001ladies and gentlemen it is now 6:45 p.m. and a quorum of members is present so the meeting of the Board of Education of the school district of New Berlin is called to order please call the role Miss Crosby here Mr Helmer here Mr Kur here miss Manley Miss Schulz here miss uner here miss W I would obain a motion to adjourn to close session Madam president I move to recess into close session pursu to section 19.85% by Mr Kurt and the second by Mr Helmer please call the role Mr Kurt yes Mr Helmer yes Miss Crosby yes Miss schules yes Miss uner yes Miss W motion passes we are moving into Clos session and we'll return to open session around 7 o'clock e it is now 7:08 and we are returning from closed session into
002Open 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 flag United States of America it stands na God indivisible andice 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 by providing the agenda to the city library the agenda was also posted on the district website a copy of the agenda was forwarded to the Journal Sentinel the wershaw Freeman the wakaan now all of which have filed requests for all Public Notices up is privilege of the floor meetings of the board are conducted for
003the purpose of carrying on the business of the schools and therefore are not public meetings but meetings held in public however we do have this portion of the meeting as 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 address each presentation is restricted to a maximum of 3 minutes proliv of the floor will be limited to 1 half hour presentations are not to be designed for purposes
004of 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 first up we have Leah duml hello Leah demo 3480 southware Road New Berlin I am going to be talking about uh the diversity and inclusion topic as a parent I am upset and concerned that some people are promoting critical race Theory type curriculum to be taught I found most of the concepts in the petition to be divisive and potentially harmful to children in a k through 12 setting we may see a lot of these messages in the media and social media but it does not necessarily make it appropriate for small children and teens
005to learn in school we need to be careful about the method and the content that is taught I do not agree with teaching children about white privilege police brutality systemic racism and activism these are not appropriate Concepts to teach children as young as four when they speak of institutional and systemic racism in today's institutions such as police departments schools and our community in general do they ever think of the end result I do not think it is helpful to frame law enforcement and other institutions as oppressive to minorities and systemically racist that is not the message I want my children to hear from their school curriculum do we want to create a society that questions and distress law enforcement that is what you're effectively doing when you put forth a narrative that law enforcement and
006institutions are systemically racist I also do not want a curriculum that describes our historical figures such as the founding fathers or Christopher Columbus for example in negative ways what kind of students will our district create students that distrust and disrespect our institutions students that hate their country and their history due to the race of their founding fathers or Americans that love our country and appreciate everyone's contributions of all Races which make our country great I think think there is a better way I think we can consider a more positive and wholesome curriculum that can achieve the same objectives diversity and inclusion curriculum should promote a positive experience for all students that is why I was encouraged to see ideas from the February 22nd meeting evolving and becoming more reasonable ideas like adding bipac composers and
007artists to the art and music curriculum Concepts like adding black history where we focus on contributions not involving civil rights these great ideas should gain wide widespread support in our community let's move forward on the things that most people can agree on and abandon the controversial Concepts I also think it needs to be coste effective Additionally the time spent on social moral teaching should be reasonable as is as it is time that is not spent on the necessary Core Curriculum lastly I think there's a preconceived notion of the progressive group who created the petition that parents are not educating their children on these topics at home I don't think that's true I think all parents should have the right to teach these topics how they want and what age they desire just let the schools
008teach the basics and the parents do the parent stuff thank you thank you next is Renee conik thank you thank you um thanks for allowing me to speak today my name is Renee conik I live at 14165 West Beach trial in New Berlin do not usually attend meetings in person but do commonly listen um to the live stream after the fact I did however feel compelled to come today to participate in the privilege of the floor and speak up after the events over the last number of weeks that said during the last privilege of the floor a gentleman from new berin opened with comments on how we should conduct ourselves as a Comm Community particularly during an election well I thought it was a good reminder it did recall thinking that it should go without
009saying especially for adults and particularly for our school board members elected school board members apparently not the last time I checked elected school board members as are elected positions you and they're all you the positions you all hold are nonpartisan when elected your community is appointing you and you have you and you have been selected as leaders in our community you should act as such this should include inperson online at meetings oneon-one emails just to name a few I will reemphasize online recently a board member made an online public post regarding a recently created informational New Berlin election PID page that highlights both Community selected issues and candidate responses pertaining to this next election as well as other elections in this post they disparaged me and another Community member of being a partisan actor I'm
010still not clear as to why they feel this way because no just direct explanation has been given in my opinion this behavior is completely duplicitous unprofessional inappropriate and not to mention completely baseless it is divisive unnecessary hurtful patently false and not what we need from our leaders as Schoolboard members you are representing all of your constituency in New Berlin and should not be on the board to be pushing your own ideology or partis that agenda again as elected members of the school board are you not supposed to be nonpartisan back to the post that was made about me in this public form it also made the accusation of losing our way I certainly feel that that is the case and this board member may want to turn their finger around and self-reflect on themselves thank
011you very much and thank you for your leadership during this difficult time thank you uh next we have Dakota d um hello my name is Dakota D my address is 15135 West lywood Court I'm a senior at New Berlin West High School I've attended since my freshman year before high school I went to wosa Whitman Middle School upon arriving at West I immediately noticed differences between the districts and many of them were good for instance I'm working towards an engineering major in the engineering facilities in West are far superior however other differences are less desirable the biggest of these being the blatant racism in our district until the age of 14 I had never heard the white person say the nword much less the hard R but I heard not one but both of these
012words on my first day of high school this was Unthinkable to me at the time the fact that one person would spend energy to be hateful to another was crazy to me however as I spent more and more time with these people I began to realize they weren't going out of their way to behave they were just misinformed they had a lot of preconceived ideas about the world and little to no basis for them things like black people live off the government black people don't have dads black people are criminals are all phrases I've heard thrown into a conversation without the basis of Truth to combat these false stereotypes the school district needs to teach young students to investigate these claims and put a strong emphasis on empathy empathy is the key to ending unwarranted
013hate students seem to learn not only facts about the history of Africans and African-Americans but also need to learn to put themselves in the shoes of others the school district needs not only to teach that slaves were taken from Africa but also ask students how they would feel if they were taken from their home against their will this will lead to students thinking differently after George Floyd was murdered protests erupted some peaceful some not and instead of asking why these protests have turned violent many decided to worry about the businesses that were being harmed they ask why don't theye protest peacefully not what do you do after protesting peacefully in the wake of the deaths of Eric Gardner Tamir rice Michael Brown and so many others and seeing no change kids are also very uninformed
014that white people have done many wrongs and slowed the progress of others they learn nothing of white flight the Tulsa Massacre or the many atrocities committed by whites the school district has the chance to do a great good a greater good than any one person they have the chance to affect the minds of uninformed youth they have the chance to give young kids and information basis to form opinions thank you thank you I have Med me I'm sorry if I'm saying this wrong Meg McKenzie or mechan R I couldn't read it sorry my name is Meg McKenzie thank you I live at 3942 South Victoria Circle New Berlin I am um mother of four my oldest two sons are recent graduates of Eisenhower my third son is a senior right now at Eisenhower sorry it's
015hard to breathe in this mask right here and my daughter will be a kindergarten kindergartener at Elmwood this fall I actually want to start by asking um for respect for our students who have very bravely gotten up here to speak and I hope that in the students that follow to speak that all board members will make eye contact with them and look at them when they speak similar to students giving eye contact to teachers when they speak as a form of respect in the classroom I moved to New berin 11 years ago solely for this school district and I actually knew nothing about new berin I just wanted to make sure that my three boys had the most rigorous curriculum the strongest School District that I could find and academically speaking I still feel as
016though I made the right decision the teachers that this district has challenged my sons held my sons accountable and prepared them for higher education I feel very privileged that I've been able to provide my children with the academic Foundation that sets them up for success in college and I feel extremely grateful to each and every teacher in this District that contributed to their success as my husband and I prepared to send our daughter to kindergarten though I have doubts that New Berlin will provide her with the whole child education that I hope to give her I've grown over the last 10 years and I recognize that textbooks are not the only form of education important my expectations surrounding education have changed and I'm not sure that New Berlin has grown to meet those expectations giving
017credence to my concerns were the comments made by members of this board last month the racially ignorant remarks made by several members of this board upset me and not only because I had to accept that elected officials in my community would say such things but because racism is communal and it's generational you are elected to these positions and you promise to represent our community all of our community what do you think new berland residents who agree with you think when they hear you make these comments they think that racism is okay and acceptable what do you think our children think when they hear our elected officials making these comments they think racism is acceptable and okay in our community to Echo with another concerned parent West High School dad Justin said a few weeks ago
018New Berlin is 91% white we are perhaps one of the least diverse communities in America and that is exactly why we have an obligation to teach our students about racism and accurate American history although I believe that black history month should be celebrated I also believe that black history is American history and it should be taught 365 days a year is that my time yes thank you thank you Jesse Chang Jesse Chang 13835 West Morning View Court when a gunman in Atlanta killed six Asian-American women last week there was no videotaped footage of the man shouting racial slurs there is no note left at the scenes of the crime proclaiming white supremacy that's not how racism operates these days here's how it works when your daughter informs a teacher that she's being harassed on the
019playground the response is to solve your own problem when your daughter says kids are ganging up to exclude her the teacher's response is that their story is different from your here so there's nothing we can do when your daughter says another student regularly makes fun of her name makes faces at her the teacher's response is I didn't see anything when your daughter is lingering on her iPad in front of the return cart surrounded by several other students doing the same the teacher approaches only her snatches the device away from only her and reprimands only her when you as a parent talk to the teacher the response is that these behaviors aren't immediately hurting your daughter and that your child should bear the burden of enduring this treatment with Grace and Equanimity does my little girl
020have to be called Corona virus for racism to exist no these days racism lives in what's unspoken it loves the darkness of sun silence and the way to defeat racism is with the spotlight of direct communication we must train our students and staff to call racism out and that begins by educating ourselves about the quiet ways in which racism works so this leads me to ask who tonight is going to hide behind their silence who is going to insist that racism isn't that bad who is going to suggest that what we're already doing is good enough and who tonight is going to shine the light on the path toward a safer future for all our children who tonight is going to shine the light thank you Rachel l boach hello my name is Rachel lenbach
021um my address is 1623 South 169 Street I'm a current senior at New Berlin West um West has a great quality of education and I am thankful to be a student enrolled here however it is severely outdated our definition of diversity inclusion in the curriculum as of February 22nd 2021 is only making sure all students receive the same education and this should be a given our students are learning a very whitewashed version of American history as many speakers said at previous board meetings a student's first exposure to black history is through slavery and the Civil Rights Movement which even then is vague and short their first exposure to Native American history is white men taking their land and being pictured as a group that hindered their great expansion West black history does not begin with
022slavery just as Native American history does not begin with the Trail of Tears these are all groups who Thrive before these tragedies with that these are beautiful and unique cultures and there are many of others alongside them that are severely lacking representation in our curriculum so then what is it that we're missing from our curriculum we need authors from other cultures sharing their cultural experiences our students of color are not seeing any inclusion of their customs in our school they will feel isolated and different from others we need to find ways to allow students to bring pieces of their lives into the classroom all aspects of cultures are important and something to be proud of we need to reconsider how we teach books like to Kill a Mocking Bird that pass the idea that a
023white person is at the heart of the resolution of a black person or any other person of color's problems the whole idea of a white savior in reality people of color have fall hard and led their change themselves at the same time we also need to know that although there are these different cultures we are all human and we all have the same emotions all of these cultures experience Joy Serenity and huge accomplishments not just tragedy these accomplishments need to be celebrated therefore we need to teach them these things need to be incorporated into every class through every year and every grade level we all know that all grade levels are more than capable of learning about these kinds of things they can learn about white accomplishments and white tragedies therefore they can learn about
024all other races too through story books educational videos conversations assemblies activities and many other formats students shouldn't wait to learn about social issues in other cultures through an optional class or an intervention outside of high school our curriculum needs to highlight that civil rights and discrimination issues did not disappear after the 1960s failure to do this results in many students going into their adult lives uneducated this will continue into many generations outside of these suggestions I think the school board should look into what Milwaukee and Madison School boards are doing for diversity inclusion this issue is about making our students of color feel safe important and represented along with breaking the cycle of uneducated students thank you thank you Janette Nook Janette Nook 14370 West M Drive um thank you to all the students who
025spoke it's very brave of you um so thank you last year I went to my supervisor to seek her advice about a dilemma I was having and she made a statement that made me really change my way of thinking their re their perception is their reality she stated to me their perception is their reality I really want that to sink in their perception is their reality what it means is perception is merely a lens or mindset mindset from which we view people events and things we personally believe what we perceive to be accurate and Rec create our own realities based on those perceptions and although our perceptions feel very real that doesn't mean that they're necessarily factual since last year I have shifted my own lens or mindset in the classroom and in my own
026personal life as if I were that child or adult in that instance and I got a greater understanding from where they were coming from and what their reality is I was able to see the world differently through their perception even though it was not my reality knowing this information I could then cater to my students needs and be a better educator for them I could individualize instruction even further and connect in ways other Educators could never be able to do as an educator it is my part of my professional respons responsibility to ensure that I continue to grow in the profession to always be an advocate for my students challenge not accept when laws morals and ethics are being broken through my professional journey I have benefited from being challenged to think critically and become
027Not educated on real world issues that surround the community as an educator I feel that I am more valuable to my students because of my trainings and being culturally responsive and learning more about social justice and what it means to actually by be diverse and inclusive and how to help Community with families I feel really sad for educators that are limitated by the glass ceiling in their District when it comes to being a well-rounded educator and with what DPI and other organizations have in place for educating students from diverse backgrounds I feel really sad for educators who want to speak up but can't because they're afraid of losing their job or what their colleagues may think of them I feel sick knowing that when students speak up their voices are ignored Against Racism in schools
028by both adults and students my heartbreaks for the child that goes home crying because of hate statements made to them because of the color of their skin disability and or sexual orientation my heart breaks from the mom who has to hold her child tight and wipe the tears away and explain that the world is just not fair especially here in New berin my heart breaks for the families who move to the district because they want a better education for the child but instead are treated differently from their peers for the same behaviors and continue to receive unfair treatment just because of the color of their skin I urge the bir the board and administrators to uphold the the vision of the district to have students succeed in a diverse change oriented environment thank you thank
029you an steinski I'm sorry I can't Nam know hello ansky 5860 Fox Haven Court I am looking forward to the diversity Pres presentation and learning more about the what the district's already doing in that area um like like most of the parents here and many of us I love this District I love the great staff the facilities the programs but my heart hurts I have now heard many firsthand accounts of racially charged incidents that have taken place in both of our secondary schools and so have you and including some pretty painful ones tonight I do do hope that the board considers asking tough questions about how many behavioral incidents are occurring and are being reported by persons of color and how those are being handled and what kind of reporting mechanisms are in place to
030ensure leadership has a real firm grasp on what is really happening in our schools every person in every building should understand that there's zero tolerance policy when it comes to racially driven or harassment linked to sexual orientation or any other protected groups every person must know that they can report and feel safe doing so people must know that incidents will not be tolerated please hold people accountable I think I'm going to stop there and yield the rest of my time to other speakers thank you thank you Allison Dietrich hi Allison Dietrich 2305 South cron road because of comments made by three board members at the February 22nd board meeting and subsequent discussions and debates among new berin residents I have realized that right now is the time for me to learn I'm currently diving deep
031into the history of racism and how it is perpetuated today so thank you for jump starting my journey two weeks ago there was a special on Channel 4 called hidden bias of good people presented by Dr Brian Marx it aired during prime time so obviously an important and relevant issue he defines inclusion as the act of creating environments in which any individual or group can be and feel welcomed respected supported and valued to fully participate regardless of their role or rank inclusion as defined by Dr Marx is currently lacking in our schools as evidenced by students reporting that they do not feel that way as an occupational therapist I appreciated the definition of inclusion given in the presentation extremely accurate when put in the context of special education and related services but I don't think
032that is what is in question here when talking about diversity and inclusion as it relates to curriculum I think many people jump to conclusions as witnessed at the February 22nd meeting when a board member stated I really think this goes down to care building and not so much that we need to be telling white kids that you know what you're probably racist because you're white this is really about character and not so much about race sometimes but it is about race as a predominantly white school district we are protected from having to discuss racism at a deeper level this is where we have the opportunity to add to and expand the curriculum focusing on character building is of course important but without talking about race we are really just continuing the outdated teaching of color
033blindness Dr Mark stated implicit bias is much more about the Machinery of your mind than the content of your character a second board member doesn't want us to get stuck up in the race is everything and stated I don't believe it is we make it bigger than it is and I have concerns about bringing that into the classroom my question would be then what exactly are you concerned about and bringing what into the classroom talking about racism does not lead to more racism I read this quote yesterday if black and brown children are old enough to experience racism white children are old enough to learn about it less than two years ago board members in this room approved forming a budget balancing task force to address the budget crisis that the district was facing I
034asking the board to form a similar task force consisting of parents students staff and community members to address our current crisis Frederick Douglas said if there is is no struggle there is no progress let's work together to get through this struggle and make some progress thank you thank you Chris mors Chris Moz 5224 self Garen pass and it's nice to be able to be admitted this evening by the way uh wanted to uh just mention you know after hearing uh dozens of folks say you know there's a problem in New Berlin and uh understanding that there were over a thousand uh petitioners suggesting that same issue folks I think there's a problem okay but the reason that I'm up here tonight I wanted to discuss board conduct uh this goes back to Summer and there
035was this uh this wonderful resolution that made absolutely no sense at the time uh not based on any real fact uh that was sent to the uh state of Wisconsin uh saying you know keep our district open well you guys couldn't even get all the board members to sign on to that resolution okay you had board members interrupting other board members while speaking uh asking questions in an antagonistic tone um and then fast forward to a few weeks ago you had one board member come out and say some things that put us on to the the local news channels you know folks the citizens are paying you board members to be here act like responsible adults you are failing us our children are watching you you are not leaders start acting like adults and working
036as a team thank you thank you that is all of the speakers for this um portion of the privilege of the floor now on to the president's message and announcements I'm sorry madam president were there any speakers who we couldn't hear from we've received um 10 and all 10 spoke very good thank you yes and so in reference to that I have um a couple of pieces of misinformation that's been circulating since the last meeting I'd like to address the first one was that there were two people at our last meeting that were turned away from page of the floor and were not allowed to speak that is not correct we received um 12 um forums and all 12 people were allowed to speak and we did go over time one and a half minutes
037so nobody was cut off everybody who was in this room who turned in a form um was allowed to speak and I did confirm this with Diana also there's been some misinformation regarding emailed statements people being told that um they do not hold as much weight as speaking at privilege of the floor and I just want to assure you that all modes of communication with the board are equally valued and welcome also just want to let you know about Committees of the whole um there was some discussion that we were going to use that tonight and that was dis um disbanded um after some doing some more research and talking with the Wisconsin Association of school boards attorneys um mentioned that we probably should have a policy in place before we do that and um
038we can talk a little bit more about that later when we get into the policy revision so next then is um the administrative team report first is elementary student representative update sure I'd like to start with our elementary student rep update from Orchard Lane we've got hyim who is our a student that is uh in person and then we've got Lydia that's representing the students that are uh that are virtual good evening everybody uh we are here to have our six grade student update uh from Orchard Lane so I'm going to let our sixth grade star here introduce herself hi my name is H and I'm a sixth grader at Orchard line all right H let's start out by talking a little bit about student counsel I understand that you were very instrumental in helping
039us get student counsil back carate Orchard Lane um so I just basically just stumbled on like there used to be a coun a couple years ago here and I really wanted to be in one so me and my friend Riley we decided to start one up and a fundraiser that we're doing currently is a toy drive where all the students around the school are going to be like donating toys into the boxes and we're going to be taking them to Goodwill awesome thank you so much for doing that it's great to have a student council here um one of the things that we're doing here as a school is we are celebrating our core values but it has to look a little different because of Co so tell everyone to a little bit about the
040last schoolwide celebration that we had so the last celebration that we had was well it was kind of a mix of both it was the Doctor Who week and then and then on Friday of that doctor Su week we had something called the lights out day which we turned off all the lights in the school and then all we used was like neon neon lights and stuff and then and then for Dr su's week the nice thing was we got to wear pajamas on that day as well awesome it was a super fun week and we're looking forward to our next couple celebrations too um let's talk a little bit about you know Co safety you know that's something we're still working on so tell us a little bit about how that's going from a
041student perspective we wear we we usually wear our mask like all the time but then sometimes we have masks spray mask breaks which only a couple people have them but they're always spread out um and we also use sanitizer like a lot and we're always cleaning the desks before we like switch classes and yeah awesome and you know last thing that we really want to talk about for our update is uh tell us a little bit about the morning broadcast work that we've been doing both La last month and this month so last month was Black History Month so there were a c so we had a couple kids like that were in broadcast for the sixth grade um they were talking about black wom and men that like kind of changed the world like
042for segregation like Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks and then this month is wom's history month and we're doing the same thing but like for woman that changed the world like today we did um Amelia yearart and yeah and then there's we're also going to be doing Malala and a lot of other yeah so I'm really looking forward to those presentations and we have a lot of our sixth graders are actually helping out and and presenting those things on our morning broadcast all right well H thank you so much for giving us an update on a sixth grade from sixth grade perspective on Orchard Lane uh and we would really appreciate your leadership and all of your classmates as well so thank you so much thank you so this is actually Lydia she's the um
043virtual student from Orchard Lane that'll give an update from her perspective all right good evening everybody uh I am here with one of our virtual students from Orchard Lane who's a sixth grader and she I'm going to let her introduce herself in a second here but she's just going to give us some perspective on on how things have been going in a distance learning capacity for this year so uh Lydia I'm going to let you kind of introduce yourself and and and then we'll start with some questions hi um I'm Lydia I have been doing online for the whole year now um I'm a sixth grader at Orchard Lane and yeah all right thanks Lydia um first question just you know give us a a brief description of kind of what your experience has been
044like as a virtual student um for me it's been pretty good in the beginning of the year it was um more difficult because it was kind of everyone just trying to figure stuff out um but now it's pretty smooth um one of the hardest things that um like I guess I struggle with is just the self motivation to get stuff done um because that can be hard but I like having um the freedom to like schedule out um how I want my day to go and if I need to be flexible for something I can do that easily all right no great answer um one of the things that that we're looking at as a district this year is uh you know we have our forward testing which is our state testing that we do
045um you know all across the the state of Wisconsin uh I know for a lot of our Virtual Families they had to make a decision about could they could they come in and take the test at one of our schools or would they be opting out um what did you decide ladia um so I'm going in person to take the test um on April 26 I believe um and we're going to be going in person to pop Creek um because they have a bigger gym so I decided to go in person because I thought it would be easier awesome that would be that would be great well hey well good luck and I'm sure it's going to go fantastic so um last question I have for you is I know that when semester came a
046lot of our families were had to make a decision about whether they would remain in a virtual setting or whe they be coming back to in person um and when I talked to your mom a little bit before when we were setting this up uh she told me that you know you really had to go through some some DEC decision making process um in order to kind of decide to stay virtual can you tell us a little bit about that um well in the beginning of the year it was kind of like my family decided that we wanted to be um online just for like the safety of like my grandparents and everything so once the semester ended I was able to choose if I wanted to go in person or stay online um I
047was gonna go in person um because I've just wanted to do that like it's my sixth grade year I just kind of wanted to be there um but I decided that it would be the best for me to be online just because um I'm like used to it now and going back in person I felt like it would be um quite of a difficult transition because I'm used to all the ways that we've been doing school in the be since the beginning so I just thought it'd be easier because I'm just on track with everything and I know how things work that's awesome I'm I'm sure that wasn't an easy decision for you but you know just the process that you did uh that you went through to get to the decision that you made
048is um it's really you know very grown up you know you made like a really good decision hopefully it sounds like things are going well for you um I know that you're going to do awesome things um you know when you get to Eisenhower next year so uh anything else that you'd like to share with with our school board this evening um no I don't believe so all right well Lydia thank you so much it was wonderful to be able to sit and chat with you um and good luck to you the remainder of this year um and I'll definitely be keeping track of you um as you as you get into Eisenhower next year so thank you so much thank you so next we have our Secondary School update for that of Eisenhower and
049Nishi will provide her update as well hello here's some things going on at Ike right now so the ike Jour journalism class is working on a day in the life of new br/ project photo story where they are capturing the school inperson and virtual life and the community Through photos in a week they're also trying to show the dualities and connections between being in school virtual and in the community in general um Ike will also be partnering with new merland West to host a schoolwide no place for hate virtual assembly for all students in grades 7 to 12 on March 26th it will focus on the themes of anti-bullying kindness and the accept of everyone in the 45 minute live and pre-recorded sessions of the assembly the schools will be following up with discussions and
050classes on that day our acted Club also won the division 3 state championship and NHS induction will be happening March 31st to welcome incoming sophomores into the club also Student Union organized a spirit week for St Patrick's Day last week that included days of dress every single day and a trivia night that Wednesday there's a new club at Ike called the ik Culture Club whose focus is to educate their members about different cultures and ethnicities the president of this club is Alisa leang also girls varsity head coach Andy mrey was named the wakisha Freeman girls basketball coach of the year Ike also has a herb Cole excellent scholarship winner who is Nisha bipar and for sports we have some All Conference players for girls girls and boys basketball as well as hockey Nikki deberg and
051Kylie lumberger are First Team all conference for girls basketball Joshua kruba is First Team all conference for boys basketball and Ryan Cook is all conference for hockey the state competition for Deco was earlier this month we had one individual Lea kasac and two teams Simon thst and Kevin Lou as well as pran tou malapa make it to Internationals our Middle School Musical Shrek is also opening soon and with May and AP exams coming up teachers and students are making plans for AP testing with all the changes this year there's a lot to consider for each class and students have the option to take the test virtual or in person thank you so those are our student updates I'd like to move into uh the superintendent update at this time I do have two separate updates
052the first one is basically our Co update um wanted to just let everyone know that we're extremely proud of our efforts not only to stay safe to stay open as was evidenced by some of the students that shared their stories uh we're most recently proud of the fact that we were able to get all of our staff members vaccinated that wanted to get vaccinated well in advance of the state and what the State Health Department had anticipated uh should we have followed in line with the state uh we likely would still be waiting probably another month and so I just want to point out that fact that again we were able to solidify those vaccines uh with a pharmacy and get everyone vaccinated that needed to um again we are looking at April 1st as
053being a virtual learning day for our students to allow our staff members to get their second dose most recently we received uh information from the CDC that uh they W they were recommending changing social distancing guidance from 6 feet to 3 feet uh regardless of where the CDC is at we take our direction from the wsh county health department uh there are still a lot of details that need to be sifted through and we have yet to get clearance from the walshire county department of health to make any sort of changes at all at this time quite honestly regardless of the guidance that they may provide we're not sure that we're going to move in that direction because again we believe that we've successfully navigated uh based on on what we've done to date uh
054now again it's not suggesting that we won't move to it but we have yet to make that determination I also wanted to clarify that uh while we did ask our secondary students as they registered for their courses for next school year we did ask them roughly who and how many were interested in a virtual only option we did receive I think roughly about 50 students between Eisenhower and West that were interested in that option 712 uh and certainly that looks a lot different than it would at the elementary uh when it comes to the elementary at this time we have yet to determine whether we will be offering a virtual option or not we will be seeking feedback from families in May uh to help us guide and determine the feasibility of a possible virtual
055option for next school year uh I do know that we are moving forward with our summer school programming as we had uh we are going to be offering certainly in-person uh summer school learning obviously with all the precautions that we've taken throughout the school year uh we also believe that there may be an opportunity for virtual learning but we have yet to get confirmation from the state on whether or not we'll be able to get those students counted uh for uh FTE and membership for Revenue the other item that I wanted to touch base on is uh what is give education day give give education day is a 24-hour online virtual fundraising event uh hosted by alumni Nations to support K12 public Public Schools across the country this is the first ever give education day
056being celebrated in New Berlin the school district of New Berlin partners with alumni Nations to run our New Berlin Nation digital platform the actual day is Wednesday March 24 but donations have been coming in for at least a few weeks we have a web page set up to allow individuals to donate donations are tax deductible and donors receive a receipt for their gift now how will the funds be uh collected and be used we plan to use the funds to enhance our staff appreciation week which this year is May 1st through the 7th we have approximately 600 plus staff members typically the board and administration celebrates our staff with a modest meal usually breakfast provided by our food Serv Food Services Department and a small token gift examples of previous gifts included an sdnb branded
057popsocket an SNB branded plastic tote bag and a coupon card for New Berlin area businesses depending on the amount the amount of donations we we could enhance the meal and or the staff gifts if we get an unexpected windfall of dollars we can reevaluate what else we can do for our staff again as this is the first ever give education day we aren't really sure what to expect as far as the amount of funds we'll receive for that reason we didn't want to overpromise or get too specific about what the funds would be used for as of today 3:00 we've raised a about $2,000 from 49 unique donors most donations have been for $20 though we have received one donation of$ 150 six donations of 100 and 13 donations of 50 that is my update
058thank you I'm sorry Jenna can I ask a question yeah you can ask my questions on the virtual for feedback are you going to be getting feedback on the experience as well as interest for next year yes and I just had a question too thank you um so I believe that the state mask mandate expires on April 5th is our plan as a district to continue that if that is not renewed by the state of Wisconson uh that's yet to be determined and again we'll work with the wa County Health Department to make that determination okay and then I believe on the give education day that you are saying that the money used will be used to enhance the staff appreciation week which is the first week of May is that right correct okay and
059that was correct right that's what it's used for okay thank you okay then we'll move on to the district reports which includes an incident report there isn't one this this month from what I can see um and then the enrollment report suspension report and donation report misser would you read the donation report please um we received a $100 donation from cassena cavanich um in support of el Elwood Elementary um a $3,000 donation from Elwood hom school to support the play Works purchase $315 donation from the POA Creek PTO to support first grade field trip $242 57 from caf America and cyber grants to support the best buddies program at Ike thank you to all of our donors thank you and then on to the consent agenda are there any items that should be pulled out
060for separate consideration hearing none um all the let's see here I um can I have a motion then to approve the consent agenda so moved I need a second I'll second okay I just okay so I have a motion by Mr Helmer and a second by Miss uner to approve the consent agenda agenda um any discussion okay hearing none all those in favor raise your right hand Susan yes from the phone you sorry Susan uh motion passes second then on to the regular agenda first up is discuss approved long rage facility plan Kelly I'll need you to drive this presentation for me since you have the clicker over there by you um I just wanted to uh simply just iterate where we've been with regard to our long range planning process um these are the
061dates so over the course of the last couple of months we've been putting plans together the board initially approved preliminarily uh a plan based off of their initial request uh of having $350,000 and then gradually up to a million dollars within four years uh we were able to deliver that to the board the board approved that plan and then uh we further discussed uh other options for Capital Improvements based on utilization of fund balance as well as that of possible Esser funds and so on at the last meeting we went through a lengthy conversation uh and talked about uh what those uh items would be so these were the preliminary four years of projects approved this was the funding for it and then we discussed fund 41 and again I just want to clarify fund
06241 uh is not to be determined at this point that is something that Patrick will actually bring to you in the preliminary budget which will be brought forth to the board in June uh the preliminary uh budget will be the first read first meeting and then approved in the second meeting uh which is approved so that we can begin spending for the upcoming school calendar year or the school year and then obviously we have our annual meeting and budget hearing in September we also talked about eser funds and a point of clarification with eser funds we have received what the first round which was not much uh to the tune of roughly $90,000 uh tens of thousands of those dollars had to be Shar shared with the private schools uh we are anticipating significant dollars
063coming in for eser 2 and eser 3 dollars that have already been spent on behalf of covid and and Us opening our schools but uh we certainly do not want to spend money we don't have yet so we'll be bringing that uh those dollars back to the board to determine what if anything related to capital projects the board would want to do with those dollars then again specifically we talked about fund balance and the spend down a fund balance we recommended that we do go ahead and U maximize the fund balance that we have spend that down and Implement that towards capital projects and this was the explanation behind it we're currently in a very comfortable spot uh we with our fund balance being uh at the end of the year to be at roughly
06426% the board's policy reflects that we have to have at least 10% so we're well above that Mark hence why we are recommending that we spend that down and in the next slide you'll see uh what that would look like so again this was what the board had tasked us with initially and then with the fund balance spend down of these dollars it would get us to a total funding amount that you see here we did reprioritize the projects again what you'll note though is the projects that were preliminarily approved by the board in that 4-year proposal those will get done within 3 years and then what you'll see is an additional two years of funding that include things like LED lighting and Pa Replacements and other oneoff projects and then this is what the
065fund balance will look like as we look to spend this down as a point of clarification this is a plan so this is what we'll head into going into those years but should something dramatically change or drastically change we will revisit the plan and with that we would recommend approval of the capital project Improvement plan as presented okay since this is a an action item do I have a motion to approve the long range facility Plan update as presented so moved second so I have a motion by Mr hmer in a second by was that Miss anger um to approve any discussion no discussion today okay then can we move on to um voting all those in favor raise your right hand Susan yes all those opposed motion passes well that never happens but we'll
066take it thank you okay uh up next is the diversity inclusion presentation followup Susan I'm still here okay all right I'm gonna pull Jeff into the call here while we're waiting why don't we have our team come on up socially distanced of course hello hi there hold on okay Susan yep okay excellent all right thank you sounds like we have everybody on we're going to go ahead and get started because this is quite the lengthy presentation uh as mentioned uh we did bring forth the presentation about a month ago to start the conversation related to diversity inclusion in the school district of New Berlin our attempts are the following we want to share with you at this time a bit more detail than we did at the last meeting the last meeting we were simply
067trying to set the stage for these details uh we will be sharing those things with you uh throughout this presentation again I do want to clarify that our strategic goals are aligned to uring that we are educating all of our students every single one of them our mission and our vision and our strategic goals are aligned to making sure that that happens and then we support the vision of our graduate by the following again these are operational definitions of diversity and inclusion I understand that other districts may have their respective definitions but this is uh where we've been uh working from with related to diversity inclusion in the school district as a point of clarification there are many pieces already in place as it relates to policies and procedures that protect our students and staff
068we do have non-discrimination policies we have a bullying policy we have training and we have accountability reports to the state so while I understand for some this may all be new information this is information that we deal with on a on an ongoing basis we have been and we will continue to do so and on behalf of Nicole Jones who couldn't be here uh tonight I will be presenting the information related to the employment services information this slide shares with you the makeup of our staff by demographic and how that compares to our students and what you'll find is that the two groups actually there are three groups that are most underrepresented and that's our Asian and Hispanic populations in terms of Staffing demographics and that our male students are also underrepresented by our staffing
069demographics as well what I will share with you is that second bullet point that's quite common I'm not going to read this slide to you but I do want to clarify that we certainly do take a recruiting uh for diversity very seriously we have and we will continue to do so these are all things that we current ly do and have been doing for quite some time to recruit staff to try and get that alignment more in place uh as you look against a couple slides back to to ensure that we do have that alignment with again the two populations that we're failing in right now which is Hispanic and Asian and with that I'll hand it back over to the teaching and learning team okay good evening for those of you who don't know
070me I am uh Dr Kelly Sanders I'm the chief academic officer for the school district and here is my lovely team behind me I have Amanda maerowitz who is our director of student services Kelly kakowski who is our director of secondary teaching and learning and Brady ranky our director of Elementary teaching and learning so I wanted to start out by reminding everybody that we do have an equity District action plan um that is based off of a lot of data that we reviewed to to assure that we are meeting our strategic goals um as well as how they align as uh this presentation does have links in it so if you want to dig into that information um you can definitely do so if you look at our overall enrollment over the past several years
071I like I said and Joe said we're just going to kind of let you look at uh our demographics uh over the last three years I do want to emphasize with everybody as we go through this presentation that when we talk about subgroup size um does it does actually impact the data so sdnb has smaller numbers of students uh in certain demographic categories compared to other categories so if a group size is small which means less students are needed to impact the data for instance four out of 10 students equals 4 40% but also four out of 100 uh uh is 4% so it's it's sort of really looking at um the cell size and understanding that if there's only a few students uh in a particular subgroup one we may not even have the
072data to be able to share because the demographic group is so small um that we we actually cannot share that data so you'll see some of that as the team kind of goes through this this is our attendance at the elementary level over the past three years this presentation will be published so um if you uh want to look at it later it it is published um it is also showing Live on YouTube right now so you can rewatch if you if you choose to secondary attendance data as well I'm a tad bit taller than DR Sanders so give me a second here as your director of student services I'm going to talk to you a little bit about Special Education data and I'm also going to talk about some Behavior data so the next
073few slides are really focused on Special Education data this first one looks at the number of students who qualified or the percentage I should say also and the percentage that did not qualify for special education services over the last three years what you'll notice is that we have had a decrease in the number of referrals that have come to us and in fact we actually had a bigger decrease this year than what's depicted and the reason for that is we actually had to do a number of evaluations this year that were pushed off from last year from spring and summer due to the state of emergency and our buildings not being open and safe for us to conduct those evaluations at that time so we're actually trending a little bit um even lower than than
074what's here in terms of the number of referrals what's not disaggregated for you is the differentiation between parent referrals and District referrals these are both um lump together for you in this data we also have the ability to dis agregate data by certain demographics as it relates to students who are in our special education program and those who have on the next slide um look at our overall program this slide looks at the percentage who've qualified and the percentage who have not qualified you will see that we have an under representation of Asian and white students compared to our overall enrollment demographics in special education and we have disproportionality in terms of an over representation of students who are black students are Hispanic and students who identify with two or more races in special education
075and this slide just shows you that overall makeup of the program in general whereas the other slide looks at the number of referrals and who qualified over the past three years I did want to make a note actually on the last slide too um as DR Sanders talked about us developing an equity dap or District action plan around Equity a lot of the work with special education was involved in that and one thing that we discovered is that we do have a number of students actually at the time at least 50% of our students with IEPs who are black came to us with IEPs and so we were also looking at intervention data as well as our Universal practices to really look at what's happening before special education occurs because hopefully we have culturally responsive
076practices and interventions in place to to prevent the likelihood of students being referred to special education in the first place here it's a little bit small but you can see um and you can refer back to the presentation this is the demographic makeup of our talented and gifted program in the district as well the next few slides are talking about Behavior data one thing that's important to note is that this looks at the number of infractions and at both a secondary and Elementary level the percentage means that that's the percentage of students who committed an infraction that identify with a particular group just like DR Sanders talked about before a few students can impact the data one way or another so what we did not show you for confidentiality purposes of students due to our
077smaller cell size with some of our demographics is the number of students that actually make up that percentage of infractions So You Don't Know by looking at this data whether for example um students who identify as Asian at the secondary level that 5% of those infractions were committed by students who identify as Asian you don't know whether that's two students that committed 5% or 100 students that that committed that 5% if that makes sense and again this slide just shows you last school year and the next slide that I'll flip to in just a moment shows you to date this school year I think it's also important to note as administrators work together with our teacher teams that not all infractions yield the same consequence that's something that we're working really hard together as a
078team to look at the whole child and to look at what's warranted based on the situation and also to use opportunities to teach students when an infraction is is committed so that hopefully we're not seeing repeat offenses we do have students who have significant Behavior challenges in our district just as all districts do and so Administration teams and teacher teams work together to have very specific plans for some individual students too to support their behaviors in our classrooms I'm going to give you a moment to look at this slide and to just read some operational definitions as superintendent Garza talked about earlier we are obligated um to report some of our data in terms of accountability both publicly um to our board and also to the state pupil non-discrimination is one of those areas and
079so for the purposes of the the next couple of slides we're going to be looking at these protected classes as well as discrimination harassment and bullying what you'll notice on this slide and the next slide is that we have a downward Trend in terms of the amount of incidences that have been reported to the district that involve harassment student to student harassment correct correct um so the trend it's trending down now you could argue that um last school year we missed a quarter of school but only having nine incidents reported to us you could still extrapolate the fact that we would still Trend downward even if we projected out what that quarter might look like that we were virtual for our students and then here's our bullying data again we're looking at a three-year Trend
080and the board you get this report from student services department annually in Fall as well to look at the incidences of bullying as well as some of the trends that were noticing and what we're doing about it overall we're we're seeing a reduction um in cyber bullying and we're seeing a reduction in um uh targeting students based on socioeconomic status and social status as well as their appearance and with that I'm going to turn it over to my colleagues to talk about some of the celebrations with data and and also dig into more of the academic data for you so another thing just to note that even when we looked at the infraction data we have to remember that um a student could actually be in three different demographic groups so when you look at
081um an Asian student they could be economically disadvantaged and they could have an IEP so often times when you're looking at an infraction it it could be one student that may be in three or two different demographic groups so as you look at that data just something to think about at the end of every year we do a survey of our students fourth through 12th grade we do a survey of our parents and we do a survey of our staff the past two years we've actually had our students identify um their demog graic group so that we could actually start to drill down and try to figure out and Target certain behaviors that maybe we're not aware of so some of those um celebrations that we've noticed especially in the elementary data is that 95%
082of our diverse student population believe their teachers care for them compared to 94% of students who identify as white 91% of our divers divver diverse student population agree or strongly agree they feel safe at school compared to 94% of our students who identify as white we do have some growth opportunities we always have growth opportunities where we need to do more with perseverance and growth mindset specifically with our students who are Hispanic and black and need to support our students who are Hispanic and black to feel more successful at school those were some of the questions that they had to respond to at the secondary level you can see some of those celebrations 84% of our diverse students population agree or strongly agree their teachers care about them compared to 88% of students who identify
083as white and then 80% of our diverse student population agree or strongly agree they are provided opportunities to maximize their potential compared to 85% of students who identify as white also same thing with the small cell sizes um and this is something that we're going to continue to monitor over time as you can see there are several uh growth opportunities here that we want to continue to focus on um and these will be uh more intentional as we continue to move forward you can see that we have a lot of strategies already in place related toal mental health and student engagement we do have a mental health advisory committee that's made up made up of parents School staff District administrators and local Mental Health Providers we do Sabers as a social emotional learning screener every
084year you will hear Brady talk later a little bit more about Second Step but we do have Second Step at the elementary level and at the middle school level next in health uh this year and then it will be an advisory next year and then we are adding DBT skills for schools these are all live links here so you can go in and learn a little bit more about the things that we have put in place um related to and the silence challenge day and as you heard um earlier from our student rep no place for hate that is coming up securely is our um safety mechanism so if we do see any um targeted behaviors or Internet um you know bullying or searches that's where we have securely and that was what how we
085would be notified and then we also have different Partnerships uh in the area um especially with our partnership with family services which is on-site mental health care for elementary and secondary could you please please go a little deeper in the Universal Design for Learning uh not specifically in I mean you you have the detail board but can you talk more about that Kelly uh because udl is something that we've taken seriously here uh we don't we don't just give a lip service uh and it is about all students and being fully inclusive with all of our students and that's a a strategy that we've been on the road since actually Kelly since right around the time you got here yeah we been 5 years ago go so we have had a Universal Design for Learning
086Focus for several years and actually at our elementary and secondary they have built in some um talking points around what we're doing with udl as it relates to when we start talking about curriculum so I'm going to let them dive in but if you have any further questions after they get through their kind of curriculum instruction pieces we would be more than happy to come back and talk about that but it is really to address all students and giving them voice and choice in how they learn and how they show their learning uh through a variety of ways we also have a lot of professional learning opportunities for our staff um you can read through those um yourself and if you have any specific questions about any of them uh we definitely can um address
087those at a later time and then I'm going to have Mr ranky come up and talk about elementary data all right and I'm a little taller than all of them so uh it's nice to be here tonight uh um nice to see everybody um thank you to everyone who who came out U my job tonight is to to share a little bit about our elementary programming I'm going to start with with just a just a broad overview of some of the data that we have uh available to us so the the first data points that I'm going to share is our our forward data um Ford data you know as as most people in in the room know Ford uh comes once a year we did not take it last year so the data that
088that I'll be sharing is actually two years old just simply because W with the the pandemic we did not have it uh last last year we we are scheduled to do it this year uh so uh we'll be able to up update you on that data as soon as it's unar un unemaro um just a couple things to remember with with forward data um th this is a an assessment that gives kind of grade level it assesses grade level standards uh so um then the state sets cut scores for us and students fall into one of four categories based on the cut scores that are set they're either Advanced proficient um basic or or below basic um we obviously uh in our data we want 100% of our students to be Advanced uh or or
089proficient uh we're not there but we have uh pretty pretty intense systems of intervention uh to meet the needs of of all of our kids who are are falling below so here you can see um uh the first slide kind of shows a breakdown of our our forward scores on the leth hand side uh are the last three years in the school district in New Berlin uh this this particular slide is broken down by by race on the on the right hand side you can see uh what the state how the state average uh shakes out um with the same um the same um race uh obviously you can see we we we have a few subgroups there that don't have um a um uh enough uh people to report out on so so we're
090not able to get that data to to report publicly uh similarly in English uh language arts uh on the leth hand side is the school district of New Berlin on the right hand side is um you know kind of the state average as you can see um our our scores for for the majority of our subgroups fall um considerably above the state average which is something we're proud of obviously like I said before though uh we we want to continue to um grow that amount of kids um in our um uh Advanced and proficient range uh the next the next uh data point here is same thing but uh socioeconomic status again you can see uh with our students um both um are socially economically disadvantaged students and are um our students who are economically
091Advantage they they are both um scoring well above the state average in both reading and in math um again something we we we continuously dig into though um to to look at how can we continue to to increase our scores with that and then and then finally uh students uh by by disability uh our we find that our students with disabilities do do score um uh lower um on our uh Ford exam you can see actually in the last uh Administration we we did uh score just a slight bit below the state average especially uh in both Ela and um and and uh math the next the next uh data points that I want to share with you is is map Now map is a little bit different uh we've talked about this before so
092I'm not going to spend a lot of time explaining it it's a it's um an assessment where as kids keep getting uh answers correct they keep getting harder questions and if kids are getting answers wrong they get a little bit more challenging or they get they get less challenging questions so it gives us a really good picture of where our students are at um one of the things then map does is it it produces a um a like a a norm uh and that's based on a national score map does not um um create norms for different subgroups of of students it just uh it's a it's a national Norm that we have uh one of the things to remember about Norms uh is that you know the the 50th percentile U when you think
093of it from a statistical standpoint 50% of your kids statistically would score above the norm 50% of your kids statistically would score Bel below the norm so let's just take a look um again you can see um this is three years of of winter map data winter isn't all always the best um uh one to look at uh but I but I pulled winter simply because we didn't have spring last year we don't have spring yet this year uh and fall data um you know we shared with you uh couple months ago so uh you can see the majority of our our subgroups U kind of fall within that uh 50% range uh of of 50% of our students uh scoring above that 50th percentile um uh much like our um for data our students
094uh who are who are Asian and students who are white uh tend to score a little bit higher than our our other subgroups again here's here's a breakdown of um our economically disadvantaged um and and economically advantaged students and our students with disabilities on both reading and in math uh you you can see uh again that that's really our um you know the the subgroup that that doesn't kind of fall within that 50 uh% range uh but I but I will say that the um this data looks does look a bit more promising than our um our forward data looked so um we're excited about that I'm going to turn over now to uh Kelly to talk a little bit more about the secondary data hi thanks for having me so we're going to start
095with something that you've seen already this year our 2020 Secondary College in career Readiness dashboard so when we look at subgroups within this dashboard our biggest disparity is our students with disabilities they are not meeting the indicators such as our other subgroups when you look at four-year graduation rates which is the standard to look at and this is pulled off of the state um wise dasu portal um you can see that we don't have a whole lot of subgroups populating and that's because we have too few students to publicly talk about because we don't want to identify them so you can see that overall we're very comparable to our neighbors to the South and to the north the one area we we did see a dip in was our students who are Hispanic and I
096can say they're projected to be 100% graduation rate when you look at it by socioeconomic status you can see it like our neighbors to the North and South we also have a disparity two out of the three years and our biggest disparity occurs with students with disabilities so our students with disabilities did not perform at the same graduation rate as students with out disabilities one reason for this is we had more students enter in this past year robust programming for students who are 18 to 21 year old so that would be something like project success or Pathways so they're still with us they're still getting some key programming but they don't count as a four-year graduat I bet they'll count as six-year graduation so if we looked at the six-year graduation rate that would probably
097tell us a different story I don't want to say probably it would so forward Brady talked to you a little bit about the forward data at the secondary level grades 7 through 12 that's a little bit different so these students our students take forward in seventh grade and eth grade of spring they also take just the social studies test in 10th Grade otherwise they do the ACT aspir so when you look at the percentage of students who are proficient or Advanced um and you look at our subgroup data you can see that all of our subgroups to the left that's New Berlin I know those graphs are kind of hard to see but to the left it's New Berlin to the right is the state of the Wisconsin when you look at three years longitudinally
098all of our subgroups in the area of mathematics are outperforming the states again here it is with with socioeconomic we have a smaller Gap than the state but we still do and same thing New Berlin on the left State at the right and you'll see that our biggest Gap is in the area of students with disabilities versus students without now let's talk about Ela so Ela again most of our subgroups are outperforming the state with an exception of spring 2018 are students with two or more who are from two or more races did not perform at the state level you can see all of our other groups did here it is by socioeconomic Ela and disability El advanced placement is something I've talked about before our goal is students score a three or above in
099the May exams and this is is the percentage of exams that were three or more so our students who are Asian black and white are outperforming the state average with our students who are two or more races in Hispanic very close to the state average our Gap is much smaller than the state's gap for students with ap three or above for economically disadvantaged and I don't have anything to report publicly for students with disabilities from New Berlin because that cell size is too small but here's what the state's data looks like another focus when you look at our Equity plan is females in Career Education so this is an issue within the state within the region and within our school district so we track the number of females we have taking computer science and information
100Tech courses and I proud to say between 1819 and 1920 we moved up 11 female males as a daughter as a parent of three girls I want that even higher same thing for manufacturing engineering and construction we have increased the number of girls by 12 we would like that even more ACT scores the 2020 scores are still embargoed so I'm still reporting to you on the spring 2019 scores I pulled some of our neighbors in wera County K12 12 districts not all of them are there but the majority and we are on the left so we are that light blue bar when we have enough students to populate in each of the subgroups so our students who are Asian students who are black and our students and students who are black are outperforming all of
101the other groups um and communities that I pulled in the area of ela when you look at the percentage of proficiency our students who are Hispanic and white are near the top the same holds true for the area of math in act and this is our Junior's math test so we're comparing Apples to Apples and the same also holds true when you look at students composite scores when you look at how our Junior scored by economics status you can see there is a gap but our students who are not economically disadvantaged are near the top as well as our students who are and here's our act data by students without disabilities versus students with disabilities we're also going to look at map data at secondary students take the map assessment in grade grades 7 8
1029 and 10 with the exception of some of our advanced math students who exit out after geometry again as Brady said it's normed nationally when you look at some of our subgroups you can see our students who are Asian and our students with two or more races are outperforming our students who are white Hispanic and black with our students who are black performing the lowest I was excited to see for math that all of our subgroups increased from Winter of last year to Winter to this year and here's our reading scores with their students who are Asian outperforming our other students and our students who are black performing at the same rate as our students who are white with our students who are Hispanic or two or more races performing slightly behind them here it
103is by economically disadvantaged students to the left is math to the right is Reading in 20120 is the orange bar same thing for students with disabilities so you can see we saw some growth both in math and reading this past winter um when you look at our students with the disabilities and their proficiency and now I'll hand it over to Brady all right so uh I want to touch just a little bit on on some areas of our our curriculum um to to address some questions that have come up uh and and just in general to give everybody a little bit of an overview um I I am passionate about uh these things uh obviously I have two kids in our district a second and a fourth grader uh both at Ronald Reagan so um
104so so we're living uh the the experience with the majority of people that are here um so I want to talk first about Second Step second step is our our social and emotional um uh program that that every every week uh students go through second step lessons um within Second Step there's there's multiple units uh throughout the course of the year the the two that um I I wanted to just point out to you are really this um this unit that happens at every single grade level obviously in age appropriate way ways um dealing with empathy um teaching kids how to how to be empathetic uh to to you know within their within their classrooms as as well as as this problem solving unit right like how do we respond when things uh don't happen
105the way we want them to or or don't happen um how how we should uh again like I said second step happens on a on a weekly basis uh with all kids uh K through six um in our elementaries um Second Step is uh also um in in the midst in one of our one of our elementary schools is piloting some some different um things uh some different resources that are becoming more and more culturally uh responsive and diverse um and they've also released uh in 2021 uh they just came out actually in February um some some new lessons um in the in the area of of diversity and inclusion uh that that we're currently looking at um reading through vetting and then we'll make alignment to which grade levels we We Believe are um
106they'll fit well within so that's Second Step uh our social study standards um one of the um uh things I want to point out is the social study standards uh there's a you know there's a there was a question uh a bit ago um about you know the standards being old and and not updated uh actually the social studies standards were updated in 2018 um so um you know they're they're relatively um new um are social studies curriculum um is is called TCI it's it's the main resource that we use right now TCI is is is really um you know um a neat program and it's been a good program for us in that um one first it it um provides a a very diverse like the textbooks have a very diverse uh um you
107know groups of pictures it points out U the the differences um throughout um throughout our schools um there's also an emphas real big emphasis on um citizenship as well as service how do how do we build on that empathy um thing things that we're learning in second step and then how do we how do we move that out to to a more of a a Global Perspective again you can see here uh I'm not going to go really in depth into it you can kind of read through it um but really you can see across the top uh each year uh our kids are uh focusing on you know the kind of the topics that they're focusing on throughout um really starts um kind of getting to know themselves and then um themselves in the
108world and then it they'll move all the way through um and learn about American history and and then uh history of the ancient world I want to talk a little bit about Ela our Ela curriculum um especially in our fourth fifth and sixth grade um really starts to focus on being good consumers of of information um and so on the on the left hand side you can see there um uh some of the some of the different topics that are that our kids are engaging with um one of the one of the stories uh if you remember a couple years ago I told you a story I was in a fifth grade classroom and and there were um kids that were um doing some reading and some and some debate and I asked one of
109the the students what are you what are you studying and I I can't remember what what they were working on at the time but she's like yeah these two different issues and I said well what do you think about it she's like well I'm going to suspend my judgment until I have all the facts uh so this really it was a really neat lesson and it's something that's kind of stuck with me that I I've loved that unit uh uh for for a very long time um again the the um the social or the ELA standards are updated this this year um Kelly and I uh have been working with some colleagues across the the area to get to learn them because we'll lead our staff um through a kind of a a program review
110uh to make sure um things are aligned also one of the things that's been really great is is this concept of classroom libraries um we we've been uh pouring lots and lots of books into classrooms um we have we have two uh literacy coaches within our district one of the things that they they consult frequently is a um uh a diverse book list U from the teachers College uh out in New York uh they're the they're the creat ators of our our uh curriculum resource and uh they spend a lot of time making sure that we're we're providing uh a really diverse array of books in our um classroom libraries Again part of that uh review next year will be a classroom Library audit just to make sure that all of our classrooms uh are
111H or do have um a diverse selection of books um within them uh I just want to point out because I know a question came up um about um the characters in the books uh that that kids are getting read to um we've We've Got U read alouds which are uh a way of teaching reading I went through and you can see the kind of the breakdown of of how the the main characters shake out in those books obviously 33% of those kids those books were non-fiction books um which is which is actually a really great thing uh that that our kids are being exposed to more and more non-fiction um and then you you can see um that there's a a pretty good breakdown uh of uh the the different uh characters on the
112on the leftand side are are read aloud books and then on the right hand side our K2 students engage in shared reading and those are the shared reading books that uh they engage in finally I'll end uh our our Librarians also spend a um huge amount of time uh doing research on U making sure that the collections in our libraries are are diverse uh they work with the CCBC in Madison that's the uh Cooperative children's book Center uh in in on the U Madison Campus uh so they they continuously review uh books that are coming out one of the really uh neat and exciting things um that our um our software program that that runs our libraries is doing uh is there in a beta phase of doing um audits diversity audits of our collections
113uh so this spring um we're going to be uh working in uh well hopefully it's in a beta phase so uh we'll we'll have a little bit better View of um how how the collections in each of our elementary schools um are doing from A diversity standpoint so that's just a little bit I hope I was able to answer some of the questions that have come up I'm GNA turn it over to Kelly thanks so I think one exciting uh result of our Equity plan was recently we were able to purchase 1,400 across the district diverse uh books so non-fiction fiction different authors different characters for our K12 libraries and I forgot to I'm sorry Amanda include um our students with disabilities on here especially at the secondary level so we want all students to
114be able to come to the library regardless of their their reading ability and be able to check out text so um add them on this slide too we also have tried really hard um to create equal access to programming and what I mean by that is to break down barriers so students can enter in AP courses dual enrollment classes and so we took a really hard look at some of our prerequisites and asked ourselves do these really need to be prerequisites and why and so we have decreased the amount of prerequisites we've added more onsite dual enrollment to make it accessible for students who might not have transportation or gas money we also provide transportation for our students in the WCTC dual enrollment Academy so transportation is not a barrier for them to be able
115to access that coursework in Middle School we've really tried hard to be more inclusive and you can see this here so Ela between seventh and 8th grade has have different themes and one of my favorite units is how do we learn history through literature literature and how might that be a little bit different than informational text so one example through Ela in sth and eth grade at West in Eisenhower we have our students listen to a holocaust Survivor speaker and within our social studies focus groups which you'll we'll hear a little bit more about um we heard that the speaker was really impactful to our students we weren't able to do this in 2020 and 2021 will look a little bit different we're actually using the HC to come in and um provide us with
116a stand up don't stand by um presentation in lie of a Survivor speaker that's through the lens of the Holocaust we also added more Choice books so when DR Sanders talked about Universal designed for learning udl that includes a lot more voice and choice and what the students want to read about what they want to learn about within a unit in English language art so you might have four different choices um of of books that you want to read underneath a theme for you to be able to select one um also within udl is Mastery oriented feedback and very clear goals so these are just a few examples they're certainly not all of the examples um that we have in ela we also have added new Zella let's see this is the second year that
117we have it um so those in the audience who might be sophomores Juniors or seniors wouldn't have access to this and it's non-fiction articles that really promote some discussion and critical thinking one example that we have is Christopher Columbus pros and cons of celebrating Christopher Columbus Day social studies in seventh grade is a World Geography focus in e8th grade it is the first part of US History next year we're adding um second step back in to advisory um and that really is an empathy and critical thinking problem solving social emotional curriculum this this summer we added a equity and AP committee comprised of educational leaders and teachers to examine our AP Trends um and look at it through demographic groups just as we did with our data here today in English 912 we continue but
118to budget for additional Choice books here's some of the books that we are either choice or mandatory through our curriculum these are just a few in 10th grade our entire 10th grade curriculum focuses on Research and World themes and these are just some of the units that we have within that curriculum we've changed that about five to six years ago also like Elementary we will be going into English language arts alignment this next year and part of that is taking a deep audit of our poems texts and novels to make sure they are diverse enough and rigorous enough in math we selected resources that were inclusive in fall we had a challenge day for select students at both Eisenhower and West and so that was a program that really um talked about behaviors how you
119can change unhealthy behaviors how you can be more empathetic and inclusive and then on Friday we're going to have a no place for hate um presentation for all of our students in grades 7 through 12 at both Eisenhower and West and um this again is an anti- judgment inclusive presentation that really um should be great and it's by the Anti-Defamation leag here's example of our courses that we have in social studies in n9th and 10th grade students need to take one world social studies experience whether that's AP AP Human Geography or world studies and then one US experience which is either AP US History or 20th century us those green circles are courses that we've added within the last 5 to six years you can see that one of the electives that we have is
120sociology that we've added and I'm going to talk a little bit more about that specific class we added it because it's a universal transfer credit agreement within the wuw system and the technical system which means students who take it through WCTC here on our campus get free credits and it transfers to anyw school so that's part of the reason why we added it not the whole picture so in social studies I talked to you a little bit about 9th and 10th grade um in 20th us and World we've really tried hard especially over the past year to two years to think about what kind of multiple perspectives we we can bring into that course so here's two examples a couple examples that we have right on the presentation sociology is a course where we look
121at stratifications racial gender social and we also talk about cultural differences and awarenesses and how our cultures might impact our behaviors AP human GE geography is another course that talks about cultural awareness where people live why they live there and how they move so any social studies course we really do try to approach topics with multiple lenses and multiple perspectives so students can critically think and um analyze for themselves here's our units in World study so when you talk about that 910 course if students take don't take AP Human Geography they do take this course we also have some extracurricular and Club activities at both Eisenhower and West and here are a few that are inclusive and promote diversity we also have some opportunities for students to be leaders and give input and you can
122see those on the bottom as well we celebrate students who build a resume around cultural awareness when this State came out with this we were one of the first districts to jump on board and offer it to our students as part of our College and Career Readiness initiative so we offer this um State Global scholar award at graduation for seniors um we're projected to have about 12 students with that this graduating class of 2021 and that would be the highest that we have one question that I got was how do we compare to other districts the state doesn't collect this data on like the wise Dash portal so I don't have that at my fingertips but it is a celebration that we that we really value and as DR Sanders is walking up I do
123want to say that even though some of our subgroups were not populated we do keep track of these students and we want all of our students to succeed play particular pay particular attention to this slide because we will be addressing this as we ask you to uh review the social stud studies uh resources coming up as one of our next agenda items that is exactly what I was just going to say so you stole it so thank you so yes this is kind of our run through of how we choose resources in the school district um this is a common practice for most school districts but I want to really highlight these are the steps that we always take when we are reviewing a resource similar to what we did with math last year um
124I want to kind of briefly go over some of our actions and Strate IES moving forward no district is perfect we all know that we have areas that we want to grow and improve on because we want to make this an excellent school district for all of our students and so some of the things that we want to uh do is we want to continue to monitor all academic social emotional and behavioral data like Kelly just said just because we don't have a DPI subgroup size does not mean that we do not take uh and support every single student who may be uh underperforming or need additional supports um we want to continue to collect survey data from staff students and families and this year we will be adding demographic data to our parent survey
125so that we can actually desegregate that information a little bit more we want to continue to seek curricular resources instructional strategies to meet all students needs we want to determine how to maximize parent student focus groups in more of an advisory capacity and we want to be more intentional about engaging with and celebrating diversity throughout the year a few more pieces we want to increase focus on research-based literacy strategies for specially designed instruction for our students with disabilities we want to increase a focus on Phonics and pheic awareness instruction at our early childhood through second grade we do want to improve engagement with new students and families as we onboard as we talked about with open enrollment last year if students don't start with us and kindergarten we need to do more and be more
126intentional about how we need to get them up to the level of our students who are with us all the way from kindergarten and then event uh also we want to utilize more targeted instruction strategies to support economic divides that exist and I'm going to turn it back to Mr Garza so I believe this presentation again is a Continuum of presentations to the board addresses some of the questions that have been raised as a person of color as an employee Community member and parent I'm extremely proud of our efforts we have been and continue to take diversity and inclusion very seriously and we use data to drive our planning and decision making in the school district of New Berlin our students in most every subgroup outperforms the state and other local school districts I'm proud
127of our teachers support staff and administration that do this work on a daily basis as a professional Learning Community we are about continuous Improvement we do address diversity equity and inclusion in our plans and we have been our district action plans and our school action plans we believe that in our planning and as we continue to plan we address the gaps that we identify again the data is driving our work now while I do understand once again that we do have our shortcomings just like any other school district know that we are putting our best foot forward day in and day out on behalf of all of our students and for that I'm extremely proud I'm extremely proud of the effort that this administrative team worked with and came forward with it was a lot
128of work and again I understand that this becomes an emotional topic for some but know that we are addressing these gaps and these issues in the school district what I will ask is for the board at this time sure we will address questions we may not have answers to your questions today please know that there are stories Beyond stories behind the data that we've provided you and and I also ask to be careful with making certain assumptions as well because that can become problematic and so with that I would ask the board if they did have any questions at this time just to start I want to make sure that the presentation is now public on the packet so anybody who's watching you can open it up you can start click clicking on links and
129refer back to it at any time so any questions who would like to go first anything sure I'll go first um okay I have a bunch of questions um I guess I'll just they're they're all fairly small but the no heat no place for heat assembly on Friday is that the first time that we're doing this have we done that in the past no okay um and then it on the professional development it talked about or it listed cultural competency training and then yearly training on diversity and inclusion can you talk more about what's included in those so every teacher as they are hired in the district go through a cultural competency um they go through several different um lessons with uh Nicole Jones um and so uh she she presents on that um we
130have a lot of that going on in our buildings as well but all of our staff are also have to go through what are called safe School trainings at the beginning of the year that focuses on bullying harassment identifying making sure that we have strategies to um not just be reactive but also proactive um with our students um and then reacting in a positive way as much as possible um if something were to occur so every year we all go through that okay um and then Brady I appreciate the information you shared about the libraries and the classroom audits what will we do at the end of that audit to correct any deficiencies that we find yeah great great question I think um will I mean I can get more information you Kate but I
131think really it's it's you know looking at what if we're speaking specifically about books what where where are we where are we light and then uh looking to provide uh those those Monies to our classrooms or our school libraries to build that up um so I mean that's kind of the the the short answer to that question but we you know I can I can get you more information on that as well yeah I know um Kelly shared that you know that we did get some books for the secondary level I think those were for some from some grants so are there similar things available to Elementary yeah I mean you know every every year our Librarians have a a a pretty decent budget to to be updating our collections of books uh within our
132library uh so again that that's where the the um the the work with you know the children's book collaborative at W Madison or or um some of the re research that they're doing on their own uh to update those libraries uh comes in so yeah and we can certainly continue to explore uh different Avenues to provide books um you know as many books as we possibly can because obviously we know that that's a you know a very important thing I know I just know books are very expensive so curious we if we had any plans for well they can be uh you know we're also looking at building up our our um digital libraries as well obviously you know having a a large amount of students U virtual you know gives us U and giving
133everybody iPads uh or letting everybody use iPads has been a very helpful thing because we can right use uh th those resources as well perhaps a funding area for home in schools as well if we're looking for items for maybe uh as the fundraising chair Reagan I will keep that in mind as we look hopefully to being able to do an event next fall when I noticed I noticed on Twitter the other day I know po Creek had a huge U amount of books that were uh purchased the other day and those were all Amy really dug into doing some research on appropriate books um and then you said sorry R don't walk away too quickly um you said that you were evaluating the Second Step lessons on diversity is that something you could share
134with the board yeah certainly I can I can I'll send those out uh uh to you again it's a it's uh yeah I'll do that Kelly I got a question for you uh it seems like our elementary and it's really hard to glean something from those numbers because they're up down this year last year smaller group we don't have that group right um it seems like our elementary numbers though it seems like we grow so our elementary numbers aren't quite as good but as we have kids longer I think you touched on this our ACT scores our um graduation rates are all very high for those groups is do you have any data on the average number of students the average number of years at students with us versus the the progress they make it
135sounded like you were alluding to that we get some students in at maybe third or fourth grade and at that point we're playing a little bit of catchup from students that haven't been in our district for all their entire careers do you guys have numbers on that is that something you can put I know it's a hard ask because it's so a I had heard kind of like that that may be an ask that was coming like especially to break down our demographic data by that um I actually had that report pulled and there are about 5,000 lines of data um and it basically is it's just too hard to really look at when a student arrives how many years they've been here and then break it all the way down to the demographic group
136I wasn't even I I was more actually leaving the demographic group out but if we have a kid for 13 or 12 years yes do they get a 21 on their act versus and that was data that we were able to actually share last year um with you when we were talking about Open Enrollment and we were sharing that secondary data do you have anything else that you wanted to add a little bit um DR Sanders and I were able to get from the UW system our remediation data if you remember in math and in reading and look at our students who had to who got into a UW School but had to take a remediation level course and that's a course where you have to pay for but you don't get any credits and
137we were able to do a really deep data dive into who are these students we were looking at def demographic areas Act is at their grades and the number one predict were was transients meaning that the students who came to us after second grade or fourth grade I don't have the data right in front of me but for English it was one grade and for reading it was another grade and that was the biggest predictor of a remediation score when you looked at that group so do we think that that could be the case yes can I make an assumption you know or tell you for sure is no because we haven't done that specific data dive we will get that to you as soon as we can thank you I it's I realize it's
138a ton of d dat inside there so I'm I'm appreciative of well I will say that since we did that dive I will say that we are truly creating action strategies in all of our buildings to address students that are coming into us and kind of working hand inand with with families and and with the students to try to identify where those opportunity gaps are and then to address those opportunity gaps so that hopefully they won't have any yeah so one of the um you know as soon as the board approved the Open Enrollment seats in January we started a strategy of identifying who those students are to determine how they are tracking how where they're coming in and then keeping an eye on them over longitudinal uh or over several years to make sure
139that we are doing what we need to do as Kelly just mentioned to get them to the same level as the students if they're not already there in some cases they already are excellent thank you both for all of your oh thank you all four five for all of your hard work and dedication for this I know this is a lot of workk thank you very much yep I've got a few questions um so this was a report of a lot of different things so I I kind of worry that we it impaires us from digging deep into particular areas that we were talked about I think that this report was predicated on a lot of input from the community on diversity equity and inclusion among racial groups within our school buildings but then there
140was a lot of stuff on special education and there was a lot of you know what I mean it seemed like it was a lot of data not focused enough and drilled down enough on that issue in particular I think it was very helpful in a lot of ways so I appreciate all the work that went into it but I had a few questions first off um again I think it's a really good start um I agree with the number of the speakers that we should be that no district is perfect and we should be continually improving and I appreciate that everybody seems to be on the same page about that that's encouraging to me um one thing that was in the data that we did not talk about was on slide 29 if you
141scroll up to that slide I'm just doing it myself here thank you so much so slide TW slide 28 is the elementary student end ofe survey on um the statement that our students make about whether they feel that their teachers care about them as opposed to um diverse populations versus white populations so between those two slides 28 and 29 there's like an 11% drop between our students in the elementary buildings about who feel positively about that and the students in our secondary buildings I feel positively about that I'd like to find out why we have such a significant drop between the two buildings I think that's important to talk about so just as a sort of a data point I think that and and honestly I I love that we're that we're celebrating the good
142stuff but I'd very much like to celebrate it being 100% that's what I'd really like to celebrate and so I think you would too I think we're all on the same page about that so I think that that's more what I'd like to work towards I know you would too um later on u in the next slide um there's a mental health advisory committee mentioned I had no idea such a committee existed so I guess I'm con I'm wondering um who's on this committee when did they meet how can we will we hear something from them later will they report to us on how that's going because I'd love how long have they been meeting I guess is the first question so we have had a mental health advisory committee for over two years okay
143um CU I don't remember I thought that I had mentioned it before so I apologize that if I did not but I I thought that I had but yeah I mean I just uh you know so the mental health advisory committee basically Works based on our you know so so we do have several grants that we've applied for sure and as a result of that that that group reports to this team the administrative team which then that informs our district action plan and our school action plans uh certainly if if the board would like more information about our action plans in general you know because you don't you know one of the things that I want to point out is that we can't take things out of context it's part of a broader process and
144not just an isolation and so when you're looking at things in isolation you lose that broader context uh I also do want to mention back to your initial point that yes we did bring forth uh a lot of information related to diversity inclusion beyond that just of of race that's because our operational definition of diversity is beyond race and not just focused on Race um and so while we did include that information we also included this other information as well but again if the board would like more information about the specific work of that group I'd be happy to provide that to the board so I guess that's what I'm asking for on that point um and back to the uh well I'll get to that in a second um Second Step um so this
145may be a question for Brady um but I believe second step is only 22 lessons long but you're indicating that it's used every week in school so how do we stretch that out if it's only 22 lessons yeah I mean I think there's there's definitely enrichment um you know reading you know other text books or I mean you know read alouds you know to Kate's question and point um and then just you know other other ways to engage our kids in in those Concepts uh if that makes you know what I'm saying so you guys like kind of fill some things in so that sure okay and is that sufficient for what we're after in terms of creating empathy and understanding and emotional intelligence among our kids which is all part of the whole child
146education that we've got to promote well you I mean I know it's a that a question with no real answer but I guess I guess I feel what data would you like me to U yeah I'm just try share with you that is yeah I'm just trying to figure out is that enough like that's what I'm wondering and I don't know you have chren too like the you know we we have other things in place to to be building you know in addition to Second Step In addition I mean so so talk about you know uh like our maker culture right that we're trying to build like that maker culture that we're trying to build right the whole that whole process is predic ated on students having empathy in in a in a system and
147so and and and exploring you know other other people or or a condition or or something so that they can they can do do some research into that and get to know other people and so again there there's a there's it's not just second step that's that's building that base but then we have we have other uh work that we can do and then and then you said that second step was updated yeah so so yeah I mean so second step one they're they're um do doing some more work around you know culturally responsive uh um practices uh that that um one of our elementary schools is actually um kind of piloting some of those things uh right now okay um and like I said and Kate asked uh to be provided with some of
148the the lessons that another organization is working with second step to to bring some um uh more diversity inclusion uh type of lessons to to kids and I think what we can do is and again with some of this we're taking a list of of questions and comments that the board has uh we'll bring those back to you and so uh I think Kate had already asked for that information and we'll be happy to provide those updates to the board as needed that'd be great I'd appreciate that I was also I don't know um Brady if you are the person to ask about this question too but I know in our elementary libraries we did reduce the Staffing of Elementary Librarians remember when we did that I think we brought down the elementary Staffing to
149like was it halftime Joe I mean you would remember better than than I but I know that in our elementary schools I don't think our libraries are fully staffed is that remember that I'm not sure what you're asking me it we had 1.0 FTE at one time and then they were 08 FTE and then I think they were some number less than that is that so so right you know we right now all of our libraries are staffed for 1.0 FTS I'd have to check the specific number and I can get back because my question was because there was mention a slide of the Librarians kind of going through and evaluating you know kill your so our two secondary Librarians are the ones who order for our elementary buildings okay so we want a Continuum
150of learning K through 12 sure so our two secondary Librarians we use common School funds yep to fund our library and so they will work in conjunction we have a A system that monitors all our books called Destiny and so our secondary Librarians can look through and look at what we have like if a kid didn't turn in a book or we're down somewhere like we can update all of that with the Staffing that we have and then our our elementary library AIDS because they're student learning assistants that are just in the library they then are responsible for helping our our our students pick out books and our our staff to pick out books and to identify some of those books that may be um for a particular topic great um okay and then I
151just have kind of a a comment um I know that we are data driven and I think that's good um one data point I wanted to bring up to the board and to The District administration is that this meeting and at our meeting on February 22nd at privilege of the floor time we had approximately almost 90 I kept notes 90% almost of all the speakers had things to say about the racial climate of our buildings that was negative almost 90% of those speakers had those comments I'm concerned when that many people come to these meetings tell us these things and we nod and we don't say anything and they go home and we don't do anything about that that's concerning to me so if we are truly a data driven District I think what we
152need to do is I think we need to refer this matter of diversity equity and inclusion to a committee preferably a Community Committee we're not the we're not deating what we're going to be doing I'm not I'm suggesting an idea I'm not suggesting we take an action right now Janet so I'm just speaking my piece I'm not making a motion or suggesting that we take an action but I'm telling you telling body that I think that we should do something like for example what elbrook has done Elmbrook has formed a committee that comprises itself of Administrators Educators parents community community members and students and they're studying this issue of diversity equity and inclusion they started it their study La last August in 2020 and they have been meeting almost every month to talk about the
153climate of diversity regarding race in their district and how they want to proceed on it so that all students feel welcomed and valued in their buildings and when almost 90% of our speakers in the last month come and say we've got a problem I think maybe we need to listen so that's my observation I'm hoping that we actually do something about it um I just want to make sure that Susan and Jeff didn't want to have ask any questions Susan do you have any questions um yeah I do just a couple questions I'll be quick um so thank you very much first of all the presentation very thorough very helpful thank you um regarding the student surveys just a quick question on the participation level can you give any insight on the the number of
154students percent wise that are completing that each year on average so Susan you bring up a really good point and that is something that we have really been just taking face value for who are completing the survey um I will tell you that has been one of the things that have bubbled to the surface that we really do want to look at if we have this many students that have responded out of um the whole so I do not have that currently um our numbers are high compared to any survey we are getting like 60% or more but we we really need to look at that um a little bit more deeply in the in the coming years and and especially now that we're going to add uh demographic data to the parent survey we'll
155have to really look closely at those numbers because at least our students have to do it while they're sitting in a class so our percent our completion rate is higher but parentwise we'll we'll have to do a little bit uh better with that as well so very good question it is one of our action steps moving forward thank you and then are the questions consistent at the elementary level through the secondary or do they change they change slightly um mainly because we uh our secondary Administration was trying to get to some of those deeper level um issues about why some of those numbers look different at the secondary level and so they they there are a few that look different I can actually um share those questions you'll get those um in May but I
156can share them out um in advance just so you can see what their the questions are yeah and I guess where I'm going with it is you know as all these actions are taking place and changes as you guys walk through which is really helpful to see the things that are evolving you know do those actions translate into student feedback of where I'm going with that yeah um and then I just had one other quick question on the females in Career and Technical education I was a bit surprised I don't know if others were that the numbers there was such a gap and I I'm just wondering if we're looking at other districts if there's any comparison data um or even with the state as a whole and you I know you might not have
157it there's so much information here but just curious yeah we're part of the cisa one Career and Technical education Consortium and within that Consortium one of our goals is around gender and equity in career and um technical education specifically construction manufacturing and computer science so collectively we're trying to think of strategies in the region that work with our business partners and they're helping us too on what they've done in hiring and recruiting and we're trying to emulate some of those systems um so sometimes it goes back to marketing differently advertising um really identification of skills um that would be successful in those courses and uh we are working with other districts who have seen successes or are working towards the same goals as us what I will also say is that um our our CTE
158teachers yeah we we probably have the most diverse as far as uh gender uh opportunities the majority of our staff are actually female uh in our CTE courses um and so we certainly take pride in that we believe that that's actually helped us in our recruiting efforts um but again can we always do better most certainly absolutely great all right thank you very much Jeff do you have anything no not currently no okay thanks Amy anything thank thank you okay gosh everybody seemed to have asked my questions I was going to ask you but um I'll just go back to one little more here the surveys um are those Anonymous how are those conducted with the students they are Anonymous they're Anonymous for staff parents and students are students doing them in class yes they
159are okay um and then in regards to all of the new books that are being um brought into the school schools as that's being done are books being removed talk to our librarian and I did this morning we had a meeting with them just part of our monthly meetings um and they do look at um destiny that that database to see which books haven't been checked out in a long time which ones are getting old and need to be replaced so that is part of their own continuous improvement process that they that they do so it's basically books that just aren't being checked out very much but like the the books that are becoming um just worn out are those are those same titles being removed so when I said books I didn't so so
160much mean the actual physical books but the titles are there certain titles being removed from if if it's a if it's a text that's just absolutely worn out because it's checked out a lot we're going to replace it um but if it's worn out just because it's really old and it hasn't been checked out for a long time then we probably won't replace it um and we'll add a different title that might be more relevant to our students and interesting to them okay um and I don't think I have any more questions about the books um oh the the survey responses I probably should have kept kept this together um I just just in it and it's mostly an observation that I noticed that um when we do see that drop which is about 10%
161from those the primary to the secondary schools it does seem to be the the same though by by race so it's it's not like showing that there's a definite difference between the races it's 10% across the board for both um so if I'm seeing that correctly yes you did okay I think that's all my questions for now so anybody thinking something one I mean we have to keep this I have not too long so if you have anything one more question um so I guess like I know Kelly you went into some of the like broader longer term next steps but I'm just curious from a you know quote series of presentations perspective is there another presentation planned and and what would be the focus of that our our our the what we've wanted to
162do is again we've this has been a process not an event uh so our goal was to just give a general overview of our work which is what we did last month we dug a little bit deeper now and now that we've and again it's a breadth of information as you all know we now will take even further the questions that were raised the comments that have been made and bring forth another presentation to the board and then from there again our recommendation we've provided our recommendations as far as areas that we have to improve in based on the data that we have uh but again if the board wants us doing something different that'll be for the board to determine and tell us what additional you'd like us to do um again I we
163may be bringing this to you at the next meeting but it's really going to be contingent on uh the variety of other items that we have to address as well thank you this was a lot of information I know you pulled together we asked you for a lot of things and you brought it to us so it's really appreciated well I speak for all of us you're very welcome and just when you think you've had enough of them I know and now we're on to the social studies resources review we are not going to be seeking approval obviously tonight it's really just uh an update to the board but we will be seeking approval at the next meeting okay so social studies alignment why now so we actually started the year thinking we were going
164to go through English language arts alignment and in light of covid and because there's new state standards in English language art that are new this year we determined as Brady said we needed to learn a little bit more about the English language art standards not only as Leaders but also with our teachers before we could even start that Journey since the standards were so new in addition some of our codes for social studies were expiring so it was a fiscally responsible decision to start looking at Social Studies since they had new standards that were recently adopted in 2018 that weren't going to be changing anytime soon so when we go through an alignment we look at what standards that we do have and which standards we need to meet as a district and those include
165our K8 Wisconsin standards our 78 Wisconsin standards and then the 912 Wisconsin standards in addition we look to advance placement uh course expectations and learning targets as well as the act and you might think act well we really do look at the reading portion of the act and what skills we might be succeeding in and which skills we might need deficits in and then we look at our res potential resources in curriculum from that lens as that's another opportunity um for growth so how did the standards change in 1998 and yes that was the last time the state updated the social studies standards before 2018 that's a huge gap um we still have the five main strands the Behavioral Science economics geography history political science within those strands the standards did change there's a little
166bit of different grade band distributions that change between the old standards and the new standards and they're all founded in this sense of critical thinking and incy inquiry within all of those strands so when I talk about standards those Define what should be learned at certain points of time so for example if we have standards in the band 6 through eight that's the expectation for those grade levels somewhere between six through eight students need to meet the standards the curriculum is really the larger scope in sequence that includes the resources that we have to offer students to help meet the standards so we um the process that we underwent and uh Joe and Kelly both shared it with you but we analyzed our district data and social studies um particularly our forward data uh at
167the elementary level it's we only have it in fourth grade because in fourth grade is the only time um that uh kids take the social studies portion uh we we um we we dug into the standards uh a little bit we broke them apart uh we we we saw where um where our needs uh were and what we wer haven't been addressing um we built a teacher uh Team to to review uh several different resources we selected several different resources to take a look at uh We've we've also uh had solicited some some family and parent feedback uh throughout the the process we worked our uh vendors uh we worked with our vendors uh to to get their best uh prices uh on these things again being as fiscally conservative as we possibly can um
168but we also wanted to get the best product that we we we could um and then again we reviewed all the viable resources we we did have to eliminate some uh because they were um well quite high in their in their pricing um but they weren't the best ones anyway so that was that was a good deal um we presented options then to our our District's learning team and then uh tonight uh we're we're presenting just a proposal to you um again we've all seen the the Strategic goals of our our district uh and really specifically we're we're focusing on you know the student achievement um part part of this just a real quick uh when we when we when we were reviewing and our teacher teams reviewing they kind of looking at these different
169um Concepts uh on uh as they as they reviewed um the different um vendors that we we took a look at we reviewed a ton uh of different ones um I will say I I've I have a pretty good view of social studies at the K5 level because I've read through actually five or four resources completely um Kelly I think maybe has as well um her textbooks are a bit longer than mine though so that's a it's a the plus of being the elementary guy um and uh our recommendations uh to to you uh for our K5 would be hoton Mifflin hardcourts um into social studies um from a for six seven um mcra Hill networks eight US Government history from hotton Mifflin hardc court and then um 9 through 12 um a whole bunch
170of different uh um things now uh those resources are all set up in conference room a uh we would welcome anybody to um come come in and and review them and that uh that that is where we're at does anybody anyone have Jody have comments or questions yeah so what I would like to just mention is we're not seeking your approval tonight in fact for the sake of time unless you have a very prominent question comment or concern I guess I'd ask that you please just forward those to me and then in our next presentation before approval we'll have that information to you I'll actually have it uh to you you know well in advance of the next board meeting so that you'll have that uh if the any board members would like to schedule
171a time to meet please contact tyana to do so uh we may or may not have one of our district admin there with you um unfortunately we cannot check out the resources we have limited resources uh and they need to remain in that room and we need to have that accessible to our community so not just board members but anyone else that that would like to come in and review those resources we'd be again happy to reach out to my office and we will schedule a time for that to happen uh as a point of clarification we actually do have three weeks between meetings uh so uh I do know that that third week is spring break we will have limited staff but again I would ask that if if somebody wants to come in
172during that time we will make sure to to get you the access that you need so again unless there's anything Earth shattering uh we would ask to uh move on to the next item anything that must be asked right now no okay so we'll hold off on that uh so we can move on to the discuss approved policy 01 67.3 public participation at board meetings just want to remind you that this was tabled so I believe we actually need a um motion to take from the table um to be able to uh open this up to discussion again do I have a motion to take from the table motion to untable okay a policy oh jeez sorry 0167 0167 to discuss and potentially approve have a second second okay so we have a motion by
173Mr hmer a second by Mr Kur so let's uh begin our discussion again uh Madam chair point of order a motion to take from the table is not debatable or amendable under rabbit's rules but it's to be able to open it up to discussion again I looked it up that's how it right works this is the motion to take it from the table so that we need to revisit so we need to vote on the motion to take from the table okay and then after that correct you're right we miss I did miss I missed the vote so we do need a vote sorry that's okay thanks um so uh Diana why don't you just call the roll since we have two people on the phone sure uh Miss Crosby Mr Helmer yes Mr Curry
174yes Miss Manley yes Miss schules yes Miss uner no Miss Wonder no well motion passes now do we need another motion or we just just R yes Madam president I have a motion I move that we refer this policy to the policy committee that was created by our former president Amy Crosby on October 26th when she established the policy committee so that we can more fully vet this policy and consider it in a more appropriate venue I think it's very difficult to go through an entire policy in this venue that's my motion second you take the role please oh should we have a second so it's it's up for a vote I think we have to have discussion oh discussion I'm sorry we have discussion I thought we had needed a vote okay discussion yeah
175I mean I believe this policy involves everyone so I don't know that I want three people making a decision on this so I'm definitely in support of this being in front of the whole board I don't think any decisions would be made I think it would just be to bring a recommendation so basically right now what we have is the recommendation from the President and Vice President instead of a deep dive in a committee level of all the nuances of the policy so I would definitely support a committee reviewing it in great detail and bringing back a I don't want to say better but different let's just say different recommendation I agree I think that the my work in the finance committee I think is instructive to why I made this motion which is because
176I think that at the committee level we have much more time to vet the language to propose changes to make sure that everybody is on board which we have always done all the policy revisions at the finance committee level have all been unanimously approved um but both the committee and then subsequently by the board so I think it's a way to get Buy in among the entire board to have it reviewed by a larger body and not just by the President and Vice President and then brought back to the full board for a vote because the committee has no power um Mr Helmer as far as making a decision they only have authority to make a recommendation and actually do the hard work of crafting new language around a com a policy that we have
177which needs revision so I think that that time would be well spent and I'm asking that we consider that as an option okay we want to be able to let everybody um speak since this is a motion so um we have Miss um anger and miss m and Mr Helmer so far correct uh Susan do you have anything no I'm not support of okay tbling this to a committee okay you're not in support of tabling to committee if I heard that correct Jeff that is correct yeah okay uh I'm in agreement with MIT and with Susan I'm not in agreement okay Amy I think this one this policy is um important because of the virtual options of meetings so I know that hasby um recommended that we update this policy policy so I would be
178in favor of of passing it okay um and then I'll give my opinion here um the way we've been doing the policies the Committees in practice have been the president of creating these committees I don't believe that the policy actually says that but if we're going to continue with that practice until we actually address the second um policy item that we're dealing with um as the president I can disband the policy committee and I pretty much have because I felt that we should be dealing with policies as a whole um and so I believe that we should bring this off the table and debate it now and decide on it now so any other comments before we vote okay can we take the role please Diana sure miss Wonder yes Miss uner yes Miss um
179Miss Crosby um no Mr Helmer no Mr Kurt no Miss Manley no M schs no okay so motion does not pass and we move next to I was going to move the policy but I gotta find it again sorry what was the policy number it's 0167 I move I move to approve policy 0167 the public comment uh at board meetings policy second so I have a motion by Mr hmer and a second by Mr Kur to approve uh any discussion thank you very much for all the work you did on this policy I think we definitely need to get this in place so that as was stated we can adjust and make sure that everything is correct for all of the online and virtual meetings as well thank you again so I think our standard
180for a lot of policies has been to adopt the Neola recommended policy so my first question is other than the virtual stuff why would we not just use the Neola policy here okay I'll speak to this since you're asking the question of me um because we had some good items in our existing policy and so basically what this is is a melding of our current policy and the Neola policy taking the best of both and then adding to it what we can do when we go virtual since our current policy didn't address that and so at least now we do have um the parameters for what to do when we go virtual and it mirrors what a um spoken uh comment would be so it it's it's just basically following the same guidelines as the
181spoken policy all right my second question would be in regards to the recent change um about preference for district residents I'm curious where that came from and why we think that that is important it came from feedback from both the public and from other board members who were concerned that if we had a large number of um people from outside the community wanting to come speak at one of our board meetings that they would not push out those who were um voting members of the community and and so that also is something that is done by germant toown in practice that I understand and so it was suggested that we add it to ours it doesn't stop anybody from outside the community it just ensures that people who have um their stakeholders who are here
182that they do get a say Jeffer Susan any comment online or kren go ahead I think you were going to go yeah so I have a few items the first is um in the Neola policy um the item the agenda item language was struck out and that language says any person or group who would like to have an item put on the agenda shall submit the request to the superintendent no later than x days prior to the meeting and include name and address of the participant group affiliation when appropriate topic to be addressed such requests shall be subject to the recommendation of the superintendent and the approval of the board president so I'm wondering why that was all stricken because I thought that was an appropriate ad to allow Community feedback and input in the
183process of crafting an agenda because they could always be denied I mean but to strike it out and to say you can't even ask seems to me an overreach so why was that stricken well for one I was looking at what other school boards were doing and they rarely included that in their they used Neola policy as well not all of them kept it in um also just because it doesn't have it in the policy doesn't mean that's not a possibility we can always accept emails and and suggestions and and consider them anyway so just because it's not in the policy does not necessarily mean that we wouldn't take suggestions for agenda items but the converse is true right we could leave it in the policy and still ignore the stuff that came in right
184I just wanted to keep it more as to our current practice and not make a huge difference I guess if there's enough that want to amend it to keep it in we can do that yeah I'd like to keep it in I think that it shows the community that we interested in what they have to say and what they want to bring to the board and what's important to them and I think that there's no downside to keeping it in because it's at the it's subject to the recommendation of you know whoever the board president superintendent or whatever you have a vetting process in place so I think that it would be appropriate as communicating to the community that their input's important and that we want to get it so I'd rather see it kept
185in with regard to the um preference to District residents my question on that is first of all I think that was a I think like as you know Kate anger indicated that was a weird ad to me because what if we're talking about alumni for example who have graduated from new berland and come back don't live here anymore but have experiences they want to share and they're still they still consider themselves part of the community would those people be edged out by people who live here now because they're alumni I mean that's the practical application right the practical application is when there's an abundance of speakers um that want to speak those who have St are stakeholders current stakeholders should have preference and not be um barred from speaking because people from outside the community
186or former community community members come to speak totally understand I wouldn't want to totally like ban but when we have an abundance of speakers it's just logical and rational to have people who currently are in the district who have students here who are pay taxes here that do get to speak first so if they have to pay taxes here then they have to own property here I said also if they if they live here not necessarily that and and you are paying taxes through rent you don't have to necessarily have to you need to be a voter here but what if you don't vote because you're starting to get into no please so we're we're starting to get nitty and picky here but but see that's the point right because when we're trying to carve
187out who gets preference I think this is the difficult situation you get in we had people here that would have liked to have spoken who were not members of the community last week or two weeks ago um and they were not able to come in here because we have limits we have limits so at least if we had a policy that allowed people who lived in the community who had a stake in the community to to have that Preference they would have been able to speak I think that I I think I've said this to you guys before there's a staying in the law bad facts make bad law this is bad law and it's bad law because it's based on one thing happening that you didn't like and one thing that sort of didn't
188smack it's not that I didn't like it it's it's the feedback I got from the community I got emails people were saying why do people who don't live here get to speak um and I I want to hear from people who aren't in the community I it's not that I want to tell them no you can't speak it's very nice to have feedback from those who you know have different experiences and to share that with us or former students to come I mean it's great to hear from former students to give their feedback on what they've learned and you know how they're doing now um but the fact is is that when you have an abundance of people who want to speak and we have a limited amount of time which by the way the
189new policy does allow us to have a motion to extend it for another half hour but if we were to have a situation where there's a lot of people that want to speak is it really fair to say I'm sorry this person who doesn't live here who doesn't have kids that go here they get to speak before you that's not fair and if we want to talk about Equity that is not fair to tell a person they live here and you can't speak but you fix it by letting them all talk you can't necessarily we have a meeting we have I said we can we can extend it we got people on the line we I'm sorry two minutes I do I want to give um other people a chance to speak I know we
190were asking me questions as to why we were doing things so I but I I have a couple other questions that I haven't had addressed yet which I would have liked to address okay so we do have a motion going and you do get to keep the speak until you're done goe thank you I appreciate that so number three on the first page where it says attendees must must register their intention to comment in the public portion of the meeting upon their arrival at the meeting that's not how we do it no that is no because it's no it's not because the fact that if people come late that's when they arrive so it seems to me the language should reflect something like before the start of the meeting no it's it's upon coming to
191the meeting no because people can walk in late Janet and if they walk in late that's when I arrive I I think the the point is is that you can't send in um your form by email ahead of time you have to be present says they're lately arrived I'm saying that the language is in articulate and it needs to be fine-tuned because of the fact that it should say something to the effect of attendees must register their intention to comment in the public portion of the meeting in person prior to the start of the meeting or something to that effect because I think that's what you're driving at it's not this well it that actually that wording is in our current policy that right which is also a problem I think this is why I
192didn't want to table it last week and these are the things that I wish we were able to work through as a board but we were forced to table it so we didn't get an opportunity to work through this why can't we work through it now I understand we you were ready to vote on it last week so how is that any different from us being ready to discuss and vote on it right now this is us working through it and it's unfortunate that it's 10 to 10 but we had a lot of things on our agenda tonight so if you want to work through it this is us raising our concerns we know we're going to be outvoted but we still would like to influence the policy so I think that that's what needs
193to be changed in number three um in number five I think it's also an inarticulate statement of what we do because I think you only indicate you only want people to State their group affiliation if and when appropriate but the whole sentence because it's conflated together basically says that people can need to only announce their name and address if it's appropriate so what does that mean this was taken directly from Neola so by you saying it's not right lawyers wrote this so I don't know I understand that but I'm saying that it's inarticulate and lawyers are human so go easyy on us but you know the thing is is that I think that we can clean it up if I know you tended to point to that we should always be using Neola and now
194you're saying we shouldn't so I'm getting a little confused I say Neola is the right starting point Janet and I'm saying that I think that this language is in articulate and I think that we can do better so I think we should because it doesn't make any sense F and secondly I think that having to share your address I think you should have to share your address in the form that you file but don't think people should have to say their address in public on a video because what if they're saying something controversial and actually I agree with you there which is why I got feedback from people on both sides of the issue yeah um that didn't like having to put their address in so that's why you see in the Green Let's consider
195maybe asking them just to state that they are a resident of the district sure but what language are we adopting if this gets voted today well that that's part of why we're we're talking about this so do we want to put keep that in there andove so then somebody needs to make an amendment yes I know that's why this is in order to get this passed the way that you're talking about I mean we could actually leave it as is where they could State their name and address or state they live you'd have to remove the brackets somebody would have to and we would make an amendment to remove the brackets if we need to sure and I think that there's also on the second page in paragraph 13 where you've stricken paragraph E I
196think that you should allow it I think you should allow the rules to be waved and further if you're worried about a president you know being you know whatever crazy then you can add the successive language which is with the approval of the board when necessary to for the protection of privacy or the administration of the board's business I think that it's appropriate for the presiding offer to officer to have that power to wave those rules because sometimes there's going to be a situation where that needs to happen for whatever reason so I think that should go back in um I saw that there was the change in 14 which I appreciated which having with extending the time um so I think that that's appropriate I think that there aren't you know in in the
197issue of extending the time for Deb you know for a privilege of the floor it happens so rarely we don't have night after night where people where we're having tons of privilege of the floor speakers here so it happens so rarely I just think that it's a no-brainer so I appreciate that being in there and you always have to keep in the rest of the agenda for the evening so you know we we're going long here so if we had to put another half hour today it might have been a burden for all of us sure but but we have the option with this but you know we're public servants we sign on for it right we also have paid Administration here tonight as well sure I understand that and I appreciate all of their
198time I really do because we we wouldn't be here if they don't do what they do so I do appreciate it um the last item I had a question on is on page three of the policy with the virtual items at item 11 where it says any emails not read within the 30 minutes will be shared with the board and recorded in the meeting minutes so does that mean when you put that in there because this is new language right when you put that in there that it's going to they're actually going to type out what the comments are in full Pros in the meaning minutes if the if we have an emailed comment because here's the problem I think if you don't do that you got a Foy a problem right so I think
199that since that's your policy then you got to do that every single emailed comment goes in every single emailed every single minute document and has to be part of the public record so as long as we're clear on that then I think that part is fine with me um I took the language from another policy but I'll ask Diana maybe she would be the if you know could we just like attach all of the emails to the minutes and refer to them in the minutes or we is this going to be so technical that we would have to write them all out or you have to probably attach them as to the packet in the minutes agenda item would that be sufficient as long as they're by reference and they're available to the public right
200and the whole point of me putting that in there was that it was available to the public sure right I think that's appropriate yes do we want to just say then that they'll be in board docs or something and as opposed to being part of the actual minutes I think they need to be part of the actual minutes and the reason I think that Kate is because of the fact that it makes it a lot more user friendly for people who are seeking the record okay I don't want them to have to click around 12 times to try to find the thing that they're looking for that's not good policy okay you have any other questions comments um Susan anything um no I I do support though that preference is given to District residents when
201there's a limitation of time available and I'm in support of also not having to share the address rather just that they're District resident okay Jeff anything um no Amy um I agree with s about the address portion of it okay so at this point it sounds like I'd offer an amendment okay which amendment yes um Madam chair I would offer an amendment to I have two amendments so I'll make them separate because they must be separate motions okay um paragraph five on page one of the policy that it is modified to read as follows participants must be recognized by the presiding officer and will be requested to press preface their comments by an announcement of their name comma and having previously filed their written address on their privilege of the floor form so you're saying
202not to state that they are a resident of the district I don't think it's necessary if they put their address on the privilege of the floor form because then to your point of putting priority to Residents then you would do that with the paperwork in calling the people right so I don't think that they have to say that they're a resident of new berland if they've already survived that but now you're you're assuming that we're not going to have anybody outside the community be able to speak we in a in a normal evening we might have enough time for people from both in the community and outside I wasn't saying that I was saying that I'm basically trying to get at that they write their address in the form but they don't have to orally
203state it when they're at the microphone not their address but think the public would like to know the speaker whether or not the speaker's from the community or not from or from the district I should say or not from the district okay I agree I think that's important agree I think you used that number today of 90% of parents said this and if we don't know if they're from a district and that's fine so to my amendment I think we have to have a second to discuss it right after yeah after you propose your Amendment and we get a a first and and then second Al you could offer a friendly amendment to my Amendment which would have to be seconded which I would accept so I think you need to call for a second
204to my Amendment okay so we actually haven't voted for the First Amendment or we haven't we don't have a motion for your first amendment yet do we I did I did you made a motion I did do we have a second so we need a second order to open it up for discussion so seconding it doesn't mean you're going to vote for it it only means that you think it's worthy of discussing so do we still not have a second can I make a better motion then sorry I only didn't second it because I I thought then we could just make the one that we wanted I would I Madam chair I would be willing to withdraw my motion okay so we have a m withdrawn do we what would your can we just change
205it to say I mean I think I agree that the address shouldn't have to be stated publicly and I don't think it should have to be stated publicly whether you're a resident or not so I think we can say something to the effect announce your name and state whether they're resident or not but we probably need to say something about the fact that their full address must be disclosed on their form we do have the form which we could vote on separately it was going to just take this and put it into the form um do we need it actually on this policy I suppose we could we do all right so how would that read okay I think I could read something like by an announcement of their name and a statement of whether
206they're a resident of the district and then maybe in parenthesis we say full address must be disclosed on the form and group affiliation if it went appropriate well if we keep it close to as possible maybe something like participants must be recognized by the presiding officer and will be requested to preface their comments by announcement of their name and state they are resident of the district while also completing the form with their full address but then we do we still would we want group affiliation if they're actually representing like let's say the PTO of one of the schools comes we probably would want to hear that yeah I think we need the group affiliation because if they're coming to speak on behalf of let's say the ran home and School Association or something like that
207we need that group to be stated as well because they're making a statement for more than just sys out right so I think the the issue with the way that it reads right now and what you had said in your summary email is it sounded like for non-residents we were going to still ask them to State their whole address and I feel like that's my point of no that was not my that's not what I had intended I'm not sure how you read because it says address or state of their resident of the district right I sort of put that in there so that people would have an option if they were not comfortable stating their full address we just want to know if they're a resident of the district or not okay so did
208somebody write down what Kate had moved I the wording was awkward so I don't I was trying to figure out I know what you're trying to say I your wording was fine too um what about what about what about if we just take out those brackets because I have brackets in there because it was like optional or state we still keep it you know by an announcement of their name address or state they are a resident of the district also State group affiliation if and when appropriate the the full name and address will appear on the for on the uh privilege of the floor for I havea say anything about the pleas okay hold on one second okay hold on see this is why I want to do it in committee kids well trying to
209do it we we because we have informal board we can use that because we're a small board yeah this is appropriate we can do okay so here's just an idea um participants must be recognized by the presiding officer and will be requested to preface their comments by an announcement of their name and whether they reside in the district having filed a privilege of the floor form stating their full address and then I think we need to go on and state whether or not they represent a group when present at the meeting or something to that effect does that I like that is that okay M okay Diana can you get that all down did you get that Diana because we're I you didn't okay let me moving whe whether they reside in the district having
210filed a privilege of the floor form stating their full address and further whether they represent a group while in attendance at the meeting does that work I have an informal approval here do do anybody have any objections to that wording okay if there's no objections to that wording then let's do an official Amendment to the motion okay now who's original motion was it I think we withdrew the you withw yours withdrawn was it Kate Kate was going to do one but it never happened okay so we haven't made Antion to amend the new motion this is the new motion so I move that language that I just said M seconded okay okay any discussion on this I think we're all in agreement so that's that's an amendment to what's in front of us okay so
211we have an amendment but let's but let's take a vote right yes I just wanted to make sure everybody knew we have an amendment to item number five so um let's take the role this is for the amendment this is for the amendment specifically to rewriting um policy of item number five Miss W yes Miss uner yes Miss Crosby yes Mr Helmer yes Mr Kurt yes Miss Manley yes Miss schules yes okay so then you were going to suggest another amendment I do I have another amendment for number three on the same page I would re I I'm trying to amend it so that it actually reflects what we do which is attendees must must register their intention to comment in the public portion of the meeting in person prior to the start of the
212meeting period because that's how we do it people come here I'm sorry I shouldn't talk that's my motion no no that's okay yeah sorry but that's all I want to say okay so we so you're you you just gave an amendment a proposal yes okay um and was that a did you motion it I'm sorry did you motion I think I did but I will do so now okay let's make official motion I move that we amend item three on page one to read attendees must must register their intention to comment in the public portion of the meeting in person prior to the start of the meeting period you have a second seconded okay discussion I think that's how we actually do it so the language we have says upon the arrival so that means
213that anybody can roll in at 7:30 and say I'm here your policy says I got to register when I get here and here's my form and now I demand a talk you know what I'm saying but it's not on the agenda during that time it's only the privilege of the floor it doesn't matter the language says and I think the language binds us to requ to allow them to talk because it doesn't say that they're limited before I say anything does any oh go sorry I was going to say because it says in the public portion of the meeting and on the agenda has the public portion of the meeting right so I think it is bound there I mean I don't have a problem changing the language sure but then let's say for your
214sake of of your facts Mitch that they come in during privilege of the floor and they want to talk but let's say they're a resident and we've already L A non-resident talku and now we're out of time so now what do we do see what I mean it's a problem um I just want to mention that the new policy is a little bit different in the timing of the privilege of the floor the privilege of the floor under our existing policy is very clear that privilege of the floor will be in the be at the beginning of the meeting our new policy actually only says um public comment shall be permitted as indicated on the order of business this gives us flexibility and let's say we want to do it in the middle of our
215meeting or we want to do it at the end um that's possible so the whole point is you probably don't want to say you have to be here before the meeting starts okay if you want to take people at that point I just thought that's how we're doing sure I mean how we're doing it right now is you know as long as you're here before privilege of the floor begins that's pretty much what the practice has been um I think the whole point is is that we don't take emails ahead of time and start stacking it up that way it's you have to be at the meeting in order to register to speak why don't we change it then employees must register their intention to comment before the public portion public meeting employees okay he
216said employees but yeah whylo the public portion of the meeting yeah I'm sorry what did you I didn't understand the employee part sorry me so let's say we have a meeting and we don't have the the privilege of the floor till the end we have a meeting where it makes more sense to do it at the end sure some people might not want to come for the whole meeting so we want to make it so that they're able to register to speak before I was unaware that you were considering moving around where privilege of the I'm not actually considering moving around I just think we should be flexible you know I'm okay with that I I just I'm I've heard the public say that hey we'd like to speak after something sometimes so this gives
217us flexibility and I'm okay with that I was just offering language to be in conformance with what we actually do right now so if that's not what we're going to continue doing then that's fine yeah I mean I do like that this leaves that open because as I've said I feel like 500 times it would be great if we had public comment at the beginning and the end we got a lot of people who stayed through this whole meeting they might have some things they want to say agreed sadly not to me I would second mit's language if you would like to make that up an official motion yeah and what okay but we have to vote on my Amendment first right yes unless Mitch wants to offer a friendly no I don't know if
218you can do that let's just vote on your Amendment and then we'll we'll do another one so on the amendment to um why don't you restate that so we all remember what it was I I had proposed attendees must register their intention to come in in the public portion of the meeting in person prior to the start of the meeting okay so we have that motion on the floor let's take the role Miss Wonder yes Miss anger can I vote against something I seconded yeah you can vot no yeah can Miss Crosby no Mr Helmer no Mr Kurt no Miss Manley no Miss sches no okay so we were talking about another amendment would you like to make the motion Mr Helmer oh okay just a moment he's getting the language put together do you
219want me to do can we just talk okay make another amendment it down and then go through right you guys okay talking through it and then just making sure we I I think I remember what you said so attendees must register their intention to comment in the public portion of the meeting prior to it being on the agenda PRI prior to the public comment being on the agenda but I don't know the exact word I I don't think we want to say being on the agenda I think we need to say prior to the start of that section of the agenda or something like that prior to the public so they must uh register their intention to comment in the public portion of the meeting prior to the public comment portion of the agenda portion
220of the agenda the only really person that matters is Diana I know Diana do you have that don't you have to say something before it begins no yeah I we just wanted to make sure we had the wording right before we started to do the amendment so now we're going to do I know yeah we're going to do the motion I okay nope I just want to make sure the word begins before it begins is in there oh okay before it begins okay do you want to read it to us Diana so we know what the motion will be okay that's what I have attendees must register their intent to comment in the public portion of of the meeting prior to the public comment prior to the comment portion that doesn't public comment portion public
221comment of the agenda begins that's what I wrote that's yeah the public comment item agenda begins okay public comment portion of the agenda okay I it's listed as an item so does that make sense Sor yes so say saying it saying item is does that make sense since listed as an item listed as items okay all right so we have a motion to amend uh number three of the public comment policy so the motion was by Mr hmer yeah second we've got Amy seconding so discussion now do we need to disc more so I think though based on what you were talking about J earlier about wanting to allow flexibility and people to participate wouldn't we want it to be prior to the public portion of the meeting ending so that if they came in
222during privilege of the floor and handed in a form and we still had time that they would be allowed to speak I think the problem with that is then we are shuffling if we don't know if it's a resident it's got to come up here is it the last minute but I just I'm just asking because as a point of clarification when Janet was saying earlier that she wanted to have the flexibility to allow people to do it even when they weren't here before the discussion began which is how I understood it so you know that's the question so you're just concerned that if somebody comes in while public discussion is still going on but has not ended that they wouldn't get a chance to speak right which is I thought what you were trying
223to prevent in your comments earlier no actually that wasn't what I was getting at but okay I understand what you're saying I thought yeah I might I guess I took from you that you wanted it to be if there's an opportunity for them to speak we want them to have the opportunity to speak because I was saying they have to be there at the beginning of the meeting and you're like no we should allow them to speak if they well I I meant that if there was a portion of if the public speaking portion came after the start of the meeting I didn't want people to feel they had to be here at the very beginning of the meeting before it started in order to register sure that's what I was getting at okay yeah
224so if we so let's say theoretically we switch public comment completely from the beginning to the end of the agenda people should not have to show up at 7 o'clock to speak at 10:15 sure right right but I think if we exactly if we did it twice on the same agenda they'd have to sign up before the first one if they wanted to speak during the first one and before the second agenda item if they wanted to speak at the second agenda item so basically before that agenda item starts whichever one it is wherever it ends up on our agenda you need to sign up in advance I agree for logistical means of trying to organize public comment we would want to collect all the papers before we started that agenda item okay that makes
225sense to me I just didn't know what you were trying to get at in the previous comments so okay on the phone any comments from uh Susan or Jeff I think we're making this a little bit more complicated than it needs to be yes so we want to give people the opportunity to speak but we don't want to have chaos in our meeting either correct so is caution okay so the the motion on the floor right now are we ready to vote on it because that's that would be just to clarify that that the public who the person who wants to speak must be here before that item on is on the agenda okay so let let's take the role Mr Helmer yes Miss Crosby yes Mr Kurt yes Miss Manley yes Miss schules yes
226Miss younger yes Miss Wonder yes okay are there any other amendments no more amendments so then do we approve do we do the main motion then to approve the whole the entire okay so we need another motion to go back to the main motion with approve the um policy with the with the Amendments the Amendments so moved second any more discussion are we good okay then take the role Mr Helmer yes Mr Kurt yes Miss Crosby yes Miss Manley yeah Miss scholes yes Miss younger yes Miss Wonder no okay motion passes on to the next item um which is our other policy revision uh to discuss approved revisions policy 0155 committees um and I just want to let you know since the last time this was um on the table I did make some changes
227uh based on feedback I received I just want to let you know I know that um our former president Amy Crosby did work very hard on getting the Committees started and I really respect what she's done and I don't want anybody to think that this was personal against her um I talked with Amy about this about um how the Committees did get started Ed and that I was working on it so um I did I really do want to respect what she's done and um So based on some feedback I got from her and others it did remove the don't we need a motion before no I I'm setting this up for discussion we're not debating it I just want to give you background for what what we're going on which is appropriate we can't
228actually asked the wasby attorney about what can we talk about before we do a motion so I'm just giving you you know this is like a presentation type like why is it why did why was this done so um I did remove uh specifically listing out committees and I also remove the job descriptions um because actually I couldn't find them on the website I remembered them being there I thought they had been removed so there's no reason to redo things it's already out there the website does specifically list the Committees and it does list exactly what the jobs of each committee are so um put that back to like we're just going to refer then to the website it gives us flexibility if we change committees um so I did do that so now I
229will ask for a motion to approve I'm sorry we have to take it off the table so a motion to take from the table I motion to move policy 0155 off the table have a second second okay so we have um a motion by Mr Helmer and a second by Miss Crosby discussion no discussion on the motion to remove from the table I'm sorry that's right yeah so we've removed it from the table so now a motion to uh approve the policy do we need to vote on that take a vote onor too many motions so could you take the role please Diana sure Mr Helmer yes Miss Crosby yes Mr Kur yes Miss Manley yes Miss schules yes Miss Zer no Miss W no motion passes now a motion to I move to I
230move to move policy 0155 for the Committees to be discussed and for approval as written second okay so I have a motion by Mr hmer and a second by Mr Kurt discussion I'm I'm trying to figure out what kind what problem we're trying to solve here oh I'm sorry I wanted to mention this um I put together the reasons for doing this so let me just find my great I can't read so these were the reasons for doing this um the current policy is not completely clear as to who creates the Committees uh it appears that it's actually the board when you read it and there's really not enough Authority given to the full board under the current policy uh since the creation of the Committees there has never been a real actual motion from
231the board to refer something to committee because this is really what we should probably be doing we've been doing it very informally committees have been used for more information gathering rather than making recommendations to the board work has been completed in committee that the entire board was not aware of or uh items have are being repeated as a full board and then in particular the first year committees were used more for new member orientation rather than to make recommendations I did gather up a lot of information from what other school boards are doing and it was interesting that every other school board except us had an actual orientation policy so I just just to mention that as a side note um so the these are really basically the reasons that um you know it's been
232two years it's just time to take a look at it see what's working well what's not and there just just some things that need to be addressed and so that's why um I did the policy and I didn't want to just be like throw it out as a topic for us all to discuss I figured well I might as well do something as a recommendation that we could look at at rather than having to Hash it out just alt together I also want to mention I know this is really hard tonight but I think in the future we will use work sessions for this type of an item I talked to the wasby attorney um and he suggested that we should probably use work sessions we don't have to do uh an extra meeting as
233a committee um so that's an option I'm sorry this is not an official motion no sorry so you don't have to make yeah so you don't have to it it would be more like what we're hashing things out right now we don't have to go through all emotions and the amending of the emotions cuz this is this has been a little crazy I know and I appreciate you guys hold hanging in there with us uh with me here so but yes that's something we can do in the future instead um can you speak to why we just didn't use the Neola policy or on on this topic practically did there are a lot of changes though there's a few here and there because I I look through it I mean the Neola policy is very
234um skeleton like I mean it's just it has a very basic um layout as far as the template goes and when I started to look at what other committee other school boards are doing um I some of them are really complicated and I don't think we want complicated that doesn't work for us either I think it's just something that you know we need to do something that works for us that's flexible enough but yet has a lot more guidance than what we've been doing so if I look at what was changed from the Neola policy and what you said about the reasons it seems like there's two big changes the first one being who sets the agenda um and then there's also the the matter of how often the Committees are meeting so those two
235things are specifically called out in this proposed policy looking at your spreadsheet of other districts no one else is doing that no one else is saying committees can only work on what is referred by the board most of them are saying the committee chair sets the agenda any Committee Member or the administration can make recommendations of agenda items or the board can refer agenda items I mean it feels like we're both trying to restrict the power of the Committees and also like somewhat make them pointless if we just want everything to be talked about as the whole board and I like kren I'm still a little confused because I feel like our committees are functioning pretty well and if I look at frequency and the topics included in each of our committees they align pretty
236well with what the other districts are doing so this feels like kind of an attack on one specific committee and I I don't understand why that's necessary I feel like our committees are working pretty well at this point um and while I understand the idea of reviewing periodically I I don't know why we would want to take that power away from committees when again all they can do is recommend things to the board and I I you're saying there's been issues I have no recollection of any item ever brought to the board from a committee that wasn't recommended or even discussed that the committee was going to discuss it go ahead sorry M Sor no I I thought you were done there um on one of the finance meetings how open enrollment programs have successfully
237moved forward in other districts was the topic that should not be a finance committee meeting that's we need to get Buy in from the board if we're going to do stuff like this they didn't do anything they just talked about it I mean I think the same could be said about your LED lighting proposal the board didn't ask us to do that that was something that you ran on in your campaign and therefore we discussed it as a facilities commit committee because it was a facilities item open enrollment is a financial so the board actually did direct me so it we weren't getting the traction in the committee so I made a proposal to the board and said this is what I believe the LED proposal can do for us do you want to research
238it further and the board fully we had discussed it twice in committee before then and I think the committee was in agreement with you you just didn't like the fact that the administration hadn't gotten you what you were asking for so I mean we talked about it in committee first so I don't think you're blameless here if we're trying to point fingers at which committee isn't following the rules Ed lighting is within facilities open enrollment is within the finance area means everything is in LED lightings would be within Finance too that if you had an issue with that specific item and that was probably like a year and a half ago why was that not addressed with the committee chair or the president of the board and why are we changing our policy that just
239because of anent ago so as a committee chair myself I don't feel an attack I don't feel this as an attack I'm okay giving up my power as an individual and as a committee chair I feel like I don't I shouldn't have that much power to set the agenda and tell Joe and Patrick to go and work on whatever I feel like I want the board to tell me and say these are the three or four things we want you to work on in the facilities committee and that's what we've adapted to right now we're not holding facilities committees every month just to hold facilities committee meetings we're holding them as were directed by the board when we looked at the the lrp plan the board said or Joe said we want we're looking at
240spending this much money this is the fund balance we're asking for should we have a committee and everyone said yes go to the committee figure out what was best for us and come back with a recommendation and that's how I've transformed that committee and I feel like that has worked really well we're not requiring a ton of resources we've come up with really good ideas and I feel like if a model for what we've been doing on that and I'm not offended by it I I I feel like this is a great thing that I get to give up the support and I get to ask all seven board members what's on my agenda and what they want me to working on it if if someone doesn't want to follow that I guess it's kind
241of alarming to me that someone wants to make up their own agenda well I think we're setting as the Personnel committee chair we're setting the agenda based off of what the committee's page on the website says are the things that the Personnel committee should be reviewing and we set goals for ourself at the beginning of the year that we were going to do policy reviews we were going to look at staff um feedback compensation you know it's not like we're doing things outside the realm of personnel but we shouldn't have to spend time at the board meeting talking about what things should be on the committee agendas that just doesn't make any sense I mean and as we can tell from tonight you know we're here forever if everything is discussed at the full board
242level then we have to spend hours and hours at these meetings rather than having a dedicated group drill into the details and bring recommendations back to the board but that's what I think we're looking at is if you guys come to the board and say we want to discuss uh superintendent contract we want to discuss these two policies sure I mean if that's what the board agrees on I have no problem with that we shouldn't be discussing what you guys are going to talk about in your agenda for an hour it should be a three minute item these are the three things we're going to dig into do you guys support us using our district resources that our taxpayers pay for we only have one CFO one one CEO one director of learning we have
243we have very limited resources and we have to make sure that the board and the community know what those resources are being spent on so it's not a personal attack I don't take it as a personal attack and no one else should it's just fixing our policy to close those loopes to make sure that we're all working together that's the only thing I view it as I do not feel this as a personal attack I think Amy did a great job starting these committees I just think that after two years we learned a lot and there's a lot of adjustments that we have to make with these and they're not huge adjustments just take a little bit of power away from the committee chair which I'll be the first oneit I'm okay giving up my
244power I'm very okay with that Janet's giving up power with this too and I think it's a good thing for us yeah it just seems like a huge change for one incident and and a lot of overhead that's going to have to to go through the full board when for the most part our committees are doing what the board or the president asked us to do already so I'll stop speaking let's hear from some other some other people um Susan Jeff thoughts on this I'm good with the changes that have been submitted so I support the adjustments I'm sorry can you repeat that I didn't hear yes I'm sorry I support the changes that are made and the policy change as it's admitted here Jeff I agree I agree with Susan the whole idea behind
245the Committees is were they were supposed to be an extension of what the board is suggesting and that's all that's being suggested tonight Amy I think we need your wisdom what do you think I guess the the only thing I don't like is um saying how many how many times they can meet because we have Financial reports every every month that we approve so um I you know like to see I like how it say A Min minimum but I don't know if there should be a Max okay and to that point on the finance committee as the the only chair of the finance committee having served from this board for the last two years I would like to point out I was not consulted by anybody about making these changes I was never brought
246any concerns by Mr hmer or any other members of my committee as to concerns about how I was conducting the committee so it would have been really nice to hear those concerns in real time if you had them having not heard them I looked at this committee and I thought that it's not I agree with Amy I don't think that there should be a maximum amount of time that the committee meets with the finance committee we meet every month BEC actually not even every month in the last two years we've met 16 times the facilities committee has met seven times the Personnel committee has met seven times in the last 2 years Finance meets a little more often because we have monthly Financial reports to review and approve I can say with complete confidence that
247in a conversation I had with uh former president Crosby she and I agreed that nobody reviews the financial reports that are in the consent agenda they are not reviewed by the bulk of major of of board members ahead of the meeting and they weren't reviewed prior to the finance committee being created and I think that the finance committee serves an important purpose in that respect because those items get reviewed I will say this if these policy changes are enacted and if what happens which I believe will be a disbanding of these committees then I think that at every meeting on the fourth Monday of the month I will ask that we pull out for separate consideration all the financial reports and I can ask all my finance committee questions at that time to ensure that
248all those questions get answered properly and then we can use our board time for that I don't think that would be an efficient use of this body's time which is why I think it's important to continue the committee structure as it exists so I do I am troubled by the fact that number one apparently according to Mr Helmer there were problems with my committee which were never brought to my attention number two I was never consulted as one of the three committee chairs of this board with regard to the changes of this policy that are proposed um number three I'm still trying to Grapple with what problem we're trying to solve with these policy changes um and I do have a concern about a maximum cap on the committee me meetings that are held each
249year and a further problem on what the charge is for the committee's work I think that a chair was whether it's facilities Personnel or Finance should have some ability to generate an agenda that agenda does not give power I've never said no to anybody who wanted anything included on my agenda never and I'd be happy to entertain whoever wanted to profer something for that agenda as far as District resources being expended the finance committee has met for no longer than 55 minutes at any meeting every other District I looked at has a finance committee meeting that meets once a month for at least an hour sometimes more than an hour so I don't think that the lift is all that much for board members or for administration it's not out of line it's not disproportionate
250and I do object to the characterization as such so I definitely don't think that we should Vote for This policy in its current iteration I think there are also there's an omission of statute 19.85% and I don't think it's in our best interest as a district and I think it's going to make us much more inefficient at our full board meetings I'd like to clarify there is no cap it says I'm trying to pull it up right now what is it Target two to four it said should plan to meet two to four times per year or more often as directed by the board so if we get directed to meet by the board 12 times I support that if that's what the board wants to your question of bringing um Financial reports and asking
251those questions at the meeting um that is done a lot in the Finance meetings so we're asking a lot about the checks that are at cut um you could do that in the board meeting but I think and that's been one of the problems in the board meeting too is or sorry the facility or the committee meeting is those are often sent 24 28 hours before the meeting and so if Patrick could get those in the meeting three or four days before the board meeting I think he could probably answer those via email and we could probably have those answers to you but I don't know that calling those out in the board meeting I don't want those answer via email m because they should be part of the public record so if you do
252it via email it's not public and people have to do a foyer request to get it that's totally not in the public interest that's fine but if those if those numbers or if those questions get to him in advance I think we could probably make it through those I am the first to admit that I do not give stuff to Patrick as early as I should that is a personal failing on my part and I will endeavor to make that better so my apologies Patrick for that you mentioned that there's a statute missing from the policy this was taken from Neola I don't see anything strike if you look in the second full paragraph of the Neola original policy the two last lines of that policy on are different than the lines of the third
253paragraph of the proposed policy they don't include the statutory reference which should be included in the policy I'm not seeing a statutory reference in do you have the Neola policy in front of you oh the the original policy the current you mean okay do you see what I'm talking about there's a state the statement in the original Neola policy says a committee May conduct a closed meeting provided it is for one of the purposes listed in 19.85% must May conduct a closed meeting providing it is for one of the purposes described in the statutes no reference and the committee abides by all requirements for the conduct of a closed meeting the reference should be made mine doesn't show that so I don't know what you're talking about at the moment I see closed meeting pursuant
254to 19.84% doesn't deal with the exemptions 19.85% maybe you want you can make an amendment okay so um then I make an amendment to add back in the original Neola policy paragraph that refers to statute 19. 85 is that we just the whole paragraph then yeah let's just take that whole paragraph as is since I think is that yeah that should I'm sorry what are we doing so the third the third paragraph of the no I'm sorry it's the second paragraph of the Neola template policy will replace our third paragraph of the um proposed policy so I have a a motion I'm doing the motion I have a motion to amend do I have a second second so I have a motion by myself um and a second by Mr Helmer discussion on the amendment
255if there's no discussion then we'll take the vote Miss Schulz yes Mr Helmer yes Miss Crosby yes Mr Kurt yes Miss Manley yes Miss uner this is on the Amendment only right on the amendment only I said yes sorry oh I'm sorry Miss W yes okay so the amendment passes are we ready to have a motion then to approve as amended motion to approve motion motion to approve as amended second so I have a motion by Mr Helmer second by Mr Kur discussion we have further discussion on this okay so should we go I'm sorry Amy yeah to um clarify if we want to move something to committee we would vote as award like if I wanted to move every month that we review the finance like we could I could make a motion for
256that any point okay any board meeting MH yes so any other discussion on changing the language of this policy then we'll take the role yeah second Mr Helmer yes Mr Kurt yes Miss Crosby Miss Manley yes Miss scholes yes Miss Miss anger no Miss Wonder no uh motion passes so then we are on to our next um agenda item the first read of the superintendent job description I'm sorry I I meant to ask you Kate if you would present this for us what I will present it okay can we possibly postpone the next two agenda items to the next meeting does anyone object on that they're just first read so I suppose I mean there's really nothing to discuss it's just a matter of maybe explaining what they are sure okay so the super send
257in job description um we haven't had one historically so this is really just trying to fill a gap for something that we do not have um we started with a recommendation from Nicole um and then as a committee we made a few adjustments so basically we changed the duties and responsibility section to be aligned to the Neola policy so we pulled those bullet points exactly from the superintendent um policy recommendation from Neola we did add um some clarification at the top around the reports to and supervises items that was something the committee wanted to do um and then we tweaked the ne of verbage of the objective um Nicole had actually done that initially to just be like a little bit more new berlines so it says like maintain Excellence using kind of some of
258our new berland language um the education requirements Nicole pulled from sort of the standard uh requirements for all superintendent so that was her recommendation and then the parts at the end of the job description the core competencies and the additional requirements those are standard on all of our um School District job descriptions so that came from Nicole as well thank you so if there's any questions on that from now until our next meeting if you could direct them to um Kate and probably Nicole you could copy her in um and then we have first read on policy 56 630 corporal punishment and this is one of those odd ones it's really not Personnel but if you want to set it up for us please yeah so it wasn't it was Personnel I think originally it
259isn't it's more of a student policy now um we're really just recommending um using the new policy here so we did not actually change anything so it's a change from what we had but really A standardization to the new o policy all right so then we do have some items from closed session to vote on so I'll need um I need a motion to approve the employment performance and compensation um report so moved need a second second so I've got um a motion by Mr Helmer a second by Mr Kur and and we don't need to discuss on this since it was done in Clos session so um let's take the role Mr Helmer yes Mr Kurt yes Miss Crosby yes Miss Miss Manley yes Miss scholes yes Miss hunger yes Miss Wonder okay so
260motion passes and then one other one um we need a motion to approve the administration compensation for 2022 so moved second second okay were you sleeping guys we can't get out here okay so I have a motion by Mr Helmer a second by Miss Crosby um let's go to vote um please take the role can we have Joe explain what they are oh yes I'm sorry I should let you do that go ahead so similar to what was the board approved at the last meeting uh the board approved a 1.23% CPI uh General increase for certified staff and classified staff at the last meeting based off of that we're recommending the same percentage increase for the administration okay so any questions on that we can take the roll now please thank you Mr Helmer yes
261Miss Crosby yes Mr Kur yes Miss Manley yes Miss schules yes Miss anger yes Miss Wonder yes thank you motion passes so now there's future meetings and dates just to remind you board meetings are generally held the second and fourth Monday beginning at 7:00 p.m. in the Eisenhower Commons unless noted otherwise next meeting is April 12th then on April 26 there is a board reorganizational meeting and then a board meeting on May 10th other dates to remember we have spring break April 2nd through the 9th and the spring election is April 6th Madam chair I have a question yes um typically the finance committee would meet on April 26th can that be added to the calendar I believe under our new policy we need a motion to add a add it at the next board
262meeting I mean add added as a topic at the next board meeting yeah you have to approve the agenda oh okay so we I will put that as an agenda item on the next board meeting okay so then it'll be considered whether we can hold a finance committee meeting at the next yeah in April we can start working out on one meetings how many meetings we need coming up okay yes all right so please note completion of a health questionnaire is required upon entering the building by all staff and V visitors Common's capacity is limited to 25 visitors and I just want to apologize I said 40 last time that was actually under um when we were meeting at West so this Eisenhower is 25 visitors face mask are required per state mandate at least
263for now and please observe social distancing so now um I need a motion to a journ real quick we probably shouldn't have any committee meetings on the 16th because we're going have the board oh you know you're you're correct yeah the 26th the 16th is it we don't we have a meeting on the 12th actually the board Reger organization is the 26th right so so we have the current board members on April 12th possible new board members on the 26th so what are you saying we should not put the agenda item on the 12 I'm sorry when was they asked for the finance commit was it the 26th yeah when was the the 26 I asked for the 26th because we can't meet as a finance committeth so I combined the two and that's why
264I'm struggling with no I was I was proposing that we meet on the 26th because that's the fourth Monday and that's when Patrick has indicated to me that the finance reports are available for a review they're not available at that second week meeting so we couldn't meet that second week okay you know what I'm thinking there's yeah there's a board reg organization meeting actually on the 26th so why don't we wait till we have we know what our new leadership's going to be and then those whoever's in leadership then will'll make those decisions I'll just plan to ask whatever questions I have about it at the 26th meeting and and pull those items out for separate consideration from the consent agenda Diana is the 26th strictly an organizational meeting or will there be other items
265it's the new members take um take office that's not the only it I'm sorry oh there will be other items on there okay just wanted to make sure okay and I thought we did the Committees at the next meeting so the Committees are also done during the reorganization okay I thought we did the committee appointments in May last year because the new president could be appointed and then the president will still appoint the committee so they would need time before the next meeting to consult with the other members and we refresh my memory did you usually I think that's right you the the board it wasn't until the following meeting that okay okay yeah I think that's right all right so yeah so at the 26th then whoever is the board president at that time
266we'll ask for those who are interested in committee chairmanships and we'll start from there now can I have a motion to adjourn so moved second who wants the second second so I have a motion by Mr hel Helmer second by Mr K all those in favor say I I all opposed no opposed the motion passes this