001wow another life very good wait now it must be on where's that green well it's kind of green okay just check if it's okay so we're all good now everybody has a good mic that's off now all right okay okay there you go good evening everyone i called to order the monday april 18th regular meeting of the river falls board of education this meeting has been properly notified i'm going to move directly into hearing of visitors or delegations and i have a request from mr jim miller you are the first ones to be able to address the board this evening sitting at my desk hi i'm missy hildebrandt uh the commander at the river falls american legion and i have my adjutant jim miller here with me tonight um and we wanted to come this
002evening and recognize superintendent jamie benson and middle school principal mark chapin for helping us out at the legion they came on a saturday and facilitated a brainstorming session for our members to create a vision statement a mission statement and our strategic plan for the years going forward so we would like to present them with certificates of appreciation um if we could have jamie and mark come up please we'd like to the american legion would like to present a certificate of appreciation to jamie benson and mark chapin in recognition and super sincere appreciation of outstanding service and assistance which contributed to the advancement of the american legion programs and activities dedicated to god garden country presented by fletcher pajack american legion post 121 department of wisconsin on this 18th day of april 2022 [Applause] and the
003same a certificate of appreciation for mark chapin in recognition of sincere appreciation of outstanding service and assistance which contributed to the advancement of the american legion programs and activities dedicated to god and country presented by fletcher pahacik american legion post 121 department of wisconsin on this 18th day of april 2022 [Applause] you [Applause] would you like you're welcome i think one of the things that this demonstrates that leaders that we have within the district are also leaders in the community and we're very appreciative of mark for your willingness to do that and for our superintendent it's very helpful in terms of the relationship we have with with the community so we have one more wildcat pride that is hot off the press todd all right uh you know what actually should we wait on that
004is there any other visitors or delegations i think i jumped the gun sorry are there any other visitors or delegations who would like to address the board please come okay please tell us your name and if you use the mic then everybody will be able to hear you so my name's grace redmond um and i just have a little speech that i want to share tonight with everybody so i never thought that i would have to return to a board meeting after i graduated to defend a program that i love so much honestly it's embarrassing embarrassing kim miller has taken the theater program and changed it into something many students look forward to each year when i was a freshman back in 2015 the theater department had roughly 30 kids if we flash forward to
005when i graduated in 2019 more than 100 students were involved within the program i have found some of my closest friends from this activity and it truly helped me find my voice within the high school walls i believe that jamie benson has not taken the time nor wanted to to learn about this impactful program clearly thinking that there are only 10 kids involved doesn't prove that you have an understanding of what the theater program does or someone with such a little background should not be the deciding factor of what they do as benson has cowered in the corner not replying to emails and dodging phone calls this group of angry and frustrated students continues to grow i sent in an email when this news was first made public last tuesday and i have yet to
006hear anything back i know that i am not the only one who is dealing with this it appears that no one cares to mention that it would be the high school version of sweeney todd there's no killing grinding or cutting that happens on stage it is all implied and shown symbolically i feel that this musical has been painted in a bad light in the star observer that came out last week the synopsis given is the plot focuses around serial killers whose assistant cuts up victims bodies and turns them into meat pies this article fails to mention any of the things i listed above this is the high school version and there's never actually any gore or violent killings on stage do any of you know when the policy was first created september of 1991 last
007revised during the year of 2008 this policy is over 20 years old theater and content in schools has changed and this policy should reflect those changes this was all revised before the musical and most of the department that we know today even existed so how are we going to pull from a policy that use and use it to make this very important decision these kids need a musical that challenges them to grow deeper and grow as actors and actresses i think that it is insulting to kim that the musical was pulled especially after her judgment has been shown to work out time after time the theater program started with a 700 budget this money did not come from the high school but instead the local community theater who had money left over currently that bank
008account holds fifty thousand dollars fifty thousand dollars this is all money that the theater department has earned for themselves after performing many sold out shows shows that people thought no one would come to because of their dark theming and dialogue kim miller has made the theater program grow into what it is today kim miller helped student after student find their true selves kim miller helped to enrich the lives of these students and brought around overall positivity to the group kim miller helped me become who i am today and lastly kim miller knows what's best for the theater program not some people who don't even bother to attend the shows i hope this speech made you feel uncomfortable because then maybe you will start to understand why it's such a big deal grace um this is
009not an agenda item and so the board really does does not have the ability to be able to a response but i do i do want to say that one of the things that's really important to us as a board is that everybody looks at issues in their complexity and that we understand a variety of points of view and i think that there are many things that would be additional perspectives that would be worth considering are there any others other visitors or delegations who would like to address the board this is a lot different than speaking in the auditorium oh my goodness indeed could you tell us your name please hello my name is evelyn flash and i'm currently a senior at rfhs i have a family member who attends meyer middle school why bring
010this up is my concern with something that happened with the school counselors a student went to the counselors with reports of bullying due to how they present in terms of gender identity from my understanding the school contacted parents and outed the student as trans and subsequently created a potentially unsafe environment for the student counselors are mandated reporters which i understand but by outing a student they are creating an even more unsafe environment for the kid it is important for parents to know about bullying their children are enduring but if parents knowing about how their child identifies is unsafe for the student it shouldn't be brought up the school and parents can be involved with solving and preventing bullying but someone's identity or sexuality does not need to be mentioned 9 out of 10 lgbtq plus
011students have experienced harassment or assault i myself have been called an f slur just for existing a third of lgbtq plus students miss school because they feel unsafe and too uncomfortable to attend the whole point of the school and the whole point of school is to provide a space for students to learn about themselves the world around them and how to exist within society how was adding to the anguish students feel ever going to accomplish these goals students already feel unsafe at school but by outing them to their parents or to their potentially homophobic or transphobic parents will make them feel unsafe at home as well this right here is why 40 percent of trans kids attempt suicide this is why 66 over half of trans kids struggle with depression i understand that we can't
012go full force into teaching lgbtq plus health because that'll create tension and anger within within um the city but we what we can do is not allow the school to out their children if a student's gender or sexuality is a factor the student deserves to have a choice in what is said and what is disclosed not being cisgender or straight is not a safety concern on the basis of the identity itself it's purely others who create hostility and a lack of safety my goal in this little speech is to create a policy or rule that gives the choice to the person it affects thank you again this isn't an agenda item but i do want to say we have a tremendous concern as a school board for the health and safety of every single student
013and given the fact that you've made you've brought up a specific experience i definitely hope that you have had an individual appointment with mr chapin um who would be able to give you some perspective and help you think it through um from a school point of view he would be the the expert for us right now are there any other visitors or delegations who would like to address the board yes please come forward my name is jean walter retired english teacher and grace very passionately spoke to you tonight about her feelings about the school play and i know in contacting some of you it's a done deal you know you've made your decision and i i can't say i understand it completely but i am trying to look at it from multiple perspectives which is
014why i contacted the board president and i also sat down and had coffee with kim miller and i just want you to know kim miller a little bit in reading the article in reading some of the um in mr benson your your discussion of it you have to understand that kim miller is very passionate about the theater program grace you said it well um that program nine uh nine years ago was there wasn't much to it and i think you need to understand that i'm here because i really feel kim miller needs i don't want to say an apology but you need to know kim miller a little better i don't think her intention was to violate the policy number 381 and i'm assuming the policy 381 also includes the yearbook it would include any
015other student publication am i correct 381 is about teaching controversial issues so i'm not sure 37 really 373. whatever the one is that in a in addition to student publications right so do you want me to give you the right number to it or are we i'm just pointing out when you asked if for claire sorry so anyway in the 20 years that i taught at river falls i was the yearbook advisor for a short time and i was also the advisor of the pentamento and dir which was a student creative writing magazine in that time period i was never informed about the policy so i i too could have been in the situation that kim miller is in so i feel that it's hard to violate a policy that you don't know exists and
016i think there needs to be better communication or i would hope better communication to the advisors of the yearbook or student newspapers or whatever that this policy does exist because i it's you know on top of everything else we don't always get to look at those policies i do also want to say that um holy catholic high school just you know this case you want to see the high school version holy catholic high school opens sweeney todd on the 24th of april and they're a high school in minnesota but kim did not purposely try to go over the head of anyone and i don't think when we look at perspectives there's kim's perspective and there's also obviously the board's decision and what you have to go by um but i just you're going to maybe
017lose a good teacher over all of this too so and you don't need to say anything well i will clarify however that this was not a board decision that all of the research and everything pertaining to this issue followed board policy but it was implemented by our district administrators so i hope at some time at some point our district administrators would sit down and just let mrs miller know that she is um she's feeling really awful she saw herself being the theater director and retiring from river falls school district that's what she said to me and i i hate to see this is where i become passionate because i hate to see a really good teacher leave this district and that's might be because of not knowing about a board policy thank you are there
018any other visitors or delegations who would like to address the board this evening yes uh hello my name is amber hahn i'm a parent of two children in the district and i've never spoken to a school board before my children are very young so this is just starting my journey as a parent in the public school system i'm here tonight because i wanted to talk about a program called junior kindergarten my understanding is junior kindergarten is a program that the district offers to children who are not ready for kindergarten despite their chronological age falling within that time period turning five before the beginning of september basically i have two children in this district and one of my children has recently been identified as a child who is a potential candidate for the junior kindergarten program
019in talking to a friend of mine that serves on a school board she encouraged me to come tonight i understand this is an agenda item probably nobody came tonight thinking that somebody was going to talk about junior kindergarten and you may not know much about it so i just wanted to say a little bit about what i've learned about the program recently um to kind of i guess put forward why i'm here um so you may or may not know this but um junior kindergarten candidates are referred by their 4k teachers after those teachers have observed them in the classroom for a year or so i recently became aware that this year uh for the very first time more children have been referred by their 4k teachers than there are spots available in the program
020it's my understanding that there are 17 spots available and there are a host of wonderful and important reasons why that many children can participate it's also my understanding that over 20 children have been referred by their 4k teacher to participate in this program for the 22-23 school year it's hard to know obviously if this increased need is something that's going to continue to happen maybe it's just a fluke this year maybe it's an unintentional consequence of the health pandemic um it's really hard to say i also understand this and again my information may be incorrect but my understanding is this is the first time this has ever happened um to the program to have more people referred than they have spots for um and so i think that's certainly unfortunate um but um i guess
021i just want to share my experience and i'm the type of person that asks a lot of questions and if i don't get the answers i want i ask more people and i just get more information and because of that i think that i've um the way i think about it is i may have a lot more information than the other parents of candidates for this program and so that's part of the why that i'm here today i think it's unfortunate that i have more information than other parents similarly situated because as a parent it's our job to advocate for our children and it's also our job to provide for our children and as you all know um there are various levels of abilities to do that amongst parents in the district parents anywhere really
022and one of the things that we can give to all parents to be able to do that to the best of their ability is time and information and i feel like um and i don't want this to be interpreted as a criticism because like i said a couple of times i think i understand this is the first time this has happened so i know that this is unprecedented and i'm not here to criticize i'm just hoping to um help us to think about this a little bit differently maybe um and uh i encourage everyone to if to find out more about the program find out more about the current situation and really think about how we can best serve our families and i'm here to offer myself my own willingness to help i've done my
023own research given my child's issues and where i think he's at and what's best for him i don't know if other parents have done the same but um i just think that if there are children that are not going to be able to participate or have this research in the coming years in the coming year for whatever reason and it might be my child it may not be my child but i would love to share the knowledge that i've come about and the supports that i've researched and the preparation i've made in case my child's not able to participate in the program but so that i can help him to have the supports that i think he needs to be successful in whatever school environment he's placed in and so i'm just here to ask
024if you as board members or everyone can just maybe take a few minutes and learn a bit more about the program maybe talk to some of the people that are directly involved in it and find out if we can think outside the box a little bit more than maybe we've thought about and if there's a way to help parents in this situation parents of children have been referred to this program connect to one another and if there's a way that the board can help facilitate that or the district can help facilitate that connection if we can encourage everyone in this process to be a little bit more transparent information is really important and information can really help parents do the best for their children so is there a way that we as a district can
025be a little bit more transparent with how this program operates and also just ask um and to think about more ways that we can improve our communication um time is just so important and for a parent who maybe got a communication and believes that their child is in this program and doesn't realize that actually potentially not all the children referred are going to be able to be in the program it's really important for that parent to have that information as soon as possible so that parent can do what they need to do to have supports in place for their children be that a 504 plan or be that you know seeking out therapy options in the community through private pay or health insurance um just uh information and time uh transparency and communication so that's
026all i wanted to say thank you i want to clarify about what your specific concern is it sounds like you're concerned that we have more children with needs compared to seats and so you're interested in in the district exploring that that's the first thing the other thing would be to provide information to parents about about the program or how to make a decision and what the application process is does that what you're talking about it's kind of a lot of things so um i found out that there were more kids referred than would be able to participate in the program kind of inadvertently and in speaking to other members of the community who also received letters from the district letting them know to call in by a certain date and express their interest in the
027program they a couple people this is an anecdotal right um didn't have any of that information they thought their child was in um their forecast teacher informed them that they'd been recommended for the program they you know may have looked at the website watched the video thought okay cool um you know my child's going to go to this program i think that's great or maybe they didn't think it's great but for whatever reason they thought their child was in i don't think that all the parents that got the information from their 4k teacher that their child has been referred to that program knows that there's a pretty good possibility that you know four three some number of kids is actually not going to be able to be in the program i see that helps to
028clarify mr benson is that something that you can look into about communication for us please we will do that first thing in the morning thank you for bringing that to our attention anything else all right then we are going to get back on track and we will do a wildcat pride award todd all right can is my mic my the light doesn't work of mine is mine working okay should i go up to the front and we'll make amy go up there too to do that okay she wants to sit still i don't think we give her a choice all right this this month we are happy to present wildcat pride to amy halverson on behalf of student staff parents in our community the board of education extends its appreciation to you for your dedication
029commitment and devotion to serving on the school board the last six years your passion for always making decisions in the best interest of students was a clear reflection of your values the countless hours preparation homework and overall commitment you provided to help make this district the best it can be proves you to be a true ambassador of wildcat pride i have a few other things to add to this amy you have served the board in the school district with distinction for all of these years i want to highlight a few things you worked extensively with the facilities to identify the needs and then to be able to narrow them so that they could fit within an appropriate scope for a referendum and then did the referendum work which the referendum passed a lot of that
030had to do with your wisdom and your willingness to guide this the full board and work in conjunction with the administration you also have been an incredibly strong support for the community education program for a long time helping to provide vision and ideas for that program you have advocated quite tirelessly i think for the renaissance students all students but particularly the renaissance students because i think you recognize that they need an extra dose of support and that's been very very important i'm also going to say that you listen very well to your colleagues you ask questions very directly and that is a very helpful thing to have in a board member your questions are direct yet respectful and the last i want to highlight that you came on the board initially because you applied for
031a vacancy and there is a specific line in your application that stands out for me after all these years and it was i'm a very hard worker and that essentially sealed my willingness to vote for you and it has absolutely proven to be true you have worked tirelessly to be prepared for meetings to attend other meetings beyond just our narrow school board meetings so thank you for all of that hard work and it's truly been a pleasure to work with you and you know where we are on monday nights and so when you get lonesome for us you know right where to find us [Music] [Laughter] um stacy if i could just say something too because you and i've been on a board for quite a while you can sit down here amy don't just
032stand anyway i i think that there there are two parts of it you touched on it it's this one um why would anybody volunteer for this kind of work sometimes um and she put in her application had to go through this odd interviewing process did it stepped up ran for re-election stood in front of it and has really been solid for us and and especially in in recent years here in communicating the needs of the community between us all that second part of this though is something that we've talked about a lot as a board is regardless of whether or not we agree or we agree with everybody agrees with us in the community or those kinds of things we're able to talk to each other and amy has been so good about that even
033when we disagree as a board member she's been solid she's helped keep us keep the drama down and keep the communication going and i just appreciate that amy so thanks a lot we are going to miss you all right we are going to move on to the spotlight on education and we have west side elementary so mr camera i brought a friend tonight i tried to bring two but one of ours had to stay home um so what i was hoping to share with you tonight and along with mrs everson our school counselor um is our character council and i we think it's the third year um that we've started it um we formerly had a student council program that that was great um all kids can participate and we set down the end of
034put them in my first year and um amy and stacia said we have an idea what do you think and one of the wisest things i did says let's let's see that play out and it's played out wonderfully so i'm gonna let amy kind of talk through and i think she's got a good surprise for you at the end yeah thank you um like uh dr k said i am amy everson i'm the school counselor at westside and um we can go on to the next one our character counsel um we our goal in mission and we came we worked on this um is to embrace and live out our elementary uh west side elementary character traits in service to others in order to make our school and community a better place and so that
035is something that we try to hold true at our meetings and and our activities that we do and just try to communicate that to our students first i wanted to thank uh greenwood character council they have um i don't know how long they've been having it but um years before us and so we really took um a look at what they were doing and tried to model what what our school was going to look at and so we morphed it into a capstone opportunity for our fourth and fifth graders open to all fourth and fifth graders whoever wanted to join and we transitioned from the student council in that 1920 or so that was right before our shutdown so we we had a few months of really good service experience and then of course kovit
036came we started with 37 students and transitioned to that next year pretty much doubled and this year we have i would say we're close to more than around 70 because we have a few that joined in last minute um but we changed a little bit from having our meetings at eight in the morning to during our lunch time so more students could participate we took out that barrier of parents bringing them in the morning and so that has been a real positive for us some of the things we do we show appreciation every month we we pick a different group in our school and school community like our paris custodians office staff things like that and do some just kind things for them um otherwise uh things we do like spirit days um dress-up days
037things like that but also the big part of it is our service projects um some of the things we've done even just this year donating to heifer international fundraising for different refugee groups in the united states our angels on earth giving tree coco's rescue we've sponsored different adoptions for through that thank you notes just kind things neighborhood leaf rakes and other things just that i didn't even list so one big piece of our character council is the reflection and this has helped our students to really think about the opportunities that they are involved in and then reflect on how that how they are helping others how it affects them and these are just a few quotes from our students just learning that everybody matters helping others can be super fun even a small gift can
038change a life and so our students are are taking these opportunities and really starting to kind of look inward in how they can you know affect others and what that does for their own character and i guess we wanted to stacia johnson is also our co-facilitator fourth grade teacher at west side who is you know the other half of character so and said she can't be here tonight but we hope to have more in-person service projects in the future we've been a little limited this last year but our we're very thankful of our staff our leadership and and our school board for you know really putting character first in our district and this is just one of those ways that we can kind of show that in in our school and one and amazing and
039we would not be anywhere but on that as you recognize a lot of other people because in the beginning we did fourth grade at their lunch in fifth grade at different times and instead were able to work with kind of both grades in the middle time that would work for everybody so a lot of people had to do that and the other thing that i'll tell you is we have almost 70 kids some of they don't all come into it saying oh character film so they like many follow their friends into it and then they get into it and you get quotes like that and you can get you know almost all quotes like that kids who just fell in love with something they did whether it was the coco's heart or when we went
040over to the giving tree around christmas time or some of those things that really just it the light bulb kind of went on for them and that's all because of the work they've done thank you and i think part of our excitement for this year is we just found out a week or two ago that we were a promising practice character council award winner um so that is very exciting and i think mr chapin are we one out of the four in the state yeah so there were 16 applicants uh for college cracks state level from 15 different schools and three of the four recipients so we're not the only ones there's there's others in the district that are showing really um great work with character and so this is just one example so thank
041you very much ellen um stacey i i i really want to thank the two of you would see what you're doing at west side and i particularly like the parts that you're talking about living the character um traits and that's something that's been important to me in my time on the board and as we've grown and developed and and maintained and supported character education within this district is this is easy for people to support okay ah this sounds great i really support it it's another thing to live it or to attempt to live it or to think we live it and um and i always when we're we're talking about this character education dealing with this i always want to single out and shout out give a shout out for mark chapin here who's brought
042me along on this and he's been the catalyst the genesis and the catalyst for this um throughout my time on the board and and i like that and he's on top of it and keeping it going but it's also the reminder for us that this isn't just for the students okay so this character education traits are something that us as board members and administrators have to have to constantly be reminded of or we live in this is this important and especially when we're getting into disagreements when we have challenges in the community or other people who may have other opinions than what's going on and all that how does this relate to the character education traits and those kinds of things so they're important reminders for us too but i really appreciate the work you're
043doing now in in west side and taking this kind of ratcheting us up to the next level thank you one thing they do that so well is they balance all the the work and the things to do with the fun so the spirit days are such a fun thing from 50s trying to think of some of the hawaiian days next week so balance that with the project so they do a really nice job thank you very much all right we are going to move on to reports any administrator reports okay we're going to go right into the superintendent's report i wanted to share with the board uh results i'm calling these preliminary results of a community survey that we conducted recently just preliminary because there's a lot of data and i'll be sharing with you
044and the public more detailed information this is just kind of a boiled down summary just to to bring some attention to it we really appreciate the people that took time to fill out the survey we also had people recently participating in listening sessions i'll come back to that at the tail end but what we're doing is we're surveying the community we're surveying our staff and our students so three different surveys the report i'm giving you here is just a summary on on the community survey and so we asked it's basically an opinion survey we asked lots of questions regarding different programs and services things about our district and wanted to know public opinion about both where do you think we're at within these programs that we're offering and then we also asked some open-ended questions
045regarding basically our strengths and weaknesses and what do you think should be some of the skills and attributes of graduating seniors and so on and so survey produced a lot of valuable information that we'll use in conjunction with those other data points as we identify district priorities moving forward uh so again um we obviously value the feedback we want to represent our community values uh we talked about character education here earlier and what we attempt to do as administrators teachers support staff board members all of our work we're trying to do our very best to align with what we believe to be the expectations of our community and so by asking for feedback in a formal way through a survey like this uh that's a part of that effort to gather public opinion and take
046their pulse see where they're at see where they think we're at as a school system and so we distributed the survey uh through our district newsletter we advertised it on facebook district website we put an article in the newspaper reminder emails and so on initially we collected demographic demographic information brian you can just kind of flip through we don't need to go through the i'll just mention that we had 87 percent of the respondents were parents we know that because we asked the question if you have children in our schools moving forward brian if you could yeah thank you right there uh overall we asked over the last two years all things coped related is why we used a two-year snapshot um how do you think we're we're doing with our communication and we got
047high marks there we appreciate that we also asked the two-year question what do you think about our covet-related decisions um sending it out um going through the decisions that we went through over the last two years i wasn't so sure that this one might come back 50 50 at best and so for me when i read these uh to be honest i look at if you're very satisfied or satisfied that's a good thing so i took the liberty of circling um 72 percent uh said that we did okay next slide 88.6 percent and you know i really appreciate when you compare the last slide to this slide that you get 70 of the parents that said yeah i support what you did with kovid um 30 percent said not so much i'm i i can't
048say that i was really excited about your covert related decisions this slide here says well how satisfied are you overall with the district as a whole and i think it's notable and i'm keep paying compliment to the 30 percent who said i'm not necessarily honest i was not on the same page with you with your kova decisions but i recognize that this is a very good school district to the tune of almost 89 percent and so i appreciated the respondents differentiating with those last two questions again these are i just put a couple of examples in here these are not they're too small i know that you can't read them and again we're going to put this on our website and it'll be accessible uh for people to view on their own these are just
049a couple of examples asked about how do you think we are doing those kind of questions with these next few slides how are we doing with math science social studies the core how are we doing with our athletics and our extracurriculars how are we doing in uh our performing arts chorus band musical marching band and so on we asked some questions like how are we doing in another portion of the survey we also then asked questions about what do you think should be a priority where do you see some of our strengths and areas in need of improvement and so on next slide next one please we asked five facility related questions and we asked these questions in a way that said you know we're looking at options for uh facility needs in the future
050we gave quite a long narrative to try to help the respondents to the survey understand a little more in depth what are the details before we just asked a single one-line question and so there was a paragraph dedicated to each of these five facility questions to try to provide more background and information so that people could make a more informed decision when they replied to the survey question that was our attempt and so the the five questions were related to our transportation center school forest outdoor stadium indoor field house and an additional gym space at meyer middle school and the results are are present here more work to be done to kind of digest that more work to be done as far as how and when would we move forward with any of these facility
051improvements next slide please we asked us a section yeah that one that we asked a section about how valuable are some of the um some of the following and people could identify and the reason i just pulled off these four is that they are reflected more so again i know it's small print hard to read all of these are connected with the next slide so we'll just go go there so we asked an open-ended question and said what are the what do you believe to be the skills knowledge and attributes that we would like to see with our graduates when they leave our system here what are those skills knowledge and attributes and so what we receive back as you can imagine is a lot of when you're asking open-ended questions it's time to get
052out uh multi-colored highlighters and begin to identify themes and so that's what i attempted to do here was to identify themes from all of those open-ended responses again more work we're going to we're going to put this together in a little more formal report and expand on this but i want to give you a quick snapshot so here you can see what the community had identified critical thinking skills resiliency resounding theme on this one resounding theme resiliency work ethic personal accountability navigating challenges adaptability confidence those kind of themes were very prevalent in the survey communication skills listening and speaking um presenting having those kind of soft skills necessary in society and in the workplace kindness empathy respect and appreciation for diverse populations and diverse cultures character traits that we just spoke about earlier are wrapped
053into some of those same themes core academics and a balance here not just read write do math core academics but also a balanced education to include music and the arts and technology and ag outdoor education it's just a an appreciation for the need to have a very well-rounded education and then life skills um had to look for description because if we went around the room and said what does life skills mean to you and what does life skills mean to you and go around the room we might hear different definitions but there were some particular themes around life skills uh financial literacy was a big one big time uh job skills and independent living kind of skills preparation for life as as i read it beyond mom and dad's house there was some some themes
054there that i think are encapsulated on that slide quite well again that's under the graduate readiness kind of questionnaire next slide please what are some of our strengths resounding high quality faculty and staff supreme repeated recognition of that uh by our community in this survey caring and passionate were words that were used frequently not just their professional knowledge on how to teach the exes and the o's not just on how to teach the reading and the math and the science and the social studies but they passionately care for and love kids and our community knows it again strong academic and co-curricular programs of the variety of courses the variety of programs both academically and co-curricular character education was recognized communication music in the arts pride that's recognized both from internally internal staff but more so
055the recognition that our community is proud of our schools as well and then course options relationship that we have with cvtc the university vocational technical programs that there's a blend of opportunity in preparation of our students that include not only the the four-year college bound uh but also the kind of the tech vocational trade piece is being recognized by our community as well suggested improvements include mental health supports for students and staff remedial supports for students that struggle academically cultural competence respect for diversity equity empathy inclusion connectedness college and career and life skills again a theme recognized here that there's more work to be done and then again the balance between the academic and the other co-curricular programs so on one hand some of these things you're recognizing that our community said hey you're doing
056it real well and on the other hand you're seeing some things here mentioned where keep doing more of it and continue to improve on it last slide so again our feedback it's a way for us to take the pulse of our community and get their feedback and get their opinions it'll help us to identify future strategic priorities and i already mentioned that we did three surveys one with the community one with students one with staff along with those three community listening sessions and as we strive to continually improve these are the things that in part we will lean on to develop those priorities you know the as we move forward we we will include all of this feedback uh to identify the direction of the district and and what our priorities will be and i
057just again want to recognize and say thanks for the people that attended our listening sessions the people have completed the community survey we're going to continue to share the results of all of our surveys we will be uh also sharing plans for how we will be connecting this feedback to those priorities so the the you'll see how your feedback comes to life and the identification of some of our priorities moving forward thank you very much we look forward to hearing more about this all right any other comment then we'll go move on to action items and at this point we have meeting minutes from the march 21st regular board of education meeting we have bills that have been submitted for payment we also have recommendations regarding employees so at this point do we have a
058motion to approve minutes bills and employment as presented so moved thank you cindy thank you allen for the second any discussion all those in favor aye aye opposed the motion is carried the next thing is um pat knox is here to be able to give us an update about school nutrition this is and and chad too this question is something that we needed to learn more about but it was also something that a community member brought up to us so we're all eager to learn more about nutrition i'm going to give a very brief introduction pat joined us about about a year ago and he was hand selected from a crowd of uh applicants and i think what's exciting about him is he's got a lot of energy he's got gr he takes initiative to
059get a lot of initiatives going and um he gets a lot of that from his vast array of experiences that he's had working for some of the largest in leadership roles for some of the largest companies in the world managing their food service programs so i think those skill sets are what caused him to stand out above above all the other candidates and we're starting to see the fruits of some of that so um i've enjoyed working with him for the past year and i really look forward to his initiatives taking off and he's going to kind of share what some of those are and what his vision is for the next two to three years and you already brought us treats we'll we'll get to those all right thank you for uh giving us
060a few minutes here um first slide we'll do a quick real quick recap uh wait for brian there we go um what have we been doing since somebody from my position was here last we've been feeding kids um this last year the usda made meals free to students and in that time we have increased breakfasts in the classrooms and in the schools 85 000 over the last regular year which was 2018 2019 through march of that year we did 35 000 through march of this year we've done 121 000 breakfasts across the district lunches uh that same time frame we did 218 000 we've now done 255 an increase of 37 almost 38 000 before the end of the year or at the end of the year we will probably have done an extra 160
061000 meals in the district over a normal year because of the the usda's program that has allowed us to put meals in the classrooms and feed kids for free amazing work that the team that has been here that i inherited has done and a lot of fun that we've had and the next one brian please some things that we're doing we are doing more scratch cooking we're working to increase variety increasing variety in some new things and increasing variety and bringing some old things back we have an incredible team that's here using their resources of what they know the kids like what they've done that worked well in the past some new things that we've tried this year uh omelette station on uh late start days at the high school give us an opportunity to
062feed kids before school and you can go to the next slide and see some pictures there where we're using fresh ingredients when we're doing omelet station fresh vegetables and things like that that are going into it so wherever we can get the opportunity to hide things or slide things in that they might not realize what they're getting we're taking those opportunities to do it on the next slide we're actually we're doing it ourselves um the ladies are cooking from scratch uh for the students the students are coming in and ordering it and we're getting great reviews um numbers are continuing as you can see to climb with what we're doing and we're having a lot of fun doing it that's the big thing um i think the morale on the team is is pretty good
063uh next slide um things that we're doing again with scratch cooking using where we can rather than just buying um we could buy a pork collet already breaded but if we can get one and do it ourselves from scratch sometimes we can save money sometimes it costs a little bit more labor uh but we swap those out we're looking for opportunities where we can like with the stir-fry if we can do a flank steak stir-fry instead of using a philly beef steak which is fully processed again when we find money to save in one spot we're going to spend it in another we find efficiencies over here we're going to use that money over there it all goes to the kids as best we can and the more opportunities we can do things um you're
064going to see that coming i lost a picture there i'm sorry fruit just disguised as dessert was a strawberry shortcake that we did from scratch on the sending the kids off for spring break week where we did a beach theme lunch next page is mood boost this is a new program we're going to be doing next year at the elementary schools actually we're piloting it here in the next couple weeks at greenwood which is part of your samples what you have in there is a citrus chickpea salad is the one with chickpeas in it the banana and avocado smoothie is the the kind of creamy one with a little bit of red to it and then blueberries and balsamic vinegar with fresh thyme are in there and um again where we're trying to do different
065things and get kids to try different foods that they haven't in different ways and also rather than just offering them canned corn and frozen vegetables and things like that that's what this program is going to do and it's going to be a lot of fun engagement with the kids and there's a little bit of bribery with some stickers and trading cards and things like that if we need to do it to to get him to do this stuff and then the last slide uh excuse me that kind of explains what your samples are and one more thank you so some issues that were brought up about our nutritional program everything that we do complies with the usda which runs what we do we have to follow all the guidelines that they give us for all
066the meals that we serve and we are meeting all those guidelines um it may not be the guidelines that everybody wants us to do unfortunately we can't do everything farm to table and everything from scratch but we are doing that and one of the big components that comes up that a lot of people don't realize which is the example with the um animal crackers there if you look on the top right there at the front in the yellow it says no high fructose corn syrup a vast majority of the foods that we serve are specially formulated just for schools the tricks that we serve are different than what you're going to buy on the store the hot dogs that we serve are different than what you're going to buy in the store the first ingredient
067is whole wheat or whole grain and then yes they don't use high fructose corn syrup we use natural sugar if it needs to be done we have lower sodium contents we're required to use at least 51 whole wheat in our ingredients and then they're fortified so when people sometimes see oh you're giving the kids tricks yes we are but it's a low sugar 100 whole grain tricks that's gluten free and it's a special formulation that you can't get in the regular store they don't want you to have in the store what we have because it won't hook you as bad as that does sorry that's my timer to make sure i don't go over and uh with that though like i said we are doing everything we can to meet or try to exceed the
068guidelines that have been given to us by the usda and with the numbers that have gone up i think you're seeing that we're doing that in a lot of ways next year when we go back to regular meals i know that there will be a drop and we won't see as much as that but i know that we are also going to see over what we've done in previous years our numbers continue to climb we're doing refreshes in the high school and the middle school physical refreshes this year with some new branding and labeling and things like that and we're working with chad the food service program is fairly financially stable we fund ourselves and we're working on a plan for the next few years of what we will do to keep making refreshes and
069keep things going along not staying stagnant and keep pushing the envelope we want to feed as many kids as we can the best food that we can all the time my phone number and email are on the website if you ever need me or ever have any questions i am there um cell phone's the best way to get me because with six schools i'm rarely in my office so and again thank you for the time and if there's anything we can ever do let us know in terms of refreshes i think if you were to think panera type environment i think that's the direction we're looking to go how does it look like a panera but i think you're going to see many of those similar elements showing up here at our high school middle
070school here as we refresh them i like the idea of more and more cooking that is from scratch and part of the reason i say that is i know that food nourishes bodies but food can also nourish people's spirits too when they have time together and i think part of it is when the food tastes good and when kids know that somebody's taken the time to do something carefully for them that says a lot so thank you for that i also i love this idea of the omelets on the late start days for our kids what a very nice way to to bring them in and to serve them and they're really good all right you see that's a great vote of confidence so thank you very much for your vision and your hard work
071you're very welcome thank you for thank you for letting us feed your kids thank you absolutely thanks for being here anyone we brought extra samples so okay we'd like to on your way out or at this point please do help yourselves and excuse me but i have another meeting i need to slip on you go we're gonna go clean up some food stuff absolutely thank you you're welcome all right we are going to move on pr thank you patty too i know that you're a big part of this we're going to move on to personnel committee and amy i'll call on you so the personnel committee met on april 11th and we just had a few things on the agenda we heard the certified staffing plan update and then we have two action items one
072is to approve sending letters of intent to the certified staff and then the other is to approve the revised director student services job descriptions and that did where some of those tweet those tweaks were made yeah so um just a pretty short straightforward meeting so um i would make the motion to approve sending letters of intent to certified staff and approve the revised director of student services job description thank you amy is there a second second thank you bob any discussion questions or comments all those in favor aye opposed the motion is carried all right so chad and todd maybe you want to talk with us about roofs allen's favorite topic and his enthusiasm for spending money that way right right um so joe if you want to come forward here we're just going to
073take two minutes to update you um on what we're looking to do for summer projects here in 2022. so if you kind of remember back over the course the last three or four years we've had a long-range plan for facilities that actually originated from the facilities committee that you mentioned um that even was on a few years back after the referendum so what we've done is we've kept an active list of what those projects and priorities are each year we review those projects each year we review those priorities to make sure that they still are our priorities and then we pick off those in which we believe we can uh fund for that year so uh the big priority for the last three fiscal years has been the replacement of the high school roof it's
074it it's over 20 years old and roof systems just that's their natural life cycles 20 years they they don't do what they're supposed to do let's just keep water out so we the board has been very supportive of us aggressively keeping up on replacing that rough as necessary so what we're here tonight to do is seek your approval out of the fiscal year budget fund the final sections um that would be replaced at the high school on the high school meeting by the time we get to october of 2022 we would be completely done and that's that's probably that's well over two million dollars that we would have accomplished here so um like joe's just gonna share the yeah so we had uh respondents of five different contractors so for this the time at which
075this was bit out very good response and i'm happy to report jackson and associates who we have a very successful history with was a little bitter by thirty thousand dollars on the alternate and almost forty thousand dollars on the main base bid so we're coming to you again i don't mean to repeat it but as a request to approve action on the last remaining roof sections of the high school and this will protect us from having smoggy books and ruined equipment in the shop i mean it'll protect our buildings as learning places for our kids correct can i make the motion to approve this [Laughter] because i think i i heard somewhere before that these are like 30 year roughs now right these aren't these these are outlast all of you you're going to outlast
076all of us but anyway please ellen make the motion i i i move that we um approve the request for both of these yeah is there a second second thank you bob any other questions comments yes sir last year we were able to save some money by sliding up and getting the roofing company a little earlier in the year is that great question so this year we reversed that strategy because of our late bid so we push so this will be a fall project no hot tar during school hours same as we've done before so we're following that same mentality on the opposite end good question any other questions just to point out too that it's a lot of money now but it can be even more money if we put it off and have
077leaks and then we have to repair damage on the inside am i correct we're spending tens of thousands of dollars in repairs a year one of the things that we've been pretty consistently doing here the last decade or so is making sure that we don't end up with a deferred maintenance backlog which an awful lot of institutions whether it's k-12 or higher education or whatnot and if you don't attend to this stuff ongoing i mean i get it you get a deferred maintenance background backlog and then suddenly you've got huge projects you're asking for a big referendum or something to do or doesn't get done and we've got as stacy mentioned those problems so i think ongoing um chad and joe you guys have been really good at sort of keeping us at this and
078as much as i don't like spending you know there's a couple million dollars on something up on the roof that we don't ever see and it's not textbooks and it's not teachers and all of that it's it's always real hard for me but um just want to acknowledge that it is important and i appreciate the fact that we're keeping on top of it and that loudness to build up so because it would end up costing us more or it could end up costing us more that we can't spend on kids and get us crossways i mean if we come to the the voters in five years with you know millions of dollars in deferred maintenance the first question i would have as a voter is well how do we get here we got to we
079got to stay away stay ahead of this this is what helps keep us fiscally sound and and all of that and keeps people supporting what we're doing our buildings are well run they're well managed and they're in pretty good shape for their age joe was jackson the company that did the rest of the roof um a large majority of the high school was jackson and then mcphillips brothers is actually um yeah there's a was it on here it's in the board right now by reading glasses thanks any other comments that will all turn gray and we can check the high school off as long and put it for 30 years what's kit going to do with all the buckets [Laughter] yeah perfect anything else all those in favor aye opposed the motion is carried all
080right um our own allen is on the wasb board of directors and so that not only helps us to keep track very well of what's going on with wasp but it brings his expertise and leadership to the entire wasb and he's going to give us an update on um legislative activity this uh thanks i i asked to be have this put on the agenda and periodically i'll try and do this some of the stuff you guys know i push out as emails amanda sends it out to you with especially the legislative updates which are timely or i'll make some comments to you about watch the latest video on on whatever waspi's done but i just thought a couple comments once in a while about the wsb the wisconsin association of school boards for anybody that
081doesn't know i've been elected to the board of directors there there are 15 regions region 14. so i'm one of 15 directors there there are literally hundreds about 400 plus school districts school boards in the state public school boards and um this is the professional association that provides support and advocacy for those school boards and school districts a lot of it is legislative advocacy but as you know um they also provide a lot of resources and expertise and one of the things i i had so i i get to go to madison periodically now since down there in february and then just a week and a half ago and they're showing us more and more resources they're ramping up their website and i would encourage the rest of the board here to start watching the
082waspi website and the tabs on it and i'll try and as time goes on point out some important tabs and good resources on it so that we if we've ever got a question we can click on it the wasb is not something where every time we've got a question as a board member we should call them individually for their expertise maybe start with our administrative staff here before we go down there because sometimes the meter's running okay sometimes if it's a legal opinion or whatnot the meter is running but there are lots of resources that are out there already one of the things that they do is a new member new board member orientation and that's actually happening this thursday and um there are i just found out there are see there are 36 districts
083in region 14. we're one of the largest regions in the state they're 36 and they run all the way from very small districts to larger districts than us there are 26 new school board members in region 14 this time i don't know if they're all going to be there thursday night but i'm in charge of the program i'm fortunate enough there's a waspy staff member that goes to each of these in the regions they're all going to be this week or next week and um we're fortunate here in that john ashley the executive director of wazbee will be the person at that so he and i had a phone conversation this morning sort of planning that out i would say to those of you here today if you have any thoughts about um wisdom to
084share with what a new board member maybe i don't know what you wish you would have known um it's something i can share with these folks coming on board as well but this is an important time in wisconsin everybody's been watching all of the hyper activity um the um tension that's been going on in the state and it's not unique to wisconsin and i don't expect this to go away for another for a while certainly with the fall elections coming around and and some of the partisan involvement in these nonpartisan elections this fall has been a real challenge but we're seeing some significant changes going on um in school in the future what's going to happen in the future for schools for example i just found out from talking to john ashley this morning that
085they expect fully about 25 of the superintendents to turn over in the next 14 months in the state 20 20 to 25 of the superintendents um there'll be a significant number um the number is close to 400 new school board members coming on this year alone of course there are several thousand school board members in the state um and then we've talked before and jamie sent us pushed out some information about the number of legislators that are turning over this year and i don't know about the the governor's race but just in terms of how the legislative races turn out but just the number of people who have stepped back and said they're retiring from the legislature this year there'll be a lot of changes so where i'm going with all this is point being
086and i said this last week when i was at a meeting in madison there's maybe been no greater time in my time on the board 14 15 years here when we for the importance of a professional association and to be tuned into its members focused on local control it's the number one um priority in in waspi's um list of focus local control and support for what we do and keeping us all on the same page and helping us um with legislative advocacy which is all member driven from the boards in the state and um so um i think there's i've got another meeting coming up in june um there's a leadership conference coming up in july and i would encourage you to try and connect more and more of these things are happening virtually i
087would encourage you to try and and do as much of those webinars as possible so anyway i think that's that's all just kind of an update for those of you here and the fact that we have a voice now on the wisconsin school board association for at least the next three years because it's a three year term that i'm sitting on there and um that should be good for our district but i'm also because i can bring information back but also i'm interested in your input and things that i should be taking to them so thanks thank you alan nathan all right do we have any future agenda items suggestions then we will schedule some upcoming meetings there will be a board reorganizational meeting on monday april 25th starting at 6 30 here in the
088conference room educational program committee will meet monday may 2nd at 6 o'clock once again here personnel will meet monday may 9th at 6 00 here and the next regular board meeting will be monday may 16th at six o'clock today jamie and i talked about the importance of a school board retreat and we are at this point proposing may 23rd as a potential time that would be the fourth monday in may we're wondering first of all if that works for everybody and secondly if you have a preference um between five or six o'clock or 5 30 or something in that category i think maybe if you could just check your calendars and get back to us that would be great and then or maybe get back to amanda and then she can take it from there
089and help us and the good news is we do not need to go into executive session and so