001we're ready ladies and gentlemen it is now 6 46 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 mr kurth yes mrs schulz yes here mr seidl here ms unger here ms wundercheck helmer let me know that he will be arriving late he should be here by the time we have our regular open session so i would entertain a motion to recess to close session madam president i moved recess in a closed session pursuant to section 19.85 1 c e and f of the wisconsin statutes to consider a the approval of closed session minutes of june 24th or sorry june 14th and b employment performance and compensation matters pertaining
002to staff i'll second i have a motion by mr kurth in a second by mr seidl please call the roll mr kurth yes mr seidl yes ms crosby yes ms scholes yes ms unger yes ms rondack we are moving into closed session and we'll return to open session around seven o'clock ready 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 allegiance 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 was given to the public last friday
003by 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'll begin first with recognitions the friend of education awards so annually or at least up until last year when we took a pause and a hiatus we would typically honor an organization that has done and gone above and beyond to support the students of the school district i'm extremely proud to be able to share with you tonight that we have basically four different organizations that support our elementary schools and they do that with tireless volunteering and you know they volunteer they pull together to help organize and certainly they help support
004our student programming with financial resources um i'm going to just mention a couple of the uh the different uh or the different groups and the things that they do so for example we do have the elmwood home in school here i know tiffany is a co-president that will be accepting on behalf of the organization but they've contributed almost 45 000 over the course of the last couple years supporting events like the fun run high interest day an all school skate the book fair fall fest movie night the spring dance and the sixth grade completion ceremony next we have the orchard lane parent faculty council and we have natalie and andrea here tonight and they've brought forth almost twenty thousand dollars of financial support and again when i just mentioned the financial pieces it's much more
005than just that it's again the tireless volunteering and and and effort that they provide beyond that but again they support things like high interest day the fall family social star trek staff appreciation the battle of the books breakfast with santa and the fourth through sixth grade lock in and again these are just some of the things that they've been able to do over the course of the last couple years at poplar creek they have a parent-teacher organization and uh next year's president catherine is here to accept their award and they've contributed almost forty thousand dollars as well in financial support uh they've supported things like the talent show dr seuss night leader of the pac awards all school behavior incentives the artist in residence program and staff appreciation and while unfortunately we don't have a
006current representative of the ronald reagan home and school association we certainly have a former uh president of the holman school that will be accepting their award tonight kate and again they've provided justin in the last year alone over sixteen thousand dollars in financial support the new family breakfast rock and reagan day if you've had a chance to get over there their maker space over there is incredible and i know that that's been a work in progress i think brady can attest to it he was over there when they actually started it and it's been enhanced year after year with the financial support of this group field trip buses and the gaga ball pit um so with that i guess on behalf of the school district we would like to thank you for all of your
007work please know that it doesn't go unnoticed uh and again it is more beyond just the financial support it's that time commitment that you all take uh and spend on behalf of our students and our staff and their families so with that uh please join me in congratulating them could we have the elmwood home and school representative come up tiffany natalie and andrea from orchard lane and catherine from poplar creek and then again kate from ronald reagan home in school if we could just take a brief minute because kate will need to join in for the pictures uh we'll take just a brief pause if you wouldn't mind we'd like to have pictures of all of you in the back there that would be great thank you um so thanks kid up next is privilege
008of 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 your name and whether or not you are resident in this school district each presentation is to be restricted to a maximum of three minutes privilege of
009the 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 forum and the speaker will be ruled out of order leah demmel hello i am a school district of new berlin taxpayer and parent i'd like to talk about curriculum transparency in regards to diversity and inclusion which is on the agenda item tonight during the past school year i have had two clear instances where my child was taught about inappropriate left-wing partisan politics in the classroom in both instances the teachers were well intentioned they apologized and modified assignments when able i do appreciate their efforts however the controversial
010subject matter was already viewed by my child or taught those moments cannot be undone both of these instances violated current policies other parents have indicated the same problem i propose we have all teachers post all teaching materials and resources ahead of the school year or at the very least a week ahead of the lessons for parent review online this would include videos books articles websites etc many new state bills banning critical race theory and identity politics asked for this including the proposed legislation in wisconsin i think it would be helpful to teachers and parents so family values and students right to learn in a safe environment are respected i do welcome true diversity and inclusion as i think americans of all backgrounds and races contributions to this great country should be taught however crt just
011gonna shorten it there and identity politics should be left out of the classroom proponents may call it by a different name such as equity or culturally culturally responsive teaching however the concepts are still taught so it really doesn't matter what they call it proponents of crt say true history air quotes cannot be taught without these divisive concepts or that it is whitewashing history that is a lie no one can no one is asking that history not be taught students can still learn about the holocaust or jim crow we can say the holocaust happened to jewish people and jim crow happened to black people however it needs to be done in a way where we look at the actions of the people and not the color of their skin we can teach history without perpetual oppressor
012victim racial narratives as with crt and identity politics dividing people into groups based upon unchangeable physical characteristics serves no educational purpose and only teaches students to hate those in the opposing group the next lie is that those opposing crt are misidentifying it or do not know what it is that parents should leave all teachings to the professionals this is false parents expect them to teach the basics such as reading math and science concepts like intersectionality institutional racism and transgenderism are outside of the realm of normal lessons yet the concepts are readily available all over the internet television books and news they are easy to understand and parents have a right to oppose them this is a matter of parental choice on if how and at what age these concepts are taught i appreciate that most
013of the board members have rejected these concepts but we need to go a step further and make sure they are not being taught anyway thank you for your time thank you jeanette nowak hi jeannette where'd it go i went away all right well i'll just start without so um new berlin resident um first off thank you for adding those policies to the agenda tonight to be discussed and i really appreciate it and with that said i did put one little recommendation in there and all of you would receive that email the next thing i want to talk about was a little jumbled up um student suicide policy that i have been bringing to be proposed nyola has in their policy 5350 already a student suicide policy put in place they've already created it it's already
014adopted by many different school districts especially seven local ones around us so again niola has policy 5350 student suicide already put in place also knowing that um 2018 there was a 13 year old who unfortunately took their life who was also a student of new berlin and my heart goes out to that family as every day you know they have to live without their child and with that came in 2018 also a committee from new berlin who has the parents there's t educators there's other people on that committee and they meet four times all year to talk about mental health and with that knowing that there's the policy in place um neola has the 5350 knowing that we have the committee already in the district and that there are students who consider all the time
015either self-harm through different avenues and considering suicide that a policy really should be put in place to help provide as safeguards no one would be rewriting a policy it would just be adopted because you're already utilizing um resource put in place that the district is paying for and one of the a couple questions i had is what are some barriers that is preventing the board from adopting such a policy of student suicide and from those barriers what can be done to make this policy put in place to provide that all the students have these safeguards and that there are the resources readily available for students for parents and that especially if that committee like if there are people out there who want to join parents um maybe they want to join and have these resources
016also available on the website um so those are just some questions that i have regarding the student policy for possibly adopting for the student suicide so this was all off the cuff but thank you so much and i really strongly do that hope that this policy will be considered for the 2021-2022 school year thank you thank you angela spielman i've been freezing at the last several meetings i wore a huge sweatshirt tonight and now i'm sweating so thank you for adjusting the temperature good evenings good to see you guys i look forward to seeing you at the next several meetings um and seeing how you vote for the way school will look and fall and then even more importantly from loosening code of covet mitigations which is really concerning to me are the concerning types
017of curriculum that are sweeping our nation and even our local neighboring school districts i just basically like to echo what leah talked about there's some very divisive and dangerous topics being taught in the classrooms and quite frankly they have no place in new berlin our mainstream media and social media are starting to take words and twist their meanings to fit political and social agendas and that has no place in our classrooms words like tolerance equity inclusion inequality all these words are meaning different things than their true definitions so essentially i'm just here to say that our classrooms are not for political agendas they're for our students to learn reading writing math science and history and while i think it's very important that all students have equal opportunities to learn and participate i sincerely believe that
018every student in new berlin is given a fantastic opportunity for academic excellence and we need transparency in the curriculum to assure parents and teachers to assure parents that the teachers are not pushing political or social agendas in the classroom and accountability for the staff members who push against these policies finally kind of related to that is that parents need to be allowed back in the buildings that's really my big make it or break it whether or not my kids will come back to new berlin schools if volunteers are not allowed in the buildings we will continue to be open enrolled into a different school district but thank you for your time thank you then charlotte krupa hello my name is charlotte krupa and i do reside at 4440 south high view court in new berlin
019wisconsin i want to talk tonight about new berlin school curriculum and how we will protect our children from the hate of crt critical race theory and csj critical social justice my youngest daughter is now a senior at new berlin west she was a virtual student for all of 2020 2021 school year it was a voluntary choice as i did not want my student athlete to have to wear a mask for eight hours every school day it was a big concern for me that we were doing that to our children in the first place as she went through the school year we were able to talk more about what she was learning and how she was learning it she went from a 3.8 gpa to a 3.4 gpa she was less engaged to learn but also
020the teaching staff did not always concentrate on the curriculum as they were supposed to be teaching but on the circumstances our environment was dealing with and how it was impacting our lives lots of personal opinion was in what was concentrated in the classroom taking up valuable learning time as we prepare ourselves for whatever this diversity and inclusion presentation is we must remember that words can be very manipulated i am a daughter of a world war ii veteran and growing up i had much respect for my father and for fellow veterans i still do i taught my children to stand for the us flag and reminded them that many men and women fight for our freedom to live in the greatest country every day we will remember that we are all americans who care about our
021children and their futures we will not divide society based on race ethnicity religion gender or any other factor i want the best learning environments for our students here in new berlin where children respect each other and their teachers there is no room for hate in our classrooms curriculum in our schools is a key factor to the success of our students and i would like that to be kept in mind as we watch this diversity and inclusion seminar thank you for the privilege of the floor have a good night thank you and i have president's message just an update from last meeting there was discussion about posting information of where we're at in the policy review so that is now on the school board's webpage of the district website under board of education policies and if
022you take a look at the right side when you go there there is a link for policy review so you'll be able to track what's being reviewed what has already been reviewed and also there have been links put there to the employment handbook and the student handbooks since some of our policies do re refer to those two handbooks so rather than have to search for them on the family and resources page or the employment page there's quick links right there so those were all updated on the website in response to some feedback that we received on to the administrative team report we have the superintendent's update yeah just a few updates uh just wanted to let the board know that we're now in our second week of summer school uh as you know we do
023have elementary offerings as well as that at the secondary level um we are kind of utilizing this time to determine uh next month when we come to the board and let you know what our reopening plans will be for next fall um so we're really looking forward to getting back to a true normal as we reopen schools next fall and talking to the health department as well as other neighboring school districts we're all really looking forward to kind of getting back to where we were pre-pandemic so i'll be bringing that update to the board at the next meeting with details um did want to let you know that we are just a few days gone from the the ending of our spring sports schedules uh we did have a great representation of student athletes at
024the state track meet from both ike and west the yike girls soccer team unfortunately lost in the semifinal for the wia soccer program and then again just wanted to make sure that uh again the board is aware that we won't be meeting twice next month we'll only be meeting once and uh again with that i'll be talking about our skill reopening plans for next fall we also do have um tonight the diversity inclusion presentation as the board is aware that we were asked to pull together a kind of a series of presentations throughout the school year i believe our first presentation was done in february we received feedback from the board from the community to kind of define and further clarify some of the items that we had shared and again we're doing that same
025thing bringing back more information to the board about how we address diversity inclusion topics in the school district and i'll save that conversation for then uh so with that uh that ends my report okay thank you then next are the district reports mr seidl would you read the donation report please all right the following is the donation report from june 28 2021 the first donation was for new berlin west high school herb cole educational foundation to support the science department in the amount of 6 000 second donation was from may 7th for new berlin west from wisconsin r.a.p to support athletics in the amount of 225 dollars the next one was also for new berlin west it's from nb red llp to support the purchase of a field house banner in the amount of 750
026the next one is from 426 from poplar creek the herbicol educational foundation support school improvements in the amount of six thousand dollars the next one again is to poplar creek is that two separate ones just checking on that okay so uh in the amount of six thousand dollars from the herb coal educational uh the next one does not have a date but it's from orchard loan orchard lane pfc group uh purchase scholastic books subscriptions for classroom for the 20 21 22 school year in the amount of 2013.34 cents the next one is from 524 2021 new berlin youth football club 4 new berlin west support scholarships in the amount of two thousand dollars the next one is from 513 for new berlin west from the new berlin junior women's club to support co-op in the
027amount of 550 dollars next one is from 6-4 2021 new berlin west new berlin west high school foot football booster club in the amount of 938 dollars and 20 cents next one is from 6-2 also for new berlin west layman insurance agency incorporated to support the girls and boys soccer program in the amount of 1 000 the next one is from 610 uh 2021 for ronald reagan it's the ronald reagan uh holman school association was the donor it was to support the purchase of books for classroom libraries in the amount of 470 dollars in 80 cents finally we have from 610 2021 also from for ronald reagan from the ronald reagan holmen school association to purchase kindergarten 2122 welcome snacks in the amount of 1584.90 total donations for today is 23 532.12 cents thank you
028to all our donors we truly appreciate it and that ends my report thank you the next item on the agenda is the consent agenda which contains the notice the approval of the minutes from june 14th and the financial reports are there any items that should be pulled out for separate consideration do i have a motion for the consent agenda i move to prove the consent agenda as presented second i have a motion by mr kurth in a second by mr helmer any discussion hearing none all those in favor raise your right hand all those opposed motion passes on to our regular agenda first is the diversity and inclusion inclusion presentation yeah i'd like to ask our team of staff to please come up quite the group we have here definitely all right kelly if you
029could uh just kind of go to the first few slides that i can kind of walk through um again i just want to clarify that um our work in the school district of new berlin has has uh the the threads and the embodiment of diversity and inclusion um and it's woven through our our mission our vision and and within our strategic planning process uh if you go to the next slide um we also you know determine how we support the vision of our graduate and and we're talking about all of our students regardless of their background and just as a reminder to the school board and the next slide you know we define diversity inclusion in these ways and i'm not going to read this to you but i just want to clarify once again
030that diversity and inclusion is not just about race it's about many more things than just that and so i you know i i know that uh a lot of focus that that occurs around this work has been on race when that shouldn't be the only thing we should be focused on because diversity comes in many different ways and then again inclusivity again we're looking about interdependence and independence and the views of all of our students as being capable and not coming from a place of uh you know of like a victim mentality we're talking about making sure that all of our kids because they all have unique strengths and abilities and and that we're supporting them in that growth uh in in the school district if you go to the next slide as mentioned these
031are the things that we shared with the school board back in february and we took a very high level approach at that time talked about some strategies and shared the action steps that we plan on on moving into this and then we came back in march and we actually dug quite deep and provided data sets and data points on and indicators about uh specifically how we're doing in the school district of new berlin and again i you know the data has shown that we are doing great work as it relates to diversity inclusion in the school district of course we are a professional learning community so that's all you know we have ongoing continuous improvement efforts uh you know we've got teams not only at the district level with our district action plans that are
032guided by the strategic plan but then our schools actually have their respective school action plans that embeds this work uh and again it's about it's it's much more than just the the the color of somebody's skin and race it's it's about everybody's unique needs in the school district and how we're meeting all of our students needs despite that and as far as our goals for tonight we want to share with you how we use student leadership groups to enhance diversity and inclusion because that's really where it belongs is with the students themselves you know i do believe that we want to share with you how we enhance diversity inclusion strategies throughout their level in content areas for our staff and then finally you know i do know that we've had you know circumstances where people
033have come to the school board and shared you know things and experiences and and how we respond to it we certainly take any and all of this very seriously we're not passive whatsoever and sometimes when you know when people come and present it's almost as if we are passive as a school district and that could be further from from the truth so uh we're going to kind of get into how we address you know again and we're not going to be just talking about racial situations we're talking about you know if students are having you know some discrepancies regardless of the situation how do we address that so i'll hand it over to kelly and the team uh and we'll go from there okay so i'm gonna have everybody kind of introduce themselves when they
034come up so we have um some elementary administrators with us secondary administrators and our ads and each of them will take a portion of the presentation and then we'll open it for any questions at the end so we're going to kind of talk about elementary first and kind of walk through the those objectives that joe just mentioned so i am going to turn it over to mr both of you i'm just going to turn over to both of them and then they're going to introduce themselves good evening i am jamie veal and i have actually served as the associate principal at elmwood elementary for the last seven years and i am thrilled that in a few days i will officially be moving into the role of principal i am honored to be able to continue
035working with our families our students and our staff and i truly thank you for allowing me to continue working in the school community that i'm really proud of and with that being said tonight matt stemnesky and i are going to share some of the ways that diversity and inclusion strategies are taught and enhanced with some in some of our elementary curricular areas and across our elementary buildings this is a slide that you have seen before that highlights units within our social emotional learning curriculum second step diversity and inclusion are taught through several of our second step lessons specifically within our empathy and problem solving units we are proud of the ways that our staff have addressed these lessons and enhance them with literacy connections every grade level teaches these empathy and problem-solving units along with
036an additional four bullying lessons that are encouraged to be taught within our first semester these concepts are then revisited throughout the year and the lessons um throughout the remain and within the second step lessons throughout the remainder of the year we have seen connections from these concepts and strategies being both taught within our classrooms and our and our playgrounds one example is our recess teams using strategies to address inclusion and cooperative play within the empathy unit which is taught at all grade levels at the elementary level we wanted to share a sixth grade example with when teaching lesson 22 students learned about managing multiple perspectives they learned the difference between what perspective and perspective taking are as a literacy connection the lesson was related back to characters in a story that they previously read entitled
037how charlie got her chopsticks there was a student-led discussion about how the characters in the story practiced perspective taking many of these lessons are also supplemented with diverse texts that teach into the skills provided within second step matt is going to provide some specific examples of this within our readers workshop and the same the same core competencies that you saw as part of the second step lessons are also included within our readers workshop units the social issues unit book clubs reading for empathy and so these learning targets that you see on the on the presentation tonight are from actually a sixth grade lesson and so students will be able to lean on their personal experiences to help create meaning and text they will be able to look for possible connections from their text to their
038from text to their own life consider other others perspectives and then see themselves as both the hero the villain the protagonist the antagonist the main character in a story and by the way i know matt of course doesn't need any sort of introduction but this is matt stepnes sorry principal at papa creep sorry jamie that was on your slide um sorry well thank you for having us tonight um along with that so this upcoming school year there'll be a program review of our ela program of our ela curriculum along with the diversity audit of classroom libraries we're always continuing to enhance classroom libraries actually last time i was up here we talked about how we spent a good chunk of our budget money diversifying classroom libraries utilizing our literacy coaches and our really our classroom
039teachers too in order to vet and build those libraries so that there are texts that include diverse characters um the boy called bat series as a mate the main character has autism he's not the victim he's the main character and so that's just kind of one example that third grade students have really um you know taking a liking liking to and staff will utilize those texts as part of their read allows as jamie mentioned in second step and in readers workshop and again same similar to what we talked about when when jenny and i presented for poplar creek students should be able to read about themselves as characters in books and also read about everybody else and so we like to say mirrors and windows they see themselves in text and they get to see
040read about others okay so joe referenced this earlier there's a you know kind of a behavior incident or there's something that happened during the school day and this is maybe 20 times a day at the elementary level but this is kind of how whether it's recess or lunch or in the classroom or at times as our kids get older there's been more you know incidences on social media as well and so really with any incident that happens this is really kind of the steps that we take even if it's 20 times a day you know gathering as many facts as possible discussing with all the students involved at times separately and then at times together for a little bit of mediation it kind of depends on the comfort level of the student and maybe perhaps
041what happened sometimes kids do not want to talk with the other person that you know is involved in the situation there's conversations with the classroom teachers and support staff depending on the area during the school day what happened we have to determine whether it's a single incident or if it's a pattern we have infinite campuses where we keep notes to these behaviors along with our own anecdotal notes as well um we of course notify families depending on the severity of what happened and then we determine mediation re-teaching is necessary and then of course you know consequences if necessary too and uh jamie would like to touch on that right now so thank you okay so matt was able to share some of our reactionary pieces but we have many more proactive pieces which include reteaching
042teachable moments classroom meetings restorative practices and peer mediation many of our schools have peer mediation programs that include training and utilizing student leaders to help solve peer conflicts that that could arise restorative practices are used to teach coach and mediate when problems arise these are both teacher-led and then also can be led by our oldest students through that peer mediation programming restorative conversations and practices are great to use in a variety of situations at the elementary level because they give voice to the person harmed the students have an opportunity to have a voice in the resolution to the harm and then they also focus on relationships not just the rules we've had a lot of positive parent feedback resulting from the restorative conversations even when a consequence as matt shared has been implemented learning and
043relationship building are really the top priority for our elementary students next up is our elementary group that would like to share what they're doing secondary sorry all right thank you jamie and thank you matt my name is kevin fitzgerald i'm director of athletics and activities at new berlin eisenhower um and in all of our co-curricular activities there's an ability for our students to be exposed to a diverse group of students but we also have a specific number uh excuse me a number of specific clubs at the secondary level that gives our students the ability to learn specifically about diversity and inclusion first off international club is designed to encourage socialization education and communication for students that are interested in learning a little bit more about international culture at both of our secondary schools we have
044a diversity and inclusion team that discusses issues that are specific not only to the building but issues that are specific to society related to diversity and inclusion we have a best buddies club which is a national program but specifically with our program dedicated to creating one-on-one opportunities for friendships and leadership opportunities for our students with intellectual and developmental disabilities we have a co-exist club for students interested in promoting an inclusive and safe environment for all staff and students a couple years ago created a change of mind club which is dedicated to eliminating the stigma around mental illness also focuses on providing resources not only within our school but within our within our community unicef club you're probably familiar with the term unicef it is a global organization it's youth-led it's a youth-led movement with focus
045on advocating for underprivileged children focusing on advocacy fundraising community engagement and awareness of under underprivileged children and then last but not least a culture club that gives members the opportunity to learn a little bit more about cultures all around the world not only with students in our building that have different cultures but cultures all around the world and next off i'll kick it off to mr napoli my counterpart at new berlin or excuse me new berlin west there we go jordan napoli athletics and activities director in new berlin west kevin obviously went through some of the different groups and teams that we have at western eisenhower i'm going to talk a little bit more about the actual events that have maybe taken place over the last year to specific to some of the diversity and
046inclusion work that we're doing early in the year right off the bat when we got back to staff work days we started this year with a student and staff challenge days the staff came in over their professional development and we really focused on a workshop with this challenge day group that came in and the focus for a lot of our staff was solely around like self-care understanding yourself working towards figuring out how you work best with other people and really helping that interpersonal relationship and then obviously how that really is going to impact your work with students later a couple months later in october we then took our challenge day and did it with about 50 students and the program that they went through was called if you really knew me staff members from both
047schools actually helped in this alongside the challenge day workshop people and that was conversations that helped guide students through conversations focusing on really how to understand yourself understand the differences you have with other people in your school community and then how that impacts things with our own community in february i believe it was we had the no place for hate tour which came through and this was a district-wide virtual assembly which focused on promoting a welcoming and supportive atmosphere for all members of our school the assembly highlighted the role students play in combating bullying bias and the escalation of hate and how we can create a more inclusive and positive atmosphere in our building other things that we've done that have been kind of spearheaded by our international clubs or different groups that kevin had
048showed you before um is some of the culture weeks and really these are just celebrations of different cultures throughout our building such as black history month was celebrated in february asian heritage month and throughout these months there's different highlights and different things that happened we had movie nights with some discussions that were done virtually in the evenings we focus on cultural influences from the different groups focusing on music cuisine recipes all sorts of fun stuff entertainment important figures and those things were highlighted through a variety of different events that took place in the building in addition to that our best buddies group which kevin mentioned they ran a couple of joint events this year they do the spread the word to end the word campaign they do a friendship walk and run and that's really
049just to continually promote inclusion acceptance friendship and recognition of individuals who contribute to our school all the differing individuals who contribute to our school community and then this year something new that we kind of did as well is we created this pen pal program and this was actually brought to us by some student leaders so it was 100 student-led and that was intentionally working with students to find students in our schools that don't really have a strong connection to other people and we have kids that are involved in activities we have kids that are involved in sports and then there's always going to be some kids that aren't connected and so there was a group of student leaders that came to us and said we'd really like to figure out a way to connect with
050these kids we created this pen pal program that was able to kind of help through that and we were able to identify some kids through some of our student counselors and student leaders to connect with other kids that really are connected and really have an ability to kind of be those uh positive voiceful leaders in our building set them up through some pen pal work and created some relationships that otherwise would have not been there so some of the work that we're doing at west and ike and i'm going to turn it over to trudy and christine now all right i'm christine springer so i'll see a principal here eisenhower also taught english here for nine years so pretty familiar with some of the curriculum i want to talk about tonight trudy and i are
051both here to talk about how staff enhance the diversity and inclusion within the curriculum and we just wanted to give you some more specific examples in addition to the ones that were presented earlier in the spring um so for english for example focus in 10th grade is world literature entirely based around the idea of danger of a single story which is a actually a ted talk by a woman nade shimanda adichie and she talks about how you need to look at as they do in the elementary school looking at different perspectives surrounding any particular event additionally we expanded the middle eastern unit one of the texts that stands out in particular is about a young woman named eugene mustafa who she fled the syrian crisis and she is a woman who is bound to a
052wheelchair so it brings an extra level of adversity that she had to overcome as a text that our students are now able to access in 10th grade with world languages of course there are the cultural celebrations however there is also a big push for building that appreciation for culture and having rich discussions in a different language about that for example in spanish 3 they explore the question of why it is important to see the world and they have debates surrounding that within their class and focus on how it's the destination not necessarily just the idea of traveling but it's the experiences and the richness of those experiences and talking about the value of traveling to different countries learning about the cultures and learning about those languages as well and the last example i have to
053share with you is in physical education actually one of our teachers this year was talking to me about how she's really trying to look at where sports come from and she highlighted badminton said badminton actually began in india and so she taught her students about how it began in india and then how it was transferred over by some people from some soldiers who were there and took it back to great britain and then it was developed into kind of what it is today so looking back at the cultural history the rich history of even things like badminton hi i'm trudy whalen i'm one of the associate principals at new berlin west um so just to give you an idea of some other things that are being done throughout different grade levels and content areas in
054social studies you guys kind of were able to look at the new resources that were being purchased to kind of enhance our curriculum they're really going to focus on those multiple perspectives multiple sources and how to tie together those pers that perspective from different views and get students to use some critical thinking skills so we're excited that that will help support some of that as well as um just developing citizenship skills within our students in music um they explore a variety of of cultures and so what some of the teachers will do is even do theme focused music and kind of teach through that lens as they work through their curriculum as well just to kind of enhance students experience and knowledge of those different cultures and then in math as we kind of looked
055at different resources previously one of the things that we wanted to make sure was that we were able to support universal design for learning and so the resource that that was selected will help with um the variety of different learners that we have based on just the different components that are built within there get the next one too now i'm all out of order um okay so then the other piece that we wanted to just kind of address was just the behavioral issues that that come up um to ensure that all of our students feel welcomed in our buildings and so some of the the proactive solutions that we've taken and mr napoli and mr fitzgerald already kind of highlighted some of them but we had the challenge day for staff and students this year
056um the no place for hate tour um so those were two programs that were selected to kind of support that that work that we had been doing towards diversity and inclusion as well as the activities to celebrate the diversity that mr napoli talked about and then the other thing that we had at the beginning of the year was we had some students that were interested in just having some conversations around diversity and inclusion so it kind of started as a smaller group of students and developed into more interest from students and so that team of students kind of grew throughout the year and just focusing on their learning around diversity inclusion as well and then we also had teacher teams and and we'll continue to develop those out as well that wanted to participate in
057just learning more getting different people's ideas it was interesting being part of those teams and hearing different people's perspectives even within those teacher teams um and they also you know are taking that that perspective taking and just different people's thoughts and ideas around it and learning more and so those teams were a benefit this year and that's something that will continue in the future as well for our advisory middle school we're going to have second step which kind of correlates to what they're doing in the elementary and what they'll learn in second step is managing social relationships is one of the key ideas and there's a unit on bullying and harassment and just how to manage some of those social conflicts that might arise and then moving into high school we have the dialectical behavioral
058training which will continue some of that work but students will move into more of the mindfulness emotional regulation work with distress tolerance and different skills with that and then it'll also teach them some strategies for interpersonal effectiveness and how to address things that might arise and what tools that they have that might be available to help them with that and then last um one of the other things that we do that is proactive is um raw screen strategies which are proactive solutions that involve the students kind of um with those restorative practices that ms veal had mentioned they're in alignment with that where the students help kind of work through that so that they're part of the solutions and they develop some of those problem-solving skills as well and as elementary mentioned you do have
059things that come up um and so we have to have some different approaches when things do arise um obviously we have those in the moment learning disk learning discussions with students whether it's a classroom of students whether it's a small group whether it's individual students whenever we receive information whether it's from students parents guardians or from the community we take it very seriously and do extensive investigation and talk to everyone involved and everyone whose names come up when we're doing our investigation as well to get as much information as we can we have conversations with our families whether it's phone calls sometimes we've been doing some online meets via google meets or zoom or sometimes you know if we need to come in as well to have those conversations with families too then we set
060up some follow-ups whether those follow-ups need to be with administration some check-ins they can be with our counselors our social worker a psychologist having follow-ups for any students who are involved to make sure that we're moving in a positive direction that they're feeling safe in the school and feeling heard and then we also have potential disciplinary actions we work very much as teams within our buildings and across the district to make sure that we're consistent as well and how we are approaching these issues with our student in case in the cases of discipline and like the elementary mentioned as well we take focus on restorative justice practices ideally it's an opportunity for both parties to come together where they can reflect together and understand the harm and impact and kind of share both sides of
061it and truly have a conversation that is if the students and families want to have that conversation sometimes students are or families are a little tentative about having that but we do try to have those conversations with them and try to give them opportunities to make sure their voices are heard and provide some learning for students as well so we do what we can to make sure not only that we handle the initial issue that may occur but that we continue to work with them as well and provide support for everyone who's involved and do those check-ins to make sure that we're moving in a positive direction dr sanders i'm going to turn it over to you thank you so just some other examples of actions and strategies that we are going to continue to
062focus on as we move forward these were brought up in previous presentations as well but we really want to continue to effectively utilize those restorative practices as needed in our buildings we want to continue to build out that celebrating those commemorative observations that occur throughout the year some of those examples are women's history month national hispanic heritage month etc also continuing as elementary and secondary talked about is kind of building that literature across levels in content areas that that kind of mirrors windows um comment that that uh matt had mentioned earlier um continuing that professional learning around diversity and inclusion through second step uh and social studies we do have a new resource starting so that's that's something that we're going to be doing some professional learning around and second step is really kind of
063pushing off at our middle school um this coming year as well and then continuing to have that focus on diversity and inclusion student and staff team so that we continue to have student voice um as part of the work that we are doing um so with that um i'm going to turn it back over to joe yeah and um you know i just want to share with the board that this is our conclusion of these presentations um you know we did share with the board that we were going to provide as much information as we could we think we've done that uh so obviously this is presentation three of three so please don't just consider the conversation today as being the only conversation that we've had around this i do know that you know last
064summer we received a petition of sorts that we essentially were forced to respond to um and what i will say is diversity inclusion is not an event and that's what i felt like we were we were needing to do something as a result of that uh and almost like you know like we were kind of we had to defend ourselves from a you know from from these allegations and accusations and um what i will say is we've updated our we updated our mission our vision like eight nine years ago um and just because somebody says it doesn't necessarily mean it's true and we've provided that evidence to you throughout these three presentations that the school district of new berlin takes diversity inclusion very seriously we've provided the results of what we're able to do and
065what i will say is i don't believe that we need some sort of special committee to tell us to continue to do what we're doing because what we're doing is effective and i also don't feel that we need a committee to be able to further divide the conversations around just race which unfortunately that's what's happened in school districts around us and and they you know they they take this focus just on race and and again our operational definitions about diversity inclusion are not just about race and so again i um i understand that there are there are there are things that will occur in the school district and know that we take them and we handle them accordingly um when they're brought to our attention so with that i take a lot of pride in
066what our team has done again this is not just an event for us this is just what we do and just because we received that petition again doesn't mean that all of a sudden like we have a knee-jerk reaction this is the work that we do day in and day out and we've been doing it since i got here 15 years ago so again i just i take a lot of pride in the work that we do um our strategic plan highlights diversity inclusion our mission and our vision do our district action plan our school action plans address it and it's embedded in our work and so again i know that we've taken some shots here and there about the work that we do as a school district but again i couldn't be more proud
067of our efforts and again just like anything else do we have areas that we need to improve on yes we do but that's what our team will focus on and we'll use data to drive that decision making not not uh i guess just allegations and um accusations so with that we would certainly entertain any questions i have quite a few um and i don't mean to just treat me like i don't know what i'm talking about because it shouldn't be too hard uh what does it mean to be both the hero and a villain in a story anyone so it's just kind of our opportunity to share that characters in a text could be anyone and so uh we've we've been able to well and i i'm speaking on behalf of all of our you
068know elementary staff and so just after talking with them as we went through the presentation how they've been able to build kindness and read aloud in empathy texts and bring diverse characters so the story of for example if you've heard the story of wonder and that's that's a story of a student with a physical disability but you know is maybe gets made fun of her teaser kind of as a victim whereas we are including those texts but also texts where a student with that maybe that disability is now just the main character in the story and it's just you know showing how they go about their day or whatever conflict they go into and so we want students to be able to see themselves represented in text and that could be as the main character
069as you know the hero as the victim as maybe you know as maybe the villain and so that's just a way to show that everybody has their own story everybody has their own background and so they get a chance to read about that in these texts that we are you know hoping to bring to all of our elementary schools as it's not just a public creek thing or an elmwood thing it's it's after talking with everybody it's it's all of our it's all of our elementary schools okay so i hope that answered your question you get to see see yourself as many different characters in a text okay perfect and uh maybe i don't remember who i should ask about this uh re-teaching what exactly is that mean when it comes to um so since
070our second step is the curriculum that we use to teach different you know behavior situations or social situations along with our behavior matrices to be safe be kind be respectful um when we kind of rolled that out you know years ago there was a lot of teaching that went into how do you behave on the bus oh sorry how do you behave at recess how do you behave when you transition in the hallways these are a little bit more maybe elementary specific but there's similar matrices at the secondary level how do you behave at school events and so if a student has a problem with that or if there is an incident that happens then that's our opportunity to reteach that you know remember when you walk in the hallways we have you know voice
071level zero or we keep our hands to ourself or you know body bait whatever whatever cues we have used and so as as simple as it may sound at the elementary level and maybe even secondary in some instances you have to teach the transition from independent reading to social studies so you have to teach and model the transition from you know gym class back to you know back to the classroom and if students aren't meeting those expectations then we have to take the time to reteach that okay and in that basically what you just said makes sense however what does that have to do with for diversity and inclusion oh did you want to add i think when i spoke of i spoke a little bit about classroom meetings and so when we're teaching the
072second step lessons they tend to be short they're not taught every single day the actual lesson but then the re-teaching comes we've been really trying to focus on classroom meeting time within their day every day so sometimes it's something happen maybe on the playground or something happen in the classroom they're able to come together as a class and talk about what happened talk about what matt said being safe respectful responsible and then the concepts from second step okay so that re-teaching like talked about those different characters bringing that together with things that they're reading social studies all those things can be talked about and integrated within that classroom meeting time okay which has been very teaching is actually classroom meeting time yes it can be it can be one of those yes it can be
073it's an example it's just an example of okay where that re-teaching can happen all right and i gave a very simple example as far as you know transitioning from the carpet to independent work or whatever that example was but if there was a problem kids went to poplar creek i know all about so so if there's well but i guess the the more complex example would then be well if there's a you know a comment that's made at recess that's inappropriate or about someone's race or about someone's disability then we are re-teaching and modeling with some of those texts or you know this is how we do how we treat each other and this is how we you know build background knowledge of the person that you made a comment about you know things like
074that okay perfect yeah um diversity and inclusion student staff group i don't remember who discussed that was that you guys um describe this to me please and what is the charge of this group did you want to speak at all to it because i believe that i can i can jump in yeah sure go ahead because i think he's maybe a little bit more familiar with it so for us um a lot of that work this year was started with staff groups and it was groups of staff that wanted to have some conversations around you know what are we doing from a diversity inclusion standpoint things that they're doing in the classrooms things that we're doing outside of the classrooms and really just having deeper conversations about that that was completely outside of like what
075their classroom norms and what they're doing in the normal day is doing those were just probably what 15 to 20 staff members that were part of those groups the other thing that they did is they brought ideas of different activities and things that they were doing in the classroom and kind of shared those at those meetings so it was more like collaboration type work that they were doing okay yep and then the student groups okay happened as the year kind of progressed and then there were students that were wanting to learn more about diversity inclusion understand their classmates a little bit more had questions want to converse with that and then sometimes those groups would kind of intermingle and we'd have those discussions okay so the charge of this group isn't to make any real
076decisions it's used to educate other students about other students or strictly conversations okay um culture club i think that was you guys too uh no ron it's not the karma chameleon i i realized that because i realized that but uh i would assume that there's a world cultures class available to students or no at the secondary level as part of social studies social studies in every social studies class but there isn't just a world focus specifically okay i know the culture club is something that's new it was brought up like this time two years ago yeah yeah yep it's something i wasn't here last year and then they came up with again this year it was students who wanted to explore additional cultures i know sometimes students like i'm used english as an example because
077that's where i lived for a while um students would learn about a culture in a text that we were reading especially through expanding the number of texts that we had available and they wanted to learn more about those cultures that maybe they didn't learn about those cultures in another class so it's really more of an opportunity for kids to kind of explore cultures on their own that's kind of where unicef stemmed from as well when students came with that initial idea two years ago as well it was they had heard about unicef and supporting people and supporting children specifically in different cultures who maybe needed additional support so that's kind of where this comes from so kids wanted to explore things that maybe they hadn't seen in their classes because the class can only teach
078about so many cultures there's so many cultures in the world so they wanted to explore some different ones as well or take a deeper dive into some of them as well okay and if i'm remembering correctly when it was brought to our uh when it was i guess promoted to us adopting this club it was our students that had an interest in sharing their own culture and gained traction with other students okay wanting to learn about it but also wanting to learn about other cultures okay that's fine um now the other question i have is math universal design for learning thank you guys by the way appreciate that so please tell me what a in my opinion it doesn't get any more fact-based than math yeah so how is there a universal design for learning
079when it comes to math so some of the things some teachers will give students like choice so they might say like you can learn um some students may select to learn by watching a video some may select to work with another group of students some may select um to work with the teacher and so there are different choices and then even with like assessments they might have choice in how they want to demonstrate that they learned the math so while some students are like just give me the test i want to take the test and show you they might have like a project-based learning type of assessment with it so there's some choice in in how they how they learn and how they demonstrate what they learned okay that's all i have thank you everyone
080didn't mean to put anyone on the hot seat well that was easy ron any other questions um i have a few um comments first um i want to applaud all of your efforts in all that you've done i really appreciate joe you too i know that you guys are all involved in all these day-to-day efforts to extend diversity equity and inclusion in our buildings and i think that's really positive um and i i really do believe that i know what you know you talked earlier joe about this petition that we received i don't remember when it was now it's been a while um feels like a long time ago that we received it um and i i'm more of the of the perspective that i sort of i guess i just kind of try to
081presume positive intent of everybody and i think that's what you know i presume here i presume everybody all of our actors are are trying to act the best that they can doing the best they can and trying to give you know our kids the best kind of resources that that they can and i think that that's really good um the thing that worries me is that earlier this year we had a lot of people including students come to our school board meetings and say that they didn't feel comfortable in our buildings and that they were uncomfortable with things that were said or how they were addressed or things that occurred and i think that as administrators of course you guys have to deal with those things as they come and i know that you do
082but i'm worried about the fact that they happened at all you know that makes me it gives me pause and it makes me worry about those kids and how how do we get to a place where you know i mean we had kids come in in february i think it was and say that they heard the n-word flung around in the halls of of a high school that's not okay and i know we all agree about that i don't i'm getting any fights from anybody on that so i don't mean to say it like it's a you know it's a revolutionary statement because i don't think it is but the fact that we had kids who took the time who wrote a statement who came here to deliver it in public that was a big
083deal and it worries me as a mom and as a board member that kids would feel so moved to do that that they would actually do that so i had said a while back that i thought that um that we should always try to be better and i believe that we believe that as a culture in this district i believe we do um i think we can be better and i think that that we're all a work in progress i believe that we all believe we're lifelong learners and then we're all keeping on trying to learn more and learn better and learn you know and help our students do the same things i just don't want any student to ever need to come here and say those things that is not okay and so i
084said a while back i think that we should have a committee a community based committee that is comprised of students parents teachers administration and professionals i think we need a committee i think we need to talk about how we got to the point where we had any kids come here and say those things and we had several and we had several parents too at this point you're moving into asking for action taken would you like this put on the next agenda and we can debate a committee i i think that would be great i just wanted to i did want to finish my thoughts for a second i just wanted to make sure that i didn't want you to get too far off no no i'm really almost done i'm sorry i know i'm long-winded
085i apologize um but i do think that having such a conversation with that group of people doesn't hurt anybody and it might help us all learn something else so my hope my again i applaud all of you i'm super proud to live in this district and to see the wonderful things that you are all doing i really really appreciate it from from joe at the top to all of you and down to all of our teachers and even our custodians and everybody else i mean i really do believe we have some marvelous marvelous professionals in this district i do think we need to take a look at it so thank you anything else i just have one question and i know joe you responded via email but i'm hoping maybe you can elaborate a little
086bit more you shared the the additional second step curriculum that included was it called again teaching for justice or something like that and we've chosen not to use that in our second step curriculum can you explain a little bit more on why yeah i mean so uh as you are aware when we presented i think i think the second presentation brady shared some of the things that we do specific to second step and uh it was brought to our attention that second step had supplemental resources that dealt uh with more of the like the social justice and justice for all type topics again it was it was mentioned that we were going to be looking at it well we've done that and um in our review we just don't feel at this time that um
087the the content is appropriate i mean in my opinion it's very divisive um it uh you know again it's about some of these things that really should be taught at home and not necessarily in the school district um and so i you know uh it was from my you know after having it being reviewed by at least brady and others kelly and myself you know yes we still do have uh you know some things that we pull from there but as far as adopting the entire supplemental pieces we just don't feel uh we need to do that so uh and again you know just because we do want to focus on more of the high level support and not digging in on things like specific to race you know we're gonna we're gonna be talking
088about empathy we're gonna be talking about empathy generally speaking so that we're not again narrowing our conversations in places that we really shouldn't be so that's about you know equity and inclusion for all and not just a specific topic i just wanted to say thank you for again bringing this to that higher level instead of focusing on just one thing race or whatever else that is i believe you guys are doing a really good job by taking the actual true definition of diversity and inclusion at that larger piece so thank you very much for your efforts anything else i thank you too this was a lot of work that's been put into these presentations sharing with us so we have a better understanding what's going on um i had one question i was just a
089little interested in and when it comes to the diversity audit of classroom libraries what are the criteria for when you remove a book and i'm background on this it's concerning me that we're seeing a lot of good classics being taken out of classrooms for really not good reasons and i'd hate to see that happening in our school district you guys have the details on it yet yeah so um one of the things that we're doing is um our literacy coaches are looking at like a rubric that we would be using and it's really not to pull books out as much as it's about creating a library that is representative of many students within our district so if if we see that many of the characters are i'll use animals at the elementary level if we
090see that all of the characters are dogs we may want to get some more characters that are llamas or cats or something along those lines so that we're creating a more broad diversity of our texts instead of saying oh we're going to pull that out because it it it doesn't fit um now and we've had the same yeah we've um had the cameras we've had situations where a parent may disagree with the content of a book but we will provide an alternative so we're not just going to pell mel remove a classic work just because a specific parent disagrees with a specific viewpoint then in that case we would just we'd provide an alternative an alternative resource which is what we're more than happy to do but again i don't recall like actually since i've
091been here that we've actually pulled any classic um because somebody disagreed with it okay thank you you're welcome that petition joe um you're in contact with a lot of the neighboring superintendents did they all get the same petition i mean was it verbatim or it was very similar okay and as i understood it it was uh it was a petition that went out nationwide um and it also um i mean it was a forum petition and then people just attached or clicked something and uh and then you know sure there was some customization by some local advocates but it was nearly identical with maybe some caveats as far as how districts handled it some districts didn't address it at all other districts developed committees and and then develop committees with certain recommendations that like elmbrook
092for example they met and met and met became very divisive and the school board said we're not going to do that so i also don't want to waste anybody's time either it i mean i read through it it seemed like it was more changing curriculum rather than there was an issue that happened in our school or two issues and let's address those right well there but there were some very broad that's right it wasn't specific that we've had three issues in the past two years and this is becoming a problem we need to fix these it was let's change everything and we really need to flip everything up on what we're doing today and again sure now we've presented this to you uh certainly in response to that to a certain degree mainly to just
093clarify what we what we do and the data to support it because again as i recall i mean the data that we presented is really good data that shows that we are doing well with related to diversity inclusion and not just saying that we are we're able to prove it um you know we're closing gaps achievement gaps regardless of you know actually again you know people talk about inequities probably our biggest inequity is has nothing to do with race but lifting up our students with disabilities you know and we can't forget about that and that's what our data are showing us and that's where we're going to focus our efforts now again we're not going to just forget about all these other things we'll address them but again that's what the data are showing us
094as of now and i think it's tough for all the parents because i have younger kids other board members have older kids so we get some of this visibility at certain times and it changes over the 10 years so i think this really is good that you were able to do this demonstration over the past three presentations and give us everything that you guys are actually doing because there's a lot of stuff you guys are doing that we don't know we're not in the classroom every day so there's a lot of stuff that you guys are doing and we really appreciate that thing and you know we answered you know questions that were raised by the board so you know i think that that first meeting we got you know questions from you know several
095of you we were able to address those and and even further you know based on our last presentation we addressed some of those i know kate for example wanted us to share more about the groups that we have the student groups that we have and so we're able to do that so again i really do appreciate the time that our staff have spent on this and again know that it's embedded in our work it's part of our vernacular it's not this outside thing that just happens because a petition shows up we're dealing with it thanks i have one thing or actually maybe two quick question what what is our graduation rate kelly could you answer that or joe it's it's close to 199 99 it's been that way for a while right yes yeah so
096and then we're still ranked as far as u.s news and world report is like one of the top schools in the in the state as well as in the country right right and so that's all our students so everybody that goes here gets a fantastic education because of everybody out here i just want to make sure that everybody looks as a whole as as an as inclusive for all that everybody that comes to our school district gets a fantastic education thank you guys you've been awesome all right thank you onto some more fun stuff we're going to discuss and approve the preliminary budget yeah and again here um you know we provided to the board a presentation at the last meeting and you know again as patrick mentioned the preliminary budget is strictly a procedural
097piece to allow us to start working the district beyond july 1st um and not until we get the numbers from the state which happens in october obviously we'll get a little bit more narrow uh come september at the budget hearing and annual meeting and then the original budget we're going to be seeking approval on again there were really weren't a lot of highlights other than uh know that the esser dollars that we are looking to receive i know that the the joint finance committee finally came out with what they're looking to do um you know the federal dollars are in play we don't know what the governor will do whether there will be a veto or not um but again the process will continue to play out um and again taxes will increase slightly but
098we knew that was going to happen just because of the fact that we had such a significant drop last year and that our uh our mill rates are almost near record lows over the course of the last 10 years so again with that we did not receive any additional questions from the board so we would ask that the board approve the preliminary budget as it was presented at the last board meeting all right do i have a motion i move to approve the 2021-2022 preliminary budget as presented second i have a motion by mr kurth in the second by mr helmer any discussion no discussion i have one question sorry i know i think the finance committee mentioned something about reviewing student fees and so i know right now this budget is based off of
099current student fees so is there any chance that student fees will change the finance committee meeting is the is the policy not reviewing and adjusting student fees that would have to come from this board okay so it's only the policy correct patrick that's all we're looking at so all right there's no adjustment and fees coming out of the finance committee meeting okay thank you and just to clarify janet um i do know that we kind of did our research we made adjustments three years two years ago uh roughly around this time where we did either increase or adjust based on comparable districts and you know kind of where we were and i believe that brought in a significant amount of additional revenue as a result of that decision a couple years ago so unless the
100board recommends that we make an another adjustment we'd prefer to just kind of stay where we're at with the current fees okay just enough we were going to vote on that separate so i wanted to clarify for that okay all right any other discussion all right then we will go on to the vote all those in favor raise your right hand all those opposed motion passes then we have first read of policies 2260 nondiscrimination 5112 entrance age 5116 hazing 5517 student anti-harassment 55 17.01 bullying and 54-21 grading yeah so again uh we brought the uh the approach for policy revisions to the board um these in particular we're asking to again tonight's a first read so there's no vote needed tonight but these are policies that we felt we needed to have in place sooner
101than later so that they can inform our student handbooks our employee handbooks as well as you know the policies themselves as we start the start of the school year um i do want to just clarify that uh the some of these policies were actually in one policy neola recommended that we split them into several different ones so that's why you're seeing you know why why are we having not just the one but three separate it's what neola recommends um and then as far as the the early entrance and the grading um those are things that again we want to make sure we get approved at the next meeting so that can inform our handbooks and such so we did not receive any commentary from any of the board members related to uh any of the
102policies uh so as a result of that i guess we would recommend that uh we bring these back to the board at the next meeting for approval any questions here yeah i didn't i apologize i actually should have sent it in but for some reason i just had it in head i was going to talk about it here so um which one was it sorry it was the early admission policy um that seemed so before we had some criteria of how that would be met and that seems to be eliminated is that are we drafting another policy to add to that is that going somewhere else or is that i have the same question yeah so we will still follow those procedures mitch they're just not into policy they're they're considered administrative procedures or administrative
103rule but those are the the processes that we will follow so to that point though i think that timothy's point where there's in that new policy there's reference language in the handbook are we gonna be able to see that handbook before we vote on the policy well we need the policy approved before we develop the handbook no but i mean you could have the draft the draft language for the for the handbook and because otherwise we're proving a policy that we don't know what what the language is that it supports in the handbook right i mean that's kind of a procedural quandary for the board it's a i think there was like a supplemental document that you gave us when we did the hearing a couple weeks ago is that going to remain the same
104like could we reference that procedure or whatever it's called i feel like the last sentence of this says the district shall prescribe procedures conditions and standards for early admission to kindergarten and first grade well instead of just saying that should we say refer to blah blah blah blah to see our procedures i mean what if a parent wants to apply where do they they don't know where to go based on those policies point taken so we will we will be sure to provide either a change in the policy verbiage itself to refer to and or maybe just add an addendum to the policy are you planning on making changes to what we have in place today or are you pretty much planning on no the only thing that we were going to clarify was that
105you know um and again i don't want to get into the specifics of any particular situation but if somebody were to complete kindergarten somewhere that we would still allow them to kind of enter in at first grade okay okay because i actually had that question because this policy made it seem like there wasn't that possibility so nope we need to make sure that that is clear that that's possible and again that that may be in that administrative rule that we'll figure out a way to get it get that in there it is an entrance age though for um first grade for b yeah i saw that but it maybe it's just the way i'm reading it i'm reading it as if you had to be a certain age and have completed kindergarten it must be
106six oh it's a separate sentence but i mean that could be six years of age so let's say the child's still five but they completed kindergarten i just want to make sure that that child can still enter yeah our school district even if they're not six well we'll take a look at that and see if we can clarify it further yeah we may just need to add like the word district because it talks a lot about if you came from another state or country you could still enter but what if you just came from another district within wisconsin and you still ended up going in early i feel like that might clear it up a little bit more i feel like this is the problem with neil you get some better but you get a
107lot of extra that we don't really need i think in some of these that makes it muddier but we'll take a look at it okay we'll address those for sure why don't we go uh if questions if there's questions let's do it policy by policy since we're still on entrance stage does anybody have another question about entrance age i have one more it says that the superintendent is has the final decision under our current policy the school board has the final decision so this is being changed to superintendent and there's no no above that for the family to appeal and that's an f appeal of denial of waiver can you what was your question again oh so under the current policy it was the school board that has the final decision it was written in
108it yeah yeah i went and i read it and that's like you in this case this is what neola is recommending so i just wanted to make it very clear that we understand and if everybody's okay with this that it's the superintendent who's the final decision i'll say i'm not comfortable with that i think it should be the board but you know that's for us all to decide and i think it should be his decision the superintendent's decision but i think the appeals should still come to the board right so i think i think in almost all situations an appeal should come to the board in case there's right because if we don't know about it and there's extenuating circumstances something changes we may need to change our policy or whatever we have to adopt
109to right accommodate someone else but under this policy it says appeal and denial of waiver and it says the decision the superintendent or designee is final so are we looking to change that to the final that the appeal is actually goes to the board i mean i think i think what we're going to fall into is the trap that that we did the last time um because in order for the board to because i wouldn't make a decision that would go against our board policy and so the board would have to change their policy to approve something that i would have denied the thing is this policy no longer has criteria or procedures in it well that's what we're going to bring forth that we would have that okay but again that's you know like
110i would not go beyond what's in the policy when i make my decision and so in my opinion i believe it gives somebody a basically false hope that the board is going to change their policy in order to make an exception yeah i agree i feel like if you if you found a case where you felt like we should make an exception you would bring that to us and say hey you know this this kid it doesn't meet the criteria but maybe we should adjust it because blah blah blah blah like i feel like you're going to try and do what's in the best interest of the child in the family and i agree i feel like the hearing we had recently was a lot of false hope because all we did was turn around
111and look at our policy and then reject it okay no more questions or comments on this one all right then if there's any other comments let's go to nondiscrimination i think the hazing and the student anti-harassment and bullying they sort of all went together because i believe they um referenced each other they do those were confusing yeah that was interesting you're nulling me so is there any questions now on just this one or we're ready we're going to put them all together not just the only thing we're not talking about is grading so we'll do the non-discrimination hazing student anti-harassment and bullying because they all sort of reference each other so janet could we just separate out the non-discrimination okay if you want to start with that make sure no no no i'm saying i
112don't i don't necessarily want to start with that i'm just saying that because the student hazing uh student anti-harassment and bullying are all those all went to 51 30. i'm sorry those all went to that's a non-discrimination okay from bucket okay if we could just do that whatever non-discrimination then we'll focus on that one any questions on that one i do one second sorry i printed these out and wrote all over the place instead of compiling my question okay i just have one um because i did see i had a bunch of questions about the reference policies but diana fixed that so um in the beginning of this one and it applies to some of the other ones as well where we're talking about sex um it says including transgender status change of sex or
113gender identity can we also add gender expression because that is something different than gender identity where is that indicate that in the very first full paragraph yeah it wasn't the neola one but whatever the board wants i don't know what that means but can you elaborate on it yeah sure the difference is so gender identity is what you feel your gender is and the expression is how you express that to the world so there could be someone that feels masculine or male but maybe chooses to wear a skirt so those are two different things and we wouldn't want someone to be discriminated or harassed because they're a boy wearing a skirt and it's they're not necessarily transgender they just feel like they want to wear a skirt to express their gender wouldn't that fall under
114general harassment though i mean if someone gets harassed for wearing a skirt isn't it well the only gender reference in there is gender identity so i'm just saying because they are two different things i think we should have listed out both gender identity and gender expression i think this also goes to the way regulations and laws are written so if a regulation or a federal law state law has it written that way then we should um in order to be complying with the law but if not then i think we're going back to sort of what mitch is saying um general harassment because there's the laws look at that differently but there's harassment and there's discrimination there are two different policies right right i'm sorry yeah we're doing non-discrimination so so again it goes back
115to making sure that we're complying with the laws with how they right but are written but i think janet i mean in fairness i i do think that this is something i'm not familiar with um to be honest with you but i'm i think that we should be in the business of trying to protect our kids as much as we can from bad things happening to them i don't know what's going on with whoever the kid we're talking about and it's i don't think that it's a minimum duty to comply with the law i think it's a maximum duty to try to protect our kids and to try to make sure that they're not subjected to discrimination for whatever reason and if that and adding those two words doesn't cost us anything and it doesn't
116and it doesn't you know and it potentially could help a kid and i think that if that's the case then it's probably worth doing i'm not disagreeing with that part um of course we don't want to discriminate based on any characteristics it's just that you don't necessarily list every single characteristic because in a way you start to limit so generally keeping it more general than it applies to more people so i guess i just i'm thinking we need to keep it compliant i agree with that because i think if you list out 50 things you're very thorough on listing out exactly what you're explicit on and then all of a sudden you're missing one and i would read that as obviously that one didn't make that i feel like neo already went fairly specific by
117including transgender status change of sex and then gender identity so i feel like i don't know to me adding a fourth specific isn't any worse than having the three that we already have in b and by saying gender identity instead of just gender they've excluded gender expression i don't think expression has gender i'm just going to say it i don't think it's an expression has gender i don't think clothing has gender i think it's like mitch said it's it's so you're you're going down a rabbit hole of trying to decide inanimate objects having some sort of gender i don't think a clothing with buttons or a pair of pants or a skirt because there have been kilts for centuries so it really doesn't matter to me because i don't think it touches anything i think
118when we're dealing with behavior issues or bullying that's going to be based on the other policies that we have i think neola has covered all the bases when it covers it because this is a human thing and not an inanimate object thing so when we bring this for the vote at the next meeting we can put that in i will do some research and provide you guys some yeah you can make sure if it's if it's compliant and then if we want to change it we can make that amendment when we vote on it can i ask a question on this one to there's another one of those references about in the district employee handbook but we're going to get those things also before the next meeting right just like in the prior policy there's
119another one of those references sure yeah i mean i just like i mean if we're gonna vote on it and it's in the employee handbook or if it's gonna be in the employee handbook you've got some proposed language that could be tacked on that so we know what we're including by reference in the policy is so wherever or is the language already there that's what i'm asking i think whatever it is but we were gonna we were gonna go through the employee handbook in the personnel committee so i don't think that i think we're putting no only the staff handbook oh that is the employment oh yeah but oh does it reference the employee one i'm sorry i thought you were talking about the student handling you wouldn't know this one is the reference to
120the employee so yeah i don't know that i mean i think we have to approve this and then make the changes to the employee handbook when we make the changes but why would you do that when you're approving something you don't know what you're approving it doesn't make any sense the employee handbook's approved it's the current employee but does the language already exist that is referenced in this policy there's currently bullying harassment in the employment i'm i'm saying the language that so if you look on that paragraph in the non-discrimination policy where you begin there's a couple paragraphs and there's a series of letters letter paragraphs a through i after that it says the board is also committed to equal employment opportunity blah blah blah and then it crosses out policy one 1422 policy 3122
121and policy 4122 it creates we'll make sure that they're aligned pardon me we will make sure that they are aligned and you'll you'll give us the absolutely i really appreciate that thank you and i know just as an employer they have to comply already with equal employment non-discrimination practices so i'd be very shocked if those are not in the employee handbook matter of fact if you go to the employee page that's linked in the policies which i have been looking at there are also other um notices there that are required by law so i would expect them to be there but yes let's double check to make sure and to that point joe and this is a question sort of for all of these policies have all of these drafts already been reviewed by our
122legal counsel for the changes that were made as you recall niola does have legal counsel that supports them right but i know we have our own legal counsel and we've had and we don't we don't feel it's necessary to expend those resources so the answer is no correct okay thank you i just wanted to clarify that okay do we want to move on to the other policies yes okay so we'll move on to the other ones uh the ones that are dealing with the hazing student anti-harassment in bullying okay i have a question i have a concern about um the i'm sorry do you have one you want to talk about first gen no go ahead you can start okay i wasn't sure um in the and i'm conflating these i apologize on we have
123the student anti-harassment the bullying policy and the hazing policy so i believe it was in the student anti-harassment i'm trying to put my hands on it but there was a complaint procedure that was laid out um in i believe that one i'm just trying to grab it here yes okay so this is the one which one i'm sorry the student anti-harassment policy so i really do i would really like to convince the board that this policy in particular should be reviewed by our legal counsel and the reason for that and i agree with you joe i mean maybe it's not necessary to expand our legal resources or our economic resources on legal review and we have neil look at it looking at them but my concern is that we had legal counsel come to us
124um i don't remember how long ago it was now but it was around um a hazing situation i believe where we were cautioned as a board not to put into our policies very stringent and detailed quasi-legal procedures because in doing so we expose ourselves to additional liability and she was very clear that we shouldn't do that now that puzzles me when i look at this student anti-harassment policy because this student anti-harassment policy clearly lays out a quasi-judicial policy um and a process for complaints um and in fact you know has different compliance officers what i've got it in the on page six under the investigation and complaint procedure section so that just gave me pause for that reason and so i'm not sure it wouldn't be worth it to try to um ensure that we
125as a district are protecting ourselves and making sure that we're doing everything that our our particular legal counsel wants us to do because that's what she's there for is to try to help us do those things so i i guess that's what i would that's what i'd be requesting i know i would respectfully disagree with that um i don't think we need to expand those additional resources i do believe that neola has their legal staff that wouldn't put us in a predicament legally and if this is what they're recommending i would recommend that on their behalf i do agree that we've taken into consideration some of the things that were brought up previously and again i can't imagine neola services would be not looking out for our best interests i i appreciate your perspective joe
126i do as a practicing leader for 23 years i disagree and i think that i'm uniquely qualified to make that disagreement um and i would say this i caution you and everybody else who believes that there is ever a one-size-fits-all for anybody because there isn't and when you practice law for long enough you realize that the cookie cutter approach doesn't work for anybody and i understand that in this format i i fully agree that a lot of these policies can be cookie cutter but not all so i'm saying sure don't expend resources for all of these i get that but i know that when our council came she said those words i understand that and i'm concerned so i've said my piece is there something specific is there an exact line i mean it seems
127kind of vague like it says the compliance officer will try to complete the investigation within 15 days it doesn't say he will abs i don't see a lot of definitives in here i guess so is there something the whole policy from page six onward i'm sorry did you read the entire policy from page six onward match not right now but i read it earlier correct okay then you read that there's a complaint procedure that is exactly the process that's exactly what our council said do not put into your policy because can i i have i have some legal occasion here what you've been saying here so i vaguely remember legal counsel saying something about this but this was in regards to bullying so i'm and that was she was talking about the bullying policy we
128had so i'm reading the policy here that's being proposed for i'm sorry not bullying it was hazing it was the hazing so i just want to make that clear so she was referring to our hazing policy that we shouldn't be too specific in the hazing policy so i'm looking at the hazing policy now and i'm going through where it starts then to refer back to the student anti-harassment policy that if it is discovered that the hazing was based on [Music] oh based on any protected classes then you go back to the student anti-harassment have to follow that procedure but otherwise if it's not due to a protected class being violated then you don't follow that policy so i'm wondering does that make a difference because she our attorney did make it very clear that it
129was our hazing policy and i guess when it when it comes to the protected classes then we have no choice but to go back to the student anti-harassment policy and have to follow that because then you're talking about you know discrimination happening and and there's laws and then you do have to have a procedure for filing complaints and everything i think that it's entirely possible that our legal counsel could take a look at this policy and say that's fine go ahead and do it in which case i guarantee you it's not going to be that expensive but i for one would really feel more comfortable if she did okay we can bring that up for vote next time when we're doing the vote do we have any other questions on these policies i had the
130same one here with the gender expression okay on all three of these really because they have the same paragraph essentially so five five one six one seven one and then one seven oh one all three of those was that not in the non-discrimination or was it in that two i think they all listed that on four okay that's why i wasn't sure it's okay leaving awful more on the bullying the final sections where it talks about records and reports do we do that do we keep records of the number of reports made okay and we do have an annual report that someone could request if they want to okay i believe it's listed on the what on the website yes okay and then the other question but i think i saw it in the in
131the old policy the observance of the bullying awareness day is something we really do yes okay i noticed that some of the policies referred to protected classes and some referred to protected characteristics i don't know if you know anything why the difference um some of those um i know niola recommended the characteristics some of our staff had changed it to classes and then um they suggested we keep it with the characteristics and i missed some of those should work classes should be characteristic okay anything else so we can move on to grading all right then we'll move on to grading any questions on that policy have one the last section about the dual enrollment courses um it said sometimes we get the grades and it's on our transcript if we get it from the post-secondary
132institution are those grades then used in gpas yes you can get back to me if you don't know that's fine but my question was if they are why wouldn't those also be weighted since they are also college level that's a good question i think my daughter would have appreciated that because they were all weighted i'm just based on personal experience i think they are included in the gpa but i don't know for sure they look like they are any other questions on those all right uh then we're done with our first read oh no it's not on there okay all right so student fees will be coming through a first read after the finance committee releases it okay and then action items discussed in closed session we have a motion for that i moved to
133approve the employment services report as presented second i have a motion by ms crosby in a second by was mr helmer okay i didn't hear you at first uh to approve i need to scott oh sorry we don't need to discuss this um all those in favor raise your right hand all those opposed motion passes and our last item here is future meetings and dates a reminder that board meetings are generally held the second and fourth mondays beginning at seven o'clock p.m in the eisenhower commons unless noted otherwise so we have a bit of a break our next meeting is july 26th and it will be preceded by a finance committee meeting at 5 45 we then have a meeting august 9th august 23rd which again will be preceded by a finance committee meeting at
1345 45 august 30th preceded by a personnel committee meeting virtual at four o'clock other important event a date to remember is our district budget hearing and annual meeting is september 27th scheduled for seven o'clock p.m here in the eisenhower commons do i have a motion to adjourn second i have a motion by mr kurth ii by mr heller to adjourn all those in favor raise your right hand all those opposed then um meeting is adjourned thank you have a very nice fourth of july holiday and any vacations you have coming up we'll see you on the 26th of july