NPSD Board of Education Meeting

001of the Northland Board of Education July 28th, 2025. Please join me in the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. here. Becky >> here. >> Jennifer Payne is here. Chris >> here. >> Roaker here. Nick >> here. >> And we have Thank you. We have a forum. Susie, has the meeting been posted according to open? >> Yes, it has. >> All right. Thank you. Now, I'll entertain a motion to the agenda. I'll make a motion to approve the agenda as presented and leave the order of the meeting to the discretion of the chair. Right. Motion has been made and seconded. All in favor, please say I. >> I. >> Motion carries. >> Susie, first item on

002the agenda is public participation. We have none. We have none this evening. All right. We move forward to board committee reports and communication. So I have a board communication to speak to everyone and to the public. The board is utilizing Pat Mans, a search consultant from the Wisconsin Association of School Boards to assist us in the interview process for the district administrator position of the Northland Pine School District. The board has received two internal applications for the position. Uh the candidates are Dr. Daniel Marine and Tony Dufek. The board has scheduled interviews on July 30th and has asked a group of staff to participate in the interview process. Further updates will be forthcoming after the board completes the interview process. Okay. Yes. And then the books in front of you guys on the table is

003from Pat's with a little bit of information um resource guide for us to look at before Wednesday's interviews. And we should be here at 12:30. Correct. You guys don't have to start until 1:00 or at the Pines Community will start at 12:30 because Pat's going to meet with them. The staff group, I'm sorry, will arrive at 12:30. Pat's going to meet with them at 12:40 for 20 minutes of the process and then he will come and join all of you in the Pines community meeting room. So, they will be in the staff development room. So, all at River Elementary. >> So, yeah, you don't have to be there. You're starting at 1:00. Starting at Y, you're good. >> If it's all right, just remind that I sent the email, but just a reminder and I

004guess everybody else too that um August is one of those months where everything comes boom right away. So, next week is policy, finance personnel, and the board meets early on the 18th because of inservice. We've always done August that way in your approved calendar, but all of a sudden, you're busy on the summer and all of a sudden, boom, what do you mean? We have meeting next week or we set a board meeting. So, I just want to send that reminder. Um and then the other thing under do it under here is just welcome Mr. Tilly is back with us at North and Pine. So um he's here this evening. So just wanted to point that out. So we welcome him back and he's great to have him on board already and hit the floor

005running and making us better already. So just welcome. >> Welcome Mr. [Applause] >> All right. Minutes for the standing board committees are shared in the board packet in board docs and are in public view. Does any board member have any questions for other board members regarding the minutes of any committee that they do not sit on? Not hearing any. We'll move on to the consent agenda. >> I'll make a motion to approve all items contained in the consent agenda. >> Second. Does any within that a motion made second? Any discussion? All I would say is did we not have any I forgot to ask if we had any items that needed to be removed from the consent agenda. >> So headsets made out of gold or what? And that's remember. >> Oh yeah. >> Okay.

006So not anything in here we can have a conversation about. And there are a couple items. I guess I'll let Paul go. >> I can read all that. >> I know, but I just want to explain though because that didn't go to finance. So, I wanted to bring that up because it wasn't in finance. Typically, we would go to finance agenda then to the board. But due to yan getting information late and then getting that to me, we were unable to go to finance and we would like to go get these ordered before get into the August ordering so they can get on their way. But we've had these as written in there. Um they they they are impactful to learning. Um and this is coming out of your common school funds, not your regular

007budget. So this is extra. This is money we get directly from the state. And you can use it for books and many other items. Unfortunately, the amount of money we get and the amount of books we're buying is a tough balance. So we've tried to find ways to impact learning in multiple ways. And kids are really engaged. I know Tony could speak to this. He's had them at Monasuri for as said in there for quite some time. Um but if you have questions about that. So just wanted to point that out because it wasn't in the finance agenda. Also, it's an annual thing and it seems just like a step forward, but um and Sue is here tonight, but we just put forward that statement on academic standards notice to parents. That is a requirement

008by the by law. We have to do that. It's pretty straightforward. Um Kudos to to Sue and the staff for working on curriculum. We're really moving some things forward this summer. Um that isn't what that is, but I do want to kind of tie the two together a little bit because that's what that work is based off of with those standards. And then um the other one in here, and it is a formality, but it's important one is even though Mr. is with us before. Anytime you have a new administrator that has to go for attendance purposes, you have to prove that he can represent us at in court. So, that's why you see that on here tonight. That's something just a little unique. Um, also want to welcome two new staff to the Pines

009family. Karin Davis, new to the area for KD River Elementary, and then Pines alumni. And we're excited to have Mackenzie Rancis who did do a little bit of pair professional work with us last year after she graduated semester was a great resource there and has taken the sixth grade special education job at Eager Elementary. So Emily and Gretchen and Brooke and the team are excited to have her over there and join a great sixth grade team. So just wanted to pass on those two and welcome them to our family. >> All right. Does anybody else have any other questions for any other items? Okay. Not hearing any. All in favor, please say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? Motion carries. Moving on to our discussion and action items. We're going to keep this in order.

010This is just content. So, the first item on the agenda is the survey reflections. >> All right. I'm going to do a presentation. You have multiple documents in there. Um, I did just put this presentation in there. I was kind of fine tuning as day went on. I had it done, but probably one of those things I should just stop at some point. But, uh, are you comfortably sitting? You want me to go stand? Where? Um, this is a dialogue. So, I it's not just me go through everything real quick. So, this is how we do this every year. Um, and I'll share which way the surveys as a good reminder, but um, this is both survey reflections. back up. Um I think it's one thing we continue to think about on an ongoing basis.

011I think you get um thankfully, you know, some of your decisions are monetary in different aspects. But as you make decisions, our mission and our um our collective commitments are always important to keep remembering at every meeting. We put our goals at the top of all our agendas, and we'll talk about those later as well. But just got to kind of always remember that this year we did two surveys. One was with school perceptions that ran from 428 to 512. And then um the staff survey which this year Susie typically I would just do that. Um but with the topics we thought it was best that Susie sent that out and collected all that information. Um that had two parts. One was the characteristic new dis administrator which um you have. Um nobody else has

012it. I don't have it. not see it. We kept that completely separate. That's why Susan did it. And the second part was on behavior. And that part I did get because that's why we've been working on this and you received these in June. So, some feedback and thoughts. Um, I'm going to hit on numbers first and then we'll get to comments. Um, I was disappointed. This is the lowest rate we've had. Only about 19% of our respondents of our parents. So, lower. U once in a while somebody will say, "Well, low means people are happy and they didn't take the time to fill it out." I usually don't feel that way. I think when something's going well, you want people's feedback. There's always ways to get better and and move this forward. Um this was

013in that summary sheet, but just a reminder, and I did go back and look, um these are the top three concerns parents had and top three things they think were doing well. Um they're exactly the same as 2023. They're just the order switched around a little bit. But, you know, far as our areas of opportunity, um we definitely feel um students wanting to go to school, we'd like to see that much higher. Um if you look at the columns, the current score is based on one to five. So, anything, you know, some would say three or better. Really, you want to be four or better is always our target. Um you know, you're going to see slight fluctuation, especially with a lowered response rate. Um, and the right comparison that is a comparison against other

014school districts that take the same survey. So that's our percentile rank within other school districts that take the survey. So the higher the number, the better. That's the way you want to remember that. So very much disappointed in the 22nd comparison. Um, more focused on that previous score or that's what we would like to see, you know, at four or higher. um healthy culture of our school um you know again need to be higher and then sad fire schools effort address bullying that is a theme which I'll talk about uh as we go through this survey one of the things I'm only going to spend a minute on here because these also fluctuate when you have even all the total responses that's districtwide and then certain schools only have so many parents but want to

015point out a couple that saw a significant change um kudos those two of the schools that carry principal land lakes elementary as you can see 97th percentile and then sore middle school took a significant jump and 7.45 which is a nice jump 13% gain and then St. Germaine already at a high comparison 98th percentile 9.33. Um I will say one of the things as principles we've talked about and directors but sometimes we read the questions response and think we had really good survey results but then we come here and it's not quite as high. Like I know Tony and I are talking about Monasuri like when you read the Monasuri survey separately there's nothing in there that's like I wish this was this isn't going well but then it's dropped a little bit. So, we're

016not Sometimes you got to be careful, but I definitely want to give kudos to those schools that saw the bigger jump and also um at those ratings. So, nice job there. All all schools um always had that room to adjust a little bit. So, I picked out some of the key findings, not just the top high ones as you'll see in the next slide. Um these one focused on me and you as board. So, there's four questions. Trust in leadership. um district administrator um doing what it takes to make district better. Obviously, I'd love to see that much higher, but 74% agree or strongly agree. Um the board balances mission and fiscal responsibility. I think that's one of the toughest jobs as a board. That's why they ask that question. And then school board doing

017what it takes make district successful. So, right at that 70% as well. Um this is kind of that area where we start getting into the deeper aspects of the questions. Um you know I feel welcome at child's school that means our staff is principles teachers custodians um very much are you know parents feel like they can come into school which I think is important. If a child doesn't feel safer at school parents aren't going to send them or they're not going to learn. and again 87 and a half. Um our custodial staff just year after year does a phenomenal job that's recognized in our surveys. Um I think it's important to know that we have high expectations for our child. That's a question always I always pay attention to. Um also you know my two

018my own children are graduates of clients and I'd want them to be treated with dignity and true respect every day and to have that at 90% says a lot about our staff. Um I highlighted number six in green there. Not only did I highlight the strongly agree that's probably one of the ones where we saw the most disagree and it's not just the simple math subtracting, there is that not NA you can check and that was one question that people are very grounded in and I'll talk about that in our action plan some more. But this continues to be a challenge. I did talk to Bill Foster who runs a company and he said that's that's a pattern. He said, "The more you work on it too, the in his surveys over the years, the

019more a school works on it and focuses on getting better sometimes you'll see it addressed in the survey more just because it's on the front of their mind and they kind of their response. But I'm going also talk about that from a behavior standpoint. Um, participate in school sponsor activities over 80%." Why is that important? What do you is that for sports? What? No, it's because data is very clear. When a student is engaged in extracurricular activities, they're a much more successful student. And that can be band, choir, you know, uh sports, uh any, you know, bass fishing, trap, whatever it is. That means they're busy. They're engaged with other positive adults, and they're usually somebody who has less time to get in trouble. Does doesn't get in trouble. So, that's another reason we look

020at that. the one I did. It'd be pretty crazy if you'd have asked me 10 years ago if we could get rid of question eight to think that we could not do that anymore. But to know that 98.4% of our parents said we had reliable internet outside, you know, Harland's done a lot of work in the community with partnerships and and the Boss County Economic deserves credit for that as well. But I mean, we used to get that answer and it was in the 50% or less. So to see it at 98.4 even with this more people ask it's pretty incredible and there's people that have multiple choices just it's one of those questions that probably could go away which is hard to fathom but it's a great thing for our community u parents were

021asked what should we focus on for the future I think this is really important um we've talked about doing some long range pan planning I think um as you start looking for a new leader that's something that's always kind of a time when districts and new leaders look at kind of that next three to five year And this is a piece of that survey. Um, preparing students for life. You know, I think, you know, we do hear our test scores could be higher and I think we know that. I think there's other areas, but really understanding that it's the whole child that's really important. Um, the social, emotional, mental health services for students. Um, so a pretty high percentage. Recruit retain high quality teachers. That's means our parents also recognize our success based on who's

022in our classrooms. Um, school safety and security. And then community business partnerships. I did put the close ones because they kind of are in another cluster in that 20% um opportunities earn college credit student discipline which is again kind of that theme with bullying behaviors services for students who have difficult learning. That's also one that I've seen as a pattern over the last couple surveys. And then career and technical education. I will I did add a picture of our um local report card because I think if you think about um you know, number one, earning earning credits, business partnerships, um, you know, career and technical education. That's where that local report card is supposed to emphasize the things that parents are asking us to focus on and showing data of what that looks like. So,

023I put that on there as a good reminder to all of you that we take it serious. We have ways to measure it and and it does show up and where we put that. I did read through the comments looking for patterns. um when they had a chance to reflect on the school's strengths, seven 117 out of the 270 did leave a comment. Um our strengths, our staff, high quality and caring communication, um which is there's some areas communication they're real positive about. You'll see later some areas we can improve. Um they really impressed with the educational opportunities. Again, our facilities came up over and over. They liked all the different choices for extracurricular as well as the academic and then community involvement and school safety where patterns of that were repetitive and multiple times

024maybe said different ways too. Then when asked how could we improved 119 answers were there um you know the pattern of addressing behaviors which I'm going to end with our action plan at the last slides and then bullying came up the communication one that's come up and we've really focused on this as a team this summer one they feel there's quite a bit of discrepancy from one classroom to the next. So if you have a child maybe in one building or another building or different grade levels, one teacher may give me all kinds of great information about my child, but the other teacher doesn't give me enough. I get a newsletter, but I don't know like how's my child doing in their homework and behaviors and that kind of thing. So that's something we've been

025talking about. How do we make sure that's happening more consistently? Um and then um too many ways we communicate. um like you know I have to have a app for this and my one I have a kid in this building with this app and a student in this app and this app and I'll show our action plan how we're going to work on that. Um the one that this came up in last year's staff survey and it's something that administrators have brought to me during the school year and now came up in this survey again is just the issues we still have in our schools of diversity race um and just understanding differences. So just having some students that really struggle with that. So that's something that came up in this parent survey again. And

026then support for acceleration and struggling learners. So that's also something that I mentioned in a pre the previous comments when it came to just um communication. This was a section just on communication. You saw the two ways I already mentioned earlier in the comments section. But this is always kind of interesting to me. How do parents want us to communicate? And they could check all that apply. So there's a very long list. It's not the top five, it's all of them. So you could check as many as you want. 89% PE picked email and 82% picked calls or texts and then it drops off significantly. You would still think, you know, different message, whatever, but because people don't teachers would tell you email sometimes is the least that parents will respond back to us on,

027you know, but I think they like having that record they can go back to and find things. Um, they do like the text and automated messages, you know. Um, I know Sore Middle School goes on a lot of field trips, you know, like just those reminders. I know parents appreciate if they get in multiple times. Um, you know, so we we'll talk about how to with the texting because one of the things we've really tried to crack down on last year is staff using their personal phones to communicate with parents and students. That's definitely an area of concern legally. That was a lot of our legal updates, but also respecting parent, you know, not that staff don't get calls and texts on weekends and evenings on their personal phone, you know, when they don't need

028to. So, so I'm going to switch gears to staff survey. I'll do the summary of action plan at the end. Um, again, not sharing the top one. Um, we did have a high return rate. I think having that characteristic of a new TA was probably a good thing for us to get staff engaged. We had um over 50%. We we figure we have about 220 employees, 210 to 220. Um, high return rates over 50% responses. A lot of those um I we can't see who responded, but when in that 210 220, there's a lot of part-time different employees too that maybe just chose they didn't have an answer, especially on the behavior side of things. So 70% that we did ask the question about certified versus support, it was 7030, which is probably very close

029to what the percentage of staff we have is. The this one was very simple. In the behavior side, there were a lot of questions. The first question we asked um and remember we implemented behavior handbook last year based on the previous survey. Um on a scale one to five, did it have impact or did no impact or did it it helped? 36% rated a four and then um 67.4 was a three or better. So um I think we made I think it helped. Uh, one of the things we talked about administrators, did we bring it up mid to end of year versus just kind of giving a good kickstart with it? And then I do think it helps the new staff especially get grounded um and procedures because it lays out flowcharts and how to

030do things. Um, so with the new staff coming on August 18th, that'll be something we didn't have in the past. They'll be able to reference in those first three days. When asked administration communication regarding student behavior incidents, um 50% said four or better and 77% three or better. Um this is one where staff a lot of times didn't feel like principles gave them feedback enough on what the what what was the outcome, what did you do? Um so this is something we worked on last summer and we talked about again this summer of how might continue to try to get better at that. Um when asked if curriculum impacts behaviors and learning. Remember this is the staff. 40.8% said four or better and then 69% rated three or better. I did see multiple comments. Well,

031I talked about it was only year one. So like didn't expect to see you know immediate change on everybody because it's going to take time. Um in the comments section um there was question about areas proven for discipline. Um we they did feel like um they have seen or they would like to see um consistency of consequences. Um feedback on what the consequences are, what to do when a student disrupts the whole class, timeliness of support. Um there's comments and questions about what happens to students who destroy items and then what happens about students leaving the room. This is all areas they thought we could respond better. our strengths. Um, there was a lot of good feedback how Gretchen and Brooke really did a better job at ERS. Um, I know they focused heavily on

032this area. They made definitely made changes. I'll talk about what is going to continue in that area, but that was probably where we saw the most growth especially in the comment section. Were a lot of frustrations previously. So headed in the right direction. Still concerns. Um, it's only first year of curriculum but did seem people staff does see the difference and there were comments like okay we're headed in the right direction will we keep going there or is this kind of a you guys done and moving on to the next thing so I think this is on us now to carry this we never when we did this work we never thought it was one and done by any stretch so I'll talk about what that looks like here in a second so this is

033probably as a board I would think this is what you want to know for me um and your team um first off what are we doing about feedback from action or what is our actions based on feedback of the parent survey. One of the things, and I think we fought this too much, you know, and you'll hear from Emily about the bullying data next month at the board meeting, and so many parents be like, "Well, that thing's junk. It's not accurate." And I think sometimes what got lost was administration takes all behaviors equally as significant. In other words, just because a state doesn't call something bullying by the definition doesn't mean a principal doesn't deal with it. And you know, I principles here can talk to that further, but we're really looking at trying to

034do a better job of sharing information about all um behavior data. So like really using this last year as a baseline data for ERS did data collection different this year for behaviors than they had done previously. So really to report it out, you can't really compare it to the prior prior years. So it'll be a baseline data, but we need to continue to build our vocabulary and what we share with you, what we share with parents because we always have felt both are important, but we seem to get hung up on well, you don't deal with bullying. Well, it's really all behaviors. We don't take time to we have to do it by what is told to us what bullying needs to be. So excuse me, need a drink. Um, we definitely have been working

035on this summer working on the behavior plan and in particular, how do we communicate it to students and parents and use it to be more proactive than reactive instead of looking at what do we do when there consequences needed? How are we engaging our students on an ongoing basis throughout the year and how do we engage parents? So, what documents within that plan needed to be modified or changed? um tying them back into a responsive classroom and our social emotional learning curriculums. The other one in here um we are committed and our staff is receiving this communication this week and last a little bit. We are requiring all elementary teachers only to use dojo for parent communication. The reason for this is one is you can message. So it's like texting and that is what

036a lot of parents do tend to do with their teachers. You can send messages, you can send documents. If it's consistent, then every parent in elementary has one thing to look at. Will they get Infinite Camp campus yet? Yes. So, they'll get emails. Um, they will get other things from Infinite Campus from me, from their principal. Their newsletter can go out in Dojo, but you know, they can send it by email and dojo for those parents that don't want to do, but they only want to do email, well, then we can do that. If you want to text your teacher, then use the Dojo app. So, we did solidify that into one. We had um Tony's school last year did this as kind of a pilot. Um they committed to it and had great success.

037Um we just continue on in the survey to hear from parents. There's too many different tools. Let's go to one. So, that's what we're doing. Um we want to keep looking at the comments. I think sometimes you get hung up on what ones you didn't hear good information from. So, we have been reminding the team because can be It's it's frustrating when you know you're hearing that this isn't going well and you've been working so hard on it, but what is it also saying we're doing well so that we don't quit doing that or how do we use that to improve on the areas that were not doing as good. The other thing is and Dan and I have had this conversation for years. Kudos to him. You saw Jake Richards in here. Our staff

038and our students and our administration have done a great job with financial literacy. But in the survey every year, I wish our st I wish you teach financial literacy. Well, we teach it. We do all kinds of projects, partnerships, entrepreneurship speakers, you know, we've done all these things. And I think I think Dan and I have talked about it. We just need to communicate it better to our parents to know what's going on, you know, like in our community in the voice of the pines and highlight some of these great um things that we do because um it it just keeps coming up and our staff is doing a phenomenal job of it. I know um part of it is I think a little bit of opinion what financial literacy should be. We try to

039teach kind of all aspects and we bring in a ton of local experts in the banking world and in the financial world these kids. It's not just our teacher or teachers. So, you know, kudos. Um but we just again it's on us. We we not communicating what we're doing. Um action plan staff um survey um you know I think uh they do think the second year of the phones are going to continue to make this a positive that I think that was a good move. Staff are happy with that. Continue to focus on implementing social emotional especially 4K 4K through 12 curriculum help build skills and I do think um also how do we keep engaging parents in this conversation? I think it's none of this thing. We talk about this with literacy and math

040and yeah we're not expecting the parents to do a big chunk of our job but if we're not working on it together we only have them for so many minutes in the school year. We have to work together on these topics and if we can partner and not expect them to do things but give parent a lot of parents if we give them the right resources and tools they'll work with us. So we just got to keep doing that as well. Um only a couple more to go here. Um, this is I I want to point this out because when reading the surveys, this is I get a little bit disappointed in that when a kid misbehaves and and it came up in the survey repeatedly, those are special ed kids and that's not necessarily

041the case. We have a lot of students who are misbehaving that don't have IEPs at very significant level. Trauma is a real issue with younger students across this country. I could send you numerous articles. I just sent one to the elementary staff this morning or this afternoon. So, one of the things we run into is we are a public school. We are by law expected to have every school here or every student come to school. It would take some very specific reason an expulsion. So, like safety um and you know, you probably don't really look for the day where I have a first or second grader sitting an expulsion here in front of you as a board. You probably wonder what would I be doing that for? Um the other thing we run into is

042the lack of partnerships. Um and parents run into this too. There's very few supports for students that are struggling with mental health or trauma. Um or for us um students parents in our region um and that's really or extreme behaviors. This is a constant topic at my superintendent group. So we are trying really hard and I'll go through a couple more but it's hard for a parent to understand when a child is that challenging there are other resources many times we are waiting we're partner with human services but they have limited resources um so that is a struggle we don't pick and choose what kids go into special education there is a very there's experts in the room here including on your board that could tell you that is a very strict legal process and

043it gets very frustrating for parents and even staff who think the magic solution is to give an IEP. The thing I'm proud about is schools have really changed and that it doesn't take an IEP to get academic and behavior services. We have changed drastically in a good way, I think, so that all students can get some of these benefits, but that there's this stigma that an IEP is the only way to solve a problem. And we're seeing more and more kids struggle. So then let's find the solution IEP and and that isn't the way it works. So, you know, sometimes Neil and Emily tough spot because be like there is no IEP for the student because they haven't qualified. That doesn't mean we're not going to give them services. We have tiered behavior plans. We

044have tiered academic plans. It's just they didn't get a label. There's not that guarantee that I think some parents are looking for. So, I just want to remind you and you when you read the comments that some of that is there. So, what have we done? These are huge steps and kudos to your leadership team and your staff. Um, this was the first year we've ever taken nonsp specialcial ed kids out the CLC. The need was there. There were kids who didn't qualify for an IIP, but their behaviors meet the services of the CLC. So, we committed resources and had students out there. That helps all students learn and those students learn a lot out there. Cool. I mean, that staff does a fantastic job. Plus, they transition eventually back. It's not like they're going

045away and never coming back. That's a good thing. Um, we have created, we are creating a program to help students with autism and hired an additional certified staff member. Um, Emily, Neil have been working and Gretchen and Brooke. Um, and what I see this is trickling into all of our elementary buildings. Um, eventually, not the program, but the skills and things we learn. Um, so a team of staff that are really understanding many of our students can be successful. they're just not going to be successful in the in the exact classroom learning the exact same way as the others. The number is always that 75 to 80% of the kids can do pretty well in a regular classroom. And you'll hear that with reading as well. That's a number. That's where charter schools and other

046programming. If you keep asking a kid to act like everybody else and do the same as everybody else and they're not capable, yeah, there's going to be tension for staff and for students. So, this is a big step forward. I I have um excited for it. I think it's going to take time to build and the idea of it also is to help our regular classroom teachers understand how these kids learn differently and have a place for them to learn while they go in class and come out. We hired instead of hiring a second counselor when one left, we hired a a behavior sports specialist for Eagle River Elementary to work with students and teachers to build skills in both um and help kids and staff. This has been modeled in other districts and has

047worked well. We talked about it for quite a bit on our administrative team. Um, and we're excited to see the impact this could have and we really hope this will be of benefit to our staff and our students and our families because they will be part of it. It's not like we are doing things to kids. These this person will work on building skills in partnership with the parents. When we do tiered behavior plans, parents are at the table in the conversation. These aren't things we're doing to kids. This is working together. Um, we continue to focus on bullying. As you can see the items above and also that proactive approach with our behavior plan. The other one that gets and this is where my old principal hack comes back on the work. This is

048I think it'll be in here for a long long time in surveys but there's always this push even from staff. I want consistency and consequences. I want every kid that does this to have this action almost like a automatic check the box. This happens this should happen. That isn't how it works. And every principal, you have a veteran staff sitting in here tonight. Sue's been a principal as well. Every kid needs not every single kid needs something completely different. Yes, we have that if you skip and get so many tardies, you get this consequence if you do this. But a lot of our extreme behaviors, there's not a set pattern that student is student A isn't going to operate the same way as student B with that consequence. So as principles, you're trying to change

049their behaviors to help them be successful in the classroom. So I do get it gets frustrating and I and this is something where we need to sit at tables with our teachers and do that talking and listening better. But there is no magic. We do have some consistency, but for some of these extreme behaviors, there is no magic. Always this happens. Always suspend them. Always. Well, sometimes you're just perpetuating the problem by doing some of those consequences. Student A, it might work really good. So, we do that, but student B, it does not. So, that's something that, you know, I will be bringing up and I put it in there continued conversation between staff and administration. The other idea, let me just back up. questions, comments about the survey, thoughts, any feedback for the short

050time from the surveys coming back that you guys have always working on these action plans. It's a lot of really great information forward and >> we do get some of this verbally. I mean, we're engaging staff all the time, but it's nice to give them that opportunity. Okay. And if you want further down the road, we certainly can talk about one of the things and this is my reflection. I have a great relationship. Bill Foster has no relation to Scott Foster whatsoever. He owns a lake home up in Land of Lake. So he I do think his heart gives us a little bit of he's always been really good to me with giving me feedback, information, just things to think about. So when he gives me the data, we start talking about it. also gives

051me um he gave the characteristics for free that we used in the Google survey that is used with other search firms. So he's been willing to share things that maybe weren't shared with others, but him and I were talking like Bill, are you seeing the drop in response rate? Like it was I was disappointed. You you try to stay out of it because you want parents to feel safe that the school district isn't checking who that is. But if it's that fine line, if you don't push the survey enough, then it's kind of like maybe we don't get the response. So, we talked about maybe spring is not the place. The other thing is um as you are going to be hiring a new district administrator, Bill and I were talking like how could this

052data be useful to the board and them to set them up for future success. So, one of the things him and I talked about is we haven't done a community survey from the district as long as I can remember. like we have not surveyed the community. I engage the community. They give me feedback when I'm doing listening sessions, referendums. I go to many things. I get they're pretty free with giving me feedback. They come to board, but we haven't done a wide scale. The other thing is maybe getting a survey result from staff and parents in the fall. Maybe we would get a better response rate and maybe we would get more authentic feedback because spring busy end of school year tired you know lots of things going on. An idea I had and this

053came up talking to him is what if we did a survey in October and I picked October because one I think fall will be better in spring. Two, that's when Voice of the Pine goes out. So when he does these community survey, one of the biggest costs is to mail everybody a postcard, right? Well, you're already sending Voice of the Pines out. So we could put a QR code to the survey right in there. So it wouldn't cost you more to do the mailer. That saves a chunk of that survey cost. I'm hoping you get return rate. We're doing the voice of the pines. I think it would give you the board and and the staff some great feedback and data that I think you could build a three to five year plan with and

054some ideas. Maybe, maybe not. This is, you know, this decision does not need to be made tonight, but would need to be made soon because you'd be surprised how quick we have to have that voice. My mindset is you kind of you put it out there in October. Maybe you go mid to late because it doesn't hit mailboxes. We try to make sure we get out before Veterans Day, you know, so it's a reminder for Veterans Day. So then you would get that result in November before Thanksgiving. You can really sit on it till after the Christmas holidays. Then come back in January, February. Now you're starting to use that information to once set up. The administrative team could have the data. Our staff could have it. you know, you would have time before this

055went out. This would be some different questions than you've used before, but just something to think about and you know, we could bring this to policy and go through the committees of the board. But this is just something Bill and I came up with based on kind of years of experience, what we've seen, and maybe a better way of doing it. Then you could maybe take a year off from surveys the following year to kind of work on whatever you came up with. Or you could say, "No, I don't like the city, Scott. I want to do it." and do something different. But I know I'm always just trying to bring you some new ideas and think ahead. So that's what this is instead of just keeping with the every other year routine of what

056we're doing. >> One side note on the phone um usage. My sister lives in Texas and it's now they enacted a state law that they will have no cell phones in schools for the whole state. So specifically from the the state, not from school districts. You guys are ahead of the curve. >> Dan continues to get calls how they can do it in their school and Utah. One of our alumni hall of fame contacted about how his kids school in Utah. >> Should I bring this to policy with some ideas, numbers, timelines? I Bill did send me at no cost sent me the information to So or we can wait till after your decision on hiring and get input from that person as well. But I just thought tonight was the night to start the

057conversation being that you this is all about surve I want to reiterate what Jen said that it's nice to see the prompt response administration and the district on some of these items. Uh some of my own frustrations were highlighted uh right there. I'm glad to hear that the dojo program, the pilot program was a success and now that's going to be a trend across all the elementary schools because that was one of my headaches as a parent. Uh each classroom having a different app to use. Uh I'm personally seeing success now in sports being used in more and more sports. Uh simpl my life there. So if I have one educational app and one extracurricular app, it simplifies the communication. Big fan support and I thoroughly support that. There's some safety and security as well

058with that and training needs. But I would agree, thanks for bringing that up because AJ kind of pioneered that sports unification too which fed into our decision here and how well it's working there. So I'm glad you brought that up. That one's free and so is dojo, right? So that's another bonus free. I don't get you don't get that at the board meeting too often. Free and it works good. So >> all right, >> move on to district administrators report on board's annual goals. >> Yeah, this will be um this is you know we we we we're in the process it's on the agenda later to create the new these are your goals. Um, we did switch these academic goals two years ago, I believe, from just being proficient to proficient and growth. I know

059there were some concerns in the community. Well, you don't even want to deal with proficiency. No, by going to growth, it's put more pressure on us. But it's also the acknowledgement. If you're not growing as a parent, that's what you want to hear. Your child to be high performing, being proficient isn't the answer you want. You want to know, are they getting better? Um, and if you're a struggler, if you only based on proficiency, that's pretty defeating if you're not there. But maybe you made you're two years behind but gained a year and a half. That's pretty exciting for a kid and parent to have that celebration on their journey to proficiency. So, we do take both into accounting. Um, and also just remind um there's going to be changes by the time we get

060here next year um with some of how we test and what we test because there's different requirements. So at winter we had progressing um and I'm looking at the first one for English language arts which was increase student growth in ELA through strong collaboration with districtwide professional learning community. Um so you can see um you know, there are some decreases in these where we're 78.57 proficient. Um 165 or 173 of our students tested. Um so remember the test. This isn't the oldfashioned test I think some people get confused about where you take a test the beginning of the year, you take that same one the end of year. That is not these kind of tests. What you're expected to know at the end of the year is much higher than at the beginning of the

061year. So keep that in mind. It's not that they ressed they weren't growing at the rate we needed them to be progre be considered proficient what proficient was in the fall proficient in the spring are two different things here um you can see the uh the the next one down for grades two through six which is star reading um 66.22 proficient. You saw an increase there. Um 366 of the 440 students showed growth. Um above was 92.7% and 83.8 from 2 to6. Um it is not uncommon to have the higher the grade the harder it is to show growth. Um that's not uncommon in any type of learning. That's just research based. Um then star reading grades 7 to 8 59.3% proficient um 190 of 210 students tested 113 to 190 students show growth we

062are having conversations about and and do have a plan and so will be sharing a policy or assessment calendar so one it'll be a little less testing for fourth graders thankfully third graders or fourth graders >> both okay that's and then what we're using is something that we're contin to have conversations levels which ones we choose to give because we think there's a better way to show parents and our staff and our students and our students their learning. So, we can continue to research and have conversations around that. The next one is math on the far right. As you can see, we did not meet all of our expectations yet. Um, we did have a slight decrease there. Um, you know, I think the lower levels really did a phenomenal job this year of showing

063growth. I think the reading plans are are really starting to drive conversations. We've talked about the reading plants. Now, we're looking at math. How could that strategy maybe help us as we look to grow in math? So, our administrative team is having conversations. We need more staff input on that. But you can see there the growth in math. Um, 5 through eight decrease of 2 67% 220 to 300 show growth that that's a number we obviously would love to see much higher um and then the preac grades 9 and 10 um and then the ACT um which did increase but um was still at 38% proficient. So, you know, I think one of the things we've had ongoing conversations, Sue and I and the mostly elementary, I think 712 with math and reading math probably,

064it's probably opposite 712. They probably spend as much time on math than they do reading at the elementary with all the mandates and the requirements. And obviously, we wanted to get better when we gave ourselves that challenge. So, we focused so much of our energy on reading. It's not like we've ignored math, but it's there's only so many minutes in a human's life. So, um, we're looking to get a little more balance back into helping support our staff with teaching math as well as continuing in the areas of reading. I know it's always a lot of data. This this these numbers come at you often. You heard about HR last month. Um, this is another way of looking at similar data but in different ways. U we're going to use our DCIT team in August

065and inservice to really have some deeper conversations about recommending academic goals to you as a board. Um I don't know if we'll be ready in August. Most likely it won't be till September to bring in front of you because we're trying to find a better way and I guess you tell us before we start working on it, but we want our staff involved in this conversation too because if it's a district goal that they're trying to help get better at, they should they've had some voice, but we want to maybe have another level conversation about it. What is the number? What is the the exact thing that would give us the best focus on how to get better? We're trying to in the surveys and just in life, the less focused or the more focused

066you can come on less goals, the better chances are going to succeed. So, listen to our staff, but we're trying to drill these goals to help you understand the work we're doing and drive those things. Just like with behavior, we're doing that same work with academic. And that's where in the If you saw the action plan, you know, the reading training, now we're in year two. We're trying to hire additional instructional coach to help with reading and math. Um, we haven't found one yet. Um, I know we did some reteing with co-eing last year. Um, we're trying to get better at our PLC. That's where we're working with our DCIT. I know Sue, um, Haron and Dan and now Josh will join the team. We're trying to do more with our reading and writing. Um,

067it was really emphasized. So, we went to Green Bay for our training in June. How much research says the better you can get at writing will improve your reading. I think we kind of know that, but you just need to be reminded that again. And what are we doing in our writing a little bit more systematic in 712? That's something we've spent some time talking about as well this summer. What does that look like? But we definitely need our language arts experts in the room before we get a final plan with that. So, questions on those two academic goals? Um the next one was for human resources they know health care and consider giving staff options for taking some money as pay unless choice and health plan salary structure for sports staff and um well

068let me back up. The goal was to review and implement strategies retain employees through consideration pay and benefits action plan is when I was reading sals for sport staff and then compared to neighboring districts. So we did do a deep dive in in these topics. We did bid out our healthcare. We did change in January. We went to the lowest bid, but with a company that was not new to us. Um, so it wasn't like we just went out and picked this random thing. It was the most match, perfect match to what we already have. It was different brand at a lower price one we had this before. So we did do that. try to keep our health care costs in line but still provide a great service to our staff that need it. Um

069so we are also already bidding out um and looking at other options um for this next year. We're having some service concerns um going into this year. We're dealing with those. and I spent a lot of time with it unfortunately and working with the company and our healthcare advocates slash advisors. We did implement a salary structure for support staff um this year. It's in the handbook that you approved. We'll continue to review that annually. Now that it's been implemented, you got to try it, make adjustments. Um, and I would say comparing to other districts, I did provide personnel with a very deep dive of and some new metrics for certified staff and pay data that we can go back and look at, but it was probably the most data that I crunched to give you

070some different ways of looking at salary models or salary pay for area school districts. We put goal met because we did do the things we said we're going to do and made the changes. questions on that one. And then finally, the last one we met seems like a long time ago, but was the operating referendum. So that one was pretty straightforward. Any year we've had a referendum made that do questions on that? All right. >> All right. The next item on the agenda, the administration will present the annual charter school reports to the board. >> So, all of you have the um document that I did for the charter board for my annual report, but I'll just kind of give the the summary of that. Um enment our high school continues to be strong in

071the upcoming year. Um I think Scott put in the report that it's um at 54 for next year and I would have reported like it feels like we're down a little bit for this year but we're actually up from where we were last year at 53. Um we had a large senior class just like North Pines High School did with uh 30 students. Um 30 students we graduated in June. I'm happy to report that as of right now it's actually 31 with some extra work that was put in in June and July. So we're happy about that. Um so another large class for us even though the graduating class for the district goes down a little bit next year. So our high school will still have a pretty large um class of seniors for next

072year. So that's really good from enrollment as a charter school. You're always thinking about enrollment but it's a stressor on staff. You know especially at a school when every student has a personalized and every student is doing something a little bit different. Um that's just every student that you add that's another plan that you have to manage, another set of options that you have to manage. So um but that's good. Um you know, one of the things we focused on a lot this year was options for students and opportunities for students. One thing we're hearing a lot from students is the group of students that we're getting really want hands-on learning opportunities. They want outside the walls learning opportunities. So, our staff spent a lot of time um we devoted almost every Wednesday of the

073school year to u non-traditional learning whether that was inside of the school and different activities hands-on activities teachers are doing with students or uh we called them expeditions that we were you know transporting either very locally just going to um you know different opportunities here in Vis County or some of them that were much further away. So things, you know, we did a trip down to Spring Green, went to American Players Theater. Um we've utilized the Loenwood facility up in Land of Lakes um for trips and learning opportunities. Um you know, a group of students went surveyed um grouse and did some science activities with that. So just focusing on things that are not occurring within the the walls of the school and that are more hands-on. Um, another thing that we're trying to do

074a lot of is helping students with career exploration, providing lots of opportunities for students to hear from uh different local businesses, um, business people, different career opportunities they may have because that's probably one of the number one things I hear when I'm trying to work with students that may be struggling academically is like, okay, what's the goal? What do we want to build to? What do we want to work towards when you're uh outside of school? And I get a lot of I don't knows. I have no clue. So we're trying to bring those opportunities to them to help them, you know, get knowledge of things they could do. So we had things come in like Delirious Construction, Frontier Builders, uh took a group of students down to the heavy equipment training center in Col,

075Wisconsin just to give them experience and opportunities to explore those careers. Uh good success story and you know a small group so you know one student makes a difference but took the students to Frontier Builders. um did a tour there of everything innovative that they're doing and I actually had a student apply for interview and get a job with Frontier Builders for this summer. So, I'm hoping that leads to an opportunity for him um somewhere down the road because they're trying to um expand as a business and are looking for, you know, partnership with us for students that are going to become their, you know, their next generation of workers in their business as they hope to expand. Um, you know, one of the things that we were working on this year is for improvement

076and we saw a little bit of growth. Um, but not exactly where we want to be at is attendance. Um, and that's I think true among a lot of schools, but it's something we really focused on. So, um, last year we saw growth. This year we saw some growth. We're still not where we want to be as a school, but um myself and Brooke and Katie Stucker, we all went to a um attendance workshop at CISA in June to kind of work on some uh better ways to track what we're doing with students for attendance. I brought some ideas back to the team and that'll be something that we continue to work on with students. And basically the, you know, the thing we brought from that training was, you know, it's about partnerships with families

077and work, you know, it's not about taking them to Juency Court. It's about working families and getting students in a place where they really want to be at school and they, you know, you're you're working on those things as a family that they're struggling with. So, um, attendance will continue to be something that we focus on. And then something that's, you know, just really big and close to our mission, um, with Sor High School is just continuing to build, um, really strong relationships with students. That's one thing, um, we really focus on heavily in the beginning of the year. The expeditions provide us with a really great opportunity to do that. Um, is, you know, you really can't make a with a student until at least one staff member has a good relationship with that

078student, a strong relationship with that student. So, that's something that our staff really prides themselves in is utilizing the different options that we have, the different expeditions that we do in order to, you know, build better relationships with students. That's one thing consistently that students come to us whether they're from a school in our district or whether they're from outside of our district is they have not been in a place where they have a strong connection with their teachers, with their principal, with their school even. And even with our families, that's a common thing is our our families are not really connected to school. So that's something we're we feel that we're strong at. What we're continuing to try to work on is um you know building relationships with our students and families. That is

079the the short version of mine. Um, any questions for me? >> Awesome. Thank you. >> Congrats on graduating ethan seniors. That's that's quite an accomplishment. So, thank you. >> All right. So, you obviously have the annual report for monastery learning center there as well too. I'll also give you the cliff notes version. So, but I will go through page by page and just highlight some of the key components of some pages and some pages. I'll just kind of skim over and if you have any questions I'm happy to answer about them. Um, so first page that Scott has up there is just background about the Monatory Learning Center. A lot of it just like where we started, when we started the one thing I want to highlight is we just accomplished our 10th year saur

080high school which is a huge accomplishment of obviously we got another 5year contract with the board um for the charter school for high school and monastery learning center. So a lot of times the charter school make it. It's usually in that first five or 10 years that something goes haywire and doesn't. So, it's a not only we've survived that, but we've also thriving which you'll see report with academic scores and parent satisfaction rates and things of that nature. But, I do want to give some shout out shout out to the teachers. I mean, I think the main contribution to the success of the school is we've been consistent staff since we've opened. So, we've had the same three teachers and pair professional all 10 years that we've been there, and they've really put a lot

081of heart, sweat, and tears into the program, and I really contribute the success we've had to the hard work of the teachers and pair professionals. All right, so I'm going to go to the page that's got enrollment. So, I'll skip over mission values. Here's enrollment. So, the next two pages go over enrollment and demographics. I'm not going to go into great detail about all those. um you can look at those but one thing I will highlight is that our open enrollment rate in the monastery learning center is at about 14% which is a little bit higher than the the district um just want to highlight that because we start the charter schools to obviously to service and provide options for families and kids in our community and to best reach all learners. Um but the

082reality is that sometimes it attracts guys from outside the district as well too which is just an added bonus to having charter schools when it attracts people for open enrollment because that obviously brings some revenue to the district as well too. Um I'm going to skip over the rest of the demographics and go to attendance. Just as Harland highlighted you know attendance isn't just an issue since co really was the spark of attendance issues. It's not just our district. It's across the state. It's across the nation. Um so you can see here the attendance rate learning center for the past 5 years. Um, we made it a focus just like Har was saying all schools pretty much have made it a focus and it is a celebration that this year you can see well you

083can see 21 in the 22 school years in the yellow how low it was but how it's continued to go up and we're at 96.2% attendance rate this year which is awesome. It's the highest we've had yet and uh we reached our goal. We set our goal for 96% we achieved that which is awesome. Next student achievement. So each of our charter schools set goals um that we present to our charter school governance board throughout the year and we update them um throughout the year as well too. So these are the three main goals um there's two on this page and then one on the next one. Uh you can see in the far right I'll just highlight the last outcome of the scores. We were very we achieved um the literacy goals in some

084areas and we almost achieved the math but we had 92% of our students proficient in per literacy. That's 4K through first grade. 82% proficient in reading that's second through fourth grade. So that's hu that's great celebrations right there. Math not quite as good. We didn't quite reach our goal. We had 75% um still a lot to celebrate there but definitely room for improvements while there. The next page student achievement continued. One of our goals um as it was across the whole district this year was to implement purposeful people, our new character education program. So to really look at that data, we we tracked uh student discipline referrals. We set our goal to have 90% of our students to have one or fewer discipline referrals. And we did achieve that goal as well too. We had

08596% of our students had one or fewer. If you include the if you include the bus, if you got rid of the bus, we have 99%. So the bus isues. So So that's a huge accomplishment there. There's a lot more than purpful people that contributes to that obviously with classroom management, the teachers, um their consistency from year to year, responsive classroom, and a variety of things. Financials, I'm going to skip over that. A little too dry. Ter's not here to hear that. That's parent survey. Um, I'm just going to highlight at the very bottom there's a couple quotes from that we pulled from what parents have said and then you can see in the pie charts there. Um, two of the most important questions I felt like that we pulled right from the survey um

086is this is a survey that we I do a Google survey every spring. It's in our contract that we do a Google survey to the charter schools in the spring. Um, so this is one that I sent out separate from the parent uh the school perception survey. Out of the parents that responded to it, 100% said that they were satisfied with and that the child was too. And as you can see, the blue is extremely satisfied. So the vast majority uh were extremely satisfied, which is awesome. Uh we also do try to solicit some suggestions for what we could do to improve. So we have a question specifically about that. And one of the common things that kind of came through with that was trying to get more information to parents about how they can

087support their learning at home and especially with monitoring methodology. So something we want to focus on this upcoming school year is what are some things that we can do to educate parents on a little bit more about monastery methodology and how can they support their child's learning at home. So that's a good problem to have happen. We want parents to be involved. Next curriculum instruction. There's a lot in there. Um I'm not going to go over all of it. U I will just highlight this summer the teachers worked hard on a couple different things. Uh most of the monastery staff were trained in a literacy program called UFly. So they took part in that this summer. And then we also redid our report cards for the monastery learning center this summer. We've had the same

088report cards since we opened. We really wanted to make something that was a little bit more parent friendly, user friendly, and also focused uh mainly on what are the most important thing that students are learning. And we felt like the report cards we had were dated and we wanted to update those. So the report cards went into this upcoming school year. Family engagement, you get my monthly reports, so you see a lot of that uh throughout the school year. Um so I won't highlight that. And then the summary um just Again overall a successful school year. Uh things to highlight 10th year that we finished which is absolutely awesome. Uh student achievement as you can saw was high for the most part areas of growth but overall students did really well. Parent satisfaction rate is

089high and we are expecting to be at full capacity this upcoming school year and we have a waiting list and a big waiting list for the younger grade levels. So um so overall successful school year but we're always looking for ways to improve. are always looking at data and getting that parent survey to figure out what we can do better. Any questions? >> I have a question. Tony, it's not maybe for you as much as it is Harland. You mentioned the percentage for attendance. Harland, do you remember your offand percentage of attendance? >> Just under 91%. What's the district? >> All right. Middle school. >> Sorry. All right. So our middle school. So I do will just highlight a couple of things from the report. um PSP students had a significant impact I would say

090and provided an opportunity for us this year at Soore just to consider maybe there's other kids to kind of hook into our programming or flexibility or and so when I highlighted some of the changes just to um kind of note the impact of the kind of coming and going and especially that middle school years when um social emotional kind of takes a heavy front uh burner. space sometimes to other things in life. So, um they think they want to go home and I don't want to do school and maybe I want to go to school or maybe I just want to go part time and and so we um found some opportunity and how to support those students. Um I noted in there in the demographics that um there was an increase in students with

091uh needing special education supports up to 20%. Which is a 15% increase in the last year. Um and that has always fluctuated at source. Sometimes we're right at similar to the to the middle school and other times we're high or lower. But it's always something to note because certainly with our programming too, it just creates more opportunity to collaborate with uh special education teachers and think outside the box of how to best support their needs too within the programming that SOAR provides because it's a little different and not as easy to do some of the interventions that require the same time because one of the things loves to do is not the same thing at the status time every day. Um so I also included things about community connections and field studies. Um the part

092on achievement I think something that I continue to struggle a little bit with is the how to represent um growth for students at an individual level. Um so uh literacy and math and these scores represent progress or lack thereof on STAR um which which middle schoolers sometimes put lots of effort into and it's a great representation of how they are and times not so much. And um one thing I'll come back to that in a second. Um parent surveys got talked about quite a bit and uh something we're proud of is 100% of sore parents that responded feel like their students are treated with dignity and respect. Um 86% are satisfied with amount of learning that their child uh engaged with during the year. Um something that's not noted in here but it was I

093shared with our charter school board. because social emotional learning has such an impact on student achievement and their attendance and their engagement in school and um and we uh so I looked at listing kind of all the students and then kind of made anonymous obviously but and noted how many of the children this year had some type of inner I would say experience with a threat to self um whether that be an attempted suicide either at at home or or some kind of feeling of that level of of of stress in life for all kinds of different traumas and reasons and and at sore last year that was 29%. Um which is significantly high when you think about that age range. Um but the pressures put on students nowadays whether they see social media and

094everybody was out at a bonfire and I didn't get invited and and I don't have any friends and lonely and those kinds of things. require a significant amount of parent communication then. And so the other thing I kind of noted just um one of the times when I was kind of feeling like are we making a difference? And at that time the parent communication I kind of gone through and found that 84% of the parents I felt like I had um multiple communications with to the point that I had their their um kind of a quick dial on the cell phone whether texting or communication, that level of communication. It was a regular um constant communication because um sore or not just sore middle school, but often middle school requires that it's a challenging time

095for kids. They're trying to figure out themselves. Um and um so those were two things to note. What I want to bring back to achievement is there's somebody that's been on my mind, a student, and I just thought I would share with you as an example of achievement that doesn't always kind of show up very This is how all our fifth graders do. This is how all of our um seventh graders did. We had a student that moved into the district from outside of the state um Octoberish um enrolled immediately in this building and kind of tried to adjust but needed something different. So in the two months that they were here missed uh 27 almost 30 days transferred up to sore continued to have problems with absence and bus um mom was one that

096I called and texted regularly so did SRO and school counselor and good morning are you up get on that bus to get outside never got on the bus from the house but wouldn't make it to the shuttle bus so started with um you know like I said almost 30 absences in January there were six In February there was four. In March there was four. In April there was three. And in May there was zero. And there were also a student that once they came they sat in the corner of the classroom on the floor with their hood up um all the time. And in Mr. Libbyy's room who even though he sings to his lamp every day her name is Mildred. Um, and after about two months, she would kind of sit up a little

097bit and look over the edge, but give him no satisfaction at all that she was entertained by him. She wouldn't roll her eyes or anything, just kind of look at him. And um, wouldn't eat at school, any of that things. And and I I do birthday Sundays every month for all the kids. I roll this card and it's your birthday one Sunday. And middle schoolers love it, too. And um, and the student wouldn't never the all those months by rolled it down the hall and they accepted a Sunday for the birthday month and ate it privately, never in front of any students, but by the end of the year they attended the sor overnight camp ate with us the whole time um hung out with all the kids and had multiple friends in the tent

098and it's private information to Northland Pines at this time but um scored advance in reading on the forward exam which is unbelievable. So that is an example of a student that um won't show up in this achievement. Um you know even when I look back and look I think they attempted the winter assessment and the second percentile which means probably if they opened a computer just sat there and so that's what I want to find a better way to represent store because it's such an individual kind of need. We're so thankful for it in our district that we have these options. >> I thought you were going to say they also started to sing. >> No, but they will roll their eyes out Mr. Libby or act like they smile once. >> That's awesome. Thank

099you, Carrie. >> I think that's the the piece of this. Well, first off, just so you're aware that the annual reports are required to do, but as a principal and I've been in car's and Harland shoes as principal at the two s schools. It's a very and and they shed more time with the governance board where they share. This is a super reflective practice as a principal. It causes you I think all of our principles do a good job reflection but when you have to write it and share it multiple boards and and really go through it, own it. Um you know Carrie and I know both know I chased it, she's chasing it. How do we help kids at sorting better math? It is a it's been a cloud over us from day one.

100We we we are But the good thing is her and the staff continue to look at it. It's not a oh well it's never going to work. It's just a 180. Like I have to remind her it's okay. We'll figure this out together. you know, let's get some more people in the room that may. But I also want to just say the the stories that sh Carrie um shared and and Haron and Tony is there is a lot about stories because it tells a better better piece of it. Not that we're trying to hide from any of that other piece, but one thing that's that I remind myself often of where we picked and car stories really told that is think about school and your own journeys. It worked well, right, for a lot of

101us sitting in this room. Maybe not everybody. I don't know everybody's backstory, but we're very time oriented, right? We're we're they're coming September 2nd. We know what trimesters are. We know when grading windows are. We know and we have expectations of what proficiency is on this date to this time on a test. We and all these other pieces. The one thing and and I think Krie highlighted so well in her talk about her students and it really reminds me often when I go there or talk to Harland or even happens at the middle and high school as well. Graduation is that piece. So, it's these last few months that we went through. But what the charter schools have done is allowed for time to work differently and and never underestimate that is there. Yes, that

102student did come every day and probably would have had five Fs if they were in this building. And that's nothing wrong with this. What's going on here? That's just the reality of the way the system is built. You're not in class. You're not going to pass an assignment. and you're not going to turn stuff in and it's very frustrating. But if you're allowed and it is it does take unique it takes people and and time and that these teachers don't necessarily get in this building because of the volume of students and expectations. But if we're ever going to get that student back into the fold of our district, there are district students. They're not pines or so. They're our districts. and that relationship to that parent. That's one of the things you want to highlight

103and celebrate as a school district that we have schools that have the ability to allow some of those kids. Many of those kids are going to end up at high school here. Some may go to sore, some may go here, but if we can get them back on track and build their confidence and their confidence and and there are some of those same stories in this building, but that is something different and and kudos. I think um that light bulb moment we look for as teachers doesn't always happen in a lesson. Doesn't always in a day. Sometimes it takes weeks, months, but if you don't stop to celebrate or have that option, you lose a lot of kids through the cracks of a district. You don't have graduation. You'll become very accustomed to a graduation

104rate in the 90% uh one percentage range. And that's not the norm. And it's something that our staff and your leadership group needs to take a lot of credit for and and understand that it's a journey that these kids are on. and and Haron and Dan who just went through trying to make sure some can get to that graduation. They don't give it away, but the light bulb clicks later for some kids. Um, but the POP work that has been done at both buildings to get kids to learn in a way that's going to make them prepared for life. That's still the mission that I started the day with. So, just want to say um nice job by the team, the staff that was highlighted, but also don't forget the value. It is different. It's

105confusing to some, but it is a journey and a process. And we've never said you have to put them on a sore, you have to go to sore and you have to go there. You have to become a North Pines graduate hopefully. And however your journey gets you there. Um, and now that we've had this, something I've talked to um Carrie and and Haron a little bit about and the Soore High School staff is we want to do more of a longitudinal study because we have 10 years of students and it's pretty exciting. All right, middle school actually has more data than that. We want to actually track all the kids that we've had and what what has been successful. I've got that in small samplings like the student will tell me like the journey

106was great. I know I did this elementary went to middle school. I went to North High School and as an engineer this thing prepared me in this school. This prepared me in that school. So what are that what are those things that can help us do that later? you know, and we have college graduates from sore or um Soore High School now, you know, and it took years to have a school new enough to get to where you could have plumbers and and craftsmen and military and and college graduates. So, just something that um just want to highlight and not just breeze right over tonight because it is a pretty big big deal and we should be proud as a board to have the diversity and opportunities of high quality schools and multiple choices for

107parents and kids. Thank you guys. Next is update on pickle. >> Yeah. So, since the last time we've met, we have had two meetings. One on 7:16 and one this week, last week 24th, time's flying. Um Dave Bonan and AJ um have joined me as kind of ours rep. Um, as the new DEA is selected, we'll include them in the meeting as well. If their schedule works, um, we've spent all of our time focusing on thatou that you would eventually want to tell me if we the draft is what the direction you were thinking. A lot of time and and this is both research and in our meetings of what does it really look like? Is it a donation? Is it a lease? Is it a it's that legal kind of but yet kind of

108what is the essence both groups are looking for? So, we've spent time And at that we've tried to both collect. They went to Anigo where there's courts on the school down there and met with their with the pickle ball group down there. Um AJ and Tara reached out to Anigo on the school side of what kind of agreement is there. Um I've used some other leases to use as examples. So we're kind of in a drafting phrase between each other. Um this week we spent a lot of time talking about the availability of courts for what it looked like for the association for the students in the community. Um Obviously, I think you have a standard. I kind of know you well enough. I think you have a standard of if you're doing this, there

109there has to be some opportunities for kids in it. Um, we did go through the first meeting. More time was spent on the actual location, the pros and cons, some concerns Emily Ro has brought up about the CLC, some things AJ has brought up about cross country and disc golf. We were able to kind of work through those. They did mark off the site. So, Dave and one of the guys who's done all those drawings, they walked the property. Um, we did talk a little bit about maybe some trees that may have to be cut if it were to go where it currently is set. Um, and then we discussed the possibilities of bathrooms and hookups and if they had them and didn't have them, what the two things were. Um, also because it's free,

110I'm working with our insurance company, Terrace, helping just like what would our ability insurance carrier expect in agreement or do they have a model? What is the language they would expect from the association and for us? What impact would have us? So, I've been keeping track of all this in a written form, so it's always going to be there. Um, and then their next meeting is 8:12. They have they'll have an association meeting and then I'll be able to take some of the things that we're working on and work through those further. So, questions on that? So at this point when you're looking as you said your focus is on theou um once we get that hammered out and you come back to us for that we approve it then most of that meeting time

111for you and AJ would be not as much I would imagine >> unless you still want to have a representative there but then be in their area to fundra and >> what what I really see as two steps to this is getting a draft that I bring to the seven of you to say, "We can live with that. Take that to our attorney. We're willing to spend a little money to get that to a legal spot." Or you say, "No, I'd like to see we can't we're not going to be able to live with that that way." So, my goal is to get you something that you verbally agree to, not that would be agreed that ready to be signed, but be agreeable that we can take it to our attorney to make it a

112legal document that you could all vote on at some point to make it happen. Does that sound like what you wanted? I just want to make sure that's what you're thinking too. Or >> would it make sense to try to bring something to us before your 812 meeting just so we can give you some input if feasible so we're not wasting time if that was necessary? I think we're pretty green yet. So >> I think um reasonable might be September though like if you can give me September I think it' be better >> especially with the timeliness of our committee meetings coming up >> I think I may have something closer to draft to send out ahead of time then look at discussion >> good act 12 report update Um, as shared with you in

113a memo, this is not something you have to vote on, but it's something required under state statute. Um, as in 2023, Wisconsin Act 12 requires me um to bring a report to you based on crime statistics. This is one of those new state mandates that legislators came up with that has some great fuzziness to how do you get the data and how do what you report. Um they list it very clearly and I listed those for you. It's homicide, sexual assault, burgy, robbery or theft, battery, substantial battery, aggravated battery, arson, possession of alcohol control substance or substance analog possession of firearm violation of gunfree school zone and disorderly conduct. This is only for high schools and you have to break it down into both. If you have multiple high schools, you have to break it

114in per high school. You have two high schools so it is broken down. um where the two gray areas are is what making sure what's substantial like gets to a a charge. Um I have experts in the room that understand that way better than I do, but I did work with our SRO to get these numbers. Um you know, if this happened outside of school, we're not reporting it. >> Yeah. So, this has happened either in a bus that we we don't own, but we lease or on our school property or a school event. So we had four violations of municipal ordinance relating to disorderly conduct at North Pines High School and four violations of a municipal ordinance relating to disorderly conduct at SO High School. We will be and I actually have to lay

115a zero or number in every single one of these categories. So I'll be reporting zero in the rest and then four of these other areas. Questions? I will enter these into the DPI website and there'll be a big place you can look at this. >> All right. Next is your district administrators report which you've been doing so is that kind of board members sitting and not >> didn't make very many motions tonight. Just want to highlight um this is really a team effort of the staff at North Plants High School who created salt which you've heard of before but the state of um WIA created a state level kind of salt group of kids around the state for two years. This is the second year and both years I kind I didn't double check this

116but I tried to really look. I think we might be the only school that has had a kid in both years. Maybe I'm wrong. I didn't 100% confirm that, but I know there's not many if there were. So, you have um Riley >> Riley Dar also was like Ryan in my head for a second, but Riley Dar um and um both I would say both our young ladies are outstanding young adults, but big honor, big thing to have a second year in a row. Cody Moda was on there last year. So, just want to pass it along. It says a lot about the character of your students and particular the two that have been on there. I can stop talking because Mrs. Nordine can share an update on Eagle. She can do it way better

117and she probably needs new shoes for replacing all those steps she's put in >> week and it's been great. We um have officially I think we start when we started last Monday 237 on the roster but they don't necessarily all they e and flow and come two days and not two weeks. Um so we're that's still kind of settling out. So we have 11 classrooms going and it's there's happy kids and happy staff and um administrators have taken turns every day kind of welcoming and waving them in when the buses drop them off. So that's kind of fun. They love familiar faces and and friends. So last week was the world of science, lots of volcanoes erupting and doodling slime and all kinds of that stuff going on. This week is traveling around the world.

118Everybody went out with Chinese tubing today about 50 g. We have a number of class six or seven of them going up this week forest dig up some bugs and hike around and try not to get any ticks. lots of work goes in to get us to this point. So kudos to during the school year when she's trying to do everything else. But you can just tell the prep and the work that's done and it's gotten better every year. So kudos to her and then the custodian staff and in that building and and this building too. I mean, all of our custodial staff you saw from the survey, but over here they were getting ready for kids in Wisconsin and praising the pines. Over there, they had to do what they had to do to

119get ready for school, but then they had to get ready for Eagle Camp at the same time. So, just our custodial staff is phenomenal at what they do and we're very fortunate. So, kudos to all them for that as well. Um, switching to stuff not quite as fun as Eagle Camp. Um, state federal budget. Um, as you maybe have heard, budget did pass that 325. Some people have a lot of districts um really are making a big deal about that because they're used to raising the revenue limit by 325 and having the state backfill that. So they're it doesn't look like such a big impact on their tax bill. Well, they're not backfilling 325. So that's going to hit some of these school districts bill rates much higher at their annual meetings coming up here.

120Whereas we don't get back filled with that. So that 325 tariff, all the projections we did for the uh referendum. We we knew 325 was coming and we know our taxpayers have to pay it. So, it's not a great thing, but it is we it's all in in our model. It's already there. We're not there's no surprise to us and our taxpayers. So, if there's any solace to our taxpayers and that we don't get state aid, it's that it's pretty easy to predict your bill rate a little bit better because you don't get any help. you just know you're going to have to flip the bill. So, just kind of something to keep in mind, but it does help us. Um, special ed reimbursement, um, it says in every article it went up to 42%.

121Just remember that it was supposed to be at 35% this year and it's really 30% reimbursement. What we're hearing is probably guess around 38% that you may get reimbured. Everybody, we, your association, my association, the principal, we all wanted 60%. We, they didn't even budget in the first go around till they come all back to the table and agreed to raise to 40 to 42 and 45% in year two. Remember, it's a two-year budget. Um, so we'll watch that. That will be helpful. That is good money for our taxpayers. That's money that comes from Madison that you paid in property taxes, in personal taxes. excuse me, on property taxes, but personal taxes and sales tax and their big coffer, that's money that comes back to our taxpayers. So, that's a good thing. Um, and it's

122money we can use to educate kids. Mental health, for some reason, they put 40 million in year one and 10 million in year two. Typically, in a budget, they start small and big, grow it. Nobody knows why, but they did 40 million and 10 million. So, um, that's one of those numbers and Terra does an excellent job of keeping us head. So we don't, you know, like, oh, we have all this money in this area, let's use it. We know that next year we won't have it. It's based on so they take 40 million, divide it by all the kids in the state, and then gives you that much per kid to use for school counselors or mental health providers or items like that that you have in your district. Um, per pupil aid, that's

123the one we always really want and they never want to give us money there. So that's stated at 742. Um, and then there is a high cost special education. Tara and Emily and Barb Clauser, our special ed seed department do a ton of work to even get that reimburse. A lot of schools don't even mess with it because it's so hard. You have to track every minute and it's just it's it's one of those great things the state made so hard that you can't even ask for it. Thankfully, we do and they've increased that rate. Um, so we'll keep an eye on that and see, but that is not an easy predictor. Like I can't really give you a number because the number of kids that qualify for cost vary. It's one of those that

124varies car sharing her numbers. One year you can have 20% kids, the next year you have 10%. So that's a hard one to give a hard number for Tara and I to give you a predictor. The only other one I didn't put on there is they did raise the amount you get for per um open enrollment. So, as long as you're on the plus side of that, which we have been that helps us. Questions on the state budget? Anything you've heard or any questions? Um Ben, I really break it into two topics. Goes pretty quick. One is um the 72 million that Congress did not distribute. As of this morning, we found out they the president decided he better give that money because I think it caused a lot of uproar. So all those funds

125will be coming to us. That's what it was reported and that's what's in the news and I haven't got that from DPI but that's what we heard on the national news multiple times different sources. I always look at variety of sources. So >> is that 72 million directly to Wisconsin? >> That is Wisconsin share. That's 39,000 for us in title two that we would have lost and two grand in title three which pretty much goes to see somebody that helps with supporting our program. Then the new budget really have not seen the details. There's a lot of talk I've been getting different sources that some of it maybe they have to revisit that a lot of things were in there that they didn't even know were in there that and we don't know any timeline.

126So normally we get this document this is all the changes. So when you pass a bill, if you paid attention in social studies, you pass a bill, now you got to make it a law. So now they're working through all those details. The one we do know is SNAP will change. That's something that we talked at finance that we'll have to be watching our free and reduced lunch counts because if you're on SNAP, you automatically qualify. Now without SNAP, these families will have to fill out their own paperwork. So we're going to have to really focus on reminding them to get the benefits they have coming because those two things are different. one automatic quality for the other, but when that goes away, you're still qualified for free and reduced lunch. So, we'll have to

127watch that. And then we also have to watch Medicaid reduction. That one um a lot of superintendents around the country are watching closely. That's how a lot of districts pay for school nurses and other things. We don't rely on it for that. So, I don't want anybody to be completely nervous about it, but if it's loss of dollars, it's loss of dollars. As a budget, you have to keep an eye on those things. So, we'll keep an eye on that. Um with The final details of that are questions on federal. All right. Um update on enrollment. Um I did share numbers for you. As you can see of all the things that doesn't take a survey to tell you that I would say is very concerning. And this is not just at Pines. probably a

128little bit more at Pines or I think in in Northern right now is our declining enrollment. As you see as we sit today compared to last year, we're down 76, which is also down from two years ago, which is, you know, another 26. So, we're over 100 kids less than two years ago. That's bodies. The other trend that Tara has been keeping track of that concerns me the spreadsheet is for the last three to five years we've seen what who says they're coming on day one in August excuse me who says they're coming in August is not who shows up on day one I was talking to Lori Edwards about this from this just her own experience she agrees the last three to four years we've seen this much smaller class show up because people

129don't tell us they moved in there is a lot more transient so this remember budget. We'll talk about this at the annual meeting. The state builds in this like little cushion like when you start declining rapidly, there's like a cushion so it doesn't impact your budget. But three to five years out, it starts really impacting. It's not a cliff, but you are getting to reality three years out. Three to five years out. So you want to be thinking as a budget. Remember we had tough conversations about some staffing changes is important. This is the reason I'm telling you these tough decisions. If you can do them in the moment versus when you're forced to do them, that's a big difference. So, just kind of we'll keep you up to date. We'll give you hard numbers.

130Remember, we're coming into the annual meeting time. So, August and September are big numbers. Not August as much because it's short turnaround, but September and October are your big budget number time. So, um I put some other supporting data in there. You can see, you know, we graduated 135, it's 105. You know, senior class 4K is at 62. In our long range projection, I used to put 80. Now I've lowered that to 70, hoping that we get to 70. Um, you can see St. Germaine numbers. Um, they're kind of leveled off. Hopefully they go back up a little bit. Um, the big class at Eagle River's third grade. That's our biggest class right now. Um, Land of Lakes, uh, unfortunately not in every building is third grade. Land lakes um their multi- age numbers and

131then sore high school and soar middle school numbers are strong that includes the pops as well and we have not started under 1300 since 201718 which is you know something to keep in mind. So you know it was just a couple years ago I was telling you that we had the highest amount of kids in 12 years. Now we're sliding back to Um, I have projections showing us getting close to 1,200 in the next three years that I can share with you as well. Sorry about the doom and gloom on that, but that's just the reality. I think there's a reason that you have to think about being proactive and work together. So, something to keep in mind and Tara and I will be showing you that moving forward. Um, updated violence county emergency service

132meeting. Um, I was invited to attend. I've been trying to get there. Um, so Sher Kgleton from Emergency Management in Bios County. Um, it was held in Land of Lakes, so it's great to be up there. Um, at the fire station. Um, basically every fire department and EMS within the Biles County is invited. Not all of them can make it, but a lot of them did. So, I presented on what would happen in bus accidents. They gave me 30 minutes. So, I made that about 10 because really it's not I gave my form. I had gotten some from the neighboring districts, but really it's about control of traffic and scene and schools won't control that. We'll worry about communication to parents and working with students and their families. Um, so I went through what our

133response was, but long as I had 30 minutes, I've been wanting to talk to them about our safety maps that all of us in the county have, our safety protocols that we all now are going to be standardized, and then work being done on reunification because probably the reunification and the maps are really needed across all those other agencies. So, um, it was great for me to be able to sit in the room, thank them for their service to us as a school district and the others across Vis County and share share that information. I gave handouts and there's actually stimulated some future conversation that I'll be having. I know St. Jermaine Fire Department wants to get help with their maps to get it into their fire truck. Um, our SRO's are already working on

134that for the sheriff department as well. So, I already mentioned praising the pines and the kids from Wisconsin events. Two huge events when you talk about community and you being in this district. Um, again, our staff Dave Bonan and his crew did standing job for both. Um big crowd for kids in Wisconsin. Gracing the pints had a really good crowd. Didn't talk to them on their final number yet. They wanted more, but um it was kind of there's some things with the group that came this year that caused a little bit of controversy, but it went very well. They did a great job cleaning up, helped with set up, great communication. Year two was much easier than year one as far as just what's happening. Um still a ton of work on our We have

135their meeting in early August and then I'll follow up to see what the plans are for the future. And then um I just wanted to show I know you've heard about this before, but this got apparently lost. I know it's hard to believe this got lost on the desk down in Madison and then we didn't put it on the last two months, but um we did get uh we have the very nice national award and then the state of Wisconsin also sent us award for recognition for our green school. So that'll go on the wall next to the national award. But they apologized that it got stuck down there and then it was on my desk then. Well, we missed a couple of agendas where we forgot to tell Susie to put it on there.

136So, but just good reminder and good focus goes with the video we showed. Um I probably there's two to three articles just today on other districts just doing their solar >> ribbon cutings and different things going on. So, it's definitely something that's catching on not for the awards but to money with the issues of um if you've seen any news articles recently the cost of power is going up rapidly and especially with the AI data centers it's going to be something to really watch and you are positioned yourself in future boards not for in a good way to be at least a little bit able to absorb some of that not other just a heavy agenda, a lot of information. So, thank you. >> All right. Thank you everybody for being here this evening. I

137will now make a motion to convene in close session pursuant to the provisions of Wisconsin statute 19.85 subsection 1C to consider employment promotion compensation or performance evaluation data of any public employee over which the governmental body has jurisdiction or exercises responsibility and Wisconsin statutes 19.85 subsection to deliberate or negotiate the purchasing of public properties, the investment of public funds, or conduct other specified public business whenever competitive or bargaining reasons require a close session. The purpose of the close session is to discuss the potential discuss the potential contract and compensation for a new district administrator whose future contract would be effective July 1st, 2026. At the conclusion of close session, the board will entertain a motion to reconvene into open session. Upon returning to open session, the board may take action related to items discussed in

138close session and will then entertain a motion to >> roll. Roll call. Eric, >> yes. >> Becky Line, >> yes. >> Jennifer Kane is >> yes. >> Chelsea, >> yes. >> Nick Seager, >> yes.