Mukwonago Area School District - Committee of the Whole Meeting/Board Meeting - 3/10/25

001e e e meeting to order uh pledge allegiance please a moment of silence please thank you Crosby did you do a roll call please Jason is excused Mike here Jake here Jim here Dale is excused Eric here Carolyn here Craig here Crosby here uh nobody under citizens comments we do have an oh employee of the month thank you Dr Cook please take it away okay so uh this evening uh we have Mr Ron pond with us Ron if you wouldn't mind coming up um so Ron's nominators uh stated it is my pleasure to recommend Ron Pond for the employee recognition for buildings and grounds Ron has been with the district since 2018 and serves as the buildings and grounds operations supervisor on second shift for all of masd having Ron on the team has allowed

002me Andy Wagner to focus on so many other tasks that I was not able to do before he was hired Ron's main responsibility is to make sure we are staffed in the buildings and grounds Department to keep our schools cleaned in 2023 we were struggling to get people hired and in five months Ron had interviewed over 450 people on the phone and in person once new Personnel are hired Ron conducts the Orient ation process to get all of our staff trained and ready to operate as custodial cleaners Ron oversees 31 employees on the second shift he routinely will do inspections to make sure our schools remain clean and confirmed workers are performing to the best of their abilities if we are short people to work at night Ron will help pick up the slack and

003fill in at every level to make sure we are not falling behind this can sometimes mean he is at two or even three buildings a night filling in second shift has never been safer Ron works to do drills with our custodians and sports teams so that they know how to handle a fire alarm and severe weather when they are at the school this is something that was not done in the past be before he came to the schools recently Ron has taken on more responsibility by overseeing some committees that we have started started in buildings and grounds to get our people more invested in their positions we now have committees for professional development to discover better practices for building buildings and grounds and ways to work together research and development of equipment and products to

004use in our schools custodial and cleaning training to help to help Ron see all sides of what we do in our schools and afford some quality assurances for his process for his processes of training people Ron shows up for work and Deals what with what comes his way on a daily basis I know I do not say thank you nearly enough to Ron for a job well done thank you for allowing me the opportunity to highlight and thank our employees Ron thank you for all you do for masd thanks Ron Ron do you want to say anything Ron who did you bring tonight good job thank you and Ron what is your wife's name Lynn thank you for babysitting Ron I mean taking care of Ron thank you thanks thank you Ron 10 more years

005Ron okay 15 15 maybe Max Andy thank you thanks for R uh presentation going to go sore right away here sore folks come on up so tonight we have our source staff here uh to do a presentation and update of the new facility um and just an update on the programming so we have Mark Dum who is the original OG of SAR uh de barier is new to sore this year but certainly not new to us um jod Jonas you guys have seen her present in the past she's here to give us a goo2 update also part of the sore team and then Bill plant is the uh administrator in the sore building so I am super excited to have them here and I will let them take it away me get the right presentation

006up for you and please talk into the microphone so the people watching on camera can hear you can hear me okay I tried to prep them I said C's gonna tell [Laughter] you uh hi my name is jod Jonas I teach the GED option 2 program in the morning and I teach English at sore in the afternoon so what is the GED option 2 program it's a the we use the GED test battery to test for to measure proficiency um the Statewide accomplishments of the program is that there is an 80 to 100% graduation rate here in Magano we have 100% graduation rate since we started the program three and a half years ago it helps students graduate with their class um they can actually W walk the stage with their peers and get their

007high school diploma it's a greater opportunity for credit recovery and it increases students success with earning their diploma and we have a High attendance rate the next slide oh do I do it okay thank you I won't read this slide to you verbatim but some of the highlights are 150,000 students globally receive their GED annually um it is accepted by Lally all Employers in colleges those are some uh statistics on the right of the students we've had we've had 62 graduates 11 of them have had IEPs which is actually quite impressive because the program is very rigorous um I'm a special education teacher as well so I'm able to still um abide by their accommodations and modifications and WCTC at the testing center also has their modifications in place when they test so what does

008DP require for the students to be in the program they need to be at least 17 years of age have a nth grade reading level which we test at the high school and be at least a year behind their class so starting with about 21 credits going into their senior year there needs to be a formal meeting with the with the student and the parents it is really important that we stress with them that it is a voluntary opportunity it's a privilege not a punishment so we go over the contract and everyone signs it so we're all on the same page we require 90% attention and they still have to earn their half credits like all other high school students in health personal finance and pass their Civics test they need a minimum of 80%

009completion rate and as I mentioned we have 100% so far students are entitled to their traditional high school diploma and they participate in the same graduation ceremony program data is collected at the end of the year by DPI I have to fill out an end ofe report so it's really important that we meet all of these requirements so that they up our contract again for the program in the fall again students with IEPs are not excluded from the program it just takes maybe up to 30 days for me to apply for their accommodations for CTC in addition to that what do we require as a a strict currently we require students to pass all four GED tests or to receive the credits in each subject they need to pass a vocational online class um they

010need to be working at least 10 hours a week have a driver's license state ID they need to earn a 100 College and Career Readiness points which I'll go over shortly they need to complete a senior Capstone and present that to me in their exit interview and it's really important that the 3 hours they're with me every day 8 to 11 that they're making consistent academic progress this isn't just test sprep they need to be working on resumés cover letters reaching out to some of our Community Partners to set up community service hours job shadowing college tours all of these are the requirements in the program this is not an inclusive list but these are some of the um points that I ask them to go over to try to earn their 100 points um

011each um section it's worth different points depending on what they're doing but I do strongly recommend we have to have our our cover letter and resume done before they leave and I need to know what their path is After High School whether that's applying for WCTC or youw school or going into a job that is really our main focus in this program is to get them to a point so they can be successful community members so uh okay their scores in their transcripts so their scores are really important to go over so they need a 145 to pass the test but they can get college credit if they get a high enough score or test out of classes so I always stress to them we're not just looking at for you to just pass we

012want you to do really really well on prep for this because you can test out of classes or earn credits um people often ask what does the transcript look like since they're going a different route we do have to notate on the transcript that it's an alternative pathway so as you can see we put up there G D2 meaning it's an alternative pathway and then it has their score and their past state so the transcripts do notate that it is an alternative pathway even though they're getting their traditional diploma types of students served by alternative education so not just in my program but also in SAR this is a list of from DPI of the U main characteristics of some of the students in our programs and we've had students that meet every one of

013these bullet points in some at some point or another so it's really important that they have an alternative environment whether it's in GED option two or in sore they need a smaller environment that feels more familial they need to build those relationships and connections and have one onone support in order to be successful so we have a a lot of high-risk students we really need to build on that small environment student highlights so this is just um some of the student spotlights that I've had this year I have a student that was chronically TR at the high school this year was not at school at all he came into my program he is currently 90% at attendance and he received a college ready plus score on his math test which means he does not have

014to take his first year of math or earn credit which is pretty impressive and he's doing really well with with making it making it to school and on time um I had a student that had pretty significant mental health struggles last year and she was placed in an alternative alternative placement a different school but then came back started with me decided she wanted to be a CNA she's currently enrolled in a CNA program and she's caring for two elderly women in their homes right now as she's studying um I've had past students be accepted to u schools WCTC job apprenticeship programs hired directly into the work force without their High School diplomas none of this would have been possible and they could not do it on the traditional route so we feel our programs are

015really important um the last comment is just an email I got from a parent actually a few weeks ago from a student last year of how well he's doing and he was trying to join the union and he was able to pass a basic skills test in English math and writing passes OSHA test and he's going to be joining the Union and getting a job this summer a job apprenticeship this summer so those are some of the highlights and then in Closing one of my my favorite quotes from someone at DPI that I work pretty closely with Educators should not be roadblocks to students with plans to be valuable community members thank you very much thank you Jody any questions anybody can you repeat the last quote please a little louder in the microphone sure

016Educators should not be roadblocks to students with plans to be valuable community members awesome thank you Mark you up yes sir so as Christine mentioned my name is Mark D and I've had the great privilege of working with the sore program since our Inception uh that was during the 2018 19 school year and as you may recall if you've been around a while our first four years years we were located at the Lillian Rose building and then years five and six we were located at the St James Parish Center and we're very grateful uh for our permanent home we are now located at 97 Main Street so if you're ever at the Blue Bay for breakfast or during the school day for lunch uh please know that and we mean this sincerely that you are

017all welcome to stop and come in and want of us or one of our students can give you a tour and you can see a little bit about our programming our learning spaces and interact with our students on the next page here you'll see some data pertaining to our enrollment and we have served over the course of six and a half years 132 different students across all four grade levels and if you look at the number total number of students in the lower leftand corner that's 211 so there's a good number of students that are with us for multiple years once they join the alternative Ed program uh the enrollment does tend to sway towards the upper classmen that's why you'll see the heavier numbers in grades 11 and 12 and I do want to

018mention in terms of enrollment we have students that join us at the beginning of a school year we have students that join us at the end of the first semester and then we have students that join us at various times based on their individual circumstances we work closely with the MHS pupil Services team who makes recommendations and then Dave or myself Bill and jod then we will meet with the student and family and determine if sore is a good fit for what they need here you have some graduation data and you can see here the number of students who completed at least a portion of their diploma requirements through the sore program back to our first graduating class in 2019 and we are anticipated to have 13 students this year complete their MHS diploma requirements

019the leg wall at sore if uh if you ever come it's it's something that's a great source of inspiration uh this is located in one of our main learning spaces and when students complete their diploma requirements we frame a 5x7 photo of their choosing and the students have the opportunity to personalize their frame so in addition to identifying the student uh what you'll also read on the frames something pertaining to their career goals something that they're proud of either personally uh or as a student and then we ask students and we'll we'll touch on this in a little while we ask students to provide some words of wisdom to Future students who walk through our doors and perhaps were are feeling the same way they did a year or two prior uh very impactful very

020inspirational uh um so that's the sore Legacy wall and we added around the corner which you can see we have a graduate Spotlight wall so the second wall spotlights SAR graduates three or four years after they've left our program and it kind of gives our students an update in terms of where are they now here's uh the sore daily schedule and our school day begins at 8:15 students and as you can see our class periods are shorter our class sizes are much smaller and that seems to work much better for our students uh schedules are highly personalized again we're we're working right now with students in grades 10 11 and 12 and it's very fluid we have students who are attending sore only we have students who are attending sore and taking a class or

021two at MHS we've had students that attend sore in WCTC we have students who are with us for classes and out in the workforce so there's a lot of moving Parts but this gives you a general overview of our shell a lot of small group classes a lot of one-on-one support uh both academically and on the mental health side as well so the the true pillars of our program in addition to academic growth uh we really try to focus on the mental and emotional health of our individual students we work hard to cultivate life skills uh we do quite a bit of cooking quite a bit of baking uh we're very grateful that our new facility provides the opportunity for our kids to be comfortable with those skills um as they are very close to

022being in the independent World um we focus a lot on social skills relationship skills postsecondary exploration and then we try to uh partner with the community and pay it forward and we've done quite a bit of community service over the years with the Magano Resource Center then we goano food pantry uh St James uh to name a few but this kind of outlines the pillars of our program all right um hi I'm Dave barrier this is my first year at s but I actually was at the high school teaching special ed for the last eight years so what Mark was saying about the community and the career Ed education and life skills that's a big part of s um we're partnered with about 70 businesses and organizations in the area since 2018 um if you

023want to go to the next slide I'll list a couple of them um our big thing is we go on field trips um do community service opportunities bring in guest speakers from all these um organizations to give the students the network with the professionals that they're interested in um a thing that I started this year as it's my first year but connecting with the students to see their real interests um if you want to go to the next slide too some more and then the next slide shows a little um options of the field trips we went in this year so far I handed it over what happen just kidding with all that pressure you go okay you're back so some of the no okay here are some op um examples of the Partnerships we've

024had this year so September we did a WCTC tour um I focused more on my students with IEPs so we showed them how to apply to accommodations the steps to that and then the testing areas um in November we went to your personal Gardener in December we did the Genera tour and introduced GPS to some students that had were interested um just in January we partnered with GA Larson HVAC company um did a tour and then some learning opportunities with them and then in April I personally know an executive chef and owner of a restaurant Precinct in Germantown and we have a student who loves to bake some of you might have had her cookies this summer um so we're going to go there and she's going to give us a little tour of the

025restaurant on how where she went through and like the steps and then giving some like culinary skills lesson for them then what Mark was saying about some students and not going to read them all but the one on the bottom these are current students at SAR and then one on the bottom is this young lady that I worked with last year at the high school in special ed and this is what she said as a freshman I struggled to communicate and ATT 10 school at MHS coming to sore this year as a sophomore has changed me for the better the supportive staff that show each up each show up each day happy and ready to help has made a great impact on me I'm able to communicate more between staff and students complete my work

026on time and build up my confidence with everything I do so these little Snippets of the impact on these students to show how important SAR is for these students that need that alternative Pathway to graduation and for that student I read about I working with her compared to last year you can see the growth it's amazing to see it gives me CH was just talking about it so also in the presentation we have a few testimonials from prior year students but you also have a link in the presentation that will take you to many more testimonials uh from students again back to our very beginning um I just want to read the top one here here being in the sore environment help me realize my talents who I am and who I want to be

027if it weren't for this program I wouldn't have graduated or had a plan for the future I'm very grateful for my teachers who helped me get to where I am today and again like Dave said you know our kids we want them to have a voice and um the growth that we see from the time that they join us until the time that they leave um they're more than students we become like a family we are a very tight-knit Community uh we're incredibly proud of our students uh we work very closely with our families and we want you guys to to hear directly from our students even though they couldn't be here tonight uh they know that they are here with their words and here you want it there's one so we wanted to we

028wanted to end on what are the core values that SAR and every year at the beginning of the year um we always have a group of students who are new to our environment and we sit down with the students as a staff and we ask our students to help us create a list of guiding principles that they would like to see feel hear in their school environment uh trade and characteristics that are going to help them feel safe and supported and to help them grow and this is the list that our current year students created and I think it really lends itself to giving them a sense of ownership in in the environment um that we're creating at sore so with that we if you have any questions we're open to your questions otherwise again

029we want to express our our gratitude for the support of the school board and our community um we're very happy in our new home uh thank you very much I was at Blue Bay when I stopped in last week by the way and I stopped in and and the girl that met me at the side door she said who are you and how can I help you I said I'm here to see Mr Dumay and she said hold on a second I'm thinking okay that was pretty cool she she was she was geared up pretty fun nice job and it smelled really good you were cooking chicken I think anybody else Caroline how is the new space working out as far as sizewise with classrooms and all the small group learning that you have going

030on I think it's working out very well we we have a lot of flexibility uh we have various room sizes so we can be very flexible and fluid based upon the needs of our individuals and small groups so we're we're very happy happy with the spaces one more Caroline do you have alumni that come back to talk to your current students as well I'm glad you asked that question uh yes we remain in very close contact with our alumni um as I said earlier it becomes we're we're like a family and I think that our students they come back because they know they were cared for and supported and it's a a place of safety for them uh but they come back and share with our current students you know we always tell them that

031when you graduate three years from now you're on the guest speaker list and so we're proud of where they are and we're grateful that they come back and and want to inspire the current students that's awesome excellent thank you anybody else Christine thanks um there's just a few people I also wanted to mention um that are really uh pivotable pivotal in sour success and one of them is Andy Wagner he does a he does a really great job making sure that the facility is taken care of when we were putting it together like getting everything ready to go he would meet us there he'd help us design stuff he was amazing um and so I'm very grateful for that and then also on the Chris wasn't an Andy employee of the year or something yeah

032I think so okay there you have it right so he was he was amazing um and so also the people who are photoed behind you those are some additional People Randy Jensen uh does a great job coming into store to do some transition work with some of our students Megan R is a social worker in our district so she goes between between all of the elementaries but primarily between uh claran Big Bend and SAR and then Seth um up there he is our driver for SAR so if you see him you could see him a dozen times during the day he is back and forth between sore and the high school or dropping kids off or picking them up and he does he has a great relationship and rapport with our kids and then we

033also have somebody who comes in she's not uh pictured up here but from the gals Institute that also does some small group work and um mental health U work with some of our students and so it really is truly a great partnership there and Bill back and forth between Eagleville and SAR all the time so um I can't say enough about this group um I'm always really excited when they come to update the board so they will always they special kind of group of kids and staff for me so thank you guys for having them here tonight thank you thank you thank you you can stay for the policy discussion if you want but uh next up the health uh Insurance employee survey Tom you got that all right so uh coming up to join

034and leave the next couple presentations that we have right now uh we have uh Lindsay duette who is our benefit specialist she works with Rachel and she's going to deliver information on our employee um Health Plan service survey so we launched this uh survey once a year we just did our second iteration so Lindsay will share those um findings with the uh room and then uh after that then Megan Zimmerman will uh join us then to talk about the the financial performance of our health plan Megan and Sarah Sarah's not with us tonight um but Megan is here to um deliver some of that information so without further Ado Lindsay thanks Tom all right hi everyone hello thanks for having me all right so we sent out a survey to all of our members on

035our health plan and I just came to talk to you about what we found out it was sent to 363 employees on our health plan and 265 of them responded our goal was to determine where our health plan excels and where we can improve that 72% completion rate um really gave us a picture of what we're doing well and what we can kind of work on okay so a big thing was asking them how they feel um in terms of satisfaction with our health plan Partners um as you can see we have some really great data when it comes to certain Partners um with ventegra and rcri our Pharmacy Partners we have really high satisfaction rate um you can see just 2% of our respondents said that they were unsatisfied with Ventra and then 4%

036with prescribe um along those same lines Doctor on Demand um we have only 4% of our respondents were unsatisfied with it you scroll on over you can see that our health clinic on site only 5% of our respondents were unsatisfied we'll come back to that Health Clinic um it is a Shining Light in our health plan and we'll talk about that a little bit more when it comes to Prairie States lindsy yes sir why do you why do you do the 2% versus a 98% is the health industry different no no I'm just I'm going by what we are finding to be issues with our health plan so that we can really Spotlight the things that we excel in as well okay so when we look at Prairie States um the dissatisfaction rate is 133%

037and then HPS 15% the one that we had concerns about over on the right is collaborative care um one in four of our respondents were dissatisfied with it and we really wanted to look into that and see why so Lindsay can you go back just for a quick second if you don't mind one one statistic you'll hear from us uh in a little bit is um employees are going to rate I understand the health plan well we have some work to do in that area and that kind of as you see when we design a self-insured plan the way that we have there's been a lot of success but we have some work to do one of those pieces of work to do is to clarify the plan um I'm just going to clarify a

038couple things here right now because you can see there's seven partners that we have on the screen um I'll start with the MD Health Clinic obviously most of you have taken a tour through there it's on the east side of maguo high school that really delivers about 80% of the Care our employees seek all right so when they go there it's open 38 hours a week there will be times when our employees have to seek care that the clinic cannot provide at that point in time they uh access a uh network of doctors at HPS they're uh from Green Bay down through southeastern Wisconsin and there's uh 28,000 500 Partners 120 hospitals uh 96 additional facilities that are in the HPS network uh when we are when our employees are seeking a referral as to

039who should I see in the HPS Network then they would work with collaborative care and that's the entity on the far right hand side um Reese uh Ventra is our Pharmacy benefit manager so for our people that are on a monthly maintenance medication and it's going to come to them uh they'll uh that as our Pharmacy benefit manager and anytime somebody is going to seek uh a specialty drug you'll see those commercials pretty much anytime you're on TV uh we work through rescribed to Source those drugs um at at deep deep discounts uh the last partner then there is a doctor on demand so if anybody wants to see a doctor virtually obviously they can't do everything but uh there's certain things that they can provide so it does meet a need for certain folks

040uh at certain times overarching all of it then is Prairie States Prairie States is kind of the the offensive coordinator so to speak of this team um they coordinate all the partners all the billing um they they run the plan on our behalf we sign a plan document that says here how it operates they take it and then they run with it so um just want to take an opportunity to explain that stuff as we have several partners that probably need some explanation so there you go Lindsay thank you all right so we wanted to compare that to the data that we um obtained last year uh and this is where it gets kind of interesting um as you can see over on the right with collaborative care there have been some changes with the

041company itself and the satisfaction rate with our employees has gone down because of that we believe we are looking into that um in terms of HPS that is also something where the satisfaction rate has gone down um it's been pretty consistent with Ventra Doctor on Demand rcri and then of course our that we were just talking about um the satisfaction has only gone up because they're improving constantly when we opened it up to comments we noticed a few different themes um the first one being that the navigation of HPS collaborative care and Prairie States can be difficult and there are slow turnaround times for care some of our employees mentioned we have benefited from many aspects of the program however it's a lot of Hoops to go through when seeking care he also said the

042good out ways the bad but they are not free of their issues and errors the frustrations are the time it can take to ensure a waiver is possible in the end we receive Care at little or no cost but it comes at a very tedious price another common theme revolved around our health clinic I told you I'd come back to this um it continues to excel some of the things our employees said were whenever my family of four has medical needs Becky and Don are quick to help and our highly knowledgeable and kind I was a vocal skeptic about this plan when we first heard about it but I'm beyond impressed and very grateful that we have this plan for masd employees using the masd clinic has been extremely helpful whenever I need to be

043seen or have a direct question they are always very helpful weekend hours would be appreciated if at all possible everyone at the clinic was so kind they got my visit done in a timely manner they helped me with issues I did not know they could highly recommend when I tell you that these are only a small amount of comments in a sea of glowing reviews about our Clinic I am not exaggerating one bit and that is definitely a testament to Becky and her team over there um it has been invaluable to our employees I think that anyone would tell you that when we asked them if there are any other services they would like to see at the clinic there were a few different suggestions they ex uh would like expanded medications available expanded testing

044for influenza covid RSV Etc increased hours and availability particularly on the weekends they suggested Chiropractic Care physical therapy and in-house Imaging and x-rays when we asked our employees if they would be likely to use counseling if we offered it at the clinic I think these numbers speak for themselves half of the people who responded said that they would be likely or very likely to utilize a mental health counselor I cannot even stress how huge that is um follow behind that Financial counseling at 20% would use it Behavioral Counseling at 19% adolescent counseling at 18 family and marriage counseling at 15% and substance abuse counseling at 6% so if just stay right there for a second Lindsay I I think when we are looking for ways on how we can meet the needs of our employees

045and and continue to improve with employee satisfaction um when half of our people that take the survey are stating that someone themselves or and their family would likely use or uh likely or very likely use Mental Health counseling um that that shows up on the radar uh Becky had as we meet every uh every other Thursday to talk about the needs of the of the clinic and what's going on Becky had said hey I I'm hearing a lot of feedback from people that this might be something worth looking into this validates it when we ask what what could we do differently or what can we do additionally that's it right there on the far right when we asked about their views on the health plan in general um an overwhelming majority of people 71% say

046that they do understand the masd health plan um they also agree that it meets theirs and their family's needs well and they are overall satisfied with our health plan on the other hand when you look over to the left um only 48% of people that responded said that the health band has been straightforward um they feel that there are a lot of Hoops to jump through and it gets confusing because we have so many Health Partners um 60% of them said that they don't know who to talk to if they don't understand the health plan they don't know who to go to for help if they need help um 52% of the respondents said that they feel it is equal to what other similar organizations offer when we compare that to last year the numbers

047make sense the more that people use the health plan and get to know the heart uh the Health Partners the more they're going to understand it and know how to utilize it for their family so it has increased in terms of um understanding the health plan um and being able to utilize it for their families and being overall satisfied with it but again they still struggle with knowing who to go to for help and feeling as though it's not really straightforward and there are a lot of Hoops to jump through one of the other pieces or important aspects as you look at this piece of information is that majority of our Workforce is 7:30 to 4:30 and they're not sitting with two hours or even sometimes one hour of an extended duration of their day

048that they have to navigate Health ISS issues so calling Health Partners or navigating trying to find Specialty Care is an overall concern that we continue to hear about and so I think that right that's very different than a job like mine or a job like Christine's where we can maybe schedule that time in our day a teacher doesn't have that luxury and so as we continue to talk about making our health plan less with less Hoops to jump through um I think that's an important piece of feedback that we have to to consider is that our employees are Bell to Bell and their their schedules are driven by literally a bell Rachel I'm on my my wife's plan and I guarantee you on her plan I'm I'm way below 45% I mean I think Insurance

049the insurance industry is not great as far as that so adding that I think Craig thanks for State stating that that that is true I think in a sea of options right um how many of them are actually straightforward understandable easy to navigate um Megan might know this best but I'm going to guess you're going to say hardly any if none at all um so across the board with the exception of one of these metrics you see on the screen um we have increased uh we have increased in these areas that people agree or strongly agree um on the questions that are being asked the far three right hand uh most uh to the right there I am satisfied with the plan the plan meets my family's needs and I understand the plan um we're

050at 2/3 and higher in climbing so I know that we're moving in the right direction we still have some more work to do um the one thing that I would point out here is that using the Mac Health Plan has been straightforward while it did go from 45 to 48% I would love to see that number climb much higher likewise with um the second uh bar question that's asked there the M Health Plan is at least equal to what other similar organizations offer I do wish that number was higher because when I compare what we offer relative to other school districts I know we're just as good if not better I'll put more emphasis on better I I I believe that um it's a matter of getting our people to know how good we are

051and many do acknowledge that which is great but i' love to increase that number even higher Lindsay okay and then we just opened it up to generalized statements um this is is what they said this is so much better than I thought it would be our Clinic staff are truly amazing and are doing a great job we are very lucky to have such great healthare this is the best health coverage I've had since the beginning of my career I hope we can stick with it I had to get a mamogram and that was set up effortlessly for me I really appreciate this process also the ladies at the clinic are amazing and help with my refills immediately time and time again you'll see a lot of comments about our health clinic they're really stellar all

052right so that brings us to different areas for improvement and opportunities we may have um a lot of comments did indicate that they would like an increase in clinic hours and expanded offerings at the clinic um I feel as though our Clinic is just taking Leaps and Bounds to get that done um we've recently invested in some equipment and training for Becky so now she can do skin cancer screenings in addition to all the other things she does um we do migraine medication we do um allergy drops for people that want to retrain their immune system I mean we are just just pressing forward and making it better and better every single week um the second part would be a health mental health counselor at our Clinic um like we said before half of our

053respondents said that they would be likely or very likely to use this option and to make it easier to schedule and be seen right away um is a game Cher if you've ever tried to schedule with a mental health counselor it can take time just to schedule it and then there's long wait times afterwards to be seen having somebody at their fingertips is invaluable in terms of using the masd health plan and not being straightforward um one solution that we have that we kind of touched on a little bit before is to perhaps bring in an in-house Patient Advocate to help navigate seeking care outside the clinic the clinic is basically our One-Stop shop for a lot of things but you can't always go there for everything and then moving forward from the clinic can

054be confusing so if we had somebody to advocate for our employees to say hey this is a really great place to go go see our partners at MH Imaging you get a great quality X-ray and it's at a lower cost to you it's a win-win for the district um so that is something that we are considering bringing in as well when they say that they don't know who to talk to if they don't understand our health plan um we have some great ideas for that um more Outreach so that they can understand our health plan a little bit better a Triad flyer um I've conducted several listening sessions and I plan to do those more sending out bi-weekly emails detailing our health plan listing the different places you can go to for mammograms um lists

055of our medications that we offer at the clinic just reaching out to people and letting them know what we have to offer um professional learning website development so that they know exactly where to go for their healthare all of these things can lead to more visibility and help them understand a little bit more any questions guys Mike go back to this page I'm just curious is the clinic open all year round or only while school is in session it is open all year round and theyve recently increase the the hours and the days that they're open and is it for just the employee or can their family members go there any employee that is on our health plan and their family members that are on our health plan can go to the clinic um however

056we have also opened it up to our employees that are not on our health plan and they charge a fee of $25 to be seen um and that includes anything at the clinic and then if they need any medications then they would pay for those outside of the clinic thank you sure anybody else so I I guess one point of emphasis I'll make here as we kind of it and get to Megan's part of it coming up in here a second is that you'll see we'll talk about missed opportunities and what those mean and ultimately that third bullet point of using uh uh the health plan and using it is straightforward we're going to try to um make it more straightforward and Easy in such a way that it helps the employ employees and lowers

057the district's costs and that'll be kind of the theme at on the back half of Megan's presentation so uh that in-house Patient Advocate and what they can do we're going to explain that more in depth here in just a minute so just keep that thought close for so the cost of adding would be next the next thing we're going to talk about is that correct yes so these this is kind of we covered right now with Lindsay's survey and the information is this is the employee perception now let's give you some information on financial performance and how's how it's going okay thanks Lindsay thank you Tom a new suit it's nice I was waiting for you to call me off like a Joseph A Bank thing or something like that Craig know dropped off good

058just like this is it this is it fits a little tight though all right give me one second all right Tom while you're setting that up I I think and and first of all good evening everyone um Molly talking to the microphone please oh Megan not Molly Megan thanks Craig Megan I'm sorry talk the microphone please Megan give a quick introduction for some of you are new here or are meeting uh Megan for the first time Megan is our health plan consultant uh Megan helps a number of uh school districts and pl uh private employers navigate the options so whether you're fully insured self-insured uh Megan is the one who helps bring ideas to us uh we began working with Megan is it three and a half maybe four years ago close uh when we

059started looking at ideas for ourselves staying fully insured was the recommendation while we research the plan that're we have in place right now um so Megan brings a wealth of knowledge to us um and helps guide us and all the things that we're delivering to our people right now so Megan thanks Tom and good evening everyone and I I just wanted to add too for a little perspective of the feedback from the survey that Lindsay spoke to um typically in the insurance industry the net promoter score is used to me measure satisfaction and that ranges around a 35% satisfactory level when you're talking about health insurance so as you can see from your results you're far surpassing that amongst your employees and their family members so good job um now I'm here really to talk

060about the financial uh components and performance of the plan so if you have any questions please jump in and and stop me um so as a self-funded plan uh we look at the plan costs on a policy year so um your plan year runs from July through June but because you have stoploss we look at a policy year which really is the full um 18 months so we we've kind of annualized that at the bottom as you can see for those total uh for 12 months but um just wanted to kind of point out some of the the main pieces when we talk about the financial results um overall you can see um the medical claims decreased by about 9% and RX claims decreased by 51% so pretty substantial results as you can see and

061and we're really looking at you know when you look at 2022 the 2022 to 2023 plan year you can see that plan um overall when we look at that annualized cost was running around 8.4 million or roughly uh 21,000 per employee per year and then you can see from the 2022 to 2023 plan year um there was a significant increase um from costs and really you know helped lead to the decisions of looking at um you know alternative funding and um you can see that the plan annualized cost was around 11.2 million uh and roughly around a $28,000 cost per employee per year when the district made the move to a self-funded plan you can see the dramatic uh positive Financial impact and results in that 2023 to 2024 Year and that was roughly about

0627.9 million and 2,825 annualized costs so some really substantial savings as you can see um when you look at the financial performance of the the plan um and that historical comparison Megan I'm just going to add on to that so you know in this particular school year in 2223 we were fully insured with anthem when we we went out and said what's our move for 2324 Anthem actually gave us a plus 35% rate increase but for this purpose we just put this at plus 25 we kind of humored our humored ourselves and said well let's just pretend that we talked them down by 10% right the reality is the number was going to be even higher than that um and then you can see the actual performance in the 23 24 school year so not

063only did we avoid this markup here we actually walk back to spend there and I think along with the results that Lindsay gave us here I think we're showing that there is employee satisfaction so not only did we save costs but we got better Megan go ahead correct um so we wanted to show you kind of the the performance of the policy year for the last seven months and you can see you know we we're doing that historical walk back as Tom mentioned and looking at um the performance uh when you were fully insured and then comparing that to when you were self-funded so overall you can see that um when we look at the 2023 to 2024 year certainly a significant Improvement in that analyed cost and then we fast forward to uh the

064seven-month period thus far uh where we looked at the data through January of 2025 you can see it has um increased in costs but still is below below the overall annual cost when we look at that 2022 to 2023 plan year of that 8.5 million and I do want to point out just for reference um medical Trend right now on average runs around 9% and Pharmacy trend on average runs around 11 to 133% So currently medical Trend and for a number of years as far as surpassing um the Consumer Price Index I mean a lot of the things that we're hearing about in the news day in and day out so um we are seeing a little uptick in costs but also keep in mind too there's um been a lot of added value and

065benefits to the plan like the clinic like the the pharmacy plan a lot of the highlights that Lindsay spoke to so um as we are seeing the cost uh increase uh as a comparison to where the costs were in the prior year uh you can see that those costs are still in 2024 to 2025 below where they were um you know years prior so if I could just expand on that um here the seven-month comparison so July through January uh in 22 23 with anthon we had spent $4.9 Million last year for the first seven months it was 4 point let's call that two 4.2 million and this year we're at 4.8 uh the medical claims here you can kind of see they've jumped right we can't always predict accurately how many babies will be

066born how many knee Replacements will there be how many people will get cancer we take a best guess you know with actuaries that are in Megan's team that can help guide that but we can't control every single piece of that the biggest thing I'd state that is that in 2223 uh first seven months versus the first seven months now we're still less so again it's one of those things where we were able to curb the cost and the rate of increase um and that's that's something to to highlight and be proud of there Megan so there's other important performance metrics that I want to speak to certainly um as Lindsay highlighted in the survey results uh the clinic continues to stay busy and receive High Praise from members uh it's also important to note that

067over 97% of employees completed their Wellness checkups that's an incredible number and we all know that preventative care um getting your routine visits helps to prevent um more catastrophic care um down the road so really highlights uh the the utilization within the clinic and promoting important things like wellness checkups also from a cost stamp sorry Megan can you share what the average is on that in the industry because I thought it was like in the 70s and we were well above that Rachel what was the question and talk in the microphone please I'm sorry Craig I believe the average in the industry for employees who complete that health risk assessment that wellness check is in typically in the 70 perents is that correct correct and we hit 97% and that's just really a testament I

068want to give Lindsay a huge shout out she was hounding people um individually to make sure that they got that done and to Megan's point that preventative care the feedback that we got on that from Becky was just incredible about truly in some cases um saving people's lives so so like on that point I I do want to say that um the investment and and sometimes you to spend money to save money that we have invested our our expenses and our investment in preventative care so as we talked about um our people can get breast Imaging at any pro health facility uh there's routine Imaging and Diagnostic Imaging and sometimes in traditional plans there's a cost for one but not a cost in the other and we just eliminate all of it and said just

069take care of it it's free go it's a way of saying that we could invest a little bit now or pay a lot more later um we chose you know let's let's invest now in preventative care and we can remove costs down the road and keep people alive by the way you know how about that so um it that investing in preventative care has been something that we that's what we talk about every two weeks when we get together how can we help people stay more healthy because we know financially speaking if we do that it also helps the district financially absolutely and I think I I wouldn't downplay the ease and accessibility of your clinic so I know we're talking about the financial piece but that is also you know driving those results and

070that 95 plus percent um completion rate so that's tremendous from a financial impact to your individuals on the plan only 30 individuals and two families hit their out-of-pocket limit last year that is extremely low typically we see on average around 30% um so you know again a very significant impact in a positive manner financially to the individuals and family members on the plan um As and we're going to get in more detail about 0 options in a moment but there were over there were 334 co-pay waivers for Z options offered from July through December so certainly members are um choosing those Z options and uh we're going to talk about some room for improvement and some Communications but certainly a huge benefit to members in the plan in addition the 595 um five-star Health collaborative

071care member contacts so those are people reaching out wanting to learn more about those zll options wanting to learn more about their health care wanting to get uh second opinions you know just just really having that advocacy and support need is really there within the population so tremendous numbers um and when you look at the the number of of claims so 55% of members with claims used a z option which translates to about 27% of your medical spend so those Z options are those direct contracts um you know a lot of work has been put into making sure that they're contracted with high quality high value providers so not only are members saving money but the plan is also um you know rewarded in the benefits of members opting for those uh Z options and

072I think uh you know as a comparison in the prior period 30% of members uh which represents around 14% of the medical um you can see who who opted for those uh Z options so you can really start to see um the increase in in those results and then as for the pharmacy plan so there were 149 free medications for 53 members which was over half a million dollars in savings and I know we've spoken about this in the past it's sometimes people have a hard time you know when we just talk about why would something free then provide savings but it's really you know all the opportunities that we talked about and the fabulous U member testimonials and and results from the survey of of the pharmacy plan really performing very well so we

073know that zero options result in great care and lower costs for both members and the district um we' certainly had some good results but we also see that there's ample opportunity to improve care and lower costs so the following are are some examples um as we've talked about uh and these are the Z options so we're we're going to break them down in specific categories so the first one is outpatient surgery and there were 63 outpatient surgeries as you can see 39% opted for a z option which is around 62% um 30 were direct contracts nine were co-pay waivers and 24 were where a copay was applied so this is when we talk about the advocacy the navigation they help uh provide those waivers um you can see the district paid around 383,000 however there

074was another nearly 250,000 in Miss savings and that members also paid n a little over $99,000 so to give you some examples of uh a procedure in the saving you can see in that far right hand bottom box there's uh some procedures examples so one is a hip replacement you can see the the district uh cost um outside of a z option is roughly around 45,000 with a z option uh that procedure would be around 199,000 which is about um over $26,000 in savings so that's nearly a 57% difference um that's significant when we talk about opportunities um to not only um mitigate costs for the district but for the members and also making sure that members are going you know doing the research getting a second opinion going to a high quality high value

075provider um another procedure is a trigger finger surgery um typically this is done you know in an outpatient setting you can see that the district paid over $122,000 we know that there's a z option that's a little over 3,800 so right there that represents $8,000 or nearly a 68% uh difference and I use that example specifically because when you start to think of volume you know you're going to have a handful of of significant more expensive procedures like the hip replacement but think of those trigger finger surgeries where there's a lot of volume there and that can really make up a significant portion of savings so these are really important education pieces and opportunities to continue to educate members as well as when we're talking about the aacy and navigation Partners um to really highlight

076um how this trans translate to savings for the district and your members so be if you could just stay there for a quick second so what what on that on the screen there what we all ultimately really want to do is to steer our members into centers of excellence where a doctor can provide uh perform that surgery with a high rate of success with a low rate of uh a secondary or um uh you know follow-up appointments that are unnecessary so just hide a a center of excellence where they excel at their craft and we know then at that same time that there's uh there's excellent doctors whose prices are great and their degree of success is really high and when we when HPS and our partners help identify those are like I said HPS

077has a wide Network there's a lot of places where you can get a hip replacement but what is the best as we steer our people into those places uh we a typical outpacing surgery where you're in and out in the same day like a knee replacement or a hip replacement is going to cost the employee $500 but to incentivize them we say hey go to Dr Johnson or whoever the preferred uh provider is and we will wave that cost typically the employees going to say okay like that saves me money we've just steered them to avoid $35,000 hip replacement for the $199,000 that's really good so we're able to use data metrics to help understand who the best providers are at the best cost and then we have the in we try to steer them

078and that's where that uh Patient Advocate comes in as to why would we add this position because we can help that those $50,000 we can start to get those things right where we want them and not have Miss savings more more um you know getting these things done Megan go ahead I have a question yeah when an employee opts to not use the zero option do we track the reasons why I'm gon look at Megan on this one here great question uh I think we're working to do a better job of that and exploring some of the navigation opportunities but it's an excellent question um so it it is something that we're actively working on I mean sometimes we can get the feedback um you know when they call uh five star which is through

079the TPA and get some of the information but is something that we're continuing to track I can say with other plans other feedback it's sometimes not being aware o of the options or they've already had it scheduled and they're like I don't want to change this is already what I've been you know the path that I'm on and sometimes it's travel and time and just change overall but I I think there's certainly an opportunity to dig in there more which we are planning to do so Crosby there's also examples where you know in um somebody like myself just use myself for an example if I need a knee replacement I may not go to the clinic but my network has a specialist that I can go see for $150 The Specialist will verify yep you

080likely need one uh let's refer you to an orthopedic doctor I can go see that orthopedic doctor for another $150 and they can say yes you do need the surgery I can get pre-authorized uh and I can say I don't need a recommendation from you I'm going to see the orthopedic doctor and I'm not even interested in your Z options I I have the right to choose where I want to go and it's my $500 and there is a network but there's definitely better not all doctors are created equal not all medical providers are created equal so um we can do our best best to steer it but it's it'd be wishful thinking think to think that we're going to steer everybody all time yeah sorry can I CH I think a realistic example of

081what we hear a lot especially from that 25% group that um was was not satisfied with collaborative care which is the group right now that steers our members toward the zeroc cost option is here's here's two providers and you decide right which one is best and now me as the person who is utilizing the care I call the two providers well we can't get you in for 6 months well I need to see you like in two months and now I call back my collaborative Care Rep and she says right and it's that back and forth and finally I say you know what I'm going to just go to the one that can get me in two weeks from now and so I think that's also why we are looking at this patient care Advocate

082because right now that navigation is left on the employee and there is no doubt that right we want our employees to be active in their healthare but sometimes there's just too many barriers especially when we're talking about some of our employees who need specialty care so we're not just talking about right the broken finger and I need an x-ray but we're talking about our cancer our employees who have cancer our employees who have significant Health needs and I think that for that 25% I think Lindsay would agree that and Megan would agree that those are the story lines that we continue to hear here of why I'm not going with the zero cost option is because there's just too many when we when we hear the word Hoops um they talked about waivers waivers are

083something that you have to get from collaborative care to go see and get the con you know the consult there's just a lot of that and so I think that's again some people will just say I'd rather just pay the co-pay schedule the appointment myself and be done with it so I think those are actually very good reasons why we should be tracking why they're going somewhere else because if we see it consistently with certain providers and maybe those providers should not be included in our Network and maybe we then need to seek out other providers that are getting our employees in Faster yeah we do try to capture it in that survey data um where we have the narrative I think it's um something that again is a theme that when we hear about

084the issue we track okay yeah well and I would add in I think an excellent point Rachel sometimes people just don't call regardless so it could be a missed opportunity and they didn't make any Outreach to um Prairie States or to collaborative care um one other piece I just want to highlight to with the zero dollar options and specifically when you're thinking of an outpatient surgery that that we have these examples um most of these have then also bundles that have uh warranties so you know in the event that you have an infection um there's a you know the surgery there's a whole host of things that right can happen sometimes post a surgery um that's under a warranty so that's not any more cost to the plan that's not any more cost to the

085members and I think of if I would Select Care from any healthcare provider and they're willing to put a a warranty on their procedure that speaks pretty highly about the expertise and the value and quality again Caroline has a question the is there a set theme for the missed opportunities I see like the 63 outpatient surgeries and then in your slide that same slide with a hip replac Gynecology visits are those your main opportunities where people are just either bypassing the Z option and going straight these were just some specific examples do we have a set theme where we're seeing it's a great question I don't believe there's a set theme I think there was just it it it's really member dependent too but great question Megan so maybe I'm jumping the road here a

086little bit but there there's many businesses that have the same model that we're doing correct there's some yes and are they basically having the same um do they have the incare advocate they have the same the same type of uh help that we do sure very similar plans I would say there's other plans out with amongst other districts and and private sector employers that have similar plans um there are many that have the the advocacy uh and I think everybody's I think that's also an opportunity where there's a lot of learning and growth um because we know Healthcare is personal and your advocacy has to be personal and they have to be knowledgeable and they have to be um growing with these plans so I think there's a number of different variations and that's really

087where the conversation and and identifying and and looking at these opportunities came up for a much more customized Advocate um approach that we've been talking about okay last question for me Rachel is this a teacher retention plan as well because it's it's going so well absolutely this is um Tom has heard me say this a hundred times that health care and the benefits surrounding healthare is one of I call it the three-legged stool you don't mess with teachers pension you don't mess with their health insurance benefits and you do not mess with their time off and so this is um an absolutely huge part of our retention strategy we have to make this an employee favorable experience um Megan I think on every call hears me reference like is this favorable to our employees and

088I think you know we know that regardless of how much we communicate what we communicate there will still be a level of confusion because it's Healthcare and the healthcare industry is is designed I think in some ways to confuse the end user and that's that's wrong but it is it is what it is um but this is 100% teacher retention I would like to add to that too if uh an advocate would could help people get steered towards the right outcomes and they had two hip replacements that were going to go this way but should have gone this way and they steer that correctly just from the potential savings that you're seeing on the right hand side of the screen this position would pay for itself and then some which is a savings to the

089taxpayers when you talk about you know teacher retention saving being more efficient with our spend why wouldn't we so the next missed opportunity I'm just going to focus on the charts in the um right hand uh columns are MRIs and CTS so you could really think of these as Commodities and imaging um and you can see then the average uh co-pay uh and costs related to an MRI of roughly that $3,000 and then the CT of $3500 and then you can see those costs for the $0 options so those again when you again and I like to refer to that as a commodity it it's an Imaging they're read by the Radiologists and then they're um reviewed and sent to you know the provider for followup these are uh where there's a lot of volume

090and a lot of opportunity for savings so you can see that um that Miss savings on uh just these two examples was over 112,000 so pretty significant and then also member savings as well um so again a win-win where members pay zero and then the plan saves as well the next opportunity is really around Primary Care visits and this really when you think about the results you heard about the clinic um again the clinic is just uh you know a feather in the cap of the health plan a true um you know just value add um really effective uh delivery system for Primary Care um you can still see that uh when we looked from November of 2023 through January of 2025 that there a number of non- preventative Primary Care visits outside of the

091clinic now I will say you know we're we're continuing with um you know the incentive with the wellness program and driving that through the clinic to get more and more uh family members spouses you know getting people more familiarized with the clinic but there still is an opportunity um to drive more utilization and and and visits through the clinic versus um through um you know a primary care provider outside of the clinic and you can see that the P plan paid to 259,000 and members paid nearly um almost six figures uh for these type of visits so you can see that um there's not only an opportunity uh for the cost savings but really that clinic and and Becky and her team are that gateway to to those referrals to connecting people with the advocacy

092through collaborative care through uh five star so it isn't only just the savings opportunities in the event that somebody does need care outside of that Primary Care scope there're also being being uh referral to those plan partners and really making sure that people are getting the necessary care and then uh avoiding costs for Unnecessary care that quite often happens um in a traditional Primary Care setting I think that was me I'm sorry so one of the the the missed opportunities that can also be uh defined through uh Primary Care often and we're having conversations around the clinic relates to Labs so we have the opportunity through the clinic that there's a wide number of labs that can be provided at zero cost and these are the same lab providers that all of the health care

093facilities in the community the hospital systems are using so there really is no difference in uh the labs and who's processing them the difference really boils down to cost and you can see that there were over 1,500 uh lab episodes that occurred uh where there was savings to the plan so certainly the the plan paid nearly 200,000 members paid 32,000 a little over 32,000 and you can see that there would have been nearly a 50 to 90% savings to the district and members through Labs so I understand there's also times where you're receiving care members may be receiving care and their provider says just go down the hallway have your lab work done here it's convenient you're here well the members are paying for that for those Lab Services the plan is paying for those

094Lab Services where the members then could go to the clinic have those labs drawn and still sent to their providers um so there's again it it it's educating members it's making sure that um you know when when those type of conversations come up that they you know have those reminders and are aware that those are additional services that the clinic provides that provide savings for themselves as well as the plan so based on this um and we're going to have a more uh accurate projection presented in April's meeting we're looking at a preliminary renewal projection around 5 to 10% um I want to say that um this was based on claims data through January February experience was very good and March and claims activity will determine um a little bit more about the reduction possibility

095with this projection um but still as we've talked about there's a lot of positive results that we're seing financially from the plan but when you think about Health Care Trend in inflation and when I talk about that 9% if if we can keep as much care running through a zero doll option a direct contract option we're fighting that 9 plus perc annual Trend and looking to uh mitigate ideally and reduce that Trend so that's really where you we talk about those missed opportunities and we talk about the navigation and the advocacy that really brings this together where we can try to mitigate um you know those renewal projections any questions Jake sorry going back to the first slide it'd be slide number two I can go to in the deck Yep this one yeah when

096we look at the stop loss where does that cap our costs like where when does that kick in at what level sure at the at the trying to understand the down like the downside right how bad could it sure yep at the individual level we have an individual stoploss value of $175,000 so one individual if they reach that $175,000 and exceed it then we would be reimbursed and stop loss would ultimately pay for those costs in the aggregate I don't know that off the top of my head it's in the $8 million range maybe 9 million but there's a certain protection point where we are protected if in the individual level or the a get where um our interests are insured and is there like a General guideline that's used to determine where to put

097that that's where actuar start to come in and once upon a time I did those things but I don't do those anymore but on Megan's team they they steer Us in the direction of finding something that financially makes sense you know for us when we lower that stop loss to like $100,000 that line item of a million dollar 1, 41,000 is going to become a lot more so it's a balancing act of figuring out what works best and what's smart yeah no great question we Benchmark to where that deductible should be and and certainly plan performance has a great impact on on looking at that stop-loss premium and hopefully uh mitigating or potentially reducing that thank you anybody else so real quick Megan it it looks like you could almost pay for the incare advocate

098person to to push people into the zero decisions Etc the mental health part Christine you can jump in if you want and it it might be harder to put a number on that as far as cost and I'm not trying to and I'm probably way early in this conversation no that's okay I thought we should talk about it no no that's okay so I if I'll take swing at this one if you don't mind um we know through the feedback from Becky at the clinic and what the employees stated here we know that there is demand we can look at the spend of our plan to say how many people are seeking mental health or uh um therapy outside in the network and how much are we spending on that so if we brought this

099in house how much could we save I think the part that's really difficult to measure um is how many people give up on finding a therapist because they have such a hard time finding it that they would finally begin to use it if you said guess what it's inhouse um if we were to you know as we talk about expanding the services at at the clinic uh if an advocate was under Becky's direction we feel great about that finding the right uh behavioral the or mental health therapist if we again we could find one by the end of the week if we wanted to but finding the right one who can do exactly the way kind of the standard we're setting we'd be P willing to be patient and wait for it and finding the

100right person uh would improve all the retention things that Rachel works on um we believe they would save costs and it's a worthy investment um at this time I'd say that the emphasis or the priority at the moment is the is to have that Advocate who can help the steerage take the stress off employees navigate the plan and get them into great doctors at lower costs it wins for everybody so to me it's Nob brainer I get it and and I'm not against the mental health part of it it just it's hard to measure that's all I think Craig to Tom's point the priority right now is on the the patient advocate and it really hits on Crosby what you said and carollyn what you said that that Advocate can also help us to collect

101better data to be able to make an informed decision while the survey results most certainly said this is something that would be utilized I think that we do need a little bit more information to realize if that cost savings would be there um The Advocate there's no doubt that to Tom's point there it's a cost savings um and so the priority is on that right now Christine uh the data that we we do have that we track on care Solus which is a mental health navigation tool would speak to the fact that like so far this year alone we've had almost 5,000 Communications between our mental health providers that work through um our insurance company and Care Salis so um but some of that is with families and students right not I getting there time

102um so yes I can't I can't uh tease out which is Staff or staff families like children or um um community members but I I would still tend to think that we have a there would be a high interest um I also think like between the partnership that I see in the gals Institute and um just some of the Partnerships we've created in the community with some really good Advocates some really good um mental health people that we see I see a lot in the community and in meetings that I'm in I think it would be a really really great opportunity for everybody involved okay thank you very much anybody else Lindsay Megan thank you guys thank you thanks Megan thanks Lindsay good job today uh consent agenda approval of the Schoolboard minutes February 24th

1032025 any concerns or questions if not passed by consent uh policy Who Doctor you got this yeah so again this is our first reading of these policies so we're not going to go through them Point by point just a little bit of background uh we have the policy section called technical Corrections and so um through our policies technical Corrections can be made administratively and then I have to notify you up the board as to what those were and Technical Corrections are very small things from a policy standpoint it might be the word was changed in the policy it might mean that they added a a uh statute to the policy to address a legal compliance piece so please review those if you have any questions for me on technical Corrections happy to answer those I

104do have a question and I think you se you have answered it um I did notice that yes some of it was just a parenthesis or something was changed but there were certain policies where entire paragraphs were removed is that surely because it's state statute or something like that and not that we're changing the language of the policy itself some of the technical correction changes were made because that that language already exists in another policy so um if you could point to the specific policy happy to talk through it but um when we worked with our niola consultant there were a number of policies where there was uh duplicated language that was no longer needed okay so because I read all these policies Joe I'm glad you did how many nights did it take I

105did it today oh really yes sat outside and did it it was nice anyways in the uh student accidents illness concussion and sun and cardiac arrest policy uh 5340 at the very end that whole last sentence has been removed red lined so I just want to I just want to make sure we're not actually changing like language and that these really are is technical correction this is technical in nature because this is covered in multiple other areas and it's also referenced in that uh the DPI and the WIA uh if you look up the in the information containing the following as provided by the uh DPI wiaa and then you see the information about the risks Associated to participate all of that information is in the policy already okay hence the reason why that is

106okay to change and then dumb question but I noticed all these were changed to 2024 why are we not changing them to 2025 the original like when this was this came out as part of a 2024 update okay when this is forwarded over to niola it will change over to 2025 in the correction see I read them all you you nailed it uh Dr Cook uh I did read them all as well kind of sort of well most of them all right kind of the uh the his her uh um we talked about this briefly um would you explain that please because at first I looked at it and thought okay are we going to get in trouble with the the his her yeah so every four years this changes let's yeah the the the

107his her to the they we can talk about the proper the language but I mean if we were coming to a meeting and um I we were you know for instance be discussing something in the in the flow of the discussion we we would use the term they in that discussion I wouldn't every time I said that a speaker would come to the microphone I wouldn't say he she would speak about whatever topic he she felt was appropriate to talk about this evening you know right so so what the recommendation it started out as a gender-based recommendation that you couldn't make somebody pick in the current times after we've gone past a lot of that gender discussion really what people have found is it's much the the flow of the conversation is much different and

108it started to become a shift not necess it's become more of a shift in the formal English language than it has necessarily been in the what would be the informal language you're starting to see that more in professional text where people are not they're they've gone beyond essentially just assigning the gender he or she in the text and they're using they more and more frequently and I think it transcends any political motivation behind it I think it's more just from a practical purpose okay thank you we are just on that note we are working through the um the uh recent administrative uh uh executive orders out of Washington and how they pertain then to I think it's about 30 policies that we have and we'll be bringing those to you in April as part of

109the policy update anybody have any other questions about policy review doctor do you want to be okay with moving along here or do you want to go through every single one of them there's only about a 100 yeah so in in the policies so 56 thank you Jim under uh new policies and policy recommendations um this is the first reading of these policies so uh as we've done in the past and we've had a large presentation of policies we've put it on here to put it in front of you to talk about it if you have any questions today about what's in those policies you know we can certainly bring that back I would anticipate that these policies would finally be up for a formal approval at the April school board meeting um because there's

110a lot of them we just want to draw your attention to them some of the policies on there are still being looked at administratively but we just want you to see kind of the full scope of what is what is being recommended at this time again some of those policies are new policies to the district those are coming up as a result of a a law change or a practice change that Neola is recommending to us they make the recommendation again as a board you approve them some of them are minor minor changes to policy uh where you'll see some language has been removed from for instance the uh you know a policy on uh due process rights language has been removed from that but it's because it's been added or it already exists in

111our suspension and expulsion policy so um as you read through those I want to give you plenty of time as the board to look through this this number of policies please take some time we don't need to go through them Point by point tonight um and then we should be shooting for April timeline for approval on these I just wanted to clarify and hopefully this will help new board members that some of them appear to be duplicates but really they apply to different types of employees is that correct thank you yeah so if you see a you might see a policy that is a um I'm going to see if I can find a quick example of it here um where you would have a uh a policy on um 130323 4230 it says e

112ethics and conflict of interest um any policy that references the 1,000 series applies to me as a superintendent as I'm the administrator I'm the person who's been hired by the board you supervise me anything in the 3000s and 4000 series references 3,000 is professional staff 4,000 is support staff so you'll find a lot of the same policies policy language across those three books but if you look at the organization again of a school district the board under the bylaws forms itself you hire an administrator we create the program we hire the staff and so that's why you'll see some of the the policies are replicated three times um does you want to include number two the policy number two as well as the same conversation here Joe policy number I mean the uh item number

113two there yeah that's what we were okay yep so new policies and policy recommendations yep yep so we we I split them up this time just again there was a lot y came through there were a few policies from uh a prior release um one of the nice things about niola is it does keep us current the other policy service that is out there comes through the the Wisconsin Association of school boards of WB that is much more it's nowhere near easy as easy to use and it is about you get that update once a year and it it falls much further behind it's also more expensive than theola so this does a nice job for us Crosby just going back to the technical corrections I noticed in a few of them that the wording

114for volunteers assisting District staff was removed is that because it's somewhere else I didn't see it anywhere else I was just curious why we were removing that that language can you point me to the policy please uh there's one in criminal history record check so 1421 so again the in in the 1400s so there is a policy on volunteers such okay yeah so the criminal history this what this is doing is it's taking the policy the proper language and putting it in the proper place okay thank you anybody else Joe you good for for now on these two topics so take a look at them over the next month we'll have this uh on the agenda these policies will be on the agenda again listed under policy for the meeting on Monday if there's questions

115that come up you can ask them then and then we would be shooting for uh an April time then to take action Jim we R 56 got it more on there too so uh one thing to point out uh there was a there's a both a policy update I just want to direct the board to it uh as it does it does directly affect the board um they they're in two places now in policy language uh if you look under the 144.5 there's a paragraph added in there about as a condition and so there's no requirement for a background check as a Schoolboard member as an elected official in this regard um but we do give you a badge access to our schools and so um Neola is making a recommendation and then there was

116a request made from uh a board member about making sure that we have a background check so it would be a childcare level background check for board members who are going to get an ID that then allows you into the school so um you would have to submit to that then before that badge access would be um would be permitted and that check then would come every two years so we'd be treating you at the same level then as a volunteer in our schools Mike so since you brought that up I have to ask question if someone was to get elected do they get a background check before they can be sworn in or not no so you can still serve as a school board member so this is a public meeting it's an open

117meeting and it is you know it's in our boardroom the door is open for the community to come in so in that regard there would be no background check before you're sworn in but before we issued you the badge that would then give you access we would then have to do that background check okay so technically we can have a board member who would never be allowed to step foot in the schools you could yes all right thanks could that be made public knowledge just I'm just curious we wouldn't do a press release on it as we wouldn't do a press release I mean we have volunteers we have volunteers that don't pass the background check um we just work directly with those volunteers and and give them the explanation as to why uh their

118access was denied will those be subject to open records requests that' be a question I'd have to talk to our our Council about Mike wouldn't it be easier just to preempt it like you were talking about then swear them in and have problems just thinking out loud yeah but the voters get to decide who their board members are oh yeah dictate yeah that's my point like unless there's some kind of state statute that says you cannot serve as a Schoolboard member with certain types of felonies it's really out of our control correct correct correct I mean so from an election standpoint yes the community would pick you but we could still restrict access as a school okay thanks Joel Moving on uh Personnel topics non student learning topics extended trip request hey the first item

119is the extended trip proposal from the high school this item is for discussion tonight but I will be bringing this item back at the board meeting on Monday for approval so this proposal um is for two of our high school staff and four of our students to attend the national save promise Club Summit save stands for students against violence everywhere and this is the youth leadership initiative of the Sandy Hook promise group one of our sophomore students Evelyn sakas is on the save youth Advisory Board and she has been asked to present at this conference um being on this board is quite the honor as there are only 10 students nationally who serve on this board so huge congratulations to Evelyn for that and then there are three other students who are part of our

120save club who will be attending the conference as well to assist with the presentation all of the information about the conference and about the trip was was linked in the board memo but I'll just give you a quick summary the conference activities take place between April 25th and the 27th the request is for Marilyn tashner and Evelyn to travel out on April 24th this is the day before and the reason for that is because of Evelyn's um of her being on the board there are some board activities that are occurring before the conference starts then Margie Canfield and the three other students would travel out on the 25th they would attend the conference together and then all travel back on the 27th are there any questions about that I have one rosby I noticed you

121included the full save itinerary are there any other nonconference related like planned activities outside of this not that I'm aware of but I can ask that question and bring it back to you thank you anybody else thank you Angela um Angela AC academic and Technical Excellence scholarship 20125 yes so these scholarships are through the Wisconsin higher educational AIDS board they award these scholarships to um High School seniors in Wisconsin each year and they ask ask that the high school nominate the students based on specific criteria that they give to us um high schools throughout the state nominate students um and the number of students that they nominate is based on enrollment so for Austin Magano that is four students for each of the scholarships the first scholarship is the academic Excellence scholarship and the criteria

122for this is grade point average so this scholarship is awarded to students in the state who have the highest grade point average if there are students who have the same grade point average then there are additional sub criteria that are looked at and those include things like the ACT score and then from there we look at the number of AP and honors classes that students have taken so for this year the students who were nominated for the academic Excellence scholarship were Jen Keel David anel Kathleen schore and Adam Whittier and then for the technical Excellence scholarship the criteria for this is students who have taken the most CTE classes in a single concentration area and or including their participation in the youth apprenticeship program and then the other criteria for this one is that they

123need to be um looking at attending a Wisconsin Technical College the students that were nominated for the technical Excellence scholarship this year are Oliver thoron Max neemo Brooklyn Hagen and Hannah Cary so we um offer these students our congratulations um this is a great honor and accomplishment and we wish them the best in their future endeavors awesome thank you Angela uh next up 4K update Angela yep just a quick update about our 4K registration for the 25 26 school year we had priority registration that was taking place that closed out on February 28th we currently have 193 students who are registered for 4K for next year this is a slight decrease of about 29 students from the same time time last year with our priority registration being completed Su resir in our district office has

124been working tirelessly um to place the students at their requested site based on parents preferences on their application they list the top three sites that they are interested in with that we had only three District families who did not receive their top three choices so those families are being being contacted so that we can find out what their next choice is and place their student um at that site and then finally all of the families who registered at this point will be notified regarding their child's placement that will happen mid-march and will be um via email are there any questions about that Kine does that include open enrollment or will we now open it now that we have the priority of registration open enrollment will now be offered if we have seats available so open

125enrollment um parents who are open enrollment did um register already we take priority for our resident students first and then move down the list to open enrollment okay anybody else thank you Angela uh moving on finance and Facilities I take it back uh Christine Consortium agreement of specialized services I apologize all right so tonight I have um just an agreement that we use it's called a Consortium agreement for specialized Services it is a partnership that we have with the Elmbrook School District um they manage the Consortium agreement for loow incidents disabilities so we have students who receive deaf and heart of hearing services um and we don't have enough students that we would employ our own teacher um and so we partner with um other districts we hire one staff member and then that staff

126member serves a variety of school districts um and so every year uh we uh join the Consortium specifically again for the DEA and heart of hearing services um generally Services have stayed in around that $40,000 range um and then uh but in order to sign the contract I need board approval and a signature and so I'm bringing that tonight for discussion if you have any questions and then we'll bring it back for approval next Monday anybody have any questions thank you Christine oh this is a point this summer you will see the cisa contract come through and so we do use Christine some services from cisa some services from this elra Consortium just want to make let you know that it'll be two entities that we contract with yeah so for C we use Vision

127um services and so those do look different and it is confusing that they're two separate agencies but it works out well meets the needs of our students that's what we need so thank you Christine uh student service topic number two students at risk of not graduating yes so the next um piece of information tonight is uh in accordance with State Statute 118 uh 0.153 I'm bringing forward for discussion um potential request for approval way down the road yet um student at risk policy um this policy uh looks at how we can continue to educate students who are at risk um and they would meet uh at risk of not graduating and they have they meet the criteria under the following two areas um they are one or more year behind their age group uh in

128high school credits two or more years behind their age group and at least one basic skill level habitually Trent um they're parents their adjudicated delinquents and eighth grade scores who eighth grade students whose scores are below basic um basic level of failing um and are not promoted to 9th grade which we don't not promote students from 8th to 9th grade um but the state statute asks that we um requires that we start tracking grades 5 through 12 so this is a new process for me we had don't have this policy in place right now um Joe has been a great of information because he did work the staff in wakaa through the process um so right now we are just starting to meet with uh DPI U there's a couple of really Key Programs in

129the area that I think we can take a look at uh what they're doing there's one in Stevens Point and then there's one in Oak Creek um I'd see it as a potential blend with sore um the jeto pathway it would be more of a competency based pathway I think at this point um but I'm still totally learning about it so I will bring you guys updates as we work through the process thank you Christine anybody else go ahead I was just gonna ask if you have any questions okay if you do ask Joe just kidding thank you thanks Christine Financial facilities topics Tom 2025 buildings and grounds budget all right so every year in March we bring to you the billions and grounds budget we we'll get to the 10year capital plan uh after

130this but here this is just Andy's uh standard buz uh budget here for his operating needs uh for custodial supplies toilet paper things that his Department ultimately overseas and takes care of along with like your our regular maintenance needs of just minor roof repairs not roof Replacements that would be 10-e Capital plan but minor repairs and then as utility budget there for turning the lights on and having the Heat so no proposed increases there but looking for uh approval of this next week so he uh has his budget and he can start to plan ahead any questions about any of that I'm sorry Craig that was your question ask no go ahead man you're good nice shoot Tom um finan and Facilities number two uh 10year Capital plan all right so uh I'm gonna get

131back up here real quick here and uh bring to you the 10-year Capital plan so um bear with me one second here while I turn this on all right so in the 10year capital plan right now so I gave you a full copy of that plan um it's and I'll pull up that exhibit just to make reference to it here bear with me now uh the 10-year plan um if I go to the agenda 10-year plan it's the second attachment there it's by building um obviously there's a lot of detail here and it's small font there I apologize but it just goes to show um you know up top here all these BB's is Big Ben Elementary School you can see the trade or the area HVAC flooring generators fire paint asphalt Etc all things

132are considered uh the we have an anticipated based on the life expectancy in the year that the uh project was last done and we have the replacement cost and an inflationary Factor each project in this list here really is something that Andy does a great job of working with his team to go through each building each major component says what needs to be done what I want to highlight is that um we got a question this past year this past summer we did a section of roof replacement at Magano high school and the question was asked why didn't you just do this back when the referendum was taking place the answer was there were still seven years of life in that roof and just like in our own houses we wouldn't replace it had to

133be there right we don't want to wait always until things fail but you do want to try to get as much useful life out of it before you start to replace things like that so every project that's in this list is reviewed and said all right what has priority right now um in the memo that I have there then uh there's some I want to just kind of walk you through here real quickly here so um at Big Ben Elementary there's a a we're going to replace a well and pump and Andy if there's any questions here Andy's here to help answer that but uh Andy that would be similar to what we did at Rolling Hills but that obviously we're not going to wait for it to fail we had school that we missed

134um and we want to try to avoid that so we feel that that project is now time uh to take place here hey Tom Andy we we have we we talked about that a couple times before I'm guessing right maybe five times before this four times I don't I don't remember we kept saying it's good for now we're going to look at it next year you're saying the overall plan or the well that and a big Ben pump situation so the well itself at Big Ben that's something new with the catastrophic event that we had at Rolling Hills this year we decided to be more proactive than reactive and so that was something that was brought into the 10-year Capital plan for all schools that have welds okay all right so yeah that that's a

135$188,000 price T to do that project there um moving on back to the list then um hang with me here let me just close that out all right prayview uh we have a fire alarm panel that controls the fire alarm throughout the building that's at uh a time where it does need to be replaced Andy would know that better than anyone so we're recommending that project uh there's a gym wall partition that separates the gym at Section Elementary that separates the cafeteria from the gym class because that space doubles up during the lunch hours there and that thing has broke many times here and it's time to replace that um the last two projects then that we have on the list right now is replacing the track around the state in the stadium uh coach

136gak is here to join if we have any questions there he can speak to the conditions uh of the track now the track has been on our plan if you go back to last March and the March before that this plan has or this project has been uh in our in our um plan now for some time um a couple years ago we did go out to bid Andy had some quotes that were given to us um and we ultimately said we can patch this up we can squeeze a little bit more life out of this track but now I think we're at the time where I think that the track needs to be replaced uh Coach G do you want to come up and just kind of speak to that real quick and lend

137your opinion about it as you use that part of the district more than anyone yeah as Tom said a couple years ago we put a Band-Aid on it uh so had a couple of the like Lanes one and two that get used most often they were resurfaced and then we had them restripe and repaint uh the new exchange zones with which were implemented by the national Federation about 3 years ago um since then it's there's there's cracks um the the seal Flex has worn off and there's there's bare asphalt showing in fact on our North runway on the north side of the stadium we have a roll out Runway that's covering the seal Flex because there's so many bare spots and exposed asphalt uh which poses a danger to the athletes using that Runway so

138it it's definitely H has seen its its life and we are uh in need of a of a new Surface and not just doing the top coat it's going to be your resurface of the asphalt underneath it as well so it's it's a total reconfiguration that's being done any questions for Mike or Andy we had one more we were G to talk about but Carolyn is that something we can get done before track no it'll be done during the summer so we will patch up any bad spots in the track yet this spring before they go into season and make it safe for everyone and then we'll do this over the summer so when we when I said we're going to redo everything when we take the asphalt out and then we put new Asphalt

139in that'll have to sit for 30 days before we can put the new rubber surface over the top of it so we'll have it done before football starts in the fall that was my next question okay yeah there would be a period of time though when the stadium would be unusable by anybody um yeah so looking at this now obviously because Andy would have to go out and get bids and take a look at um securing the the people to do the work and a timeline that works for everybody that started today all right thanks Andy uh so yeah getting bids I guess just early helps us understand should you guys move forward in that regard last project then that we had here that we want to bring to you to consider right now is

140um the locker rooms in the South gym here so just before we even get to these pictures I wanted to offer you guys uh as I said in my memo an opportunity to see the spaces for yourself so on Thursday at 6 o'clock if anybody here in the community would like to meet in the athletic foyer um I'll give you guys a tour of these spaces so you can kind of see for it for yourself um you can't really smell these pictures you can certainly smell the the locker rooms um so these pictures don't do Total Justice here but just to kind of show you these spaces this locker room the South jym was a part of the 1993 expansion at at Magano high school so uh this was uh likely opened in 1994 I

141believe and hasn't been touched since so 32 years of wear and tear um you know we have a lot of RC athletes in particular football and wrestling our track programs and and all of our Varsity athletes use that but it's a hi traffic area um that has certainly seen better days here so um the spaces here are just really worn and um we're going to present some options here for you so these pictures here are of the boys area um you know the bathrooms and the shower areas we didn't capture those but um you you'll see those on Thursday if you decide to join us on a quick tour um on the flip side then in the South gym locker room we have girls locker rooms how nice those are yeah these are pictures from

142I don't know 11 o'clock today so um the state of condition is just different here so when I when I bring options for you guys to consider you'll see that um the spaces are the same age but they're just not similar okay so um just to Pivot off at that and show you kind of what were ultimately uh the ideas that we had so this is just a picture of Magano High School um you know let's I'll just zoom out for a quick second here uh this is the first floor um you see the South gym locker room is right here what we ultimately just kind of looked at as like well just from an idea standpoint what could we do to to um help uh improve the space and perhaps expand it uh currently

143we we don't have enough space in that locker room or the locker rooms to meet the needs of of the athletes uh the student athletes that use those spaces so here's the locker rooms the boys is up here the girls is down here I'll zoom in a second but ultimately what you'll see when I zoom in is that we we're considering expanding into the trainers room which we have here with that an idea was that we can move the train room into these two offices here this bottom one is storage for a a a uh for table and the top one is Zack Ortiz's office Zach would then have been displaced into the library yeah sorry Zach correct but ultimately what we decided was you know what we can do this more efficiently we can

144just take a look at the locker rooms uh if we were to take over the um the the training room right where I'm hovering here we have a training room in the along the west gym is I just mooved to that right in this area here so we have two athletic training rooms we'd simply make use of that one room for all athletes in the building um so it's not that we would take it over and not have a replacement we feel we can be more efficient with the resources we already have so without moving the this sorry moving this lock uh having to relocate this Locker uh excuse me training room we don't need to do any work here and displace Zach so we just kind of said we're getting more efficient by just

145reducing the scope of the project here I'll here just to give you a little bit better idea of what these spaces look like all right so here we go so here you can see up top we have uh in the boys locker room area um there's a door here that uh you can enter on the west side of the building or this is the the turf gym area um here as you kind of walk down this Corridor here you have the training athletic training room right now and then you come through this door you have the the majority of the boys locker room right here coach gach has his office in there um the coach's shower facilities are there separate from the the athletes along with bathrooms and then a shower area on the bottom

146then it's pretty much kind of a mirror image where you have the girls here with some storage area and janitor facilities uh or storage space rather there uh with their showers and bathrooms there um ultimately as I just go to the last page here of this then to show you what it would look like as I said to you earlier the girls in the boy's Locker space so this is the girls Locker space one idea or option you have uh is being presented with is just holding off on the need to renovate this space simply because the needs are different um you know if you had a project in your own house and you had a son and a daughter and the daughter's room was in great shape and the and your son's wasn't you

147would prioritize it differently like in your own personal situation right you won't spend the money until you felt that you had to or the need was really there um again I want you to be the judge of that and come see the spaces for yourself so just going down below the girls locker room then we have the boys and this ultimately kind of shows you what it could look like um here you can see like in the prior pictures we have just your standard metal Locker that was installed in 1993 and this would ultimately bring in a a cabinet style where uh it's proper space for the athletes and their equipment be it their lacrosse gear their football helmet and shoulder pads whatever season happens to be in that locker room at that time so

148this would bring in approximately 100 lockers um the expansion would take place into this training room here all right so you can see that that space would be taken over to add about another 30 or so lockers uh just in this area here where we could get all of our athletes into one area so that's the proposal there uh uh for your consideration um both spaces could be done neither space could be done this is ultimately what how you feel about this project being a true priority but at this time uh I believe that it's worth you guys considering this because I think that space is in need of some help Caroline do we think about moving the girls into this new space and letting the boys destroy the girls space like they did their

149other one no I don't I don't I wouldn't want the new space to get ruined like the other one did so I thought why wouldn't we re reward the girls who took care of their so the number of toilets that we have in here whereas like the boys have urals right the the the toilets single stalls um the individual so the boys and girls shower areas are different right there's single stall showers here uh for the boys it's there's everyone's in the same area so I mean it's just different um so no I haven't considered that the current facility probably would suggest Mike do you want to add there well part of it is just sheer volume as well there's on average 290 boys each year that use the boys locker room and girls you're

150looking at about 75 girls per year so um girls just don't use locker rooms as much as as guys do uh guys have to keep their equipment at school when it comes to like football which has lots of equipment they don't take it home but like girls tennis has the option to use the The Varsity locker room in the fall and not a single girl even utilized it this year they just kept their their rackets and their their gear in their their trunks or they took it home with them um so just by so the guys is more worn and guys are probably a little floppier but um just by sheer volume uh it's 209 it's like over four times as many athletes use the varsity locker room on the guys side compared to the

151girls and it's different sports too much different sports that said should we push the wall and make the girls smaller now you're looking at Plumbing yeah I mean you it's going to be hard to move that plumbing and everything else in that nature so so I mean when you look at the uses right of of the sports that use it there's there's no female equivalent of football historically there was no female equivalent of wrestling obviously that is now changing and that's great um could this space be used more the girls area likely Joe we can't make a decision now that we're going to have have to try to undo in the future you know and what we're seeing is higher and higher levels of participation in female Athletics and so if we make a decision

152that would take away from the girls locker room it's one of the reasons why I asked time to set up tours so that we could go in there and see it whether we do the girls locker room at this time or not it is something that we have to plan for in the future and we do have great participation among female athletes so to shrink the locker room now we would be creating a problem for ourselves in the future is the larger training room adequate space and is it good access from all different parts of the school like have we talked to Jason is this going to work for him and his team Mike I'm gonna let you weigh in there yeah the the training room next to the West gym is far superior to

153the one connected to the South gym uh it's it's just because of I guess habit and proximity uh but there is easy access um the the guys will just if they need any treatment for for football exam for example they'll just walk right outside we'll put Runners down um it's closer to basketball it's closer to volleyball so it's just going to to athletes are just going to have to adjust a little bit but Jason prefers the one okay down by the West gym because it's really really nice it's just never used okay so the West Gym's roughly 700 sare ft this one is only 400 we were still going to keep the ice bath and stuff in there so we're not going to take away some of the plumbing aspects that we have in place

154but use more of the unused space for lockers all right I just got to have my ATS back so just making sure anybody else okay thanks thanks gentlemen so just one last piece then as we talk about the 10-year Capital plan and our funding that that is uh driven by end ofe surpluses that we might have in fund 10 we move that over into fund 46 and that will pay for upcoming large projects and that's really been this the strategy that we've developed here to pay for our roofs at claran this summer The High School last summer or other things like the track surface so um we have enough money in fund 46 to finish out this year's projects to pay for these ones that we have proposed but then we will have to make

155a transfer which we could have done last year for as much as 2.5 million but um I will bring to you this summer more than likely let's make a transfer here Schoolboard and that will ultimately whatever we transfer this summer we'll pay for the summer of 2026 and the summer of 2027 we're always trying to stay about two to three steps ahead of what our needs are right now so um just know that that's going to be coming here okay anybody else ready to go to Village of M gold memorandum of understanding Tom yep all right so uh you guys are aware of this uh effort right now I gave you a copy of the memorandum of understanding where the district and the village of Magano could share our fiber optic networks and have internet

156connectivity so on so forth um we're just having our legal team review that to make sure that we're not uh that we have the flexibility should anything bad ever happen which we don't anticipate but we got to check our details here so this will come back to you in April the village of maguo is going to adopt it on their side in early April and then we'll do the likewise uh what it we meet on April 10th and 24th and we'll do it in in finality uh in final form then okay thanks Tom anybody else good um number four emergency repair all right uh uh hey Mike thanks for coming appreciate it yeah thank you thank you Mike thanks Andy um all right we had an emergency repair that's uh needed it's not affecting student

157learning environment yet at this time here but we had uh a new Chiller installed to supply uh cold air throughout Section Elementary School um that Chiller is 2 years old Andy is that correct yeah we're going into year three he going into year three and we had some problems with it and Andy ultimately identified it here and he's got a section of the pipe he could probably go get off his desk real quick to show you uh on the inside of the pipe that connects the uh Chiller to uh the air handling units and the and the coils that are in there uh the interior of the pipe was failing uh for a few different reasons on that but ultimately um the system can't bleed out it's always in in a state of it's not

158working uh We've identified that to fix that so that's something that we ultimately said uh I'd never Envision you guys uh sacrificing the environment of our students so we said this is something we're going to move forward with and just let you know so that's what we did just giving you some uh information on that number five Tom budget okay so as we talk about that then uh a budget amendment reminder so we haven't done one in my time here but what I'm going to ask the school board to do is to uh adopt an amended budget sometime in May June or July even you can adopted after the fiscal year closes and it's a way for you to say we recognize the updated expenses and revenues we had our budget we adopted in October

159but things like the the pipe repair that we talked about or the Well Repair at Rolling Hills is going to push the initial budget over right so um by adopting the amended budget uh I I highlighted in the memo there the well replacement at Rolling Hills the pipe repair at section we had an underground pipe repair at Parkview Middle School a scoreboard onetime expense with repayment coming but nonetheless an expense right now um those are going to push our budget over and an aitor might say Tom you spent too much money well if we adopt the amended budget it will recognize those things that we're always on the same page just wanted to give you a reminder about that okay any questions about that uh number six referendum financing option all right Joe uh thanks

160for going up there so um now is a time I wanted to talk to you about our our original timeline for referendum financing so at some point in time we're going to borrow $ 89.1 million and as soon as we receive that money the interest rate you know the interest charges begin but also uh having that money and investing that money has a a benefit of interest rate deposits or investment earnings um on the screen right now is what we ultimately communicated to the to the district style all right here we go so here we go this was the uh uh 2425 uh you know the the uh ultimately the tax levy that we have that's related to the the repayment of Magano high school that project in 2016 uh we have a levy taking

161place this year one more next year and then as we get into 26 27 we're paying off the remainder of the high school at the same time that the Middle School uh new debt comes online so there is no tax increase this year as a matter of fact you all remember we cut taxes by half a percent we can hold the line next year in the fall of 2025 and then in 2026 is when we said hey now it's going to go up here okay so as we talk about that that concept there we were ultimately going to delay uh yeah Joe you can kind of go on down here real quick just keep moving down um keep going down to the exhibit that we have here so you can keep going one more and

162keep going one more all right we can stop right there here so um the options that we have there's a couple different things that are moving right now obviously the economy has some uncertainty to it and with that uncertainty means interest rates are going to move in terms of the interest rates just like a mortgage uh the higher the interest rate the more interest cost you're going to repay um so as as interest rates move uh the the question I have for the board is um our initial game plan said we're not going to borrow the money until 20125 or 2026 but by waiting between now and then we might see interest rates climb so the question for the board is what do you think interest rates are going to do do you want to

163wait another six 12 months to lock in interest rates or do you want to expedite that and do that now and lock in based on what your expectations are so there is Market volatility Carolyn you if I had a crystal if I had a crystal ball I probably wouldn't be here but I would say wait yep how long it's it's we have no idea that they've been slowly declining the hope is they continue to slowly decline um did something else go ahead um I I don't remember if I asked this a couple meetings ago but if we got locked in how long until we can refinance without big penalty seven years that's a that's a law okay at current rates what are we looking at so East Troy just locked in about a couple weeks

164ago at 4.18 now we when we went out to the community we use a conservative interest rate Assumption of 5% right um right now they're at 4.18% um but that may change likely will change it's it's the group's guess as to what we think that's going to happen here um so just no I don't think that Auctioneer right now sold sold I'll take that what's the H the rate history the last let's go three years do you have that or did be I not in this not in this presentation right now but anytime you're in the 4% range in the like last 20 to 30 years of issuing public bonds like this here 4% is is an average rate like that's good it's not great but it's not bad when we refinanced in 2020 or

1652021 we refinanced um at about 2% some less than that that's not happening for a long time that was a market historic low that I can't see what would cause that again could be wrong but it's hard to guess that's going to happen again a couple years later right um so here I going to give you a couple proposals here so we have two columns here uh one column here on the leth hand side represents if we do as we've done the last few ma is uh we make a a prepayment of debt at Magano high school we do that for about $3 million every year if we do that this may all right um You can see that uh ultimately that we would make one more uh two more payments of 6.4 million there's

166that final smaller black payment and in the 26 27 school year um and then the like the referendum debt that comes online this is the new debt and this is about each year about $ 7.26 million each and every year for a total of $142 million in repayment if we were to shift gears and borrow the money now um and say you know what rather and Jake you've asked these questions before um this is basically paying off low interest debt paying off low interest debt and paying off the remaining low interest debt saying let's not pay off 2% interest rate let's start paying off the higher interest rate so really it's paying off one more uh prepaying debt one more time this may and then stopping just letting the high school debt play out and

167not paying off that low interest debt early so abandoning that strategy um because you can see then ultimately these $2.6 million uh 7.26 million payments become about 7 .21 and the difference is about $440,000 each year so uh doctor if you could scroll down the totality of we could reduce by not prepaying low interest debt and paying off higher interest debt we would save $1.3 million in the financing scenario furthermore if you borrow the money now and put it on investments the estimated interest earnings uh would be $3.2 million so in totality there's about a $4.5 million gain for the district now what I have to say is this is a change from what we communicated we we said hey we're not going to borrow the money till uh 2025 or 2026 um we can

168still control the tax impact to not occur until we said we said the tax impact is not going to occur until the fall 2026 Levy we can still hit that but we're ultimately considering idea that um based on what I'm showing on this screen between shaving off $1.3 million in costs and adding uh additional interest income that's a benefit to the entire District it's a savings of taxpayer dollars so I see it as my duty to bring these options to you guys for consideration right now so current rate 4.18 what do we current current rate 4.18 what do we I guess what would you approximate the return on investment being for that 3.9 so I think that's a footnote somewhere down here if you go on down here number five assumes one year of investment

169earnings at 3 .9% got it thank you yep so when we went out and sold this referendum we were going from $121 211 cents to 145 right MH that was a and that yes and that was at 5% at what percentage do we break even I'm not falling let me let me make sure here do we stay flat mill rate what what our interest rate have to be Joe can you go back up to that very that black and yellow chart there all right I know there's a lot of I'm trying to explain this as best I can all right so uh every household is paying $121 at least that's what we did in 23 24 um to pay off the The District's debt related to to our project so we're trying to keep that

170flat keep that flat keep that flat and then Elevate that are you asking how can we get this to fit in and say you know we're not even going to raise we don't have to raise taxes what I'm asking is if that was calculated at 5% if we're at 4.1 where does that bring that yeah right so I mean um good question here if you Joe uh I don't have the footnotes on this and I apologize these the these charts uh this chart here is developed at 4.5 to 5% right you have 20 21 years worth of bonds and each issue of bonds that you're paying off have various interest rates so they're not all 5% or all 4.75 they have different um interest rates that are connected to them um so generally speaking 4.5

171to 5% is the interest rate that went into this graph here um at 4.18 when we talked about this we could lower this potential mill rate impact down um I don't want to quote that number right now because off the top of my head I don't know it but um it could potentially be less than what we communicated right we we don't want to say hey it's only going to be here and then all of a sudden it's much higher that's a bad look so we're not really abandoning what we said the impact was going to be or when the impact is going to take place but I think it's wise for us to just be flexible in our considerations of a different C plan for good reasons and I think we have some of

172those good reasons here right now so we could do this a couple different ways if you if you felt like this is worth looking into we can bring back uh um we can bring back a parameters resolution that ultimately is what you identify and adopt and then we say Okay bar here's the parameters that you can go out to the market and execute our borrow on our behalf and if all the conditions are met the interest rates are what we thought um we're going to give you the latitude to work within those parameters if something were to cause an economic Spike of any sorts and it's outside the parameters they can't do it on our behalf we can adopt that as early as next Monday if you want more time to to let this marinate

173and consider things um we could do this in April um I guess the question so Tom yep excuse me so do we think that that time is of of the essence here I I'd like to ask a question Jim go ahead to address that um so my personal opinion no time is not of the essence here I think that interest rates are improving but in that scope can we adopt say if we see rates come down to 4% flat can we pre-approve um like can we have a resolution where if you get to that point where we're all comfortable that we have a pre-authorization to make that decision yeah I think when you adopt the parameters resolution that that ultimately is kind of what you're doing there right like saying if it gets to this

174point then assuming that's what you were saying I just want to make sure I understand that that's what you meant by that y um we obviously we don't want to run the risk of paying higher interest than what you're seeing right now correct um the question is is where are we going from here right yep so that that there comes in right fortune telling and you know predictions they're really difficult especially when it comes to the Future um but that's what we're kind of tasked with doing we have to make a judgment on behalf of all the taxpayers in the district to to do what we think is in in their best interest and our best interest here so um there is some risk in Waiting those risks could be unfounded they could be very

175real so my question is can we can we make that decision at the next meeting to a point basically pre-authorized where if we got to a rate that we're all comfortable with as of now that you already have that authorization to move forward where we don't have to bring it back to another meeting and wait two weeks and and and delay that decision I think we might be able to do that um what what I'll do is if that can be done I will bring bring back a parameters resolution or a couple different versions for you to consider and maybe adopt next Monday okay um if not let's keep our eye on this come April and see where things are going if we don't like the way the direction of things are moving maybe we

176wait until April okay but yeah there's definitely not an urgent thing where I'm saying you have to do this right now I'm not saying that but um I want to just put this all on your radar for consideration is that something that would require a first and second reading like would we even be able to this next week this is no no you could certainly do that this is the introduction the the the the basic ideas is being presented to you and then the final option is yours to have where you could read that and say yeah we're we're good with this you may read that and say you know what we're gon we don't like the parameters that are being presented here um I will go to work on this tomorrow and uh give

177you a board update on Friday as to what to expect here um and I will work with our partners at Robert W bear Brian Brewer and his team to say um um I guess ultimately what's the the direction here if the rates fall right and they they get to 4% even we'd like to start locking in on that I think that's the question is where would we all be comfortable obviously we run the risk of them continuing to fall at that point once we lock in right yeah I mean they could fall further right and then you locked in you're like oh we should have waited this out further I guess the flip side is that's that's that's where so at that same time if they start to climb up if there's uncertainty and the

178market is suggesting there is uncertainty like right like none of us in this room uh control the movement of the stock market the stock market dipped last week and it went down 2.7% today that's the market speaking we should at least consider that and say okay where do we think this thing's going to go over the next 90 days 180 days whatever does waiting make sense or does locking in sooner make more sense that's I I'm comfortable if what you initially proposed was what 5 point something or 5.0 yep okay so if we hit that or something lower we did what we told the taxpayers we going to do and obviously if we hit four and it goes down to 3.8 a month later oh well but you know it's wor it's worse if the

179uncertainty all of a sudden we're up at 5.2 so what I would encourage the board to do uh Dr Cook can you go back up to that black and yellow graph is that you'll have an option then if we lock in at a lower interest rate right here if we lock in at a lower interest rate let's say that the mill rate only goes to a125 or a130 right and we're underneath the 145 that we talked about you had told the community hey we're gonna this is going to increase to a145 you can instantly start to pay off and defease debt to say you know what we're going to Levy up to the amount we said we were going to and with that little extra piece that you agreed to we're going to start prepaying

180debt right now now as fast as we can and that's again the the practice of paying off your debts as early as you can and living within the uh you know the permission that the community ultimately gave you so you could certainly issue a lower Levy if the interest rate is better and you say you know what we only need to do a130 guys this is better than what we thought or take the latitude they were given and start paying it off early and that flexibility uh is something I'd probably say take advantage of it okay so um all right more to come I'll more than likely bring options your way that we may or may not act on okay so Brian at be yep are they con not constantly daily watching what rates are

181doing and updating you every single day if Brian and Company was in the room right now they would say you should you should be considering this right um again it's not their job is to to say why is the market volatile they'll say the market is volatile there's uncertainty be it from tariffs or whatever that is something that we need to consider and talk about in this room right now so there is a risk in waiting right again it might not be founded could be totally much to do about nothing right but at the moment they're moving yeah so waiting might have a risk okay all right very good thank you Tom um going to action items hires retirements and resignations we have one retirement notice so sue coat a kindergarten teacher at Rolling Hills

182we are looking for a approval of her retirement notice do we have a motion I'd like to make a motion that we approve the retirement for Sue second any discussion who's been doing a long time she's a good she's a great teacher congratulations to sue all in favor say I I opposed carries thank you um we have to go to Executive session deliberating or negotiating the investment of public properties the invest of investing of public funds or conducting other specified public business whenever competitive or bargaining reasons require a closed session conferring with legal councel on current litigation make a motion to move into executive session second all in favor say I I rule call please Mike yes Jake yes Jim yes Eric yes Carolyn yes Craig here Crosby yes