently with Corey Kurpatre um our new SRO at the high school and he is very dedicated um and really wants to get on top of like rejuvenating the SpeakUp Speakout app. So for those of you that are not aware of it, it's an anonymous um reporting app. Um it's statewide and right now it is um monitored from the Office of School Safety. So, and I'll talk a little bit um after this slide about how many tips we've had so far to date. Um hold on a second. I'm going to flip a screen here. Um we also have the one thing that's really nice about SpeakUp Speak Out is that it's all handled through one central location. So, all the tips go through there and then they're um delegated out from there. So, if it is

176an immediate concern, um they will dispatch to the local um police department. So, say a tip comes in at 1:00 in the morning, there's some significant concerns about a student, maybe they're um their concerns about taking their own life, then there's no like wait time there. The Office of School safety receives the tip and then they dispatch. So, even if a Go ahead. even if a school personnel doesn't see that tip on their phone or in their email, somebody is still reacting. Um, and so that is the to me one of the most um valuable pieces of the SpeakUp Speakout app. Pretty cool thing here. Uh, how is it funded? So, right now it's right now it's uh I believe it's fally funded. Um, or is it state, Joe? Uh, state funded through the Department

177of Justice. So there is I don't know if you ever hear about it on the news. Occasionally you will hear we were at a conference on Friday and they talk about like how long will the funding last for the SpeakUp Speakout app. If this was ever not funded at the state level, we would have to develop something I feel like internally to have some type of anonymous reporting tool in my opinion. And and maybe we could create something really great. That's certainly possible. We have talented people. but we won't have the office of school safety on the other line regardless of whatever we create. Um, so, uh, great question. So, what happens when a tip is submitted? So, the SUSO staff, uh, receives it and then they open up a line with what they call

178the tipster, right? So, here's the person who's reporting. The person on from the SUSO staff can go back and forth with the person. They might ask some more questions. Um, it's an opportunity if there's something uh on like a social media post, you can upload it. You can upload Snapchat um screenshots, anything that you want to be able to upload as the person who is putting the tip through. Then that tip is sent to the school staff. So, for example, myself or Dr. Cook might get an alert on our phone that there has been a tip and then um there's usually a team. So at the high school, a team of people will get the tip and and generally student services staff will as well. And then we have to respond and investigate at the

179end of it. Then we create a dis uh like an ending report that will summarize and detail out um our response and then the tip is closed. So, since we launched in December of 2021, just to give you an idea of how often we get tips, we have had 228 tips um and around all of those different topics. So, SUSO isn't just about a planned attack or something um like a a school tragedy. There's also all of these other things um that that students or parents can report. This last year we've had 71 tips to date. Um where you see the purple that 32% that's other those can be anything that had like two or less incidents by it. I didn't I didn't um like I didn't take apart. So that other could include things

180like reckless driving in the parking lot. It could include a hit and run. Um it could include like an eating disorder, a concern around like an eating disorder. So, it could be a lot of those different things. Um, but I think it's important for everyone to see that it's being used. Um, and I think it's being used in a way that benefits our students and our community. That's what I have. And that was a lot. So, I wanted you guys to stay awake. Do you have any questions? Craig, I think one thing to note about the uh the Office of School Safety at the Department of Justice, it was started back in 2018 by then Governor Walker and Attorney General Shiml um in response to a school shooting. Um and after that, school districts began

181to receive the safety grants were in place. there was $100 million in funding uh for schools and then as a result of that project that hund00 million in funding the grants so on and so forth to help safe make the school safer they did build in this component and as you can see it is something that's used um I would say appropriately in our school district I think at workplaces in my prior role uh where we had hundreds and hundreds of those every year um this is I think a much more practical number really reflecting what kids and parents uh general community members see as a need in our community that needs to be responded to. And that 24-hour human monitoring, I can't say enough about how important that is. Anybody else? Okay, thank you.

182All right. Um Jen Tyson is here tonight. Um Jenry program support coordinator. She works with our elementary schools and specifically with our special education teachers, students um and then some of our related services. So Jen is actually speech and language path uh by trade um but also brings a lot of expertise in the area of behavior um and assist of technology and autism. And so this is kind of the May mayhem part of the year where our behaviors start to spike just a little bit. And so also timely to bring in just some information about what our staff do um have access to as far as a K12 system and then what we're doing in response to helping um to provide professional development. So I will let Jen take it from here. Welcome Jen. Hi.

183Thank you. Is this on? You gota talk right into the microphone though. Okay. I'll work on that. Um so just briefly what I'm going to go over here tonight. So um universal classroom behaviors can really vary widely among um all of our students. So they can be more typically challenging behaviors and then those um can be much more extreme challenging behaviors that require specific strategies. So, I'm going to discuss um some of those various degrees of dysregulation and then specifically students with those invisible disabilities and I'll explain what that means um on a a slide coming up here. Um some of the fringe and outofthe- box behaviors that we then see associated with those students that have invisible disabilities um autism and behaviors that are associated with autism. Um and then the basic non-violent crisis

184intervention deescalation techniques, which is the model that we use for our um verbal deescalation of students that are disregulated as well as um the seclusion and restraint procedures. Um so just a belief non-negotiable that um I have and I try to instill in the staff when I'm working with them is that kids really do well if they can. Um we have to determine what's causing them to not do well. Um, so it's it's not necessarily a matter of them wanting to have behaviors essentially. Um, we have to do what's called a root cause analysis to determine what that disability related need is and how we can best support them. So, when I come in and do conversations with staff members, um, for people that are asking for support for students with behaviors, um, the three

185things that I talk about with them are, um, are they what are they in control? How what are they in control of? Um, is the student trying to control something? Um, is there a power struggle that we can avoid? So, that control is super important. Um, behavior and how it's seen in context. And we can't really look at behavior in isolation. So a student that just acts out, there typically is context to that. Something that may have happened before that, something that could have happened on the school bus on the way to school, something that could have happened the night before, something that could have happened um in the morning before they left, something that happened at lunch or recess. So there's definitely context that goes with each of these behaviors. Um as well as

186that all behavior is a form of communication. um and how are we receiving that communication and then what are we doing with that communication when we receive it. So when we look at these two children and the um the obstacle that's in front of them, this is a very visible disability. These are students that wouldn't be able to get up the steps. Um so we would put accommodations and support in place for them. Um but their disability is very visible and we can see that. uh when we look at some other students that have some of those disregulating behaviors that then are associated with negative behaviors, we also have to look at what accommodations and supports we can put in place for these students as well. Um sometimes these are much more difficult to determine.

187It's not as easy to determine that like I I need to provide a ramp for them to get up the steps. Um so those disregulating behaviors are much more difficult and that's where we really get into that um root cause analysis of those behaviors. So and that root cause analysis is essentially continuing to ask the question why. So why is this student acting this way? Okay. Well, why do you think that? Why or what context is this happening in? and really trying to hone in on what that behavior is and then what that disability related need is that we have to support and if we can provide um some specially designed instruction or supports and accommodations through that student's IEP. So when we think about that boy um a lot of people may sometimes we

188will say well he would do well if he wanted to and um really working on that reframing our of our thinking so he will do well if he can and how are we going to help support him so that he can do well and all of that comes from that root cause analysis again as well as those disability related needs. So then um those in invisible disabilities. So these are disabilities like I said previously that they're not immediately obvious to us but they definitely impact learning and social interactions. So some super common invisible disabilities are some of those more neurode divergent disabilities. So students that are um a they're developing atypically neurologically. So that could be um ADHD which is probably one of the most common ones. um oppositional defiant disorder, autism spectrum disorder, anxiety

189disorders, sensory processing disorders, learning disabilities um that go beyond a specific learning disability, but something such as dyslexia or dcalcula, and then um trauma factors that some of our students come to school with and are experiencing outside of the school. So, how can we support those students with those um invisible disabilities? So, it really starts at the classroom level. Um, building strong relationships and trust um built on mutual respect, using predictable routines and clear expectations, providing accommodations such as extra time, sensory tools, visual supports, assisted technology, um, augmentative and alternative communication, and then really um, building a program on that student's strengths and celebrating all of the small successes where they can um, demonstrate their skills and show us their knowledge. So when we speak about behaviors, we talk about the difference between fringe behaviors

190and then out of the box behaviors. So fringe behaviors are more mild and moderate and they're more classroom managed behaviors. So they could be managed within the general education classroom by either the general education teacher or if there was support in that classroom for a student IEP. Um, so some of those examples might include excessive movement or fidgeting such as tapping, standing while working, pacing in the back of the room, frequent calling out or talking to peers, mild to moderate attention difficulties, uh, occasional difficulty following instructions, and then more of the mild to moderate emotional outbursts. Those out of the box behaviors um would require more structured interventions or external support. So some of these may include some more frequent um emotional outbursts, physical aggression or self harm, severe avoidance of tasks or complete disengagement,

191and then a very persistent non-compliance. So the when to seek additional support. So when these things start to happen, you would want to seek additional support. So, you're going to collaborate with your student services staff, which includes school counselors, um, as well as, um, school psychologists, special education staff. Um, there's some staff, um, that have more training in behavior. So, you would want to reach out to them as well, as well as, um, the crisis response team, which in every building includes the building principal. Um, we implement behavior intervention plans. So, those can be implemented for students with IEPs or 504s. And when the behavior is persistent and rises to the level that it becomes more extreme, then we do conduct conduct functional behavior assessments and that's done through either a 504 evaluation or re-evaluation

192or a special education evaluation or re-evaluation and that really looks at the function of a behavior. So staff are asked to provide data around when a behavior occurs and they usually use um ABC data. So what was the antecedent? What was the behavior? And then what was the consequence of the behavior? Consequence not being like a consequence that was implemented, just what happened as a cause of that behavior. That be that information is then used to create a behavior intervention plan and oftentimes some sort of a goal if the student has an IEP for us to start providing um specially designed instruction for. So dysregulation and autism. So autism is a developmental disorder affecting communication and behavior. Um it is a spectrum. So it affects each person differently. Some students do have um visible characteristics

193of autism. They have stmming behaviors. Um they might have verbal um they might be echolelic and you can visibly the things that they're presenting are visible for us to see. But there are students that have very mild autism. They're on the spectrum. and they're much more high functioning. They are in the classroom for years um before they may all of a sudden start to show some dysregulation that then we need to support. Um so autism affects how a person perceives and interacts with others. They often will have difficulties with social interaction as well as communication. Um restricted or repetitive behaviors or interests. They might be um very hyperfocused on one thing. Um, so we sometimes will use that then as one of their strengths for them to learn. Um, sensory s sensitivities. So they can

194either be super over or super under sensitive. So they're um, students with with autism sometimes can go outside and very subzero temperatures and it doesn't affect them sometimes because they are hyposensitive to that type of weather. There's reports of students that have broken bones and it's not their families aren't even aware because they're that they lack that much sensitivity for that. Um oftentimes they have challenges with change or transitions and then there's frequently rigidity um in movement or behavior. So I just wanted to briefly um Yeah. So, real quick, autism is a lot like is it asberers? Yes. So, um you there used to be more categories for um autism and now it's just autism spectrum disorder. So, there used to be autism which was much more the um the students that had more needs

195in the area of autism. And then there was Asperger syndrome which was students that um we would consider more higher functioning. They were able to communicate a little better. usually their their cognition was not impacted. And then there also was pervasive developmental disorder um not otherwise specified, meaning they were somewhere on the spectrum, but they couldn't determine if they were autism or if they had Asperers. Since then, the DSM has now just said everything is autism spectrum disorder, but it is very similar. Yes. So, um, within, um, the Mcuano Area School District, when I had when we pulled these numbers, there were 666 students with IEPs. Of those 666 IEPs, 65 of those IEPs were students that had an educational autism label. Um, so that does not include students who have a medical diagnosis of

196autism, but are not qualified under educational autism because it is different criteria. Sometimes those students are um serviced under the significant developmental delay which u means a significant um delay for students ages three through nine or they might be serviced under other health impairment labels. And it doesn't also include some of our students that have medical diagnoses of autism that are just serviced through a 504 plan for accommodations. Um students can also qualify under emotional behavioral disabilities. So at the time that we pulled these numbers, there was 27 IEPs with that label. So 4.1% of our IEPs and then the the the big one is the other health impairment. So 179 of our IEPs or nearly 27% are qualified under that other health impairment label. And sometimes students with autism don't meet criteria for educational

197autism, but they do still meet criteria for other health impairment. So, it is really hard for us to to specify exactly how many students we have with autism. But these are the types of students where we most frequently see um behaviors from. That also includes or that doesn't include then that we have 341 students in the district currently receiving accommodations through a 504 plan. So, our response to disregulation. So, we utilize the techniques in our non-violent crisis intervention training. um myself, uh Jamie Dabner, who's the secondary program support coordinator, and one middle school special education teacher are all trained to train individuals to be able to utilize these techniques. So, most special educ educators receive this training. Um all of our elementary student services personnel receive this training. All principles receive the full training, which

198includes um not only the verbal deescalation techniques, which is really like the heart of the program, it it encompasses like at least 70 to 75% of our eight hour training when we do it. Um but then they are also trained in the disengagements and holds and those are the types of things that we have to do when a student's behavior escalates to the point of a lack of safety for themsel or others and we have to use some form of restraint. Um, beginning next year, um, the, um, um, CPI, which is the company that we, um, are trained through, has a new deescalation basics training that we are planning to provide for all educators in the district. So, that will be it's about a 30 to 45 minute training where where they'll learn more of

199the techniques around verbal deescalation, reframing behavior, classroom culture, and then those basic deescalation techniques. And then as I said um we utilize our crisis response teams within buildings when behaviors exceed classroom managed techniques. Um so when we are addressing heightened behaviors like I said we use those deescalation strategies before we move to any sort of a disengagement or a hold. So some of those key strategies are remaining calm using non-threatening body language. We want to validate the students feelings and provide choices. Um we we try to reduce sensory overload and that's particularly important for our students that have autism because sometimes it is a sensory based need that they are seeking. Um and we want to make sure to give that student time and space so that they can um deescalate from their disregulation. Um

200something else that we're going to be providing now moving into this summer and then into the 2526 school year. Um this is um specific to autism, but it's a framework that can really be used for a lot of students. So um it's called the CS framework. Um we did try to send about 10 educators to a training for it last summer and unfortunately it was cancelled. Um but we were able to work with Emily Rubin who's the co-author of this program and she's going to be coming in August to present a two-day training for our staff. So she is an inter internationally recognized speaker and consultant and she specializes in autism spectrum disorders. So, this will be open to all staff in the district. Um, we currently do have 27 staff that are signed up

201to come for this training in August. And we will be sending out I'll show you a flyer on my next slide to all staff because we really want um also our regular education staff to start to receive some of this information as well. However, special consideration will be given to um those who we know will have students with autism in their class for the 2526 school year. Um, additionally, next year, Emily will be providing um a coaching model throughout the school year for our staff. And then next summer, she will come back to provide a three-day training. So, anybody that didn't have day one and day two this summer could come for day one and day two next year. And then anybody that has those first two days could come for the three-day training. So,

202the searchs framework um it's it's um broken up into three areas. Social communication, emotional regulation, and transactional supports. So social communication is that um child or or young adults ability to engage in meaningful and reciprocal conversations. So it's really talking about being able to converse with people, being able to share joy, being able to share attention. Um and then that emotional regulation piece is is the behavior piece. So what are they doing to stay regulated? Sometimes that could be self-regulation like they're holding a fidget. Sometimes it might require mutual regulation where we're helping them get on a swing to help deescalate that behavior. And then those transactional supports are what we do as their team, their parents, their educators, and their peers to help foster their growth in communication and emotional regulation. And then just

203the last thing that I wanted to go over tonight was um our least restrictive to most restrictive range of services. And this is for our students with IEPs. So least restrictive being that we just create a classroom environment um built on relationship or environment and relationship built on mutual respect. Moving down then we would ask the classroom teacher to vides provide support. Um more restrictive over that is that they would receive support from special education pair professionals or teachers. We might create a BIP. We might conduct an FBA. So that's that functional behavior assessment and then a behavior intervention plan. Then next would be removal during periods of dysregulation or removal of class to a different location, virtual learning from a separate setting into their general education classroom, self-contained program. And then our most restrictive

204range of service is that alternative placement where they um move to a different school offsite to start receiving their education. And that's done um through an IEP placement decision. So I don't have another slide that says questions, but I do. Oh, I do. Wait. Thank you. The heck. Thank you very much. Uh, pretty informational. 504 versus IPB or um an IEP. Thank you. Yeah, real quick. So, a 504 is that they likely have some sort of a medical diagnosis and they're protected through the section 504 rights. Yep. IEP means that it's special education and they've qualified for one of the I believe there's 12 categories now that they can receive special education in. The other difference is that a 504 is just accommodations and supports and an IEP comes with specially designed instruction from a

205special ed teacher. Anybody else? Thank you, Jen. Well done. Thanks. Um, budget and tax levy. Thank you. Budget and tax levy. Thank you. Passes back. You guys want a presentation or you just want a memo? Your call. All right. No, I'll go very quickly here. So, we have um I was asked by uh one a board member to just summarize the steps we've taken so far this year uh to date to balance the budget. As we said, since January, we are chasing deficit of 1.4 million. So, I just have four bullet points or actually three. We had $270,000 of limited one-year uh limited one-year hires that are were with us or are with us this year. And those positions are not coming back next year. At the conclusion of uh let's see here, we have

206447,000 in retiring positions that we are either shifting folks into those roles or doing something where those roles aren't coming back. Um lastly then through course enrollments and through the information that Rachel shared over the last couple of meetings uh we've rightize our staff to meet coordin uh student course demand and accordingly reduce 3 point uh $378,000 in those uh teaching positions. So the total reductions just underneath $1.1 million. We have a few more moves to make over the coming weeks. Um but I have no doubt that we'll be able to balance the budget and and and meet our goal in that regard here. Um likewise then I guess one thing I just will show um is the tax levy here. So there's three tax levies that go into each into the overall levy. So

207this past year we levy 32.3 million. Um the operating tax levy is defined by the revenue limit per student. So we multiply our third Friday account by however much money we're getting. The state pay pays a share of that and then the remainder becomes the operating tax levy. Um the referendum levy is something we can only levy if and only if the uh community gives us permission and then the community service levy pays for the two school resource officers. So this is what we actually did last year. We had a $32.3 million levy. You can see that there's a lot of assumptions that are going into this next year. the 2526 levy. We we don't know how many students in the third Friday. We don't know how much money per student we're going to get

208and we don't know how much money is going to be embedded in the state by annual budget. But our best guess right now is it's going to go up a little bit here. Um all in my my absolute best guess at this time is the tax levy this fall will change less than 1%. And then you can just take a look on this referendum line item right here. You can see that uh this fall we will not the the levy will not increase for the new middle school referendum debt. That will start in 2627. But I just want to give you a little preview right now as to what we might expect when we come to levy this in October. Any questions? Jake. Um just wanted to say great work on increasing the bond rating.

209Oh, you bet. You bet. I know you didn't really touch on that, but good good work there. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. You're here. I second that one, too. Thank you. Anybody else want to jump in? Um, we're going to go to action items, hires, retirements, and resignations. So, I have some hires that I'm going to recommend, but I'd like to show you a video that goes along with our um with one of our hires. And so, uh we have a we talking about, right, like the pipeline of, you know, growing our own. And so, this is uh a video. I'm gonna actually let it just speak for itself and then I'll talk about it after. Go ahead, Tom. All right. So, with Mrs. Shallow gone today, thought I'd take the opportunity to talk a

210little bit about from the administrative side what it looks like to go through the hiring process of educators. Okay. So, this is that time of year where you have retirements, you have some resignations. as an as an like an administrator, one of our most important parts is hiring the right people to be in front of you every day. They have the single most largest impact on our student learning. Okay. So, with that being said, we go through the interview process. You guys apply for jobs, they interview, we do reference checks, and then we get to the point where we are right now. Mr. feel. So, at Parkview, we have a position available and we we conducted interviews this week and we had a lot of great applicants and one of those great applicants is standing

211in this room and as educators that as educators or as future educators hopefully um our goal in this district is always to get the best candidates we can. And in this case, we had a great candidate who went to Parkview, went to the high school, student taught at the high school, and we want to stay forever. So we are here today to offer the [Applause] chocolate [Applause] and Bailey is teaching in the future educators program at the high school. And so Dustin and Luke called Dustin and Luke called and said, "Could we do something a little special since she's teaching the future educators program? She's a Maguan Go alum. She wants to be here. She wants to come back." And so, um, that is what they did. And it was pretty cool to see. When

212I met with her, she was just ecstatic to again be able to give back to her community in this way. Uh and so again just as well for our our future educators in that program to see that whole right come full circle um of again somebody being offered employment was pretty cool. So I just wanted to show that to you so that again it's it's kind of a feel-good moment. Um and it's been a long meeting. So um all right. So then here we go. Here's the other ones. We've got Faith Diggins who we are offering special education teaching position to. Uh McKenzie Lindau, also a special education teacher. Laura Morris, also a special education teacher, and then Bailey Sabin, a family and consumer education teacher. So, all of them are being offered full-time contracts

213for the 2526 school year. Make a motion to approve the hires for the 2526 school year. Second. We have a motion and a second. Uh Jason, I really wish I really wish that we could post stuff like that on social media on our community pages because I'm not on Facebook, but I see enough of it. And it's just a lot of negative flow out there in regards to the school board, the administration for this school district. And I think something like that, if I don't even know if it's allowed, that would go a long way. I'll find out. talk to the teacher and question, ask her and then talk to Ben and get it out there for us. Absolutely. There's not enough feel-good stuff out there, and I'd love to see what Jake talked about

214before. Um, the strong work that Tom's done here with the bond rating and the finances of the district. I did a quick little Google dive and I mean, it's in the top percent of school districts in the country, if not fraction of a percent. Anybody else? All in favor say I. I. Opposed. Motion carries. Next, we are um at the time of year where we offer all of our current employees a contract for the 2526 school year. And so you have a PDF that was attached that has all of our staff members that we are moving forward for the 2526 school year. And so again, looking for a motion to approve those contracts. I'll make a motion to approve the contracts for the 2526 school year. Second. We have a motion and a second. Any

215discussion? So, this is it going to be a done deal. Then these are the employees that are offered a contract then. Yes. Okay. Any more discussion? All in favor say I. I. I. Opposed. Jake, can I just have the record show that I abstained, please? Thank you. Record shows that Jake abstained. Motion passed. Thank you. Uh we're going to head to executive session. Um Wisconsin statute 19.8. 851B. Consider a dismissal of demotion, licensing or discipline of any public employee or person licensed by a board or commission or the investigation of charges against such person, deliberating or negotiating the purchasing of public property, the investing of public funds or conducting other special businesses whenever collective bargaining reason require a closed session. Crosby, would you please? You need a motion first. Oh, yeah. I'm sorry. I make

216a motion to close the open session and go into closed session. Second Crosby, roll out, please. Jason Mike, yes. Jake, yes. Jim, yes. Dale, excuse Sorry. Eric, yes. Craig, here. Crosby, yes. Uh, five minute break. Oh, so uh coming back into open session uh we will need a motion uh on the Approval of final notice of non-renewal. Okay. I I will make a motion um the district to recommend final non-renewal of four certified teaching positions based on declining enrollment in budgetary constraints impacting staffing allocations for the 2025 through 2026 school year. Second. We have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Do we have to do a roll or all in favor? All in favor? All in favor say I. I. Opposed? Motion carries. Motion to adjurnn.