001ladies and gentlemen it is now 601 p.m and a quorum of the members is present so the meeting of the board of education the school district in new berlin has called to order please call the roll ms crosby here mr helmer here mr kurth miss manley here from my last time miss scholes here miss unger here ms wundercheck i would entertain a motion to adjourn to closed session madam president i move to recess into closed session pursuant to section 19.85 c e and f of the wisconsin statute to consider a student early entrance appeal b adjourn to executive session for deliberation second employment oh an employment conference oh there's a whole bunch of two more yeah sorry employment conversation pertaining to staff and to discuss preliminary notices of non-renewal second i have a motion by
002mr kurth on a second by ms manley we are i'm sorry please take the roll mr kurth miss manley miss crosby yes mr helmer yes miss scholes yes ms unger yes ms wandercheck motion passes we're moving into closed session and return to open session around seven o'clock do it is now 7 16 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 who are able please rise and now for those who wish to prepare for the meeting we'll 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 by providing the agenda to the
003city library the agenda was also posted on the district website a copy of the agenda was forwarded to the journal sentinel the waukesha freeman and the waukesha now all of which have filed requests for all public notices we begin tonight with recognitions so we have some special recognitions the first one is the career exploration partnership spotlight but unfortunately we received notice that the person who we were going to present it to is under the weather so it will be delayed to a future meeting and then uh next is the world affairs seminar scholarship recipients so we'll have director of secondary teaching and learning kelly kyokowski i present on behalf of the the rotary as well as the recipient oh it's my pleasure tonight to introduce the two students who the rotary in the school district
004of new berlin um are sending to the world affairs seminar this june so our first award recipient is laura stadler from new berlin eisenhower and the second is faith lopez from new berlin west faith couldn't make it tonight but she did say thank you to both the school district of new berlin and the rotary and i'm here with dr art and grow from the rotary and this is laura so some things that stuck out about laura's essay and i've read a lot of essays over the years and hers really did stick out she talked about the pandemic and impact on her and the impact of what she saw giving back to the community during it so she talked about you know food banks soup kitchens giving back by making masks and how important it was
005for young people to truly understand the global perspective and how others impact and perceive things so thank you laura for a great essay and thank you faith for also a great essay we're excited to send her to the session which is cities urban life in a changing world this one is actually going to be 100 virtual so it should be interesting um i know you will represent us well so thank you to the rotary and thank you for applying we're really excited that you're representing us would she would she like to say a word yes she can i just want to say thank you for the opportunity and i look forward to representing school district of new berlin or yeah at the world affairs seminar in the summer so thank you yeah just a little
006explanation of the world affairs seminar which will be held for a week at the carroll university in waukesha in in the weeks time about 35 different countries are represented so when they have face-to-face time it's really an uh it's just an unbelievable experience for the students to get to know kids from all over the world and i'm just so thankful that we have the opportunity to sponsor two of the high school students from new berlin and thank you for chuck and and for raising such a wonderful daughter thank you congratulations our next recognition is going to susan manley our longtime member of the board we are very sad to see her go she's been with the board for a very long time let me go through let me go through and list some of your
007accomplishments during the years so we recognize susan's commitment to the school district having served on the board from 2005 to in 2009 to this year serving as your clerk during school years 2005 to 2006 200 2013 to 2014 to 2018 to 19 and also as vice president for 2019-2020 she has served on the personnel committee since 2019 and also served on the district's budget balancing task force in 2019 as one of our board member liaisons so we really do appreciate her service and we have a very special recognition award to give her thank you say um it's just been an incredible honor to serve on the new berlin school board for 15 years so yes i'm old um but i'm profoundly grateful to the voters who've entrusted me with this privilege truly is during my
008tenure lots of change i can't even begin to share we used to get our packets dropped off at our houses now we get them electronically right just to name a few big things but during that whole time the one thing that's never changed is the district's commitment to educational excellence and certainly the remarkable parent and community support we're just in an incredible district i'm joe your entire administrative team i mean you guys are just top-notch and the exceptional teaching and support staffs are a treasure to our community i've had the good fortune to see firsthand the tireless effort to ensure that continual elevation of the student experience and achievements continue to increase year after year i mean it's truly extraordinary and board members it's been wonderful to work alongside each of you while we don't
009always agree on everything we have learned i've personally learned a great deal from each and every one of you so thank you for that i wish you continued success and appreciate your hard work and dedication to our school district and to our community so thank you [Applause] all right next is privilege of the floor meetings of the board are conducted for the purpose of carrying on the business of the schools and therefore are not public meetings but meetings held in public this portion of the meeting is an opportunity for you to come and voice your concerns to the board so please do not be defended when we listen quietly 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
010listen 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 a resident in this school district each presentation will be restricted to a maximum three minutes privilege of the floor will be limited to one half hour presentations are not to be designed for purposes of engaging others in a debate in this forum discussion of certified classified or professional personnel or of individual board members shall not be considered an appropriate topic for this forum and the speaker will be ruled out of order first up we have leah demille hello leah demmel and i'm a school district of new berlin parent and a resident of new berlin um this is regarding since we're
011going to be discussing the social studies curriculum it's along the lines of the diversity and inclusion curriculum so burlington cedarburg elmbrook wauwatosa new berlin and many other cities nationwide all these school districts have recently been accused of racism issues many have received petitions similar to the one received by our district from alumni and students demanding critical race theory and identity politics to be implemented to correct racism is this a coincidence do all these schools have widespread racism problems or is this an attempt at political indoctrination i believe it is a regional and national agenda to implement partisan politics into public schools critical race theory suggests that american society is inherently racist there are many systems of oppression including law enforcement health care and education as examples supposedly caucasian people have white privilege and must recognize
012that including children progressives wish to create a more equitable and collective society this movement is about acclimating people to the concepts of socialism in the name of racial justice what used to be outlandish theories taught in college classrooms are recently being promoted in k-12 education with zero research on effectiveness or risk to our youth this is scary young children and teens are still developing their self-esteem and identities it's crazy to propose a potentially harmful curriculum for children regardless of what surrounding school districts are doing because if this is implemented we cannot easily undo psychological self-identity and self-esteem damage to children school board members please pause and do what is right for our children not what is the modern ideology sometimes new ideas are not always good ideas non-negotiable training modeled after almbrook school district has
013been mentioned in at least two of our district's meetings board meetings there are aspects that use critical race theory and identity politics language and book selections new berlin should not adopt this training i would also like to thank the superintendent and school board for the impressive presentation on diversity and inclusion during the march 22nd board meeting i believe our school district is already doing so much in the area of diversity and inclusion the statistics presented seem to show that we have made much progress we are a wonderful school district with a focus on college readiness that alone is integral to our student success of all races regarding diversity and inclusion i think that should definitely include special needs children in addition to race i clearly see that our fiscally responsible district uses resources where they
014are needed although there is always room for improvement i would like the superintendent and board to recognize how great our district is thank you thank you up next we have jeanette nowak jeannette nowak i'm a new berlin resident um thank you i personally believe administration and staff need to have a multiple year plan to teach how to be culturally responsive with history lessons use restorative practices and how to modify the curriculum to expand on topics along with how to facilitate conversations that will be uncomfortable and how to build trust with students of color lgbtq and those who feel unsafe for other reasons so i'm in a feelings place and um i just want to share a little bit more about me and why i've been coming and very passionate about education and students and them
015having that wide broad knowledge i'm a proud mps special education teacher of five years who teaches middle school students on the alternate curriculum that are identified with intellectual disabilities of iqs of 55 and below i currently teach students that are black hispanic asian muslim and mixed races i have received nothing but high scores on my evaluations at the end of the year and i'm always visiting my students in their homes at least once a month and reaching out to the community for donations to help out my students and their families and personally new berlin has been doing a great job of helping my students and i've been blessed i personally i'm getting a little bit more and more upset with new berlin and ellenbrook but primarily new berlin so mps train trains and expects teachers
016to teach with cultural responsiveness equity and keeping cultural practices at the forefront at least at my school and mps has long taught this way but if a suburban district with the majority of white demographics realize that they need to keep up with the educational practices and yes this is being taught in college universities i'm a proud cardinal stretch alumni and this is how they educate their current teachers going into the field so then why so much retaliation here in new berlin it makes me really disgusted that there's so much hate in people's hearts and as an educator to a diverse group of amazing children it makes me so outraged hearing how black indigenous people of color are not worth learning about especially when it comes to historical accuracy taught in the white majority of white
017districts and how i have to face my students for hours a day looking at them and knowing that there are people out there who care less about them and their history i have to teach my students about people with hate in their heart and how to navigate to stay alive i have to teach them how to act around police and when they leave outside the neighborhood why because i want them to live and to be treated with kindness and to be functional in our world these are conversations that i have to have all the time but new berlin doesn't there are conversations such as the wars genocide human trafficking domestic abuse child abuse women's rights unfair treatment and legal systems her story and being woke about our world that is what our students really need
018to learn about just because this doesn't happen in new berlin doesn't mean it's not happening everywhere and it's very important for them to know especially if they want to be future leaders in a career in college-ready world that they are educated with that world lens and perspective and not going out there being unaware of what's going on so if you want your students to be successful then they need to know this especially in their future career field politics teachers whatever it may be these are all very important and not just in the bubble of new berlin so thank you very much i appreciate you listening thank you next is scott yent my comments to you tonight have to do with increasing public participation in these meetings we run into a bit of a paradox in
019this regard because few people attend on a regular basis but when something compels them to do so their participation is not met with the welcome that is deserved in fact i tried to attend the march 22nd meeting and deliver comments to you at this podium but i was not able to because of your attendance restrictions if only we had an auditorium in this building capable of holding everyone who wanted to participate that said i'm glad to be able to address you now because i think the public wants to participate at a greater level and it would be a mistake to lose the value that opportunity presents to you it is in your power to show them that you encourage their participation by providing more ways for that participation to happen currently this time period is
020the only time the public has to address you and have any say in the ongoing activity of the school board if i were interested for example in one of the agenda items tonight say the item labeled discuss and approve policy 5630 corporal punishment this is my only opportunity to let you know what i think about what you're about to discuss and approve except that i have no idea what the proposed changes are to policy 5630 the board doc site only lists the agenda item with no supporting documentation that gives me no way to provide you with any useful perspective or guidance there are two opportunities with this example you could list the proposed changes to policy 5630 and the board docs agenda so that we could review them and comment during privilege of the floor
021or by email before the meeting second you can modify your public comment policy by welcoming input from the public unlisted agenda items during the meeting a neighboring benchmark school district does this by allowing public statements quote prior to voting on action items or prior to close of board discussion the board president will call the name submitted on the form requests to make these statements are done similar to how privilege of the floor is done here now making these two simple changes would improve public participation by welcoming the perspectives and feedback from the community you are tasked to serve these aren't new and revolutionary changes because they're being done successfully by at least one other school district if you are serious about wanting more people in these chairs at these meetings please consider making changes such
022as these to make those people feel welcome and useful i think you'll find the rewards outweigh the effort thank you thank you up next president's message um i actually was planning on mentioning this but between meetings there is another way to contact the school board and put in your comments questions or anything like that and i just wanted to remind everyone of that when you go to the school district website and you go to the board page at the top you can contact the school board members through an i form so please feel free to send your comments and questions through the i form at any time on any subject if you want to reach any of us individually all of our individual board member emails are there as well as our school district voicemail
023phone numbers so i just wanted to make everybody aware of that that is my only message for this evening so we can move on to the administrative report first up secondary student representative update thank you so spring sports are wrapping up their contact days at west as they head into the real season teams are finding many ways to get better and get ready even facing covid protocols multiple student athletes have recently tested into the higher weight clubs in the after school lifting program many of our viking basketball players received all-conference awards for their seasons including megan schultz kayla garney megan church jackson hoyer noah daniels and nate yacht west held a successful spring spirit week with outfit lottery winners receiving prizes every day and a pep rally with dodgeball games a cheer and palm performance
024crowning of the crystal ball king and queen and the announcement of the 2021 prom court the west theater arts program held a successful tribute to musical theater to perform specific highlight scenes of different shows nhs hosted an easter extravaganza with an egg hunt and other activities for the families of new berlin new berlin west combined stress last week is coming up activities will include food trucks therapy dogs an outdoor walk arts and crafts and yoga green colored bracelets will also be sold to raise money for mental health organization deca recently raised 293 dollars to donate to the muscular dystrophy association by selling shamrocks mikaya kukis and maria radish were winners of the american association of teachers of spanish and portuguese 2021 poster contest students in grades 7 through 12 participated in the digital no place
025for hate tour focused on positive communication and relationships with others students in grades 7 through 10 will participate in forward and act aspire testing on april 28th and advanced placement students will be reviewing for their upcoming exams with their instructors plans for prom senior awards and graduation are all continuing forward and we're looking forward to these events thank you thank you superintendents updates i do have a few updates i just uh you know after coming back from spring break we've had the time to reflect uh not only as a parent i've got a senior and a junior uh already and susan you've got another graduating senior so lots of things happening and lots of things moving you know as emily just mentioned we've got a lot of great things happening in our school district and
026i'd be remiss again to talk about the the level of effort and what we've been able to do as a school district to keep our keep our schools open since the inception of the start of the school year and it's been quite an accomplishment to say the least the fact that some districts even now don't even have their kids back in school yet as a testament to the work that we've done and the leadership that's been provided on guidance provided by the school board so i'm i'm completely i'm completely overwhelmed at that at that reflection again recognizing that uh again some districts aren't even back in full session with their students you know when we talk about equity that's actually one of the biggest inequities that i see in our lifetime in public education the
027fact that kids aren't back in school right now i'm absolutely ecstatic that we've been able to provide that opportunity for our students at the same time i'm also happy that we're able to provide a a virtual option for the families that wanted it and as as the data have shown uh we've closed that gap we had last spring we had learning loss we experienced it the data are showing that we've closed that gap and that the rigor of the online option that we are providing is is just as well as is the opportunities that we have for our students in our in our buildings and so i i had time to reflect over over the last week and again we've come a long way and certainly um i'm kind of tired of the pandemic i
028think many of us are and you know some of the questions that i that i have recently gotten not many but some are you know when are we going to start loosening some of the restrictions that that we've put upon ourselves i don't know what i will tell you is this we have from from from pre from the start of the school year we have followed the guidance of the waukesha county department of health we are not i am not a health expert i'm the superintendent of the school district and our health agency is the department of health at the county and so for example one of the questions i've received recently is now that the the the the mass executive order was overturned uh what does that mean for the school district well the
029county is telling us that we should stay masked up the county is telling us to continue to stay safe to stay open and i i there's no way that i could recommend to the board to do something different i just don't feel that that would be appropriate especially at this time now you know again we've come a long way uh but there's you know there's still a lot of question it's a divisive topic quite honestly whether we should be masked or not but again i can only i can only rely upon what our local experts are telling us and that's to stay masked at this time could that change next week it could change tomorrow actually with the way this pandemic is gone uh it could change at any time but again that is that
030is my recommendation based off of the county's guidance and so you know the other thing too is to to to take steps back um when when coveted cases are on the rise right now uh i'm not sure that that would you know again that's i'm sure that the county's taking that into consideration uh we also have a lot of things at stake you know you know sometimes a little bit of a sacrifice i'd rather have a bit of a sacrifice than not to make me make sure that our kids are in school for example you know emily mentioned we've got ap testing coming up we've got another round of a c t testing these are high stakes opportunities for our students we've got a prom coming up and you know so if we're reducing the
031mitigation efforts that have gotten us this far and again if the county is not suggesting otherwise i i would have to i have to recommend that we stick with their guidance do i want to tell you that i just i'm done with the masks yes that's what i would love to tell you because then i can wear my glasses when i talk because right now i can't see you but uh but that's okay um but point point being is that we've come a long way we should be very proud um my hope is that i can work with the county should nothing change between now and the end of the school year as far as what their guidance is i want to work with them at least come this summer so that when we do
032have summer school that maybe we try we try and do something different because now you don't have as many kids uh you know you know that could be impacted um so that's something that you know i will be working with kelly as far as the summer school uh our summer school efforts um i'm gonna be i'll be pushing the county you know because there are some questions that i have you know some things that i've read like you know texas and florida have done away with with the masking requirements and some districts have chosen not to uh continue to wear masks and they've been successful so then what does that mean for us and so i would challenge the county health department on that as well and what i've been getting as of late from
033them is that there's not enough research around these variants to be able to determine the impact that those variants will have on the spread of covet 19. which again you know for me again i if if it were up to me i'd do it with masks i'd do away with social distancing i'd get rid of the one-way hallways i'd get the lunchrooms back to where they need to be but that's you know ultimately that's not up to me it's i have to rely on the health department to make that suggest that that guidance on our behalf um so really that's the the biggest update that i have related to covert 19 i will be providing an update to families related to that um also know that the county while we're not making a push you
034know just like we did for staff we offered the opportunity for a vaccine the county is offering opportunities for students that are 17 and older uh to have that opportunity and so we'll include some of that information uh we've had some you know again i've got a 17 and 18 year old so we've had some interesting conversations at home about the vaccine as well so uh with that that concludes my my superintendent's update and and finally i just i would like to thank susan as well you know susan you you've i've you and i have been here about the same time but you were on and off there for a little bit uh susan was on the board when i was initially hired uh we certainly have come a long way i'm extremely proud of
035of the work that you've done on behalf of the school board i've seen it you know i've seen every almost every day of it and uh really want to thank you for everything that you've done on behalf of the the board leadership and uh wish you all the best of luck as you look onto bigger and better things does anybody have any questions we would just limit them to informational questions okay then we'll move on up next is the consent agenda which includes the notice and the proof of minutes of march 22nd i have a motion move to approve the consent agenda as presented second so i have a motion by mr helmer i'm sorry emotion by mr kurth in a second by mr helmer i did forget to ask if there was anything that
036needs to be pulled out separately for consideration which i'm assuming not okay so any discussion on this hearing none then all those in favor raise your right hand all those opposed raise your right hand motion passes on to our regular agenda first is school update from orchard lane i'd like to introduce principal royce lindner along with associate principal julie cater good evening everybody it is really great to be in front of all of you this evening before we get started with our orchard lane update i just want to say thank you for the opportunity to return to building leadership it has been an absolutely it's been a very unique year to say the least but it's been absolutely wonderful and also i want to thank you for the opportunity to work side by side with
037julie in a building leadership capacity she's absolutely wonderful at what she does and i feel very very fortunate to be able to share that responsibility with her to get started um we wanted to share really part of our goals with you and the first goal that we have is really built around literacy like many of our other elementary schools are what we're looking at is we're looking at a growth goal that's really built on four different indicators we didn't want to limit ourselves to just one indicator when it came to measuring our students as readers so we have four different ones one being our math test the other really being our reading levels that we look at throughout the year we also take a look at report card scores that are built around different comprehension
038levels both with fiction and non-fiction literature and then lastly for our first second and uh kindergarten first and second graders i would take a look at our ela which is also early literacy assessment to share some of our celebrations right now at kindergarten which is such an important level for us we're really proud to say that 93 of our students are meeting those reading level goals at second grade we have great response with our early literacy assessment which really shows that those students are ready to take that next step going into third grade and next in fourth grade we had quite a few students coming in at really high levels and so anytime we have students coming in at high levels we always want to know are they going to continue to grow and we're
039really happy to say that our fourth graders are doing a great job with that but along with that we're also always taking a look at what areas can we improve on we have a couple things we really noticed when we took a look at our data number one we've got quite a discrepancy between the growth that we see in our map scores and also the score the growth that we see in our reading reading levels and quite honestly between the two of those i'm actually happy to say that our reading level growth is actually much higher than our map growth and the reason i'm happy about that the fact that you have those two different measures is that our map tests as you know really only give those three times during the year they're really
040kind of a snapshot moment in time type of an assessment whereas our reading levels are measured throughout the year so if i was going to have a discrepancy between those two things i would be much more happy to see that our reading level growth is high the other thing that we want to continually work on though is to work on the growth for our students that are significantly below where we want them to be according to those grade level benchmarks one of the things that we're trying to do in the process of growing those readers is really presenting ourselves as a literacy forward school so we're looking forward to the opportunity as we'll talk about later to have more and more people coming through the hallways of orchard lane but for our students right now
041we want to make sure that as they go into their classrooms as they take a look at their classroom libraries as they walk through halls that we present ourselves all of us as readers and we want to show the value that reading has for us as a school so in addition to our literacy goal we also decided um that we thought it was really important to make a community goal and so what we did is we took a look and we analyzed the trends in our survey data from orchard lane the last two years and the survey data was from staff parents and students and we basically came up with um a goal and then how do we know if we're progressing and meeting um you know the expectations we have set for ourselves is
042we came up with different indicators again analyzing those trends where we thought you know coming in as a new team we probably need to really focus on these specific areas and so what we're going to do here for the next few minutes is we're going to talk about some of the things that we've done not only as a leadership team but as a building as a community as far as trying to make sure we're growing in those areas so building community with our staff this last summer royce and i invited all staff if they wanted to voluntarily come in and meet with us or meet with us via a google meet and do what we call a 3-2-1 interview and the 3-2-1 interview works this way basically the staff member could ask us three questions
043professional personal um as a team because we are a brand new team working together like what three questions do you have of us then we went to basically two things what two things would you like royce and i to know about you whether that be on a professional level whether it be a personal level what else would it be also as a team as a teacher who is just new to teaching or as a teacher who's been in it for a while so it was pretty much wide open and then the last uh the one stands for what is one thing you would like us to focus on as a school this year as a leadership team um maybe you know it's kind of been in place for a little while maybe needs a little
044tweaking needs a little bit of a change or this thing is moving in a great direction you know don't change anything and so we did that another thing we've done is we thought it was really important based off of the feedback we got was that staff are doing some amazing things within our community and we are recognized a lot by parents we're recognized a lot by district administrators but we don't recognize each other and so what we put in place this year is what we call starbursts and so every week when we have our our weekly professional learning opportunities we start off with a starburst you can recognize a colleague of yours for something that they've done maybe to help you as a teammate maybe something you've witnessed them helping a student succeed maybe something
045they've done out in the community so we've done a couple things that way then we took a look at the surveys the survey data from our students and one of the things that we recognized was students really value the the community piece the getting along with others the need to have friendships that are successful and so a few years back these uh staff members started kind of what they call the core values and it has to do with like character education and so the core values that they um ins basically put in place were kindness respect responsibility perseverance and integrity and so what we've done the staff have asked us to keep that going and to actually grow it and make it make it even bigger and so one of the things we've done is
046we have a monthly principal read in which we pick out a book and either mr lenoir myself will go into each classroom and we read the story and the story will revolve around one of our core values and afterwards we'll talk about it like how did the character show kindness but then we asked students to reflect how have you shown kindness how have your friends shown kindness what have you done outside of school to show kindness and it's more of a just kind of keep bringing those values back and and and really living them not only inside our building outside at recess on the bus and at home and then what we do is we celebrate those core values so when staff members see students you know demonstrating one of those values they can earn
047a star ticket and so when they get a star ticket they put their name on the ticket and they drop it into their grade level star ticket box and at the end of the week we draw names for a little prize but the one thing we did this year you can see and for those of you that have been in orchard lane you know what hallway that is right off the office that's a pretty big hallway and we made these huge stars four of them one for each quarter and every week after we get the star ticket star tickets drawn what we do is we put them up and we try to fill the star so happy to say that first quarter and second quarter the students were very successful um and they or they
048earned basically an all school award our first award for um first quarter was what we call jukebox and so classes could enter a song to mr lindner and throughout the course of two days every so often he would get on and he would be the dj and he would say and coming to you from mrs larosa's kindergarten classroom is the song and then we would play the song for a few minutes and the kids were all excited the second quarter we did what was called lights out and so each classroom could decide how do they wanted to spend that time with their lights out some students did flashlight reads some did dance party they had glow we put you know glow bracelets and things like that some did a movie but it was really pretty
049neat to see as we walked through the hallways and the kids were just so excited third quarter happy to say it doesn't show it on there but we did finish the third quarter right before spring break and they have filled that star and so what we'll be doing is taking some uh suggestions from staff members on to what our third quarter celebration will be just to continue you know we're going to continue looking at student and family engagement there's been quite a few things that we've been able to do not everything we want to do we've been able to do but we're definitely looking forward to some more things in the future but this year we started out the year we had our kindergarten tears and cheers celebration which is kind of that first day
050drop-off experience for our kindergarten families they still got a chance to do that it wasn't looking quite the same but they got to drop their children off at the the outside doors they got a chance to get some goodies and uh stick around and hear a little bit about what kindergarten is like at orchard lane and in the school district of new berlin so that was great for us to be able to do that the meetings that we've had with our families this year they've had to be virtual meetings but they've been really nice because we've asked our families to give us some give us some feedback on what are the things that they want to hear about so we put out a google form parents and families submitted those google forms with the things
051they wanted julie and i to speak to and then we were able to set up the google meets and then invite all of our families in uh to be able to listen to to those presentations just like with our staff we were able to do three two one interviews with our fourth fifth and sixth grade students to get a student perspective on the things that they would like to celebrate with orchard lane and also some of the things that they would like to see us work on as building leaders not to forget our virtual students i know julie had mentioned the reading we get a chance to read to our virtual classes and that is the best it is so wonderful to be able to see those students on screen we want to keep those
052students close to us as a building so we were able to actually to go and we booed all of our virtual students and give them a little bit of a treat and just a note to let them know that we're continually thinking of them most recently we've had we had a great opportunity to take that sabres data that we got from our students and from our staff and take a really close look at what that data was telling us about our students and about how we can continually work to build connections uh for those students as they come either into the into the four walls of orchard lane or they attend virtually um one of the things that we've been really excited about is about in february uh during black history month we started doing
053these morning presentations where we'd actually have sixth graders come in and do lessons during our morning announcements and those lessons really range from uh things so they could either be key people or key events in our history and during that month we actually decided like why just why stop there let's look at continuing this every single month so during the month of march we were able to focus on women's history during the month of april right now we're able to focus on arab american history and also autism awareness so we're just going to continue that because the reception has been fantastic our sixth graders have done a wonderful job and it's something that we can do perennial and really do it not only throughout the year but keep on growing that opportunity for our students
054something new that we started this year as well is we had the opportunity to get a access to a great module on anti-bullying and we actually took that module access and we extended it into building out a coalition at our school and a coalition includes not just staff but also families and even students so we're kind of coming together really with our goal of making sure that we have a common understanding of what bullying is how it impacts us as a school things that we can do to be proactive and also responsive to it when we see it another thing that we've done we've obviously we've all had to make some adjustments due to the the current situation we're in and just to give you a little idea what what used to happen is our
055sixth graders as we approached the end of the year here they would take a little field trip up to the middle school and they'd get a tour around the building and they'd meet some students and they'd meet some of the staff but over the last two years obviously that has had change and so last year the secondary staff from both buildings they put together a little video for the for the students and then it was sent out um kind of you know the same thing a little tour of the building introduced some people and so on and this year um i have a little bit of a history with you know uh being a former uh middle school high school um administrator and i thought you know we're gonna do the video again we won't
056be able to take the trip but why couldn't we bring some people to us and so i got approval um from from district level to have um some of our key people come in and talk to our students and and we've been doing this now since january we started with our associate principals from the two schools they came in and just did a meet and greet here's who i am do you have any questions this is what you have to look forward to our school counselors from the two schools have come down met with the students that's always happened it's continuing to happen the associate principals wanted to come back and this time bring the athletic directors because as you can imagine sixth graders had a lot of questions about what kind of fun things
057can we do in middle school and so they decided to bring down the athletic directors in april here our principals are going to come down to orchard lane and introduce themselves kind of talk to them a little bit get them excited for what's to come next year and then in may we're also going to bring in our school resource officers to introduce them talk a little bit about their role and then what kind of things they can get involved in that kind of coincide with some of the programs that the school resource officers run like for example midnight basketball or or summer volleyball things like that so with that what are our next steps well like many of us we hope that things are going to be different next year as far as some of
058the restraints that have been put on us um but one thing we are going to continue to do as a leadership team at orchard lane is we're going to continue to get feedback and again feedback from our stakeholders which would be our our parents our students and our staff and so we've already done that with our staff we have gotten mid-year feedback from them we've made some adjustments based on some of the feedback we've gotten and we're going to continue to get that feedback as we move into the end of the year and then reach out to our parents and to our our students as well uh one of the other steps we were able to take this year i'm really proud to say is that we're able to actually take some of our our
059money for our school and be able to invest it into adding some more diversity into our classroom libraries we really want those things to be universal we want our students as they walk into the classroom we want them to see themselves in the literature that surrounds them so that's been really important for us and we're really proud of what we've been able to build there looking at continued improvement we tucked in a document that we worked on this year and we talked about those four different indicators when it came to literacy growth in our school what we actually worked on with amy stapnesky as a team as we actually worked on some very specific steps we can take regardless of where students are performing in each of those indicators is what can we do next
060so if somebody is maybe like showing us that they have a little map score well what can we do if they're showing us their have a low ela score what can we do there so really some specific steps that we can be responsive to the needs that our students have and also we really want to we're really excited about the idea come assemblies bringing people together as much as soon as we can and one of the things that that we're excited to implement whenever we can is is something known as learning walks so learning walks they might look a little different depending on where you are but our idea of a learning walk is to be able to invite our stakeholders into orchard lane and be able to walk the halls with us talk a
061little bit about what's happening within our school and within our district you know just really excited about the opportunity to really welcome our community and our families into orchard lane so they can really see what their kids experience every time they come to school and without any questions i do want to just state that i think just sometimes you don't know when you have transitions what that's what that's going to look like rice requested the opportunity to go back into a building julie opted in to returning back to orchard lane um to help royce out because royce needed it i do [Laughter] uh and i'll tell you you know because they were also vacating other spots too and you know so it's it's always this you know what's what's what's the the good and the
062bad of it and what i can tell you is they have not only supported the transition of the in the positions that they left they've i believe done a successful job and an incredible job of transitioning as a new leadership team into that building they've shared the data with you and again there's work to be done there's always work to be done we are about continuous improvement but what i will tell you is the culture and the climate of that school is it's in a much different place than where it was and that certainly says a lot because if you don't have that culture and you don't have that climate it'll make the rest of it that much more difficult and and so i just want to commend them for their leadership uh the the
063the risk that they took because they were comfortable where they were at um and i i can say that i think we you guys made the right choice uh because it's evident in in in the work that that we're in the work that that's happening and and the things that are happening at orchard lane so congratulations and again i know that you will continuously seek improvement in the areas that we needed in um we don't get it perfect all the time but i will tell you they are putting their best foot forward uh with the staff with the families with the students um and that's kind of a common theme that i heard here from them and i think that's been one of the key reasons of the shift in my opinion so uh with
064that i guess are there any questions and if not uh we'll be happy to move on i just want to comment on your three two one i love that i'm gonna borrow that and use it at work so thank you that sounds really effective it wasn't our idea well thank you so much excellent it really worked well that's fantastic students you know once they got into it they they kind of like oh you want to hear what we have to say so that was good they didn't understand it at first until we kind of got it going yeah that's terrific exciting thanks yeah i just have a comment um this was a really great presentation i appreciate you know sharing more than just the test results i feel like a lot of times that's what
065we're getting from the schools but it really just paints a great picture of the things that are going on at orchard lane um and what you guys are doing kind of at all levels with the staff and the students and the parents so thank you so much for doing that thank you and i wanted to comment too because i'm the only orchard lean parent up here so i feel like i should first i joe i want to agree with everything you said so write that down is that on the record i know i just want you to know write it down um because i completely agree i think that the climate and the culture of orchard lane having had a child in that building since what 2012. i think that the climate and the culture
066of that building has changed significantly and i think that a lot of that success lies at your feet and i'm pleased as punch that you have been willing to come into that building because orchard lean kind of got a bad rap for the last few years you know we kind of did and um not that there weren't a lot of wonderful people in that building at all times which there have been to be very clear but i want you to know that i've heard from a lot of i know a lot of the teachers in that building because i've had kids in that building for a long time and i hear from these teachers because they know that i'm on the board and i am involved in these things and and the reviews are very
067positive from the people i'm hearing from so i think you should know that because it's important for you to know that what you're doing is resonating with people and it's so important and that good culture really does come from the top and so when you guys are doing what you're doing it has so much value and it's so important and i'm personally grateful i'm also grateful as a board member and i'm grateful even when bad things happen so when they have been on occasion to hear about them because to be very honest with you that's something that didn't happen before you know we didn't often hear about some of the bad things that happened and when you have a kid like i've got a kid who's nonverbal and can't tell me this crazy thing happened
068in my classroom today i'm glad i know about it from you guys you know because i can't figure out all that out on my own and i think that other parents may not have kids that are as verbal as we would like them to be even if they are verbal so keeping those updates good bad and different coming is so important and i feel like it just reinforces the notion that we are all in the same boat and we all have a common mission and we all want to support each other and i want to support what you do in whatever way i can and i appreciate you guys supporting my child and all the kids in that building because they all need you so desperately and thank you so much for doing what you're
069doing thank you thank you [Applause] up next we will be discussing and improving the social studies resources recommendation do you have any presentation prior to our motion i do not have a presentation okay um there were a bunch of questions but i guess we could discuss that after our emotions so do i have a motion to approve the social studies resources recommendation so moved motioned by mr helmer second by mr kurth all those in favor wait nope sorry any discussion i just want to give a quick thank you to joe in the administration for answering all the questions that i had i appreciate that additional information and i wanted to second that too because i had a few questions also from my review and i appreciate you guys taking all the time that it took
070to answer those questions that's really helpful and just so the board is aware i know that amy did have questions that were answered at the time i did believe we did have administrators around uh janet same thing um so i you know i again i think they were really good questions i i think it's great that uh you know this is one of those big things that the board does is is determine our curricular resources and so we appreciate the feedback we appreciate the the questions and again we recommend approval of the social studies resources that have been presented for approval anything else um i noticed that it was in the packet the questions and answers can we make that public so everybody knows what the questions and answers were okay so if there's no
071other discussion then we will um do you have something to share i'm sorry okay then we will take the vote all those in favor raise your right hand all those opposed raise your right hand motion passes next we will discuss and approve the west multipurpose room remodel so for those of you that aren't aware of the old gym over at new berlin west has a balcony and that balcony is actually opened and so uh it's been it's not it's not been as as easy to use as we would like because of the fact that the balcony is open and so um we had planned and per board policy anything over twenty five thousand dollars needs to be brought to the board for approval um but we had planned on actually closing off that that opening
072so we can utilize that space uh for multi multi-purpose so uh gym classes can now we'll be able to use it more uh because not only will it be walled it'll be padded uh so if you go to any of our gym areas or multi-use areas you're gonna see padding along the side um it also helps us free up opportunities for our students we do get congestion during uh some of the sports seasons you know you've got your your wrestling your cheer and your dance they're all competing for a certain spot because they have to have matting for some of the things that they do and so this frees up more than opportunity not only not only for our own internal groups also for gym classes but also now for external groups so we can
073get more people in and not having people like for example you've got uh like a youth wrestling team that'll start practice like at eight o'clock at night because that's when they can get in there you know so again uh do want to clarify that the the the dollars are not coming out of the uh out of the general fund they'll be coming out of fund 21. uh we did go out to bid low bid was kph construction uh for 27 300. and then we also have the the matting in the floors uh that came in for 36 thousand dollars uh from uh two different groups so uh the total with a contingency is a project of 66 and we recommend approval of the project for this multi-purpose room remodel as presented okay do i have
074a motion to approve the west multipurpose room remodel so moved second i have a motion by mr helmer and a second by mr kurth any discussion what is fun21 again is that the community fund that's a special projects fund so dollars that have been raised over the course of years for um what would normally be a non-budgeted item so anything else i know mats are really expensive and i'm in support of this but can you guys just take a second glance at that and just make sure that we do our due diligence to make sure that we're getting the best deal on that i had the same question about the i know they're not cheap but i think part of the issue unfortunately is a supply chain issue so you're dealing with a certain material
075and unfortunately the material that we're talking about inflates it uh just like you know we were actually dana and i were just talking about um you know for example like a hot tub cover i need a new hot tub cover it's like a four month wait and then they're gonna charge me like an extra 200 bucks than what it was worth last year uh so i think i think that's part of it patrick and i would agree that is part of it another issue is because we are dedicating this room uh where we're going to have mats that are just down it allows us to spend some extra dollars and get mats that are going to last for with proper maintenance up to 20 years before they have to be replaced we could spend fewer
076dollars but um you know again you're you're going to get what you pay for on this and since this is a room that's up in a balcony we felt that it was why a wiser use of district funds to get the material that's going to last simply because we can put these mats down and we don't have to roll them up and move them around so these will remain down at all times and like in the cheer area and above the stage right that stuff's moving constantly okay yep yep and that's one of the benefits of doing this project thanks yeah i just if you can just take a second i know that's the big i know that's the big expensive piece of this i mean it's more than the construction piece of it but
077i know that they are very expensive so i appreciate it well if there's no other discussion then all those in favor raise your right hand all those opposed raise your right hand motion passes then we have discuss approved policy 5630 corporal punishment um should have that been that could have been made public i i believe on the public um so going forward if we can make policies public so people can see it ahead of time yep that was my ear okay and mine too i usually try to review it to make sure things are out there and i forgot myself as well those would also be in one of the facility or personnel committee meetings too would that be in the agenda i was thinking actually most likely i'd have to go back and look
078and make sure again sometimes i think it's just an oversight we forget yeah it should be in those um so then this was purple punishment was something that was done personnel committee personnel committee brought it forward right so we don't need a second on it we just need um a motion i'll make a motion to approve the policy as presented are there any is there any discussion if there's no discussion then all those in favor raise your right hand all those opposed motion passes discuss approved superintendent job description this is also brought forward by the personnel committee kate do you have anything you want to share about it um not really anything additional i mean i think i mentioned at the last meeting we pulled the bullet points from the neola policy um and the
079other the top items were mostly recommendations from nicole with a few tweaks by the personnel committee and then the subsequent core competencies and and qualifications are kind of standard on all of our job descriptions okay since this was also brought forward by the personnel committee all we need is a motion i move that we approve the superintendent job description as presented is there any discussion if there's no discussion then all those in favor raise your right hand all those posed motion passes can we clarify the other duties as assigned just kidding everything i think i was assigned to be in charge of that so you'll be hearing from me [Music] oh then the next is a first read of policy 7250 com commemoration of school facilities and this was brought forward by the finance committee
080so chrislynn do you have anything you want to share about it for a first read no it was unanimous in the finance committee um that we bring this forward we didn't have um language that addressed it in this more modern fashion so that's one of the reasons why we brought it forward okay so there's no vote tonight this will be voted on next time in the same case for first read on policy 7530 lending of district owned equipment which was also brought forward by the finance committee right and like the previous policy this was our policy surrounding this topic previously had included things like the use of driver's ed cars and things like that that we just don't have anymore so it's just a real outdated policy so we looked to the neola policy which
081more suited what our needs were surrounding this issue so we'll be voting on this as well at the next meeting if you have any questions in the meantime you can direct those to chrislyn action items on action on items discussed in closed session so we do have two i have one of them yes and we have susan doing her last motion [Music] i moved to approve the employment services report as presented so we have a motion by miss manliness second by mr kurth i need to well since we've discussed in closed session so we'll go straight to vote all those in favor raise your right hand all those opposed motion passes and then we have our second one was that that was on the non-renewal or was that something we're not doing tonight i think
082that was included in that it was included okay so that was part of that all right then i'll just remind everybody of the future meetings and dates board meetings are generally held the second and fourth monday beginning at seven o'clock p.m in the eisenhower commons unless noted otherwise on april 13th the board of canvassers will be meeting before the election canvas at 8 30 a.m in district office conference room a then on april 26 we have our board reorganizational meeting board meeting after that is may 10th and another one may 24th just a reminder that we still are doing the health questionnaire before you enter the building and right now the commons capacity is still limited to 25 visitors if i'm correct on that and face masks are still required per our district policy and
083please observe social distancing so next i need a uh question about the future meetings and dates i did see um diana emailed both of us about the finance committee meeting on the 26th is that on the agenda oh i'm sorry i must have not replied to all so i said no um for now uh so i might as well mention the plan is on may 10th we're going to have a work session and it's going to focus strictly on the committees going forward and laying out the plan for the committee meetings for the rest of the year at that point we'll also be appointing chair chairs of each of the committees and deciding as a board where we want to go forward for our new policy that we did for committees so thank you for
084bringing that up thank you so then i need a motion to adjourn i'll let her do it i move to adjourn all those in favor raise your right hand opposed motion passes thank you good evening and thank you susan