Board of Education Monthly Meeting 4/17/23

001order the regular meeting of the River Falls Board of Education this meeting has been properly notified and we are going to begin with the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the pledge of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you do we have any visitors or delegations who would like to address the board this evening you may come we have this microphone please tell us your name and this would be your chance to speak my name is I have three students in River Falls I have a freshman thanks great is this better okay I am here on behalf of section 5e the appeal for the committee on poet X um I'm hoping that the board can see fit to remove

002it from curriculum entirely this was an anchor book and the committee met as for your policy and 11 out of 12 people voted to make it a choice book my problem with the choice book is so um Diary of a Part-Time Indian was also a choice book that had the letter home recommending the parents read it and um or at least huh see that it was a PG-13 book is what it was said like Billy Madison so I allowed my child to read it and it has the n-word it has I I'm going to quote it um [ __ ] [ __ ] [ __ ] which according to filmratings.com is an R-rated book and poet X has 300 pages over 30 curse words 10 of them are the f word touch me again and I'll scratch my fingernails down your

003[ __ ] pimples show me your D cups man horse and picks in a thong put out or get out those are not curse words but they are in violation of our language policy River Falls is a character school of excellence and this is not commensurate with our values I've emailed my concerns that's the committee I'm pleased with the rigor with which the committee uh thought about this process I think the inappropriateness makes this um completely unacceptable to be in our schools according to Scholastic this book is an hl800 making it fourth grade reading level for English 9. it's completely inappropriate the oh The English Department has lost my trust the specifics of the book when I said please could we have a letter depicting let's say the poem about masturbation which is graphic in detail to

004the protagonist I was told by a teacher that that's taking words out of context and we want to have the the literature speaks for itself and I don't think there is a parent that is comfortable with the school teaching masturbation and sexually explicit material in an English class I think if you gave teachers specifics or sorry parent specifics they would deem this completely inappropriate I was told in the committee meeting it's good to have the masturbation poem in there because it removes the stigma from masturbation to children and teaches them that this is a good and okay thing to do again I don't think it's the school that needs to be teaching morality I think we need to let the parents decide um I am concerned that this book has been embroiled in controversy since

005its publication in 2018 Huntersville North Carolina was sued by parents um and for anti-religious themes also sexual themes Marlborough School in Illinois banned the book for lewd content in February 2022 Lakeville Minnesota threw it out in June of 2021 for sexually inappropriate themes and anti-christian themes this year our children were made to read sexually explicit material without parental consent or notice this is wrong it's unlawful I would like it removed from curriculum thank you [Applause] so when it gets to the to that point on the agenda I'll clarify what the board is going to be able to do tonight so thank you for your comments anybody else who like to address the board my name is Veronica Sparling and I'm here to express my concern over some decisions that have been made concerning the curriculum

006used in ninth grade English hmm I haven't spoken in a long time I'm also aware of the book a Part-Time Indian being sued being used and I um I sent an email to Stacy and she kind of explained how that decision was made which I appreciate that but I was asking for specific names of people who would make the decisions to put these kind of curriculums in our school she sent it to superintendent Benson I never heard back from him because I'm just asking for a list of the people's names she explained that some of them are maybe janitors at the school some are people with an education background I I appreciate that explanation but I think we need more transparency about who is exactly making these decisions because I mean I think when kids

007are sent to school I would really hope that a classroom is a place to inspire young people to be their best to Aspire to lofty goals and to use their time studying to become the best most responsible member of society they can become I do not see the absolutely true Diary of a Part-Time Indian being part of that endeavor nor does poet acts as far as I can tell I would like to read a poem from poetix just so people can understand why I would take the time to speak up this is the poem in bed at night my fingers search a heat I have no name for sliding into a center finding a hidden core or stem or maybe the root I'm learning how to caress and breathe at the same time how to

008be silent and feel something grow inside me and when it all builds up by sink into my mattress I feel such a relief I'm such a release such a relief I feel such a shame I sink into my mattress I feel such a release to make myself feel this way is a dirty thing right then why does it feel so good this has to do a place in curriculum in school when kids are introduced to something like this in mixed company Suddenly It's like oh this is a topic we can talk about and explore together we can have sex and and we can masturbate this is so out of line with anything that should be in curriculum I am very disgusted and I think we need transparency to know who makes these decisions because I

009would like to speak with them just for clarification I've never suggested that janitors or custodians make curricular decisions in our district would anybody else like to address the board yes I'm going to ask people to keep their comments to one minute Melody boersma I live in River Falls and I am the parent of a senior this year so she only has a couple more months left and I've Loved this District but lately I'm so glad that she's leaving I'm sorry when I first read what was in the book poet X I was Disturbed I was disgusted I was disappointed both as a parent and as a teacher at a neighboring District first of all the parent side Jacqueline talked about it um your other guest talked about it we don't need to be teaching that

010stuff in school I'm not for um you know getting rid of books books or anything like that if my daughter wanted to read this book I would let her but not in school I would say you know what let's sit down let's read it together because the things that are in there are something that an English teacher should not be teaching my kid neither should a district those are things that we discuss as a family and we talk about it with our family moral code so for that reason it should not be taught as a teacher this is I understand the interest level is at an eighth or ninth grade level but the Lexile is at a fourth or fifth grade I taught fourth grade I taught fifth grade I'm now at a middle school

011my district teaches with rigor having a ninth grader read fourth or fifth grade material is not rigor we know our forward exam scores are going down steadily that's not how we get them to to measure up okay we have to give them things at a ninth grade level so that they can read it if we don't do that we will never be able to catch catch them up and so I would also ask the board to reconsider and and pull that book maybe not out of the library whatever if other parents want to read that with their with their children and make it a true Choice go for it but I don't think it should be included in the curriculum for those reasons thank you are there any other comments hi my name is Sarah

012Bucklin um I live within the River Falls School District um we we pulled our kids from school and are now homeschooling for reasons such as this um I was going to ask if all the board members had read um that's these books it made me uncomfortable listening to it and I hope it made you guys uncomfortable um if not that is questionable um you know I would ask you to categorize this content that we read today if I were to ask to categorize it I would call it word pornography which really should have no place in the school districts um I'd ask what is the goal of this reading material why is this something that is an important to be required or suggested even to read my personal stance in agreement with the other lady

013is that sex education should be left to the parents um the public school system seems to have taken a sharp left in the last few years instead of focusing on Reading Writing and math it seems to be focusing on social issues sexual topics that should have no place in schools in my opinion um the widest support is quiz supported criticism of my objection to this book was is this book being pushed on your kids and if not oh I'm sorry can I read I'll rewrite that is this book being pushed on your kids that are on kids that are not your own if not then what does it matter so I'll pull that back to you is this book being pushed on children that are not your own I understand um that a letter is

014supposed to be sent home to parents to opt out of this reading but why is that even necessary and what about those parents who don't have time to read all of your emails or letters what about them um so I think that's all I have thank you you were wondering about people reading the book have you read Poetics I read the experts X but you haven't read the book I have not but that I'm not the school district putting out this book you are you're one of them anybody else like to address the board hi I'm Pam Snyder um I am a Community member I had no intention of speaking tonight but you just asked her a question Stacy so I'm going to tell you I read it did I read every single page I

015probably read about 90 of the book I read it two years ago the reason why I read it is because it was on the list by Uber Max kindy as a book that he recommends and those of you who know who he is he's a social justice um proponent he wrote the stamp from the beginning a lot of books about history that a lot of people consider as critical race Theory and I did read the book and I found it to be inappropriate as a teacher I've also taught reading I've been a reading and interventionist I've been in school districts where we required our students to have ninth grade reading level in junior high and this was a large District in the United States if they didn't they took reading um reading classes we did

016all kinds of things with all kinds of books we did readers Workshop writer's Workshop we used Anthology we taught them how to write we taught them how to read so to this teacher's concerns if we're giving students books that are controversial if they are low level reading I think that it's incumbent upon the school district and also upon the school board to consider this because you can teach kids how to think critically with almost very little controversy and anything you get them give them to read they can learn how to write beautifully they can learn how to read I would like to know what is the school district doing actually to increase their reading levels if what we're hearing is math scores are going down reading scores are going down are there extra classes um

017that are outside of the classroom time or even in the classroom time to help boost those those kids if we want them to be have academic rigor if we want them to be the leaders of our City in our nation we want them to be able to think read write speak critically without um you know being watered down with their education without being watered down by things that they have to then maybe be feel you know there's a lot of talk about um their mental you know their mental concerns it's not just from um kovid it's from a lot of things but one of the things is kids who are not exposed to this and now have to be exposed to it have to wrestle with it people say they're going to hear it you

018know they're going to be on their phones they're going to see it on TV or you know movies or the internet or whatever not every home and not every kid does that yes many kids do but a lot of kids don't now you're making them wrestle with something that is maybe not their families um intent their families moral background you know if we're going to talk about Equity if we're going to talk about equality then we need to be respectful of everybody not just certain people so thank you for listening [Applause] the comments I wasn't going to say anything my name is Michelle Lundberg Bogner and I have an 8th grade daughter and I'm very open-minded to all of this stuff but I did have a conversation with her about this book and we read

019some of the excerpts and she said oh my gosh I would be mortified I would not go to that class I absolutely wouldn't read this not in school so just her take on it of being like I have to go to ninth grade and I have to read stuff like this in front of my peers I am mortified so just from an eighth grader perspective of reading like that foreign Gillis I'll be really brief a lot has already been said I have two children in this district and I also have a son in 12th grade in Hudson so I you know I go between the two districts and something that really bothered me was losing trust in the ninth grade English Department with providing this book and so that's that's huge for me is the

020trust and then the other piece that I'm really concerned about and it's been echoed so I won't belabor it but as the academics just sliding down and just um yeah that just really concerns me knowing this is a fourth grade book in a ninth grade class and the last thing I'll just say is garbage in garbage out I mean in that that to me really sums it up so thank you [Applause] any further questions or comments all right then we are going to move on with our agenda and the first thing is a wildcat Pride award and Mike would you be willing to oh Bob has them this evening we have two presentations and the first one is a gentleman sitting right to my right here Todd this is Todd's last school board meeting and

021on behalf the students staff parents and community of the board of directors extends this appreciation to you for your dedication commitment Devotion to serving the school board for two and a half years your passion for always making decisions in the best interests of students was a clear reflection of our values the countless hours of preparation homework and overall level commitment you provided to make this District the best it can be proves to you that proves you to being true ambassador of Wildcat Pride thank you but I have to add a few things yes so Todd um thank you for your willingness to serve the community and the district you have been a thoughtful and well-prepared fair and balanced board member I've had that sense that every single meeting and every interaction that I've had with

022you you have considerable expertise in many many areas especially related to fiscal policy and so I think that you impressed your board colleagues when you very quickly grasped what a defeasance is right away you needed no tutorials so you saved room for the rest of us um but you not only understand big picture Financial issues but you also understand how individual dollars impact specific programs and initiatives and I think that's really important when we are looking at financial decisions you've also represented parents really well which is particularly important for the board there have been many times we have asked what does this feel like to be an elementary parent and you've been very insightful I think we all know that your service has been dominated and complicated I'm given to covid we are right in

023the middle of all of that when we had a lot of meetings we always have a lot but we had even more and you were there with every one of them I'm also going to pay you I think one of the highest compliments that I can which is to say that you've been a courageous board member as evidenced in many ways but especially by your willingness to change your mind too often leaders don't do that I think that often leaders think that they need to just stay in one place but you were courageous enough to to think that you need to learn new ideas so you've listened you ask questions and you are willing to adjust based upon concerns for the district which you saw is stronger than your own personal opinions it was to

024be very much commended River Falls has a tradition of strong school boards that support the district we also have a tradition of strong school boards that support each other on the board not only professionally but I think also personally and in our relationships and you've done that particularly well so thank you very much for all of you you've done we're truly going to miss you but the good news is you know us where we Define where you know where to find us when you get lonely so and we'll probably also have one more person watching our our meetings online is that accurate oh know if this is on thank you Stacy I appreciate the words thank you Bob um yeah I'll I'm sure I'll find find the meetings from time to time so they're not

025as exciting to watch as they they used to be I guess but I'll stay up to date but you know that we have a number of really important issues facing the district and we are going to need to rely on you to give us your Insight your you are up you understand the context of our of our um the issues so don't be shy about reaching back to us that just would add that I appreciate that you always represented our what I believe to be a large faction of our community values and you were advocating for the best interest of our kids thank you [Applause] and our next certificate is Mark Chapin Mark if you want to come up here in the well [Laughter] DMR so uh mark the board of education extends its congratulations

026to you for being chosen the herb coal principal leadership award being recognized For Your Excellence in school administration is to be celebrated you are a true ambassador of Wildcat Pride congratulations [Applause] I'm not sure if everybody understands just how competitive it is to be able to receive a herb call award this is very impressive mark thank you for your service for your vision for your leadership It's a Wonderful reflection of you and the district so congratulations Stacy if I could add a couple yes words um just Mark appreciation and I've said these kinds of things to you directly so they're not a surprise but really appreciate your work in the Middle School the Middle School our ears are critical years and it's not like all the rest of them aren't but it's that age group

027is tough age group and your leadership not only in middle school but within the district and the leadership it's really been appreciated it's noted and you've made an impact here this isn't an easy job and you've uh you've got to keep a lot of people a lot of Juggle a lot of people's opinions and a lot of people's perspectives and all those kinds of things you do a good job and um I did this award this award is well deserved and it's a recognition of what you mean to this District so thank you for doing what you're doing and and continue to do it thanks Mark [Applause] all right we're going to move on with our Spotlight and education and today we are going to hear from the Renaissance Charter Academy I think it's Mr

028still varenas and his crew today all right all right well this is exciting did you get the justice all right well should we do introductions first okay so um this is our guidance counselor at the Renaissance this is Jerry Muller and over here is Peggy Webb our lead teachers so tonight's um presentation is just to give you an overview kind of an update of what's going on at the Renaissance highlight some things that we're excited about and talk a little bit about some of our goals for the new building too so a lot of stuff here we'll move through fast all right right we start off just kind of revisiting our mission Renaissance Academy models acceptance compassion and dignity we nurture Independence responsibility and individual strengths to Foster personal growth and academic achievements so that's

029a mission that we revised last year uh our population actually part of our population is right here as you can see Sierra is a Renaissance students serving on the school board uh you look good in this picture though um so we serve students um from a number of different backgrounds students who have fallen behind in credits maybe need a little personalized support in order to graduate with their peers a little bit extra for one reason or another um we serve a number of well a large percentage of our students qualify for free and reduced lunch program um a large percentage of our students have high Aces scores meaning adverse childhood experiences and I would say that all of our students in our program no matter where they're coming from benefit from smaller learning environments smaller

030class sizes and that's what makes the difference I think over everything else at the Renaissance um our goals for this year we continue to work on a positive School culture uh creating a culture where students feel comfortable and connected to their peers we found that that leads to improved academic outcomes and and we've looked at data to verify that we continue to promote dignity respect inclusive inclusivity and a sense of community another thing that we're working on very hard at the Renaissance is a career in college readiness we're focused on preparing our students for the next step what we're doing in that area is looking at student youth apprenticeship internship work based experience and Jerry's work very hard on some of those connections with post-secondary um attendance so our students over time have struggled with

031the tenants due to a variety of factors so we are addressing that by looking at the root causes of absenteeism in providing some incentives to have students with us as much as possible and we're also offering support for our students in terms of mental health and wellness support so we work with many underserved and underrepresented students who struggle with mental health issues such as anxiety and depression so we provide access to Mental Health Resources such as counseling um and we have a social worker who's not here tonight who's done a great job uh providing family with families with resources so we're there for students not only for the academics but also for the mental health support I think at this point Jerry I'll turn it over to you sounds good right you want to take

032this oh sure do I just click it on it yeah on the right side perfect uh like Mr Silver said my name is Jerry Muller I am new to the district this year I'm a first year school counselor and I work at the Renaissance and at River Falls High School and I've loved my time at the Renaissance so far so I'm really excited to share about what we're doing so ACP for those of you who don't know is academic and career planning so some of the gains that we have gotten through this year is that we have a ton of increased participation in programs like eccp and start college now so that's partnering with cvtc and uwrf to get some of our Renaissance students into college classes so they can see what college life is

033all about what a professor is like what the coursework might be like so we have students taking classes like goat herd management plant and Seed identification and behavior modifications so those are just really great opportunities that our students don't necessarily get at our high school but they can certainly go and when we were on the uwrf campus that was extra great for them to just walk over to their classes and then we have a lot of Juniors and seniors who are working in our work based learning program so they can get credit for working in the community so you probably see them out and about when you are you know getting your Burgers when you're going through the checkout lines those are students at River Falls and at the ren who are working and getting

034credit for it so that's a really great opportunity as well um Mr Silver and myself have been working with all of the seniors to work on individual post-secondary plans no matter what pathway they're going down we're really proud to do that we can offer that individualized support and check in with our seniors multiple times throughout the year so they know that they're supported and know that we have their backs we've done a lot more tours of four-year Tech colleges and certificate programs this year as well Sierra actually went on our uwrf tour I think it was pretty well attended for our for our student group and I thought it was great they got to meet with student panel there they got a tour of the campus we got to eat in the cafe interior I

035think that was a highlight and then we had Jen cell who works at cvtc she came in and she gave a big overview of what cvtc can offer for our students specifically and why a Tech College might be a really good pathway after school for students at the Renaissance specifically and then like Mr Silver said one of our goals is increasing our mental health and wellness at the Renaissance as well so we've prioritized a partnership with restorative services in the community and now at our new place at the old police station they are conveniently located a block down so that's been really nice we have a volunteer Calvin who comes in and does community circles twice a week and those are really really well attended he was honored at I think a couple weeks or

036a couple months ago he was honored here um and then we have five students currently participating in individual therapy with licensed mental health practitioners at restorative services so that's just another opportunity we can give students who need a little bit more in-depth mental health support that myself and Jackie Graham the school counsel or the school of social worker cannot offer we also have yoga offered weekly on site in the morning for students we have art therapy which is that picture there and then just this week we started our weekly self-esteem group that has six students participating and we have a enough students who are excited about it that we can run a second cohort of it so we're excited about that as well I'm Peggy Webb I've been at the district for almost six years

037now before coming to River Falls I did teach egg at a local at a plum City School District so I brought a lot of my egg Science Background to bring in Cooperative learning into the Renaissance Academy we've worked really well with the uwrf with Tova flygar who has written a grant in regards to environmental and natural resources and she and I teamed up together to implement some of the the grant components as part of our curriculum and the next few slides you'll see is what our science courses our natural resources and a couple other Broadfield science classes have been participating in we are currently working with our local resources and as you can see up in the photo we've been working with uwrf and the carpenter Nature Center where students have been given the opportunity

038to go to the Nature Center see the new facility and then also see an outdoor lab where they're doing some tree identification and some Timber management programs we have ongoing themes that are woven into the curriculum by doing self-care coping skills cultivating positive relationships prioritizing sleep and practicing gratitude now you're wondering how does that fit into our curriculum when we take care of ourselves outside of school then we can do better ourselves while we're in school so it's important that we model for our students some of the things that they can do when they leave our building to kind of perpetuate the Continuum of self-care outside of our buildings we do Dibble we do dabble in character education and we have taken bits and pieces from the curriculum and in this particular photo you'll see

039that our students are working at the University where they are creating a legacy project and the Legacy project is down by AG science which is down by the the greenhouse and you'll see a retention area where water can run off but then the native plants that we've planted in there will help with the runoff from the the parking lot and other paved areas um character education also deals with honesty we're working with some geocaching situations and when students find the little geocaches they are responsible to return items in their location we sometimes they say oh we should take all of this and they're like ah no we should leave it for everybody else so you know it's nice for them to remember why we're doing these things so um the honesty component was very prevalent

040in this particular activity respect we had a part of the grant with Tova that dealed with indigenous cultures and she was able to bring in a group of Native Americans where we learned about their water ceremonies and other indigenous cultures and practice and one of the other activities we participated in was how they gathered rice so we went over to the university and we watched a video on how they cultivated the rice in their handmade canoes and then talked about the environment environmental impacts other agencies have on their native lands we talk about perseverance you know at the Renaissance we have a number of students who are going to be first generation college students and you know I took them over to a college fair at the University and these two students that you see

041right here are going to be first generation college students and their families and we all know that education continues to break the uh the poverty cycle okay this is courage this might be a stretch but if if you can see it we've got a rat on the shoulder of one student and snakes and the others so if you need a if you want a safe environment to kind of face your fears we will bring in rats and ferrets and and uh snakes so if you bring it they will come and it's just a nice activity for students to kind of you know get in I'm I'm petrified of rats I can do snakes all day long but not not rats so it's just great that these students have the ability to do that we also

042Foster citizenship and if you look here you can see that we have students working in the community garden last year and then we also have uh the middle picture where we are working with the kidney project on the trout count that happened to come up that day so students were there learning about how to do the account the trout count to make sure that we are all good stewards of the land positive attitude it's it's attitude is your option is what I live by so when we show each other's support we are able to encourage additional Charisma to um to follow and to just show that everybody is supported in our program because it takes an entire it takes an entire Village to assist some of our students that we have and then we have

043respect the students are working with finding that's a little uh snapper turtle if you can see it in the Student's Hand they found that it's about the size of a quarter and they can we have it as a pet is that a good idea no put it back so you know we're learning to respect the wildlife and everything that it encounters and it's just been a really great opportunity to work with the grant that tovaflagar has written with us written for our students and then we have another one that's up and coming for next fall as well some of the things that we're going to continue to work on is some of the Native prairie grasses that are here in the area and then we're also working with her to do some things out at

044the the school Forest Mr Silver so we've focused on a model called the school of Hope which works towards helping students develop a sense of agency for their own Direction so over the summer we had a a book read and some meetings this fall and you know again working towards helping students understand the relationship between hope and success so I just thought I'd put that into the mix we've had a number of success stories we have a lot of fun at the Renaissance in case you're wondering but uh we with that we've had a lot of success um one that we're excited about is we're seeing significant gains in the number of students reading at grade level or above we um I would say about four or five years ago maybe looking at about 47

045percent of the students reading at above grade level and and Gary's going to speak to that in a minute but uh we're seeing gains um in that area so we know that what we're doing with reading is working it's a process we've got a long ways to go but we're excited about what we see so far in terms of the data um we've had some really great student presentations volunteered had nothing to do with the grade during African-American history month during women's History Month that we thought were just amazing and again the student the students who put this together weren't doing it for for any reward they just wanted to be part of this process and present the information to celebrate these months um we have less behavioral incidents over the last few years and

046I think part of that is the connection that students are feeling to our program in our building and people like smaller and Miss Webb um and we're seeing an increase in GPA overall in in students that are transferring into the program so what we'd like to measure is where our students when they come in and where are they a semester later in our program and almost um in all cases we're seeing significant increase in GPA so we're excited about that you want to take this slide sure me again to talk about data so like Mr Silver said um in 2019 we had about 47 students who were reported as reading at grade level and with our last fast Bridge overview we have 63 percent of students reading at or above grade level and within that

047sect of 63 percent of those students 31 percent were marked at a college pathway level and it's worth noting that quite a few of those were underclassmen so freshmen and sophomores so we're really proud of that and that's something that we want to keep growing and that's a lot of teacher work taking that onto and really prioritizing reading during free time reading during the content delivery and just making sure that's something that we're focusing on as a school culture and not just you like to read okay go read and then forget about it after that so moving on to the other side is the climate survey that we just administered last week for term four and that's looking at connection that our students have to the Renaissance so that first this is just a snippet

048of of what that survey entailed it was about 12 questions these are two that we're really proud to show off so that first one I feel connected to at least one Renaissance staff member we really like to see that grading go up on there so five being yes I have lots of connection I feel very very connected here and then that seconds um piece of data that you see below that the Renaissance provides support for me to be academically successful just like Mr Silver was saying we really pride ourselves on being a safe harbor spot for students to come and feel like they can shed whatever layers they need to and just be themselves with us so that they're connected to us as staff members they're connected to each other as students in our community

049and then they're connected to the academics that because we are a school that we are providing for them so that four and five those are that high end of the scale again just like the graph on top and we are really proud of those numbers that we saw as well all right thank you um we're really excited uh to move into our new least space um on Sunshine Boulevard Sunshine Avenue is that the I think it really is called Sanchez so it's going to be all rainbows and um but it gives us a chance to um to I think even leap further in terms of enhancing our academic rigor we may take a different approach to education at the Renaissance than traditional high schools do but we don't water it down we recognize the importance

050of having a rigorous academic experience for all students no matter where they come from so specific goals that we have for our new space is offering some upper level science courses including chemistry and physics which haven't been offered at the Renaissance mainly because of space and equipment so we plan on incorporating that into our curriculum as soon as next year and um the other thing we want to help students do is explore their interests and talents further so that we can increase the number of students that are participating in things like extracurricular activities and and Athletics and clubs I feel that's really an important part of being a high school student and we're anxious to bridge together with the high school on that given our proximity to the high school students can literally just walk

051down the block and participate in art Club fpla other things that we you know just because of our distance from the high school have been a little tricky many of our students don't have transportation so this is really exciting for us this proximity so that's what we have for you a lot of great things going on at the Renaissance are there any questions one question yeah so right now we have 50 intake and our capacity we figure in the new building is 100 why do we have 50 right now in that 80 or 100 because we don't have any space we've had a lot of requests for the type of programming that we offer at the Renaissance I get calls every week I have a long list waiting list but we just simply at the

052police station if you saw it you know what I'm talking about it's just so I think there's a finite number I should mention because we want to offer you know something different in terms of small class sizes and so forth it right around 100 is what we figure is probably our finite number in this new space but we're excited to grow which we will and and I think that we'll be able to serve you know up to 100 students really well yeah Crips yeah are you seeing a tie between class size and student teacher ratio so that you find that students perform better with Hands-On from the teacher approach versus big huge classrooms with us yeah I think that's pretty much a no-brainer in terms of just you know when we're dealing with class size

053and maybe 16 students we have the opportunity to really know them and know their strengths and know their challenges um and for the population we work with you know there are many students that do really well in in larger class sizes 28 and so forth the population we work with really is the population that tends to have slipped through the cracks so they need that and and that's the benefit of our setting and our approach so you're looking for more funding to go towards that'd be great so yeah it's more in this intention colors are going to better use because if you're saying the kids are falling to the cracks that means that the dollars are chasing the wrong problem well you've heard your Solutions that's a better solution to the dollars so I think

054part of that goes back to the population we work with so if you look at the percentage of kids that are successful at our high school it's very high so we're you know we're talking about those students who just simply didn't Thrive maybe the family's in transition maybe the student comes from a situation of no resources there's a lot of different reasons why they end up in our program but ultimately they're behind in credits they're kind of lost in the big school so what we provide is a connection for them um you know could it be scaled I guess so but I I think right now the model's working because the high school serves vast majority of students really well so yeah that's kind of where we're at I was curious because there's a finance

055as we evolve or we've seen more online schooling we're seeing more kids leaving the public school going to private schools right obviously for what happened earlier tonight for a demonstration right so I'm thinking that maybe like a survey to see what you're actually doing in comparison yeah and the Renaissance Academy has been in existence since 1998. so this model is working again for that percentage nothing's new here you know this is something has worked for a long time here yeah okay I think it's important to remember to remember that the Renaissance is one of our schools they're part of the River Falls School District I mean the Renaissance is is governed just by the school board just like all of the other schools in our district so yeah well I didn't mean to make it

056so much he's the leader of his yesterday he's a leader of his yeah no he's he's the leader of his building right just like we expect all of our administrators to lead in their buildings Ellen you're very impressive some some comments here because I think this is really good and you've got a good staff and of of been there and I've watched it and um for a long time this was um so for those that don't know in Wisconsin we can charter schools within a district so our district has two charter schools within it which is unique so we've charted the Montessori um school and we've chartered the Renaissance Academy which makes our district very different it gives our families a lot of choices the Renaissance Academy doesn't exist in any other High School in

057this way in Western Wisconsin west of Eau Claire okay so these the and it's not that we have these students in other districts don't okay it's that we've decided we're going to address these students who have unique needs and it's not like they're all one kind of student either as you guys know this is a very diverse very diverse district and it's a very diverse group of students who are in this but it worked um you know the Genesis of this was Carol Motes many years ago came out of the middle school and had formerly been an elementary teacher still active in his community and it's really been a Hallmark here and the success stories for the students and success stories and epiphanies for board members along and on the success of these students has

058has been um long and and Story the one thing we should say though is this is this is no more efficient way to educate students the cost per student in this and in the Montessori is higher than it is for the rest of our students but it's not higher if you consider the fact that we keep them okay and that we keep these students and we get them through a rigorous and relevant educational program and graduate them because our philosophy is there are no disposable students okay and that many of these students as you say come from very different backgrounds so we're very proud of this and it's why why we put so much time into it this is 50 students out of 3 500 students in the district but they're an important 50 students

059because we we don't want to lose them and and they're an important part of what we're at so I really like this presentation tonight and the fact that you've got a couple of your talented staff members here and we've got one of the students who's our student member on the board here this has just been something of Pride for this board for a long time so I appreciate the fact that you're here you know I I really appreciate that Alan and again there are staff members that couldn't attend a night and and it's because of them you know and their hard work that it's all happening the way it is so I'm very thankful as well more quick thing I'm excited to see the building as the first I've heard of it I don't remember

060like I don't know where the funding is coming from but I don't remember like having a referendum or anything about that and I thought that was districts that's all been an open conversation we had a public meeting about it that's in August um there isn't a referendum for that for that building we're renting it releasing the building yes I've heard that rumor too and and the speaking of the word transparency um as the board members have alluded to there's a legal requirement in the state of Wisconsin at any time school any time that school districts are going to purchase land sell land or in this case lease a property it requires a community vote and a lecter's meeting by law has to be posted twice which it was there was an elector's meeting held and

061school board members who were at that meeting stood up out of their school board chair and sat with the rest of the electors it was an elector's vote it was not a school board vote so we posted that twice we broadcast that meeting live and it was to establish a lease with an option to purchase that isn't going to happen without another Community referendum electorate Vote or whatever so there was there was a electric vote that approved the lease agreement and inside of that lease agreement is an option to purchase quite frankly School District doesn't have the money to buy a building we don't have it which but there's a lot of public support for this and we would think that maybe because this is this is a would be a very good deal for

062us if we could buy it but we can't decide that as a as a board broader things are going to have to come into play here and some priorities but part of the reason I'm glad you asked that is because there's a ton of misinformation for that ton of information I've noticed a number of of comments floating around about well how did this happen how did this happen well we're open our meetings are open they're posted meetings like this are recorded um the elector's meeting was open rather than to come and grab everybody and drag them in there are some things that we've um any point point being they're open and transparent and we want feedback on it this is a particular program that's just been incredibly good and just yeah across the Spectrum there's

063been support in this community for it and we hope that that will continue but the next step for this as Jamie says is there will have to be another vote if we purchase that building and purchasing it could save the district a lot of money going forward but it's moved around a lot as those of you who followed this it's moved from the old building the old Junior High building to um the PRS it's moved to the university it's now at the police station we've got to find a home for this those our teachers do a really good job in this program but it's um it's got to have a home and it's it serves a home and we can do more with it and our students deserve more for it so yeah all right

064well Renaissance crew thank you very much for your work and for um highlighting it for us today we are going to move on to reports and we have our student representative reports so Sierra when I think of River Falls I think of words like kindness community and generosity as a school district I see many students reflect their community's values every day at all the schools in the district we do little things to give back to those in need at the high school they have this place called Wiley's wardrobe where students can get essential needs like clothes Food hygiene products when they can't afford them I had the opportunity to meet with senior leaders of Wiley's wardrobe and just discuss why it's so important and how we can make something similar for the rent Wiley's wardrobe

065was created by a senior named Olivia Redman she knew that there was needs for students that weren't being met and she decided to do something about it her goal was to create a judgment-free Zone and she truly achieved it their mission is to provide a safe and welcoming environment offering clothing snacks school supplies Personal Care items to all high school students in need we get donations from many donors and we share them between the schools we have all types of clothing to for anything a student will endure we have business casual clothing for interviews and scrubs for those who are working a healthcare profession this is essential when students are struggling financially and aren't too ashamed to ask for help at the Renaissance we are trying to create the Renaissance rack but due to us

066moving buildings it's been a challenge to get started we all we are working to get hair products for all different types of hair our goal is to meet the needs of all students donations are welcome we are looking for adult clothing in all size and we hope to see more students utilizing Wiley's wardrobe and Renaissance racks and I can't wait to see how the program grows thank you you know that's a great way of getting some ideas is you see something that's going on someplace else and you imagine well how could that help us in our situation so you've got some creative thinking to do over at the ren about that so good for you all right superintendent's report I will be brief but the good news for tonight is just to mention some progress

067with our school Forest we for the first time really ever have a significant amount of student experiences planned for our school forest in the past there certainly has been some groups that have um gone out there on a field trip and some environmental learning experiences but we've made some pretty significant advancements particularly to providing access to the school Forest which has been landlocked in the past and we've partnered with the Kinney River land trust and we now have a new access road it's it's dirt now and I guess maybe a little bit of mud today but we're hoping that we're able to actually train this access road to get to our forest is a half a mile long and if you're going to take the littles out there the little kindergarten Elementary kiddos they're pooped

068out by the time they get to the forest and so we think we've with the help of a lot of volunteers of clear cleared out trees and did a little bit of road work and so on and we actually can get a bus down that road assuming the weather would cooperate and not be too muddy a vision for the future as we're going to get a Gravel Road in there and and that too would take some Community Support probably and we'll get a facility back there and do all kinds of great things but we're really really excited that all of the work that these volunteers have put in to help us gain access is going to come to fruition here in the month of May I think at last count there was either 10 or

06912 different field trips already planned and different age groups different experiences and so we're pretty excited about that I just want to give that kind of a progress update we've provided periodic updates to some potential opportunity for kids to experience the Great Outdoors and be able to engage in some environmental learning but it's really coming to fruition here now this next month very exciting many thanks to our volunteers for making all that happen good thank you Jamie all right we have administrative reports related to The District strategic plan so every month we have been getting an update about what's going on in our schools related to the plan and so this time we are looking at goal 3.1 enhanced mentoring and coaching support for new certified teaching staff so we're going to go by the

070order on our agenda and we will first hear from River Falls High School and the Renaissance Charter Academy I'm going to pinch it for the high school Chris Sawyer to step in on him but I'm going to do it just because all uh three of our high school administrators had some conflicts tonight one with illness and the other two with personal conflicts so I'm going to just give a real quick update on mentoring activity at the high school once a month the high school offers some collaborative opportunities for staff they're really learning from each other they're doing some things around the Universal Design of specific lessons and ways to engage students they're incorporating different methods of increasing engagement and group discussions with the students they're creating some very specific summative assessments that helps teachers to

071monitor okay so what have the students learned what have they not learned how do we need to adjust our instruction to increase the achievement for all of our kiddos all of our teachers have our new teachers have an assigned mentor that's common throughout the district and then also anywhere from September through May there's either once or twice a month there's also our ninth and 10th grade teachers they have specific meetings targeted towards supporting some of the students that have some particular higher needs and so they work with the counselors and do some specific targeting to help increase the academic achievement and engagement for some of those kids kids that to help avoid having them falling through the cracks um teachers are placed on a valuation cycle that involves the administration observing instruction and having dialogue

072with staff again that's common throughout the district as well administrative kind of this open door policy to provide coaching and mentoring themselves and providing support to our teachers there's a staff connect kind of a newsletter where they're communicating improving their Communications with staff it's very very intentional meetings have been held with the paraprofessionals the support staff folks doing a better job of that this year helping them learn new and different ways to help support students academically as well as behaviorally and so that's just a real quick overview of some of the things at the high school level thank you yes Chris do you have something to add for Ren um marrying a lot of the same ideas um we're obviously a smaller staff there's five teaching staff but but really I I kind of put

073our primary focus in three areas um one is to help teachers identify and address individual student needs we're all about personalized learning we kind of live and breathe at the Renaissance so allowing and and helping them understand what it means to tailor instruction to those needs is what we're big on we meet every Friday to talk about that and how we can better do that because it's a little easier for us to meet as a team because all of our teachers have students in common so what works for one teacher oftentimes will work for another teacher if they're experiencing some challenges so that would be one thing um we certainly want to facilitate the collaboration between teachers on staff allowing them to just share ideas because they're I've got to create a bunch at the

074Renaissance um and I spend a lot of time in classrooms that's why I fall behind on paperwork most days because I think it's really fascinating to me what's going on in individual classrooms so they they see me a lot and I get to see what's going on and and our staff is is pretty tight so so there's something that's not working or something that is working they're often willing to share that and and brainstorm and problem solve together you know and ultimately the winners are the the students in the in the core academic areas because um they're they're fine tuning all the time um let's see I had a third idea I can't see it there but I think we've we've hit kind of the major themes in our in terms of our mentoring and

075coaching staff we don't have a lot of new staff members we have a lot of veterans we have a new guidance counselor who's uh worked very closely with our teachers as well so um I I think that speaks to sort of the the um the family uh Team feeling that we have is we don't have a lot of turnover um luckily for us and and with I'd say the primary advantage of that is you really do learn how to deliver and personalized instruction in a in a meaningful and authentic way meaningful and authentic way so that is where we're at thank you very much Meyer Middle School all right uh this evening I'd like to share two specific academic instructional supports that we provide our new our new staff I think it's important and maybe

076it's Captain Obvious but we do have new staff that are veterans that are coming we have new staff that are newbies fresh out of college so that the amount of support that they need varies a little bit different um the one thing that we really haven't talked a lot about is the importance of educator Effectiveness and um we use What's called the Charlotte Danielson framework and what you find out when you look through the Charlotte Danielson framework it has four domains and 22 components and when you read through those there's four different levels for each of those 22 components so teaching is complex there's the art of teaching there's a science of teaching so one thing that I don't think this is unique to my middle school I know all of our our teachers that

077are in our three-year cycle have to do the self-review and I'm a real stickler for the self review I expect a great deal of time um spend a lot of time uh I expect a lot of time to be put into that self-review and then when we meet at the beginning of the year uh we go through and we have conversations we identify strengths and areas for growth conversation center around things like classroom management routines procedures high expectations making learning relevant to kids developing highly engaging lessons focusing on learning targets making sure those are posted and check for understanding the power of formative assessment response days so that's as principals we serve as coaches as well so we're coaching our new staff so that part of the educative educator effect in this process to me

078is one of the most important parts is that self-review and the conversations that we have around those that's the first thing the second one is our weekly collaboration meetings through our professional learning communities and that's with our grade level departments and really that begins with the belief that that all students can learn at high levels that's the work of defor uh this is the book study that we did as an admin team and that really begins with rigor relevancy and relationships so um pairing a veteran staff with a new staff having discussions around scope and sequence having discussions around pacing right now we're building proficiency scales we're hyper focusing on the learning we talk about and build our common assessments during that time and then analyze student learning so those are just two ways that

079we support we have grade level department colleagues and then the roles of principals that that we serve as coaches as well thank you Mark all right Elementary folks we're gonna have a quiz afterwards so that's what you're getting terrific well good evening everybody my name is Nate Sherman I'm the principal at Greenwood Elementary School and I'm also the school district safety coordinator and I'll be representing the Elementary's today Rocky Branch west side and the Montessori so in thinking about 3.1 enhancing and mentoring coaching supporting our our new teaching staff there's really four different areas that we wanted to speak to you about tonight where we provide support the first one like Mark said was as principals we try to be instructional leaders in our building so that's one area I'll talk to you about tonight

080we also have instructional coaches at the k6 level so we use them also for the goal of supporting our new staff we have assigned mentors and then also we use the colleagues each other's colleagues on a regular basis too and the objective of all of this is to put our students in the best position to learn to make sure that they're getting the learning opportunities they deserve through the support that we we provide them so as principals Mark talked about the educator Effectiveness model and I think part that he didn't talk about is our responsibility as principals to be in new teachers classrooms on a regular basis to give feedback also to evaluate but we try and be there on a regular basis informally first to make sure that there's a sense of comfort and

081Trust among the new teachers we want them to see us as colleagues and people that are helping them grow not catching them if that has to happen it will but that's not our objective so we try and spend a lot of time in the new teachers classrooms uh talking with kids watching them teach offering informal suggestions to them but then also there's a formal side of it that goes through our evaluate evaluative process where we are giving very specific and precise feedback to the work that they're doing maybe the teaching techniques they're using how they're questioning students how they're assessing students maybe even how they're using time their their time and the resources that they're using too so those are some ways that principals are supporting staff in their development our coaches play a pretty

082big role for all of us too this year we've had three literacy coaches and one math coach in the district and next year we'll have instructional coaches so we'll be coaching in a different capacity come next year but we're excited about the opportunities that that provides all of our teachers that are new to our district have a cycle with coaches so like Mark had mentioned some of our new staff aren't brand new but yet it's important for all of us to make sure that we're coaching and supporting them as well teachers are in education for the right reasons they do the best that they can based on what they know and we need to make sure that collectively we have the right amount of shared knowledge so that they're doing the right things based on

083the research that we have accessible to us so our coaches are involved with our new staff they do a lot of modeling for our teachers so they might share part of a lesson where they're getting in front and saying this might be how you would approach it there's also some co-teaching some back and forth some shared components that go on it's not an evaluative process with our coaches but it is one in which we're supporting our new teachers as they're working towards their goals our coaches are also helping our new teachers understand data analysis which is really really important so in addition to helping our new teachers figure out what to teach which is an important topic that we're going to get to in a little bit and also how to teach we need to

084make sure that our new teachers know how to assess whether or not our students are learning the things that we want them to learn so analyzing data and looking at it and saying okay what is this telling us what kind of adjustments do we need to make right now and can we make in the future as we as we teach down the line mentors are meeting with our teachers on a regular basis and we actually have I guess I refer to it as a mentor curriculum to follow where our mentors are meeting on a scheduled basis going over specific information to help our teachers transition into a new school whether you're brand new or just new to a school there's a lot to learn that goes beyond the classroom just how to function in the

085school where to get this where to get that how to run the copiers how to use the phones do you dial eight nine one what do you dial to get out of this thing so there's all kinds of things that our mentors are helping with but also just being a support system for them in anything that they need and then lastly I mentioned using their colleagues and Mark talked about collaboration and so did Jamie and referencing the high school and what I handed out to the board members and the people up front was a standard that comes out of the Wisconsin State Standards and this goes back to the comment that I made about trying to identify what it is that we should teach so for those of you that are Educators you know that

086the amount of standards that we have in the state of Wisconsin far exceed what we could teach during their years in school in fact I think some research says we'd have to teach them all the way until they're 23 to cover not teach that means something different but to cover all of those standards and I'm pretty sure they don't want to stay till they're 23 and we probably don't want them to stay that long either so one of the things we have to do is prioritize our standards and here's one of them this is a third grade reading standard and it says describe a character traits motivations and or feelings drawing on specific details from the text describe the relationship among a series of events ideas Concepts or steps in a text using language that

087pertains to time sequence and cause and effect simple right each that so obviously it's not very simple it's pretty complex it's multifaceted so our teachers need to work together to identify what elements that are within that standard are going to be taught if that's a priority and if so how are we going to get at those things so we have to work together to break down that that information and then we have to create what we call common formative assessments so there's different ways to assess students one might be at the end of a unit a final exam we call that a summative but at that point the learning process is generally over a formative assessment is an assessment of learning during the learning process so that we can intervene when we during the teaching

088process and catch kids before there are any gaps I also wanted to talk about our student support team that meets regularly with principal School psychologists school counselor title teachers special education staff where we're analyzing Benchmark assessment data that's being progress monitored on our students trying to see if we have need to change our instructional approach and then lastly you know another thing I want to mention that Rocky Branch has done a nice job with this year is peer observation we have a lot of experts in our midst in our schools and Rocky Branch has done a good job getting their teachers out and into each other's classroom to learn and observe so those were the things that I wanted to share from the elementary thank you I want to make a comment that I think

089applies to all of you and that's when our teachers are supported our kids thrive I have a question for you and maybe Mark too um what's the feedback that you're getting from teachers from new teachers specifically on the impact of the work and I'm curious if you've observed any any difference or or growth in our new teachers assistant right is this plan has been implemented in a really intentional way well this year at Greenwood we did not have any new teachers but we did the last couple of years and and to be very honest um I'm not sure that our approach was any different before this element of the Strategic plan became a priority for us or not um certainly it brings some emphasis and reminds us to stay on top of that but we

090all recognize that our most important assets are the people that we have in front of ours in front of our students so we invest a lot in them at the middle school that they have in terms of growth professionally we meet at the beginning here mid-year and at the end of the year so they each of our teachers whether you're a new teacher or not set to ppg's professional practices goal but we work to support our teachers on there so bare minimum hopefully they're making progress my whole thing was let's get let's get better off one thing this year let's get better at another thing next year have that growth thank you to all of you all right we are going to move on to letter D and I'm going to call on Ellen as

091the clerk thank you Stacy yeah um I'll say a few words about this I can say a few words more tonight because there's not an ed programs committee report so um anyway the election results so um let me just recap a little bit on the process of this I think as board members we've all been through it at various stages but just generally so it's out there we all understand the process of running for the board is by Wisconsin state law is a little more complex than most people think there's a window where you've got a file you've got to decide whether you're going to spend more than two thousand now it's twenty five hundred dollars on your campaign and for those that don't know most candidates are involved in some degree in a campaign

092if they spend more than twenty five hundred dollars there's another whole process they have to do with reports there are certain things you have to do with your brochures for example and all the material you put out there you have to say who it's paid for and all those kinds of things so it gets a little complex but for everybody who wants to run the their first stop is with Amanda um Taylor in in the superintendent's office and Amanda meets with them shows them the paperwork um they're all invited to do a one-on-one with uh superintendent Benson if they have questions and to talk through the process and also invited to talk to any of us current board members who who do that and um in Wisconsin um our elections for school board members city

093council and some nonpartisan Statewide races are all done in April and it's really unique there are very few States in a nation that do this I almost put the words nonpartisan in parentheses because as we all know these spring races have become more partisan and we just saw a supreme court race that kind of was all over the place and it's not the first time and there probably won't be the last time that that gets involved with us but in the meantime we're all we've got local citizens who are running for office so um they've they filed that paperwork they can campaign then the elections held given all the regulations and rules that Wisconsin has for them and then once the votes come in there's a preliminary report that Amanda gets and posts typically to

094the rest of us that she will get via the phone the results from all the precincts around in in the area and keep in mind this is Complicated by the fight by the fact that River Falls district is in two counties so we're getting Pierce our Saint Croix County reports and Pierce County reports and it's some of some townships or precincts and not others and so it gets a little complicated so the second step after those come in is here is a local District there's a board of canvassers that has to that I have to convene so there's at least three of us who get together and Amanda's there and um we count the tapes literally that all of the precincts have put together and see if they agree with the original ones and we

095put together our report sign it and send it back to the county so this time when we did it um there the numbers we came up with were exactly the same for the top three vote Getters okay for Patrick Richter who was a registered writing candidate and it's difficult to be a write-in candidate in in Wisconsin and it's a challenge but um he had he get when we did our canvas he got about 100 more votes than what he'd had before it's not that they weren't reported but for anybody who's seen the list there's registered writing and then there's other write-ins and about a hundred of the votes that had initially been reported as other write-ins went to him didn't make any difference on on the eventual outcome and each in each of the county

096clerks had that then we we waited long enough we didn't do it until last Monday to make sure that everything was in we did it sent it in and it's all done now so there were a total of almost 1200 votes 11 738 votes Allison page got 3 880. and um Stacy Johnson Myers got 3704 so they were the two largest vote Getters behind them was Cassie Erickson with 3291. Patrick Richter got 300 830 votes and then there were 33 other votes the question I heard from a number of people was um wow that seemed like a lot of votes so I asked Amanda if she could run off for me and I shared him with her I sent her send them out to the rest of you board members today these official result tallies

097that get posted out here and actually we've had other years where there have been 12 000 or more votes cast in it so there was a lot of interest and that's good um I really have to hand it to people who are willing to put themselves out there and go through what it takes to get elected to the school board and stay on the school board and deal with what we have to do in the school school board it's not just anybody who will do that I did have some questions about finances and how much you can spend on your campaign um and I mentioned earlier if you're going to spend more than this year it's twenty five hundred dollars you have to file reports one candidate did file that report this time did it

098elect to do that this year um followed all the procedures went to Amanda got the reports and has so far submitted those anybody who has questions about that that becomes open record so anybody can access that it's perfectly legal if there are outside groups and this is happening more and more across the state with local races who come in that's independent of what local candidates do and out of state or out of District tax can come in and as long as it's within Wisconsin State electoral law or federal law they can do that so there's another whole part of that but this year for some reason we got inundated in these nonpartisan spring elections with stuff and I just thought it would I would take a minute and sort of explain what happens in that

099as long as you can spend as much as you want um most people don't spend a whole bunch but there is money and effort and all that involved in being on the school board to say nothing of the time and effort that it takes so I appreciate and respect all those people who have put themselves out there and done that any questions about the results of the process Bob you wanna I think you want to mention that your role is that is the board Clerk and you're automatically a member of the canvassers but also Amy Halverson and Barb copy were the other two campusers so yeah I just didn't take it about myself the campuses as board clerk I'm board clerk it's my responsibility to make sure it and Amanda is been designated as Deputy

100clerk so she helps collect all the stuff and really puts us together and helps type up the reports and we sign them after we've gone through and we make sure that our accounts we sit in here sat in here for quite a while making sure that all of our accounts matched there's a lot of tapes that we've got to put together and find those things so thank you Bob thank you and Allison is here with us tonight so welcome oh yes I should say Allison is here and of course Stacy is here all right we are going to move into the action items and what I'm going to do is we're going to take letter e right now we will then follow up on the rest of the agenda later so how we're going to

101do this on letter e is I'm going to give a little bit of background I'm going to take a motion in a second and then I have a few comments to make and I know that the superintendent has some comments to make as well um about this so this is this is the the background and the context that our school board is committed to policy governance and I want to make sure that everybody understands what that is so what that means is the school board sets the policy for the school district and we do that by taking into account a variety of factors including State Statute Community Values the needs of the district and best practices those are the things the majority of the things that go into how we create create policy so once

102the board has established policy then it is up to administrators to implement it but then school board members come back into this because we are the ones that monitor that implementation and so in regard to the complaint that we had about the book poet X the parent properly followed School Board policy our Administration then conducted a review process made a determination and then again in accordance with policy 871 the parent slash Community member asked for that to be taken back to the school board for um for our for our review and so that's where it is for us tonight the only available option for the school board and this is really important for everybody to understand is to either uphold or question the process that Administration went through in implementing policy 871. so it is

103not our place to make curriculum decisions that's administration's responsibility our job is to determine if the process was properly held so with that bit of background I'm going to ask for a motion that we uphold the decision that the Review Committee made thereby affirming the committee's decision is there a motion please I'll make a motion to um uphold the decision of the Review Committee thank you Todd is there a second second thanks Bob all right if there are any comments my my comment is to say that when we're looking at policy government governance trust and transparency is really important at all levels the community needs to trust that the board is carefully considering Community Values and expectations for for Education that's really critically important the community also needs to trust that the board has complied

104with the law and with best practices the Board needs to trust that administrators and teachers will carefully Implement policies all of our policies so I think that at this point it is appropriate for us to be able to recognize that we need to be thinking about how we are not only implementing this policy but also policy 381 related to controversial issues and materials a key component in that policy is that parents will be communicated with well ahead of time so that parents can make informed decisions about a course of study or curriculum resources and how it fits their students so it is this board's expectation the policy 381 is carefully implemented it also seems of is we also need to be able to make sure that we are trusting Administration to have a rigorous process

105for selecting curriculum resources so um I am at the end of this agenda going to be requesting a review of policy 871 the policy and the rule just to make sure that we feel as if the straw the policy is strong enough to be able to manage public concerns about instructional and library media center materials so that's my comment I know of Mr Benson you have something to make and then we'll take anything else and then we'll have a vote I'm going to reiterate a piece of what Stacy said and that is that the role of the board regarding policy governance on this particular decision before the board their job is to determine whether or not the policy that the board created was followed in that policy where Stacy's mentioned that Administration needed to review

106the parent request for the book to re be removed the policy says there will be a committee of people that are put together and go through a process that helps reach a decision for that committee so the board's decision tonight has to do with whether or not their policy was followed and whether or not there was some Fidelity and a comprehensive approach taken by the Review Committee and the first Speaker tonight indicated that she beared witness to that process and spoke highly of the process that was used although not necessarily agreeing with the outcome there was some process there that had was done thoroughly so what I want to add to this is that regardless of what the board determines in this vote that's on the table is that the administration is is going to

107follow this vote whatever regardless of what the vote is by having a a full review of the books that are currently used in our classrooms we are going to engage our staff we want to build and promote a great deal of transparency I think the the trust factor is at play here and we need to be very mindful in how we address that issue so for deep Clarity let me try to resay it another way the board is only voting on whether or not their policy was followed that's their vote here tonight after that vote regardless of the outcome what I'm indicating is the superintendent I'm telling you that we're going to re-engage in the process of determining what books we will or will not have in front of our kids in our classrooms and

108we're going to forge that decision around one of our more recently board adopted strategic plan values which includes integrity and that we believe strongly in that word and frankly when I hear comments from the community about a lack of transparency or a lack of trust to me that speaks to integrity and um we can't have that we can't have our community wondering about our integrity and we will continue to again after this vote on the process of the Review Committee to we will administratively engage in determining what books are and are not going to be used as I'll use the word as a kind of a supplemental resource in our classrooms and make sure that their reflective of Our Community Values any other questions or comments before we have a vote the material we've been

109given yeah do you want to say well I mean the board was given extensive packet to review well in advance of this meeting so we have all the documentation as far as timeline who was in the meetings the committee the process everything like that it's not the rubric the responses the whole thing yeah thank you that's important for everybody to understand we've reviewed it so I was planning to just make a general comment about transparency and our commitment as a district to transparency with parents and community members but Mr Benson I think articulated that very well um so I'm not going to belabor that point but I think I want to actually turn to those of you who showed up today to share your concern and to express your um your care for what's being

110put in front of our students thank you Mr Benson is sincere when he says he cares about the values of this community and so for you to take the time to care enough to show up and to express concern you're an important part of this process and so we're not always going to agree about the books that we put in front of our students but at the very minimum we need to ensure transparency is there so that we have a mutual trust with one another so thank you for engaging in this process and showing up and thank you to Mr Benson for your leadership in taking steps moving forward to ensure that transparency is there and that our Community Values are a part of these decisions and I think that one way that we are

111going to be able to make sure that that happens when we look at this comprehensive review of policy 871 we can make sure that when we are communicating with parents it's not only what the content of the book is but which are whatever book it is is why we think it's important why we think that it would be appropriate for our students to read that that's the kind of information that we want to make sure that we are providing to our families ahead of time so anything else because I'm in a role um first off tonight and it's not Ed program right that's not a program right now um I want to agree with Lindsay and and Bob's comments too on this um well said again I want to reiterate part of the reason we

112have policy is so that we don't get one-off decisions policy means that an individual an individual parent an individual Community member an individual board member doesn't get to decide what does or doesn't get put in a curriculum or a small group of people we've got a process in place that helps us do that does it work perfectly all the time probably not but it's really hard to avoid controversial stuff I can tell you that there's several books that I would love for us to be teaching in several of our different disciplines and a number of you tonight would consider them controversial and there's some stuff that's currently in our curriculum that I agree is somewhat controversial but that doesn't necessarily mean we get to drop stuff in and out I don't get to say what

113gets it what gets in and what doesn't get in we've got to collectively decide that because we're a public school district we have thousands of people who live in this District we have thousands of students here and lots of parents and there needs to be a process to do this so This Is it is it without flaws we're always working on it appreciate the fact like Lindsay said that you're all here tonight because very few people show up and listen to to us we got a couple people who are interested enough I'm looking at Jim and Pam and some others that that that regularly sit in and listen to us and are patient with us but appreciate your interest but understand that there's some complexities to this um is our policy clear enough I don't

114know should parents be able to opt out and should it be cleared parents yes I think parent choice is very very important um I think how we do this we've got great teachers in this district and and the one thing I would say is I enough heard this a couple of times our test scores are not plummeting that's flat out faults okay if you look at our report card and we did a very extensive presentation on this back in in our December we're bringing it back in may bring it back so we can everyone can see it again there was an article in the paper about it compare us to neighboring districts there's been some cherry picking on data and there's a ton of data in that that's one of the dangers of presenting all

115that um that I think has has not adequately represented that you look at how we compare Statewide and nationally our district is doing well can we do better you bet we can do better that's our goal we're always striving to do better but there's a myth out there that somehow uh test scores went off a cliff they might have in some districts and they're down in some areas we know the the pandemic and all of that has done this Nationwide but um but that's not the case um so I I do want to make that that case glad we're going to continue to look at this and talk about it I would say too there is a process for all of this and we're administratively or even I'm going to put him on the spot

116and point to Nate Sherman he's our new curriculum director coming in next year and you'll lead this process so there he is you saw him up here he doesn't get to decide this either there are processes for it but he will be actively involved in this as well as the board so all right anything else all those in favor I suppose the motion is carried all right and I think in that comment you also have a teaser about next month come and learn about test scores all right so we're going to move on then to letter a and before the board this evening we have meeting minutes from the March 20th regular Board of Education meeting we have bills that have been submitted for payment we also have employment recommendations so at this point do

117we have a motion to approve minutes bills and employment as presented so moved thank you Lindsay is there a second uh thanks Mike any discussion all those in favor I opposed the motion is carried Todd I will turn to you one last time for uh finance and facility committee update yep so we met uh last Monday April 10th we had a number of things um as Lynette is transitioning in she is sharing um just a little bit about the way she handles things and some reports that she'll be presenting to the group um if if I do decide to attend meetings I'll probably pick finance and Facilities to come to so well then you get the spreadsheets yeah lots of spreadsheets so we started with a comprehensive review um of the roof replacement plan which

118I don't have the map in front of me but Joel hazelman presented and it basically shows that we are yeah 90 of the way through all of the all of the student centered buildings in the district um with roofs that would have 30 plus year life expectancy they would be warranted and they have ways to extend those beyond that length of time too so I want to say all new within the last 10 years less than that maybe oh yep and and so we are just finishing the last sections there um so hopefully we won't have to be putting money into roofs for for a very long time after that so um Todd can you just add because roofs are my favorite topic right I just want to pinpoint how important that is because we

119measure our roofs in this District in acres as Jamie always says not in square feet and it's millions of dollars of expense and the fact that we've been able to gravitate now at a 30-year roughs means that's going to for the next few years at least free up money that's going to help us because we're facing some real serious Financial streets coming up the next few years and um anyway it's it's great that they're doing this and I just think it's important for us to all realize that this will free some money up and relieve some of that pressures I give Joe a lot of credit you know my time on the board um he he has very diligently worked on finding the right material the right contractors and so um give Joel a lot

120of credit the next item we had was a 2022 2023 budget update through February of 2023 just showing where we're at compared to the budget and Lynette talked about some of the variances that existed um you know different different um timing for for when we receive payments uh from uh tax money and different things that the state the next item we had was to review and discuss the district's Investments and our policy there again Lynette's getting her eyes on that for the first time I don't know if there's anything specific that came out of that um that that you wanted to highlight it was more just kind of a general discussion and and talking about what's included in there I think it was just uh um yep you're good um I think it was just

121the recommendation to bring a policy um an investment policy sure yeah it was the one we had was a little vague right yeah and it was more financial management as opposed to specifically about investing sure sure being a draft of that soon yep yep um next item was to um discuss where we are in terms of fund balance and then also policy related to fund balance there there was some discussion mainly there about restricted funds that are put into fund balance and are those are those calculated in there's there was some terminology I think at the state level that would require us if we want to count that as fund balance that we would need to move it out of unrestricted and also making sure that the unrestricted or the restricted pieces of it match

122up with projects that we have on the horizon I think some of it was year mark for roofs which which had been taken care of Fairly recently then too so next item was budget model projections Lynette has a very complex model through is it bared Baird that she's familiar with and that the district will be using moving forward and presented a number of of different projections on what that looks like over a five-year Horizon um mainly focusing on what that looks like for us moving into next fiscal year and then the year after that because that there's a lot of assumptions built in and we are hoping to have clarity middle of this year until early fall on what the state is going to be doing is that fair timeline end of June yeah is

123we're waiting to hear we have to set our expenditures and and um things like that well before we know what the two-year budget cycle looks like from the state so it puts us in a tough spot and and um now we get kind of the final piece of that moving forward here in the next couple months and and then some of those projections become known items and and we can move on from there so we're hoping for some good news there's there's some uh optimism that special ed funding might be increased at the state level um I don't know all the way up to the governor's projection but if right now we transfer 3.9 million dollars out of our um general fund to fund the special ed programming that we provide so if if the

124percentage was increased to cover more of of the expenses we have there that would mean money left in the general fund uh for other other items I miss anything on the budget yeah thank you you did well all right I will give a report on the Personnel committee the Personnel committee met on April 10th and one of the things that we did is we recommend the board send letters of intent to certified staff that's an annual responsibility that we have to meet State Statute we also received a brief update from the insurance study committee there was a staffing update this is the time of year when we have retirements and we have resignations and we are quickly and eagerly trying to fill our all of our positions so we received an update that way we

125approved the volunteer coordinator and virtual learning secretary job description because since we have indefinitely placed our e-school on Hiatus for kindergarten through grade eight we really didn't need to have the same level of um Hands-On leadership from the secretary job description for virtual learning so we did some shifting on that and we made a change to that job description we also went into executive session to discuss the final notice of non-renewal for certified staff and to discuss contract negotiations with our two employee groups our Union employee groups teachers and bus drivers so at this point I would move that the board send letters of intent to certified staff is there a second please second thank you Cindy any questions or comments we've talked about this for for a while we do this annually all those

126in favor I opposed the motion is carried and ask the question yes please do you all understand the committee structure of how the board works so everybody knows what we're talking about when we might be good to explain yeah what can you know you brought it up yeah yeah you're re-elected so we have three maybe you're asking in part the board has talked about there may be a public appearance at times that some decisions when they get to the school board level appear to go rather rapidly and they didn't get a lot of vetting and conversation is that why maybe you're asking the question is just to kind of point out that a lot of that work dialogue debate discussion vetting takes place in committee work and we have three main Committees of the board

127Personnel finance and Ed program and so then when each chairperson gives a report they're giving a summary of what the conversation was and so when I said we received a staffing update then we talk about the fact that we have people who resign and people who leave our district and so then we're getting an update about where we are on that when we change a job description we're doing it in response to a need sometimes we do them simply because we are wanting to systematically go through our job descriptions and make sure that they match what's actually happening so we have those conversations at the committee meeting and then we bring those recommendations to the full board so yes we we spend plenty of time in board meetings or in individual committee meetings going through

128all of these things and those committee meetings are open so for those of you who love to listen to us we spend a lot of time just about almost every Monday night at least three Monday nights a month sometimes for before this month um and some of those meetings can go long as of alluded to Ed programs tends to be a little longer than the others but sure are there citizen members no but I mean these are these we are elected officials and so the Committees are made up of the people on the school board so however every committee meeting has an open format in the beginning for public comment so and as we have teachers or whoever it is that's working on a specific issue that comes and they're invited to the table and

129we have conversations all of us together but the Committees are not able to act on anything independent of the school board acting and so every time a committee votes on something what they're doing is they're recommending that the board take this action so that's that's how it all works together any questions Cindy will answer it's very good it's very good here in it and when we have you it feels like we Zoom but we've already talked about everything often twice three times and when it gets to be 11 minutes to two hours then I kind of thinking yeah I do think it's important to note though too the Committees are made up of two board excuse me three board members but oftentimes the full board will attend those midi meetings just so that we're all

130able to engage in the conversation and ask questions and collaborate even though we're not voting members on the individual communities that's a really good point that Lindsay to bring up and make sure people are aware of because I think that's a particularly important thing that our board does that keeps us strong is that we are all participating in those conversations which was also why I have a lot of respect for people who are willing to serve on this board because it's a lot to learn and there's a lot of time committed to it for letter e today that was many many pages to read all right so now we are still at the second recommended action from the Personnel committee and that's to approve the volunteer coordinator virtual learning secretary job description is there a

131motion please did we X point of order did we vote on the yep okay yep we did thank you Cindy is there a second yes a second thank you Todd any questions or comments thanks Dave for working on that all those in favor I oppose the motion is carried all right one of the things that the Board needs to do is at any point when we adopt new policies there have to be two readings and so after the first reading it's still not an adopted policy until it comes before the board for a second time and so this evening we have three emotions that I'm going to take together one is the actual policy and then the other two are rules which means how they how that policy is implemented or additional information procedures for

132how to implement the policy and this has to do with administering recommend medications to students but very specifically the medication naloxone which would be used in the situation of a drug overdose which we hope we don't have but if we do we definitely want to be able to be prepared so at this point do we have a motion to approve the second reading of revised School Board policy five or 453.4 as well as rule number one and Rule Number Two which regards the administering of medication to students procedures for administrating medications and then the specifics on naloxone Administration it's a flowchart there are motion please move to approve thank you Lindsay is there a second thank you Cindy questions or comments I think it's important for people to know that people who will be doing

133this will be trained it's also true that if um you should misread the situation and somebody is provided naloxone accidentally it is not a terrible kind of thing right right so all those in favor I oppose the motion is carried all right we are at F and we already have one future items and that could you just say one more thing we proved that as a policy because we can't just decide um we got a new drug we're going to start giving it to students okay there has to be a policy for this to do it and we're following our policies so anyway right all right so we have one agenda item that will come before the board at a time that the administration thinks as though that we're ready to do it and that

134is a complete review of policy and Rule 871 is there anything else I just had a question is that going to come through Ed programs or are we going to I think that is well can we just talk about what's the question I just wondered if there was a plan if the 87 871 was going to come through a committee first or if it was just going to be addressed at the board level and you don't have to answer I just didn't know if there was a plan or not we can we can wait on the magnitude of what's at play will probably just have that be a direct board conversation okay or we might get started at a program to give good credit through Ed program we'll have to think that through a little

135bit but ultimately it'll receive a ample discussion and review everything will land here twice before it's done but then we'll decide if it goes first in program or not anything else test scores I think that will be a anything else maybe a board resolution regarding um a resolution stating the board's advocacy for uh the legislature to improve school funding in this biennial budget especially since we rank 418 out of 421 districts in the state of Wisconsin in terms of our pupil allotment that would be important thank you both to Jamie and Lynette for spending time in in man in Eau Claire testifying at the budget hearing that's important anything else all right then we're going to schedule upcoming meetings the board reorganizational meeting will be Monday April 24th at six o'clock education program committee will

136meet Monday May 1st at 6th finance and Facilities will be Monday May 8th at 6th Personnel will be Monday May 8th at 7 or immediately following finance and Facilities the next regular board meeting will be Monday May 15th here in the district office at this point I would like to make a request for executive session pursuant to Wisconsin statute 1985 1C for the purpose of issuing final notice of non-renewal to certified staff and to discuss negotiations with employee groups is there a motion so moved thank you second thank you Bob I need a roll call Mike Lindsay yes Todd yes Ellen yes I'm saying yes Cindy we are in thank you everybody for coming but uh