Board of Education Meeting 04/28/2025

001All right, it is 7 o'clock and I will call our PWA school board meeting to order for Monday, April 28th. Um, first I will start with roll call. Larry here. Ashley here. Matt here. Mary here. Travis here. and uh Stacy will be coming later. Um, was the meeting properly noticed? Meeting was properly noticed. Thank you. Um, can I get someone to give me a motion to adopt the agenda as presented? So move. Second. All in favor? Any opposed? Opposed. Uh, we'll stand and do the pledge of allegiance. I aliance 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. Well, tonight we are happy to welcome Horizon Elementary School. We have Christy Johnson, we have Emily, Colleen,

002and various um students with us tonight. So, I'll ask you all to come up and get started. Thank you. They all look so pretty. So, talk right into the mic. Perfect. So, if you want to kick us off and I absolutely will. Thank you very much for having us. My name is Emily Jazzinowski and I'm a third grade teacher at Horizon. We are introducing a very new fun project at the school and it's called the Horizon Hammock Garden. Switch to the slide. So, first to explain the project, we're going to talk about who, what, when, where, and why. We can't go in this order though because we need to talk about what is a hammock garden. So, a hammock garden is an outdoor learning space for learning for students to be a part of nature

003while enjoying their love for learning. There's going to be 25 hammocks or more depending on the class size and they'll be attached to wooden posts for the entire class to swing and enjoy their reading experience outside. It's a great way to make our school unique and creatively enhance the learning experience at Horizon. Here's a few photos for inspiration. So you can see some pewy red shade sails to block out some sun. And Mrs. Rooney is going to speak about design elements. So at Horizon, uh when we launched this with students, we started in February and we had the students start to think a little bit about how this hammock garden could look. So we had to think a little bit about the design of the hammocks. We had to think a little bit about possible

004storage and shade, location of the hammocks, and had the kids work in all of their classes to come up with some different designs, thinking about what would be the most efficient way that they could arrange the hammocks in that space. Um, and also uh in a very uh non-costly kind of a way, right? Um, so the students came down to maker space or in their classrooms and they worked on designing different layouts as they had conversations with each other. We also talked a little bit about having uh spaces that would be accessible to students that might have mobility issues. And then we started talking a little bit more about some other possibilities, making sure that we might have something like a little library that's there or even a rock garden. So, as we move into

005the month of May, all of the students at Horizon are going to be uh given the opportunity to have a rock and to do some designs that are going to be a part of the um aesthetics of the hammock garden as well. And so, who is involved? Obviously, all of our Horizon students are going to be invol invol involved in this planning process. Uh we have high school students that were over today that were helping to plot out where the posts are going to go for the hammock gardens. Um and then uh families also have been a huge part of this process. They have been contributing books and hammocks as well as monetary donations and a big thanks to the Piaki PTO also that graciously gifted us $1,000 from a Pewwaukee grant this year. And

006then of course our community members have also been very helpful and supportive. um everything from Wei Energies that has been helping us as well as CG Schmidt. So we are very lucky to have so many people involved and students. So we have some students that are here that are going to um explain their involvement with the project from designing, planning and solving math problems related to the real life uh materials and budget as well as reflecting with writing. So, first up is Arlo. Horizon Horizon students all took a turn trying out possible designs for the space. One challenge we faced was to use fewer posts to allow more traffic flow. We also wanted to include a handicap access accessible hammock so that the hammock garden is universally designed for learning. You can be used by

007all and can be used by all. You can see that the element from our early designs have made their way to the final project. The handicap accessible swing is attached to the whole structure so that all students can hang together. Next up is Natic, a third grader. I love math. And the planning phase of the hammock garden is full of numbers, calculations, and measurements. As you can imagine, I was very excited to know that we had a chance to use our math skills to problem solve some real life scenarios. Each grade level worked to solve actual math problems during the hammock gardens material and price list. We found solutions to problems ranging from the height of the hammock hooks, calculating the area for pricing out wood chips, and multiplying the total bags of concrete by

008their cost to help build the budget for this project. As a third grade, I love challenging my thinking by giving the fourth and fifth grade math problems a try as well. Our words have power. Writing is a powerful tool that can be used to make big things happen like the hammock garden. Students used writing to persuade local businesses to consider donating time and materials. Students also wrote letters of gratitude to the PTO for their donation and even as a way to envision and reflect about the outdoor learning space. Our fourth grade classes used a writing choice board and used our creativity to create poems about the Hammock Garden. We'd love to share them with you. Step really quickly. Just want to explain that um the packets you have here have a lot of the student

009involvement pieces in there. So, feel free to flip through. And the poems that the girls are about to read that they wrote themselves are also included in those packets. Enjoy. Sensory poem by Isa. I see my awesome book. I hear birds chirping. I feel great. I smell greenery. I taste the knowledge of my book. Hammock. Helpful, amusing, mindful, magical, outstanding, comfy knowledge. Garden. Great, amazing, radical, delightful, enrichment, nice by Lily. Horizon. Hammock garden. I see the words I read. I hear the pages of my book flip. I feel the wind pass me. I smell the fresh air. I taste the knowledge. by Penelopey Ricead. Thank you so much students for joining and sharing. The next step is when will this project begin? This has really been a year-long design and planning process that the students

010have been involved with, the staff has been involved with, community members, and as you heard today, the high school construction class as well. So, that's been really exciting. I'm proud to announce that last week we broke ground on this project and Friday they came to start pulling the ground back with our connection with CG Schmidt and then today the high schoolers took their part in starting to measure for where the placements will be um dug for all of the posts. We Energies will be coming to donate their telephone poles and install them for us as well which is really great. Where will the hammock garden be? The school is shaped like the letter E. So the northmost courtyard has been pretty underutilized. So we're going to be placing it there between the fourth and fifth

011grade hallways. And then the last slide is a little mockup that just shows a little example of what it might look like. As you can see a side view of the clusters. There'll be hammocks underneath some tapered shade sails. There'll be three clusters of those throughout the space. So, why is this important? We've done a lot of thinking about how students will benefit from this rich sensory environment that's going to enhance their cognitive, physical, and emotional experience. So, really being able to be outside, um, doing some reading, collaborating, cooperating, um, lots of different things that seamlessly align with our graduate profile. So, we've done a lot of work in thinking about how this hammock garden can create and can connect directly to the items from our graduate profile. Couple of the things that we've done

012directly connected include um for that connect piece, we've had lots and lots of community connections and I'll um I've highlighted some of those for you below. Mrs. Jazzinowski also mentioned several of them all the way from Wii Energies who donated all of the posts, CG Schmidt who donated the labor for pulling back the ground for us. Wellsteins and Suns which is going to help to even out some of the ground and the posts. We've had some um landscape companies that have donated um rocks and different things along those lines. Um lots of connections with PWA High School as have been mentioned with their building classes. PWA PTO, which has helped to fund raise through uh their grant program, and then PWAKE families. At our Horizon Family Game Night, we did a trivia game where families

013were able to contribute $5 to participate in the trivia and all the proceeds went directly towards our hammock garden. Um, from that create, we did the makerpace challenge that Mrs. As Rooney mentioned, we're all of our students engaged with thinking about how to make this design the most effective. Um, contribute. We are in the process of purchasing rocks and there will be a rock garden where every student in Horizon will paint a rock that will become part of our Horizon rock garden. Um, and then from that care lens, students have thought a lot about accessibility, as you heard them mention, thinking about creating that handicapped accessible um, hammock that students will be able to engage with. So, a huge thank you to all of our students who are here. An additional thank you to Mrs.

014Rooney who has helped greatly with this project. But ultimately, the bulk of this has really come from Mrs. Jazzinowski. So, I want to give a huge shout out to her. She has put in an incredible amount of time into this project and so um it's really been exciting to see her passion shine through for this though. So thank you for the opportunity for us to share this with you and let us know if you have any questions. So if I come and volunteer to help with readers next year, can I check out one of those hammocks? Yes, there will be lots of opportunities to engage with those hammocks. Awesome. Any other questions? This is just another great example of um the K12 environment and the campus environment. I think back about four or five years

015ago when the construction classes at the high school also developed a project to put a gazebo uh in the courtyard that is used by all the students at Pwaki Lake Elementary. So, another great way to give back and um contribute to the whole uh campus environment. Thank you for putting your time into this. This seems like a really really great project. Thank you very much for having us. We're really excited. This is going to be a big week for the project because it's really happening now. So, it'll be fun to check out. Thank you. Thank you so much. All right. Um, next we'll move on to salutes and recognitions. Uh, does anybody on the board have anything they want to start out with? Okay, admit uh I have two for tonight. Um first of all,

016our global business students in the from the mini business competition at Carol College. Uh we had first place and second place teams in the competition that was over there. Um I can get Tammy the names of the of the student participants. And then also uh our ProStart students, five of them who went with Mr. Demars to the taste of the draft uh and created and served food to a lot of the participants in that event. So that was a big success. Awesome. Well, potentially too. Um I think this was on the school Facebook page. Um, Ella Opie is being recognized as a Wisconsin student athlete by the WIAA. So, I guess there's four or 32 alto together across the state, but it's every division. So, I think you forgot the word academic, right? It's an

017academic award for an athlete, WA academic scholar. So, pretty cool. So, not very often in Piwaukee. So, good for her. Awesome. I have one as well. Uh Lauren Weisky, who is a math teacher and interventionist at both the middle school and the high school, was one of 100 teachers in the state of Wisconsin recognized for the uh Cole award. Uh so it's a pretty prestigious honor for an educator. Um she gets a $6,000 award and then the school gets the $6,000 award as well. So it's a great recognition for Lauren. Absolutely. Congratulations to her. Anyone else have anything? Well, I have one more. This is this is for um last week was administrative assistance day. So, I want to recognize Tammy over there. And then and then also Sandy Kirkowski at the district office. They

018both put in a tremendous amount of time to make sure that things stay afloat and they do so with a smile which is excellent. Thank you, Tammy and Sandy. Thank you. All right, moving right along. Tammy, any comments from citizens? No comments from citizens. Okay, next consent agenda. Um, we have um minutes from previous meetings, both regular meeting and business affairs. Uh, no correspondents or gifts at this time. So, can I get a motion to accept the consent agenda as presented? So, moved. Second. All in favor? I. Any opposed? Abstain. Next, moving on to old business. Um, we need to consider and possibly um approve the CTE curriculum revisions. Um, Anthony, I'm going to give that to you. Yeah. Um, we had presented at our last meeting on the CTE curriculum revisions. there was opportunity

019for um community members and board members to review that curriculum. I I did not receive any requests any questions regarding the CTE curriculum. Does anybody have any questions at this time? The CTE curriculum is career uh career and technical education for what grades? Uh it was presented grades 6 through 12. Is there a dollar amount with that? Excuse me. There there is a dollar amount. It's the the dollar amount has not changed since the presentation which for CTE was uh $47,98757. What are we getting for that? Excuse me. What I'm sorry, Anthony. What are we getting for the $47,000? I I don't have the itemized list in front of me. Um, but that is all of the materials and everything we need to deliver the curriculum for all of those courses and that that is

020something I can easily um easily get. Is that I don't to review that. Did one have to make an appointment with you and go into your office? Yeah. or or we it could be a phone conversation as well. But if you wanted to review the curriculum that's posted on our online website for as a draft curriculum curriculum currently and that's available to board members and to the public as well. Are the resources available that you're anticipating to purchase available for that same look? We could make them available. Yes. Could we do that with all the time all the stuff we're buying? uh some of it is materialbased, but if there were a textbook or a curricular resource, the answer to that question would be yes. I'm kind of thinking we should be doing that on

021a regular basis. I think we're having did we not have difficulty with the purchase of what was the title of the book that we pulled out? We pulled from the shelves. You're talking about a library book versus a curriculum book. What was the title? Artstoppers, I believe. But that was a library book. That wasn't curriculum. Yeah. No, that's not this is curriculum. A different totally different process for approval. I think if we want to be transparent, we should have putting this stuff online so people can see what it says because I think Go ahead, Anthony. And that that is why it was so the board received the materials two weeks ahead of time prior to the last meeting. Um all of those were presented here at this meeting. At that point in time it was

022communicated that there was a two-eek window and opportunity for community both community members and board members to review any curricular materials. Um I didn't have any questions nor did I have any questions or um requests from community members either. Right. Isn't so my question goes back to isn't that the the arrangement that you offered to the board where we would we would make an appointment with you. I I do remember those words if you wanted to to go in and see it in your office was the correct the curriculum outlines were posted online available to everyone and the physical resources were available to come review in my office. That's correct. Okay. I don't think the curriculum outline is particularly useful to the public. I think we're not having trouble so much with that as we

023are with the actual resources. So, the resources are not available to the public to see prior to our purchase. The public is welcome to go in, Anthony, and and see them as well. and and whether it be during a curricular revision or renewal like this or at any point in time, anyone is welcome to come and review in your office by appointment. Correct. Okay. Why can't we break that open a little bit more so that people can look at it online? Well, some of it is actual physical. Here it is. Um physical books. Physical books. Um, and then there are also some that are online that would require loginins. Um, and we pay for those, you know, per login. But even with that, um, we probably would be able to find a way to make

024that available to whoever wanted to review it. I think when we had the discussion about the series that had come into the library, it doesn't matter where it's coming from. It's going to be seen by children where whether it's curriculum or library. and teachers use library resources for their curriculum. So that's kind of a moot point. I would I would say but um well I haven't from a curricular delivery standpoint and a curricular resource standpoint the teachers do not use any library materials. Now if there are classes where students are reading choice texts then they would be getting those from the library but I do know that the library issue specifically led to a policy revision on the part of the board. I think that it was we're not using the community as much as

025we could. Uh the big example is what they did with the federal budget. Now in our lifetime and most recently in the last five years, they were able to put that on online and a lot of people who are just interested in looking at it looked at detail. We're not using that ability of our community to do that at all. So something like you caught two months ago or four months ago, whenever it was, why wouldn't we allow the public to constantly always see what we're purchasing and what's in those resources when we can do that? So I can speak to the curriculum because that's what's on the agenda. But as I stated before, anytime they would like to view that if it is something that we can't just have, you know, an online access

026for, people are always welcome to come and review. And Mary, uh, Anony's predecessor, Danielle, put all of the curriculums online for the first time in history. So, right now, any parent can go online and look at a curriculum that their their child is involved in. That's been in the last five years. So we are using the the we are being transparent and having it available to anyone who wants to go look. Yes, physical items they need to come in and figure out how best to do that and it takes a little work but I don't know how else you can think that that should be done. Well, we had the the the series that were not was not appropriate. And what was said to us as a board was that sometimes that happens because it's

027require it's recommended by the I think it was the American Library Association and then the people who purchased it didn't look at it closely. I'm thinking we could do a whole lot better in vetting that unless you folks think that we're not having any issues with any of the curriculum and that and I feel like the board took action in revising the library and media selection policy to to do just that. It's a much more in-depth process. It is. It is absurd to think that in 2025 we have to come up with a policy to prevent that from coming in in the first place. We had a policy, but the new policy, it's common sense. It should never have been here in the first place. And and nobody argues that with you. And there is

028a stronger policy in place now to try and prevent that from happening. I think everyone differs in their ideals about what might be appropriate or not appropriate, which is why we beefed up the policy to set clear guidelines on what we were willing to accept versus not. So there there is no question. Okay. I'm going to move to move on because now you're entering into a topic on the library book policy which is not on our agenda. So that part of the conversation is over and I will move to approve the CTE curriculum revisions as presented. Second. All in favor? I. Any opposed? Opposed. All right. And next um is a consideration and possible approval of the K3 literacy curriculum revisions. Yep. So similar to the CTE curriculum revision process that was presented opportunity for

029people to view um the budgeted cost for that was $66,426.70. Received uh no questions from board members. uh no request from community members to um come in and review anything physical that was not available online. Is it your is it the administration's position that without spending $66,000 we cannot become compliant with act two act 20? Uh I believe that question was posed when it was presented and at that point in time I believe I communicated that it was our recommendation that the dollars that we were spending on that was for the best possible curriculum for our students in addition to being in alignment with act 20 requirements. Right? If you said that before and you're saying it again, it doesn't answer the question one bit. My question is without it without spending $66,000 are is

030it your position that we cannot become aligned with act 20? I would say that at this point in time I would say yes. Um we have processes in place built for curriculum revision and ad adoption. Um and to start from scratch square one that would be my position. Yes. to start from scratch square one. So if if I if I question if I query Representative Nan and our our senator on the uh absolute necessity of a school board to spend dollar one to become compliant with act 20 is it your position that they would say yes well and I can't speak for them but what I can say whether we were making this change for to be in alignment with the act 20 law or not our process from a continuous improvement standpoint is to

031continually review our curriculum on a regular basis much like the CTE curriculum that we just presented. Um and generally speaking, if there is a new adoption of resources, there is a cost that comes with that. This is reading material. We were we were understood I was un under the impression that we had to do this because of act 20. It it it's it moved the process the curriculum renewal process up. Um the board was made aware of the piloting of two curriculums last year um which ultimately led to this decision here. What is so new about reading literacy that you have to spend $66,000 if you were understood at 20 there were material I'm sorry the question was for Anthony yeah and I can share that we we vetted not only curriculums that were recommended

032by the DPI but also curricular resources that would continue to put us in alignment with the new requirements which were reviewed the last time we were here. Um and this is what we thought was the best approach. Um so that is why it's being presented tonight. I know but for five years ago we had reading materials for reading proficiency. What is it about those materials that is no longer anywhere sufficient for us to do reading proficiency five years later that we need to spend another $66,000. This is just reading proficiency. They are not approved. Excuse me. My question is addressed to him. You keep asking the same question and he's giving you the same answer. Act 20 explicitly banned us from using some of the materials we used to use. We need to buy new

033materials. Are you advocating for our teachers not being given curriculum materials? Anthony, um, my my question, so if what that board member was saying is true, then your answer to the question about the representatives and the state senator should be an absolute yes. I I they would say that. They would say we cannot become in compliance without spending $66,000 more on reading literacy for K through three. I can't I can't speak to what the representatives would or wouldn't say. I can't imagine they would give a specific dollar amount and say $67,000 would be required to get new curriculum. Um and and as as I as I presented the last time when we looked at the two piloted curriculums and this would not drive our decision-m solely. We want to have a curriculum that best supports

034learning for our students. And the curricular resource that we did end up presenting here to the board was probably about $80,000 cheaper than the the second option that we piloted. I understand all that, Anthony. My question is it's reading. Five years ago, you told the board the same thing. We bought a different product. I I did not tell the board. I'm speaking as you as the administration. Now we're back here and again we're doing reader and literacy and you need to spend another 66,000 and I was just wondering if you had a reason why and um perhaps the board member was correct in saying that you are repeating your answers so I'm not going to get an answer. So thank you very much. I I would just like to say, Mary, that clearly you are

035very passionate about curriculum. And so I'm really going to implore you that as these curriculum things come up for a vote, please, please take the time to come in and sit down with Anthony. I've done it, others have. He is so welcoming. He will spend all the time you need to go through those materials and explain it explicitly and answer any questions you have. I I just really implore you that because you are so passionate about this, please take the time to sit down with Anthony and and discuss the concerns that you have. Thank you, Madam President. I beg to differ. I have spoken to Anthony. I've gotten responses on a few things. KIPP to include KIPP and that I do not find that to be the case. I do not find it plausible that

036we need to be spending $66,000 additional on something so simple and something we've done for 150 years as reading proficiency. Thank you. I move to approve the K3 curriculum revisions as presented. Second. All in favor? Uh any opposed? Oppose. All right. Moving on to new business. Um, we have both of our SRO's here tonight and I just want to start by saying thank you. Um, because you've got us through some really challenging times in the last month here. Um, but I'd love to have you girls come up and just give us your, uh, school resource officer report. Uh, good evening. Uh, so I know I'm probably a new face for some of you. My name is Lissa Hildenbrand. I started the beginning of this school year in September. Um, so I've been with the village

037for four years and I'm really enjoying my time here so far. So, we'll just get into it right away. Oh, you can look right there. You need to the writing up there's a little tiny for for me. So, um, just a little bit about me. My name is Julie Butenhagen. I've been a police officer for 20 years up here at the school district for seven. Um, I have an associates degree from Lakeshore Technical College. I actually went for parallegal studies before going to the police academy in 2004. I've been at the Pewwaukee Police Department since then. Some of my specialties, um, some of the things I really enjoy doing is our internet crimes against children task force. Um, forensic interviewing of children. So, anytime a child is a victim of a crime or a witness,

038we use uh, forensic interviewing. um so we can interview those children in a child-friendly environment in an open-ended way so we get their narrative. Um I've also been uh an evidence technician and uh I've worked on white collar crimes and really just sensitive crimes in general and then also as a school resource officer. So as I mentioned earlier um I've been with the village of Piwaukee for four years now. Um started here in September. I earned my bachelor's degree in Spanish and criminal justice from W Ash O Ash Oshkosh and then I uh went to the police academy shortly after in 2021. Um some of my special assignments include internet crimes against children um obviously school resource officer and I'm also a community liaison officer so I handle special events in the community um national

039night out um you know events at the lakefront all those fun little events that happen along the way. So just to kind of get into our role as a school resource officer, we are a member of the safety committee. So we attend the uh meetings along with admin and everyone else. Um we also are crossing guard coordinators. So we are in charge of you know or a part of hiring um crossing guards and ensuring that they are you know doing their duties. Um we're essential members of the behavioral safety assessment team for students who struggle with mental health. Um guest speakers in classroom. Julie does life skills is in currently in the thick of it. Um we're a liazison for complaints regarding student driving concerns in the community along with parking especially on Lake Street.

040And then we are also medical alert first responders. Some of the special events that we um help with or attend is a lot of the dances. So homecoming, um graduation is a huge one. Football games, police escorts for sports, um so when sport teams go to state, we um have the opportunity to take them usually to I94 or um 164, it's probably one of our favorite things to do. Um and then when they win, uh then we get to have a parade when they come back. Uh let's see. Spring sing is what also one of our favorite events in the springtime for Peabaki Lake Elementary. And uh again, dances. Prom is not in our jurisdiction, but we do help with um kind of the security when students first arrive here for um the festivities for

041prom, career day, reality store, um fire drills, and active threat drills as well as weather. Attend safety committee meetings. We often work with John Stangler um if there are safety concerns or if there's a certain um if if we see something that we think needs to be changed or updated, board meetings and then K9 searches of the school. Um so I'll just quickly touch on National Night Outs. Um as I mentioned earlier, I do help organize this along with another officer at our department. Um this year was the first year that we've ever held it here at the school district. we worked hand in hand with um John Stangler to kind of make this happen. It was um the largest turnout we've had in all the years that we've been doing it. Um so the

042cooperation with the school and the coordination with you know um all the student volunteers that helped and all the clubs. Um so it was a it was a huge success. Um it's it's meant to bridge the gap between police uh and community members. It's meant to be totally free for the community. They just get to come and explore. We have, you know, squad cars. Um, we had the Blackhawk helicopter flight for life this year. Um, so we have a bunch of police equipment, army equipment, lots of fun stuff for the kids to come do. Um, meant to form those lasting relationships with juveniles. Um, and having it at the school also helped with that. Um, to get that record turnout. Um, this year we are holding it on Wednesday, August 6, 2025. So mark your

043calendars. um with the success that we had last year, we're hoping for a similar turnout and we're really excited to put it on again. So, as we get into our priorities, our first priority obviously is to maintain a safe and secure campus for all students and staff. Um at the same time, we aim to build relationships with those students and staff members. Um, we educate ourselves on critical after incident reports, whether that's from events that might have happened here at our school or, you know, neighboring communities, other states, just to kind of build our own responses. Um, responding and being a part of the support team for students with heightened mental health states or crises, continuing to combat the use of vaping devices, um, many that include THC in our schools. Um, continuing to educate

044students and parents on the increase in sextortion. And so as IACK members, that's one thing that Julie and I have a pretty good knowledge on. Um, and our teens and younger are being targeted um, a lot more often nowadays. Um, we did have Katie McFersonson come this year for a couple times, I believe it was, um, to give her presentation on it. Um, so that's one way that we're kind of trying to educate on sexion. Uh we continue to educate students and support them regarding cyber bullying and continuing to network with local SRO's on current trends and safety concerns. And then we do um have our speak up, speak out and crime stoppers, which are anonymous tip lines. So we'll often get uh SUSO tips throughout our weeks with things that range from vape um

045concerns to sexion concerns. Okay. Uh so our goals continuing on um to educate students and parents on internet safety um extortion, cyber bullying and online predator cases. Um you know I think we could give this presentation monthly to parents and students and um unfortunately we still have these cases and I think it's so important. Um this is something that we hold very um dear to our hearts. Uh we see that kids are not just being bullied at, you know, at school anymore. They're being bullied 247 because it really trickles on to the internet and social media. So we are going to keep on fighting this. Um and hopefully uh some some way uh we will have less reports and um you know more students speaking up and sticking up for other students. Uh we want

046to continue to build those positive relationships with students and every opportunity that we can strive to provide the environment where students and staff feel safe and conducive to learning. Our door is always open. So, if there's any safety concerns that students or staff have, we're happy to have them down um or meet with them and talk uh about options and uh planning. Attend trainings on school safety, school threats um or school safety conference, IAC and SRO conferences. Um we're going to talk here shortly about one of the programs that we learned about at the WISA or Wisconsin school safety conference. I think it'd be a really great um addition to some of the clubs and programs that we have here. So, one of the programs that we learned about at our recent um school safety

047conference was a club that's kind of originated or the speakers were from Maguano High School. Um so, they have a save club and it's for students against violence everywhere and it's a nationwide club, but they kind of have their own thing going on there. Um but we're it was really moving for us. Um and they had a lot of good ideas that we'd kind of like to implement here. Um so we're working with administration to hopefully start implementing this program at the high school and at ASA. So essentially it's a studentled group that brings unity among staff, students, and community. Um they have monthly activities that promote a positive school community. So whether that be um football games, they have events where at halftime the two schools will come together and run on the field

048with um banners um for you know students against violence everywhere. They'll have these banners signed by all the students um throughout the week or the month um to pledge against violence in schools. Um so it's really kind of brought their community together, their school community together. Um they'll do dances at the halftime show with both schools. Um they have a hot chocolate event where they'll just hand out hot chocolate to the kids just to kind of promote, you know, um friendliness among everyone. They do scavenger hunts for see something, say something where they'll have rewards that you can turn in. Um and then one of the big ones was no cell phone Fridays. So they were rewarded for if they were seen without a cell phone in the hallways and that eventually turned into a

049no cell phone policy at the school in general which is something that I know Julie and I would love to have here and know it'll make our jobs a lot easier. Um but it's it's one way that they kind of slowly implemented it and they spoke on how um a lot of kids protested it at first because what kid isn't going to protest not having their cell phone but eventually they just kind of adopted it and it has worked out really well for them. they don't have any big incidents with kids having their cell phones on them. So, it's just it's really a club that we kind of wanted to slowly kind of introduce here, see how it works. Um, it really they have spoken on how it really has kind of built a really

050good community within the school and within the kids and you know, kids aren't afraid to speak out if something's going on and they know they have these connections with trusted adults with their stu fellow students. So, it's really kind of been it was a really awesome presentation to go to and just to just to see and kind of hopefully move it here as well. All right, we have another page of goals. Um, some more goals are to attend trainings on juvenile mental health. Um, you know, again, it's good a good reminder for us and a refresher always, um, that mental health changes and that we have to have that like, uh, trauma-informed care approach when it comes to some of our students. We're really hoping to, uh, improve our student dropoff procedures and student and

051staff parking. So, staff parking and student parking is a huge complaint every single year because we have very limited spots available. So, we're looking to possibly assign every single staff member a parking spot. Um, and really getting better signage. Um, during our last PD day here, Lissa and I, um, went to other school campuses and just took pictures of signs and kind of got more ideas and how we can make it more clear so we don't have visitors parking in student spots. You know, they pay for their spots. And also, um, we have some part-time staff or staff that comes in a little bit later that doesn't have a spot because we have visitors parking, uh, in staff spots. So, we're hoping to be able to, um, fix that problem or at least lead, um,

052in that direction. Uh, we did utilize, um, our school district for rescue task force training this past year, and it is something that we want to continue to do. We're very lucky and fortunate that we have this campus that we can train on when school's not in session as well as WCTC. So, we want to utilize that as much as we can to get our officers as well as our fire department and local law enforcement agencies that would be responding up if there were to be a mass incident and then work to improve our anti- anti-bullying by proposing a new anti-bullying ordinance. So, we've had a few cyber bullying cases over the last few years that I've been here. Um, again, this is very like near and dear to me because I know this really

053affects our students and their mental health when something happens. It might just it might not always be school-based, but it's something where they're coming in the next day and being um, you know, upset or bothered by something. Um, so we're looking to propose a anti-bullying ordinance so that we can handle that um kind of in an immediate fashion for that student and also hold hold parents accountable when it happens on more than one occasion. So, that's still in the works, but we're hoping to get that um taken care of this summer. Okay. I'll just talk about our rescue task force training real quickly. Um we did this in August of this year. We utilize Horizon Elementary. Uh in previous years, we've hosted it here at the high school. It just gives us an idea of

054the layout of those schools. uh this lack of training was only four hours, but we are really um looking forward to working with our area law enforcement agencies again. So, uh Sheniqua, Deloffield, H Heartland, um I thought we had another agency, I can't recall, but we were all working together to work through scenarios in our school um after a PowerPoint presentation. So, we worked through active threats as well as a rescue task force. For those of you that haven't heard of rescue task force, it's essentially our procedure that um in the past we would wait for the uh scene to be completely clear the suspect is either um down or arrested. Now, we can come into the what we call warm zones where there still may be an active situation um in a part of

055the school, but we can get officers and fire department personnel in there to tend to those wounded and evacu. Um, so it's a really important training that we do and again to utilize our school district is really really helpful for us to be able to uh work with our layouts and our um neighboring agencies. So just for kind of an overview of the calls for service that we had in 2024. Um so you can see that the high school kind of holds a majority of them. That's and because they're anywhere from parking complaints to vaping um you know vapes being confiscated. Um and then we have Asa Clark with 54 Horizon and Pewwaukee with around 24 22. Um so like I said her the high school just makes up a majority of that because they

056they take in more parking complaints and all all that fun stuff. And then here we just have a kind of a breakdown of the high school calls for service. Um so you can see it's kind of hard to see but um a large majority of them is going to be extra patrols. So officers who are working third shift will come up here and they'll pull um an extra patrol um just you know driving around the area making sure you know there's no no one hanging out that shouldn't be here making sure everything looks good. So that's where a large majority of those calls come from. Um and then we have other calls for service whether that be like a special event where we're up here um or that actually has its own um category but

057other calls for service would be anything that kind of doesn't fit in these other ones. maybe small calls, um, anything along those lines. Then then we have, uh, juvenile problems, disorderly conducts, and drugs kind of take the a tie there for third place. And then, um, parking complaints are also in there. Do we have any questions or anything that we covered? Yeah, I do. It sounds like um uh maybe one of the the issues that has kind of um blown up a little bit this year is this sextor tortion and I'm wondering if you could just take a moment and just talk through what that is and um how it affects our students here at the school. Sure. So um our first extortion case we had was in 2020 and it was a middle school

058student unfortunately who was being sextorted. So it started with a conversation over Instagram. Um unfortunately she had her profile public and somebody had reached out to her and it seemed very friendly. It was another person who said that they were 11 years old. Our student was 13. This happened outside of school. and the 11-year-old just really commented and said, "Oh, I really like your profile. It's really cute." Um, it really snowballed and extortion snowballs very quickly. These aren't cases where it takes weeks for images to be exchanged. It's usually within a few hours. So, that case was definitely unique compared to what we're seeing now. Ultimately, that girl who is an adult um said that her dad wanted to meet our student. So, now we have a second profile coming in. They're switching from Instagram

059to Google Chat. And this dad um asked for some images. And in order to get images, he sent one to make her feel more comfortable. And that was an image of a young girl and it would be considered child pornography. Our student was obviously very afraid and he said, "If you don't send me nude photos, I am going to tell your family and I'm going to come and kill you." So, there was some really serious threats for a 13-year-old. Um, again, this was our first case. We don't see him quite like that right now. Um, but he kept on pushing for her to send images. Once those images were sent, thankfully, she told uh a parent and they came in to report it. what happened um along with those uh with him threatening her, he

060had actually um said, "I can see your cousin. I can see her name. She lives in this area of Wisconsin, and I'm going to send her your pictures, and then I'm going to go after her." So, if you're thinking in the head headsp space of a 13-year-old girl who uh has never been exposed to anything like this, she was deathly afraid that he was going to hurt her or her family. So, she felt obligated to send these images out. In our second case, I'm going to talk about um male and females are very different. Usually females are targeted because these suspects want more images and what they do with those female images is they target the males. So for a male student, what they're looking for, I shouldn't say student, for a male victim, they're

061looking for money. So our male student was 15 years old. Again, this is outside of school. Um he was on, I believe this started over Instagram as well, and somebody had sent him a message. Again, you know, open profile. It was a direct message saying, "Hey, you know, how are you?" It started off very small. Within, I think, two hours, she sent an image. She sent an image. The image was of a different victim, but he didn't know that. He just thought, "Okay, this young teenager is sending me an image of herself. It's okay for me to send one back," which he did. As soon as he did that, they extorted him for money. And he ended up sending $1,100 via different apps. Uh we were notified by his parents because his parents got the

062notification that he only had $100 left in his account. So this was money he was saving for college. So men or teen boys are being targeted for money. Girls are being targeted for more images. And we give these talks. We had the FBI come with us to talk to ASA to talk to our students here at the high school to do the parent presentations. And unfortunately we're still seeing it. I think part of it is that our teens are being desensitized based on all the content they're seeing on the internet and on social media. Um, but it's also the fact that when they get an image from somebody, you know, they're um I don't want to say common sense, but they don't they're not thinking really appropriately and they're just making an impulsive decision and

063by then it's too late. So that's kind of extort or extortion in a nutshell, but unfortunately we're still seeing it. We've seen um students across the United States commit suicide almost immediately because they're being threatened if they do not send images. Their parents are going to be notified. We had our male student was actually told, "I'm going to let you know Mr. Stiff know." They must have come up with like a Gmail address, but they actually sent like an email address. And if you're already in a panic and in shock by this whole situation, you're going to believe that they are going to send that to your principal. So, um it's an important thing that we talk to our students about and also let them know if this does happen what you should do because

064I don't think we say it enough. We always say don't do this, don't do this, don't do this. And then they, you know, it happens and then we kind of have this freakout moment where they're thinking their their option suicide or they don't know what to do. So, um, again, that's that's kind of it. Do you have anything to add to that? Um, it's horrible. You know, I don't think in 2020 we realized when we had that first case that this is that was the start of it. I didn't even put two and two together until we got a second case, which I think was in 2022. So, after the programs that we held this this school year, did you feel they were effective? Did you feel like students were paying attention or is it

065just I think sometimes they are. I have so I teach life skills in um fifth grade. We were just in a classroom in um Issa. We've been teaching a or getting in classrooms quite a bit and we bring this up and I'll be like, "Do you remember when we came here?" If we're talking to the eighth graders, you remember we had this conversation like two years. I'm like, "No." Like we were all in the gym. How do we not remember? But this is what I worry about is that either we're not doing it enough or we're not having attend enough attendance for parents. Um, but if anybody has ideas on how to get that message out, I think it's super important. The other sad part is I don't think we're getting uh all the reports

066of the situations or incidents that are happening. I think a lot are handling them internally or maybe at home and that's okay. We're seeing that a lot of our suspects are, you know, on the Ivory Coast or in Nigeria or FBI and Homeland Security can investigate those. So, when we get an IP address that lists to those areas, we can forward our cases on. Um, our first case though, the one from 2020, our suspect was in Chicago, so we're able to identify that person. But sorry, I'm going on a a rant, but um I don't I I wish this would really stick the you know, the first time we had the conversations, but I was a kid once too and I know how important it is to keep on harping on them, but also to

067give them answers if it does happen. Have a question follow up on the a couple things actually. So with the money part of it, is that really the endgame that they really want to get you to send the money in terms of doing that rather than just the images and pictures? So it's it's a big money maker for some individuals, right? It is. So we also have adults that are falling victim to this. Obviously, adults have more money. It's rare that kids do, but they'll even settle for gift cards. So they know that young teenage boys are going to have gaming gift cards. They're going to have Amazon, um, Target, uh, all those where they will accept a gift card. I don't know how that works. I wish these people would get jobs and they

068wouldn't do this type of thing and use their smarts for something else, but you can actually give a gift card online to them and somehow they get their money. But it is um, financially driven. How or why, I don't know. And like I said, for the females, they're going for content because they could be selling it on the dark web or again they're you using it to get the the the boys to send right uh money. So I have two other questions. So the uh you talked about the SAVE group uh from your conference in terms of what's there. So it's really a student group called SAVE, right? Which is the students against violence everywhere. They're the ones who came up with some of the ideas and suggestions for things to do to help promote

069that awareness. Right. But it's a student group. Yeah, it's a student group and then they have like adviserss um whether that be teachers or or whoever. But um it like I said, it's a nationwide kind of group or club. So they take ideas from like whoever organizes it nationwide and they kind of some some of them do their own like they've created their own incu and some of them they run with with like the nationwide kind of bigger um events that they have throughout the throughout the school year. So they'll kind of create their own or they'll run with whatever they have. Yeah. Great. And so that's a more pay attention Anna and Natalie in terms of student groups. The other question I had was on the um pi diagram. Maybe go back up a

070slide or two. So what does that mean for the extra patrol? Is the extra patrol like when we have activities and athletic events here? Yep. Is that what that relates to? So that's just I shouldn't say necessarily normal but routine that for football games, high school graduations, basketball games, we'll have an extra patrol here in Tampa Lake. Yeah. So, between the special event um kind of pie and the extra patrols, that's whether our officers are like maybe Julie and I are up here for a football game and someone will stop up and hang out with us for a little bit who's on the road and they'll kind of see what's going on and they'll or they'll maybe just drive through. There's a basketball tournament and you know on a Saturday morning they'll drive through and

071just make sure everything's good. Um, so along those lines, sometimes if a third shift officer is board, he'll come up here and sit in the parking lot for a couple minutes and hang out. And I would be neglect. I mean, I think thank you to the village of Pewwaukee Police Department. Chief Hire, is that his name? Yep. Uh, we've had a great working relationship with the village police department for as many years as I've been on the school board and the response times have been great. And I think Julie, you said you've been here now seven seven seven years already. I mean, it's amazing how quickly time does pass, but I think without you, it would be a whole different environment today. But so, thank you for being here. Thank you for continuing to be

072a part of the educational process here because I'm guessing you do a lot of education, whether it's on one-on-one or group settings kinds of things. And that's really important because there's just continues to be a tremendous amount of external pressures and influences such as the internet, things that are out there that are causing students to again make bad decisions and bad choices every once in a while. So, thank you to the village police and thank you to the chief for supporting us here. So, I I do have another question on that slide about the Save Promise Club. At the very bottom, you talked about the no cell phone Fridays. Um, can you speak to, you know, there's a lot of talk about cell phones in the schools. Um, can you speak to our current climate

073here in our secondary schools? um how little or how much you think cell phones contribute to some of these issues that we're seeing. Do you want to touch on the high school? Yeah. So, I've seen uh good and bad things come out of cell phones. And I think when it comes to like the no cell phone Fridays, if I remember correctly, like Maguano said, students can have them on them. They just can't have them out. Obviously, parents sometimes have that concern. and if there's an issue, I want my child to be able to contact me. They can have it on them. They just can't have it out. So, we've seen um teachers implement cell phone use within uh their classrooms. They'll, you know, let uh the administrators know or other staff members like, "Hey, my

074class is going to be out in the hallway. They're doing a project." They will be on their phones. And I think that's great because we all have them. Um you know, we're on it checking email and doing other things throughout the day. So, I understand that it it definitely helps to be able to implement that in to the curriculum. Um, but what we're seeing also is students who are using it. We had a cyber bullying case last year where students are recording in the classroom students who have no idea they're there to learn and there's embarrassing videos of them that are being posted. Um, so students are being uh they're using them for something very negative. Uh we also see um students who might be talking to somebody from a different district or outside of

075our school and they'll, you know, become upset because there's an ongoing issue in their their messaging. So I see some negative things come from, you know, cell phones. Again, I I think there's a good reason to have them here at school and then a reason not to. I think what we learned from Iguano, they actually had a few students come to our conference and speak and they said, you know, we're really talking to other students and we're having that communication and it was really weird at first because if you go into a room of teenagers, maybe not a school, but you'll see that they're all on their phones and they're doing something where this really cleared that um space for them to actually talk to each other and communicate. and people that may not talk

076to um certain other students. They're all kind of coming together. The same with the hot chocolate event. It was um you know bringing everybody together. Everybody's welcome. No cell phones. We're just here to talk and offer you know kindness for the day or the morning. Could you expound on the good on the good of cell phone use in schools? So, like I said, sometimes they'll use them for curriculum or if they're using a cell phone to create a video for the class. That I think is really a good thing or a good way to use a cell phone. It's um you know being um the word I'm looking for a teacher's overseeing that. So, they're not recording things that they shouldn't. They're using it to create a project or a video that they're going to

077show the class. I think that is a really good thing um to be able to use a cell phone for. Uh, and I kind of already talked about the negative things, but that's what I would say would be really a good thing. So, the ability to to do a video in class is worth the massive amount of negative. So, that when when I was young, it was the the expression was well, when I was young, you sent your child to a school, you knew where their mind was all the time. you knew what that child was able to see in that school all the time. There was no question that something else was going to come into that environment that you were not aware of. It's a school. It's contained. So, you knew everything that

078your child could possibly see because it's in the school. Cell phones changes that. It flips it on its head. You have no idea where your child's mind is at any time when they have a phone. You have no idea who your child is being accessed by, who they're talking to. That seems to me a tremendous downside to the one possibility of creating a video in a class. And I I I would question whether the teacher couldn't do something else besides that to teach reading and writing and math that they have to have that video capability on the phone and therefore we should have phones in the school. But thank you for mentioning the Sure. Yeah. I the good part we were definitely we're probably not going to have any fans um from the students but

079uh I'm a proponent of it. I grew up in the 80s and 90s I didn't have cell phones. I know a lot's changed in today's day and age. I know there's benefits to technology and the change and it's a good thing. Um but I see the harm that it does and I'm a proponent of not going back to the 80s or 90s. That's just me. But I also see you know I use technology, I use email, I use cell phones. Um, so I definitely see a benefit to not having them. I don't know if that's something that we would get everybody on that bandwagon, but I think no cell phone Fridays would be a start to see how it goes and to see how the students handle that and staff and maybe see where it

080goes. So we have a lot of steps to take to get to that point. It's just our ideas that we're hoping to was when the phone when the phone was on, you said you were describing a restriction that had the phone on but not out or what what was um so what they and this is just off of Maguano's policy. They can have it in their pocket but they cannot have it out. So they can't be in the hallway on a phone. They can't have it out in class. They can't have it out at lunch. So, it can buzz. I'm assuming that it could. Okay. So, it's a I don't know why people don't see this right off the top of your head because it's even in adults. You see it with adults. They're sitting

081there with their phone. They're in they're talking to somebody, but they're already here. So, clearly whatever's going on here is not capturing their attention. You put that in a classroom with students, it would seem to me that that's a massive destruction, excuse me, distraction. for any child. They're just waiting for that thing to buzz, you know, and I've sat with students who are being tutored and the thing is right there and they're, you know, they're doing their work here, but that that eye is there's always one eye out for that that they don't have that much mental capacity to be able to split like that. So, but thank you for the uh suggestions about that. I think it's a huge problem. Julie, that's one of our um goals for this year is to evaluate that

082and the policy. I don't have you ever attended one of our strategic planning meetings? No, but I think I should. I think Okay, so they're it's May 5th, 7th, and 12th are the the they're all the same. Like, you don't have to come to all three, but if you guys could come and share your experiences with the the parents that show up, that's our topic of conversation at those on those nights, we would appreciate that greatly. Tammy can give you the details. All right, that would be wonderful. Thank you again for all you do and for sharing tonight. We really appreciate it. Yeah, I was just going to add on to um Stacy's point. Yeah, we are planning to have students there to talk about the cell phone policy. Okay. So, we would love to

083get input and I think it's one of those things where um kind of what Mary was talking about before with having that phone and having it buzz a big thing that it's just the world we live in. Everyone has phones. Even at your job, adults have phones on the table. So, I think it's just really kind of a part of our lives now. But I really think I I'm hearing what you're saying and I don't think like I'm personally not opposed to anything you're saying and I think it would be really valuable to have your feedback and this club sounds amazing and like Larry said um even though I'm graduating I would love to like Anna I'm sure um we would just love to implement this. This sounds great. So great. Thank you. Yeah of

084course. Thank you for speaking. It was really insightful. So absolutely. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you ladies. All right. Next, we're going to move on. Um, John is going to present the first draft of the 2526 budget and staffing proposal. All right. Thanks, Brent. So, u tonight we're we're we give you our introduction to the budget proposal for this upcoming year. The administrative team working together has built this budget over the last six months to conform to the revenue realities that we project coming forward. We're going to learn a little bit about what some of those revenue expectations are and what other driving forces behind it. We'll also talk about the budget as a plan. So, when we talk about the budget as a plan, we're looking at 18 months, 16 months down the

085road from when we're developing this and making assumptions. We have to make hundreds of assumptions when it comes to building a budget. Just like in your house, if something happens in November that you didn't expect, you have to cover it. So, we're fig we build the budget with resources available to be able to address any contingency that we might run into during the fiscal year. First and foremost, we want to always recognize the community. uh this uh the resources that are made available to do the job that we're doing and being able to deliver on the promises that we make to the community and that biggest promise is opening the door to each child's future. How do we how do we grow our mission? How do we live our mission in delivering the the program

086within the district and do it in a fiscally responsible manner? So we use conservative estimates uh to the best of the information that we have available at the time to be able to build the budget that we we think can be executed from a budget timeline. Uh the budget is finalized at the end of October. So there's three critical pieces of information that we don't have at this point. One is what is the third Friday in September pupil count going to be? That is one of the key determinants. Enrollment drives the revenue limit for the district. that pupil count is is essential to calculate that revenue limit. That's done on the third Friday in September. The second piece that's in there is what are the values? What are the values in our community? That is

087certified at the beginning of October. That determines the aortionment of the levy. How much is going to be charged to each um each household in the community. And the third key piece is certified on October 15th. That is the equalization aid that we can expect in the community. We're going to talk about revenue limit and what revenue limit a revenue limit means for school districts and how does that how is it determined the amount of property taxes that will support the general fund operations of the district and the relationship to that general aid that equalization aid that we'll receive. Please feel free to ask any questions as we go along because there's going to we're going to have a lot of information and again the purpose tonight is to introduce this. If you have any

088further questions or want to to talk through the budget process, I'm wide open to meet with you to to go through that. The board will be presented at its next meeting on May 19th. The um adoption of this preliminary operating budget. Again, the original budget or the budget for the year is certified at the end of October. So, as a quick summary, uh we have a balanced budget. Again, for years, we've had a practice of of putting dollars into reserve budgeting to put $100,000 into reserves into our operating reserves to improve the financial position of the district. In this last bienium for 2320 or 2425 and 2526, we have built balanced budgets where revenues in the general fund are equaling expenditures. We do not have an operating reserve contribution built into the initial budget. Just

089the the overtime, the constriction of resources that we have and the needs that we have to be able to deliver the program have eliminated the ability to build that into our preliminary budget without having reductions in in staff or cost. And we'll learn more about how that staff is built out in the district. Staffing plan is a key driver of this. We go go through a lot of time to develop a comprehensive staffing plan in the district and it's very student centric. The the staffing plan is derived starting with the high school course selection process that you will go through in January. We determine what are the students what are the desires for courses. What is that going to how is that going to drive staffing secondary level all the way down to elementary and

090then how many staff do we have to add or do we have opportunities within there where we can reduce sections of staff because of lower numbers of students. So that that staffing component of the budget generates over 79% of the overall cost of operating the district. So the vast majority of what we spend and I'm going to touch on that also in a little bit. Um there's two primary sources of revenue that this budget proposal focuses on for increases for this next year. About a week ago, the Supreme Court ruled that the $325 increase to the revenue limit per pupil was it was upheld uh that was included in statutes. Um we are budgeting based on $415 per pupil increase to the revenue limit about $90 more than what's currently in statute. that matches what

091approximately a CPI increase would be. I'm going to get back to that. So, I just wanted to plant the seed. We're also um building this based on reimbursement rate of 35% for special education aid. That's a very conservative estimate based on what has been asked from all of the agencies and the the governor's budget, the state superintendent's budget, the school administrators alliance is all looking for 45 to 60% funding on those costs. Special education aid is a reimbursement program. So what we spend this year is aided the following year. You're reimbursed for a percentage of those costs from the state level. Um and that number has been declining. I will show you some of the data on that. Um and then the rising cost over the if you look at the CPI over the last

092uh three to four or five years um 8% 4.8% has been driving costs. Everybody knows that costs have gone up for just about everything that we're we're dealing with. Our revenue has not kept up with that increase in infl in in inflation. Um so it puts more and more pressure on the personnel side and on the non-personnel side to become more efficient. And through the strategic plan, one of the big goals of the facilities and operations operations in particular is how do we get more efficient? How do we squeeze every dollar we can out of those things that don't touch the classroom so more can be available to use in the classroom? So, that's a big goal. So, um with these per pupil increases up to 415 and that increased reimbursement percentage up to 35

093when we're dealing with, you know, some of these things like the staffing increases and things like that. um how much will those numbers help defay some of those deficits we could potentially be looking at? Great question. Uh so when we project the budget from an initial standpoint, so when I first start working on this in October, we'll project where do we think our costs are going to go based on what we know at that point in time. At that point in time, we predicted three two to 300,000 maybe $400,000 of a deficit. we between bringing projected expenditures down in the budget development process and these projections for the revenues we're able to balance those. So when we talk about inflation and the lag all the way through 2009 the revenue limits so revenue limits came

094into play in 1993. Revenue limits were indexed to inflation from 1993 to 2009, which means that per pupil amount went up by the rate of inflation each year. Beginning in 2009, that was removed from the statute. And it was up to the legislature to each year to determine how much are we going to allocate for an increase to the revenue limit. for the revenue limit. If you look at that over time and compare the rate of inflation to what the increases have been, the fiscal bureau has come up with this analysis to show that the difference from 2009 to 2024 is about $3,380 per pupil of allowable revenues. So that explains partially the pressure that is on districts more recently. you you see all of the operating referendum that are out there. 148 operating referendum

095in 2024 and this year in April alone 62 operating referendum in school districts. A lot of it is because that cost of inflation, the cost of hiring staff, the cost of retaining staff is not keeping up uh the revenues are not keeping up with the cost of doing that which continues to put pressure on on district finances. I talked a little bit earlier about the special education aid estimate and why we projected 35%. Uh this year was projected at um actually in 2223 the reimbursement rate was about 32%. You can see there's been some additional investment. In the last bianium it was about $97 million was added to the pool of money that is used to reimburse those costs. uh as we as we the cost accelerate faster than the pool of money the pool

096of money that is allocated is a some certain amount. So one of the things we advocate for is to turn that into a some sufficient amount. So if costs are estimated to be reimbursed at 32.4% 4% but that cost of providing those services increases faster than it was projected. It gets prrated down which is what happened for years as low as 24 uh percent was what was reimbursed as that pool of money stayed the same and the cost grew faster than the than the pool to distribute. I mean what's the disadvantage though in terms of the sums sufficient versus some certain? I mean why is I mean because this it would switch it right a whole lot but I mean they haven't moved to some sufficient rather than some certain rate from a state standpoint

097um if we're providing revenues if and we have a fixed amount we've got5 billion dollars to spend this cost grows faster it puts pressure on the state revenues to make up the difference if that number if the amount they need to reimburse gets bigger. So put it in as a fixed amount. Now you have a target that you know is not going to grow on you. So between the inflation and between the differences here with the sum sufficient versus some certain. I mean it's two areas where I mean the state is kind of not necessarily taking money away but they are based on what was originally out there, right? I mean originally the inflation factors were built in and I assume at some point the was probably built in here too, right? to have it

098be a Yeah, I believe back in the 80s it was actually a target of somewhere around 60%. The federal government has had indicated they would reimburse 60% of the of the cost of special education services after the law was passed in the early 70s. I don't believe it's ever hit that that dollar amount. So, but we focus on those two key areas. is there's again hundreds of assumptions on different revenues that go into the operating budget and how we're going to fund it. Rather than spread this over a bunch of assumptions, the school administrators alliance has really um channeled the the advocacy efforts into these two areas because they have the greatest impact on the greatest number of districts. So, some of the highlights um the operating budget. So, we're going to talk about two

099things here and you'll see it in the slides. operating budget is fund 10 and fund 27. So the general fund plus the special special education fund added together overall that the budget is increasing by about three just I hear over 3% 3.05% for this upcoming year. again the operating budget. Um we have eliminated that projected deficit from the initial plan uh through our staffing plan and through being able to provide greater efficiency in some of the other areas of the budget i.e. utilities um transportation areas areas of that nature. Um the property tax levy with this increase in the budget the levy is flat. Uh it changes by $2,400 on $27 million. So, the levy is flat. Um, we're projecting an increase in property values, very conservative this year, uh, at about 2.68%. Um, values

100can fluctuate. Two years ago, we were over 15%, that number is certified in October. We have to make a conservative estimate. That way, the tax rate, and schools do not generate their levy based on the rate that's passed. You set the levy at the dollar amount for the tax levy. The rate is a byproduct of what happened with the values in the community. Say that again. The schools do not set their levy based on a rate. So if property value goes up 15% and we set a rate of $5, we don't get 15% more. We set a fixed levy and the rate would go down if property grows faster than we anticipated. We're also um looking at a decline. now a look in our enrollment at going down again next year. For several years, we've

101talked about the potential of developments in our community and how they could bring more students in that. They haven't ex they have not brought the student population that would offset demographics in the county and the state. And I'm going to show you some information on what's happening statewide with enrollment and in the county here. For years, Piwaukee has been, according to uh Sarah Kent at the Applied Population Lab, an anomaly, a stat statistical anomaly. Birth rates were low, population was declining of school age children, and PWA was growing. We had turnover peract we are an attractive district for families who want to bring their kids into this program into the educational program here. Continues that way. that has slowed and the demographic trends are taking over a little bit more a little stronger than what

102the residential turnover and the new housing in particular developments have been driving. And again, the focus of all the allocations in the budget is really driven by the strategic plan. How are we allocating those resources to meet the goals that the board and the community have identified? Those sessions coming up in the next two weeks with the strategic plan are going to help us u refocus again some of these resources that we have out of the strategic planning process comes um an engagement with the community and what their expectations are and what can we do different what are we're doing now and how can we get better at what we're doing through continuous improvement and strategic planning and realigning realignment of those resources. So uh quick summary of financial um now we look at general

103fund the general fund is going up 2.61%. You remember I said the operating funds are all going up 3.05. The projected cost in the special education fund is fund is um looking to increase about 5.9%. It continues a trend that's been there for 10 years where the cost of develop of providing those services is accelerating faster than what the general fund costs are are growing in the district. Um and again we do not um plan in this proposal for an additional contribution to our operating reserves. You can see the decrease that 1.18% is about 31 students um that we're projecting from a resident FTE full-time equivalency students. General fund revenues and expenses will increase about a million dollars, just a little over a million or 2.61%. The bottom line on here as we look at

104our operating reserves, we we've worked really hard over the years to increase that operating fund balance because that's what provides us it it affords us the ability to not have to go out to borrow money to meet our operating needs when we have our our biggest cash deficits. For years, we had to borrow money through a tax and revenue anticipation note uh and pay interest on that. When higher interest rates are out there, you could be talking another $100,000 or more. I believe when I started here, it was about a quarter million dollars in interest that was paid on that short-term borrowing just to meet all the costs that we had at that point. We have eliminated the need to to cash flow borrow as of about 28% of our operating funds in reserve. That's

105still really tight. It's still really lean. Hence, we bring each year to the board a line of credit for those times when we do get really tight on the cash flow for operating cost, using the line of credit to fill it short term until our revenues come in. In the general fund, um you can look at our revenues on the revenue side. The um the largest source of ours, 50 54% plus is from local revenues. The way the state is funded uh in in operating costs for school districts, you the revenue limit is made up of local property taxes and state equalization aid. The green piece over there, when you have a community that has high property value, it drives down the amount of aid that you get. So high property value per pupil, you

106get less aid. Uh it's the the way that the distribution formula works for state equalization aid. Yes. So in that case it's like think of Lake Geneva or anywhere up by Monacqua right I mean all those school districts high property but yes and for different reasons um some places it's density of students drives the changes the value some places it's sparcity if there aren't many kids and you have high property value you're most likely going to get very little state aid or no state aid John before you get too far did you say you're going to spend a million dollars for next year. That's what we're projecting from the budget for 2425 2425 and you don't have any increase in student enrollment. Correct. Minimal if we have I mean we have a flat enrollment. We

107have 31 students. We're projecting less over 13 14 grades. So you're talking an average of about two kids. Uh, and I will I will touch on that in a minute here. Mary, uh, when you say you're going to touch on that, are you going to touch on the million dollars? I'm going to touch on what drives that in school districts. Well, this district would be sufficient. Yep. So, will you be able to itemize the $1 million? It's in your appendix and it shows the itemiz it showed the itemization by function, which is the way that the board adopts a budget. Right. But I'm I'm not recalling. So does it We've got last year's budget, we've got this year's budget, and you've broken down this year's budget, each function, right? But my question is, are you

108is there some place where you're going to show us or you're going to tell us now exactly what the million dollars is? If there's if there's a particular manner in which you'd like to see it, we I mean, in business affairs, we review it by by object, which is our salaries, benefits, purchase services. I'm that's a slide ahead of me here. Um that's the way we would break it down or we can break it down by function. Here's undifferiated curriculum. Here's regular curriculum. Here's building support. Um administration, all the different core functions that we operate under. I can put that together prior to the the meeting on the 19th. I'll send that summary out and show the difference in each one of those areas if that works. Possibly. Is that the same thing as So

109$1 million title and then a list of all the items that are add up to that one million. Is that what you're Every function that's gone up or gone down. Yes, I can show you that. Right. But telling me what function has gone up or gone down doesn't tell me what you're spending the money on. It just tells me the pots are bigger. Are you looking for itemized by individual individual account number? No, not No. I want people who who don't sit on the board to be able to understand what it is. Not 0000472 has increased by 2%. $1 million item by item. What is costing us a million dollars more this year than last year? Is that something? Let's let's talk let's talk about it offline and I can figure out I can give

110you the best result to get you what you're looking for. Okay. So, I didn't want to answer yes to your proposal if that wasn't going to get me what I was looking for. Thank you. Y uh open enrollment is a key revenue in the district. The red piece of the pie, uh that is where we look at income from uh net or that's our revenue from open enrollment coming and it's about 3.1 million or $3.3 million in the upcoming budget. A lot of that is built by inflationary increases to the reimbursement rate and we have a small we're anticipating about an increase of 10 students um net to our open enrollment numbers coming into the district. Breaking down the general fund revenues in a couple of different formats for you. Uh you can see the

111the tax levy in the general fund is actually decreasing uh with with an increase to equalization aid and that revenue limit increases about $858,000. So of the million-doll increase projected revenue, $858,000 is driven through the revenue limit either by in our case an increase in state aid and a decrease in the local property taxes at the general fund level. On the bottom half of this chart, it it identifies another way of looking at this with more specific revenues in the general fund and what some of the changes are that we're projecting in those areas. As I as I talked about revenue limit in the past and allowable and allowable revenue increases indicated that since 2009 the revenue limit had been taking off from the CPI increase. You can see in 200910 and forward it was

112fixed at $200 a couple years. Act 10 happened in 20112 and our revenue limit went down by $594 per pupil. And then after that it was a combination. So the combination of revenue limit allowable increase per pupil and per pupil aid. Those are two different items. They both been used to distribute additional resources to schools since 201213. If we go back to fiscal year 18 1718 through 21, we average about $211 uh per pupil that we received in additional resources over that time frame. In 12223 the revenue limit went up by zero and the per pupil aid went up by zero. So the only the resource the district had was the onetime federal money that was there. If you had the average of 211 and it would have been in we would have had that

113increase to offset those costs when the fixed funds when that that one-time money went away. um that increase would have been over three years going into 2324 6 $633 instead of 325. If you add in the following year, this current school year where we had 325 per pupil, that's $650 compared to 844. That is a driving force behind a lot of the operating referendums that you're seeing. Those two years with no increases and then the subsequent increases that were approved not keeping up with those cost of inflation and the cost of doing of operating within the district. And you also see that the the 415 and we're not projecting an increase in the per pupil aid in our budget, but that $90 very well could come as per pupil aid increase um in a different

114pool in a different pool. As you can see over time on our revenue limit, the gray bar on the top has gotten bigger. We've uh really um managed our cost to to the to increase what our share of the state equalization aid pot would be. that would be coming to Pewwaukee. That has created flat to decreasing general fund tax levies for the district over this over the last six to seven years with increasing funding for our revenue limit coming from state equalization aid. As we look at expenses, um salaries and benefits are the biggest part of our entire budget. It accounts for over 78% of the operating budget in the district. Um, if you add in personal services, the green piece up there, that's where we can do we can provide services more efficiently by

115outsourcing them to a third party to bring them in like transportation rather than employing our own staff. Um, that also includes utilities. So between those, you're at almost 95% of the operating budget is personnel related or or services that we're paying somebody else to provide because they can do it more efficiently, more cost- effectively than what we could do it in-house. As we look at our expenditures moving into the next year, uh we always try to say where are where are our largest risks? What are our emerging risks in here? Um that's a riskreward. A couple of years ago, we switched to self-funding our health plan so that we were able to control our costs and re and retain um retain the reward if we had good performance. Um that's a risk. Uh if you

116have bad performance beyond what your expectation was for the given year, that's when you could you would potentially see deficits that come in. That's probably the largest risk area from an expenditure side that we have. From a revenue side, we have the state budget being developed right now. A lot of that um we don't have a lot of information. We have to go on what is being advocated for and what previous bianium bianial budgets have provided for resources and then which bucket is it going to go into. So, um, when I talk about our 415 and our increase in special education aid, that's based on conversations that we've had and where we're projecting those revenues, where we think it would be reasonable for that to happen u in the in the upcoming bienium. Depending on

117when that state budget is finalized, um, it could be, it has been for a few years in June. It's gone as late as the first week of October before the negotiations were done and a state budget was developed. If that happens, it leaves us very little time from because October 15th aid is certified and you have to set your levy by November 1st. So we have to be very conservative on our estimates and conservative on our on what we're projecting on the revenue side and on the expenditure side to be able to be to react if what ultimately comes out of the process does not match what we projected. Talked a little bit about enrollment and where it's been going. You can see in 2019 we hit our peak for resident enrollment for FTE full-time

118equivalency students uh and experienced about a 1% decrease uh a 3% decrease that next year in the fall of 2020. This happened statewide. Um and the declining enrollment has continued for uh the last four years. We had one up year there uh where it bumped up a little bit. That's why we keep uh anticipating with the new developments in the community, there's 65 homes that are completed in the last few months or under construction right now that we anticipate that they're going to bring some kids, but we can't build a budget. We're also in a unique situation where because of the declining enrollment exemption in our revenue limit, if we grow in kids this fall, we will have no additional revenue authority. All it will do is eliminate the declining enrollment exemption that we have

119on our revenue limit. So we would we would have to grow two to 3% to see any additional revenue um for the upcoming year. For open enrollment, we're projecting 359 students coming in and about 110 going out. Again, the open enrollment is still window is still open right now. It's open until April 30th. Then the selection process uh begins and will be brought to the board back on May 19th for approval of the applications that we're recommending for attendance. Here's a little bit of statewide data when it looks to when we look to enrollment. The bar in the center here, we have about 87,000 students in the state of Wisconsin right now. Um 4K through 12th grade. That's projected by 2829 to decrease by roughly 7%. Um that's a combination of live births and demographic

120data. Families are smaller than they than they have been in the past. um which is dec decreasing that enrollment statewide. This is from the applied population labs. We use applied population labs. We use our own local experience and we use uh the MD RERS study that was conducted in 2023 to meld all the data together to try to project where our September enrollment is going to go. staffing plan. Again, almost 80% of our budget is driven by staffing in the district. So, uh having a comprehensive plan that's tied out is really important. Overall, we're looking at a decrease of about 082 staff uh across the district in various positions. Um the staffing plan includes at Puaki Lake Elementary a reduction of one uh FTE staff position where we had some moves for sections um to

121accommodate the smaller number of students that are coming into the district now. Horizon is still has the same number of sections uh and it's in your it's in your report information. Um Asa Clark and the high school are down u just just a little bit. um in their buildings. John, did you did you say you were expecting a million dollars in increase in revenue overall? Yes. In the general fund. Let me put that into context. Mary, um CPIU is what is determined for giving raises for staff members throughout the district. CPIU is at 2.95% right now. uh that is what the state um if you're collective bargaining that is the max amount that you can bargain to. Um so put that into context that generates about $600,000 of increased cost just to retain the staff

122that we have right now. Health insurance, we spend just over $5 million on health insurance a year. We had a good renewal in comparative standards at about 5.8%. We're projecting the rates to go up. That is $260,000 of additional cost that you have to cover through those revenue sources. Those are the two largest. Transportation, we spend about $1.4 million on transportation. That's tied to a CPI increase. So roughly 3% that cost will go up next year unless we can refine it down and drop routes within the district. Right. You're giving me costs. I asked about it. I asked about revenue. revenue is revenue and cost have to match. I asked about this. You said and I'm just ver confirming that I understand what you're saying. You expect to get an additional 1 million tax dollars.

123No, just put it and it they're all tax dollars, John. I whatever pocket is not relevant to the question. um unless you're getting private grants. But anyway, you expect to get $1 million in revenue someplace and corresponding $1 million increase is what we've got on the I just want to make sure I've got it right. Okay. Correct. So overall the staffing plan uh is it uh has gone through hours and hours and hours of refinement and development to make sure number one all those student needs are being met that we have and that we are number two fitting it within the revenue realities that we have within the district. The tax levy again uh about a $2,400 difference from current year to next year. uh essentially uh no change in the overall tax levy that's

124projected for next year. You can see the blue part of that, the general fund, that's our operating budget. That is the largest portion of that local tax levy. What we cannot account for here is levy credits. So if you look at your property tax bill, you'll see school levies credit on there. That is a pool of money that's determined through the bianial budget that is aortioned to all of the school districts that set a tax levy in the state. Uh we receive several million dollars over $5 million. So as you look at the total property tax levy we have about 27 million 27.5 million. um what is paid by our taxpayers through property taxes is about $5 million less um from that levy credit. We do not know what that credit is. It is determined

125after the levies are certified. It is the pool of money in the last bienium about $570 million was added to the pool of dollars used for those credits. So a significant portion of what was provided as funding for K12 education was in the form of those levy credits in the last banial budget. Uh the debt service levy that we're projecting for next year includes all debt service cost associated with the note issues that was approved at the last board meeting. It will be closing next week uh or two weeks on May 7th. Um and next week uh will be the closing on that. That will provide us the additional the final amount of the resources for completing the construction projects on the campus. And as you can see the tax rate decreases about 17 cents

126we're projecting it. If those values grow faster than the 2.68 that decrease will be greater. Again it does not change the total dollar amount. The district sets a dollar amount for the levy. And here just gives you a quick history of the tax rate in the district. You can see in 2011 12 we were uh close to $12 and it's been on the decline ever since. Meaning our property tax um property tax that's been passed through the board passed by the board is growing slower than what the property values are in the community. And any other questions? Yes. Would you be able to propose present to the board a budget that has no increases in it? That is exactly what we had last year. Have we prepared one? No. Um we traditionally prepare a budget

127that is going to meet the revenue projections that we're having for the year. Um we have not gone through that exercise of what it would take to reduce costs to have no increase in the general fund budget. It might be a wise thing to do. I think it's it matters. I think that we're $33 trillion in debt. So for you to say, for the administration to say that this money is coming in or we're going to raise it, you're talking about a pot that's $33 trillion in debt, it comes from the people. So all that money we got from all the feds and all that that you have cited before the pot that they're talking about that funds this school which is every one of us including the two students here is $33 trillion in

128debt. It's way below zero. It would seem to me to behoove us to at least not spend more this year than last year because we cannot survive with a $33 trillion debt and we won't. So you're connecting the federal debt to I'm connecting the debt is not okay. The debt is to you, the debt is to me, the debt is to Tammy. It's everyone. We are the the security the grtor the sec the guaranurs of that debt. Sure. Whether it comes from a pocket of state, whether it comes from the property taxes, it comes from right here. Yep. Our dollar. Okay. It would seem to be a good time to consider tightening things so that we're not increasing our expenses, especially since we have and you're projecting decline enrollment for the foreseeable future. To not

129be tapping into funds that are not there. To say that we're getting federal money is to say we're just digging the the federal dollar deficit deeper, debt deeper. It's not like there's a pile of money we're getting. It's not there. So, that would be my request and suggestion that you present to the board a budget that has no increases in it for next year. Thank you. I think you're oversimplifying the matter. If we have a same level of expenses one year after another, you're basically reducing what you're spending. Costs go up. and you're looking at a a business financial manager who does an incredible job managing our expenses. So for me to see a balanced budget, I say kudos to you and your team and that includes a lot of people I know. They have

130worked very hard to create a balanced budget based on the estimates that they have and that has placed the school district in a very good financial position that we do not need to get operating referendums. And I hope everyone in this room recognizes that, including you, Mary. We are one of the few districts in the area that has not had to have an operating referendum. And that's for a good reason, because we have quality people using their um training and experience to give us good estimates on what we need to do to run the best district we can. And it's because we are such a great district that we are retaining the students that we are. I mean, I just talked to individuals from the Kettle Marine and Waca school districts. Their decline in enrollment

131is much larger than ours. Their financial woes are much more difficult than ours and they're looking at closing schools and combining. So, I I just I think we're blessed to be in this community. And to echo what Stacy said, John, for all the work that you and your team have done to continually balance our budget and not have us out there like these these other districts doing operational referendums. Kudos. Thank you very much. And I think you said it very well. It's a team effort. There's every member of the admin team and I say this often. It's the K12ness of the decision- making that's out there and that alignment with the strategic plan and the goals that we have as a district. You have professionals in place that know what it takes to drive student

132success and there's a cost of doing that and you put people in a position to succeed with the resources that they need to be successful and you're able to come up with positive results and we've had positive results for a long time now. And John, you didn't cover it, I know, but it's one of the doc or one of the sections within your document where you talk about the things that we already do and continue to do relative to saving money for the district. I mean, it just again when we've done some of the additional buildings, I mean, we've basically managed to actually lower the utility costs. I mean, we do everything and we know utility costs keep going up all the time. And if we probably had not done our self-insured uh health insurance,

133I mean, those numbers would be off the charts, too. I mean, so it's everything that we do really does help us to control or contain the cost as much as we can. I mean, we can't necessarily do things specifically related to some of the salaries and other benefits that we offer or bus transportation, those kinds of things. I mean, but it's it's still a tough challenge to try to balance that budget and make sure that we do stay within our spending authority and limits that are out there for us. So, I'd just like to push back, John, on this last statement you said. I think you said we've been doing a good job for a couple for a while pushing out every opening the doors. It doesn't hurt to remind the board that we have

134not been doing a good job. We've been doing 60% proficiency reading for the past 10 years. Thank you. Any other questions? Otherwise, I invite you to send me your questions. If there's a specific format you'd like to see some things in, let me know. I can provide that in advance of the meeting on the 19th, um, we can whatever is whatever each individual member sends me, I will then copy to the we'll include it in the packet that goes out for the 19th so everybody can be aware of the resource that we have. Thank you very much. Thank you, John. Thanks, John. Uh, next we uh need to consider um and possible approval of curriculum renewal cycle update. Uh, Anthony, I'll let you speak to that. Yeah. So currently as our like I said you

135saw CTE and um K3 literacy at our last meeting and took action tonight but currently we have a five-year curriculum renewal uh and revision schedule. Um I had started meeting with a group of our learning coaches um and some other individuals across the district early this year to really look at that process and try and identify some process improvements. Um, we talked to some other districts in the area as well. Um, so what we would like to do is move from a five-year cycle to a six-year cycle. And that will do a a couple things. It will offer um an additional year of curriculum writing time for uh those folks engaged in developing the curriculum to take a deeper dive into that. specifically when the board receives curriculum reports like you did uh last time

136around and then have access to the draft curriculums on our online curriculum warehouse. Um you see everything there with the exception of uh proficiency scales and summitive assessments which you guys would probably consider like the end of the unit test type thing. Um that is not completed at that point in time. That's completed in the next year. So moving to a six-year cycle would allow all of you to get that full picture uh proficiency scales and um assessment summitive assessments included. It would it will also provide an additional year of implementation um in in the classroom for all the teachers. So I I'll take questions if if anyone has any questions. Anthony, are you proposing that uh and sorry you're getting the brunt of these. These would normally go No, that's fine. Yeah, because Mike

137is our guy. You're just his his standing. Are we voting in the sixyear? Correct. Yep. To move from a five to a six year. Why can't we go to a 10? You you you approved the schedule. Um our process is to has been to do it every five years for each of our our main content areas and some of our programs. So in speaking with Mike, um you approve the the schedule. Okay. So my question would be why can't we go to 10? I was always suspect of five years because uh I'm a teacher so I do not need to sit in a lot of meetings. I actually teach and I do it well when I did it. But it puzzled me because uh as I understood your predecessor laying it out, you took two

138years to go through and develop the curriculums that you do. So that's how she would start. they've been do you present yourself and you'd say we've been working on this for two years etc etc which means that the thing that you're actually implementing only had two years to run and no teacher the first year is a wash because you're just getting used to the resources and you really don't know what you've got until you've gone through it once. So now you're into the second year as a teacher with that particular thing and you now first have a chance to see what it's doing and tweak it. Okay, that's your second year. third year according to your schedule, you've got people already replacing looking to replace that before you ever really know what that's going to

139do for the teachers who are actually teaching it. So, hence my question, why can't you move it to 10 years? Uh my opinion there would be that in the span of 10 years, there are many things that change. Um if you look at many of our elective areas and you look at wanting to have, you know, take career in technical education for example, um a 10-year span of time and advancements in what that looks like in industry changes quite a bit. Um there is regular research that comes out every year that when when we know better, we do better. So part of that process is digging into the most up-to-date research for all of our content areas. Additionally, the state of Wisconsin will make changes to their academic standards and it is our job to

140ensure that we teach to those standards, which is why a 10ear span in my opinion is too long. And and in in researching some of the area districts around us, we found people with four-ear cycles, which seems very quick to um no cycle at all. Um, but it it I I mean I've seen you do this. It's like the five-year plan in Russia. You're churning curriculum. Nobody ever gets a really handle on it. And to your point about things change, we are not hiring idiots who are not trained in their in their in teaching and not trained in their their particular skill set, math or whatever. They're always looking they're always looking on the internet. always I mean when you're a teacher it's annoying because that's all you do is you think about how can

141you better do this and what can I do to to to drive this better home to the students that's not a static process and you speak of it as if those teachers do nothing unless you tell them that that is not what I said I didn't say that you said it I said you speak of it as if that it's static that the teachers do not actually massively input and have massive ability to input and add on to as they see fit, detract as they see fit. But then I get back to again uh the five-year thing. When you're doing only five years in the third year is where a teacher will really start to zero in and say, "I don't want this. This doesn't work. I want to replace it with this. I've seen

142this over here. It's better." They start doing that. Third year, fourth year, fifth year, you're coming in and telling them they're going to start all over again. I think it's way too short and I don't think that the reasons that you presented were very good and I'm speaking as a teacher not as a board member. Yeah. So I I think there's a couple things there. So I mean the first thing would be the assumption that every you know in in our current mode or in our current model of a 5-year curriculum renewal cycle. It is not true that every five years we have a complete overhaul and change to everything we're doing. Sometimes there are minor tweaks. Sometimes there are changes to priority standards. And that is based on teacher input and implementing the curriculum

143in the classroom. So it does not necessarily mean that there's going to be a full overhaul. What it does mean is it allows us and we've been a district engaged in continuous improvement for a long time. It engages us in the process of looking at what we're currently doing and analyzing is this the best way to continue to do things or not? And sometimes, like I said, minor changes, sometimes more major changes. There's a great deal of time that goes into that. And again, I refer to uh your predecessor who said or the people who presented who come in and say, "We've been working on this a long time." Whether or not they recommend an overhaul, they are putting in time to do this. And if you're suggesting that this has been profitable to the

144teaching of what we're teaching, we don't have scores to support that. We got a lot of bells and whistles. We got a lot of processes. We got massive procedure. We got almost diddly squat for results. 10 years running 60% that is a flat line. That is not a changing line. That is not an increasing line. Flat. So all the time and all the resources that are spent on doing that are not spent on teaching Johnny to read one on whatever it takes. But it's right here. You just little Johnny's right there. You set them down with the book and you do this. If you are a teacher or a professional like you are engaged in evaluating resources, evaluating curriculum constantly. Where do you find the time to teach little Johnny to sit down and just

145read? I mean, there's only 24 hours in the day and they're only here for 12 years. The amount of time you folks describe to us, to me, in all the things you do out here to get them to read, this is a massive amount of time. And this particular thing that you're proposing here, this churning of the curriculum every five years, now every six is immensely timeconuming. I I printed out when you had a curriculum review for us and you put it out and we in our packet. I printed it out and I brought it here. It was this tall and you gave us four days to read it. But never mind that anybody going through documents this tall. I agree. It takes time and it's not getting you getting us where we want to

146be because they've done it year after year and there's no change in the reading scores. Thanks. Yeah. So, Mary, I respect your opinion, but I I do want to say that the way if the board would like to have more time to review that. There was a 4-week window um to do so. So, it and it was it was not 4 days. It's never been 4 days. That is completely Mary. That is not true. You are wrong. I have been on this board for 5 years and I have never been given four days to review a curriculum. It is given to us in one meeting. So you've got the preview time for that and then more two or four weeks later we approve it. That is not four days. And I am moving to move

147on this conversation. This has gone on long enough. I does anyone have any relevant questions for Anthony about this curriculum change? Anthony, uh, if I could I move to approve the revised curriculum evaluation and renewal schedule presented. Madame President, we're having a discussion here. Are you closing down the discussion? I have a question. I move to close this discussion. This board member is out of line. Do I have a second? That you can do. I move to close this discussion. On the table, we have a motion to close this discussion. Is there a second on that or are we continuing discussion? Second. All in favor? I. Any opposed? I oppose. You have said you wanted the board to talk and every time we start talking, either you or somebody shuts it down. You don't say

148anything new and we've already moved to close this discussion. I move to approve the revised curriculum evaluation and renewal schedule as presented. But before we go there, I I just want to put out there, are there any board members that would wish to have additional time to review or question Anthony before we move on to this motion? I would like to finish that point because that was not the point I was making at all. It wasn't the time that the board had. Who cares what the board does? It was the time that the people put into it to have generated that the fact that it came to us whatever time frame it was is totally as completely as irrelevant as I can possibly stress to you. It was that that much documentation took time and

149a lot of effort and a lot of consideration on the part of people here and I'm saying it's doing us no good. Thank you very much. I'll yield. Any further discussion? If not, Stacy, I'm going to let you repeat your motion. I move to approve the revised curriculum evaluation and renewal schedule as presented. Second. All in favor? I. Any opposed? Opposed. All right. Um, moving on. Uh, our next uh portion is personnel issues. We do have two resignations. Um, Sierra Gil, a FIAD teacher at Peely, and Amy Tosen, a special education teacher. Um, let's see. Uh, Sierra, uh, she did give birth to a second daughter in January and he's has decided that it's really important for her to pour her energy into raising her girls, and I appreciate that. So, she has um, chosen

150to give her resignation. The other one, Amy Tosen. Um, her family is relocating to Colorado for her husband's job. Um, so can I get a motion, um, uh, starting with Sierra Gil, um, to accept her resignation? I move to accept the re resignation of Sierra Gil. Second. All in favor? I. Any opposed? Okay. Secondly, the resignation of Amy Tosen. I move to approve the resignation of Amy Tosen, special education teacher at ASA and PHS. Second. All in favor? I. Any opposed? Okay. Thank you so much. There are no employments or leave of absences at this time. Uh moving on to the review of upcoming activities. Um, this Wednesday is the Kuwani Scholarship Award night. Um, it is at WCTC this year. Um, I know there's a handful of us attending. I'm looking forward to that.

151The board is giving out four scholarships this year. So, very proud to say that. Um, then we get into um a busy time frame. Uh, strategic planning. Our feedback sessions are Monday May 5th, Wednesday May 7th, and Monday, May 12th. All of them are for an hour and a half from 6:00 to 7:30 at night. Um, I plan to attend all three, but I hope um as many board members as possible can at least attend one of those sessions. Looking forward to the discussion we get from our community. And it sounds like, I don't know if you can confirm this, John, but I believe we've gotten RSVPs from at least 70ome. Do you know, Tammy? Yes, that's correct. All right. Wonderful. Um, Monday, May 19th, um, is our next board meeting. 6 PM business affairs,

1526 pm policy, followed by a 700 p.m. board meeting. Uh then on Saturday, May 31st at 1 PM, we do have the high school graduation, uh Stacy, Larry, Matt, and myself are signed up to attend, and the four of us will be handing out diplomas. Thank you so much for your help. So much appreciated. Then followed by um the ASA Clerk Middle School promotion on Thursday, June 5th at 6 PM on the football field. And myself and Matt will be there in attendance. Thank you, Matt. Um, followed by Friday, June 6th is our end of year celebration and lunchon. It starts out with lunch in the uh cafeteria at 11:15, followed by a really neat celebration in the auditorium where we uh take a look at those individuals that have served us so well um

153on our staff and they're retiring and we get to celebrate their accomplishments. So that's always a really uh neat event to attend. Uh next we have the CISA, the Cooperative Educational Service Agency's delegate appointment. So this evening we needed to appoint a delegate to attend the annual convention in May. Um that delegate assembly consists of one board member from each of the school districts um within CISA 1 region um with special provisions made for areas served by union high K8 districts. Um the board of control sets policies. They determine and assess services to be delivered and approve programs cost. Um again, that convention is on Tuesday, May 20th from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the CISA 1 office. Um Larry, you have served in that capacity in the past. Is there anything uh you want

154to add to that? No, other than it's again, um the board members, board of control for the CISA is elected by groups of school districts. So, you're part of a group and that's how you get elected to the positions that are open for that. And actually, the note in the minutes, I'm not really up for reelection on the board of control. I have at least one more year, maybe even two left in terms of my position. I'm uh currently as an atlarge position. So, this would be just somebody designated to attend the um the the meeting on the May 20th, what'sever in there. And that's it. 20th. That's all that's there. And I'm more than glad to do that because there's a board meeting that follows that meeting eventually anyway. So I will be there

155in attendance and I'm more than happy to serve as a delegate for Milwaukee school district for that annual convention meeting. So I I would like to say Larry, I would go for it. I would nominate you to be our guy to go to CISA 1. Is there anyone else that would like to take on that role? and Tammy will have to fill out official paperwork and send that through just that I'm designated as the official delegate though. So, thank you Larry for doing that. So, um could I get a motion regards to Larry? Do you think we need to do we need to do a motion? Um well, maybe not. I you know it says a recommended action, but you're right. We don't need to take a vote on that. Tammy, do you know? It

156looks like last year you did. I just Okay, let's go for it. I move to appoint uh Larry Dukes as the representative for the Puakei School District at the May 20th Bord of Control annual convention for CISA 1. Thanks. Can I get a second? Second. Thanks. All in favor? I. Any opposed? Congratulations, Larry. Thank you for your service in that area. Larry, would you be Sorry, Bren. Go ahead. Go ahead. Thank you. Would you there's there's a couple of meetings that you referenced there and I think last year I'd asked you for the minutes. Pardon? I'll start over. There's a couple of meetings that occur on that night. There's two each of them has minutes that meeting is there and then the board had the board meeting in terms of right and I think the

157board meeting is the is the uh the uh the one that I requested the minutes for and the uh agenda and so on and so forth and treasures report and you were not able to get that for me last year. Would you be able to get that for us this year so we know what that board does? Okay. Again, it's not my meeting. I can definitely ask the executive director and the folks there if you want a copy of it, I can have them send you an email of it or whatever if that's appropriate. So, why wouldn't it be appropriate? I don't know. It's a Caesar meeting. It's a Caesar It's a public meeting. It's a public Why wouldn't it be But again, like I say, I would have to ask if they could if

158they can send you the minutes. I don't know if they're I don't know if they're on their website or not, but I can check in terms of what's there. So, Okay. And why do you think you can't get them? That was the thing that caught my attention. Why can't I what? Get those documents. Why Why are you not entitled to the minutes? You attended the meeting as a member. I can I can get the documents. I'm just not authorized to be a releaser of that information. I don't know in terms of what's there, but I mean, yeah. I mean, if it's We're talking about the minutes and the agenda of a public meeting. Well, it's both. I Well, the agenda is out there. I mean, they published the agenda. Well, I didn't see the agenda

159for the board. I was there and I didn't get one when I was sitting there and the agenda ran through so fast they didn't even say what it was. There was just a lot of yeses and nos and I had no idea what they were voting on. Hence my question. But your response caught my attention and I shared with a few people because it was not clear as to why you as an attending board member thought you could not distribute the minutes of a meeting you attended a public meeting. So any help you could give me in that regard would be great. Thank you. Probably see you there. I can check for you. All right. Thanks, Larry. Uh, next legislative discussion. Um, John, you already kind of spoke to some of that. I'll let you

160address that. So, we're in the process right now. Two, there have been two two hearings from the joint finance committee. They're they go statewide and have hearings for public input onto the budget. Uh feedback that I've heard from the initial meeting in or the second meeting that was held at um in West Dallas this year was that it was heavily attended and a lot of a lot of the testimony was given in support of K12 education and funding K12 public education within the state of Wisconsin. Uh they heard a lot of that hearing was held. Two hearings are being held yet. One was today. This the fourth and final hearing uh is tomorrow up north and then they'll begin their work on the budget proposal and defining you know the fiscal bureau has provided them

161with memos uh detailing the amount of revenues that they anticipate they will have to work with in allocating through the state budget and um begin their work on building that budget proposal and working together with the governor's office to create a proposal that can pass when it goes through Again, the process we earliest we would anticipate something would be in June. Um, but it should be uh completed by October prior to the certification of state aid for the for school districts to not have it revert back to the prior year's amounts when it goes through that. On a federal level, we're monitoring some of the federal funds that we receive. Piwaukee does not is not as impacted as other places when it comes to uh resources like title one uh and some of those allocations.

162Um from what we've what I understand as of now 2425 the allocations are we're safe that we're going to get what we've been told is our allocation for this fiscal year. um some questions about 25 26 and then beyond that is when um the the largest concern is about what the level of funding would be for those programs. Again, areas where there's higher needs are significantly greater impacted than what PWA is. Awesome. Thank you. All right. Next, um our board of education evaluation survey. It is that time of year again. Um initially um in March of 22 we implemented a survey. Um that survey um now is used to help us evaluate um our board effectiveness um preparation for board meetings and board operations. Um that survey for the first time was shared in April

163of 2022 and um we've been taking it ever since. I I do think it is valuable because um you're able to give your feedback on how you individually feel the board is operating as a whole. Um that survey is now open. I personally have already taken it. Tammy, is there a deadline by which Candace did not give me a deadline. Okay, so no deadline, but I think we should create an self-imposed deadline. Me being probably the worst offender in the group. Um yeah, I would just I would just say um I I just think it's important for everyone to take it. Um just be honest. I I do think uh your opinion is valuable. So please please all seven of us, please take it. So last on the agenda is uh it's that time of

164year again where we do board officer elections. Tammy came around before the meeting and she gave you two little packets, a yellow packet and blue packet. We will do everything um by paper um voting including nominations and I've asked Anthony uh to be our vote counter tonight. Thank you. Thank you so much. So, we will just get into it right away. We will start with board president and if you could write down who you nominate for board president. The blue ticket. Yes. The blue one. This is just to vote for to nominate to nominate. So you you just um you can just tell us like you can just tell us at the end who's been nominated. The only person to be nominated is a motion to accept Bren as president. Is that do do we

165still have to take a paper vote? Not if you're the only nominee and everybody likes it. Unanimous consent. Thank you. unanimous. But either way, unanimous consent. Unanimous consent or a motion. Thanks. Thank you. Um, save. Uh, I think you can just for sure. Uh, next, uh, take your nominations for vice president and fill that out. The only person nominated for vice president is Ashley. Then it's Ashley. Thank you for serving. Thank you. Okay. Next, uh we'll take nominations for clerk. question. Should there be a motion following the if there's unanimous consent on the on the nomination, should there be a motion to uh appoint the or to accept the nominee as the president or treasurer? Maybe we should whatever Mary just said before the unanimous consent that Ashley gets. Mary, do you want to give

166that motion again? That what you said? I don't know what I said. I said motion to uh approve you as the president and Larry came up with the better idea. I thought of unanimous consent and we were done. Okay. Unanimous consent for Bren. Okay. So, but now we I'm not sure we need a motion on that, John. Well, just a unanimous consent to Ashley accept Ashley as the vice president. So, oh, unless Ashley doesn't want the job. That that part we're kind of skipping over. We're not allowing her to say no thank you. You just been pressed right into Thank you for your service. Say thank you already. So, thank you for your service. Okay. So, now nominate for clerk. Both Matt and Larry have been nominated for clerk. Okay. do the white one. Yeah.

167So, our white ones on this side of the room say nominate, but we'll just use them as voting for voting. Yeah. Mhm. Who won? I think you can just say who won. Matt, Matt. Congratulations, Matt. Can I get um a Do we need a motion if we did the vote? Do you know what I mean? Oh, you're right. I don't know. Sorry. No, the vote is the vote. The vote is the vote. The vote is the vote. Okay. Congratulations, Matt. Thanks for serving. And finally, board treasure, fill out your nomination. There are nominations for Stacy and for Travis. Okay. And we'll vote now. Well, it's going to be in the minutes anyway, so it's fine. Six votes for Stacy, one vote for Thank you very much. Congratulations, Stacy. Thank you for your service. Thanks everyone

168for participating in in that election. I appreciate that and for all who are willing to serve. Um do we have any citizen comments, Tammy? We have no citizen comments. All right, then I'll take a motion to adjurnn. So move. Second. All in favor? Any opposed? Thank you so much everyone.