Board of Education Meeting 7/26/2021

001ladies and gentlemen it is now 6 45 pm 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 roll ms crosby here mr helmer here mr kurth mrs scholes here mr seidl here mrs hunger here ms wandercheck here i would entertain a motion to recess to close session madam president i moved to recess into closed session pursuant to section 19.851 c e and f of the wisconsin statutes to consider a the approval of closed session minutes of june 28th b employment performance and compensation matters pertaining to staff and c a recommendation for benefits consultant second i have a motion by mr kurth in a second by mr helmer please call the roll mr kurth yes mr

002helmer yes miss crosby yes ms schulz yes mr seidl yes ms unger yes ms wundercheck yes we are moving into closed session and we'll return to open session around seven o'clock it is now 703 and we are returning from closed 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 pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with 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 of the board of education prior to this meeting notice

003was 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 the waukesha freeman and the waukesha now all of which have filed requests for all public notices we begin tonight's meeting with recognitions yes i'd like to introduce director of secondary teaching and learning kelly krietkowski to talk about our recognize student recognition today related to the 2021 wisconsin yes or youth entrepreneurs in science business plan contest it is my great pleasure to be here to acknowledge prendil panda you come up let me tell you a little bit about why we are recognizing him tonight sure yeah yeah pranil is a ninth grade student at new berlin eisenhower and he won a statewide

004business competition he is a young entrepreneur with a great innovative mind and he competed against other middle school and high school students to win the wisconsin yes business plan competition sponsored by the wisconsin technology council his product was all weather glowing fish bait and as a fisherman myself i was pretty excited to read about his product and i would love to buy it when it goes on on production it's an artificial bait that you can fish with and catch multiple species of fish in different weather different climates it comes in different colors and they judged him based off of the market competition likely competitors and a number of other things on the rubric but he had to write a thousand word essay to be considered for this prize recognition winner um so congratulations he also

005presented for them in early june um so we got to see him virtually throughout the state present all about his product so he's going to say a few words today but congratulations we're really proud that you're a new berlin eisenhower student and thank you for already showing your mastery design thinking skills and being college and career ready [Applause] thank you for this recognition um definitely doing this competition wasn't easy started out with a 250 essay word essay and like move on to the next phase then i'd have to do a thousand word essay so and ended up doing a presentation slideshow so definitely doing this recognition and for all my hard work is nice and thank you all if anybody has any know anybody who can help with this product such as retailers or people

006who they know are really good at fishing and do it frequently please notify us thank you we're just going to reenact [Laughter] up next is privilege of the floor meetings of the board are conducted for the purpose of carrying on the business of the schools and therefore are not public meetings but meetings held in public this portion of the meeting is an opportunity for you to come and voice your concerns to the board so please do not be offended when we quietly listen we may even take notes we do not immediately respond to your questions and comments this is a time for you to talk and us to listen thank you for coming to voice your comments and concerns when i call your name please step up to the microphone address the chair and state

007your name and whether or not you are a resident in the school district each presentation is to be restricted to a maximum of three minutes privilege of the floor will be limited to one half hour presentations are not to be designed for purposes of engaging others in a debate in this forum discussion of certified classified or professional personnel or of individual board of education members shall not be considered an appropriate topic for this form and the speaker will be ruled out of order first up is scott yunj hello my name is scott yanch and i am a resident of new berlin and i'm here tonight for the same reason that i was here a year ago and that is to advocate for the safety and well-being of our students and staff contrary to what some

008have said earlier this year i am not against opening our schools nor am i looking to subject anyone to restrictions that are unnecessary as this tradition here we have no idea what is going to be presented tonight and you're forcing us to comment now instead of after that presentation so i have no way to tailor my comments based on that with that in mind in order to enter this building we all had to complete a health survey so that's a clear sign that we are not yet completely out of the woods i am still of the opinion that if we are going to open schools to students we need to make sure that our students and the staff that serves them are taken care of we need to be clear to everyone involved how things

009will be done with the confidence that those steps are being done with a sound medical basis waukesha county the state of wisconsin and many other parts of the country are seeing an uptick in covet-19 infections largely as a result of the stalled vaccination rates and variants that result from continued spread of the virus even though it is possible for vaccinated individuals to contract the virus the majority of serious cases are happening in the unvaccinated considering that no one under 12 can yet be vaccinated this directly affects every student at orchard lane poplar creek ronald reagan and elmwood elementary i think we need to seriously consider the guidance for schools from the cdc and the american academy of pediatrics which say that masks should be worn by unvaccinated individuals and other mitigation strategies such as physical

010distancing continue to be followed i think everyone is looking forward to the upcoming school year looking much better than the previous one and the best way for us to ensure that the best ensure the best outcome for everyone is for medical guidance to be followed and for us not to take our eyes off what's most important and that is the safety of our children teachers and other staff in addition to various mitigation strategies please consider taking steps to encourage continued diligence in the student population their families and the community at large by working together for the common good we can continue to enjoy less restrictions more social activities and a healthier school community thank you angela spielman hi there my name is angela spielman i am a resident of new berlin about two weeks ago

011it came to my attention that there was some very inappropriate reading material accessible to students on their school issued technology by an app called sora i would like to start by thanking joe garza and janet schultz for not only responding to my concerns but acting quickly and have the app shut down for review however it's still very concerning to me that these books were available to children as young as 12 years old in seventh grade and before you think i'm overreacting allow me to read from you an excerpt from one of these books in question this book this book is gay by james dawson was available via the soraa app just a few weeks ago and from chapter 9 the ins and outs of gay sex blowies oral sex is popping another dude's peen in

012your mouth or indeed popping yours and his there is only one hard and fast rule when it comes to watch the teeth lips tongue yes teeth no as with hand jobs and breakfast eggs all men like their served in a different way the term is actually massively misleading he won't actually be blowing on his penis it's more like sucking although i stress you're not trying to suck his kidneys out through his urethra it's more about sliding your mouth up and down the shaft of his and letting a guy come in your mouth is a safe sex no no get away from the volcano before it erupts i'll spare you the rest it's available at the new berlin public library if you're interested does this sound appropriate for 7th graders let me be clear this isn't

013about the lbgtq subject matter and it's not even about a book that's talking about sex it's the vulgar and explicit manner in which it's described this book is not even intelligently written using slang terms for male and female anatomy and demeaning the lbgt community lifestyles by insinuating that all they want to do is have sex with each other in other sections of this book it outlines exactly how kids can use apps to meet strangers for casual sex and this material could be considered criminal when available to minors in wisconsin's per state codes 948.11 which i have printed out for you all to look at i do think it's a parent's obligation to be aware of what their children are consuming on technology in the classroom which is why curriculum transparency is more important than ever

014we need to be aware of what the curriculum choices and lecture topics are in the classroom and we need to be able to hold accountable educators and administrators who think this reading material is appropriate i would like to know who's in charge of approving such material and who and would also propose some type of parental committee for accountability and monitoring of books that are selected finally i would like to quickly state that parents should continue to have the choice of whether they mask their children or not there's a fresh wave of propaganda hitting the scene and i'm deeply concerned for our children's well-being i've already sent you this but i took a survey of parents here in new berlin in just 48 hours i had 133 responses and 98 of those surveyed are in favor

015of keeping masks optional this fall related 97 of those surveyed are in favor of recalling board members who don't adequately represent the wishes of their constituents thank you for your time thank you tanya mchale my name is tony mccally and i am a resident of new berlin i'm standing here in front of you to address the ongoing issue at these previous meetings that we've had it's not just mass it's parental rights and individual choices something that some of the board members have hindered throughout these meetings some have discredited credible data that has shown masks aren't effective and also have the reverse effect putting our children in health risks situations eight hours a day five days a week is unexcusable and that's from personal experience as well mental health amongst primary and secondary grades will continue

016to be unnoticed until it is too late because of control over mask innuendos of not vast then get a mask which is said by teachers classmates further dividing these kids is unexcusable and first off i'd like to sit well last off i'd like to sit there and say where's the choice coming in how is it that the board has a choice gives us a choice for mass no mass but yet you all push the math and here our kids are not having an individual choice parents aren't taking back their rights they're being shut down by this this remember making the decision for a mask is not leaving it up to the parents it's not a choice it's forced thank you caitlin mabry hello my name is caitlin mabry and i am a resident of new

017berlin i have three children now three children that are in the poplar creek school i have a fourth grade one going into fourth grade one going into first and one going into kindergarten first i want to say that i absolutely love poplar creek i love i've loved every year that my kids have been there and so that's why i'm super passionate about coming and talking to you guys about this because i just mama bear is out and i just want to make sure that my children are both mentally emotionally and physically safe in that school environment that being said first i wanted to rewind a little bit and i wanted to say that i 100 agreed with what joe garza said about the diversity and inclusion that has been implemented into the schools i think

018it's an incredible program all the programming is incredible and i don't feel that it needs to be changed in any way yes i am referring to crt i'm incredibly passionate about now not allowing that one specific subject matter to overrule all of how we teach our kids about diversity and inclusion so now i would like to talk about how i'm super passionate about reiterating the that masks are optional i'm so thankful that you guys voted that um at the end of the year it was a super hard thing for me my husband and i wrestled with sending them and i did choose to send my kids last year but every single day i would pull up and i would just pray for them to be safe in those masks because i researched and researched and

019researched and there is a medical risk and i believe that with every medical risk there needs to be a choice as their mother i feel that i every child i'm an early childhood special ed teacher and so i study child development and i know that every child is unique in their own way and every child um is able and capable of um handling the mask in a different way and so um for instance my fourth grader has adhd and she constantly she would chew holes in her masks and she actually contracted a virus from her mask my kindergartner from la she was a kindergarten last year she had anxiety with the mask so there was a mental effect that it had on her and she would touch it constantly and so here she's germ derm

020derm germ touching touching they're not osha trained to wear these masks and so yes maybe the cdc and they recommend that kids that age wear it but they recommend that they wear it correctly and personally my kids aren't able to wear it correctly for eight hours a day and so because of that i believe that i should be given the choice as a mother to choose whether i think that that's a safe choice for my child and so i know you guys have been sent articles peer-reviewed research articles that state that there is a risk with wearing masks and so i just really hope that you consider that when making your decision i thank you for your time and i hope you all have a nice night thank you dan o'donnell hello my name is

021dan o'donnell i am indeed a resident of new berlin and ladies and gentlemen i like you believe in science and i believe that we should follow the science and the science is now leading us unmistakably to an unavoidable conclusion that children should not be masked in school over the course of the entire pandemic 16 months there have been roughly 300 covid19 deaths among those 17 and under in the united states out of a population of 56 million that is one death per 200 000 children per the cdc by way of comparison over the past eight years the flu seasonal influenza has killed an average of 456 children per year for children covid19 quite literally has been a mild flu season and fortunately for our teachers and our support staff the science has proven that children

022are not spreaders of covid19 either a recent study published in the journal of the american medical association showed that young children are not only at low risk for developing kovid 19 they also don't play a significant role in the spread of it while attending school now this was corroborated by a wide scale study in israel published in the journal plos computational biology it found that children are roughly half as susceptible to covid as adults moreover a study published in clinical infectious diseases shows that children are unlikely to be the source of covid19 in their homes where the overwhelming majority of kovid 19 transmission takes place kids aren't spreading covid19 at home and they're not spreading it at school either and not only does requiring them to wear masks make no sense from an efficacy standpoint

023wearing masks might also hurt them a study published in the journal of the american medical association for pediatrics found that wearing masks caused children to inhale too much carbon dioxide the normal co2 limit is 0.04 percent the upper safety limit is considered to be 0.2 percent children wearing masks for a prolonged period of time we're getting sometimes as much as 1.6 percent this is plainly unsafe and it's unscientific and i like you follow the science believe in science and trust the science and on the issue of forcing children to wear masks in schools the science is settled thank you thank you brian goetzky good evening my name is brian goetzky i am a resident of new berlin my statement is in regards to your policy 2260 that you're going to be covering later this evening

024it's about the nondiscrimination and access to equal education opportunity i would like to request that you add the terminology for vaccinated and unvaccinated personnel as well within this original statement that states the board does not discriminate on the basis of race color religion national origin ancestry creed pregnancy marital status parental status sexual orientation sex including transgender status change of sex or gender identity or physical mental emotional or learning disability protected in any one of its students programs and activities so again i'd like to request that vaccinated and unvaccinated be added to the non-discrimination list thank you we have president's message so just want to welcome everybody back we had a bit of a break and so this is our first official meeting of the 2021-22 school year and i have a request do you have

025a bottle of water i forgot to grab one i have two thank you okay um so next is the administrative team report what did i mean i think i think we missed one of the privilege of four forms i'm sorry let me make sure here we got scott angela tanya caitlin did we miss caitlyn no she did tanya dan are were they on the same page two three four five six seven i don't have enough i only have one tanya yeah we only had six re um present because i i have tanya mchale come on yes yep oh i'm so sorry that's okay go ahead you didn't have to say my last name this time so all right no kayak it's like kayak kayak i gotta tanya tayak yes i'm a new berlin resident so

026i have two things to talk about today optional masks and curriculum transparency many parents send their children to school each day with the full expectation that they will learn math science history and literature subjects that will help them advance their life goals and ambitions especially at the elementary level we are fortunate to send our children to a high academically challenging school district our kids have many opportunities to learn additional topics like business finance government as well as those college-level courses parents do not expect their children to participate in controversial topic debates and assignments like call cassidy transgenderism politics politics unless they're in the ap government class in which it then should be managed without bias from the teacher i agree with some of the comments that i've heard this past year from parents about children

027being afraid to go to school because that did happen to some children and not because they're transgender gay a minority etc but because their opinions differ from those children who do identify themselves as such my husband and i raised our children to be respectful of others their opinions to speak up for the weak and don't be afraid to speak their mind in 13 years that my children have been in the new berlin school district there were no issues that are being brought up recently that i'm aware of in the elementary school as well as the middle in the high school i've spent a lot of time with hsa at ronald reagan i've spent a lot of time with other organizations i volunteer a lot with boy scouts girl scouts etc and never heard from other

028parents about any of the issues that i'm hearing about when it comes to the crt issues so i'm very disappointed this past year that the issues have arisen i do believe that it has a lot to do with certain adults bringing these issues forward and dividing our community and our school district i'm going to read something from the publication of manhattan institute there can be no keener revelation of a society's soul nelson mandela famously said than the way in which it treats its children by that standard our society now has the soul of an abusive parent the pandemic has turned american adults or at least the ones who make the rules into selfish neurotics who have been punishing innocent children for over a year and still can't restrain themselves when the pandemic began the lack

029of knowledge about covid19 justified this behavior that excuse has vanished it became clear long ago that the virus is less dangerous to children than the flu and that keeping the schools open poses minimal risk of spreading infections so once again i do ask that as we go into the school year that masks are optional thank you thank you so now we can move on to the administrative report yes i've got a couple updates the first one being related to the soraa reading app of which you just heard of several weeks ago there was an article written specifically about the olmbrook school district related to these controversial topics that were brought up and identified within this article it did relate to sexually explicit material that was accessible to elementary students i believe there were five different

030books similar nature to what was read briefly that students over at elm brook had access to they also did have through the 7th and 12th grade one resource available to them and that was the one that was just mentioned i want to clarify that once we uh were brought once that was brought to our attention we immediately looked into how we worked with sora and fortunately to a certain degree we did have certain filters turned on that elm brook did not have and so you know i do know that that soraa was a resource that was provided to many school districts over the course especially over the last year that because of the pandemic we wanted resources available to our students particularly not this last school year the previous school year when we were shut

031down until further notice to have families and their students have access to these types of apps sora being one of them we further looked into it and recognized that again at the seventh and eighth grade there was one uh resource that was available based off of that article and again of which was referenced tonight uh we did look back and we were trying to figure out how many times a was that ever checked out and b you know the approval process of how how that would be manipulated at least by the school district after talking with sora personnel and so on uh we we thought we could do certain things and have certain things shut off based on our um suggestion similar to the filters that we had set for other grade levels and it

032is a it is a behemoth of a resource of of uh that are available in this the basically it's an online library and so we immediately after it was determined that we couldn't necessarily nitpick or shut certain things off that we would hit pause on that app until further notice as of now we are still trying to work with sora to determine exactly how much control we as a school district have as of right now it's my understanding that we do not have the level of controls that we would like and so we again we are continuing to work with soar to see what exactly can be done the other thing that we want to be able to do is determine the feasibility of being able to to monitor and and this is you know

033the the thousands and thousands and thousands of resources in this app similar to others and it may be determined that we may not be able to move forward with sora as a result of that again we've not come to a conclusion but as of right now where we're at we do believe we may be moving away from sora and we are also not only uh identifying and reviewing reviewing sora but also reviewing other apps and or content that we have as we continue to do on an annual basis i do want to clarify that while we have representation on the new berlin public library board we it is essentially an uh an exoficio board and they are we the school board the school district does not have any domain over the public library whatsoever that

034would be city officials and the mayor and so uh while sure they may have what they do what we are doing here is completely uh under the the guys in the direction of the school board and they are under the rec the direction of the city common council um so they will do what they do but we will do what we can do uh within the school district um again as i had mentioned we are trying to determine um you know of these apps and or things that we again thought were uh we were trying to support our families and their students um we need to be extremely careful to make sure that we know exactly what's what's available to our students and their families so again we'll provide an update to the board as

035we continue to investigate and inquire any further but again at this time given what we know unless anything changes we will no longer be providing that app to our students and their families as far as the topic of curriculum transparency i do want to let the school board know that i do plan on providing a presentation to the board sometime before the start of the school year i'll have to talk to janet and mitch to determine which of the next two board meetings we will do that at but what we want to be able what i want to be able to do is provide what exactly we share with our families currently via canvas you know there are there is access to the resources that we share not only to our community on our website

036but making sure that that the web pages are up to date that our standards are up to date for example tonight you'll be approving the standards which is essentially just a a formality but it is something that we have to adopt annually and we do need to adopt basically uh standards as far as we move forward our curriculum so that when kelly does her work with our curriculum reviews just like we did last year with uh english language arts in the previous year i'm sorry social studies in the previous year we were looking at at science that we would have at least which standards were focusing on again local school districts control the instruction and the curriculum itself as a result of that even further we have provided what what is going to be a

037first read tonight for the board as far as new policies it's called the contr controversial issues in the classroom policy what that does and in talking to again janet you know essentially we have a practice in place where we certainly do not allow uh staff to sway our students and anything that may be controversial in nature whether it's politics or in any other capacity that again maybe can shoot as controversial the policy the policy itself is what we have in practice but we thought given the attention that's being brought forth that we memorialize that in a policy to make it very clear that this is what the board has approved and that this is what the expectation is as it has always been in our processes and our procedures to our staff our plan all

038along was again to remind our staff just like it always has been when we have an election year when we have hot controversial topics in the media to remind them that you need to present both sides of the issue you do not you cannot swayed students students need to think for themselves and what i will say and i can't get into the details when circumstance circumstances like that have come up and our staff member has not followed through with our expectation that there is discipline handed down accordingly and so again and i i do know that we we did have a couple situations this last year uh where it was brought to our attention and again we can't get uh involved in personnel matters in a public meeting like this but certainly they are handled

039accordingly as as again we have directed staff of how to appropriately approach those topics in their classrooms so again our goal is to provide a presentation to the board over the course of the next month or so and again i'm not sure which meeting it'll be but just to prize the board then again when we get to that point in the in the the meeting tonight to discuss the the controversial issues policy at play as well thank you i got one quick question you mentioned you guys did some research on that sorry app to see if anyone was able to access it did you i don't think you came up with a number did anyone check that those books out or was there again when it was brought to our attention i believe there was

040internal staff and a parent that had researched it and found it but we have no indication necessarily that anybody else had accessed that that specific book okay thanks all right if there's no other questions on that we'll move on to district reports we have an incident report and a donation report mr recital would you like to read the donation report we have one donation that was from let me just blow this up i didn't bring my glasses again from the check date was 6 16 20 21 it was for the district office it was the new berlin education foundation uh proposed used to fund was provide grants in the amount of one hundred and 8130 dollars and zero cents and the approval date 623 2021 by patrick miller that ends my report thank you and

041then the consent agenda which includes notice the approval minutes of june 28th and financial reports are there any items that should be pulled for separate consideration we did receive questions from chrislin and we'll be happy to provide those responses as soon as we can okay yeah and actually patrick already answered all my questions well then i guess we are so good that we just get him taken i was kind of impressed with the speed and so i am good thank you very much are those answers going to be posted publicly as part of the finance i think yeah i think that we had been rolling those into the minutes hadn't we run our regular minutes we had been rolling them into the minutes yeah there were no questions that we could ask this evening so

042i would right but i sent patrick an email in between our finance committee meeting tonight and this meeting and he has already responded and so that should be on your email so you can just kind of roll it in and when you get the chance sure then i think it'll all be part of the record to janet's question right sounds good yeah great thank you so much okay so do i have a motion for the consent agenda i move to approve the consent agenda as presented second i have a motion by mr kirth in a second by mr helmer to approve the consent agenda as presented any discussion hearing none all those in favor raise your right hand all those opposed motion passes onto our regular agenda first on the regular agenda is to discuss

043approve recommended re-entry planning and mitigation efforts yeah so i just want to give thank you dana yes i do want to just before i get into the presentation itself i do want to just kind of go back to talk about the timeline that we experienced last year as it related to covet 19. i'm not going to go all the way back to literally a year ago because i may get the cold sweats if i do that but what i would like to remind us of were the board's decisions in may to move forward with ending mask requirements in the school in the school district by our students and our staff uh i'm not going to rehash the the meeting and the minutes and so on but ultimately the board decided to move forward without uh

044having those requirements in place um so that's how we essentially ended the school year someone could ask me and actually i have been asked this by other school districts who were looking to do away with their mask requirements and asked me how like what was the outcome uh ironically i let them know that our numbers actually went down as far as coveted cases uh during that time now what could that be attributed to a lot of things a lot of factors but it certainly did not um go in the direction that some assumed where you do you know you do away with a mask requirement and now numbers would somehow grow and grow and grow and they did not quite the con quite to the contrary we then uh brought forth to the board at

045the board's request a plan for summer school and summer options for our students again at that time the board wanted to uh move forward with only masks being recommended and um and we did a a few other things that were a little different from the end of the school year for example we did move forward with covid contact tracing which was minimal at best we did not see a surge in covert cases again we we took the summer to learn because it wasn't you know school is required summer school is not people opt into summer school and while we did have virtual options again we learned that we could move forward as we had at the end of the school year with nothing of significance uh being brought to our attention in fact uh the

046four to six weeks that we offered were rather quiet and that's why i never provided an update to the board because there was really nothing to report other than things were underway and now they're done and so now that brings us to what now as we move into the start of the school year and so based off of the board's decision at the end of last school year based on the board's decision to move forward with what we did this summer we informed ourselves based on those actions on what now and so this presentation will reflect that what now i also think it's important for everyone to know at least in our community of what they should expect come fall which school starts about a month from now and so our parents our students our

047community should know uh roughly what it is that's before them and so that's our goal tonight is to get this presentation to you get a plan approved so that we can you know we're ready to basically hit send david cody's already got something prepped ready to go but again based on tonight's discussion and approval we will determine what will be sent out to families as early as as tomorrow uh so with that i do want to kind of get into uh our planning and processes and again um we'll continue to monitor county city and district covert 19 data uh what i will say though is that um i'm sorry joe i'm sorry to interrupt i keep getting i keep pulling up this document and i can only get that draft like you know the draft

048that was uploaded in the packet i out i logged out and i logged back in and i tried that a couple of times and i'm still getting the draft and like i don't have this first slide yeah i think the only thing that's different from the draft copy and this one is this first slide okay and or the word draft on the title okay so we should be okay i'll just roll with that thank you yeah no problem um so you know we'll continue to monitor the data um just like we did all last school year and i just want to remind you that just because cases did go up i mean i will say that in october and november because of the way they that we handled it and the processes that we had

049in place we were able to keep schools open despite this the peaks that we had in covid cases uh again we believe strongly that our students belong in school and that's their the best place for them to learn uh and and other other things that go with that and also providing a virtual option for those that don't uh but again just because numbers go up doesn't necessarily mean that we're gonna close school and so i just you know cautioned folks that if they start seeing things or this you know this delta variant then we start creeping things up you know we were at a pretty pretty peak time in october november we kept our doors open we kept students safe and they were not transmitting covet in our schools and again we'll continue to work

050with county and city officials we'll continue to work with our internal pandemic response team um you know i do want to clarify that our pandemic response team does not necessarily include teachers support staff and others it includes those that are directly involved with the work at many different levels including our our nurse i have a weekly call with our the waukesha county health department i've got a weekly call with waukesha county superintendents we need to rely on ourselves locally and not so much the what's being put out there at the national level even the state level quite honestly because if and if we would have followed some of the things that were were being recommended or suggested we may not have opened school last year which would have been an absolute travesty uh but nonetheless

051we will uh this is what we will continue to do in our planning and process as far as what's going to stay the same again we will be moving forward with recommending rather than requiring the use of masks in our schools um they would they are required on buses though there is so like while the cdc and and others have put out this this new guidance they are still recommendations they're not requirements unlike that on public transportation there is an actual requirement out there set out by the cdc and so we will because we have a we sublet that out to a private firm that's durham bus company they have to follow that national standard and so do we but again you know the kids don't they're not required to ride our buses so if

052they choose their own transportation they certainly may um we will continue to contact trace i'm not going to get into all the details there um and again if students are symptomatic they may be isolated and we'll do a lot of the same things that we did last year again to try and mitigate the spread as far as mitigation strategies a lot of the things are going to stay the same in fact i'd love to be able to say that a lot of these things you know other than maybe the drinking fountains but i think they've always been kind of a cesspool of germs um that uh that i think we'll continue to do a lot of the things that we were doing before that what we heard of being this pandemic right i mean pre-pandemic

053these are the things that we should have been doing anyway uh we will also continue to you know talk to our families to make sure you keep your kids at school i mean i think we did learn some things though as a result of this thing you know don't send your kids to school if they're sick you know i think that helped a lot with with what we did last year um we'll ask parents to you know and staff to do their own health checks you know as i understood that some school districts were doing the temperature checks as people were walking in and you know that's just we never did that and you know again we felt strongly that our parents were supportive and did what they needed to do to kind of get

054their kids uh in school as long as they possibly could um again we'll continue to share our kova data on our dashboard on our website and i do want to clarify that that student athletes may be subject to guidelines that are not necessarily what we approve but because we are under the guise of the wiaa for athletics they we we need to follow those uh those but again um you know students are not required to participate in co-curriculars or athletics but they do need to abide by the rules that are set forth by by the wiaa some of the things that will be changing uh we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna you know most social distancing restrictions will be removed um we are not gonna there were some requests last year of you know please

055keep my student with only the unmasked kids or the masked kids or you know can you make sure that our kids are sitting with the vaccinated well we don't i mean we know who they are but we're not going to segregate students by by that um and and and again it certainly could be self-identifying too on vaccines and and again um you know parents should you know will determine whether their respective students should have a mask or not in fact i was even talking to my sister a lot today of like what do you plan on doing it you know and so uh really it's a parental choice at this time plexiglas in most cases will be removed it'll be the exception not the rule um one-way hallways will revert to two-way hallways that was

056mainly at the middle and high schools we will go back to the infamous color day rotation at the high school and middle school level uh that was determined by our teaching and learning team and with our principals that that we need to get back to that uh while there was some good as a result of what we the schedule that we followed last year there were some things missing you know so for example we did not have advisory all of last year and so advisory handles a lot of our college career and life readiness goals in our strategic plan and so certainly we wanted to go back to that our elementary school students will change classrooms for their specials if you're not aware if you recall they were not going to their music room they

057were not going to their art room they were not going to their music room those teachers came into their classroom again to mitigate that spread but again we feel comfortable getting them back and circulating within throughout the building at the secondary level choir band and orchestra and also some at the elementary will resume the use of their normal spaces for performance and practice and then hallway and physical education lockers will be available for secondary student use just like our cubbies at the elementary what's changing uh again uh we're gonna go back to where we were with elementary lunches again as you recall similar to what we were doing with teachers coming into their classroom we were bringing lunches into their classroom not having students go to the cafeterias and while it does say here secondary

058lunch will be also less restrictive some people may think it's going to be more restrictive especially if you're a sophomore because we're no longer going to have open campus for them like we used to at least just for last year uh now again we we've got our practices in place for open campus you know we want to make sure that there's a carrot out there for students to earn that that that opportunity and so again we're gonna limit it to juniors and seniors um we will gonna be we're gonna be asking guests and volunteers and visitors uh back into our buildings field trips reinstated we're gonna get back to assemblies study halls and pre-pandemic physical education classes mainly the size of those classes uh we're not going to have limitations like we had started the

059last school year you know if you recall we you know we started like the football seasons and even the volleyball season with no spectators or no student spectators and then we kind of you know added added added as we learned and then by the end we really had no restrictions uh and so we're kind of back to that and following what we did at the end of the last school year um again we're gonna we did learn some things as far as it relates to staff meetings and just meetings in general that in some cases it's just more efficient to have a virtual meeting you know i'm you know thinking about ieps you know sometimes or even just like a parent teacher conference maybe you know that again we had a pretty decent success rate

060last year and so we're going to take some of the things that we learned last year and maybe implement them not so much as a result not not so much for pandemic related things but mainly more efficiency and effectiveness uh so so again they may still be done virtually uh but there's also you know some people just may prefer that face to face and i think we're good with that now again as i mentioned we are going to be offering a virtual option again next year there are some things though that i do want to clarify as it relates to um the virtual options they're going to be different uh so at the secondary level let me just clarify what i mean by that last year at the elementary and secondary if a student chur

061chose the virtual option which about 25 roughly of our students chose that option uh which meant that you know we maybe had about a thousand students plus had you know chose that option it was feasible for us to be able to provide staffing and resources to to deliver some direct instruction virtually other school districts did not go to that degree of virtual online learning what they did instead was they provided resources similar to what we plan on presenting and that's a resource called edge annuity and really what that is is more of a traditional online learning option where students are provided their resources and instruction and that's done at self-paced it's a self-paced option with oversight by a teacher or a resource and again a lot of some school districts in waukesha county that is

062that was their online option last school year ours was a bit different because we actually had a teacher on the other side of that screen for quite a bit of that that that instruction uh but again as of right now we don't feel that that's going to be a feasible or viable option uh might it be depending on you know because again we're going to notify parents as soon as we the board approves this plan as early as tomorrow on please let your schools know exactly what what your plans are and we'll determine then uh whether edge annuity i mean that's our plan as we move forward with that but but again you know these are going to be the options moving forward which are different than the previous year as far as at the

063secondary level for example i'll just use my son dominic you know as an example even though it's not it's not true but if if he two years ago if you know prior to the pandemic if dominic wanted to take a course online so say he had a job and it was easier for him to do that course online rather than do it at eisenhower we were providing those options for certain courses uh and that was through edgenuity actually um and so um so prior to the pandemic that's how we were doing things at the at the secondary level now last year in some cases we still had courses like that in some cases for some students but then we also allowed students to pipe into the classroom uh you know via zoom or google meets

064or whatever it was that we had you know that each teacher had determined uh but we're gonna limit that this year to only the students that may be impacted or quarantined as a result of covet so again as a reminder those that need to quarantine are those that are covered positive close contacts do not have to they're not they're not required to quarantine but if they choose to quarantine they may have the option to pipe into that classroom like they did last year but again what i'm suggesting though is if a student chooses a virtual option from the onset they're not going to have that option of necessarily piping in their option will be through edgenuity through byu or these other options that we've mentioned here in again we are going to be asking families

065to let us know as soon as possible or let their building principles know as soon as possible uh what their what they're choosing to do uh and again you know our goal is to provide and articulate with them you know so should you know ron choose to sign his student or students up for the virtual option our principles were with we'll work with ron and the student to determine hey this is what we plan on doing answer any questions and then let the parents know whether this is really what they want to do or if they want to choose a face-to-face learning uh or you know you know again we will work with each family to determine exactly how they'll move forward but these are the options that we're moving forth at this time again

066students can access uh you know their their instruction directions assignments and activities uh while they are um you know in canvas just like they were able to all of last year uh there are recorded lessons on canvas um i'm not sure that we're gonna do full recordings like we did last year i think one of the things that we need to be careful with too and another reason why you know kelly and her team uh decided that we need to be careful with this piping in is that instruction really changed last year to a certain degree and it's it's it's interesting what a camera will do to good instruction now we were having our staff sit in front of the camera right but then what does that mean for the other 20 some odd kids

067in that classroom it's not good instruction to be sitting up front delivering learn you know instructional models when our teachers really should be out and about in the classroom that's good instruction engagement and so that again that's another reason why we've determined that the the options are not as feasible as we would like and we want our staff interacting and engaging with our students just like they were prior to the pandemic uh no assessments will be taken virtually for obvious reasons students with excused absences will be permitted to make up their coursework just like they have and then again as i had mentioned because we're bringing back the color the color schedule we are now able to get flex and advisory back into the 7th through 12th grade programming additional info is that you know

068again these are some of the things that other districts have shared certain but we do get questions you know some are asking are we going to be requiring students to get vaccinated no we will not um are we going to be offering vaccine clinics or covert 19 testing no i think at this point our students at least those 12 and over have had access to the vaccine now for months you know and those that are 12 and under that should be up to their pediatrician not necessarily us as a school district so there's certainly a lot more things involved and then again like our staff i believe we're up to the major well overwhelming majority of our staff have either chosen or have had the option and are chosen to get vaccinated so again we

069feel comfortable moving forward and again if people are volunteering to come into our schools they should know exactly what to expect and again volunteering is volunteering and if you know what the expectations are then you know choose to do what you need to do if you don't feel comfortable in that setting um we are going to be uh asking the board or actually as part of this approval of that uh january 24 which is that that be a a work a staff work and transition day so that would mean no school for students on that day what that will allow us to do just like it did last year is that if we have students coming back that semester it will allow us to make that transition a lot more smooth than than it had

070i mean it was extremely well received by our staff and our administrative team and even by some parents like let's hit pause let's make sure that we are ready to get into the second semester and if we're letting families know like in the next month or so that there's going to be a date coming in january i think they're going to be okay with it and they should also be glad that our schools are open and not like what happened from march until the start of june for those like eight to ten weeks so again all mitigation strategies learning models and school calendar are subject to change through the administration or school board decision i mean i think the one thing we've learned is to be flexible to be accommodating and to be prepared to

071turn on a dime and i'm proud to be able to say that we kept our school open last year because of that planning and and uh that fortitude that our staff had our parents had our students had we were extremely resilient and i and i again i'm happy to be able to say that i can say last year was a success i don't know of some school districts in the area that could actually say that and so just a few other reminders we've got the first day of school coming up wednesday september 1st schools will share info regarding open houses and picture days because those certainly in in the elementaries uh you know happened before the start of the school year and then obviously we would encourage anybody and everybody that's out there that you

072know once we get this out there our hope is that families will be settled in as to what they want to be able to do as far as you know bringing students back to face to face if they weren't continuing within this alternate virtual option and so on so again we are seeking the board's approval so that we can get a communication out to our families and their in our students and our staff as early as tomorrow any questions um your first question is about the what was it called i was gonna say we should probably do the motions so then we can open it up for discussion that makes more sense so do i have a motion to approve the re-entry planning as presented so moved second so i have a motion by mr

073helmer in a second by mr kurth to approve any discussion you may go ahead sure so my first question is about the ingenuity um you mentioned this is always so awkward because i can't look at you but you mentioned that you didn't think it was feasible to keep the model that we had last year but yet this end of year survey showed that 26 of families were still interested in the virtual option if masks were not going to be required so are we now thinking there are going to be less families that want virtual and why do you think that lots has changed and sets everyone out and we will find out exactly what those numbers will be over the coming weeks so again at this time that's our plan and at the same time

074you know should we feel that it's necessary to move in a different direction that's something we'll consider doing um and again what i will say is you know other school districts in waukesha county that is what they offered and they felt it's to be a successful delivery uh an approach and so based on that feedback and those conversations we feel the same at this time do we have concerns that we'll lose more families i know we lost a lot of students last year with kova do you think well if the only option we have is this third party option will families look elsewhere to find a better virtual option anything's possible given the pandemic joe what does that timeline look like for um i know you said you want to send this out i think

075like as soon as possible right um yeah we would send it out tomorrow and then are we we're looking to have families notify their principals in their building by august 10. so is this so is this like a formal survey or we sent out an email to people and people are supposed to respond like if they want to go virtual correct okay so then when you get those responses i guess i'd be interested sort of to kate's point about because i think we lost about 110 students was the number if i remember correctly um last year who just went elsewhere just left our district and just said i'm taking my 110 kids and going elsewhere so i guess what i'd like to know is did we get any of those people back because i'd like

076to is there any way to figure that out so you can give us those numbers in addition to did we lose any other kids because of the method in which we're reopening is that is that a clear question not really okay but what i will say is um we we did try and dig down into what happened to those 133 oh um more than 100 students yeah and while there were some some homeschooled because they didn't like either option sure some chose a different virtual option which in you know again that those other virtual options about 95 of them are literally what we're offering an edge annuity uh not the way that we delivered it last year internally and so but a lot of those what we found out last year is a lot of

077those people actually just moved out of the school district they weren't physically moved correct oh okay and so it was like 90 percent of the numbers i think it showed you gave a presentation on that and it was how many people moved out of southeastern wisconsin it wasn't even like moved to franklin or something it was right out of state yeah so you know again i you know base the way that you worded the question it seemed that people left because of how we were handling cover that was not the case okay they were leaving because they were leaving not because of covet you know or not because of how the district was handling culture okay and so so again i just wanted to clarify that that uh but i think covid certainly could have

078played a factor like could did somebody lose a job and that's why they had to move uh did did somebody lose a well move to get a different job did somebody uh uh lose a job and couldn't afford the current housing uh so you know there's a lot of things that come into play that unfortunately we weren't able to i mean we couldn't get to that level of detail but what we did find out is people were just moving uh and i do believe that that yeah the pandemic had something to do with it but not necessarily the way that we delivered the instruction and the way that we mitigated our efforts to covet but certainly we are keeping an eye on enrollment um certainly this again i do believe people are waiting to know

079what the school district will do uh and so we'll continue to make a push now we've been pushing our marketing throughout the school year um we can we've continued to do that during the summer uh we actually have marketing plans in place um and we continue to reach out to those families that you know again are considering you know for example if mitch were to choose you know if we have this conversation we want to make sure we have you know a really a really good conversation with their families on what those options really are for next year because every family and student is extremely important to us not just because we need the enrollment but because they deserve a quality education in our school district and one last question um so we're talking about

080in this proposal we're talking about using this third party provider for virtual schooling um whether at the secondary or the primary level um we had on the table a while back a virtual charter school that we were talking about moving forward with um and i feel like and i know that that's a big undertaking like i get that the size of that is huge um but it struck me that it might be a great opportunity to sort of you know work that out with a smaller group of participants than to have a charter school that was kind of open to all later on and i guess i just want to check in with you about where we're at with the virtual charter school efforts and if that's been i mean i understand we've been a

081little distracted by you know other things but where are we at with that well like i mentioned probably about a year ago as we put hold on it because because of the pandemic right and again we are learning uh a lot so actually last year was basically a pretty good case study on yeah what you could or couldn't do uh but at the same time um we really want to focus on the kids that we have now in these options and again i will be delaying this virtual charter school uh for probably at least another school year because that would basically we would have been planning for the last year if we were to open something up for next school year even and so like you said it is a huge undertaking but again we've

082learned a lot um and we're learning a lot from other school districts and we'll continue to do that but at this time again if we haven't already been planning for it we will not likely have a charter school ops virtual charter school option next school year but but know that that is on one of the things that we are on the radar we continue to work on it but just not moving it forward at this time sure okay thank you thank you i have a quick question yes um on the color day rotation i was just kind of curious because i know we had positive feedback regarding the blocking that we were doing so is the blocking going away or is the blocking staying the same and going into the color rotation as well the

083black scheduling is going away at this time we're going back to the infamous color day schedule i'm not sure my daughter is either so that's okay [Laughter] yeah i think there's mixed opinion on that so my kid was the opposite and again what i will say is you know our administrative team and staff you know because for staff too like in some cases they wouldn't see kids for a few days so you know there were just a lot of things that we learned and um and yes there's just good and bad i mean for every kid and like i saw a kid a quick trip on friday and virtual was the virtual option was incredible for them but she's going to be a senior and she wants to come back her senior year so so

084she'll be back in school but well start with that jeff and then just yeah start with yes you get your locker back and then just mumble the rest of it about this color color i have another question so well it's more of a concern at the elementary school level i mean i'm still concerned because kids of that age are not able to get vaccinated so i'm not even going to suggest masking of children but i'm concerned about volunteers coming into the building so we do know while kids don't necessarily transmit it a lot adults do often spread covet to children so can we require well i'm going to say i think we should require vaccinations for adults coming in to volunteer or those unvaccinated adults i feel like should be wearing masks because they are

085going to be putting our kids at risk and that is not really a requirement of school to have adults in the classroom on that topic of visitors i think i saw we were still required in the visitor health questionnaire quiet out there is that what's the reasoning for that is that so like we still have to do that is that teachers is that just guests that don't come there every day just visitors coming in okay yeah so no no longer staff will do their own uh students will do their own uh but uh as far as visitors they will need to complete it we just felt there was a good uh middle ground we see differently on that i mean again you know as kate mentioned you know she's got you know so if the

086board would choose to do away with that i mean that's something that that's why we're presenting it we're not you know we didn't we don't i mean it'd be nice of you carte blanche approved it but i expected a little bit i literally was sitting here and someone mentioned that and i was logging in filling it up because i forget to do it sometimes and it's to me if we're at this point and you knowingly come to a meeting with a cough or symptoms i mean i think we're pretty far into this that we should not be doing those things so i guess i might uh as a formality and back to all you know not only kate's but also your point mitch is i guess are you making a friendly amendment to your uh

087your motion to to do away with that for visitors i would like to but i guess i'll wait till everyone talks before i make that amendment sure and if anyone has any contradictory to that i'd welcome to here too before i make the motion but otherwise i agree with 99 of your presentation that's great to hear so just so i heard correct you will require [Music] visitors and what about parental volunteers they'll be required to just fill out the questionnaire in advance correct or before they come in but again that's what mitch is suggesting is that we not do that yeah it's it's sometimes i don't i don't always remember to fill it out right away either but my problem with that is just when people are coming in it slows up everything in the

088lobby someone has to process a paper form or go online and do it and if it's paper forms i think we're actually probably contradictory we're we're spreading more germs than we would be if we're not required yeah we actually you know that was something that we had talked about so like for example uh you know the kindergarten days the first days of kindergarten or first days of school parents want to come in we're prepared to accept a whole bunch of visitors uh so we're prepared to do that um but again if the board wants to move in a different direction certainly we could understand one more thing last year when we repealed when we removed the mask mandate you gave numbers and i think it was 20 to 25 students came from virtual to in

089person because they were okay with being in schools without masks on and i think we lost two to five that went from in person to virtual are those numbers accurate or do those numbers change at all towards the end of the year i don't recall the numbers exactly but i do know there were more students that came back to face to face i you know i'm not sure i can't necessarily say your numbers are wrong but i can't say they're right okay i just know there were more students that came back than students that chose to stay home and that's what i remember i just i for some reason i thought they're in that range but i just want to make sure that we're clear that we brought more students back while removing that mask

090mandate than when we had it that's what i had reported to the board last spring yes okay thank you but again i do you know i we are keeping track of the numbers i mean that's going to be important to us and um at this time that's why we want to get this approval so that we can get that out there and you know we may be back here in a couple weeks saying this is what we've learned and this is what we may need to do differently and that wasn't a typo on the tracker the last 11 days of school without the mask mandate we had zero new cases there were no errors in our tracking mechanisms so the number was zero i don't know if they were zero i can just tell you

091there were no errors because i don't remember those last 11 days exactly seems like a lifetime ago it does any other comments or does anybody want to debate either possible friendly amendment of requiring vaccinations for parents or doing away with the uh questionnaire i go ahead okay well the first do i have a friendly amendment to require visitors to be vaccinated i would really like that to be the case i'm not going to bother making an amendment so no no friendly amendment on that okay do i have a friendly amendment to end the questionnaire for visitors i would like to make a friendly amendment to remove the questionnaire for health the health questionnaire for visitors i have a motion by mr um helmer and a second by mr kurth discussion on the amendment was that

092a friendly amendment no so you don't really need to you don't really need to well they don't then second that okay never mind yeah it's just a friendly amendment and you have to make sure that it's okay with the second i'm glad you know thank you thanks no it was actually so it was actually an unfriendly amendment then [Laughter] friendly man then we're good okay okay do you i mean do you see any major complications with that i don't okay no then it's friendly okay does anybody want to discuss that all right um well i'm in favor of of the of the presentation as as presented and the friendly amendment so those are my comments if we're ready to vote and then we will take the vote all those in favor raise your right hand

093all those opposed motion passes we are on to discuss and approve the annual declaration and notice of the district student academic standards for school year 20 21 2022. as mentioned previously this is a formality action on the annual declaration and notice of the district's student academic student standards is statutorily required on an annual basis during your first meeting in july attached are those for the year 2122 this has been reviewed by us and is presented to you for your approval do i have a motion to approve it's all moved second then okay so i have a motion by mr helmer in a second by mr kurth any discussion i ask this every year and i'm going to ask it again so i know that we have to um like you just said the school board

094is the one that sets the standard has to vote for it is there much leeway though and what we can set because it seems like on the one hand the statutes say that the school board has to set the standards but on the other hand the statutes sort of say you need to follow pretty much state standards yeah and what i will tell you is um the devils and the details in the curriculum and the resources that we provide our students so in my opinion and what i've always shared like this even started way back when and i think amy will recall the common core standards are basically our floor not our ceiling and so you know just because the state sets aside standards doesn't mean that that's what we strive for and or the

095detail and the instruction the curriculum and the resources that we have with our students that's all locally controlled and so again can the school district itself to make up their own standards yes you can but i would caution you on that just i'll echo what happened up in germantown they were you know they were not content with the common core standards they said they were going to put together their own and i have yet to when was that now six seven years ago i have yet to see their new standards so um i would be really careful that to deviate from that but again just i want to clarify that you still have local control of the curriculum the resources and the instruction that goes with it any other discussion my only question is did

096anything change from last year no there were there continues to be minor edits as it relates to certain pieces but um nothing of substance and there are continual updates at the state of which then kelly when we again they may make some adjustments but they may not change the the big standard but makes maybe some of the things underneath it of which again those aren't substantive to in nature if there's no other discussion then we'll take the vote all those in favor raise your right hand all those opposed motion passes discuss approve policy 2260 non-discrimination and so that's been presented to us and the most recent is in the packet yes the again i would i did receive one comment and i would ask kate to remind the board of that which was also brought

097up at the previous board meeting uh other than that i did not hear from any other board members for additional changes um so i guess kate i don't know actually i'll take the take the motion first so do i have a motion to approve the policy 2260 non-discrimination as presented so moved second so i have a motion by mr helmer second by mr kurth any discussion so i would ask the other board members to again consider adding gender expression into this policy i do have another question about the characteristics versus classes change i don't think we discussed that at the last meeting where did that come from and why i think originally the district was using characteristics but neola preferred classes so i think there's some i missed a few in there when i was

098updating so neola recommends classes i believe that state and federal law uses the term classes so that's consistent and do state and federal law i guess joe use gender expression as a protected class or yeah protected class no okay yeah i couldn't find it listed anywhere except on the dpi website in which they recommend to provide safe schools for lgbt students that you adopt a school non-discrimination and anti-bullying policy that enumerates or specifically includes actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender idea identity or expression so we would be consistent with dpi's recommendation if we added that in sorry can you say those three again actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity or expression so it's saying one of those three right and we have two of them is that no they're saying like you

099should enumerate and specifically call out those three things because they're not the same so i think the point i made in email is who does it hurt if we don't put it in but who could it potentially help if we did put it in so it's essentially two words that maybe would help some student that yes um does our dress code use uh gender terms such as he him or her a girl's dress so who are these who are these uh policies for are they for our students or are they for us are they for everyone within the district anyone so we already have a dress code that does not specify any sort of uh gender roles as it is so we already technically have it in a document i mean i i don't think

100we really need it as part as this document as well that's my opinion i have a mild concern with the term expression anyway because expression could be a term used within the first amendment and anybody expressing speech in any way shape or form it's already in our first amendment it's in the constitution i don't think we need further language that can either cloud or dilute that language or possibly put more actually restrictions on something that is already you know expressed in our constitution um i did some research myself and i found that when you use the term gender expression as a protected class just like it like the eoc and any other state and federal type regulations they read into it gender expression so i think that alone would protect gender expression and i do

101not agree with putting in an additional phrase is there any other discussion on this policy okay then we will take the vote all those in favor raise your right hand all those opposed policy passes now we have a discuss approved policy 5122 entrance age i we did note suggestions from the board at the last meeting we did add under sub letter b the first bullet point after second paragraph any student who has moved to the district from uh another state or country note that we adding the district is moot wisconsin does not require parents to enroll their five-year-olds into 5k and then i do want to clarify again what was mentioned at the last meeting that um that essentially this takes the board out of the appeal process essentially the board is memorializing what the

102expectations are as it relates to early entrants and that the appeal process stops with the superintendent or designee you do have a motion to approve policy 5122 is presented second a little early you two go back and forth i have a motion by mr kirth in a second by mr helmer to approve any discussion joe i had a question on five one one two are they both at not the entrance age the administration rule it says sorry i based on the information gathered through the formal assessments of observations and parent input the school psychologists will meet with the parents within 90 days of receiving the early entrance application that seems like a really long time for the psychologists to have that i was trying to read it is that when they get the information to

103when they have to report to the parents or is that when the process starts that's when they get the information um i think part of the issue is that some of it may require additional testing dependent on what um is actually determined on the front and kelly is there anything that uh you could add to that i mean i think part of the issue is that you don't know what's forthcoming or for example if a student is in the process of an iep that could impede the the the process slightly uh which you know so more testing could uh be forthcoming and so um again that's been a standard that we've had and i don't think we've had an issue with it but yeah i was just looking because it's based on the timelines of

104when the parent has to have the application into by the time that stuff happens and then the 90 days i mean we're basically like two weeks away from school starts i feel like so mitch are you talking about i yes yeah okay so well then i comes up or that same thing comes back up again on number four and the second part yeah so even anytime you have to do any kind of an evaluation or a psych has to do any kind of an evaluative assessments um it it really is sort of a 90 90 days is sort of iep language 90 days is any type of assessments on students so from the time we get notified that a parent is requesting this the the psych has 90 days now our goal is that we're

105within 90 days but it just in case it's the middle of the summer or what whatever that timeline is we want to make sure that we have enough time to get all of the assessments completed and as you can see there's multiple parts of the assessment so each of those parts can take a little bit of time so that's that's that's been standard and from what we looked at from other policies in other areas our administrative rules are very similar to others okay yeah i just want to make sure that you guys had enough time but we also weren't delaying on parents and we're fair on both ends so thanks for the explanation other than the removal of the um board appeal are there any other changes to this administrative rule from what we had

106seen a few months ago no and again this would you know this was something that mitch had asked be included and so because that's where the the details were yeah i just want to make sure i wasn't missing i thought you were adding this up you are right on top of it will the administrative rule be housed with the policy then so they're yeah they typically are okay and i think it's usually on like the how to enroll page or for the um early childhood or kindergarten information page does anybody have anything else i i still it doesn't sit well for me that the board doesn't have the final um appeal and i and i understand the comments from the last meeting that there's like a sense of false hope for the parent but when

107i was looking at the state statutes i originally thought that it said the administration was to set the um the criteria for early admission but it actually gives the authority to the board so that's why i think the board should still have the final say because it's it's the board who's really setting the the requirements for early administration so i don't know whatever if anybody wants to comment on that do we want to just put something in there that says um superintendent must notify the board so that we know about it and if we want to we would then have to change our policy by an extenuating circumstance i think it's just should be good to have that accountability that if a parent feels that the administrative rule wasn't followed or the policy wasn't followed

108that they still have the board to go to not i'm not saying that i expect them not to be followed it's just should be there i just think it should because the statute gives the authority to the board so i don't think the board should be giving up their authority for full oversight but with the parent could reach out to us in any situation i mean they should follow the escalation but if the policy says the final decision is the superintendents can the board look and go you know we don't agree we think the superintendent and the administration did not follow the rules just if that ever happened i'm not saying it would but again the board should have the final say well i mean i think we have to say because we've set the

109policy and i agree with mitch if there ever was an issue and someone thought the policy wasn't followed they can always come to the void at that point but i think what we discussed last time is we're giving false hope to families if we're allowing them to appeal to the board and anytime they're not happy with the administration's decision and all we're going to do is go back to our policy and if they don't meet the requirements of the policy we're not going to overturn the decision so i feel like joe would let us know if there was a reason we should change our policy but when we'd have to change our policy if we were to make an exception essentially so like we can't right that's the only time we'd have to well no

110what i'm saying is let's say let's say we have a rogue superintendent five years down the road and this year whoa whoa whoa i think we got a whole another issue then if we've got a rogue superintendent it's not going to just be this one policy no but i mean there's just if by some chance the policy and the administrative rules were not followed do we does the board have any ability to reverse something that if the policy says the superintendent has the final say what i will what i will share with you janet is there are other policies where the superintendent is the final say so there are other policies that are like that so this isn't unique in that nature well maybe those policies are wrong pardon me maybe those policies are wrong

111i don't know i just it's because the state statute gives the authority to the board to set these policies and the criteria for early i just think it's we should still have the final say we're doing that right i know but let's say let's say that like i i don't know how else to say it other than what if you have a superintendent that doesn't follow the policy what's the recourse yeah so let's say there was a rogue superintendent in another district right okay i think if there was a procedural error at that point i think the board certainly could have some recourse and again it is your own policy it is i mean ultimate i mean that's what's written in the policy but i think if there was like if there was a procedural

112error something that was just you know blatantly obviously wrong by the administration there's a way for the school board to be able to supersede that determination okay all right if anybody else has any comments questions all right then we'll take the vote all those in favor raise your right hand all those oppose motion passes well you convinced me okay then discuss approved policy 5421 grading so any changes to that since it was the first read i didn't think there was no okay so uh do i have a motion to approve policy 5421 on grading so move second all right i have a motion by mr seidl in a second by mr helmer need discussion on this no discussion on this one i'm sorry i'm just checking my notes from last time yeah i had a

113question about the dual enrollment grades in the gpa did did we get an answer on that yeah we um that's something we're going to consider looking into further moving forward but you know as students are already enrolled for the upcoming school year um i think part of the problem is waiting a course for example right now students can take they can take credits somewhere else because we don't offer it internally and it literally could be the infamous underwater basket weaving course and to be able and so because we don't offer it as a school district we actually are have to approve that course for a student to have access to that somewhere else in some cases it could be a college in some cases another high school and so on online um and so for

114us we're trying to determine a way to be able to truly find a way to approve those that may be rigorous insert to a certain degree versus those underwater basket weaving type courses so as of right now they're under this that same category but we're trying to find a way that's not discriminatory in nature and that's essentially what we need to kind of weed through first of all and then secondly uh to determine you know kids that already signed up for these courses and be able to go back now at least for the upcoming school year again my daughter would agree with janet's son or daughter that that she would love for these to be certainly have have waited to them as she enters her senior year uh but that's just we're just not ready

115to do that at this time okay thanks for looking into that at least sure i was assuming they were actually more challenging courses always and i don't know it seemed like then waiting it would be helping those students that choose to go to college to take an advanced course that we don't offer but if that isn't really the case that makes sense some of them are challenging my daughters i agree i'm not saying they're not but i was assuming they were all it's like higher uwm of course during your study hall so just trying to help out our honors kids that might be going elsewhere and then should should be getting like a boost and again some of them are you know four-year colleges and i'm not trying to even some four-year college courses are

116not rigorous uh i mean i i i took bowling in college and i got an a but it was not rigorous do we track though to know what classes that the students have been taking do we have some that have taken sort of you know fun class that really isn't uh we we have a list of every single dual enrollment course that any student has taken so we know how many college credits they're earning and what they're earning it for um it's the only thing is and this is why we just we want to have a year to create kind of a rubric by which we would measure the dual enrollment courses to determine sort of whether it would be something that we would want to wait um it was just going to take us

117longer than a board meeting um to kind of get to the bottom of that but we really want to dig in a little bit more um i mean there's merit there's certainly merit to the point right because we want to encourage i mean that's part of our college career readiness dashboard is access to college-level coursework right so um and again sometimes that isn't a term for kids to take it because it's not weighted uh which is why they weren't taking courses like i ate too which was a great course i was an internal course rigorous but it wasn't weighted so or getting college credit for it either right in our dual enrollment classes they are an automatic college grade whereas an ap course is could be determinant upon where a student chooses to go for

118their post you know post-secondary so so it's just something that we want a little bit more time to dig into um and we'll we'll be digging into we want our kids to we have kids at 15 30 we've even had one that had 60 credits which is great so we want more of that but we'll look into it this year or in any other discussion if there's no more discussion then all those in favor raise your right hand all those opposed motion passes discuss approve policy now these are sort of combined because they're all related 51 16 hazing 5517 student anti-harassment and 55 17.01 bullying do i have a motion to approve as presented so moved i have a motion by mr helmer in a second by mr kurth any discussion i will just state

119for the record that i also wanted gender expression to be added to these policies we did not receive additional commentary from the rest of the board did have one other question um in regards to the classes versus characteristics um i i think i saw characteristics still used in one of these so i don't know classes no i i think it was the anti-harassment i don't know i was trying as when i read that change i was trying to look at can we make a friendly amendment then we approve this based on you making changes from characteristics to classes sure it could have just been like a literal they used the word characteristics in a different way but i was like where where were we changing this where were we not changing it so yeah you

120just maybe just saw though right yes okay and i mean i missed one but now that you say that there may be a spot in what might have been intentional yeah use of the words characteristic i'll try and look forward to it but i'm when i make the final copies i'll check oh you're ready to vote i'm sorry i didn't know if there's any other questions so all those in favor raise your right hand all those opposed i'm sorry say it again you're opposing okay okay so motion does path now we have first read of policies 2240 5500 5610 5611 5780 6152 and 8462.01 so these policies as we had brought forth to the board as far as a policy review were next on the docket for first reads again first read means that the

121board will be reviewing them has reviewed them we'll continue to review them we will be seeking approval at the next school board meeting policy 2240 i do want to reiterate based on on my commentary earlier that we are bringing fourth controversial controversial issues in the classroom policy which has been our practice we're memorializing it in policy and uh that way you know if the board had any questions this is how we move forward it's a clear expectation and we plan on sharing this with our staff just like we had in the past but now with this policy please note that that first policy 2240 was not included in our original planning docs for these policies but it was added based on feedback i had received from from janet and others other than that i did

122not receive any comments or questions from board members when after they received the packet and again we would ask you that if you do have comments questions or concerns please send them to diana she will coordinate them and we'll be sure to include them in the upcoming board packet and again we'll be seeking approval of these policies at the next meeting i also did want to clarify this the student fees and charges as was clarified by ron and the finance committee they are not necessarily looking to change the fees and charges that were updated a year or so back but that's simply we were updating the policy per neola and also the uh number went from [Music] let me just take a look here it was uh changed from 5135 to 6152 to coincide with

123the neola policy so we will be seeking approval at the next meeting can i just make a quick comment there are a couple policies that are in here that were not in the email was there a second email or did should i just have checked this board packet before i think they were added after that okay so i'll review them tomorrow and get you my questions no problem thank you any other questions on these before we move on okay then our next one is action items discussed in closed session we had two of them have those motions i moved to approve the employment performance and compensation matter pertaining to staff as presented second so i have a motion by mr kurth in a second by mr helmer and we discussed that in closed session all

124those in favor raise your right hand all those opposed motion passes we have the second one i move to approve the recommendation for benefit consultant as presented second so i have a motion by mr kurth in a second by mr helmer we do have a little background information on that before yeah so we began a search for a new benefits consultant back in march of 2021 i believe it was a couple months after that that we had updated the personnel committee led by kate informing them that we had started to ser the search and we were beginning to narrow the search uh we vetted them all and did several rounds of interviews and consultation and documentation we came down to actually two finalists which was usi and who was the other marsh mclennan um hayes

125which hayes in usi we determined that we would move forward with usi for the upcoming year uh based off of not only their presence and strong total package of industry leadership but also a strong understanding of school district self-insurance of which we are as a school district and experience with southeast wisconsin self-insured districts district office service and support employee communication and support and data analytics to help steer present and future decisions uh what this would do is this would put our current vendor hub on notice that we would be moving forward and moving away from their contract so that we could go ahead and move forward with that of usi our goal is to have a one-year contract with usi evaluate determine what else needs to be encapsulated in our agreement for future years which

126would be a multi-year contract which would include performance uh expectations for payment of usi so based off of that we're seeking approval to move forward with this recommendation of a new benefits consultant all those in favor raise your right hand all those opposed motion passes let's see all right future meetings and dates board meetings are generally held the second and fourth monday beginning at 7 00 p.m in the eisenhower common unless noted otherwise so the next meeting is august 9th and then we have another one august 23rd it is uh there is also a finance meeting prior to that at 5 45 pm august 30th there's a four o'clock personnel committee meeting currently it's set to be virtual i think i'm not sure but that will be updated on on when the agenda is released

127other important events and dates september 27th that is the district budget hearing annual meeting seven o'clock in the eisenhower commons and it's time to adjourn do i have a motion to adjourn second i have a motion by mr mr curtis a second by mr helmer um all those in favor aye raise your right hand uh meeting is adjourned thank you