SCF School District Board Meeting - 1/14/2026

001Okay, we should be going. >> All right, I'm going to call this meeting to order. It is the uh meeting portion of the meeting. Let's start with Mr. Wilson and the personal financial literacy. >> Yeah, thanks Brent. And I I uh invited Mr. Ethan Bergstrom as our guest speaker tonight. So, Mr. Bergstrom, you're a high school teacher, been here a few years now. um kind of a jack of many trades, but uh teaches math and social studies and uh personal financial literacy. So, >> the show the show is yours. >> All right. So, thank you uh for inviting me. This is where our speaker stand. >> Perfect. >> Um well, this is kind of fun. Uh I do want to talk about this brand new class, but first off, I want to thank you uh

002Mr. Wilson for, you know, approaching me and asking if I'd be interested in teaching personal financial literacy. And yes, in my past teaching years, I've taught a lot of different classes. So, whenever you get a chance to do something new, it's kind of refreshing. Um, personal financial literacy, as you guys know, and thanks for taking uh, you know, the um, you know, chance to to be one of the first districts in the area to really start doing this full, you know, all this year because I know a lot of the other districts that I was with a training are going to roll it out next year to to meet the new state requirements. So, as it is a new state requirement, um I have been uh indeed looking at, you know, all of the standards

003that they've put together and I have kind of today's presentation just kind of organized by strands and I'm going to talk a little bit about kind of what the delivery has looked like, some of the curriculum resources that I've been using. Jacob, you have had the class, so you can chime in too on things that were good uh if you if you'd like or things that you've enjoyed. So, go ahead, Larry. We can skip to the next one. So, first off, uh the Wisconsin um has indeed uh picked these six strands. So, they're kind of the units um so that kids learn about financial mindset and I'll talk about each of these strands a little bit more uh individually, but then education and employment, money management, saving and investing, credit and debt, and risk management

004and insurance. Okay, so throughout each of the uh slides, I tried to add either something that the kids have found or pictures of the kids or things that we're doing in the room. So, Jacob, each quarter this class is going to get better and better. I'm sorry you were kind of the first uh group. >> No, I really enjoyed it and I learned a lot from it >> to get to take it. But I think one of the things that I've kind of really started to appreciate is that each quarter is, you know, the seniors definitely have a lot of these things on their radar. Okay, the juniors are starting to think about it. Okay, and that's definitely the right age group to to take this class. So, I'm trying to figure out which of

005these topics are they really going to grab hold of because when we start to talk about different types of insurance, it's it's kind of down the road for them in their mindset at this point. So, it's been kind of interesting for me to look through the new uh curriculum partners and challenge or things that I found. So, Laorray, you can keep going here. Um, I have found these resources to be probably the most beneficial to me so far, right? It's not like a set curriculum out there. Um, but Next Generation Personal Finance is really trying to um, be the big resource for schools across the country to pull upon. They do online training um, and things like that that I've logged some virtual time in trying to just learn more about specific topics. They've really

006got a lot out there. Uh, RCU has been a great help. Even our local RCU, the DPI, and of course, there's an outfit out there called Bonsai that really is trying to get their stuff into the classroom as well. And I've looked at some of their things as well. So the first strand, okay, and to not give you all the standards, um, and I just kind of listed a little bit of the topics that we talk about, uh, I'm not necessarily going to go fully in depth as I talk about each of these slides, but with financial mindset, we're really trying to help the kids, uh, develop strategies, okay, to make intentional financial decisions throughout their lifespan. Um, we talk about all of their transitions and the important things at each of these major transitions

007and especially for the seniors and in that first quarter we were talking about the October 1st deadline for FAFSA. They're starting to hear these things in more places hopefully than just at home or from the guidance office that they'll start to get out and take advantage of, you know, what this class can offer uh and what they can do, you know, to capitalize on these situations. But ultimately uh we talk a lot about financial psychology and how it can impact their well-being throughout their lifetime. Okay? And to establish digital awareness to enhance financial mindset. And as you guys all know, um the banking world is at our fingertips these days. So I'm trying to let the kids have a lot of time on the computer. We've even looked at some of the ways now that

008AI can actually help them generate new ideas for how to save their money or new tips on how to, you know, make their money go farther. So indeed, to a degree, I'm working to try to teach them responsible use of chat GPT and Google AI. We've used some online things that help them like nerd wallet simulations for retirement projections. And there's a great uh new program out there called YMAB and it stands for you need a budget. So, lots of fun things that are out there um for these kids. We know that everything is at their fingertips. So, I'm trying to help them find those things to do to do better for themselves. Uh, of course, education is a really uh big part of this. A lot of this probably feels like academic and career

009planning to them because I do have them look um at the effects of personal income on their goals. what is their education path that they're starting to wrap their mind around um and evaluate the impact of lifelong learning on one's ability to function effectively in this very diverse and changing economy. Within some of the curriculum, we have all of these simulations they can play. One of them is called payback where they get to ultimately choose a college path and see if they can complete it without too much debt and then they will be paid back by their career. So I'll talk about some of the simulations that we do as we go. So thank you Lori. and keep moving here. Money management. So, at a glance, they're really trying to demonstrate their ability to use

010money management and skills um and how to utilize financial institutions and the service providers to support money management. So, lots of different topics are covered. Okay. And again, we've done in-class simulations um and the kids have been engaged sometimes, as you can see, even with calculators trying to crunch some numbers and think about things. Another simulation in the bottom right hand corner there is a simulation that they get to do called spent where they find out they've lost their job and they got a thousand bucks to make it through the month. It's kind of a depressing one but at the end of it I think they can kind of see that if you weren't hard times hard decisions come quickly right when it comes to finances. So luckily that's just a simulation but hopefully to

011give them a little perspective. Uh another simulation that we've done is called the test drive in the Royal Credit Union. Uh Jay Parks has came in and led this uh the first two quarters for a day. Um it's very fun. The kids get to select uh career at random based on how much education they think they actually want. They find out if they've got a wife and kids. They find out their income and then they have to go through a series of choices to see if they can create a budget that's going to keep their family, you know, essentially fed. So kind of a challenging simulation. I think the kids that day had a had a lot of fun. So that's been very uh fun and I really appreciate that Jade has helped us with

012that. So trying to find resources and ways to help these kids experience things even more. Um saving and investing at a glance. Uh we explore concepts and saving that apply the knowledge to help them hopefully attain financial security. Okay. Um we explore investing concepts and apply this knowledge to attain financial security. And uh you know, we talk a lot about it and Jacob will probably attest that I feel like a broken record sometimes telling them from like day one of your career, you guys have to be investing in your retirement. And we do all kinds of simulations and things where they can see that this quarter with the game and simulation stacks. I've had an ongoing challenge. Sorry, Jacob, we didn't have all the prizes first quarter, but I've got a leaderboard and it ends

013this Friday and the kids have been competing to see who can get the highest score in stacks. And sometimes during their study hall, they come running to me because they have a new high score because they want to win some of the prizes that we've got piled up. Um, so that's been kind of fun. >> Troy's killing it. >> He lost first place just today. >> I know Troy had three out of He still has three out of five spots, but first place, uh, he got dropped today. So that that $15 quick trip gift certificate. He's worried he's going to lose that now. So, but it's just been fun to try to encourage them and do some fun things. And here's them playing stacks. Like it it's kind of interesting. They lock right in and

014they're trying to see what, you know, a diversified investment portfolio looks like. And they have to take and make choices and it throws them into the game with a 20-year time frame at any given point in American history. So, it's rather random. they might face some boom or some bust, but they got to play and see what happens because gold might go crazy at the end and they might place. So, that's been kind of fun. Um, we talk a lot about credit uh and debt. Okay. Um, we examine clearly the benefits of using uh credit and we interpret lending options and consumer rights and responsibilities. One thing I've had kind of fun watching them do is I send them off home shopping on realtor.com and tell them to pick out something realistic. Okay. and some

015of the homes that they they pick. Yeah, they're dreamers, but I'm not here to squash that. But I have them compare what it looks like on a 15 versus 30-year mortgage. So, we're really looking at what is the long-term impact of such debt. Um, and do you really want to be married to your mortgage and things like that? We talk about lots of these huge topics. So, watching the kids start to connect and think about these things has been really kind of the fun part of this. So, risk management and insurance, right? Um, another great thing we talk about all the different types of risk and how it could affect your uh, finances. Having an emergency fund is key and assess the possible choices to protect against financial risk. So, we talk about lots of

016different insuranceances so that they understand that even in college you should have renters's insurance um and all the different types because as kids they maybe don't hear a lot from their parents on the insurance options that you know they have and maybe take for granted until they're ultimately on their own after 26. So, that's risk management. We play a game called Bummer, right? And Bummer teaches them that the more insured they are, the more likely they're to have very little stress. Okay. Kind of a motive built into that game, but it's been fun for him to have the simulations, the ability to incorporate the technology. Um, I've really liked all the resources and I'm constantly trying to find more um and build them things that they're independent kind of in their inquiry to learn about,

017but also that we can move into good discussion. And then lastly is just yeah, thank you for taking uh a chance so that St. I can essentially, you know, be rolling this out early for our kids so that they can all have this experience. And I have them culminate the quarter with a financial pathway project. And uh I've been really impressed. Some of these kids turn in a project that they might have been kind of a jokester in class at times, but they really have thought through some major life decisions and really have, you know, taken a good grasp of the finances involved. So getting to meet some of these older kids um because this this is my third year here work primarily with freshman and sophomores in uh in the math and social studies

018classroom. So this year uh helped me to meet some of the seniors that I hadn't taught before too. So it's been very fun. So I appreciate it that you guys have allowed me this opportunity to to try a new course and uh keep it rolling this year. So >> awesome. Be fun. >> Awesome. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to entertain maybe Jacob too. >> I The only one I have is Is this a quarter class semester? >> Quarter long. Yep. Um just a quarter long class. Yes. >> You get a lot done. >> It is kind of fast and furious at times. Yeah. Uh but when the kids are asking great questions in the discussion is it can be really fun sometimes and sometimes we have a lot of laughs about some

019of their questions. sometimes they they kind of want story time like hear from certain adults that will say, "Yeah, I've slipped up with credit cards." So sometimes the honest stories that you have or uh you know I think can be valuable too and how can you use credit cards? below what you know we talk about all these different things but yeah we've all known people that have faced hardship and I guess for me to give these kids as much info as they can so they make better decisions and the less hardship the better. >> All right so thank you guys for this great opportunity to teach teach something fun. I've taught a lot of different things but this one's been a lot of fun to watch the kids you know grab a hold of because

020they can apply it to themselves so quickly. Thank you. >> Appreciate. Good night. >> You too. Take care. >> All right. The next on the agenda is the WASB resolutions and delegates. >> Yeah. So, we talked about this back in December. It's back up again tonight. Our delegate is Brent, who will be attending the WSB convention that's coming up next week. So, we need to ensure that Brent's aware of the board's wishes in terms of uh the votes on the resolutions. Um, again, I'll reiterate the WSB resolutions are simply information that guide WSB's approach in um advocacy and lobbying and so forth and so on. It kind of sets the standards for them as an organization and uh as an entity that supports public school district boards of education. Um we already had talked about

021for against decoupling voucher funding. That was two dueling uh sort of uh diametrically opposed resolutions. Another thing that came up uh after our discussion was a limited active membership which was introduced uh by Kettle Marine School District to change their bylaws to allow for a limited active membership. pair that down into what I would call the simplest of terms and that would be they have all the benefits of being a member except the lobbying is not on their behalf and they cannot vote then as a delegate they would not have a vote pardon me in the delegate assembly to modify bylaws or introduce future resolutions and so forth. Um, so that is a a recommendation to carve out a different type of membership in the bylaws. That would be everything the WSP offers minus volume

022and have your dues reflect that. And then um an emergency resolution that came through from um boy, I can't remember the school district now. It's the one that's in Black Earth. Wisconsin Heights Wisconsin Heights School District came through with an emergency resolution around um making the special ed funding support for making the special ed funding promised in the budget some sufficient to 42%. As you recall, I provided an update not terribly long ago that the budget balget 25 27 Bal budget had promised or alluded to a 42% reimbursement rate for special education in terms of aid. Uh preliminary numbers from the DPI came in at 35% which is of course less than 42 and suspiciously close to what it was the reimbursement rate in past years. uh which is kind of what we anticipated happening

023but nonetheless it would be a resolution supporting the idea that the state would make that hole to that 42% for the 40 2526 school year. So those are the topics of conversation that either a have some you know uh potential opinions that we're seeking or b have been relatively newly introduced and again in 16 years of doing this this is the first time I've seen any of this. I've never seen an emergency resolution and I've never seen a motion or resolution to modify bylaws and I', as I shared the last, I've never seen a resolution that are diametrically opposed. So, it'll be an interesting delegate assembly. >> It'll be a late night, Brent. >> It's always supposed to go till 3:30. >> Yeah. >> Um, all right. So, do you guys care how we kind

024of attack these? talk about >> you need to understand it the best. So why don't you all right tell us how you want to >> Well, the first one I just pulled up was the the bylaws changes and they're gonna this goes to the St. Delegate assembly. >> Correct. >> And if if it's approved, I mean that's new bylaws, >> correct? >> Yeah. Okay. Um which is the uh Calmarine piece about the limited membership. Um it was in the packet Um, you know, I've read through it and the one I mean they what do they do? They withdraw themselves. They can't advocate. Uh, but I was the one thing I was wondering if is if they should be able to u vote on um while you look for that. Um my question or concern that

025came from reading it was they're proposing then that because they would not receive the lobbying services, they would pay a lesser amount. >> Correct. >> Which would by fact eliminate some of the funding for our statewide lobbying efforts. Do we want to support that or not support that might be a part of the factor >> and they would >> Yeah. Would it be fair to say that they would still benefit from just not paying? >> Well, they're disagreeing because they say that they're lobbying for things that that district does not want. But other districts could use it in the way they're suggesting to say, "Hey, they're going to be lobbying for this anyway. Let's not pay for the lobbying part of it and benefit from that." But to your point, Matt, correct? If there was

026a lobbying circumstance that, you know, uh, transformed into relevant legislative action that benefited school districts throughout the state, they would of course enjoy that benefit as well. Yeah, I I that's the piece where I have a tough time understanding personally. out. I'm not just making a comment as a human being involved in public school leadership and that would be I'm not certain what that would I mean I know what it means in terms of decreasing their overall uh uh fees for being a member of WSB but it's not clear to me what the benefit would be to have an entity to as a school district saying well WSB isn't lobbying on your behalf but any state legislation that WSB lobbies for or against is still ultimately going to impact the school district to put school

027district relevant legislation. >> You see what I'm saying? >> Yeah. But I I see some benefit to a local community in saying that um our district is a part of a community that doesn't believe this way or doesn't integrate. >> True. So that's the that's really the primary reason then behind it. >> Yes, that's what I would say. >> Correct. Yeah. 100%. >> But can you say that for everything that they're doing? >> No, I don't think you can. But if we're maintaining local control, how much do we require them to be part of the state body too? I mean, obviously they're not required in any capacity, but it's kind of a tugof-war between local control and the benefits of coming together as districts and saying we have >> common interests that we >> correct.

028And historically, and again, I'm not uh I don't mean to misquote the WSB, but I believe All 421 school districts have been members of the WSB for several years. So this isn't a new it's new that someone would like uh either not to be a member or to modify bylaws for this differentiated membership. Typically if you're the public school board in Wisconsin member because of the things they offer and arguably the advocacy that they engage in is in support of public schools and public school children. So >> my concern again moves toward the financial piece. If um if it's an option and all school budgets are tight, then I'm concerned that many districts might consider the the more affordable option knowing they're going to benefit anyway. And at the end of the day, everybody's going

029to have to pay more for whatever level they're at because the funding needs to be there to go. >> So that's what But Brent, you were looking up something concerned they might need to be able to vote on. >> Um, yeah. So, they would still be able to vote on the regional directors WSB bylaws of amendments request to change WSB regions. Um my only concern would be if if you're not in it all the way is should they be allowed to vote on the WV WSB board of directors for example? Um you know just thinking that know you're I mean granted yes they're not going to be able they know I'll have a delegate at the assembly. Uh they won't be able to submit resolutions and different things like that but I still think there

030should be a little bit less of a of a partnership, I guess, to maybe um prohibit or kind of uh fight off, I guess, what you were saying, you know, okay, if I can't do this and this, well, it's not really worth it to me to just pay a lesser amount and still get, you know, if I have really not much say other than I have access to some of these things. Yeah, I I feel a little bit torn in that I like the the notion of local control and so I I understand that they're saying we don't want this in our district and so we don't want to pay for lobbying in that way. I don't think that this resolution is quite right yet. Personally, if I were in yourstead, I would be against

031it at this point. I just don't think that we've had enough refining yet. Maybe that'll come with the delegate assembly. Sometimes it does. >> Oh, yeah. I'm sure it'll be lots of >> say no also. >> Yeah, I I was tending the whole towards it too because yeah, it's an emergency thing. I mean, why what happened all of a sudden that this has to come out right before the the convention? probably along the same lines. It just seems like it's kind of hasty at this point. >> Not necessarily unfounded, but not at this point. >> The organization, lay off people, be harder to get access to 10, 15, Yeah, there's no clarity on what the impact would be. I'm not aware of any surveys that where boards or districts were asked if this were the

032case, what would you do? So maybe this will stem some additional, you know, action and potential future resolutions or modification requests that the WSB entertains and some some changes. But yeah, there's no all I know is what basically has been shared and that they submitted that recommendation modified bylaws and it'll be talked about on Wednesday night. Wednesday afternoon. >> Yeah. Afternoon and into the evening. >> Um >> All right. The other Okay, we can move on to the with the special education. >> Yep. That was the emergency one uh submitted by Wisconsin Heights >> and that will be to um a resolution that supports the uh fully funding from 35% reimbursement to 42% which was laid out in the budget initially. >> Yes, please. >> And that would make worlds of sense of just rolling

033over and saying it's kind of like like it. >> And again, this is WSB lobbying efforts. This has got nothing to do with the legislature >> because this would take an action of the legislature to make that. >> So, we're in favor of that one. >> All right. >> Um and I guess the only other one or two I guess would be the um >> Vulture decoupling. Yep. and u we've talked about it. Um I don't know you want to just give us a quick background on it again. >> Sure. So the state basically has um agreed to fund private education throughout the state. Private school education throughout the state and what they call vouchers and in order to fund that program state aid from districts throughout the state is reduced taken off the top

034and they but the revenue cap for the local district is not modified. So, I'll use St. Croy Falls as the example. This year, we had um right around $400,000 of aid, equalized aid removed and provided towards the voucher program. That's reflected on our revenue cap sheet. That's the document we use to identify their revenues and expenditures and set the levy. So, we see those numbers on an annual basis. And of course, they've been increasing because voucher school enrollment has been increasing. Um anyway, so our equalized data is reduced by 400,000. Our local property taxpayers make up that difference. So technically our local property taxpayers are paying $400,000 more than they would be if the voucher system didn't exist. Okay? So we're all paying for kids to go to private school throughout the state. Because you

035might say, well, there's, you know, there's only one small private school even relatively close to here. So how does that work? Milwaukee, Rine, Madison, you're paying for the entire basically statewide voucher system. Um, decoupling of that. So, the argument for decoupling of that is to handle it as two separate funding mechanisms, meaning public schools, you get your money and set your levy voucher schools, here's your payment from the state. They will be completely separate. The reason that I would advocate that we would vote against that is because common sense tells me I think it's beneficial for us to be able to tell our taxpayers how much of our local levy is supporting school vouchers. If we don't have that information from the state, we can't share that. School vouchers are a state law in Wisconsin.

036I don't see that changing. But if we as a local school district get our aid numbers and our what we're you know uh is being taken off the top to fund vouchers because again they're not going to generate new revenue to fund vouchers. That's not what's going to happen. It'll just be a reshuffleling of dollars. We'll get proportionately less and we just won't know how much less we were supposed to have gotten without the voucher program. So that's why I would personally say you would you would oppose it. meaning we do not want to see them decoupled because we want to be able to see our numbers. Whether or not that those numbers would be publicly available remains to be seen. So how much is sent to voucher schools you might be able to identify,

037but how does that impact each local public school district? You I don't think would be able to identify those calculations or there wouldn't be a public document that shared that. Any questions on that one? >> Yep. >> It's hard to explain this to people when they ask you about this. >> Our money. No, it's not. Yes, our money does go to pay for those kids. The translation is hiding the information. Right. Just basically trying to hide this information from taxpayers essentially. >> Yeah. I mean, I I think what's happened, so I'm in personal opinion territory, which might get me in trouble, but I'm going to go for it anyway. My job as a public school superintendent is to advocate for public schools, not for voucher schools and private schools or home schools. I'm to advocate

038for public schools. If I didn't do that, I would hope that you would send me back. Okay? So that's what this is couched in. And the school funding formula in the state of Wisconsin is incredibly complicated. Incredibly complicated. There are business managers that have done it for a decade that arguably would look you in the eye and go, "You know what? I'm not really even sure how this works, but here's what they tell me." It's very, very complicated. Anytime there's conversations at the state level about updating, modifying school funding formula, which they that's happened in my career probably two or three different times, the legislature gets into it and is like, "Okay, hold on. There's no way." Because it's insane. It's it's it's a very complicated mess. And as soon as you start pulling on

039one lever, it affects a multitude of other levers. And arguably the vast majority of people don't truly understand what the funding looks like and how it's distributed and how it impacts local municipalities and taxes and so forth and so on. That being said, what ended up happening particularly with the voucher school uh aid removal and being sent elsewhere was when vouchers were established in the state of Wisconsin even just the it started with the you know Milwaukee parental choice program which was the that's been in place for a long time like since the late 90s I believe and then they added rine and they added uh uh Konosha you know what I'm saying so there's other pieces added over the last decade or so or 20 years to the point where now it's it's almost

040statewide vouchers. The limiting factor is it's capped by uh your overall uh income levels which I don't remember what those income levels are. It's not poverty. It's you know certain percentages above poverty. Uh plus of course geographically speaking if you have access to a private school in your area. So I mean those are the limiting factors right? But otherwise, if someone in St. Croy falls wanted to send their kid to a private school and receive a voucher, if they met those criteria, they could within the state of Wisconsin. Can't put them. I just put that caveat out there. Since those are increasing over time and you can see, so for example, at Wisconsin Rapids where I came from when I started there, our voucher voucher reduction in equalized aid was around 1.5 million 1.2 million.

041Now, keep in mind, I'm talking about $120 million budget. and it had grown to three over $3 million in the seven years that I was in. So local taxpayers in Wisconsin Rapids were paying $3 million in their property taxes to go to the voucher system. I don't look haven't looked at that trajectory here in St. Cre Falls to give you a 7-year demographic, but I do know last year was just over 300,000 350 I want to say 320 350. this year it's pretty close to 400 386 397 something like that and those numbers for you to be able to look at somebody and say our equalized now keep in mind equalized data is still tax I mean it's but it's tax collected statewide right and your local property tax goes to pay your local school

042district so that additional 400 grand that the state's taking to fund private schools is being encumbered by our local taxpayers via their property because the equalized aid makes up the other portion of that pocket. >> You mentioned the 400,000. You said that I think you said it comes on the the uh revenue >> Yeah. >> sheet. >> Yep. >> But is it does it come They give it to you and it says you're going to lose this much. >> Yes. It's prepopulated by the DPI. We're responsible for the numbers uh whenever you set your levy and do your revenue cap sheet, but something like that we would have no way of calculating on our own without the state's assistance. And that so that information that's in there, you take it to be true, right? That's

043just what it is. But um uh yeah, and it it it differs depending upon how highly aided you are and multiple other factors. And I'm then pretend to know how why we might be 400,000 and Unity is 50. You know what I'm saying? I and I'm just making stuff up, but you'll see significant differences among school districts. If you pull up their past revenue captions, you can see the numbers for each school district if you look at the correct box on that on that form. Um, but I honestly am not even going to fabricate an answer as to why it would be different because if you take similar size districts, similar demographics, generally maybe aided in a very similar fashion, you might see one higher or lower than the other. And I'm not quite certain

044why that is. But all do no one is isolated from it. >> So if they if they do that, would they would we not see that 400,000 on the cap sheet? >> That's the thought process. >> Okay. Yeah. >> But for some reason, I was thinking it wouldn't show up like on a tax statement, but >> it'll never show up on a tax statement anyway. So that's one of the things that's transpired, too, is you've heard legisl the certain bills circulating for support. none of them have ever gone anywhere, which would be like property tax transparency. So you can see, as you can see on your tax bill already, this is what's going to the, you know, local municipality. This is what's going to the school district. This is what's going to the tech school.

045You see what I'm saying? The county. And then you would have another carve out for voucher schools. And of course, that legislation doesn't go anywhere. Uh because that's not what they want to have happen, arguably. And so this decoupling initially was supported uh in a general sense because people thought well yeah that makes sense just have it be a separate like we don't care be a separate system but decoupling has now been uh supported by those that are voucher proponents I think for the explicit intent of ensuring that local school districts can't relate to their community how much their local property taxes are covering for that's my opinion. I'm just not sure what the other motivation would be, but uh yeah. So, there you go. >> Anything else? We're in agreement. All right, we'll move

046on. Anybody did anybody read through the others and see if there's any strong opinion one way or the other? >> The others are fairly straightforward in my opinion. All right. All right. We'll move on. Thank you. Um the special education spaces for the 26 27 school year. >> Yeah. So you folks see this on an annual basis, we're obligated to set um open enrollment numbers for our various special ed programming at at our various levels. One of the things that you may not have seen in in a while, I know we had all zeros last year, but this year there's a 2.1 for available space within the elementary and I just wanted to clarify that that 2.1 does not mean two students with disabilities. It means a waiting factor of 2.1. So, um, basically what

047we would have is the ability and I'll give you a quick mention. there's a current student that's being evaluated that may by the time we're done with the school year within a couple of months have taken up that 2.1 gap already. So it may be zero because there's an evaluation that's in process currently. But for example, a student with a SLD specific learning disability with a student factor level of one is a multiplier of 1.7. So if we have one of those kids at a 1.7, we basically don't have space because the lowest number you can get is 7 and that's speech only and speech is full. So if we took on two speech kids because we had speech open, then we'd be okay. But this is not a speech kid that's open, speech is

048full. This is a 2.1 or 2.2, whatever's on there total, which means that there's a very narrow EBD level one is a two. So you would fit one kid like that. ID level one is a two. You could fit one kid like that. Everything else on the matrix is either 2.1 or higher, meaning those students with those sorts of disabilities, depending upon what's in the IEP, would not be eligible to open enroll because we're over our calculated cap. >> I have a question. >> Yeah. >> So, you mentioned that um there's the potential that we already have a student that would fill that 2.1 that would create that correct change so that it would be closed. >> Correct. um de facto, not because we've closed it, but because we're full, >> right? >> Um does

049that have to be an open enrolled student that fills that? >> So, these are for open enrolled um >> I mean, we're saying next year open somebody could open enroll, but the current student that might fill that space could if they're not an open enrolled student. >> This is an open enroll. This is only open enroll numbers. If we have district resident students with special needs, the program can never be closed, >> right? >> But that those numbers are added into the calculation in terms of space. >> The idea behind that is so that you can serve your local school district kids and you're not telling, well, hey, we don't have enough teachers to serve your kid for a kid that family that lives here and you've got 10 kids in your special ed program

050that have open enrolled for Unity, for example. See what I'm saying? So yeah, this is open enroll spaces only, but when you run the calculations, it's total special ed case load, >> right? >> Which where which is where you come up. Yeah. And the student that we're talking about in a current evaluation is in fact an open enroll student. >> So we could have someone move into the district and that would push that cap even higher, but keep in mind we would have to serve them anyway because they're a district resident, >> right? >> Yeah. If you take an 11-year-old kid that has these needs and they've been in your district and the next year, you know, that it's it's full from residents, do you then >> say we can't take this over and milk

051anymore? >> No. So that that's another piece that what happens over time. I mean thankfully what you typically don't see is like a stacking where it continues to go up and up and up and up. Now, if you looked at special ed over time, like a a 10-year trajectory, you're going to see that it's not a flat line. It's not decreasing. It's on an increase. But statistically speaking from the school district, if we went from 12% to 14% total special ed population or 14 to 16% total special ed population, you see uh case load numbers and staffing that increase proportionate to that. So, in general, your enrollment caps are going to be governed by just how special needs of a population your district residents are. Arguably, if that were high enough across the board, you

052wouldn't have any open enrollment. See what I'm saying? Any open spots for special ed open enrollment. Is that making sense? >> So, it's it's a bit of a of a stacking effect. could can be over time, but what you don't see is like, oh, our special ed kids come in in 4K and then it just continues to increase like this over time. When special ed kids open enroll, it might be 4K, it might be a junior, you know, and anywhere in between. So, there is a bit of this coming and going and in and out and and a resetting of the calculation on an annual basis based on again all of the kids that are legitimately there at the time. That make sense? Any other questions? All right, we'll move on to the social event

053policy survey. >> We'll kick it over to Mr. Wilson. >> Right on. Thank you. So, earlier this year, I had several students approach me asking to revisit this policy, which um for your uh remembrance three years ago, we made an adjustment to. Um so what we did is we set up a meeting with these kids. We met in my office and um during that initial conversation we did a little history dive to remember you know how this policy used to be how it was changed three years ago and then where we're at right now. Um some of the students asked if there was a potential to change the policy back or revert back to where it was previously. um then in in conversations um found it very valuable to uh send out a survey to

054the student body um looking for some input on how the students felt. So, um, in board book you have a copy of a of the, uh, information I kind of pulled together. Um, and just as an overview, I won't read the whole thing, obviously, um, but just as an overview, like I said, the, uh, policy back in the day was, um, the voting process for homecoming and prom ended up with five boys and five girls, and the top vote getter of each gender were, um, voted king and queen. So like I said a few years back that policy was changed under the um you know description that the student body wanted to make that change um and school board voted on that change had happened. Um what I did then um at the request of

055these students and to find more information was sent a pull together survey and sent that out to the student body and uh obviously gave that a deadline. Gave it a week plus and did some advertising and some announcements and some encouragement for the student body to give some input or give their input into this policy. Um and essentially the survey like I said was emailed to the student body. they were given some time and uh the the four options of the survey um option one was to revert back to the old policy which was the five boys, five girls, king and a queen and uh 57% of the result or 57% of the votes came back to revert back to the old policy. Um the second place category was the I really don't care one

056way or another with 20% of the student uh students who voted voting that direction. Uh the third third option was the current version plus adding something like royals. So part of our discussion was some people really feel it's important to have a king or a queen or a for lack of a better term winners um top vote getters um and and that version received 17% of the votes and then the uh current version which is between 8 and 12 of the top vote getters being listed um you know not not including any genders at all not boy or girl just 8 to 12 of the top vote getters and that received 6% of the votes. Um, so the question andor conversation surrounded the interest in changing or reverting back to the old or making an

057adjustment to the policy. So up for conversation. Um, and you know, one thing to keep in mind is the timeliness of this. We're in the middle of a school year, so we do have a prom coming up. Um, and you know, again, it's up for discussion, but several a couple different things to look at. One, should there be a change? Shouldn't there be a change? Um, could there should there? Um, and then two, if so, when could it be done midyear for this year's prompt? Should be, if there is a change, would it be done for starting next school year? So, a couple different conversation points. >> You're agreeable to a change and you want to see it implemented, we could bring it forward. This is a student halfway change at the high school level.

058which could be approved in February which would have an impact on prompt um or if you're agreeable to a change but we don't want to change um our approach midstream we can bring it anytime for implementation in the 26 27th school year but if it's going to change it's going to come forward as a handbook change it's not going to change we wouldn't bring forward any question um there's how many in high school. >> 324. So 2 and No, >> a little under 200. >> Yeah. Y >> didn't respond. >> Correct. >> Um can they be asked or required to respond? Because you could almost put 200 votes in the I don't care. >> Correct. I mean, voluntary response bias is a real thing. involuntary response bias in that when you ask someone to reply

059to a survey, if they care strongly one way or another, they're likely to reply. >> Correct. >> If they don't care, there's a strong chance they're not going to reply. So, you could infer a lot. >> You you really could one way or the other. Um you could assume a lot. Correct. >> Or is it or is it also another perspective? Is it just like voting? Yes, people vote in national elections and they're literally saying >> right >> don't care and we count the actual votes that we're getting. So I'm >> right >> asking questions on both sides. >> No and I agree with that. It's a good discussion because as as votes are happening or or survey results, you know, there are a couple kids that I I asked, hey, did you see that

060survey? Yeah. Did you vote? No. Why not? Because I really don't care. And that's anecdotal of course, but um you know is that the reason that you know 180 plus or whatever didn't vote? I you know speculation but fair questions correct and I can I absolutely had conversations with people that felt strongly one way and I absolutely had conversations that you know with people felt strongly the other. This is the information after poking and and suggesting and suggesting and announcing and hoping and all the above. These were the results that came out of the student body. >> Statistically speaking, the response rate of a third of your population is a solid response rate. >> Now I mean I recognize that we have way more than 130 kids. and then be some precedent like other voting

061situations. It's like these are the ones that participated so we really don't know what the others think and you act based on >> correct. >> Yeah. And I'll site with the recent staff wide survey that we did and we have around 200 employees 180 something like that you know of people that are non-coaches and whatnot. Um then what do we get? Half 50% above which is a good response rate but because also when you do a survey and it's a required survey you have issues with data validity then because if you recall like the Iowa basic test from the old days and the kid that you sat next to with a last name that started with the same letter as yours in the alphabet and all he did was write AC/DC. Do you see what

062I'm saying? Because he's not doing it. That's kind of what you get. It's like fine, you can make me do it, but click click click and done. I don't know that you can it decreases the validity of surveys when you do that. And arguably, I think the conversation this again on a personal level, I'm not dictating anything here at all, but when the data shows as it does, I I don't feel that there's going to be dissonance among the student body. I think generally it's going to be yeah, we would like it back up the way the old version was. And of course, Mr. Wilson and I because of the circumstance had talked about this to an occasion last year and the attack that I had mentioned to him was look in my opinion this

063is a high school that's for our students they don't have unilateral authority to decide anything but they do have the ability to advocate for themselves so if the conversation comes up then I think a reasonable course of action would be to you know listen to them do a little bit of research conduct a survey see what the survey says and then we'll bring it forward for a conversation with the board depending on what the content of the survey is. And frankly, if it came back the other way, which is keep the whole current version, we don't want to. Then I anybody that asked the question, I'd go, here you go. We're not changing it. You know what I mean? Until whatever till some point in the future where it becomes something of a of a

064fashion for people. But the the data here does not indicate that there's when we have 57% that prefer the old version plus 20% that that don't care. That's pretty strong. If it was 57% and 53% for the current version, I might have a different opinion. I think we need to do some more research, but it's not showing. The data is not showing that there's this division, this close division among the students. >> I have a question. Um, so with the old survey, how many people participated in that? Cuz I just think it'd be a good thing to think about. >> You mean when they origin when they switched? >> Yeah, like the original survey. >> Do you have any idea, Mr. Yeah. I don't have an idea. I don't know. >> I recall you telling

065me. Wasn't it pretty like a lot less than the people that voted this time? >> I honestly don't have any idea. Miss Ryan did it. I don't know. >> Okay. Wasn't it just the the prom andor homecoming committees? Just that small population. >> Maybe. >> I think >> I wasn't part of it. So I >> Yeah, >> I was on the outside. >> I think they were the ones that proposed the idea. Right. >> I do remember that. They do a formal survey, but then >> I never heard about >> wasn't there, but it was like a not representative of the student population. >> I I don't mean to interrupt, but I did some research and it was just the student council that that was given the survey, which was 28 students. So that was

066the re the research that I did that it was just the student council. >> Okay. I feel like that seems right from what I recall. I mean, I wasn't on the board, but just from my what I knew of the situation with my >> and that was kind of the same argument, right? Like these kids are actively working on this stuff and the others are like the other kids like you have. So the only people that were participating in planning, right, were the ones that >> Well, I would think that if there was a student bodywide survey, you're probably going to get around 100 to 150 responses. >> You know what I'm saying? >> What was the feeling around like homecoming? That was the most recent event under the social event policy. I mean, like

067how did the students feel about it? >> This this policy. >> Yeah, >> I haven't had many conversations at all regarding it. There haven't been >> Yeah, last year was without remark, >> right? >> And arguably until this conversation took place. Also, >> what's interesting is that things that are potentially heated in in the community or among adults doesn't necessarily bear out in the high school building. You know what I'm saying? I'm not saying it doesn't matter to kids. It does, but it's just like, well, it is what it is and they move on, do their thing. >> So, Yeah, because that's one of the things that Mike and I talked about too. Well, if we start hearing about it and it's causing problems, then maybe we have to push it along. Otherwise, we can

068let it be a student led thing to to determine whether it would make a difference. We didn't hear a darn thing last year, the entire year. No. >> You know, adult. >> One of the big conversations that was had around this topic previously was um can we continue to reflect gender in our handbook and policy? Can we say king and queen and insist that it would be a female queen and a male king? And I think that was a a big concern for our community that um had big feelings about that and turned out to to really articulate their concerns and I don't see that having changed in our community. I think we still live in a conservative nook of the the state that would continue to to be concerned if we for example had

069a male queen or female king. And I think that um we we didn't arrive at any language that would in any way effectively prevent that without tramping on state or federal law rights. >> That was a big part of the conversation was had a big part of the heartache and the angst in our community. Well, the way things are definitively settled is through litigation >> inevitably and I'd like to not be on the receiving end of that. Thanks >> 100%. >> Yeah. >> So, the uh I just had another question. It was the the two the plus two royals is that was again a king and a queen, but the court there would be balance between >> the idea the royals was one term that was used as a as quote unquote winners >> but

070not gender specific >> okay >> or ambassadors or something >> right so two winners but not gender tied like king and queen are >> okay >> and the the student group that came to you and approached on this um did they give any commentary on their reasoning are they more passionate about tradition tradition versus >> um passionate about changing back tradition was a big part of the conversation >> kind of the argument. So um following through it sounds to me like with this process that you took with the students and such this is something that we had asked about um I guess three the the first time and we found out that maybe there wasn't a survey of a whole population. So you did do it was done step by step which is great. So

071now we have kind of like that representation. So, is this going to be the new like standard practice of saying in two years we have a group come through that says, "Hey, we really care about uh leaving gender out again. So, will we follow this process this way?" >> I would say it wouldn't. >> Yeah, it's a fair question. >> It'll just be a fluid process. >> I mean, it can be. So, there's elements I think again and that where is where it comes down for student engagement, right? I mean, >> right, >> the school is for that particular at the high school level. You want to see kids engaged. These are things that they have uh clearly some opinions on and some some you know I would hope some say in the matter and

072if there's things that we can do my position is always to say like I've talked about with Mike if the answer is no we're going to tell them no just like I would as a parent but then describe why that is. I mean we're not doing that and here's why. Right? But with something like this arguably uh could it change on an annual basis or every couple years as the winds of change blow? Sure. And I don't know what the harm in that would be because as our student body and demographic might change, you know, then maybe we do shift. Um there would possibly be times though where upon consultation with administration, I just want to be very clear that both Mike and I go, "Uh-uh, that's not no that is not happening." Regardless of

073if it's 100% of the student body because of state and federal laws, because of a number of things, right? Safety, whatever the case may be. I can't think of what that would be right now, but I'm just saying they don't have unilateral authority to make changes. But if we're talking about something that's they're passionate about that they want to see changed, we have the ability to change it. We engage in a professional and and reasonable manner in terms of soliciting feedback from the broader population, then my opinion is that we do it. >> Again, we are not voting on this tonight. It's just information that will be on the February first whatever meeting in February um to for a vote on. So any other questions for comments? >> I have a question. Uh so Mr.

074Wilson, you were saying there is advertising done on the survey. I don't really recall there being any. I just remember it just being sent out in the deadline and that was it. >> So what kind of advertising we talking about? Through the announcements, too. >> Okay. Do you think that more kids would have like or that there would be different results if more kids would have participated? Is that >> if I think the results were different? >> Yeah. Do you think they would be different? >> Um, from people I talked to, I think that for the old tradition way would be a lot more >> votes. Yeah. And I just think it's interesting how such a long tradition could get like changed with like only the student council which is what 20 people in this

075survey it's a lot more >> appreciate your feedback. It's good to have the student voice. >> Yeah. >> Anything else? All right. We'll move on to your calendar. >> Okay. I'm going to open with my sincerest of apologies to our community as well as the board of education for bringing this forward in January because I was supposed to in October and November and I totally forgot about it. So, I can't even give you a decent reason. It just didn't happen. And so, it is here this evening and we're going to look for you to approve it at the board meeting portion. Not because it's a rush job. It is comparable dates to what we had seen in the past. Um some interesting differences uh would be the end of the school year with graduation being

076on the 28th and then um what is it? Memorial Day on the 31st. So that's that same uh weekend. We come back on June 1st for that final day of teacher inservice, which arguably could be a portion of um virtual or online inservice if the staff members are wrapped up on the 20 uh um No, pardon me. That would be be at least a half day, would it not for them to check out? No, no, no. Because the 28th is an inservice day, too. I'm sorry. I had it right the first time. The 27th would be the last student day. The 28th would be an inservice day. and also graduation. So that's the difference. My apologies. Um and then you notice the uh Christmas break time we do that December 21st and 22nd would be

077an inservice day. So, we're kind of utilizing the model that we use this year where there's a one student contact day week being that Monday, which works out pretty well for things that happen in the middle, elementary, middle, and high, which is kind of a fun day, ski day, movie day, bowling, mall America kind of thing for middle and high school. And I'm sure nothing but craziness at the elementary. >> Yeah. Um, so that does kind of work out nice and it gets us done. Students are done of course before June and staff like I said initially wouldn't have to necessarily be in attendance on the 1st and can be virtual in service day unless they have things that they need to finish wrapping up that are require them to be in person. >> Um

078I'm assuming Easter must be March 28th then is adjacent to spring break. >> That is correct. >> Okay. So we will not have the Monday after Eastern office. >> Yep. I want to double check that real quick, but that's accurate. Yes. Um, Easter Sunday is on the 28th, correct? Any other questions or comments? We're done in May. For the most part, students are done in May. So, That's worked out good pretty good. >> And we have some decent breaks in there. >> Yeah, we are voting on this later. >> Yeah. >> All right. Uh, next is the proposals at the new course proposals at the high school. We have what? Three, four. >> First one is the advanced theater. Well, they're all for you, Mr. Wilson. Just take >> I'll take them. Yeah. So, we

079have four three plus one the uh where's my Yeah. So, the advanced theater class several years back with the addition the fine arts center and before that too we have um a class where we teach kids creative dramatics but teach kids acting but also the set building and those type of things. So, the advanced technical theater class would be a second level of that for that handful of kids who are really really into the theater world. And again, that could be acting, but also maybe more so the set building and the technical aspects of the theater. I mean, we've got one student who can run pretty much that whole booth now because he just loves to do those sort of things. So, this would be an above and beyond or that second level, which could

080be beneficial um to our district as well to have other people involved in this in this facility to be able to help out with the technical aspects of not only theater, but the concerts and the dance factory when they come in and could actually have some potential part-time employees down the road. >> Okay. I was going to ask that. So, students could potentially get paid to run that >> once they get trained in that. They'd be very valuable. Yes. >> Yep. So it won't affect a lot of kids. It's obviously a very small group of kids that would have that level of interest, but they would go through the first level class and then you know essentially saying I'm really really interested in that. I'd like to go above and beyond. So helpful, great for

081the kids but also great for the district too. >> Um you just want to go through each one of them or do you have questions one by one? >> Questions on that one? >> Okay. um exploring education. Mindy s Miss Sedre is uh proposing this class and that is a future teachers class. um the face area if you you know if you look at like a W Stouts uh face uh teaching program um in any teaching program this is absolutely in her wheelhouse in that curricular area looking to uh recruit and train obviously not fully because they need a four-year degree but to get people interested and more more skilled and experienced in the education world. Um, coupled with that, not the class, but just as a side note, in the state of Wisconsin, there's

082a group called Educator Rising, and it's a support system to um get kids, high school kids excited to become teachers, which we need, >> absolutely need teacher shortage across the country, and it's a tough profession. So, getting some of our energetic and excited kids um in this area could be really, really valuable. So, Mr. Drake would like to offer that as an elective, half credit elective. Do you know if this is common at high schools? >> It's starting to become more. Yeah. So, the educator rising group is is fairly new, like a handful of years old. It's great. It's gaining a lot of power. >> We had a chapter in Rapids and I would say that Yeah. I don't know what penetration is, but it's becoming more and more prevalent. Yes. >> Yeah. Very much

083needed. >> Yeah. And it's it's a lot of it is a reaction to the need, you know, universities saying, "What can we do? Um how can we support? How can we get more people in the teaching profession?" obviously. So, yeah. So, that'd be a half credit, just a quarter long class, but we, you know, talk with these two people about getting some kids some experience with the younger classrooms and like quote unquote student teaching opportunities. >> Any questions on that one? >> All right. Third one is Mr. Hall is proposing >> I have a more of a question comment. >> Yes. Sorry. Um, so with a class like this, is there a way to then create partnerships with it with like universities or potentially things like that say actually technical colleges too? Yeah. >> With

084your early childhood programs. >> Yes, there are some tentacles that can be connected. Yes, absolutely. >> Yeah. So, this this class could grow into an educator rising group and also so puts in some potential college connections. Um, third one was uh is history through film. Mr. Hall, it's a uh he's looking to take a little different spin on a social studies credit in that incorporating film and not just putting on movies. That is absolutely not what he's looking at. I was going to say throwback to a previous well back in the day. >> Those are film strips now, >> right? Film strips, >> right? not that but a little more in depth or a lot more in depth I should say with uh taking historical periods um obviously watching the movie but then breaking it

085down and doing research on uh how accurate the movies are um with text and research and such. So, um his the way one thing he described to me what he is he's hoping to be able to reach um different groups of kids who might not be super readers or we'll sit down and grab a textbook for the fun of it but kids who want to be engaged and and a little more exciting, a little more active. So, and that'll be a half credit elective. >> So, half credit. >> Yep. Yeah. this in the in our social studies department, we have US history for a for a semester for a full credit and world history for a full credit and then a plethora of electives that are all half credit. >> And that's cuz we're on

086the block. >> Mhm. >> Oh yeah. >> See what I'm saying? >> They could squeeze some of these movies in blocks. >> Exactly. >> Any questions on that one? All right. And then the last one, like I said, it was kind of a three plus one. This last one is actually an IEP directed class. We kind of have to do it anyway, but I want we wanted to make sure you're all aware of it. And essentially, it's taking our upper level uh special ed kids and giving them some life and transition skills. And we've started that a little bit already with some experiential pieces at the high school, but um making it a little more formal essentially is what we're looking at doing. So crazy beneficial for a handful of kids. >> Absolutely. >> Any

087questions on that one? >> Sounds good. >> Thank you. >> Uh next is the open en or the enrollment projection report. >> Okay. You ready? >> Backets. Yes. >> All right. Buckle up. So um I will try I will try to give you um a quick synopsis on the first page. Let's double check. Page one, it does have a enrollment projection executive summary. I'm assuming you may you read through that at least. I would like to run through some of the data by keeping in mind that the bulk of the discussion really comes down to what the actual projections are and that's not until like page 16. So I just want to give you an encapsulation of how this gal went ahead and did the study and what it actually means and then we'll talk

088about what the projections are and why you know what the potential impact of that would be. Um so clearly she opens by talking about the co 19 pandemic and its effects and as slight increase in homeschool potentially some changes in open enrollment behavior. That data does bear itself out here. you see some of them modified but then coming back uh you know increasing and then coming back and so forth and we'll touch on some of that uh over time. She starts simply by addressing enrollment trends over the past 10 years. So that's back to 1516. When we do the projection you're going to see that that projects out 10 years to 3536. I neglected to mention the single biggest thing that she emphasized was much of what you're seeing here in St. Croy Falls is

089as a result of what you're seeing is statewide trends in demographics in Wisconsin and arguably Brent had a question how many other states I'm not going to sell my soul for this answer but I googled it earlier and it said 41 of 50 states have seen varying degrees of declining enrollment. So it's a population issue and that is Wisconsin in particular trends older and younger people. So we have fewer younger people but also younger people are not having kids or having as many kids as they did in the past. So Wisconsin itself as a state as a structural deficit in terms of uh just a replacement rate of human beings. So you're going to see population decline and as a result of that you're going to see public school enrollment and enrollment in multiple schools

090across the board even private schools arguably decrease over time simply because there's less kids. >> Would you Google it? You Google the the public school. >> I said how many states have declining enrollment? How many in public schools? Correct. Yes. >> I think the number was 41 on 50. The 40 on 50 is significant. >> Um so she shared that caveat. She also shared the fact that 4K and kindergarten numbers are going to be a huge predictor of what future enrollment looks like, which seems like common sense, but uh it's it it's you're insulated from that for to a degree if you have a number of um uh like K8 or K5 private schools within your district boundaries, right? So then you'll get kids jumping in say middle school or high school. So those can

091have big fluctuations in numbers on occasion. for us if you focus on 4K and K that's going to be a significant predictor of future enrollment. And then the last caveat that she would share if she were standing here is there's no human being that can tell you outlier things that might happen. Right? So he have it only knows you know we're talking about the hospital being constructed and is that going to bring population in or have any kind of impact in enrollment? That's unknown. uh might there be something that comes in the future that goes away in the future that has an impact on population again that's unknown so those things can't be accounted for uh to a significant degree okay so now I am going to go um to let's see on page four

092components of 4K through 12 enrollment change what you have is natural increase and decrease in net migration. Net migration of course is going to be in terms of like open enrollment and just coming and going from the district boundaries or within the area and natural increase or decreases as a result of population demographics. What you're seeing, right? Um student choices in the St. Croy Falls School District. So now I'm on page five. That's where our only true non-public school setting is going to be homeschooled. And you can see that bump 2021 to 100 from 66 in 1920 to 120 in 2021 115 in 2122 settling back out down to like 105 now in 24 25. So not as high as it was and on a tail down. One of the things I mentioned is that

093um I do think it's going to make some sense at some point here to do outreach to homeschool families just to again we're not trying to coersse or anything like that but ask questions like hey how can you homeschooling? what would I like to make a decision to something about the public school district? Is there things that we could do differently? You know, that kind of thing. So, you can gather some feedback and arguably you can do the same thing for your open enroll students as well uh via a survey or some other mechanism of outreach. >> If a student is doing an online school, are they considered homeschooled or open enroll? >> So, in in order to open enroll in the state of Wisconsin to a virtual school, it has to be a charter

094school. So, it can't just be a virtual program because we have a virtual program, but we could only serve our district resident kids. If we had somebody open enroll here to do virtual, we'd say no, we don't offer virtual for open enrollment because you have to have a charter. You basically have to operate a charter school. Um, and the way that that works now, I mean, there's dozens of virtual charter schools in the state. You can open and roll to any one of them. So, like my virtual school could be in Milwaukee, but I'm counted on the open and roll out from St. fall school district and into whatever it's called Milwaukee Virtual Academy. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. So, that wouldn't be reflected here. This is home school only. Um that's all reflected

095on. So, in the public options that coming into the next page, you see open enrollment numbers and tuition agreements. Tuition agreements are all zero. Uh open enrollment numbers are reflected there for the last 10 years. I'm on page six now. You can see there was there's some fluctuation fluctuation in those numbers, pardon me, where 10 years ago, just by serendipity or chance, we were minus 13 in the open enrollment game and now in 2526, we're plus 13 the open enrollment game. 165 out and 15 or pardon me, 165 in and 152 out. The strongest emphasis that I'd place on that is as we ask these questions and determine what you know with our open enroll families what the circumstances might be. We have to recognize that some of them are going to say, "Well, I

096work at Angry, so that's where I'm gonna drop my kid off. It's just easier." Or you in your house or whatever. And some you might hear, well, you guys are terrible, and here's why, which is great. And those are things that we can do. So, it's not great that we're terrible, but it's great that we get feedback in that regard. I don't think we're going to hear that, but you know what I mean. You'd be able to do some research and actually change some things. A lot of open enrollment is driven by geography and people's lives. People do select places to live based on how well their schools do. And arguably our schools do very well comparatively speaking. But in many cases, it's not enough to make me want to move or make my commute

097to work an hour instead of 30 minutes. >> People make those kind of judgment calls. Right. The other piece I'd point out for those of you that are geographically inept, we have a a river. I just said lake, call myself out. We have a river that borders us on the west and we cannot under any circumstances educate kids from Minnesota. So open enrollment can never cross state lines. And so that would be one hard boundary or geographic region that we don't have access to that other districts would uh that aren't ordered by the state. The St. Croy Lake kidding by the way. Um okay. So then the next portion is the 4K through 12 market share of school-aged residents. Um I'm not going to get too terribly much into that, but uh you can see

098what it basically it's the non-public school setting in the public options giving us our total uh in 2526 and going back to 1516. Um that's simply an enrollment matrix over time. You can see that those numbers are shared I think in your annual meeting packet we have uh you know by grade level over time where um the numbers are um and then when we're talking about the enrollment projections which is frankly the whole reason where we wanted to do this she talks about where trends uh trends where confidence is high and where unknowns are and I'll cite again what I open with and that is aging and fertility. We have an aging population in Wisconsin and particularly proportionately lower fertility, not fertility rate, but lower child birth is basically what's happening. Um, and then of

099course she lists unknowns, the long-term effects of COVID, the housing markets, immigration, delayed postponement of childbearing, competition, and so forth. So the analysis that she uses to conduct the study is what's called the cohort survival method and that is with um that's the broad terminology used survival is in terms of legitimate survival like literally my ability to live which for us as a small school district of a thousand kids is a nominal number so it's like 0.01 or 0.001 but in a larger model like say St. Paul public schools 20,000 students that number would have an impact because of course just by symptom of numbers but also survival within the system. So what the odds are kids going to stay from you know prek to K all the way through uh 12th grade. Um so

100again they place a lot of emphasis on four-year-old kindergarten size and potential enrollment in terms of all of the um uh calculations and there she lists some assumptions on page 10. Also on there is resident live birth which I think is quite interesting for Poke County uh including the pardon me the population resident live burst for Wisconsin as well as resident live birth for Pulk County and in 2024 that was 350. you go all the way back to 200 2009, pardon me, was 512. So, you see a difference there, but you also see that kind of jumping around. You know, there's not a ton of consistency to that. Um, next on page 11 is St. Croy Falls 4K as a percent of the Pope the the total Pulk County 4K kindergarten pool. And what's interesting

101is that as that pool decreases um the highest we had was in 1617 where we had 16.86 of the pool. That's the capture rate in that right hand second from the right column. And uh our lowest was just last year at 9.61% and we are coming up to our second highest which is this year uh the 2526 at 14.8%. So that's based on when the kids are born and tracked over time and when they should be enrolling in 4K and who in fact do enroll in 4K. That's where those numbers are coming from. The refugees of course are um when you have numbers like we do in Poke County and say Craig Paul School District, it's a relatively small sample size. So you're inevitably going to see some fluctuation in those numbers. Particularly something like

102registered for 4K. It's just the more birth year that year. Fewer kids. >> Um, >> can I ask what is the how many kids do we get in kindergarten that don't attend our 4K? >> Oh, we're on an average year I would say average of eight, but some years that can be 15, some years it's less. This year it was less. >> And are those traditionally kids that are um in the district? There are traditionally kids who are in the district but had a different daycare situation or were in a nursery school kind of thing. But, you know, honestly, I to be that's that's really off the top of my head. I'd have to look back at years of data to see what percentage that was and what percentage is moveins. >> Just curious. >>

103Yeah. Usually, we plan for whatever our 4K numbers are. We try and plan for 10 more kids coming. >> All right. On page 12, you're going to see P County for kindergarten pool 4K pool uh by year. So that's providing that projection. And underneath that, we have what our lowest percentage take of those would be and our highest percentage take of those would be over that 10-year projection. So you can see in 2035 36, we would have on lowend 46 in 4K and on the high end 53 in 4K. And you can see those numbers don't change a ton over those years. And that's because it's a symptom of this population calculation for birth rates, right? And it is a projection. It makes sense when you're using 4K and kindergarten as your primary numbers because

104any year that you increase, all you're doing is making that longer. So you're kicking that group that you did your first prediction with to the to kindergarten to first grade, first grade to second grade. And those that's how those numbers um stay. Um then she talks about net migration. That is the again the ins and outs the movements among um uh human beings, students, school age kids uh from year to year which enters into the ultimate calculation survival rates as you can see are listed on page 14. Uh, and then we get to page 16, which is where the actual legitimate 4K enrollment projections come, which would be starting in 2526 and ending in 3536. The left hand column, pardon me, that says low K low migration would be the worst of the scenarios in

105terms of the lowest numbers. the far right column, high K, high migration, would be the best of the scenarios in terms of the potential highest numbers. The argument she made is that what you'll probably end up seeing is something that's right down the middle of the two middle columns, the low K high migration and high K low migration somewhere in there. So, if you're looking at a school population projection 10 years out, a solid bet, not a guarantee, would be around 800 kids. 10 years from now, keeping in mind that we're at 987 correct decrease for the reasons I mentioned. >> I thought she said we were at a thousand 76 for some reason sticks in my mind that was previous or something. where I got that from >> I don't know. >> Well, last

106in 2324 we are,54. Last year was 990. If we truly lose roughly 180 kids over the course of this 10 years, we're talking roughly 15 kids per grade level looking within the elementary. That's a section. >> Yeah, guaranteed. And we've already made some staffing modifications as I've shared with you. We're going to have to engage in that behavior over time. on this. What gets interesting is when you get into the it's insulated a bit at the middle school, but at the high school it gets interesting because of lensure specialization. You don't just have one teacher per grade level, right? Not a K8 licensed person. So, you have a chemistry license. Well, that person has to teach chemistry and that's it or chemistry and physical science. And so, they can't do ELA, you know what I

107mean? So those those rubs do uh are a bit harder to overcome at the high school level. >> We probably end up doing a little more shared staffing between our low and high. >> Correct. >> Because there's a specialized lensure in both. >> Yep. More shared staff. But that also would be dictated by what the lensure is of the middle school staff members. Some might be K8. Most most are K8. >> You see what I'm saying? So it it's It'll be complicated at varying times and there'll be times where you'll hear us telling you that we're going to fill a high school position or potentially fill a middle school position and here's why and the response is going to be yeah but we have fewer kids but we'll explain at the time what our you

108know goal and approach would be. We do know that as we're chasing a bubble now, ironically, it's the fifth grade classes, the largest. The fifth and eighth right now in middle school are the two biggest classes, but we're set because future enrollment at the elementary is significantly lower in multiple grade levels. This isn't just one grade coming through with 50 kids. So we know that basically the whole middle school is going to be much smaller at some point in the relatively near future and then eventually the whole high school too at a little further point in the future and have to make modifications for that to to to work. The best way to approach this of course is in terms of doing it through attrition and ensuring that we're being cognizant of not just random

109not we never randomly fill positions but being very thoughtful about any position that we fill much like we I recommended last year when we had a a retirement at the middle school to not fill that position and then ended up having to because we had eight kids enroll in five fifth grade which we didn't anticipate um that staff do not appreciate. So when you're used to 12, 14, 16 kids in your class and now you have 17, 18, 19, 20, you're going to have staff members telling you that it's way too many kids in the class. I'm telling you right now, but we are going to have to decrease our staffing over time. There's no question. And why am I only talking about staffing? It's the nine share of our budget. 70% of our budget,

110but it plays into facilities type stuff, too. >> Absolutely does. Yep. Are you done? >> I'm done. >> Any other questions, comments? >> Uh, you know, obviously we talked about some of the stuff looking at the future, but even looking at, you know, potential goals of different things for next school year. You talked about, uh, you know, potentially at some point reaching out to the the homesooled kids and, you know, what does that mean? You know, type of things. So there's I mean there's good information in here. I think it was well worth the $2,000. So >> yeah. >> All right. What's next? More goals. So hockey >> boys and girls hockey co-op. So, we're looking at reimproving both boys and girls hockey co-ops which go for two year uh twoear cycles 26 27 and

11127 28. Um from what Terry had told me, we didn't have any girls. We don't have any girls this year, but we're going to next, I think. And boys, of course, we have several boys that are involved in hockey. Yeah, with the no girls there the co-op agreement still exists. >> Yes. >> And then All right, that's fine. >> Yeah. >> Any questions, comments on that? >> Does the agreement include transportation for any of the kids >> to the right >> to their practices? >> No. >> Is there an opportunity there for that? >> We have to pay for it. has been talked about. It's always been something that has been part of the agreement. It's >> the same uh argument that I'm going to throw at you when we talk about building proximity and

112potentially a wrestling space. It's an issue when you're sending kids all over everywhere to do anything. We have the issue for soccer as well. >> Um could we? The problem is we don't have enough buses to make it happen. We don't have enough drivers consistently. So, arguably, could that happen on on occasion? Sure. The problem is once you start doing it, it's going to be pretty hard to not do it. And we're having a hard time finding drivers to drive regular routes and regular trips, much less the summer. >> You know, some the soccer team kind of breaks it up, don't they? Come here some, but obviously that's unity. We don't have to have a rink, you know, break stuff. Yeah. >> How many kids go to Somerset practice? >> How many of our kids?

113>> Yeah. >> I'm not sure. >> I don't know. >> Uh current. >> Six. >> That' be my quick guess. >> Like Yeah. Six or eight >> currently. Yeah. >> Yeah. This year that's what it is. No, girls. But >> depends on how interested the kids were when they were little, >> what makes the kids or whatever. I know a bunch of kids that enjoy it or they're all friends or something. Um, when my daughter was in hockey co there was one school that participated. I think it was and they they let a parent and reimburse the parent. >> What was it, Matt? Was it a ride share or is it the only one? >> No, there was from here. >> There was Oh, no. There was >> there was trying to think probably. >>

114Did you just take turns? >> No, they they just they just carpooled or whatever. >> Yeah. Well, the kids >> that's what I meant. Yeah, they were carpooled. the struggles of offering the opportunities that require us to co-op with another school. I guess >> we could say we can't have hockey because we can't afford transportation or or can't reliably provide transportation. These kids >> arguably most communities don't have a ice arena on their school district property. They try they're getting driving or going somewhere else within your city potentially area. But >> so it's not atypical for you hockey, right? They send kids to certain places >> and I have no idea how many districts, if any, cover that transportation. >> Sure. >> I know where I came from, we sent kids all over hell and

115it was their problem to get there. >> You know, that's how that's how it is here. So >> for I mean the kids appreciate it, you know, just like It's just like anything else that could have anywhere from zero was unusual, but 10 kids or whatever, you know, that would really mess with kids' futures and with their parents. And um you know, if the kids are like playing hockey at this rink up until a certain age, but they knew that there was just like No chance after that then those numbers will go down. >> Oh, for sure. >> Point. >> So anyway, >> some other questions, comments. >> All right, now we'll move on to the board goals. We're in our packet as a reminder just like halfway through the year check. see how we're

116doing. Um, so yeah, I'm not going to read through them all obviously, but uh, uh, this scroll down too far. First one is the mental health inclusion and well-being. Um, you know, I, you know, I think we've been getting quarterly presentations from our leaders here on what's been going on with that. >> Um, >> we got Shelly locked down, I think, for next month, too. So >> uh we'll you know obviously it's not the year end to have a you know resource for the tracking um supporting the implementation I'm sorry I skipped one centralized framework platform um we have some of that right I think we have some is it internal resources but not we're kind of looking for maybe more external >> we were looking for I think each of the principles had said

117or they had some But it was all kind of individualized and compartmentalized and we were looking to get that kind of pulled together. >> So we had something consistent across the district. >> Yeah. The conversation was the counseling group would work on something like that. >> Shel's been meeting Shel's been meeting with that crew. >> Service. >> All right. Um yeah, we'll look at the end of the year for a report, I guess, on the trainings and stuff throughout the year. Um and of course when people are, you know, whether Shelley or somebody, we want to make sure we recognize our champions uh for the mental health and social emotional initiatives across the district. Um any concerns, questions, phrases for this goal so far? over and over. >> Recognized outside the school district. >> All

118right, that's good to hear. All right. Uh All right, we'll move on to number two. Develop a comprehensive Oops. comprehensive marketing um and communication strategies to support the district. Um we did, you know, had a meeting with Craig and Kirk uh early on to kind of go over what the board's, you know, get a little bit more in depth on what we were looking for and your ideas and different plans. Um, you know, we could definitely see more communications and stuff going out, which I I appreciate um to what you know, what's going on within the district. I'm not on, you know, social media, so I have to lean on some of you guys for more of what you're seeing with that kind of stuff. Um, so, um, the the development of a detailed marketing

119plan and that's kind of what we meant to discuss. you know what's didn't have one obviously weren't going to set one for you guys but we I think are making our way through that. Any questions or comments on that concerns? Is there is there a main something like that together uh for an overall month by month the big ticket items. >> Yeah. Yeah. If everybody else is doing that, I'd like to see like a full marketing strategy plan, high level, low level. Um also maybe like calendar of new community ed offerings. perhaps presentation. >> I don't personally feel like a quarterly presentation is necessary if we get a good idea of what the what flow is what we're seeing throughout calendar year. >> Yeah. >> The plan at least in my mind Tasha is that

120we would have a plan to show you this is what the overall approach will be. Yes. >> And yeah, some of that will replicate >> correct >> in the next year and of course as new things pop up, >> right? >> So right now we're seeing all the wonderful dayto-day messaging everything. We got lot of feedback. I think everybody's got feedback how the transparency is just fabulous. I just think if we can have something more concrete, something that we can reference, okay, um in the summer months, here's some projects that are being worked on. >> Um >> yeah, like the 12 12 month cycle. >> Yeah, exactly. >> We'll figure it out. >> Yeah, that's >> all right. So the last bullet I think we just kind of covered um we talked about the multi-

121channelannel dissemination of different things. You guys are hearing positive things about that. So that's good. Um we've done some surveys with our community, right? Our staff anyway, right? Um, so that's good. Uh, in here it does talk about a bannual update uh from the departments on what's going on. So yeah, maybe you could put something together for February or something for the first half of the school year. >> Sure. And then we get one sometime in the summer. That would be welcomed. Um and then to promote increased visibility and storytelling of staff's school achievements. Are we seeing that in our uh the communications going out? >> Absolutely. >> Yes. >> So we're good there. Number two, making good progress. Thank you. >> Uh promote excellence in leadership and organizational support to ensure financial stability and

122foster student success. Um you know, I think we You know, we just talked about some of the data and stuff that we can use for this future enrollment trends with the first bullet. We did that. Uh obviously now we have to use it, you know, as we start navigating forward. Um retaining students of course is is is a big thing uh and and staff I guess too. Um encouraging in innovative financial planning maximizes existing resources. You know, we we're talking about that even as we talk about the wrestling space and different things. What can we do with our existing spaces and different things or potential other spaces? Uh prioritize regular review, modernization. Uh we talked about the uh 10ear plan early on this summer and talk about potential future things. Uh, I think Craig's kept

123us a breast. Um, you know, there's things coming down the pike, you know, in the not too distant future that we got to start thinking about too facilities. Um, and then getting some we get updates on financials and different things like that too. Any comments, concerns, questions on this one? >> I just have a question. Is there something that we need to look at rel and that maybe fits in with the school or not? But related to the heating at the elementary school, is there like something that's been ongoing for a while? >> Cold frequently. >> Is it I've heard some feedback about it and I don't know if it's ever been discussed in the past or if it's cold or if there's problem. Is it on our list to look at? >> I love

124all my teachers, but it's either too hot or too cold in every room every day. So yeah, I think right now we're We're doing as good a job as we can with that. Nate has not name >> Brian. Right. >> Ryan, thank you. Steve Brian has been very, very responsive. Um, and I and I do think it's really hard. It's an older building, but I um I I feel very satisfied that they >> Brian, who I love and appreciate and respect as an individual human being whose name is Brian, um is is being really responsive, and I do feel bad um for the ladies who sometimes are too hot or sometimes are too cold, but I I I'm not really sure there's anything we could do about that given and the um age of the

125building and the setup of I mean I've talked with him a lot about this >> I've never not had that be a complaint >> at every every elementary school with >> every school >> school yeah I mean it is hard because you do some days you have to wear your coat but the problem is these heating systems for these buildings they are super responsive to the outdoor weather so if it was our Weather is really unpredictable in Wisconsin. If it's really warm one day, >> then the next day the heater is going to be on. It's going to take longer for it to kick in. It's going to be freezing that next day. It is. It's a pain. I I in talking to our head of maintenance. I'm not sure there's much that he can

126do about that at this point to be honest. Maybe maybe I'm wrong. Mr. Borne, you could chat with him. No, >> there there's not any outstanding issues with HVAC. >> Large buildings take a long time to >> They do. It's a bummer. >> Anyway, >> we got an ace guy back guy in the back. >> I'm staying out of that one. I've worked in that building a few times and it's a it's a intricate situation. It's a motor. >> There it always is when you have add-ons. New parts of the building, old parts of the building. >> Exactly. Yeah. >> Not that we don't care about our staff down there. That's by no means the gist of this. >> No. And if any teachers are listening to this, I never said a word about it.

127>> All right. Uh moving on to number four. uh is basically to help with the transition of our new leaders. >> Um I think we're doing a pretty good job with that. Um we've got our mentors, you know, helping out Mr. Wallace for professional development. He's been able to do some of that. We'll get, you know, well, we do get feedback from Craig when we have our discussions about those types of things. Um and I guess of things we can celebrate is our strong mentors helping others. So, we appreciate that. I'll throw you away on that, too. You're you're a mentor. >> All right. >> The jury is still out on that. >> Sorry. This one's doing great though. Doing so good. >> Any other questions on that one? Comments? >> All right. If not,

128we can move on to our regular schedule meeting. >> No. No, >> we still have to discuss the 2425 audit >> budget. >> And then the Blanding Woods Road property, which everybody's stoked about. >> All right, I'll hand the pod over to you. >> Okay, so Rey has placed the P uh the bound audit booklet uh at each of your seats. Uh you have already gotten the management letter and so this is just the final numbers. I'm not going to spend any time aside from saying the audit findings were all outstanding except we get dinged on the two things that small school districts always get dinged on because we have to which is segregation of dues and then um journal entries right Lorraine those two >> same ones every year >> so that happens on

129an annual basis for the most part and um other than that though it's a clean bill of health in the district it is financially healthy position. So last year, if you recall, we had Jonathan from Clifton Allen come in and do the presentation. And what Lorraine and I talked about is we do probably every two years because generally he's providing the same information with new numbers. So I think in a couple years makes some sense. >> Any comments questions on it? I don't believe they're just looking I'm sure they'd be willing to entertain questions at another time. >> Yeah, >> that's for the budget >> when you're ready. >> Those packets, I mean, that's your packet to keep if you want to take them home and read them at your leisure. >> Yeah, feel free

130to shoot a bunch of questions to the Ray >> in an email so I can have time to move them up. Yeah, >> I'm kidding. Of course, but you can ask anybody you want. Myself or Ray is better. >> We good. >> All right. Well, kudos to you guys for the budget work that you work that you put into it keeping us having a good out. >> Thank you. Y right on >> the 2526 budget just for reference there's a um this is of course a high level snapshot excuse me being about 50% of the way so I'm going to push you all the way to the right hand column uh fiscal year-to- date percentage clearly we want to see those between 40 and 50% a little bit of jumping around the one caveat that

131I'll bring to your attention is board superintendent so that's 10 e230 230,000 My salary is budgeted elsewhere. So it's my salary. This is legitimately what the response is. So I'm super stoked about talking about myself, but my salary is actually budgeted or accounted for in the middle school high school. That was incorrect. It's being properly coded to the boards superintendent, but the dollars for it are in a different category. So you're going to see that category that 10E 20 230,000 be over budget >> just this time or always >> throughout this year because what we'll do is you've got two options basically and that is to run it because when the school year comes to a close and you're finalizing your books this is all going to roll down to a certain dollar amount anyway.

132So it's not it's it's budgeted in a spot where there's not money allocated for it, but there's money allocated for it elsewhere above. See what I'm saying? >> So it's not like we don't have the money. It's accounted for. Um or you can do a budget amendment, and a budget amendment is a little bit of a pain in the butt because ultimately when you roll it all the way down, you're at the same net in net out. Make sense? So we'll track it, but it'll be tracked appropriately. you will see that increase from the 108% it's currently to even higher before the end of the school year >> fiscal year. >> So what category is it currently? >> It's in that it's in 101 120,000 MS/Hs. >> So why is that number not artificially lower

133than this other numbers artificially? Well, because first off, you're talking about a $3 million budget uh item and then versus a >> Exactly. So, that's there's that and then there's also the idea that um uh it's about at 40%. I mean so it's classification and it's it's would be trans is pointing to generally where we would want to be. >> Well and also if you look at the 120,000 function the middle school high school a majority of the spending is done at the beginning of the year but it because supplies and they need to teach >> where superintendent board expenses are throughout the year. So like that's why you know you might be sitting at 40% already in the middle school high school but maybe a fair amount of what's happening the last half of

134the year is not going to be spent there. It's going to be spent on Craig. >> The expenses are budgeted. The expenses are all here and budgeted. It's just in an inappropriate account. Yes. >> Yeah. And >> what was I gonna say? Oh, that's not like that's not just my salary. >> No, it's not >> much other many other legal fees. That's there's lots of stuff in there in that category. >> Whatever. >> I don't think he was happy when I said yes, it's your salary. >> Yeah. >> I said, "Oh, good. That's always a popular thing to discuss." All right, >> that's my Oh, we are done. >> All right, I like to move on to >> unless there's other questions. >> Now we're talking bllanding woods. >> Yes. >> Is that correct? >>

135Y. >> So, as I talked about last month, what what I'm looking for from the board is some idea about what we want to do. I recognize in this very board meeting, we just heard uh from a a Roman projection that we'll be down another 100 plus kids in 10 years. I'm going to go back to one of the central arguments I made when I started this conversation. If we had 20 kids on the wrestling roster, it'd be too many kids for that space upstairs where they wrestle. Period. It just is. It's an undersized space for the wrestling program. Do I think we're always going to have 60 kids in wrestling? might be 40, might be 20, but even if it's 20, we need a new space, additional space. Let me say one of the

136possibilities is the is the Blandingwoods proh property. We had explored that in terms of a lease. I don't want to go through for, you know, hours of all the things we've already talked about. They're interested in selling it. The price that they said to me was 500,000. It's 8,000 square feet. That puts it at 6250 a square foot. I heard from the um gentleman that's associated with the NEI property, not the owner, but the company that's managing it, that Eric Du home, that's a 15,000 square foot property, and they're going to list it as well or have listed it at 785,000. We don't need 15,000 square feet and we're certainly not I'm not advocating for spending $785,000 on a property, but what I would mention is that calculates to $52.33 a square foot. So clearly

137if we're talking about the Blandingwoods property, we would have to know, as I mentioned before, we'd have to have it assessed and do market comparables to determine whether 500,000 is a number that we'd be willing to pay or we'd make an offer at some other number, right? Based on on comparables, um just as a as a tidbit, there would have to be renovations done. The inside of that uh would be largely gutted aside from the second story. There's a couple of restrooms that are up there. Those would stay because it's they're basically brand new. Toilet, sink kind of scenario. The entire upstairs would be those two restrooms and mats. About two mats. Downstairs. One portion is this is the first floor would be locker rooms, entry area, locker room, toilet facilities, bathroom facilities, and then

138a mat plus in that back half of that bottom floor. Um those renovations on the high side are provided for you on this chart in the green totaling as much as 573,888 or on the low side totaling as much as $388,655 for renovations to generally do what's projected what's shown on the diagram below. That is free work that I had KA do. So these are legitimate to the point that we the construction company to do it. But very clearly, this is not this isn't gone to bid. This these are not solid numbers in any way, shape, or form. Do I think they're going to be in this ballpark? Yeah. But things change and you get change orders or you tear in and something happens or you know what I'm saying? So generally that's the range

139that we would look at be looking at for a renovation. So if you spent 400 $450,000 on the building and 400 or 450,000 onation, you can do the math. We're talking around $900,000ish to a million all in on that space if we were to build um a pole shed. But on our property, for example, according to Krauss, it's going to be around a million bucks to million plus. And then of course, if we're going to talk about legitimate significant structural renovations in any one of our facilities being the high school, the middle school, or the elementary to make some modifications, you're talking about at a minimum 1.5 to two. Um, so anyway, the the thought process was three options. Do we do nothing, maintain the status quo, keep doing what we're doing? is always an

140option. Do we be entertained purchasing building? Another reason the Blanding Woods property I think is attractive is because kids could walk there. It's right there. It's as far away as the track from high school. Um or option C, do we actually put a bunch of stuff together and potentially go to a referendum based on all kinds of calculations that we have to run in terms of what our current debt load is when it falls off? you know, community surveys in terms of what the what might or might not be agreeable. What do we include? Is it the wrestling space plus the elementary roof plus security upgrades? You see what I'm saying? Because we have no idea about those things. You're not going to spend time and energy doing those things until you have some direction

141where you go. The one positive, if there would be one with respect to purchasing a building that's offsite versus adding on to the school is that if we add it on to the school, you can't sell that in the future, right? You renovate a building, do some locker rooms and pads and so forth on the walls. You could sell that again as a piece of commercial property or whatever. Maybe somebody wants to start their own wrestling camp clinic thingy over there. Who knows? But that'd be a conversation for a different day. Um, anyway, that's my abbreviated version because we've talked about this once. >> 15,000 >> $52.33 >> 6250. >> What's the difference in age of property? >> I don't know that. NEI is much more um uh Would you call it industrial with big

142rollup doors for you know they got like a floor area where equipment was office spaces? >> Yeah. So for a school district this wouldn't be a quick thing. Um, we would of course like anybody else would uh figure out via some phone calls. I'm not I think I'd probably talk with Ryan the city administrator or something like you know do we know of anybody that can do a legitimate appraisal or pull some marketer comparables to give us a ballpark idea. Um the board would have to meet arguably in close session to have conversation around what a competitive offer might be and go through that process. There'd be attorneys involved and and so forth and so on. So, this wouldn't just be like, "Hey, we'll give you a 450 for it." And they say, "Yeah, we

143shoot them 450." That's not how this works. Of course, we have multiple things we have to do. Um, but yes, we would have to determine, make some determinations on what is a fair price to pay. The board would have to act on making that kind of offer and then also, you know, have it inspected and all the other things that you would do with purchasing the facility. >> Not it's not just give it money and we get it. This may not be a fair question or might not be one you can answer, but what do you think the odds are that we will have to go to referendum in say the next 5 years for one reason or another? >> That's an excellent question. Um, >> it's really tough to say. I I I wouldn't

144be shocked in the next five years if we have to do a a bond issue question or a levy override question for infrastructure improvements. Just if you look at the 10-year plan, there's millions of dollars that are going to add up over time that I don't think we can continue to peace meal and say we'll do 200,000 this year and 200, but you know what I'm saying? There's there's going to come a point, a critical point in the future where there's too many big ticket items to be rectified where you can't bust it up. particularly if the state keeps doing what they're doing in terms of funding >> and of course declining enrollment. >> Well, with that kind of uh referendum, could you also lump in a a capital project? >> Yes. If you did

145a bond issue, that would be a capital project. Another way you can accomplish that is via a levy override and you because levy override dollars are the same as any dollars that you take in. So, it's revenue. Uh but if you know the board creates a plan that says well we're going to do a levy override for whatever $2 million but for the first two years we're going to spend 500,000 and 500,000 on the rest of the facility and then the rest is going to be we're going to do this this and you see what I'm saying? So you can use a levy override to to do um facility improvements as well. It just offers you a little bit more flexibility. Typically a bond issue is something that you're going to construct. So then you're

146going to you know, sell bonds like you did for the fine arts center. >> Personally, I think if we're going to be as a district going to uh referendum anyway, it might make more sense to hold off. However, having said that, you make a good point that we could potentially sell this property if we picked up one that's offsite, although that's the market for it. >> I don't This is my personal opinion, there are a ton of buildings over there that are just vacant and can't get sold. So, I don't I don't know if that would be appealing just me personally looking at this as a selling opportunity later. >> Just my thoughts knowing that there's just >> you never know demand when >> you know demand. But I >> if we modify our structure

147and had a wrestling room added somewhere and did other things, it's ours. There's you have no chance. You can't sell. Well, hey, >> we'll sell you in a wrestling room that's attached to the >> You know what I'm saying? It doesn't work. So, yeah. >> Yeah. But I agree, Tasha. I don't know that there's there's clearly not a huge market for giant pool sheds in our area. >> There's also not a lot of space on our current school properties. >> Not without some fairly significant renovations and and dirt work and earth work and so forth. Yeah. Have you guys gotten any feedback from the public? We've talked about this a few times. >> Well, I've talked to a couple people about different things, not specifically about, you know, just asking thoughts on, you know, property

148and there's feelings of spending money on other projects that are priority or, you know, is it um, you know, specific to just one group of individuals or I so it's mixed. I don't know that's just mixed feelings. >> I've gotten some of that too where you know they're not against added space for wrestling but if it was like a a space that could be shared you know kind of like the gym is shared or whatever they'd be more in favor of it that way. >> Yeah. I heard about our locker rooms, you know, the like heating things. Like I heard about all kinds of things in conversation. So I mean kind of enlightening just to have like different conversations with community members about stuff and what their feelings are. So like prioritizing and being strategic

149I think is important and again not saying to not do something but doing it the right way or doing the right important. I think one of the um one of the kind of misnomes is that we we're calling this a wrestling space and it would be a wrestling space, but we're not saying this is a space to alleviate the strain on the volleyball gym or the basketball gym where it it doesn't just impact wrestling and calling it a wrestling space gives that implication that it >> issue. It's a space issue. That's a good point. >> We could rent. They don't. I I think anytime though that you're if you have rent versus purchase and we have the ability to purchase, it would make more sense much like Yeah. Because also um well I mean we're

150going to incur a certain monthly cost or annual cost over this build out and you know we're still going to have to do renovations to the building. We're still going to have to put some things into the space. Maybe we need to as a board look over our 10-year plan again for maintenance and kind of agree on whether we believe that a referendum is probably necessary because if that's the case then I would think we want to put this together that as opposed to doing two separate things um and get community feedback in that way. >> For sure. So if the if the angle is a potential referendum then there's a ton of things that need to be done. starting with >> do we agree that there needs to be a potential referendum >> correct

151>> and I think that can easily budget conversation around that plan that's where you see the gaps in our >> we can pull that information together the other piece that I want to calculate is that when falls off that potential impact >> how much are we talking so there's a lot of moving parts that we need to pull together and and keeping in mind that a commitment at some point in the future means that well a if it's even ever approved, we're not talking about next year. This isn't happening now. There'll be probably at least a year of planning before we ask the question before the question's approved before something is built. So you're talking about probably conservatively three years on. >> So we're talking about their three years of bursting at the seams over

152winter sports. >> Conservatively, yes. because the last thing you want to have this be is is a rush job. >> Although I agree with you 100%. >> In terms of what you're saying, I I and maybe I I'll be upset with myself after the fact. If we're planning on potentially doing a referendum, I wouldn't advocate for purchasing the building, too. I would not that would be a step too far in my opinion because I agree. I don't know. We put in, you know, we're going to spend money on renovating that building. Even if all we did was mats on the forums and they just wrestled over there and came back. We did nothing but tear everything out. We're still going to spend money on mats and wall pads and that kind of thing and then

153walk away in two years would be insane. I I don't want to do that. We put the district in a tough spot for the reason you mentioned. Now, do I want wrestling to stay stuck in a small room for the next three or four years or two or three? No. Don't. question. Is it overstated to say that it impacts other programs in different spaces currently? Is that is that an exaggeration or is it just like wrestling just finds it really difficult? Um, well, I mean there's some sometimes others are displaced, but what's what's tough about it is the fact that like the gym is for basketball. I mean, the whole reason the gym was built is basketball volleyball and during the winter is basketball season. Um, but yeah, so I mean there's conversations all the

154time if we have, well, can we let let us use half of the middle school gym? Okay, but we've got middle school ball practice going on, you know what I mean? So, does it displace other programs? Not to a significant degree, but there's issues. There's pressure in other areas as a result of them not having enough space. So that's why they're using the stage right now. Like some of the girls and the heavyweights come down and wrestle on stage in the fine arts center and they just borrow and steal and find spots for right Frank. I mean generally. >> Yeah. I mean you'll let me interject just for a second. I guess if you went upstairs right now they're having a youth practice second through fifth grade and we have Monday nights prek kindergarten or

155kindergarten first grade we have right at 100 or 103 kids signed up for that program right now I went up last night just while the girls were wrestling stuck my head in there and I kid you not it's wallto-wall kids wrestling everywhere um my son is a freshman this year he was up there and I tell the every day. The first week he came home, he had a new scratch, a new bruise, a new cut because he was getting kicked, hit, fallen upon trying to wrestle in that small space. You know, like Craig said, we're trying to make room. two of them heavyweight kids. They take off. I think you'll have large numbers for a long long time. you know, even if half of them kids stick with it, which is probably a legit number,

156you're still looking at 50 kids, you know, in the program at all, you know, potentially. But, you know, I said, is this is that building the perfect solution for the wrestling club, for the wrestling, you know, entity? No. But I think it's probably the best long-term fix because, you know, you guys talk about three years for referendum. In my mind, I don't think it's going to be less than five years by the time you plan for it, advocate for a referendum, potentially get it approved, and then spend two more years getting whatever you approve built. You know, you you do buy the building and you can turn it into your off-site classrooms that you're in need of. You can put offsite offices that you're in need of potentially off of there. You know, there's a

157lot of things you can do with that building even if you didn't sell it. That's an excellent point. So nothing there's nothing that says it would have to remain a wrestling space or vice versa. We purchase it as a wrestling space, it's a wrestling space. So if we do a referendum in the future, wrestling space is not on the table. It's for other items. I mean, I think if you're going to do a referendum, you do find a way somewhere in this property to put it so that the kids have their locker rooms, they have their lockers, they have their cars, they're all on the property. You know, put that your next referendum. Think about that. You know, if that's, you know, if the path you went was to buy the building and you're still

158going to do a referendum in four, five, six years, consider that so that it's here on site where it really should be and then you can do whatever you know your needs would be at that point. >> I like the thought of an offsite classroom. I hadn't considered that, but we're renting space offsite classroom. There's been some talk of um C of students that aren't effective on the campus but could still be educated. >> Question we have booster programs. So wrestling for young kids is a booster program. So do schools purchase or build facilities for nonschool supported ages or whatever? Right. So booster is not It's not a school program. >> So, we don't build or purchase facilities to accommodate programs. >> No, I mean volleyball, basketball, they're all booster here. We have all the

159booster stuff. >> I'm saying I don't think we I'm asking if we purchase buildings to support booster programs. >> No, it's for school programming and what's used that is used by the community by booster hubs. because it's public facility. But >> um to your point, >> yeah, would we build based on booster numbers? No. >> But to Frank's point, if you have 100 kids involved in K uh K and first grade, the idea that 50 of them are probably still going to be going out or even 25 at two grade levels in by the time they're middle school, this problem's going to be continue. I'll go back to my central argument that I opened with 20 kids up in that wrestling room is too many kids. The full roster is 14. Well, I mean, technically

16028 if you had two of each weight classes. You see what I'm saying? It just has been unders sized for the history of its existence. >> Do you um have other thoughts about what that property could be used for if we did purchase? Like I had thought of the what we're renting space for offsite for >> Yeah. So >> there's a using it like as classrooms and so forth. When you talk about wrestling season being >> I mean because number one the winter sports seasons are the longest seasons and number two once you lay down once a wrestling mask you're not going to have the space and the wherewithal to roll them up and you keep putting them away and moving them around. So once it's a wrestling space it's pretty much a wrestling space.

161But are there other things like so for example what I would envision is let's say that we do have the building and we've now added for three years or five years or six years and we're going to go to referendum would we have a logical conversation at the time to say let's turn that building into district offices and the alternative school let's do you see what I'm saying >> so that's how you would and I can't I I have no idea >> with a enrollment can we >> would we even need to do that correct Right. >> Child care center. >> We pay rent for that too. >> Yeah. >> Possibility too. >> It's tough to predict what the what you might do with the space in the future, right? >> But not saying I

162need to see this person, but um have you thought about bringing the coach and Tara to meeting to get their feedback, have them talk about this, too. >> The coach and Terra have met with me numerous times and talked about the approach and I would hope that they have the ability to speak to me like a human being and if they in a disagreement and so forth, they would be aware of that. >> I I just meant to like help >> and they're welcome to attend any meeting you want to attend. There's not >> no one's not. >> But we have we invite people to the board. Is that what you're saying? To speak to the board and answer questions. >> Just wondering if that would give the board clarity or help with any I

163think the marching orders at this point are start looking at stuff we just talked about. I'm not saying I'm poo pooing this at this point, but I I do think we should be looking at it holistically. you know, the when's the dollar going to fall? When is this? Do we want to potentially still buy that? Still knowing we're going to have to go and buy things. >> And I I do appreciate what you said earlier. It's a space issue. It's not just >> if the gym was empty, we wouldn't have this issue because right the gym, >> but that's being used too. gym is being used in the elementary gym is being used >> in the elementary stage apparently. >> Yep. >> So yeah, so back to the summary you're saying. Okay. Wrestling label on

164it is really not fair because it's not completely fair because it's they have wrestle everywhere like in five spaces now and it's just such a mess. So chaotic. >> Yeah. We're not asking our basketball team to divorce basketball. Okay. So, I want to make sure I'm doing what you want me to do. You want to hear from the coach and Tara. >> Do we? That was just something >> I was just If nobody thinks there's value in it, totally fine. >> And that's not my point. I I my point because there's value in hearing from anybody, but I just want to make sure that you folks are clear. I've never told anyone not to come here and talk about this. And if they were sitting, I wouldn't care. I've also not purposefully invited them because

165frankly it's rare that you have staff engagement. Like I don't want to get in a position as a school superintendent where the baseball coach is going to sit out there and decide how he's going to scream at you guys about a turf baseball field for instance. >> That's not an appropriate flow of information. That's not an appropriate circumstance. I'll also say that this isn't because Joe came to me and said we need more wrestling space. This is because again I'm a rational human being looking at kids in a space that's way too small for kids to be in period. It could be the freaking dance studio if we had a dance team that was too large for the space that they're practicing in. So it's really irrelevant of the coach and the the athletic department.

166>> And I guess I can't emphasize that enough. I don't want a scenario where staff members parade in here and tell you guys what we're supposed to do because then I'm not doing my job and I'll find a different one to do and I don't think that's appropriate. I also don't think it's appropriate if I advocate for something for a program but on the backside they go oh do it anyway that would be insane then we have another problem which is speak your mind before it gets to a point where you know because this has also not been a closed door mystery I don't think anybody's surprised by the conversation it's like the fourth time we've talked about it and if there's community members who are like oh where' this come from that's not on

167me it's not on me so with that being said, I I just want to ensure that I'm doing what you folks want me to do so that when the question comes up again, we're not about, well, what about bring this person and do this and then do that. You see what I'm saying? Because this is now year two that we're going on talking about it at least the third or fourth time. And I don't mean to scold you. I just want to make sure I know what to do. I mean, I get the fact that you want to see numbers facility wise. Absolutely. We can start pulling that information together. We can run numbers in terms of I don't know how much we'll get done by February, but we can absolutely have some of those

168details together about would a referendum work, what's the dollar amount, what are we talking about in terms we already know the wrestling space 1.5 to two, you want just wrestling. You see what I'm saying? There's a lot of things, but we can start building block some things together so you get a general idea. >> Well, I I would like that. I mean, this is me, right? to entertain the you know I know we talked about this before what what would it be to be more multi-purpose you know what what is that you know and that may be too much of a stretch for what we want to you know shoot for but at least we can provide some of the number and say you know it's too high >> question girls program boys program um

169in other sports basketball Girls get the gym, then the boys get the gym after or before. Is that how wrestling is handled? Also, not all at once at one time, say 3:45 until 5:30. Um, it's, you know, hockey, basketball, etc. They It's one and then one gets the after usually. >> Yeah, it kind of depends. So now with the with how girls wrestling is working is that they are becoming two more distinct separate teams although there's still quite a bit of overlap. So there's times when our girls will go wrestle and boys are have practice or they're doing a different tournament or duel or whatever the case may be. So there's a little bit of that delineation but generally they're together. Part of that's for the coaching approach. Think about it like in terms of

170track, >> right? So you got whatever 40 track kids and four coaches >> and you're kind of piecing them together in that capacity. >> And it's not like we're doing boys track first and then girls track second. That's where there's a little bit more similarity with wrestling like track than basketball. >> You know what I mean? >> In basketball, right? It's still high school elementary school and then middle school has theirs and then if there's a game, you know, the other team's over at the elementary school. And we don't have separate coaches basically. We don't have >> We do. We have a girls coach. >> Yeah. >> Does that uh Okay. So, it's hard to predict numbers again. We talked about enrollment all that stuff. So, right now we have how many girls again? >>

171No, not that many. I pulled the numbers for last meeting. I don't remember off the top of my head. >> Eight. Mike, does that sound right? >> Yeah, I think so. I picture >> I think that's all wrestled last night. I think there's like about a dozen that started the year. I know exactly where they're at. >> Okay. So, it wouldn't >> it's not 5050. >> No, it's it'll be more next year. >> Yeah, there's about eight or nine eighth grade girls coming out next year. >> So, it'll be almost double, you know, almost double next year. >> And you got to remember we have middle school boys and girls that are all a part of this whole situation with lack of space too. We've kind of spearheaded a off season of girls wrestling in

172middle school for a fall because our middle school boys have to wrestle on the stage at the elementary school because that's the only space they have. And so when we started introducing girls, there was physically no room. And when the boys team was big enough, they would spend half their night in the wait room and then change clothes, walk all the way to the elementary school, wrestle for half the time. And it's a great big time waste. But that's what they were having to do because there was no for the middle school kids. And so now we started a fall season just for middle school girls so they can have their own stage time, their own practice time. You know, is that going to stick forever? I don't know. But it's, you know, it's a

173issue from kindergarten all the way through senior high school. >> Yeah. >> Just as a point of clarity, I think there is only one head wrestling coach and one assistant coach or several assistant coaches. So the girls don't have a head wrestling coach. Like when you have girls basketball and boys basketball each have their own head coach, >> there's one head coach >> and that would be a a burden on the head coach to basically do two shifts. >> Yeah. Your home life would be >> Yes. >> destroyed. Did you get that? >> How do how are you transcribing that? We'll just skip that. >> Yeah, I guess at the end of the day, the numbers would be nice to have. Um, as far as that 10 year plan, um, when debt's falling off, some

174of those numbers would be nice to have. I think I one more member seen that. Um I know that you're in the unenviable position of communicating with the owners of this building on landing and trying to figure out what it is the board wants. And we're kind of at this point where what is the best for the district and it's very nebulous to us yet. And she mentioned that, you know, she wonders if essentially, if I understand correctly, they want 500 and if we own it and had to sell it, is it worth 300? Really? >> Well, we also don't want to overpay for something. >> No. And I I I'll say again, if we were to purchase a building, it wouldn't be without an appraisal. And you know what I'm saying? >> You you

175don't just name your price and we don't do anything like that in purchasing a couple of dollars. So >> it's based on market comparables or quotes and clearly you can't get quotes on it because there's only one quote, but you can still do market comparables and have it priced to figure ensure that it's within that that range. Okay. Well, that's what we'll do. And um you might have something next month, you might not. I'll put it that way, but it'll be as soon as I can get it pulled together. >> And I think as individual board members, if we have questions or thoughts as that time passes, definitely run by Craig because anything we can do to kind of help this come together or a decision to be made instead of leaving a program, I

176had Craig, >> no. No. >> All right. Um, I'm going to ask for a five minute break. >> That's a great idea. >> I don't think I'm too old for this. Oh my god. >> I don't know. >> Like if you're going to get a kid, get one. Yeah. >> What's It's tricky. Couple layers of trickiness all >> what does that Jacob. >> Nice to meet you. That's why you know I'm not sure >> I was not all. Yeah, first long forgot. Sorry about that. So imagine Were you going to speak? >> No, no. I was just here to say hi. And >> all right. >> See what's going on and kind of figure this way. I mean, you want to stop by >> tell them I Apologize. >> Yeah. >> No worries. Yeah, I'm

177fine. To be honest, even I did not I had a bad feeling about the whole thing. They were shyers. >> Well, thanks for coming in. Are you ready? >> All right. I'm going to call this meeting to order. It's a regular schedule board meeting board meeting for school district falls and start with the pledge of >> allegiance. I alian to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. >> Roll call vote. >> Matt Rice >> here. >> Tosa Rager >> here. Don Milky here. Ronnie Scheler >> here. >> Brent Mccertie >> here. >> All right. Matt, would you mind reading the rules and admissions? Um uh the mission statement the mission of the school district at

178St. Croy Falls is to provide a supportive student centered learning environment that cultivates character fosters academic excellence and embraces diversity. The board meeting rules focus on the mission vision statements of a district. Come prepared. Be respectful of others and open accepting of ideas. Actively participate. Avoid side conversations. Remember board meetings are open formal. >> Thank you. We'll move on to principal's comments. We'll start with I can't remember where I went last time. Mrs. Plat. >> Okay. We had our open house for LSC3s which you may remember is our third um arm of the childcare center. We have a classroom open and dresser elementary school. All the parents came and um I've been busy stepping in classrooms all week. So, I haven't been able to actually be in the 3K room, but I talk to the

179teacher every day and it's going great. Everybody's happy. She's happy. The kids are happy. Um, let's see. Her name is Miss Savannah Freeze. If you if you don't know her, she's Miss She's a child I have such a hard time with the whole teacher thing because you call it teacher and child care, but it's not the same as a certified teacher. She's a the child care teacher in that room. And um if you can stop by, it's beautiful. She did a great job. and all the girls at Dresser have been incredibly welcoming. All the other teachers have been incredibly welcoming. Um, it is IEP season. Um, maybe you guys are in that same phase. We are uh working hard to meet the needs of kids and families. You may have heard that we had a

180second um grader who was recognized by the St. Cal Police Department for making the 911 call that saved his grandmother's life. um absolutely delightful experience and we're very grateful for the law enforcement who came out to honor him and to teach all our kids about why 911 and knowing how to call it is very important. Our new system that um I think is what Brian Craig got on her phone is amazing. So now when there's a 911 call, Craig and I both got an immediate notice. so I could be at the spot where the 911 call was made before the teacher even told me she'd made the 911 call, which is just incredible. Um, and I also just want to publicly thank the first responders who came out, the kids fine. Kirk and Derek are

181both first responders that work in our school district. They were there within minutes and um before the the the whole ambulance came. Pretty amazing. and 131 students completed our winter reading challenge and they celebrated with the polar party and we're very proud of them. >> A polar party. >> Yeah. I was hoping no one would ask what that was. >> I was I just wanted to make sure I heard >> Yes, you heard it correctly. >> Party in the universe. >> You know it, girl. >> What the How many kids are in the the 3K room? >> 10. And that's a cap. So you can only the caps once kids get into 4K the state doesn't care what happens but before 4K the rules and regulations are this thick. So there the max is 10

182and that has to be with a co-teer. >> That's just because they trust public schools so much. >> Oh that's what it is. Good. That's optimistic. I like that. She's very optimistic. Rosecolored glasses. >> All right, Mr. Wallace. >> All right. Um, we've been, uh, looking at our current schedule and looking for ways to tweak and make some slight changes. Uh, ultimately, um, with cooperation with Mr. Wilson and and talking with Mr. Cray, um, we're going to be doing some tweaking with the middle school schedule to to get all of our bells aligned. Uh, right now, uh, after the first bell today, um, there's not a single bell that is is in common for fifth through 8th grade. It's just so it's it's kind of chaotic down there. So, um, in doing making the change,

183um, moving wind to the end of the day, it allows for some flexibility, um, with our staffing for special ed. Um, it allows us to chase that bubble group that we've got in the fifth grade, uh, with more sections and we can chase that group through the middle school. Um, allows for some simplification of special ed staffing as well, uh, both with paras and special ed teachers. So, um, not really a major shift in the minutes of the day. Um, our minutes within the class periods are currently our core classes are 58 minutes and our specials are 45ish minutes. Um, by going just straight 51 minute class periods for everything. Um, it it allows us to have a lot more flexibility. Um, and it's should be a welcome change, especially with also having our win

184at the end of the day. Um, we aren't missing lots of instructional minutes with all the middle school athletics that leave early all year round. It's not just a spring thing for middle school. It's an all year round thing. It's the early sporting events. So, um should be a positive shift in the middle school. Um our leadership team is meeting with um Aaron Belar from CISA to keep working on our middle school behavior systems um during the service day coming up next week. Uh so we're excited to kind of build on the progress we've made um and look to refine what we've been working on to this point going forward. um middle school athletics. Uh we're wrapping up for switching gears to our next set of winter sports. Um our middle school boys uh will

185be wrestling now. Middleton girls playing basketball. So we flip-flop that from what we had prior to winter break. Um so those seasons are underway and they got good numbers in both programs there. Um um last thing here just to highlight um congrats to Mr. Wandra. uh he was selected to serve on the state superintendent's reading advisory council. Uh what that does, not exactly sure, but he he agreed to be a part of that program through some of the stuff he's been working on uh through his writing project in Madison. So, uh he's representing Northwestern Wisconsin and congrats on the recognition. So, >> thank you, Mr. Wilson. >> Sweet. Uh first thing I'd like to do is introduce the guest in the back of the room. Um, I feel guilty that I invited him tonight because

186it's a three-hour board meeting, but this is Mr. August Gus Larson, our soontobe officially new technical education teacher. So, welcome, Gus. >> So, not normally this long. >> He's been patient and enjoying the night. I know. Um, so he'll uh he'll be starting on Monday, >> assuming you prove things here a little bit, obviously. But, uh, so that's Gus. Great. Thanks for coming. Um the uh as Mr. Wallace said, we've been working on master schedule things and uh we've been, you know, working side by side and making sure things overlay very cleanly and our high school master schedule next year won't be changing much. Um we hopefully will be adding some additional skinnies to uh make sure that we can accommodate some different types of needs, but for the most part staying in a block

187schedule, just tweaking a few class or adding some additional 45 minutes out of the hour and a half period. So that should be good. Um, and that seems to be working well. We'll obviously continue to iron that out. Um, next Wednesday is our the next academic and career planning day in which our advisory teachers are meeting with our high school kids and we'll be doing scheduling. So, talking about next school year already, which is wild, >> wild. Um, but that'll be good. And then we'll spend uh next Wednesday will be the the kickoff of that. And then the advisory teachers are working out with student by student through their advisory helping them with their next year and following year plans figuring out their schedules. Uh Mr. Vickerman, business ed teachers met with CISA people with

188uh regarding Carl Perkins and youth apprenticeship and school to work programming to get up to speed on that. and I uh have got a meeting scheduled with him midFebruary to regroup our school to work and youth apprentichip opportunities. Um with the transition and staffing um the program kind of flattened out a little bit and we're doing what we need to do, but it's not where it could be. So, we're going to work on enhancing that and building that back up to where it should be to make sure that students are getting what they need out of that programming. And he was pretty excited when he came back to he learned a lot. was >> his mind was swimming with ideas. Um, and then the last but not least on my list is Miss Rose is

189coordinating our athletic signing day Z plural. So, if you remember last year we condensed, you know, every season we may have have a senior who's going out to play an athletic athletic event in college. And what we've done and last year went really really well was created a signing day to c celebrate all those kids at once. Um, this year it's a little trickier because we have a football player with um with a D2 division 2 and they have a specific national signing date which is February 4th, but we have a couple other students who haven't decided where they're going yet. So, we're going to do a February 4th one with he and two of his buddies. Um, and then we'll have a later date one in April and we have a couple girls that

190are making some final decisions. So, but those are fun to see. >> All right. Thank you, >> Sister. >> I think I've said enough. reserve any additional comments. >> Are you sure? >> Yeah. >> People tune in just to hear you. >> I doubt that's the case. >> Uh any board members have an opportunity to attend any trainings? We've got the convention coming up next week. Myself and these two local people be heading down there. Looking forward to that. Anybody else? the convention are they doing the online is that just over there was one time when I got to sign up for >> it was during co Yeah >> I think it was Yeah it was past for some reason >> yeah I think it was co and then like that first year afterwards >>

191because they only have like half the attendance >> okay >> I did that too I just wasn't sure if that was like a separate track that people could like sign up for after the event where they have all the recorded trainings on your phone or anything like that. >> I don't know about that, but I have been looking around and I do see that a lot of poweroints are out there. If you look at the agendas, you might see something you might want to look at the presentation provide you a lot too much detailed information, but I haven't seen that. Um, don't have any public here anymore. So, no more awards this week. We appreciate you getting that sign, that ribbon. >> Yeah. Glad about that, but I was hoping I'd get another award this

192week. So, I'm a little disappointed. >> Sorry. >> Did you buy a house? Did you >> No, I No. a polar party. >> What's that? >> I had a polar party. >> All right. Now that I got my mouse where it needs to be, um I'll make a move move on to the consent agenda and I'll make a I'll entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda. >> I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented. >> All right, we have motion by Ronnie. >> second by Tasha. Any further discussion? All those in favor say I. >> I. >> Opposed. >> Motion carries. We'll move on to curriculum and policy and we'll vote on the uh special education special education spaces for the district for 2627 which we have reviewed in the committee

193meeting. Take a motion for that. >> I'll make that motion. We have a motion by Matt. >> second by Don. Any further discussion? All those in favor say I. >> I. Opposed. >> Motion carries. We'll move on to the district calendar for 2627 school year. >> I'll make the motion to approve the 2627 district calendar as presented. >> We have a motion by second. >> Second by Ina. Any further discussion? All those in favor say I. >> I. Opposed. Motion is carried. Move on to the boys and girls hockey co-op renewals for the school year 2627 and 2728. >> Motion to approve for boys and girls hockey co-op renewal for 26 27 and 278. Motion by Sasha. >> Second by Matt. Any further discussion? All those in favor say I. >> I. >> Opposed. Motion

194carries. Now we'll vote on the hiring of the candidate for the middle school high school tech teacher position. Um, I'll take a motion for that. >> Oh, all we need is name. >> Did somebody write it down? >> Guess. >> I'll make that motion to uh approve the candidate for the middle school high school technical education teacher position. >> All right, we have a motion by Tasha. >> I'll second. >> Second by Don. Any further discussion? >> All those in favor say I. >> I. opposed. Motion is carried. All right. >> Welcome to the district. >> Welcome. Yes. Um, any announcements? >> All right. >> Just on the election. >> Yeah. So, we have one candidate who successfully filed paperwork and um, in a brief email communication today, I just said you probably want to

195do your best to get the word out between now and April. So, >> all right. be good. >> And if anybody still wants to do a >> writing, they can, right? They have to come see you guys. >> Correct. There's paperwork that they need to file. >> What's the deadline for that? If somebody wants to do a writing campaign >> is what >> what's the deadline? >> Oh, >> Friday before election. >> Yeah. >> Oh, >> so that can be all the way up to elections on April 7th. So that'd be Friday, April 3rd. >> You didn't meet that deadline by much, did you? >> That was a couple weeks. >> We're so glad you did. >> All right. Upcoming events. We have the convention next week. Uh we are planning not to have a

196meeting, no second meeting, uh at the end of January, and then we'll get back to the normal schedule in February with two meetings on the 11th and the 25th. Matt, would you like to review the rules of the meeting? >> Yes, please. Uh, board meeting rules focus on the mission. We focused on the mission, vision statements of the district, came prepared, be respectful of others and open accepting of ideas, actively participated, avoided side conversations, and remember board meetings are open for. >> All right. Thank you. With that, I'll take a motion to adjourn to executive close session pursuant to section 19.851 851 CF Wisconsin statutes. >> I'll make that motion to adjourn to executive session. >> Motion by Dasha. >> I'll second. >> Second by Don. Roll call vote. >> Matt Price. >> Yes. >>

197Christina Bger. >> Yes. >> Don Milky. >> Yes. >> Ronnie Scheler. >> Yes. >> Brett Mccertie. >> Yes. >> Thank you everybody for coming with us.