001Ladies and gentlemen, is now 6:15 and a quorum of members is present. So, the meeting of the board of education of the school district of New Berlin is called to order. Please call the role. >> Miss Crosby >> here. >> Mr. Helmer >> here. >> Miss Kik, Miss Schulz >> here. >> Mr. Cidle >> here. >> Miss Spindler >> here. Mr. Zinsky >> here. Miss Kanek let me know she's unable to attend this evening. Next, I would entertain a motion to recess to close session. I move to adjourn into close session pursuant to section 19.85 85 1 C, E, and F of the Wisconsin statutes to consider A discuss approved superintendent contract extension, B the approval of close session minutes of February 23rd, and C employment performance and compensation matters pertaining to staff. >> Second.
002>> I have a motion by Miss Crosby and a second by Mr. Zinsky. Please call the role. >> Miss Crosby, >> yes. >> Mr. Zinski, >> yes. >> Mr. Helmer, >> yes. >> Miss Schultz, >> yes. >> Mr. Cidle, >> yes. >> Miss Spindler, >> yes. >> We are moving into close session and return to open session around 7 o'clock. Who's Okay. It is now 7 o'clock and we are returning from close session into open session. In recognition of the serious and important nature of our efforts here, we will join in the pledge of allegiance to the flag. For all those who are able, please rise. liberty and justice for all. >> And now for those who wish to prepare for the meeting, we will have a moment of silence. This is a public meeting
003of the board of education. Prior to this meeting, notice was given to the public last Friday by providing the agenda to the city library. The agenda was also posted on the district website. A copy of the agenda was forwarded to the Journal Sentinel and the Walkershaw Freeman, all of which have filed requests for all public notices. Do we have anybody for priv privilege of the floor this evening? >> No. >> All right. Um I don't have any message or announcements, so we'll move on to the administrative team report. >> Yes. So, I'd like to introduce our Ronald Reagan uh administrative team. Uh Angela and Ryan to come up. Matt, come up. I'm sorry. >> Uh this is uh our first of six school presentations for the school board. Um and uh just to kind of
004give you an idea of what's happening uh in the great world of Ronald Reagan and then uh I trust that uh Matt and Angela will introduce our special guests. >> Yes, we will. >> I am. No pressure. They're over there just shaking in their boots. It'll be fine. Uh, I'm Angela Patterson, proud principal at Ronald Reagan. >> And Matt Stick, the associate principal at Ronald Reagan. >> So, as we we do every year, we always want to start with our district mission as it grounds us in everything that we do at Ronald Reagan. >> So, moving on, we are going to go over some celebrations from this upcoming school year or from from this school year. >> So far, >> it's not over yet. Uh first and foremost, one of the things that we definitely
005want to celebrate is uh the for the first time in our six years, we are significantly exceeding expectations on our school report cards. So, we're very very proud of that. We've been working very hard with our staff and our students and our families. Um so, it was a a very good celebration for all of us at Reagan. So, thank you for all the support from the district with them. >> So, next we'll go over some math celebrations. Um, we'll start with a math. Our percentage of students meeting benchmark increased from 75% to 77.6%. Um, and early math scores stayed consistent at 85%. Um, we saw an increase for our students with IEPs and English learners um, from Amath from fall to winter as well. And then in second grade, our math automaticity scores increased from
00671% to 78%. Moving on to literacy uh areas that we focused on to celebrate tonight. Our kindergarten students showed a really great increase in their letter word sound fluency, which is really fun for our littles to have them tell you all about the different sounds that they're learning. So, we went from 63% to 87%. And first through third graders take the oral reading fluency, which is a fluency assessment for all of our students um on AS, which is the state required platform. So, we increased from 72% to 77% in the fall. And our students with IEPs increased from 37 to 42% which we're really excited about. And then moving on to a reading, which our second through sixth graders take, uh, meeting benchmark 74 to 77% and we had a nice 11% jump for our
007students with IEPs. Okay, I know you don't want to hear from us. You want to hear from the real stars of the show. So, we're very excited to introduce Amy Iikstead. Any wave? There she is. Okay, good. Marina Gonzalez, who is a firstear teacher with us. Lauren Mau, Anna Powers, and Kelly Slavic. And they're going to share some of the amazing work that they're doing, how they create a culture of assessment, um, and really bring amazing experiences to fourth grade that really increase student agency and student engagement, um, just in everything that they do. They're rock stars and we're very, very proud of them. So we will turn it over to them. >> Okay. Thank you. Well, thank you so much for having us. It's really it's an honor to be here with you tonight.
008So we just wanted to kind of start with the why of why we do the things that we do as far as assessment goes. So a number of us have studied the works of Dr. Bruce Perry and his um study of the neurossequential model for educators. And so I just want to share a little bit of that with you. So Dr. Perry um has believes that the brain is separated into four parts. The brain stem, the dianphylon, the limbic and the cortex. And we know that all the information that our kiddos receive from us go in through the brain stem and hopefully will make it all the way up to the cortex where they can process the information and then hopefully communicate it back to us. Um we know that the best way for that
009to happen for our students is for them to be regulated. Um when you look at the second chart that's up there, you can see that um a child who is calm and in a regulated state has an IQ up to 120. Um but when a child is feeling fear or terror, that IQ goes all the way down um to 60. And so when we're thinking about a culture of assessment, we're thinking about our students that we know are coming with us, coming to us with a good deal of anxiety, test taking anxiety, um the forward exam can be very intimidating, very overwhelming for students. So we just wanted to see what we could do to make sure that we are getting as much out of our students as possible. Okay. So um one of the
010things that Dr. Perry talks about is incorporating these um six Rs into our classrooms. And although we do get them all in there in one way, shape or form, the two that we focused on specifically with assessment was the relational piece. um speaking to how well we know our students, how we understood what they were needing in the moment and we were able to respond to that. but also the rewarding piece because we know that um when things are pleasurable to all of us, we have those really good feel-good chemicals flowing through our brain um that help to alleviate that anxiety um help us and our students to be have open cortexes so they can look at all of those test questions and actually be able to process them successfully and show us all that
011they know. So that is our why we do what we do. So, we really wanted to apply that to forward testing. It's a big deal and it's also can cause some anxiety. So, we looked at our data and we did realized that our students really lacked motivation for a test that didn't go into the gradebook. Um, so we incentivized them to do their very best. First, we kicked off our forward window by putting up a bulletin board with all their goals. We completely decorated our pod in the Mario theme for Super Mario Brothers and then we dressed up like Mario characters and made fools of ourselves. As you can see, this was very exciting for them. We then after they complete each test, we give them a little um mystery box where they can open
012it, they get a reward, they get to put a gold star sticker up in the pod that is, you know, their test is complete. Then when each subject that we test is complete, we we proclaim that level complete. We level up to each subject because we do four subjects. After the fourth subject is done, we have a game over party and celebrate. This time they're invited to dress up like Mario characters with us. We did games and we watched the Super Mario movie. So, we really thought that this worked really well. They have increased their scores over the last couple years since we started doing this and it's because we maintain their motivation through the entire forward testing window. Thanks, All right. So, speaking of our goal setting, um, to help our students prepare for
013our 10 practice test and our 10 forward test, we created testing strategies using the acronym power. As you can see on the star, we taught our students each of the letters. Then, they identified which strategy they needed to be successful. Once they identified which strategy they wanted to focus on, they then wrote it on a Mario star which we hung up in our hallway so that they are able to see what they need to be successful every day and what they are working towards. We also have our power up um acronym in every single classroom so that we can review and retach as needed and as a daily reminder for them to try their best while we are testing. So then after we completed the forward test, we went through and sent our kids a
014Google form to say, "Did this motivate you? Was it helpful, or did your teachers just make fools of themselves for no reason?" And overwhelmingly, our students said, "Yes, it was fun. You should do it again. It helped us stay motivated. I think it would motivate kids in the future. It made me look forward to forward testing instead of absolutely dreading it." So we had really positive feedback not only from students but also from parents in regards to making forward testing a little more fun for the students. Moving on from forward, we have a bunch of different areas throughout our school year where we try to incorporate gamifying, inspiring students and using some of the things that we enjoy doing to help our students learn. So as part of our one of our literacy units, we
015have the students create a pitch. So the students research inventors, research different inventions, and then they have to create their own pitch that gets us to promote their um object that they built. So think like Shark Tank. The students have to make their own Shark Tank pitch, present it to the class, we record it, we put it out in the hallway then for our literacy night. So we have two students who we recorded theirs and we're going to watch their pitch for you. >> Hi, my name is Michaela and my name's Harlo. And together we invented the Bizzy Glider. >> Have you ever wanted to clean up faster or keep your kids busy? Well, the Busy Glider is easy storage and you can take it wherever you want. How it works is first you take
016the stuffy, you put it in the box. Then you push the back down to the busy tent where you can cuddle, play, and camp with your favorite stuffed animals. This invention is important because whenever you want to clean up faster >> or keep your kids busy, >> you have this wonderful invention. >> Come glide and ride with us to the busy >> tent. >> So, the students had to completely write their pitch, organize it, and everything for us for this assessment. So, I thought they did great. So some of the other things that we do um to get these kids really motivated um we do immersion days. So that's where we have like an afternoon of rotations where they get to like every room is different so they might have like history in one room,
017culture in one, economy of each region. Um sometimes we've done like food in the past. Um we have pirate outfits for a treasure which is a treasure island. It's a unit that is in our literacy. Um, so we dress up for that as well. Uh, Middle Ages celebration, we also dress up for that um in the photo on the uh bottom right. So we dress up as different things um from the unit. Um and then we also do field trips that connect with our curriculum as well um like the state capital during our government unit and then discovery world during our invention unit. Any questions for them before they sit back down? >> Okay. So, we're we're very excited. Uh fourth grade's just a really fun place to hang out, as you can imagine. Um
018when they're dressed as pirates and the kids are doing a scavenger hunt through the school to find different test taking strategies and and all the different things that they're doing, the kids just remember how they felt. They remember the experiences. Of course, they're going to remember the things that they teach them, but they're also going to remember that it felt good and they had fun and that their teachers were silly and they enjoy hanging out with them every day. So, we're very, very thankful for our fourth grade team. So, thanks guys. Okay, moving on. Uh, we just talked about a lot of really amazing strengths, but we always have room to grow as well. And I know Joe Schrader came and talked to all of the schoolboard and he's been supporting our district through our
019sale academy work. And for Ronald Reagan, our goal this year was 75% of our students will increase their percentile from fall to spring as measured by K3 or the composite uh for K1 um or the OR or the A reading. like we're looking for kids to grow in literacy by the percentile. And the percentile is actually trickier to obtain. Um scores can go up, but the percentile doesn't always go up just depending. So, we're really looking to make sure that our students can grow. And the same thing with math. Um looking at the different assessments. Are they growing, you know, in literacy or math? And then our students who are already coming in at the 99th percentile, we want to make sure that their score does go up. We want to make sure that they're
020still growing as well, even though they're some of our top performing students. So, where we're at so far, just looking at percentile from fall to winter, 50% of our students grew in a math. 52% grew in a reading by percentile, not score, just percentile. Um, and whether they increased in either a reading or a math, we had 75.6% of our students show growth in either or. And when we look at score or percentile, 93% of our students demonstrated growth from fall to winter. Uh the Ames composite which is only percentile, they don't give them a score, was at 58% and our early math is 47. And when you look at the either or 72% of our students have grown from fall to winter and so we're excited to see that growth continue. Um so as
021we aim for continued growth uh we as part of our sale work all schools completed a 15-day challenge to study and implement and analyze the efficacy of a high impact instructional strategy. So for us, we looked at targeting small groupoup instruction and through our 15-day sale challenge of CLA, we focus on classroom visits um and data dives surrounding small groupoup instruction. And then we've also continued with our SST meetings that we hold every six weeks and uh we go over weekly data from student progress monitoring. And then we've done staff professional learning on both next path and data analysis um and supporting teachers as they look at student data. >> The hope this year was that we would be even more intentional with our planning uh using our eagle time, our independent reading times, th
022those small group times when you only have a few kids in front of you that you can really tailor that instruction to what they need whether they're on the lower end of that learning spectrum or even on the higher end. to really be intentional by looking at that data to determine what it is that's going to help nudge them forward. So, they were looking at FastBridge, Ames, uh, literacy assessments, math assessments, and so that professional learning for our staff was beneficial as well because sometimes data is kind of a foreign language and so to kind of help our staff work through that because it can be overwhelming as well of what data is meaningful and what can you do with it. Uh, so it's been really impactful. Um Amy is part of our our one
023of our teacher representatives for our sale team. So we're very thankful to have Amy's voice in there along with two other staff members. So it's really been an exciting year. I I feel like it's it's been really really fun to see the staff grow in addition to the kids. So we're really proud of that. But the work continues. We're not done yet. Other great things that are happening at Ronald Reagan. Uh we have a whole bunch of sweet little four-year-olds in our building from Ronald Reagan and Popular Creek and even some from Orchard um and Elma just depending on on their their family travel situation. Um so we have a wonderful wonderful group. For us it wasn't as new as Elwood because we had the early learning program in our building last year but it's
024really great to just have them all day. So many really just being a part of it. you know, there's a couple little bumps in the road at the beginning trying to figure out like how do you get a bunch of four-year-olds on buses and how do you you know make that you have to look at systems and structures a little differently. So, it's it's it's a pretty great welloiled machine at this point of the year. So, if you really want joy in your day, you just need to come hang out with four-year-olds because everything is amazing when you're four. So, I highly recommend, you know, coming to Reagan to hang out with them. Uh we have a fantastic HSA, our home and school association that do amazing activities for our families. Um, Pazingo, which is
025pizza and bingo. I didn't know that existed. And they have a it's a huge turnout. Um, they've had dances. Our fun run fundraiser this year raised $60,000. Um, family board game nights. And, uh, they're planning a movie night moving forward. Um, they also funded our all school read, which will be our sixth annual all school read, which is going to be starting right after spring break. And this year, we picked the book Dog Town by Katherine Applegate and Jennifer Cheleno. uh two very very well-known authors. So definitely check the book out if you haven't already. And we will have our family literacy night on the 29th of April where we'll have a lot of fun literacy themed activities. This year with Dog Town, it focuses on a um like a dog shelter. So we're hoping
026to do some community fundraising as well to get items to to donate to the local humane society. Um we've got a bunch of fun activities planned to go along with that. We had three Education Foundation of New Berlin grant winners that actually mixed between some of the schools. So, a lot of our specialist teachers this year, which was wonderful. And we have a lot of great clubs that continued like our battle of the books. We have a mindfulness club that meets on Fridays, choir, talent show, which is taking place this week, which we're very excited about, basketball club, um, and more. >> And then up next, we just want to talk about our long awaited library remodel. um it gets underway in June. So, um we're really looking forward to that and um thanks in
027large part to our wonderful um uh HSA and then a generous donor. >> Thank you. Questions for us? >> Thank you. >> Thanks everybody. >> Very well done and thank you staff members. Congratulations on your work. We appreciate you very much and uh feel free to head out. >> You're welcome to stay if you want. >> Yes. Yeah. We're not kicking you out. >> Should we move on to the superintendent's update? >> Yeah, I did have one update before I hand it over to Payton. Um, so our outdoor facility task force followup, uh, we've had several presentations shared with the board. Uh, after completing the items included in the outdoor facility task force resolution that was approved by the school board and completing a wealth screen and feasibility study, it was determined that we had
028two potential large donors that would determine whether or not we would move any further with our plans. Uh we presented our pitch to one of those potential donors uh for an ask of almost $2.5 million uh which have granted would have been encouraging in our efforts. Unfortunately, our proposal, while promising, fell short of approval as we learned that uh this company uh and this this foundation work uh that they do, they weren't not interested in funding a capital project of this size outside of their typical requests uh which again typically are not athletic fields uh but but for other things. Uh given this and based on the data and potential uh fundraising goals that needed a few large gifts, we have now set these project plans aside. Uh we do plan on meeting with the
029other potential large donor soon, but with a change in request. Um we instead are going to be looking at other capital improvements throughout the district. Uh that would include elementary schools and secondary schools. And uh our goal is to provide a presentation to the board with these uh additional updates in partnership with the foundation and with our home and school associations as well. Uh so uh we'll bring more information. It's a lot it was a lot of hard work. We did get a lot of good information. Uh but the community is just not ready to you know move in that direction and uh we'll just continue on our natural uh turf fields as as we plant. So uh that is my update. and I'll hand it over to Payton. >> Thank you. Uh Eisenhower students
030are having a great start to the semester as our green screen room over the summer is getting a full remodel benefiting our English social studies and digital media classes. Our AP human geography is learning and making a project about new urbanism promoting community design, uh walkable neighborhoods and mixed land usage. Our AP computer science principal class just finished an assignment where they research the history of the internet. Our physics class is working on electrostatistics and got to use a generator to conduct potentials of 20,000 volts of energy. And our honors biology students are studying albinism as they're learning about heredity, the protein function, and discussing uh variations of pigmentation. And our juniors will all be taking the ACT tomorrow. Um, our clubs are also having a great start as DECA had 10 state qualifier or
031international qualifiers, sorry, for their conference in Atlanta and they had one state champion. They're also hosting their annual Ike Madness event where students play in a tournament-based uh basketball game with the final being a student against teachers where all the proceeds from that go to the Makea-Wish Foundation. Um Eisenhower's academic decathlon team got first place overall in their state competition and qualified for the national competition in Garden City, California. And our Earth Club is working on saving dead markers to reduce the plastic contamination on Earth. Our winter sports are wrapping up and our spring uh sports are starting up with both our girls and boys basketball teams concluding their seasons in the WIA regionals last week. Our New Berlin boys swim team had five state qualifiers, three coming from Eisenhower. Our cheer team is getting
032ready for their next season already with their triyouts happening in two weeks and Eisenhower's track and field uh season started today preparing for their indoor competitions to start shortly. Thank you. >> Thank you. Next on the agenda is the consent agenda which includes notice the approval of minutes of the board meeting of February 23rd, the Woodland Conference shared services agreement and the Spain 2027 field trip. Are there any items that should be pulled out for separate consideration? Then do I have a motion for the consent agenda? >> Motion to approve. Second. >> I have a motion by Mr. Cidle and a second by Mr. Helmer to approve the consent agenda as presented. Any discussion? And hearing none, all those in favor raise your right hand. Motion passes. Onto our regular agenda. First on the regular
033agenda is the interdist transfer agreement with D uh with MPS. >> Yes. So, uh, this is, uh, something that we actually bring to the board on an annual basis. Um, I'll have Patrick kind of share a little bit about, you know, briefly about what specifically this agreement is in regard to and then specifically how many students are being impacted. So um some years ago the chapter 220 program was started uh where students from MPS can attend other uh area school districts and students from other area school districts can attend MPS. Uh this this uh program was or ended in um I believe it was mid like 2015 something like that. Uh but it was not just ended. Uh the students who were already in the program are allowed to uh continue through that program. Uh
034we have one student I believe is a seventh grader this year um who is still participating in the chapter 220 program. So every year um this very lengthy but statutory agreement has to be approved by each district in order for us to participate or continue to allow that student to participate. Uh given this we would recommend approval of the agreement as presented. >> Do I have a motion? >> Motion to approve. Second. >> I have a motion by Mr. Cidle and second by Mr. Halmer to approve the interd district transfer agreement with MPS. Is there any discussion? And all those in favor raise your right hand. Motion passes. Uh then we have a couple of action items from close session. And I do want to mention the superintendent contract will be voted on next meeting.
035So uh do I have a motion on the employment services um uh report? >> I move to approve the employment services report as presented. >> Second. >> I have a motion by Miss Spindler and a second by Miss Crosby to approve the employment services report as presented. All those in favor, raise your right hand. Motion passes. And then we have another one. I move to approve the employee compensation and benefits proposal for staff of the 2627 school year as presented. >> Second. >> I have a motion by Miss Crosby and a second by Mr. Zillinsky to approve the employee compensation and benefits for 2026 2027 as presented. All those in favor raise your right hand. Motion passes. Uh then we have some future meetings and dates. Board meetings are generally held here um in conference
036room E on the second and fourth Monday beginning at 7 o'clock PM unless otherwise noted. So next one is March 23rd. Then we have April 13th and April 27th. Other important dates to remember is March 13th. There's staff in service, no school. March 30th through April 3rd is spring break and April 10th is the end of the quarter. Do I have a motion to adjurnn? >> So move second. >> I have a motion by Mr. Cidle and second by Mr. Halmer to adjurnn. All those raise your All those in favor raise your right hand. Motion passes. This meeting is adjourned.