Board of Education Meeting 2/9/2026

001All right. I will call this meeting to order. The board of education meeting on this Monday, February 9th. Um, I will take roll call. I'll start with Mary >> here. >> Travis >> here, >> Stacy >> here, >> Ashley >> here, >> Matt >> here, >> and Larry >> here. Thank you. Was the meeting properly noticed? >> The meeting was properly noticed. >> And can I get a motion to adopt the agenda? >> So moved. >> Second. >> All in favor? >> I. Any opposed? >> Oppose. >> We'll stand and do the pledge of allegiance. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Thank you. Well, tonight our spotlight on learning,

002we have Horizon Elementary School. So, I'll ask the group to come on up. I'll have Christie uh our principal introduce uh everybody tonight. I just want to point out to the board that this spotlight uh also helps address one of the goals uh that the board set goal five superintendent goal E which you were looking for information on the PLC process and how that's used to help support improving student achievement. So I'll turn it over to you Christie. >> All right. Thank you. Hi everyone. Um tonight with me I have a great group from Horizon. Lexi Horvat principal Christina Swanson who is one of our reading interventionists but currently is filling in as instructional coach for Katie Dirks while she's on her maternity leave. Then we have Bridget Halverson at third grade. Uh Julie Reutder

003at fifth grade, Lindseay Kramer at fourth grade, and Bin Jacabowski who is our math instructional coach. And we're here to talk to you all about PLC's. Okay. So, typically we start PLC's uh with a community builder and I thought it would be a really fun idea to put you guys all through a community builder um doing a trust fall, but the team didn't think that was a great idea. So, we're not going to do that tonight, but we are going to talk to you about PLC's and what that looks like at Horizon. Um so, here's just a little brief agenda about what we're going to be talking about tonight. Um we're going to talk about what are PLC's and what are the four big questions that our PLC's focus on. We'll talk a little bit

004about the structures at Horizon specifically for PLC's and how we use them and then you'll get to hear about um how our grade level leads use PLC's as well. Okay, so a little bit about PLC's. PLC's stands for professional learning community. um it's really focused on collaboration and data and it moves from focusing in silos or working in silos to really having that collective efficacy on what are we doing as a team to support all learners. So it's really about looking at at all students across a grade level as all of our learners and working together to help meet their needs. So there are four main questions that drive a PLC. The first question being what do we want students to know and do? So really thinking about that backwards planning and looking at our

005standards and our curriculum and really identifying what it is that we want students to be able to do at the end of a unit. From there um assessing. So how will we know if the students have learned it? So how are we going to assess their learning? The third question being how what will we do if students have not learned it? So this is really focusing on that intervention piece. So looking at the data after we assess um a specific standard or a specific skill that we're working on and identifying like which of those students didn't meet it and then what are we going to do to intervene? So is it going to be a reteing in a small group or are they going to be receiving some sort of specific intervention based on their

006skill deficit? And then that fourth question being how are we going to extend it for students who already know it. So our students who are already demonstrating proficiency in that standard or that skill, what are we doing to continue to grow their learning and understanding and go deeper with the standard. So when we think about the why of PLC's it brings us to um thinking about educational research and John Hattie being an educational researcher who has done a lot of metaanalysis where he has synthesized massive amounts of research to try to help and determine which um factors in learning have the greatest impact on student achievement. and Hattie developed um and shares with us effect sizes. Um essentially anything that Hattie says is at a point four or above is considered to be an accelerator

007and will promote more than one year's growth worth of learning. And so PLC's are a vehicle for promoting collective efficacy, something that Lexi mentioned. Collective efficacy being that groups shared belief that they can positively impact student achievement. And collective efficacy is found to be one of the very top accelerators in terms of student achievement at a 1.6. So if we think about anywhere from 02 to point 4 being about a normal average one year's growth, think about how much a point or 1.6 is greater than that. That's how much PLC's are shown to help to accelerate the learning of students. Um, and it's really again about that shift from isolation in your teaching practices to collaboration, focusing on student learning and determining what instructional strategies work best. Really learning from one another like so many

008professions do. when we think about doctors who are collaborating around a case or if we think about um you know scientists who are doing research together, a PLC is really built around that same mindset. And so we've developed some things at Horizon to help support the PLC process as we've really dug into it this year. And one of the things we've done is focused on our BLT. All of the people up here are members of our BLT, which stands for building leadership team. And our building leadership team is the primary system that we've used to help develop capacity in our individual PLC leaders. So, our building leadership team is made up of one member from every PLC in our building. We come together once a month and we focus around one of our four PLC

009questions that Lexi outlined for us. And during that time, we introduce a tool, a protocol, or a strategy that can really help teams to be able to dig further into that PLC question. Together, we'll practice using that tool and then discuss how individual PLC's can use it to drive instruction forward. So, there's a couple of examples that are listed up there that we've rolled out this year. You can see that um for question one, we rolled out a unit planning guide and um a standard unpacking document to help us really think about what our standards are asking for students to be able to know and um what skills that they will need. For question two, we've started doing some analysis of student work, which Brenn is going to talk about a little bit more or

010Christina maybe. Um, and we've also rolled out a data literacy survey to help teams really come together and think about their data literacy practices. And then in question three, which is as far as we've gotten so far this year, a flowchart for really helping for teams to determine what their next steps are when working with students. So, one of the really powerful tools that Christy introduced us to this year and trained us in is something called the ASW, which stands for analysis of student work. I'll show you a sample of what one looks like after I kind of talk through what makes this tool so powerful. I think the first piece that makes this tool powerful is that it takes the standards and it link links them to assessment. So there is your evidence of

011student learning piece. Uh if we take a look at questions three and four, how will we intervene for students that aren't quite there yet? Proficient grasping the concepts. But what I what we also like about it is we can look in teams and talk about that extension piece. What about those kids who are already proficient? How can we now extend the learning? It's really nice because it provides a visual representation to inform datadriven decisions. And what I found the most powerful this year working in my own PLC team as I lead the reading intervention team, but also in shifting to the filling in for the learning coach role is this collaborative process where it becomes shared responsibility. So we're not working in silos. These are not my students. These are our students. So, if I

012go into a PLC with the third grade team, it's not just Bridget Halverson's class. It's all of the third graders, they're our students. And it can be used across subject areas. I know Bin has used it a lot in math for small group work, the district writing assessment. We'll use the ASW form to think about, okay, maybe we need to intervene in the area of punctuation here and take it back to the sentence level. uh again can be used across all subject areas and I think another piece that makes it so f powerful is that it grows teacher capacity and skill set. Am I able to click on that analysis of student work to show it? >> Tammy should be able to >> Tammy can we click right up top where it says analysis of

013student work. I just want to show you this is a sample. I took off teacher names and I took off student names. But this is a sample of something we did in a third grade PLC. So, as you know, due to ACT 20, we had a lot of second graders that came into third grade with something called a personalized reading plan. And by law, during our win, our what I need block, we needed we need to provide uh direct and explicit intervention. So this we took our winter A as data from oral reading fluency and we kind of grouped kids by percentile. And Tammy, if you can scroll up a little bit, you can see underneath each of the groups specific interventions that we picked to help bridge students to the next level. There's a

014celebration here. When we started the year with these third graders, we did have students in the the first to 10th percentile group. When we looked at our ASU web data for winter, it was like all of our student subgroups had moved up a percentile group. So it was a huge celebration. So the first to 10th percentile group, our teachers have been trained in modified Sunday, which specifically targets single syllable words. Now a big piece of third grade, if you look at the standards, is being able to read those words with more than one syllable or those multi-elabic words. So we have modified Orton Gillingham which works at those multi-elabic words and I've trained two third grade teachers in this intervention model. We have a specific fluency intervention that one of our third grade teachers is

015running. And where you see the 50th to 65th percentile group, those were kids that came in third grade having a personalized reading plan. But if they're at the 50th percentile, they're proficient. So then the next piece there for them was kind of beefing up that comprehension side of things and reciprocal teaching. It's science of reading aligned. It's researchbased. And what it really does is it takes the cognitive load and it places it on the students and they're responsible for leading their own discussions and the teacher is kind of sitting back as that guide or that facilitator. So, third grade had a huge celebration. It was really neat to see the progress. We can't wait to see when we get our um spring oral reading fluency data what some of these interventions um have done for

016our students. And again, the third grade team worked really hard. Fifth grade's been working hard at it. Fourth grade's been working hard at it. Um they're not just my students in a silo. They're our students. She's gonna go back. >> Thanks. >> Okay. So, I'm gonna talk a little bit about how coaching uh might factor into the PLC model. Um I am privileged enough to get to partner with all of the teachers at Horizon. Um and through that partnership, um the work that they're doing in their PLC's um it's not necessarily a coaches like facilitating. um we are there to support teams in the work they're doing. Um and that can look like many different things. So we can um help support the collaborative practices between the teams like the dialogue, making sure everyone has

017a voice at the table. Um we can help teams in interpreting and analyzing the data that's coming in. So you saw Christina share about the analysis of student work like what comes next? Like we have all the names on here for our grade level, our shared students. Um what do we do now with that data? Um, and so we can help kind of the teams plan for the next steps of instructional moves. Um, which ultimately improves our student outcomes because at the end of the day, that's why we all are in this and why we're doing this process is really to move our students um, in a positive way. Um, some of the focus areas that we might um, coach around within a PLC would be those four questions that you heard Lexi share at

018the beginning. Um, those are really crucial to the conversations that we're having around the table. um in our collaborative teams. Um and then we have really we have summitative data and assessments that kind of drive that learning at the end of units. Um but really coming collectively together to create these common formative assessments which are those dipsticks in our day-to-day operation to see how is what we're doing today impacting students. So really coming around together to create those formative assessments and then kind of starting that process back over again to think about what is the data telling us. Um what are those next steps and continuing to plan collaboratively around um the students? Um some of the ways we might go about coaching teams. Um we might work with goal setting um with our teams.

019So they might say this is what we really want to focus in on or this is the subgroup of students we really want to move and we would um kind of partner to do that work together. Another option is to provide an observation. So kind of sitting back and observing the PLC's and thinking um is everybody having a voice at the table? Is everyone participating? Those types of things. Um really supporting the facilitators, our BLT members and kind of coaching them through this PLC process since it is very new. Um and then the most important is having those reflective conversations together to think how did it go? Um what's telling us if something worked or not and then planning for those next steps. Um like everyone has kind of shared the benefits of the coaching

020into PLC's is it boosts team efficacy. Um it also leads to collaborative inquiry really diving into that datadriven decision making um to help student achievement um and boost that and it really leads to self-sufficient system where our teams feel very confident and comfortable in doing this amazing work that they do every day. >> Hi. Um, I'm speaking for third grade and I have to admit when we when PLC's were first introduced to us, I think we were all, you know, a little nervous or um, thinking it was going to be something that was going to dictate our meetings and we felt like we had good meetings, but a lot of that time sometimes was wasted or maybe not efficient as um, we usually would run them. So introducing the PLC's seems to be kind of

021the opposite of what I thought. And so I know it's nothing new, but um once we started the PLC's, we kind of dove right in it. Third grade really took it on right away from last year and really have developed it into this year. Um having the common agenda has been really helpful in the fact that our team meetings are very efficient, very focused. Um, we have also then taken some of the documents that Christy has shared and unpacked some of our units and looking at our assessments, looking at key vocab vocabulary, um, looking at our learning goals, making sure that we are following all of the third grade teams are following the same thing. Um, and then also incorporating UDL resources so that all students are met, needs are met. And then we also

022unpacked just like we talked about the analyzing student work. We've done that a few times as well looking at our units um or looking at our data and then really focusing on where our kids need interventions or where our kids may need some enrichment. Then across the team like they've said many times that um we look at all of our kids and then we flexibly group them so that we can um put them in the place or intervention or enrichment that they need. And so in that way um they're getting exactly what they need and the teachers are educated and have the resources that they need to implement those interventions or enrichment. So through this work we're still kind of in beginning stages but I feel like the third grade team as you saw with

023some of our data has um taken this on and really feel and already have seen the benefits of a PLC and the work that we've done. And so I I think we're all really kind of excited to see what our PLC work will do in the future. And what I really enjoy about it is now that we're kind of diving into our units is that we're able to see kind of like our everyday lessons, how they can be impacted and how that obviously will impact our students and how our tier one instruction will just get better as time goes on just because of our PLC work that we're doing as a team. So thank you. All right. I think you'll hear a lot of um repeats from things that Bridget said from between Julie and

024I from fourth and fifth grade. Um I uh teach primarily math but also science and social studies. So our PLC that I um work with in fourth grade is mainly around math content. Um our PLC's for math are really driving through that model of all means all. We're working on not only the students that are proficient in the standard and need a little enrichment, but students who aren't quite proficient yet and trying to decide as a team what does that look like in our classrooms. We want it to be consistent where no matter which of the fourth grade math classrooms you walk into you, these students that aren't proficient or are receiving the same type of instruction and we have the same game plan to get them to the proficient level or or able to

025um extend beyond the the standards as well. Um the data driven part is has been really huge this year. We're working on creating common common formative assessments throughout the unit. Um and not just giving the assessments, grading them, and being done with them. Our biggest piece this year that I think has been a huge takeaway is let's dive into those assessments. Let's take a look at what is going on, what strategies are students using. Is this something something that's just in my classroom? Is it something that's across the board in fourth grade? And how can we either um fill some of the skills that are still needed? um or extend beyond um what we're seeing in in those um day-to-day um uh math times. Um and our plan, like I said, is created for all

026learners. So, we're wanting to really make sure that we have um a a distinct plan um for whichever route the students are going to take in their math from that day. Um and all the um the impacts that it's having on students. Um we're definitely able to close some of those gaps. Our goal obviously is growth. no matter where a student comes into that unit, we want to make sure that they're um able to grow in that unit. So, um we've seen a lot of that happening. Um providing a lot more enrichment opportunities for those students that are already proficient at the beginning of a unit and making sure that they're also getting what they need as well throughout the day. Um and improving our prof proficiency by coming up with a team game plan

027and how we're going to get our students there. Hi there. Um, for me, I wanted obviously I didn't want you have to hear the same thing again. So, um, what I did is I brought these questions back to my PLC because that's, you know, I thought, okay, if I'm going to present on that, I want to kind of get their feedback and see what they think. And really what we kind of came down with is those three things, the consistency, clarity, and equity, not only for us, but also for students. And what we realized is kind of like what what other people had mentioned that, you know, time was always a factor. We we'd get things done and we felt like we were bringing things in, but it was never like structured enough that we

028felt like we were leaving our meeting with a purpose and really knowing that we've got done what we wanted to get done. And what I love about the PLC's is that we are are planning, they know the agenda coming in, we know what the expectations are. And just kind of kind of see you can see some of the success. So um our shared team decisions actually trickles down into that system trickles down into the system we have in our classrooms. So our students would benefit from that by experiencing the same learning across classrooms. So that's a big difference because if our systems aren't working, systems in our classrooms aren't working. So the next thing we kind of talked about was the consistent instructional practices. Um the kids come in and they know the routines and

029can really focus on the learning. We spend time obviously at the beginning of the year for that. This is my favorite time of year because our routines are there. We can focus on the learning and we can just fly and it's right now if you come in my classroom you start to see the shift between they're like halfway fifth halfway sixth they're starting to change to a middle school student and it's really exciting. Um so that's just something that I love because we can focus on it. They know exactly what the routines are going to be no matter what we're working on. Um I love the the clear goals like we are constantly goal setting through our discussions collaboratively. We do the same thing for kids when we we set the goals for the kids

030and they know that this is what it looks like and what's expected of them because we as a team really take that seriously and have high expectations for ourselves which then um helps us have high expectations for our own students. Um I think this is a really powerful one that common understanding of effective instruction because again we want to make sure that across classrooms that they are seeing that same thing because like for what we talked about like the tier 1.5 work our kids go to different classrooms at that time and they know that no matter which teacher they're working with they are going to get that instruction that high level those teachers that know that they can achieve and that they will help them get to that point. So that is really exciting to

031me that the kids come back and they know, oh just go to that classroom and they hear the same things. Um I kind of touched on this responsibility for student success. We definitely they've talked about different things that it's our students. We take that responsibility really seriously especially because our kids then go on to the middle school. So we want to make sure that they are ready to go. They're prepared for middle school. And if we have done this PLC structure and we created a system for our students, they should know to go into another system because the middle school is also working in PLC's. Um I love this one too. The um having that voice and support. Um I do feel that you know we do we kind of like do our our icebreaker

032and things but it is really cool knowing that hey I don't understand this. Can someone help me? We we really, you know, can celebrate our strengths and I know, hey, you know, like like Erin Paulie is really techy. I like to think I am, but then you say, Aaron, I'm like, here I'm there, he's there. So, I just feel that I can go to him and say, hey, I want to do this. What do you think with this? And we really build off each other's strengths, which is the same thing. We want to teach kids, you know, when they're working together, we want to make sure that they all have equal opportunities, but, you know, we know that the best way they're going to do that is not just learning from me, but also learning

033from each other. So, that's kind of the biggest thing is is looking to those systems. Um, I do have to give a quick shout out to obviously Christy and Lexi, Anthony, and Mike because if they didn't have a a system that worked, it wouldn't get to us. So, like how we have to have it for our students, they have to have it for us as teachers. So, I do have to thank them for that because otherwise chaos. Um, so just want to put that out there. Um, and then I can't help myself. I just had to put a picture in there. Middle school. Yay. Um, it's exciting time like I said and you know we've already got kids kind of leading working independently and teaching each other. So, so that is a little bit about

034our PLC process and our journey to have our PLC's um really get to a high functioning place where we are able to support all of our students through the work we do. What questions do you have for us? >> I have a question. Is that all right? Um clarity, consistency, equity. Can you tell me about equity? >> Yeah. So if you want to go, if we go back to the equity, she was talking about um that collective responsibility. So equity and us all working together um equitably for student success and then also that equal voice that the group has with one another. >> Why is it equity and not equality? What do you mean by equity? I think that was just the word she chose to use to describe the fact um the team felt

035like they they were they're equitably sharing the work. Well, equity in the vernacular that it's being used in education usually refers to equality, excuse me, uniformity of outcomes. >> Is that not what? >> They're clearly saying that it's an equitable voice and what they're and the work that they're sharing. um and contributing as team members. So I I think >> yeah this this was really about the equity of teacher voice and then helping students to benefit from that all teachers bringing their voice forward to the table. >> Maybe you wanted to use a different word. I don't think equity equity has anything to do with what you've just described but what you described is >> not not objectionable. equitable means you have that's your goal is to get uniform outcomes of whoever you're dealing whatever

036you're dealing with. Thank you. >> So uh relative to the PLC's are they newish or newer for the horizon and if they are what has been some of the individual learnings on the part of the people that are participating in the PLC's as what are your aha moments in terms of working together as a PLC? So, in terms of being newer, um, really we started PLC's at Horizon a little bit last year. I would say we dabbled in them a little last year. Um, and then this year we went kind of full in. And then I'll invite anyone to share any ahas. >> I think a lot of our meetings were uh mostly based off of those like nuts and bolts, right? We have a test that's coming. Where's everybody at? How like right when

037is our test happening? what are what are the proficiency scales we're using to assess them? And I think the biggest aha that we've taken is we are that all means all we're working together. We're all working for all students and we want it to be consistent across each classroom. Um, so I think we um have really kind of taken that and run with it and it's been really beneficial I feel like for not only us as professionals but also for our students to see that consistency across the board and to see that goal setting that we have throughout the unit that's a little different than in the past. I I was going to say I think it's that consistency piece that I really love about this um because as you say all kids are receiving

038that same learning experience and they're all receiving the support that they need. So um to me that's key. Um, do you think with that consistency, how do you think that is helping those students that maybe lag behind and aren't quite as efficient as the others? Um, you know, I would say, um, just speaking for fifth grade, kind of like what I was talking about with the tier 1.5 that using the data that, um, Christina was looking at. That's one area that we have that consistency because we're all working with those kids and kind of deciding, okay, who's going to work on fluency? We have those those kinds of things to get that consistent consistency. But also, I think the other thing is we've really focused on tier one instruction this year. really making sure that

039we are having high quality lessons to start before we pull them into other small groups. So, I I've really enjoyed that this year. Um, one other thing I'm just going to as long as I'm up here, my big aha was um this this year Megan Quick and I are a new we're the new team leaders. So, I think where you really see how a PLC works is that if it's working, it shouldn't make a difference who is leading. So, basically, it's just who's on BLT. who is that person that is running to? But other than that, nothing's really changed. And what was really nice is um we had training this summer. That training that we had on PLC's was really powerful that I felt really confident going in and representing my ELA team. >> Another

040question if you it's all right. You I think you mentioned a year. How long has the PLC been in place here in Piwaukee? So, we've really focused on it as a school district throughout the course of this school year. Um, last year we started trying out some things at Horizon um a little bit before we fully implemented them as a district this year. >> So, it's 12 months. >> Uh, so there have been pockets across the district um certain teams, certain buildings that had a larger focus on PLC's. However, with our strategic plan goal of meeting the the diverse needs of students, uh this was kind of our year two tactical plan to um establish functioning PLC's in all four buildings. >> So, what did we do prior to this in addressing the thing you

041just said they needed to be addressed? >> It there was not a structured approach. Um so different teams met and there were probably different levels of fidelity as to how much focus they were like looking at student data and being responsive. Um this is a process that um teams across the district can use. Now >> there's been a a history of this. I mean we had to your question Mary uh have done implementations of professional learning communities models in the past. when I was associate principal at the high school, we made a push in this kind of model um back in the stone ages when I was here. Um so it's this is a this is a bedrock best practice uh in the field of education. It's in essence to put it in simple terms

042PLC's is just a school-based continuous improvement model. It's a framework and um so as over time if you don't pay attention to things uh you can drift into more disperate practices. has brought that consistency back uh together. But uh even prior to this, of course, there were school goals and and teacher goals. We had systems in terms of looking at data and and those kinds of pieces. This just brought it together more tightly uh with a framework around this wellestablished continuous improvement model. >> Was there a cost associated with implementing PLC? >> There is not. Well, there would be costs and there are some professional development, but we're always uh have expend resources on professional development. It's just what we choose to spend it on. So, there's some costs with some training, um some resources,

043some books, and those kinds of things, but primarily it's it's not very cost intensive. >> Thank you. >> Yep. >> A question to follow up on. So, I asked about the teacher side of it. So, you know, knowing that our uh kind of like tagline for our mission is opening the door to each child's future that's out there and obviously we have teach or students that are in the higher end and some students that need more attention or more intervention. So, have you had any again ahas for students either at the high end or those that need an additional interventions and what have been some of those interventions that have helped them to raise raise their performance up? Um, I think kind of like what we me mentioned before, Larry, the intervention that we're doing

044with our students in the 1.5 tier, which means so tier one is like our regular normal instruction. 1.5 are those kids that are just kind of on the cusp. Um, what I've noticed or this last round, um, I did a program called Helps and I had a group that I taught reading fluency to and what we did is we read passages. So, this is a um program, a a well well-received program that really works with student fluency. I had a small group that I did that every day with and as you can see from some of our data, um I know just within my own classroom, I had three students in that group. Um they moved quite a bit up already and so fluency then no longer was their goal. So by looking at that

045data we were able to see and also using the resources of our coaches able to see what um intervention would be useful and what intervention what where kids lie in those certain interventions. So I saw growth just from teaching that program 30 minutes a day or 20 minutes a day um saw that growth just within the small group. So >> because we want all kids, >> right? Right. >> Right. This was just that lower ter. Yes. Yes. But you like you said the on each child's future. Right. >> Right. Exactly. And so like the aha moment with the um PLC for me um going again with what you said that tier one instruction was more of an aha moment for me because we always do look at data and we do kind of see where

046the kids who need intervention or where the kids who need enrichment what we can provide for them. But I like the PLC for the fact that I can look at my own instruction, my own lesson planning, my own assessments for all tier one instruction and see how I can make it better for all students. So, >> can I can I echo that, too? I've been doing tier 2 and tier three intervention in the district for a while now. So, it just happens that I'm stepping into Katie's role doing more of the coaching side. So what I can tell you from an interventionist perspective is in years past my case loads were I was bogged down. I had very very large case loads. Now that we have systems of support for classroom teachers and these classroom

047teachers are doing amazing work. Like Bridget said they're soaring with these interventions. We have brilliant teachers in our district. We give them the tools. They can implement them. my case load, my team's case load in reading intervention is not as drastic as it was before because we're intervening sooner. And then we're broadening the skill set. So you talk about equity, all students are having access to multiensory methods for reading instruction, right? Because all of their classroom teachers, even at PLE, all of those classroom teachers know these methods now. So they're deploying them tier one. So students who may need a little bit extra push, they're hearing the same thing from all the different classroom teachers and it's making a difference. The other piece that is helpful is I am not having to do as much

048pull out intervention. My time as an interventionist is now more freed up to go into classrooms and push in. So we have that less restrictive environment for our students. Can I just want to answer another thing? We haven't really we haven't talked about the other question that is what do we do with the kids that already know it? And I think that's been really powerful because you cut me off. I'm like okay. So, um I I I I think that that's really important because we know that we have students that are coming in and that are already understanding. So, what's next for them? And I think that just across the board sharing that because I think we found that in pockets different people were doing different things to accelerate kids. Um and I think this

049has kind of brought it together where we have shared resources for those kids and also share the kids. So, the tier 1.5 that we're talking about for kids that might need additional um you know, reading or math support, these are also the kids that are working with teachers and are able to work together on things that are advanced above the proficiency that they're working with. Like for example, I worked um last year a lot with Dave Zindler, you know, even though, you know, he works middle and high school. Um, and we talked about it because I had, you know, a handful of kids that really needed I didn't want to go into sixth grade curriculum, but so we wanted to look at things. What could we do differently to really help them grow and have

050other opportunities and I think that's really powerful that we're looking at, like you said, opening the door to all children's future. And I think sometimes they forget we forget because otherwise they'll level off, you know, they'll just they'll kind of stay where we're bringing all the other kids up. We want to make sure that all the kids are growing as well. So, sort of mention that group. >> Well, I just want to thank all of you for taking time out of your evenings to volunteer to be here uh tonight. Although, we do have a lovely gift um for uh each of you, but uh you're all phenomenal teachers. Uh uh have a lot of pride in and the group that's standing up in in front of us. Um, you know, the bottom line with professional

051learning communities, and I think that's what you've articulated so well tonight, is that all of you is no matter how good each of you are individually, you guys are more powerful as a group when you're sharing ideas and and providing your insights with each other when you talk about our students. And that's uh that's what uh we really want to take advantage of is our collective, right? Our collective power to raise kids achievement. So, thank you. >> I mean, that's a good thing. I mean, it's really all about what you do with the children in the classroom is what makes a difference out there. I mean, we just cannot afford to have any kids left behind anymore. They have to keep growing and growing in terms of what's going on, in terms of their education.

052So, thank you for helping to prepare them for the world of the future. So, opening that door. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> All right. Next up is our student board rep report. Here they go. >> Couple of our stars right here. >> Yes. All right. Here is our February board report. Okay. So, first off, I have the Hook Junior. Um, so this was actually led by Mrs. Reutder. She just left. But I just wanted to applaud her. I think this is a really great um just extracurricular thing for students to work on who are really interested in journalism and writing and just kind of getting them started early into experiencing things like that. Um, so it was a the fifth grade journalism team and they released their own school journalism publication.

053Um, it was titled titled Rowing Together, but like it's called Hook Jr. Um, and it's kind of playing off of the high school hook. Um, and I just think it was really neat to see how they highlighted Horizon's activities and then like evaluated them based on the contribute, create, compete, connect, commit, and care um, sectors and just kind of seeing um, just the different things that happen at other schools. So, thought that was really valuable. >> Yeah. So, serving others paired up with my aunt Miss Thomas and Miss Vandre to do Special Olympics. We're also inviting some other special needs students from other public schools. I don't know if it's just like I think we're doing a mix of of high school and 18 to 21 programs around. So, we volunteered. We created a few

054activities. I think Mr. Dukes even volunteered to do like a mock interview with some of the students there. I know my group were doing like a grocery store simulation like they're scanning and bagging up some food. Um, so this just teaches some special education students for life job skills. We're trying to like teach that they can do more than cleaning. Like they don't need to just clean movie theater. Like it's just a lot of the surface level jobs that are given to a lot of special needs students, but they're capable of a lot more. And it's taking place February 18th in like the general I don't what is it called? Or robotics and cheer practices downstairs in the new >> multi. >> Yeah. >> All right. And then um so for the PWA scholarship fund,

055so the gnomes that were made in December, I'm sure a lot of you saw it. it was in the paper. Um, but that was from the serving others insight and those were bought by local businesses which is another great thing of having such a tight-knit community. Um, so and then those donations were then put into the PWA scholarship fund which is presented to the seniors every year. Um, just to get a bit of financial help on college because it's really expensive. Um, so the PWA scholarship fund has donated 1.5 u or$1.25 25 million to local seniors at our high school in support of their ed educational endeavors. And um there just is a list below of a couple businesses I wanted to recognize just for their support to our school and to our seniors and

056our students and just the ongoing um just support to our community as a whole. Um so yeah, that'd be Ray Shortsonics, Schnitzel Bunker, um Beach Bump Bakery, 2W Tech, Ampersand, PWA Chiropractic and Wellness. Yeah. So, elements of health and medicine is another insight course that we have. So, they were just doing a class experiment testing carbon dioxide temperature and humidity levels and they were basing it on different ventilation systems along with testing different situations of when I don't know the experiment um results might change like if the doors open or closed if the fan's off and on because these things obviously they're working to become CNAs. These things can impact your patients when nursing and stuff like that, >> right? So for athletics and activities, science olympiad, um, myaslavkin, shioam, shiobam, mkindell, John Roth Benjer,

057Ma Tin, Tyler David, John Roth again, and Panav are medalled winners at Slinger High School's competition. Wrestling had senior night January 22nd and won pirate jewels. They also came in second in the conference tournament this past weekend with one of our wrestlers getting his hundth win. So, we're moving on to individual sectionals this weekend to see who goes to state. Um, academic toathlon is moving on to state this month. dance team placed third in D2 hiphop and sixth place in D2 jazz. I guess that was prior to regionals. And then we had three girls that went for their individual solos to state. And I think they all made it on to the all state team. Um, boys basketball has a six to seven to1 record and a 0 to3 to1 conference. Girls basketball's having a

05812-2 record and a seven-0 conference record. Walk wings has a 9 to8 record. Ping pong club had the Wisconsin state table tennis championships held at East Clark Middle School on Sunday, January 25th. I don't know how the team did all overall. I didn't do too hot. I know that. Um Morgan's message had I believe their second dedication game on January 27th. FA had their regional competition this past weekend. Actually, I know some people meddled cuz one of the wrestlers couldn't make it to the tournament this weekend. He sent us a picture with his medal. >> So, I think some people did pretty good. And then National Honor Society had their blood drive preparation. >> Mora, what's Morgan's message? I'm not familiar. >> So, um there's a bunch of like chapters of it around the US.

059It's based off of a Duke lacrosse player, I believe. Oh. >> That um had passed from suicide. So, it's just like advocating for athletes mental health and the struggles that might come with sports and the pressures of that and what that might bring. >> Right. And then just some salutes and recognitions. Um, I want to recognize the guidance counselors um for just meeting with every freshman um individually to like review their schedules. I cannot imagine how difficult that must be to fit everybody in, but they managed to do it every year. So, I do think that deserves um some applause. and then a smooth transition into second semester. And then teachers, students, and administrators for adjusting so well to the cold day and just having a really smooth transition. And then for our learning spotlight,

060um, Model United Nations just recently over the weekend. Um, attended the University of Chicago conference. It's always fun. I love going on those, so it's a great experience. And then personal finance, CCIS, um, is a new offered accelerated learning advance for like advanced finance students. And I think that's really valuable for students that are looking to go into more business related careers. Um, in AP chemistry, Mrs. Evans, she's been using Brisk Boost to learn about chemical reaction equilibriums. Um, for just her AP Chem students and just helping them um, I think a really nice thing about Brisk Boost is when a student gets something wrong, it then brings it down to their level and then it kind of works back up. And I think that's something really valuable um, just to keep moving forward educationally.

061Um, in net games, Mr. Ely, they're learning about the rules of bad mitten, which I think is still really cool, the variety of gym classes that we have. And then in AP language and composition, there have ethics and morality book clubs, which will then later turn into personal essays that they get to um kind of choose on their own, which I think is really nice to give them that option. So, yeah. And thank you. >> Good report. >> Thank you. >> Report. >> Any questions from anyone? Then we'll move into salutes and recognitions. And I'll start us out. Um I had the privilege on Saturday of being able to address the FBLA conference. Um uh to welcome other schools. Um literally there was 600 students and 18 schools represented. It was so impressive. Every single

062student there was wearing a full business suit and I was so proud of our PWA students because they were so professional the way they carried themselves. Um Piwocki did um uh place second overall um for region 7 and um 40 of our students qualified for state in Green Bay. So um I just I was impressed. Um they do learning sessions, they also do competitions and again just a great sense of pride in the professionalism of our students. Anyone else on the board? >> I thought of one, but I'm struggling with it a little bit and it came to mind because my husband and I were talking about some of coaching, the commitments that coaches make. Um, and I know that we pay our coaches and our adviserss to clubs and stuff, but I don't think

063that they're in it for the money, put it that way. Um, and so just the level of dedication that we have in our staff when they go above and beyond to create these opportunities for our students to have um outside activities outside of the academics I'm just so grateful for. And I think it even starts in Horizon. Don't we have something starting in Horizon? >> Um, it's just phenomenal. Um, so there's no way I don't think I could ask Tammy to try and list every single one. Um, but as a a a parent and and schoolboard member, I am just really grateful for their commitment um to our students and in offering these activities to them. admin. >> So, as we as we go into um school bus driver appreciation week this week, I'd like

064to salute those drivers, especially those that have been with us for a number of years, putting safety first, putting those students first on daily basis and making sure they're here to provide that reliable uh transportation to school and home. Um today we started the process of um interviewing to Phil Robin Wilson's position. So I want to salute Carrie Ralfi, Melissa Schultz, Melinda Larson, Horn Robin, and then Adriana who spent the entire day uh screening candidates with myself today and also Bin Jacabowski who was involved as well and then was at the board meeting tonight. So long day for her. Um, also I want to salute Brian Sniff, Katie Spedoni, Brianna Remberts, Angie Luick, and Emily Hansen. We are into uh staffing and scheduling season. And one of the great benefits of being on one campus

065is the ability to share staff amongst buildings. But from a scheduling and staffing standpoint, it's very difficult, especially if you look at the high school and the middle school who have two different schedules. So, I really appreciate Brian and Katie and their team's collaboration and in making that puzzle fit together. >> Uh, I don't have any. >> Okay. Thank you. Um, Tammy, do we have any comments from citizens? >> All right. Thank you. Um, consent agenda. We're accepting uh the minutes from previous meetings, specifically January 12th, the regular and business affairs and correspondence that was included in your packet. Can I get a motion to accept the agenda as presented? >> Moved. >> Second. >> All in favor? >> I. Any opposed? >> Abstain. >> Next, business affairs committee. Stacy. >> Okay. So, we, if

066you look at our agenda, covered a lot of material. Um, and I copiously took notes thinking that I was going to try and do this, but it's just a lot. So, I'm going to actually hand the uh mic over to John in a second. Um, the one big thing um that's very consistent year after year is we did receive our first property tax um payment. So, we got about 8.3 million um from the city the the municipalities for our property taxes for our general fund. And then fund 39, which is our debt um fund, we received 5.2 million. So, that makes our our received revenues at about 33% of budget and our expenses are running about 50%. Um and now I'm going to turn it over to John. He can talk about budgets and handbooks.

067So part of the annual process that the business affairs committee goes through is to understand that budget process. So we have a calendar in the committee that is adopted and the purpose of that calendar is to build the capacity to understand all the elements of the budget throughout the year um and their impact on the bottom line. We talked a little bit tonight about the progress for the budget budget development process. Uh that process that ongoing begins it's ongoing through throughout the year. The next year's budget really begins in November. So, we're into February right now and deep into the process. Next week, we'll be meeting with all department chairs and uh principles to go through budget and staffing proposals for next year. Then really start compiling it for presentation to the board at the

068end of April uh with a balanced budget. We as part of that process we look at the handbook and uh nearly 80% of our operating budget is driven by personnel costs for people cost. Uh so we really wanted to dive into what are some of those areas that can be driving cost and what the elements are in the budget and and understanding more about the components that make up that 80% of the operating budget. So we reviewed that a little bit tonight at the committee. Uh we also take a look at the human resources hiring season perspective at this meeting uh annually. What is out there for positions? We have a couple of administrative positions that will be filled that our uh applications have been received for and are starting as you heard the interview

069process today. Uh along with a couple of staff positions that we'll be acting and the board will be acting on later tonight uh for some retirements and then any subsequent moves uh that people may have throughout the rest of the year. really the timing on how do those interviews fit into the process of building the budget and assuming what those costs are going to be. Um we did our monthly review of check registers and also the review of the financial report. As Stacy has said um first real um significant month of revenues is January when the property tax levy comes in. That's all payments that were received by the municipalities through the end of December uh get turned over uh the third week of January. And then finally, we talked about the capital projects, the

070update on the capital projects plan and where we stand uh both from a uh arbitrage compliance standpoint for the spendown on the proceeds that we had. Uh the projects right now are sitting a little over 96% complete as of the end of January. Um our final punch list on phase six of the projects is targeted for um end of March to be completed with the work and occupying those spaces here at the high school. There is about uh there's some significant scope of work yet to be done over the summer uh including the solar installation um and the work at Horizon Elementary School that was approved subsequently um by the board last fall along with some of the other projects, the turf replacement on the field, the track resurfacing um and several other smaller ones.

071All of the projects have been bid to date and we have contracts that are either close to being ready to be in place or in place. Uh and we are under what was previously approved by the board. So we proposed to the committee that there's two additional scope of work that really put us in a good position to cover us for the next four, five, six years of capital improvements. The added would include uh the replacement of the bleachers that's been on the long range capital projects plan for probably 10 years um in the auxiliary gym here in the high school. And then several exterior doors where there's a smaller ticket for each one of them. There's about seven or eight doors uh that they're aging. They're 20 25 years old and um Winter and

072Salt have done a number on them. So they're ready to be replaced. um completing that still being within the scope of what was approved for funding on on previous projects that we look forward to. So that is that's what we covered in capital projects. >> So I just want to remind the board so every year John and John give us that list of capital projects and they have it all mapped out. And what John just shared is if you they're going to go ahead and do these smaller projects, he's setting us up when he leaves to really be positioned well as far as capital projects and our our expected needs coming up after his departure from us. Um, which I'm very grateful for. >> I have one quick question. So in your summary report you

073talk about the taxes for this year you uh recorded 8.3 million if you will but last year it was like 5.48 million. What was the different larger debt service levy last year? So out of the total collected a portion of it is the first portion that's allocated is to pay for the scheduled debt service payments for the for the year. The second portion is the um fund 41 the capital improvement fund and then the remaining gets applied to the general fund during this year. Our February installment then will be 100% going towards the um towards the general fund. >> I'll take a motion >> motion to accept the business affairs report as presented. >> Second. >> All in favor? >> I. Any opposed? >> Opposed. >> Next, we'll move on to new business. I'm gonna

074ask Casey Bow um to step up to the mic. Um we have a field trip consideration Italy. >> Yeah, Casey had approached me uh with a desire to offer an opportunity for students to go to Italy. And you have those materials and maybe there's a student in front of us who might want to go to Italy. I'm I'm just going to take a wild guess, Scott. Um, so, uh, per board policy, any any field trips that are international, uh, require your consideration and approval. Uh, so I'll turn it over to you. >> Yeah. So, like they mentioned, um, I come to you with warmer thoughts about a future spring break. So, um, we're talking about ASA going to Italy in 2028. And I'm Casey Bame. I'm a seventh grade science and social studies teacher. >>

075And I am Scott Rail. I, uh, am the engineering department at the middle school. the whole >> department. >> Yeah. So, we um I know you're familiar with EF, but in talking with EF, um talking with staff, students, and families, people are still asking for trips for middle schoolers. Um, and so we're going to hopefully go to Rome and Sarrento in 2028, giving families enough time to think about it, save money, plan for this trip. Um, as I mentioned, we're going through education first, and so they have tons of, um, resources and safety precautions and guidance along the way, uh, starting now all the way until we get home safely. Um, and so there are a ton of package highlights that Audrey will tell us more about. And so there's 11 amazing excursions. We would

076go for eight days, as I mentioned, over spring break. And there's only one day that in that window could be a school day. So, um, proposing that we would be able to leave over that school day if those dates had to be that way based on flight information. Um, and so I'll pass it over to them to give us a little more information. All right. So, I'm here to talk just a little bit about why Italy, but um when of course to start, I think there is no better way to describe it than right from the mouth of someone who is very interested in potentially going on this trip. So, I'm going to turn it over to this beautiful, talented person who happens to share my last name, Audrey Rail. >> What an introduction, Audrey.

077>> Hi, everyone. Um my name is Audrey Rail and I'm a sixth grader. I'm here today because I have a chance to um go to Italy when I would be in eighth grade. I know it sounds like a long way off, but I'm really excited because it isn't just a vacation. It's getting to live inside history and art for a week. The part that blows my mind is how old everything is in Rome. You will be able to go to the coliseum and actually standing where the gladiator stood and imagining the crowd cheering would be incredible. I'd be really excited to go to the um Hubby Fountain. There's a legend if you throw a coin over your shoulder, you'll be guaranteed to return to Rome one day. I think it would be such a cool

078way to start your journey, my journey, by just making a wish to continue to explore the world. Another thing I'm really looking forward to is Pompei. I think it's really cool and a little scary that the whole city was frozen, was frozen in time by a volcano. A guide is going to show them how they lived, how they even had heated water in the bath house way back then. It's like a giant real life museum. You actually get to walk through. I'd also be able to visit the Systeine Chapel to see the arts on the ceiling and visit the Vatican City, which is also the smallest country in the world. And of course, we go get to go to the Naples, a pizza making for a pizza making class. I'm pretty sure Italian pizza tastes

079better than the stuff in the cafeteria. So, um, this trip will teach me how to be brave and explore the world. I'll learn how to navigate cities, try new food, and see how people on the other side of the ocean lives their life. It's a chance for me to grow up a bit and see the world in a whole new light. I really hope you make this happen. It's a trip I'll remember for the rest of my life. And plus, I'll get to go to Italy. So, >> I just have to say as the social studies teacher in me and pizza lover, you know, I'm very inspired by your presentation. >> Absolutely. I mean, clearly a good way to introduce the trip and to be able to say that outside of just being a uh

080a proud dad moment right there. I mean, uh, when I first introduced this to her as an opportunity, I asked her, I'm like, "Hey, this is an opportunity that Miss Bame is presenting, wanting to see if she would potentially be interested." Of course, her first thought was, "Well, yeah, I'd get to go to Italy." Um, so I mean she clearly jumped at the opportunity. I mean the reason why I know that Larry when we talked about some things with other trips you had asked questions about like why Scotland and why these other places our goal is to continue to bring authentic experiences with a wide range of different cultures. So whether it's BISE or whether it's England or whether it's Scotland or whether it's other countries it's about trying to open the door to each

081child's future and to be able to expand our horizons and learn history in a truly authentic way. I still remember some students back when I took seven students to Washington DC and the learning that they took by authentically and engaging with the government was far more impactful than what we could do in a classroom here. So being able to see that history when they start going into world history say in 10th grade they would have the firsthand knowledge of this is something that we can do. It's also if there are older siblings who have gone on other trips. There's like a wider range of countries where they have gone to be able to share the experiences within each other. So it's not everybody doing the same trip, but we have different experiences once the grades

082once they come through. So we're proposing this now uh knowing full well it's two years out. I mean as a as a parent who is uh with the board approval, we'll be registering her as soon as possible. Um, clearly from a financial consideration, it affords it gives more families the opportunity to spread out the payments. A full two years is a lot uh easier to be able to manage rather than trying to hit it all at once or over a 12-month period. 24 is greater than 12. Um, so in addition, we're able to lock in the pricing right now. So those are some of the key reasons as to why we're why Italy as well as what's the reason of doing this so far in advance. So I'll pass it back to Miss Bame here

083to talk about some more. Yeah. So, as I mentioned, Education First is our company of choice. And while the number might look steep on paper, there are two years from now until then that families would a be able to prepare for. It also gives us fundraising opportunities between now and then. Uh, and so we use local partnerships, Quick Trip, Culver's, Milwaukee Pretzel Company, things that people in the community enjoy and appreciate. And for our BISE trip, I had some students raise over half of their trip amount just by the fundraising opportunities that were presented. So, um, all of the students will have the chance. We want to keep it in the middle school because we want to make sure that all students have the opportunity. Um whereas sometimes in the high school it can maybe

084be only Spanish or only if you're in band. We want to make sure that all students have this chance while they're young and you know just make them excited about more travel down the road. >> So at this point in time it's about I mean looking at how it directly connects into uh say the graduate profile and the PWA school district's mission. is clearly something that would that would hit the um the the the the commit not the commit the which one is it? >> The connect. Thank you. Uh too many Cwords. Um the connect strand within our graduate profile and it would clearly open the door to each child's future about being able to see this and directly connect to so many different areas. >> What questions do you have? >> So what's the

085connection with the Milwaukee Pretzel Company? What? >> That's a company that the students get a really good chunk back from for fundraising and because it's a local company. Um I've worked with them for the BISE trip and parents have really seemed to like the pretzels as a result. >> Do you sell them here on campus then or how does that work in terms of >> uh students will go out and door to door or texting family members to sell them? Yeah. >> What is the group size that you can take? we can take up to, I believe, 35 students for this trip. And so we're hoping to get over 20 for a full bus and that that saves families $400 with the private group and it'll be only PWA um with that private group. So

086we know our kids, we know our chaperones. It will be all teacher chaperones uh in the district. >> Thank you for the very thorough list of academic things that >> just a quick comment. I think there probably are two current middle school administrators and one former middle school administrator that have some cultural heritage that goes back to Italy. So you guys are looking for chaperones, you probably have some good picks. >> I have had a bird in my ear already. >> Thanks Katie. >> Spony brilliant versions >> Larry. I move to approve the field trip request for Asia Clark Medical School students to travel to Italy in 2028. >> Second. >> All in favor? >> I. >> Any opposed? >> Abstain. >> Thank you so much. >> Thank you. >> Good job, Audrey. >> Yes.

087Next, um we're going to talk about the 504 plan and the IEP uh transition um report to the board. Tony, thank you. >> Yeah, we have Tony Stranky here. Again, this uh this piece is driven by board and superintendent goals uh that were established. I just want to draw your attention to that this is um what this presentation was predicated on because that's what you asked for. Tony, good evening everyone and thanks for having me here this evening. So this evening I'm going to talk about how we transition students with 504s and IEPs throughout the PWA school districts between buildings and from grade to grade. It's a pretty elaborate and extensive process. You received a lot of paperwork as it pertains to this process and we're continually working collaboratively and collectively to ensure that we

088can improve on our transition processes recognizing that if even one kid doesn't transition well from grade to grade or building to building, we need to do better. And in order to do better, we need to be better. So quicker Oh, there you go. >> All right. So, the to eliminate the information gap when students move. >> Tony, we got to talk to the microphone. >> In the microphone. >> Yes, please. >> So, in order to eliminate the communication gap, we have a number of components that we look at. I passed out a sheet that talks a lot about the academic, the learning environment, the teaching, the things that we look at. In this presentation, I'm going to talk about all of the components that go into transitioning a student well throughout here in the PWA

089school district. So, we every student has environmental needs. They have behavioral and social things that we need to be mindful of and most importantly our instructional delivery. Right here's our strategic timeline. So, as you can see in winter, February and March, admin and leads identify numbers and staffing needs. In spring, teachers visit classrooms, students visit their new buildings, which is really important for students to get acclimated, to get to meet the teachers, to get to meet the pair of professionals and the administrators because so much of what goes into transition is about relationship. And oftenimes people will ask, why did it go so bad? Well, the student is in a new building. They don't have the connectivity that they had with their previous teacher. sometimes new staff aren't as familiar and students change from year

090to year and uh building to building. And then one of the things that we've changed because transition came up previously in 2014 and one of the things that we're trying to improve on sometimes we do those transition meetings in May and we've had some staff turnover as I mentioned in the executive summary because people want to know the why. Why was it a tough transition? what is going on? And we did the transition meetings, we did the live binders, but then staff depart over the summer. They either leave states because their spouses relocated and turnover is a reality in our profession. So, one of the things we need to do is ensure that we make needed adjustments. So, our core methodology, the spring observations are huge. seeing the student in real time, seeing how the

091teacher works with the student and sees what that classroom environment because they're going to be certain things that students um feel most comfortable with and it's really important that we can integrate those into the receiving building or the receiving grade. And here here's a layout for the section 504. A 504 is a lot less intensive. It's a one-page document. In most instances, it talks about accommodations. And one of the most common accommodations that you will see in a 504 plan is extended time for assessment, specifically the ACT. So, the testing accommodations, accommodations in the class, sometimes kids have to receive a set of notes, things to help the student and improve. And one of the things that our counselors do a magnificent job of is just effectively communicating those plans at the onset of the

092year. Over the past two years, we've implemented a process where we ensure that all staff review the plans prior to the onset of the year. And if the plans aren't reviewed by a specific staff, we can follow up. I can tell you the last two years have been really positive and parents being very complimentary of wow I had a really effective parent teacher conference and the teacher knew everything that was in my kid's plan. That is really empowering because as a parent that's your kid. You want to ensure that your kid is getting the accommodations that they need. Now, the IEP is a far more robust, comprehensive document that is very nicely laid out in present levels of academic achievement, performance, disability related needs that are tied to IEP goals that are tied to supplementary

093aids and services, which are the accommodations. We have IEP at a glance forms, which is the same process that we use for the 504 plans, ensuring that staff are very familiar with the parameters and the supports that are listed in those programs. One of the things that I wanted to ensure that we were able to incorporate into this presentation is to hear from the department chairs in each building. This is imperative because they're going to talk to you about the transition process. And if you reviewed this executive overview, you're going to see a lot of those touch points in their in their um dialogue when they're presenting. So the first building is PL Elementary. I think it's on the screen. >> Katie, I am special teacher here at POV in second grade. And there are

094a lot of things that we do as a second grade team to help prepare our students to go into third grade. Some of the things that we do are we invite the special education teacher from third grade for one or two days and they come in observe the students that are in there and they are able to see them in the gened setting and see um how other pair professionals work with them get to read through some of their notes and some of the things that they are doing in the classroom and get a close-up view of those students and they're able to then can provide some of the other things that we do is we invite the third grade special ation teacher or teachers to come in the springtime either for one or two

095days and they come in observe the students that are in there and they are able to see them in the genet setting and see um how other pair of professionals work with them get to read through some of their notes and some of the things that they are doing in the classroom and I get a close-up view of those students and they're able to then collaborate with myself and the other teachers in the room and any encore prep time which really good for us to be able to talk through all the little notes about those students. Some of the other things that we do is we give our students a lot of opportunities to go over to Horizon to see where they're going to eat lunch next year to see what encore spaces they're going

096to be in to see where their future classroom could be. And they also get really excited about the lockers there. So, we give them about four opportunities to do this. That's through our guidance um on court. We also go as a class with our Jenna teacher and myself to go over the third graders and they will give us a little tour themselves. We also provide a night one time per spring where they can go over that's open to every second grade student going to Horizon. And we also offer private sessions. So if we know that a student is going to struggle or have anxiety going into third grade, we will then set up a time with a special education teacher there and transition them that way and go look at the space. Some of the

097other things that I do is I send a social story home with every one of my students going into third grade, whether they might need it or not. And this is really just a story that showcases all of the pictures and places that they may go in Horizon, maybe the gym or the lunchroom, the hallway that they'll be entering in, the front doors that they'll be entering into. So just to kind of ease their anxiety thinking over the summer about what this is going to look like for them, they have access to that as well. As a second grade team, we work really hard to place our students. And so we talk about what students would be good fits to learn from each other, how they're doing academically, how they're doing behaviorally, and we're very

098strategic on who we place together. Just knowing that they are going into a new environment and a new setting. So we think about who would be a good buddy, who would be a good friend for them, and who may be a student that they may need some space from in the next coming year. So that's something to be really strategic about. And I share a lot of information from going from second grade to third grade. That includes IEP the glances. I print them for all of my students. I add little notes to them about where they've left off in their curriculum, what level they're on, and a little extra things that happen at the end of the year for that special education teacher to know. I also share all the visuals that I've created for

099that specific student so that they can start the year off using the materials that they had started with. And that includes academic materials as well. If a student was working on something specific, then they given that as well. >> All right. So, I want to thank Katie Kinsky for sharing how they transition over at PLE. Let's hear from Horizon. >> I'm Shannon Dussel and I am the fifth grade special ed teacher at Horizon Elementary. When we start to talk about the transition process, we kind of start that conversation in January and February. So right around this time, building administrators here at Verizon and the grade level specific teacher, so that's either the third grade teacher or the fifth grade teacher, will re reach out to the different buildings, so PLE and Asa Clark, and we'll

100start to set up meetings around transitions. The first initial meeting usually talks about student specific and what those students might need, whether that's based off schedule, their specially designed instruction, if there's something that they need structurally or with staffing. We also talk about how much adult support is needed to help C. kids transition in different environments. Then we kind of talk about which students and families would benefit from additional layers of support such as um adding in additional annual IEP members from ASA Clark and PLE to attend those Horizon meetings. And we usually offer those for students might need more for that transition as it might be a little bit harder for them to acclimate to a new environment, a new staffing or families that just might have a lot of questions or maybe it's

101their first student that's going over to a different building. We usually start to invite those members of the team to the spring annual IEPs. And if students have already had their annual IEP in the fall, we might hold a review revise and then invite those members to help the families feel comfortable and have them introduced to a member that might they might see at the new building. Other than that, we have in the past, I am the fifth grade teacher, so I've been a part of the ASA transition and we have had members from ASA clerk come over and observe students and we've had additional meetings at the towards the end of the year just to talk more about certain student needs specifically between staff members and then all always at the beginning of the

102year school year. I have been happy to go over and help support students as needed within our own building. We still have those conversations around transitions from third to fourth to fifth grade. One system that we have implemented and used has been a binder system and that kind of transforms over the time that they're here at Verizon. In third grade, it is more of a teacher tool where teachers will put work samples or maybe data collection for IEP goals. By the time they transition into fourth grade, it's kind of a teacher and a student tool. So, some students might use the binder for organizational purposes or have some ownership over the things that they put in there. And then by the time they get to me in fifth grade, I use it as more of

103a student resource binder, I call it. So, it becomes kind of their one-stop shop to help them with organizational needs. They have tools in there for regulation, um, literacy and math, science and social studies, speech, anything that they might need or use throughout their school day, they have access to it. It also helps them with that transition to middle school when they are making more of those transitions between multiple teachers. So, that's kind of one tool. And then we kind of talk about what worked well in the previous school year and what things do we want to continue to implement in the following school year as well. as well as making adjustments to different student needs as they develop over time. And then we kind of use our own system of a Google spreadsheet to

104track student needs when it's based off um their IEPs based off their specially designed instruction and adult support and structures that they might need and align them to making a smooth transition to the next school year. At the beginning of this next school year, at the first week back, we have previous case managers meet with current case management to discuss those students and meet with the new team of teachers. So, all in all, that's kind of what we do at Horizon to help support that transition process in our district. >> All right, that was our Horizon Elementary. Moving on to ASA. >> Hi, my name is Sarah Coburn. I am a special education teacher here at ASA and our department head. Part of my job over the last couple of years has been to help

105with the transition process. Because we're a middle school, we get hit double. We help that transition process from Horizon to ASA as well as then ASA to the high school. So as the department head, part of my responsibilities has been trying to create a standard operating document between the three buildings. If I were to leave, if someone else would take over this position, we still have all of that documented and how to run that process. The last couple of years, we have really tried to solidify that. One thing that we have created is a leveling system for our students coming from Horizon to ASA. We're actually going to be implementing that this year where we have the prior special education teacher level out the students that are coming over a level one, two, and three.

106And they would each indicate like a different level of service in terms of transition and what we need. Level one would be meeting with old case manager and new case manager meeting together to talk about students and then we hold a transition meeting in August or a level two doing both of those things and then in addition having a sixth grade teacher go over and do two observations of that student and then a level three student doing all of those things and then in addition attending the IEP meeting. So that's something we're going to be implementing this year. A challenge over the years that we've just had with our to sixth grade transition is in the last four or five years that sixth grade special ed teacher has turned over every single year. So we've

107tried a lot of things where we've had you know existing staff move down to sixth grade and then we've had um people you know move out of state and it's just kind of been this challenge that we've had every year for the last four or five years. We have had a lot more consistency with staff with our 8th to 9th grade transition. We follow that similar process with myself being very involved with the scheduling recommendations for students as they move over. And then the high school staff really take over the transition process where in August they're meeting one-on-one with our students and having that transition meeting with them to get them ready for the high school. >> All right, that was Asa. And last but not least, our high school. >> Price. I'm a special

108teacher here at High School. I'm just going to talk to you today about some of our processes that we have in place to help students transition from ASA Clark up to the high school. We usually begin this process in about December, January when course collections become available for students. And our first step really is making sure that middle school has the appropriate information about the different programs that we have here so that they can better inform families and students and make those decisions within their IEP teams. Students transition to the high school. We have a program that we kind of call the essentials program. These are for students who are assessed using the dynamic learning maps and on alternate assessment standards. And if students qualify for that programming, we begin the transition process around January

109having case managers from the high school and the middle school collaborate around student needs and really determining what that individualized pathway should look like for those students. It could include, you know, a series of observations that the case, the new case manager is coming over to the middle school to conduct to see really how the student functions within their environment so that we can make sure that our environment matches their needs. We also have students come over to the high school throughout that spring semester to be more familiar with our building, with the classroom that they'd be primarily working in, with the staff that they would be working with. We also work collaboratively with our speech pathologist who really helps with that transition process as well, making sure that students comfortable in the new setting

110and with the new thumb staff that they'll be with. We also have an alternative education program for students and if students are being recommended for that program. Again, those conversations usually start in January. Really understanding how we individualize and personalize that program based on the student. They have a chance to participate in an open house within that program too. So they can meet other students who are in the program and really hear from the student perspective of you know how it's benefited them. um what the dayto-day looks like. Again, see that the new spaces and then we have a transition for our students who are participating more in the general regular education programming. And what that process looks like is we begin by reaching out to the middle school to find out really what the

111student needs are, you know, what type of academic support they need, behavioral support, and then really looking at their schedules to make sure that they're scheduled intentionally into classes with special education staff. So it could be a special education teacher or a pair professional who is being in their core academic classes to make sure that they're getting the the support that's outlined in their IEPs. We also have several self-contained courses that take place in the special ed setting such as a study skills class that's really helpful for our freshmen and we highly recommend our freshmen take that to really get that extra layer of support as they get used to a new building, new expectations, managing their homework, all available supports that we have for students. And so as we are designing that transition process

112for students, we're looking really at the individual and their needs, learning as much as we can from Isa Clark and the previous case managers so that we are ready for them and can create the environment that will help them be most successful as they come up to the high school. In the spring, we also work with the ASA Clark case managers to determine case loads at the high school. Our special ed staff are crosscategorical, so we work in a variety of content areas, but we kind of each specialized within a content area. So when we get our students transitioning to us, we really look at what their goals are, what their specially designed instruction is, and we try to match their areas of need to the strengths and the skill sets of the individual teachers

113at the high school. And so those conversations usually happen in April um where we're meeting, we're really learning about the students, what those needs look like in the classroom so that we can match them up with the case manager who's best fit to work with them and matching their skill areas too. Finally, the final piece of our transition process is in August. We host individual transition meetings for our incoming nth graders. And this is a one-on-one meeting with the new case manager and and the family and students. And it's a great opportunity for us to review their schedule with them to talk about what those supports are going to actually look like, people, who will be providing those supports, and then we can give a tour of the building and answer any questions that students

114have as they're, you know, in their final weeks of summer getting ready for the ninth grade, for the start of their ninth grade year. >> So, the one big difference for the high school is they loop and they're two different types of models. So looping you'll have the same CA case manager year-over-year whereas our elementary and middle school they're grade specific and we went with a grade specific model because we felt that that would put educators in the best position to understand the scope and sequence of the curriculum they're in alignment with the teachers and when you work with teachers over time you get very familiar with what's going on in the classroom what unit of studies the accommodations and things of that nature there are advantages and disadvantages to each model but we wanted

115to ensure that our special education teachers were equal partners when it came to teaching and learning of students. So, that's one of the unique things. I would be remiss if I did not thank and um recognize our building level leaders. I'm in constant communication with them. I try to make it to every building every day. And they're here tonight to answer any questions specific to their buildings, but they do an outstanding job. The collaboration is great and the support of all students, especially the special education students and the 504 kids is exemplar. They know their kids in their building. They know how to support their kids and the teachers. And it's been good. And I'm not standing up here tonight to say that we don't have issues with transition. Every now and again there are

116some challenges, but one of the things I really wanted to ensure that this presentation encompassed was the teachers on the front lines that are transitioning kids. Because I could come up here and sell you the home bridge, but I don't own the home bridge, so I can't do it. But I just want to make sure that we're really authentic with what we communicate. And we've been uh talking about this since November through our special education advisory council that started last year where we have representatives two per building and they meet with me once a month to talk about challenges and opportunities in student services. Um we're here to field some questions and I want to thank our great leaders for being here tonight. >> Just real quick before you jump into questions, I just want

117to again reference back to the goal that the board established. Um, basically the board goal talked about a couple things. Tonight was the first half of that goal talking about transitions, IEPs, and 504s. Tony did reference the fact that we two years ago we started maintaining a dashboard where we consistently monitor the fact that teachers have reviewed those plans. I just want to comment just to remind the board that uh case load numbers uh that piece and weighted case loads and what that's all about was also prominent in your goal and Tony did speak pretty extensively about that in January when he presented those numbers to you although I'm sure he'd be happy to answer any questions you have on that as well. So if you have any questions please ask. >> So as Mike

118said this is a board goal. Uh last spring in strategic planning um there were parents that expressed concerns about the challenges for their kiddos. You know, trying to make the the transition between the schools and especially if it's a special ed student is even more challenging. So, I know that you've had um transition protocols since like the 1415 school year, but um it looks like you've um kind of made more of a proactive shift to that face-to-face transition model. And how do you feel that that has helped with this transition process for our students? And my second question would be um we have all these transition methods from school to school. Do we have any kind of transition specifically for our special ed students when they're seniors and they're graduating and they're transitioning out of

119here into the real world? So to answer the first question um as far as our transition practices are concerned it's something that we're continually monitoring and improving and for me if a parent reaches out and shares you know Anthony I'm just I'm just not happy with how the transition they're having a really start rough start to the year we finally got it right in the last building and now we're in a new building and they don't feel like they have connections with the staff and one of the things I must tell you is September September, October have been a little bit challenging and I'd say it's challenging for about 15 kids districtwide. By the just before Thanksgiving for the last three to five years, things improve dramatically. And then by January, the student has the

120relationship, the students doing really well. We're seeing a reduction in disregulation. We're seeing an increase in engagement in the classroom. So that is something that we're really trying to find a a resolution to is that September October and what can we do to ensure because 15 kids that's a lot of kids for me. We have 300 and I just had Candace run the numbers. We're at 353 students in special education from February to February. That includes speech and language. And if there 15 of those students that are transitioning and having some challenges, we need to be mindful of that. And I think one of the things that we're starting to keep track of now is when students do struggle with transitions. So, if a student struggles with a transition from second to third, we're making

121a note of it and we're communicating with the parent and we're going to make sure that there's more facetime that they spend a little bit more time in the new building and the receiving staff is getting to see the student in the classroom. And that's why I passed out this form because this is more elaborate than we were doing before, but it really lays out all of the components that we need to be mindful of in order to ensure a successful transition. And that's why I think every good presentation needs to have one paper handout, but this one I thought was one of the most important. So the senior um we do a really Jill Thomas does a really nice job our transition coordinator with the department of vocational rehab and for a lot of

122students that are transitioning junior senior year the district has provided subtime so that DVR and Jill Thomas can meet with high school students to ensure that they get supports if they're seeking employment. Our 18 to 21 program is at WCTC. We have a number of students that participate and get some additional support from that program at WCTC from Jill Thomas and that's been kind of a gamecher just the familiarity and the partnership with WCTC. We're in constant collaboration with them and I think for me the most powerful thing was when I came our 18 to 21 students they were in the high school. They were there from 9th grade all the way through age 21. And I really got to commend this district on allocating the resources to ensure that we could really afford them

123an authentic opportunity. And one of the most powerful things is when they're graduating, they get to say they're going to WCTC. That really empowered them. And I can't every year I get about three or four phone calls from parents saying how excited and happy they are with the program. And the program, the premise for me was we need to be able to get students to a place where they can take public transportation, where they can navigate a city, where they could hopefully get a job. And we have had kids that have participated in the 18 to 21 program that are living together in a rental property that are taking the bus to work because they can't drive. So, it's been really empowering. And I think one of the really neat things is the collaboration that's

124going on between the other 18 to 21 programs where they're building lifetime relationships and friendships. And the coolest part for me as a parent is it's not just the kids making the connections, it's parents connecting with other parents from other districts. Not to say that there aren't some students that don't take part in the 18 to 21 program and some students that struggle with the transition out of high school, but I think um we have some atypical regular ed students that also struggle with the freshman year in college or life after high school because so much changes. But I think there's still an opportunity there. >> Thank you. And if I don't answer a question or you have a followup, just let me know and I'll try to clarify. >> Anthony, like super quick, do

125you just want to touch on the fact that like um that some of that post-secary planning starts almost in 8th grade when they turn 14 with the requirement of the transition goal? Yeah, every student has a post-secary transition plan and the students interviewed about what they want to do and then there's a goal that's in alignment with it that talks about what what activities the student will need to do in order to accomplish the goal. Thank you for that, Anthony. >> Anthony, do other districts have similar problems in September and October? I'm assuming you have a network of people in your position that you maintain. Yeah. So, I go to Elbrook once a month for the Waca County Director's meeting and it was an agenda. It pretty much took up a good hour of the

126meeting September, October, November. One of the things I'm most proud of is we have phenomenal teachers and we have great pair of professionals is the work that our staff can do over a period of time. I recognize September and October have not been the way I would personally like them to be, but the fact that we can turn the corner before Thanksgiving, which we are continually every seat meeting we talk about what can we do differently to ensure that we have a better start to the new school year. So, yeah, it's specifically the behavior kids that become disregulated and and have more challenging behaviors. that seems to be a a theme across districts right now. >> I want to thank you, Tony, because I've heard stories of days where we have these disregulated children and

127you are personally in that school dealing with that child. And I think that just shows your dedication to our kids and wanting to make sure that they have the best possible experience and kudos. Can't say thank you enough. >> This has been a great district to work in. And for those of you that were on my interview panel back in 13, I said one of the things that was appealing about this district is being able to go to each building every day. And that's been awesome. just getting to see the kids and work with the staff. Um, a great group of people here. So, thank you. Well, I can share I I would um like to let you know I think we've talked a little bit about Tony's been leading a team um about looking

128at what are some adjustments because and it is this is universal nationally, statewide, regionally with more challenging uh behaviors especially at younger ages uh than we've experienced uh in the past. And so there's been some real work at what might be some structural or model adjustments we can make and we have some early implementation of a piece of that that's going to be happening, you know, probably in the next month or so that we've approved for Stan Anthony to move uh forward with um which will allow us to to try some things that we're we're looking at and and work some of the kinks out for implementation next year. So again, it's always trying to as with anything that we do, we're always trying to uh take good and make it great. Um make make

129things better for those student experiences so that schools function as function optimally and uh that we can have the biggest impact on student learning. So you know, it's not a status quo thing. It's always a working issue. Any other questions that you have? anything that was in the goal that you feel like between either this or the last discussion when we talk about weighted case loads and those things that maybe you're unclear on or that that you don't think you have the information that you're looking for. >> Larry, >> I think it was very helpful to have it the numbers the last time and now, but my sense is we need to kind of stay on top of this because I mean we see increases in terms of our special education students and potentially the

130complexity of those students. So continue awareness of that as a board I think is important for us to be kept informed. So come back again next year Anthony. So >> and I I can't thank the school board and senior leadership enough for the continued support of the program. Successful programs don't happen overnight but you guys are a great community to work with and I really enjoy working with the board and senior leadership. So thank you. >> And we've had a lot of success. that you know point out even from a data perspective last year we had um outstanding growth the gaps were actually closed our special ed kids actually narrowed the gap um with overall achievement improving and uh ACT as an example so we've had some real uh good results uh in in cases

131like that as well. Thanks Tony. >> Thank you Tony. Thank you. >> Okay. Uh next we're going to discuss the shared services agreement for the Woodland Conference um athletic conference and uh the new contract. >> Yeah. So this is just an annual action item. Um it's a 660301 agreement um entering those. Thank you everybody for being here tonight. >> Thanks guys for coming. >> The board is required to approve contracts of this nature. This is the annual contribution uh to the budget. I remember this coming up as discussion last year and I don't know John if you remember um uh that the we're paying now for the current year and I'm not sure why we pay about this time of year but that is when we get build by the fiscal agent which is Greenale.

132Um so that you're you're provided with the uh the budget that was uh created for the conference this year. This is a required component uh for us to be a member uh school in the conference. We'd be happy to take questions. Otherwise, I'd seek a motion to approve uh that agreement. >> Move to approve the 663 proposal or budget as or contract as presented. >> Second. >> All in favor? >> I. >> Any opposed? >> Opposed. >> All right. Next, we will move on to the Paul Road Properties um lease termination. >> And I'll have John speak to this. This really is about moving uh the Insight program back on campus um and uh ending our lease uh over at the uh office space uh on Paul Road. Um and that was a part of

133a component addressing our structural deficit uh for next year. So, John, >> yeah. um without getting any details of moving the program over here. Um the board acted on the original lease and each of the amendments to the lease, the renewals and extensions that were there. So we thought it was appropriate to bring it back to the board now to terminate the lease. We have a six-month notification. The lease expires at the end of August of 2026. So by taking action tonight gives us the ability to provide that written notification to the lesser Paul Road Properties LLC that we will not be extending the lease. And that's a significant savings in the amount of >> the lease itself is uh about 40 $42,000. We have transportation costs where we shuttle students back and forth to

134that property that don't have their own transportation and um the utility cost uh for that. So in total it's close to $70,000. >> Do you have a location picked out? >> You're in it. >> I'm in it. All right. >> You're you're in the insight hub. back here at the high school right now. >> Is that the Seesa location? >> Yes, correct. >> Any other questions? Otherwise, I'll take a motion. >> I move to terminate the lease with Paul Road Properties LLC. >> Second. >> All in favor? >> I. >> Any opposed? >> Abstain. Um next, um John, we're going to discuss the second Friday count. >> So um in K12 public schools in Wisconsin, you have two mandatory count dates. One's the third Friday in September. One is the second Friday in January. The

135September count is really the one that carries the greatest weight because that's where you set your revenue limit for the district. It it sets your tax levy essentially uh as a component of that count information. January count is averaged with that added in the summer school count and our our students who attend vulture schools or ICS schools to determine your equalization aid next year. So it's averaged together. The result of this second Friday and January count this year we showed an increase of 12 students over the adjusted account. Remember in September we give you the calendar year say this is subject to adjustment throughout the year based on student information that we subsequently find out after a reporting date. Um so we had a couple of adjustments to that September count. Ultimately 12 additionals 12

136students more uh headcount in the district. Of that our resident count increased by nine students. Um, one of the dynamics we had this time around, we had six students who were open enrolled here in September who moved into homes within the district and became residents. So, that modifies the that count um without a significant increase to the overall headcount. Um, there's other details dealing with tuition waiverss and open enrollment. Again, if you have six open enrollment students who are coming here now, that's reducing that count, turning them into resident students. U so it impacts the revenues that we're having in the budget and that but overall minimal impact on our overall budget from any changes in student population that we've seen from September through January. Did you roll up six new students in the open

137enrollment? wait from a weight list to >> no the wait list expires on sep on the third Friday in September weight list all expire and then after that you have a window between the third Friday in September and the beginning of the new open enrollment period of roughly February 2nd I believe it opened the or third where you can accept alternative applications um and those are evaluated on a case- by case basis of whether whether or not we have space to fit them into the into the district but all weight list expire as of the third Friday. >> So, and you said you had six that went from open enroll to regular, >> right? So, our total open enrolled students attending here from other districts went down by six. >> Six. Okay. So, those six

138seats just sit there. >> Correct. It's not a seat. Is once you hit the third Friday, the designation of open seats is no longer applicable to the population that you have. The amount of o open enrollment that we approved would have been a number and then you have you're suggesting that that number went down by six because of what they did as as residents. >> No, when you have open enrollment, you make a projection based on your occupied seats in se in December of a given year. So December of 25, we made a projection of how many seats we could have available through open enrollment in the fall. That gets added to all the students that continue in open enrollment. That number fluctuates throughout the entire summer through the entire fall. We take account in

139September of the number of kids who are open enrolled here from other districts. Um second I can tell you that number. So, in September, we had um 347 students enrolled in Pewwaukee that were through open enrollment. Some of them became um resident students between September and January. It does not go back to what was approved in January of 2025 for any reference point on that. In January this year, we had 344 students open enrolled. So you take 347, you minus the six who became residents, it's 341 means we picked up an additional three open enrollment students between the third Friday and the second Friday in January. >> And those would have come in on those alternative applications. And the six that Mary's asking about, I just want to make sure my head's right on this.

140So those are six six students who then just became residents, >> correct? >> Yeah. So they moved into the district. So think about it usually or or what how we approach it is we make recommendations to the board to fill existing open space where we think we can augment without driving up costs. So the number of students attending didn't decline their designation just changed from OE to resident because they moved into the district. >> Got it. Thank you. >> Yep. >> So John, does this imply that we can say we we are not in the decline? We're not declining. We went up just a teeny bit. >> Enrollment for the declining enrollment exemption is what most what's most common districts that are in declining enrollment. That revenue limit exemption means that your prior year three-year

141average is greater than your current year three-year average. And that's all applicable to the third Friday in September count, which feeds that revenue limit calculation. Any other questions? All right. Thank you, John. Next, we'll move on to personnel issues. And we do have three retirements. >> Yeah. So, no resignations. Uh, three retirements, which include Gene Bork, art teacher, uh, who's been, I believe, 25 years, uh, at Pocky High School. Uh Mike Basili, physical education teacher who was first employed in 1995. Um so what is that 31 years if I'm doing my math right there for Mike and then uh Rachel Jük, our chief information technology officer, all retiring. So with thanks for their service, I seek your approval for those retirements. >> Move to approve the retirements of Rachel Jük, Mike Basil, and Jean York.

142Second. >> All in favor? >> I. >> Any opposed? >> Abstain. >> And uh we do have one hire. >> Yes. Uh Kaitlin Glassie would be a third grade internship um hire at Horizon Elementary. So that she would be hired to provide additional staffing as an intern um augmenting the staff that exists. not replacing anybody. Interning is um an inexpensive option uh to recruit uh talented people. Usually, if you're a student teacher who qualifies or is able to secure an internship, you're probably of pretty high quality. Um and that's a really inexpensive way for us to get someone who has more freedom to teach independently uh when you're under an internship versus student teaching. um and gives us more capacity in working with our students. So, we'd seek your approval for Kalin. >> Move to

143the approve the um hiring of Kayn Glassie as a third grade intern. >> Second. >> All in favor? >> I. >> Any opposed? >> All right. Uh next, um review of upcoming activities. So, our next board meeting um is Monday, February 23rd. That includes a 6 pm policy meeting um before regular 7 p.m. board meeting. Monday, March 9th, um right now is our only board meeting in March, and that is a 6 pm business affairs followed by a regular board meeting. On Tuesday, March 10th, we have Reality Store at the high school from 8:30 to 11. Are they looking for And Tammy, have you gotten any? >> Oh, I am. Tammy, I directly I went directly with Sean. Sorry, I'm in. >> Okay. >> And I will be out of town on the March 9th

144date. So, >> okay. Well, if you're interested, please let Tammy know as soon as possible. Um, it really is a neat process to sit there and interview these um, high school seniors. I walk away impressed and just floored by their knowledge and their professionalism. So, if you get a chance to do it, it's a great experience. >> You might even get to interview Anna >> and some of you for the second time. >> That's right. >> Um, Thursday, April 7th is spring elections. um followed by Monday, April 13th, um we'll do the oath of office for newly elected board members, business affairs at 6:00 with the regular board meeting at 7. And then, um Monday, April 27th, a 6 pm policy with the regular board meeting at 7. >> Just a note, um Anthony and

145I will be absent from the March 9th meeting. Um, so that will be the John show, which probably means it's going to be an extra fast meeting. They tend to be >> like a 20 minute meeting. >> We love those. >> Um, and I it actually does look like at the moment a fairly light uh agenda lining up I think for that meeting. So, >> all right. Um, next um we had the WASBY convention um down in Milwaukee. Um, once again, a really great convention. Uh, Larry served as our delegate. So, I'm gonna turn it over you to Larry to just give us an update and what occurred. >> Okay. And I'll try to keep it really short and brief in terms of what's there. So, school districts have the ability to submit resolutions in

146terms of things that they want the Wisconsin Association of School Boards to advocate for. And so, that starts in September. There's a policy and resolutions committee that reviews that the last weekend in September. And then there's a another wrap-up or meeting in November that they go through those one more time. Uh but then there's also a meeting on the Tuesday before the Wednesday delegate assembly. So fairly good uh I would say rigorous review of those items that are out there. Uh there were about I think 11 or 10 11 12 items that were brought forward uh for the resolutions or or for the delegate assembly to bring forward with that. Uh and out of those I believe nine of them passed. There was one that was kind of like either opposed or support and that

147was related to the decoupling of um the voucher schools from the funding and formulas in terms of the general uh education funding within the state. Uh the biggest item that was there there was a one proposal to amend the WB bylaws to create a limited active member. It was brought forward but that one was defeated by 241 to 42 votes that were out there. Um, and yeah, most all of them got approved in terms of that and there's a link in terms of the ones that did get approved. The other one that was interesting, and John, you may want to comment on this too, and it's very rare that they bring forward any kind of emergency resolutions, but the school district that brought this forward and the arguments that they made in terms of bringing

148it forward was tied in with special education funding because if you remember in the state budget, we were supposed to get 42 and 45% funding. when they actually made the funds available it would turn down to be more like around 35%. Uh so this school board or school board breath resolution forward uh basically to say that they want the WACB WASB to support legislation that provides the additional funding that is necessary to meet the estimated special education categorical aid reimbursement rate when an im when an original some certain appropriation has been determined to not meet the bianial budget reimbursement rate. So it has again it was kind of like a well past it was like 261 to 20 uh to move that forward and it's like I say very unusual but because of the fact

149that how the state has been kind of funding and supporting special education out there it it makes sense in other words what they were trying to do with it now that the um kind of like the wrapping up the legislative session I don't know if it's going to get approved but at least it sends a message to all the people that are out there uh to say hey this is something if you're going to commit it to a given amount of money, you need to hold it because our budgets were again, John, you may not have done it because you're a pretty smart budgeter. But if you had a budget and you based it on the 42 and 45%, well then now you don't get that money and so you're going to have to come

150up with a way to fund or offset those costs for special education students out of the general funds that we have. So it's a and John you can add to that a little bit too but so that was kind of like the biggest discussion item in terms of the uh getting that emergency resolution approved uh through the system. So yeah really the the thing the dynamic that is playing out is the cost of providing uh services for special education is growing at a faster rate than was anticipated. U so projecting slightly over 8% growth in the in the annual growth rate of cost uh when the funding level is not keeping up with that. So it just prorates that some certain amount. Um, >> yeah. And could you explain some certain versus some sufficient? >>

151Some certain says there's x amount of dollars and if it's not enough to cover at that reimbursement rate, you prorrate it. You prorrate the reimbursement down. Some sufficient means the state will come up with however many dollars it takes to fund 42% of the costs from the prior year. So that's the key difference. >> Yeah. Well, I think it's a really big difference now because I mean the state is looking at potentially another huge um fund available in terms of like in the billions of dollars again going into the 2020 oh 27 20 whatever it is nine budget year. So there's some money that's out there that's available in the treasury right now. So um they can't say that they don't have the funds available. It's available out there if they choose to spend it

152on special education. So that's it. Oh, and then obviously yes, other stuff the speakers. You want to add to that? We had really great keynote speakers. There was Ann Marie Anderson. Uh she was an ESPN reporter and talked about her experiences in terms of reporting on things uh like the Chicago Bulls in terms of their basketball stuff and but closed kind of with her story of her own student, her own child who had some special needs that were out there but due to a coach and teacher that made him feel uh a part of a water polo team just really raised him uh totally better as a student, better as a person in terms of what's out there. So that was I thought a really uplifting kind of presentation on her part. So >> I

153um had decided that I was going to do the financial track. >> Yep. >> Although I was disappointed that John didn't present this year. Um but I did go to um a session called the financial scorecard and it was for school board. uh they had presidents and treasures there and it was um presented by CISA 5 and WASBY has a new financial monitoring tool which um maybe we would want to look at a little closer. Um it really just helps the the school boards to keep track of all of those financial um documents that are required each year on a calendar basis. Um, but I want to say that sitting in this session and talking with um, school board officials from other school districts, we already know it, but I just have to say it

154again. It made me appreciate John because a lot of these other districts, honestly, I'm just going to say, they don't get the transparency that we get. John is constantly so transparent and offering up to us every little penny that's spent in this district and I don't think that that's always evident in other school districts. So that's my segue to say thank you John once again for all that you do >> Mike. Um the virt we still talk convention ran strategic plan. >> Um do you have anything you want to say? >> Yeah, just a I mean um we heard from the governor a little bit. He also emphasized the 4245 special ed with the because revenues at the state came in much higher than projected. So they're last I heard was like $2.3 billion surplus

155that they have to work with. So, there's a lot of this kind of bleeds into our legislative advocacy piece, but um there's a lot of wrangling right now. You've probably heard some of it over the um the veto um that put in the 325 a year for 400 years and um desire to get the special ed funding. And then you'll hear a lot about decoupling um as pieces that are out there. But the governor talked about his commitment to getting that some certain or I'm sorry some sufficient for the 4245 which would be which would be uh definitely helpful. I think that would be hundred some thousand dollars this year and a couple hundred thousand almost in the next year if that if that happens for just for us. So um it's very doable if

156they decide to do it but you know it's all it's all politics. Uh no one's going to give anything for free. So, um, there was that our presentation I thought went well. I was very, you know, I I had low expectations with a polar vortex and a >> minus 41. >> Yeah, minus 41 windchill when it was uh 9:30 on the third day, Friday morning. I didn't have high expectations when it was Friday morning of a three-day convention. Anyway, uh throw in the polar vortex. I thought uh we might just be presenting to each other, but we had 40ome people uh in the room uh for our presentation. Um, Anthony really uh carried the lion share of that presentation um and did a really great job. So >> yeah, no, I thought our presentation went

157well. It was wellreceived. Anthony did a great job in terms of being able to explain how we use the uh artificial intelligence, some of the tools that are out there uh in terms of our um curriculum and education part of it, but also just even in the uh teacher evaluation process with it as well. So I mean it's again to get people there where it was 40 45 so that were there but the best thing was is it's like Mike was planning to fly out of town but his flight got cancelceled so he was actually able to show up and present with us. So I mean it was just like yes his plans were there. >> The other session uh that I actually I did a co-presentation with Joanne Sternkey and another person from the

158Milwaukee public schools in terms of the 30,000 foot view. Uh we kind of weaved in a little bit of the bulge criteria into that if you haven't figured that out. So, uh, Joanne is still out there on the circuit doing a lot of stuff with the Baldridge criteria and doing those kinds of things. There was one, John, and you may want to comment on this because it came up in a conversation last week, Friday. Yeah. Right. Or this week when it was whenever I uh talked to uh he's our former state assembly senator for this area, Rich Zipper, and he said, "Hey, be aware of the fact that there's some special federal funds out there." So Dale Coyonga at the WASB did a presentation and and it's under the umbrella of pay it forward. So

159I don't know if you want to talk about that a little bit, John. It's not like it's a guarantee yet for Wisconsin, but it's something that has potential because the money is not just going to voucher voucher schools, it can come to public schools as well. So you know about that. >> This was the thing that Joe Carza contacted me about. >> Yeah, I just briefly got some information on there, but really don't have enough to put in context to what availability might be to our district. Our understanding from what we've been advised from the SWSA lobbyist is it's very much this is very much a a money stream for vouchers far more voucher schools far more than it would be for public K12 >> other than again Rich Zipper who has connections with Brian

160Steel out of Jainsville that area of the state u basically said take a look at look and and and investigate what it was potentially could do and if Dale Coyena was using this under the pay it forward forward funding is out there as well. So, I think it's worthwhile for us to kind of be aware of it and see what's happening with it. It won't start until January 1st of 2027, but people can donate money to this and they can designate a school that it can go to kind of thing. You can't designate an individual student, but you can have it go into it, but and they pay it forward is a scholarship granting organization. So, it goes through that group can be one of the people that's involved. >> Good night. >> Thank you

161guys. >> Good night, ladies. Yeah. No, it was some good sessions in terms of things that were there >> strategic planning. >> Yeah. I I'd be happy to take questions. I provided I try to give you a fairly uh substantive uh memorandum just with some updates. Uh the nickel tour of what I wrote to you is just to let you know we're continuing to make progress. We have 90-day cycles of improvement um that each of the process owners completed um with the administrative team uh in the last month and I asked each of them to provide you um just a little narrative update on progress with each of their plans. So just wanted to make sure that uh you're aware that we continue to move forward. A lot of the things are uh reflected in

162the board and superintendent goals. Um, a number of the strategies, not all of them, but a number of the the plans are reflected in those. So, you do get those regular updates, but I wanted to make sure you had an update from our six strands. So, if you have any questions, let me know. Otherwise, I just wanted to make sure you received that. >> You have any dates yet for the these sessions? >> I don't, but I I need to get those to you soon. Oh, that is I'm glad you said that, Larry. So, my plan, and I spoke with Brent about this a little bit. Uh, again, this is Oops. Uh this is again our lighter year uh because this is really spring of year two um for feedback of our three-year plan. So

163last year um we did kind of the roundt focus groups that were much more conversational. I received positive feedback. We kept them kind of tighter a couple of nights. Um and that was my plan to do something similar to that again this year. Um certainly if you have different direction let me know but that is the plan. So, we'll look uh April, May for that. Um maybe a little bit earlier, maybe in April, depending on how calendars and things shake up, but I'll get those dates to you soon. Um and then of course uh spring of 27 is when we would be back um uh doing the kind of that full process that's much more involved as we ramp up to um sunset this plan and initiate another plan. not specifically on the agenda, so

164I'm a little reluctant, but can you give us kind of a status report on what the hiring process is going to be for the replacement of key positions or maybe >> Yeah, we have three positions. Um we're Anthony talked a little bit about Robin's position. Uh he did um like a dozen dozen candidates they did 30-minute screeners of today. Um uh and then another round will be coming in the next couple weeks there. Uh we have our uh initial interviews tomorrow uh for and Larry, thank you for helping out on that. Um for the chief technology officer. So again, we talked to this board about um some of our redesign of district office. This is the position that's a bit of a blend between our network engineer, which is currently Mike Murphy, and Rachel's position

165is proved tonight that Rachel's retiring. Um, so we have um candidates coming in for that tomorrow. And then uh we have a good pool uh for um assistant superintendent of business services. Uh and in the next couple of weeks, we'll have initial interviews for that. That one is really important for the board. uh next to the superintendent, I would say that that's the position that you are the most heavily engaged with as your business manager uh runs the business affairs committee. Obviously, fiscal matters are huge from the board's perspective. So, the the process and approach there would certainly engage all board members at some stage of that interview process to be involved. So, we'll be getting details out to you. You have a DA report that's coming to you this week from me. um uh

166that will touch on on that process. So, but very um uh very happy with the quality of candidates we're getting in all cases. >> Excellent legislative update. >> I think we touched on most of the stuff already. Um there are a number of bills circulating. A lot of it is me or what our lobbyists from SWSA would call messaging uh legislation which is more about setting agendas moving forward or to position candidates for um the upcoming election cycle. Uh but there is quite a bit um of uh action going on around this surplus and kind of this midbian budget in an attempt to to negotiate some things. There's a lot of interest, I think, on the Republican side to um get rid of the 400-year veto piece. Uh and there's a lot of interest on

167both sides to provide some property tax uh relief. I think that's that's definitely a big driver in what they're trying to do. Um and you know, we've talked a little bit about special ed and and some of these different pieces. The governor has some things that he's uh really targeting. So, um I don't know. I don't have a crystal ball and I'm probably really terrible at predicting these things, but I do I do feel that something's going to happen. I think there's a with the election and with the pressure they're all feeling on the property tax stuff, something's going to something's going to happen there since, you know, as you will recall in the last budget, for example, there was no money put into um school aids to offset property tax. So, um I'm guessing

168something could very well happen there to offset the local property tax levies, but we will see. Anything I don't know, John or Larry SWS, anything to add there. Okay, Tammy, any comments from citizens? >> All right, with that, I'll take a motion to adjurnn. So moved. >> Second. >> All in favor? >> Any opposed? >> Thank you. >> Thanks everybody. Thanks.