001[clears throat] Post present art. Order. Arts. Ready, cut. [applause] Thank you to our Northeast Magnet High School color guard team. >> Okay, Lona. First item, >> ceremonial oath of office with Sedick County Election Commissioner Laura Brainwater. >> Okay. Will uh Amy Jensen, Julie Hedrickk, and Amy Warren, and myself come down to take our oath. >> [clears throat] >> Is this on? Yes. Before we take the oath of office, I want to congratulate all of you for winning your election. But I also want to say thank you. It takes great courage to put your name on a ballot, but more importantly, it takes a huge commitment to our community to serve our students in this capacity. So, thank you on a personal note. Okay, if you will raise your right hand and repeat after me. I
002state your name. I >> do solemnly swear >> swear >> that I will support the Constitution of the United States >> and the Constitution of the State of Kansas State >> and faithfully discharge the duties >> discharge the duties >> of the office of school board member of Witchah USD259. the office. >> So help me God. >> Congratulations all four of you. [applause] >> Okay, Latona. Next item, >> public hearing regarding school closing and student reassignment. >> On December 1st, 2025, at the board's regular meeting, the board received information concerning unsafe conditions at Chester I. Lewis Alternative Education Academy [clears throat] as described more fully in the notice of hearing attached as appendix one that that notice was published in the Witchaw Eagle on January 2nd, 2026 to announce a public hearing on January 12th,
0032026 where the board would hear testimony from members of the public regarding the proposed closing. We are now open the public hearing regarding the advisability of closing Chester E. Lewis Alternative Education Academy. Latona, do we have any speakers? >> None signed up. >> Do we have any public comment speakers? >> Okay, seeing none, the uh public hearing is now closed. >> Correct. Under the regular public comments. Uh, Lavanta, go ahead and come on. We'll uh open the public hearing and have Lavant Williams speak. >> Great. Good evening, everybody, and thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is Lavant Williams, born and raised in Witchah, and I'm a proud product of Matthew Junior High School. And so, we have been to meetings and talked about and heard about the structural damage of Matthew Junior
004High. It's also been Northeast Magnet and now it's Chester I Lewis. In speaking with many people in the community, one of the main things that they would ask is that as soon as possible, as soon as feasible, if there is that opportunity to bring that name back to the community, Chester I Lewis Chester is the spearhead and the leader of the youth that performed in the Dockham sitin. That was something that was very important to him and still a lot of Witchans don't know about that. Chester Lewis's office was right down the street on 17th Street, a little bit west of 17th and Grove. And so at the next opportunity when we do something next, if we could please bring that name, Chester I Lewis back to the District 1 community, they would appreciate it.
005Thank you so much. >> Thank you, Lev. [applause] All right, public hearing is now closed. Latona, next item. >> Good news. School board recognition month. >> Okay, Kelly. >> All right. Um, I [clears throat] just want to take a moment to personally thank all of you. Um, Amy and Amy, it's I know it's your first meeting. Um, but uh we still appreciate you and we want to recognize you. January is National School Board uh recognition month. And so to all of our board members, you have some cards on your table uh from different ages of kids. You have some ceramics that uh were created by some of our high school art students. Um some cups that were engraved by Future Ready Center students. So, uh, we tried to give you the gamut of all the
006cool things that we do. Uh, to let you know we appreciate you. Um, I wish I could tell you we're going to double your salary this year, but, uh, we could maybe maybe we should we could just double it. Uh, double zero is zero still, right? But, but truthfully, uh, the work is impactful and meaningful for our kids. And so, I just wanted to tell you thank you on behalf of all of the staff of Witchaw Public Schools. >> Well, thank you. I know I'm not alone when I say this is uh one of the most difficult and challenging roles uh any of us have probably ever embarked on and it can also at times be one of the most rewarding experiences as well. Latona, next item. WPS music students selected for SCMEA Honors Ensembles
007and WPS music faculty receiving recognition from SC KMEA, ASA and Yamaha Corporation of America. [clears throat] >> Welcome Sean. Good evening everyone. First and foremost, many thanks to you and the entire WPS community for the opportunity to honor and celebrate our WPSC SCAMA musicians and district award-winning music faculty. By the numbers, South Central KMEA or SCAMEA represents all of Sedick County and 10 neighboring counties. Individual school breakdowns show that SCMEA includes approximately 90 high schools, 150 elementary and middle schools, and nearly 250 music educators. Each year, SCAMEA sponsors seven ensembles. And as you see them shown on the screen tonight, I'm proud to say again that WPS representation in all seven categories. to invite all of our 163 WPS honor musicians along with their teachers, administrators, parents, guardians, and family members might have challenged tonight's
008BOE good news time limit and fire code restrictions. So, I want to thank the BOE, of course, Alicia Allen and her Stratcom colleagues and WPS Fine Arts for sponsoring and supporting our comeo reception earlier this evening, complete with cookies and certificates. And of course, thank you, Superintendent Beetlefeld, music parent number one at the moment, uh, for your kind remarks and board intros. So to conclude that uh portion of tonight's recognition representing two elementaryaries, two K8s, four middle schools, and eight high schools, please join me in a round of applause everyone for our 163 WPSCKMA honor musicians. as [applause] [applause] and now transitioning into our faculty honores. Please know I could speak at length on each of them but in also in interest of time we'll stick to sharing comments directly from their nomination or from
009one of their nominators. Speaking earlier of SCMEA they also recognized one outstanding educator at the elementary middle and high school levels. So, while the competition was stiff for our students, it was even more competitive for these award-winning faculty. WPS went two for three this year in SCMEA, winning the elementary and middle school levels. And that's where we're going to start this evening. First with the SCMEA outstanding elementary educator. So, I believe we first have Nina Kent Wilson, music teacher at OK Elementary from Nah's SCMEA. Yes, Nina. >> [applause] >> from s from Nah's SCMA nominations. I'm honored to share the following excerpts. Nah's commitment to joyful music making is evident in every classroom experience she creates. She ensures that all children feel valued and celebrated and her ability to foster a safe, loving, and inclusive
010environment is unmatched. In addition to her impact on students, Nenah has been a trusted member and guide for countless educators. She freely shares her wisdom, experience, and creativity, supporting both new and veteran teachers alike. So once again, please join me in congratulating Nina Kent Wilson as SCMA five outstanding educators. [applause] Next, it's my pleasure to introduce our SCKMEA outstanding middle level educator for 2025, Jaimeie Hayes from Mayberry Cultural and Fine Arts Magnet. Jaime's nomination states that Jaime's passion for teaching and her students is evident in her classroom daily. One of her greatest strengths is her ability to nurture relationships with her students, which creates a family atmosphere in her classroom. Her students are encouraged to be creative and allowed to explore. And you'll often find pickup bands created by students rehearsing during lunch or after
011school on their own. From inviting guest artists to work and play alongside her kids to helping her students perform public jazz kit gigs, Jaime embodies what it really means to be involved in the community as well as in her classroom. So, please join me in congratulating Jamie Hayes as SCA [applause] level educator. Next, it's my pleasure to introduce Francis our orchestra director at Allison Middle School for receiving the 2026 outstanding state chapter leadership award from the American String Teachers Association. Franc's nomination notes that she initiated a new rotation of all state exerts and scales with committee and membership feedback and a newly regionally rotated summer workshop for consideration. Elevating new leadership through existing and committee work. Thank you, Francis. The ASTA executive committee appreciates that you serve as a collaborative leader not only in Kansas
012but also within the state chapter leadership spaces of ASA. So please join me in congratulating Francis or on receiving the outstanding state chapter leadership award from the American Strings Teacher Association. >> [applause] >> And finally, Eric Stone from Gordon Parks Academy, who is not able to be with us tonight, is but is a familiar face to many of us for his recent Kansas Teacher of the Year honors. Eric is where else but in rehearsal tonight directing the Witchaw Symphony's youth concert band and getting ready just like the three of you and I quote Eric said he's changing the world one concert at a time. [laughter] Daryl Sessions assistant principal at Gordon Parks Academy also shared about the remarkable impact Eric has had on our school community. Eric's passion for students drives everything he does. He
013meets every challenge with creativity, flexibility, and a constant desire to grow. Miranda Wilson with us tonight, East High director of bands and WPS curriculum coach, wrote the following. While doing remote learning, Mr. Stone shared his knowledge with other district band directors in creating an online performance for students. The students rehearsed online with guest conductors, then recorded their individual parts. Mr. Stone then took all the parts and digitally created an all city performance by putting them all together. This was many hours of work that gave the students a performing outlet during that challenging time. So in that vein, please join me in giving a recorded round of applause for Eric that he can enjoy at a later time. Eric Stone, [applause] thank you again award-winning nominees for being here tonight. And in closing, thank you once
014again, WPS Board of Education and district leadership for your unwavering support of tonight's honored students and faculty. They exemplify the remarkable talent and in exceptional instruction that thrive in our music classrooms every day. Witchaw public schools. This makes our commitment to excellence and a premier district of choice, empowering every student and staff to member flourish, become future ready, and to contribute meaningfully to our greater community. Thank you for your time. And I know the awardees or myself are ready to take any additional comments or questions. But first, how about one final round of applause for all of our music award nominees. [applause] Thank you. Okay, thank you Sean. Thank you to uh the awardees and thank you to the students who put in the long hours and dedication to learning a new skill. Okay, Latona.
015Next item, >> fall student athletes state recognition. Welcome. >> Oh, hello. [laughter] >> Perfect. >> Okay, so thank you board members and super uh superintendent Bafield. Um I want to give you some good news about our performances on the state level. Uh we had four girl athletes qualify for cross country and uh and one team uh that was north and we had one boy qualify for cross country. We had six uh girls uh at state tennis and we had three individuals um for state golf and one team and the team was southeast and their coaches here with me right now. Um, out of those participants, we placed eighth place uh in girls cross country and fourth in girls golf. For the team sports, although we had a good number uh who made it to the
016playoff series, uh we qualified one team for the volleyball uh state um tournament and uh we qualified uh one team uh for the soccer state tournament and uh Southeast, our boys team, they placed fourth. Um so at this time I'd like to recognize um the teams uh and individuals who placed fourth in the state competition as they're here with me right now. Alena Lamb uh qualified as an individual um in the girls golf as well as helping her team Southeast qualify. Um she is not here right now. She uh ended up working which is a testament to how great our kids are when they're doing you know their athletes and their uh their students and they're also good workers. So eventually she's going to probably run the world. Uh so we all need to be
017really really uh super excited for her. Um and then um uh after two days of golf um she did place uh fourth. So I don't know if any of you guys know how the state golf tournament is now. It is a two-day tournament instead of a one-day tournament like it used to be uh about five six years ago. So I mean that's a lot to lot to deal with there. Um, so, uh, the her coach, Coach Pal, is here right now to represent for her. Um, and now to the boys southeast soccer team. They had a great run. Um, and they made it into the state tournament. So, now the state tournament is just four teams that get into it. Uh, they they play at striker and then out of that is how uh they
018play around and then um that's how they figure out the placing. Um, and so they received fourth. Um, and with me today is Coach Finch. And then he also has Noah Lassio and Adrien Puka. Is that correct? Okay. So, you know me and name sometimes. Um, so, uh, provided to the board is also a list of our state qualifiers as well as those Witchaw public school uh, students who received league honors at their performance in the field of play. There of course are too many uh on the list uh and it would take me way over 30 minutes to go through them all and although we would all enjoy hearing me talk for 30 minutes um I think that uh I would just provide that list for you guys uh to have so that you
019know. So on behalf of each of the high school athletic departments um I would like to thank the board and their continued support for all the student athletes uh that participated this fall season. So, I'd like to thank you all for for your continued support on that [applause] >> very much. Southeast is doing a good job representing everything. So, good job, guys, and continue the the great work. Um, we are very proud of the way you represent the school district and your school. Okay, Latona. Next item. >> UTW Welcome, Stephen. >> Good evening, distinguished board members. My name is Steven Mau. I serve as a staff organizer for the United Teacher of Witchah. Uh, President Warren sends her regrets as she's feeling a little under the weather. I know how much she wanted to be
020here tonight. First, in the spirit of school board appreciation month, I want to extend sincere thanks to our outgoing board members, Miss Hazel Stabler and Miss Kathy Bond, for their service to our community. As I know everyone on this DEIS is well aware, serving on the board is an unpaid volunteer role uh that demands significant time, care, and moral stamina. So, we are grateful for the energy and commitment that you have given to Witchaw students and families. I also want to offer congratulations to our newly sworn in board members. I've had the opportunity in different ways to get to know your character and your commitment to this community. And I want to say personally how encouraged I am by your willingness to serve. Choosing to step into this work, particularly right now, reflects a seriousness
021about public education and about working people who rely on it every day. We're living in a moment where the role of public education carries real consequence in a climate that often feels polarized or uncertain. Our schools remain among the most visible shared institutions in our community. They're places where stu where our students grow academically, socially, and ethically. But they're also shaped by economic realities that affect classrooms, families, and staff alike. That responsibility calls for leadership that is steady, grounded, and willing to engage honestly with how decisions land in people's daily lives. I want to acknowledge something that our members have noticed and appreciated in recent months. Through our regular Friday communications, we've shared feedback uh from educators about workload compensation and clarity of expectations. In response, we've seen some meaningful movement. This includes additional paid
022collaboration time for pre-K educators, compensation for expanded elementary math work, and clearer guidance at the high school level around parent notification expectations. These are not just abstract policy tweaks. They speak directly to the material realities of educators working lives and whether the system that they work in recognizes the demands being placed on them. Now, one of the challenges before all of us is resisting the temptation to rely on surface level asurances or traditions that no longer reflect our current conditions. The economic pressures facing families, students, and school staff today are different from those of the past. And addressing them requires more than good intentions. It requires attentiveness to how decisions manifest in real classrooms, real households, and real paychecks. We appreciate that this board has shown a willingness to listen, to engage and to take
023concerns seriously. That kind of responsiveness builds trust and trust is essential if we are going to meet the challenges ahead with clarity and shared purpose. United Teachers of Witchah remains committed to being a constructive partner in this work. We believe deeply in public education as a nonpartisan public good and in the idea that strong schools are built when certified educators, support staff, families, and community leaders alike are aligned around the realities that students face every single day. So, thank you for your time, your service, and the care you bring to this responsibility. We look forward to working alongside you in the months ahead. >> Thank you, Stephen. Latona, next item. >> SEIU. >> Is there an SEIU representative here tonight? Okay, seeing none, Latona, next item. >> Public communications. >> So, for the people that
024are here for public comment, we thank you for joining us tonight. If you have signed up for public comment, you will have three minutes to speak. and we kindly ask that you acknowledge your aotted time according to the timer displayed on the screen. We encourage you to share your thoughts openly and honestly, but we ask that your remarks remain focused on school related matters and are respectful and constructive. The board will listen to your input, but will not respond during this meeting. However, we are listening and may follow up as appropriate. With that, we welcome our first speaker, >> Aaron Andrews. Welcome, Erin. I had another one. He's asleep. >> [clears throat] >> Good evening board members. I'm a parent of okay students and former student myself. For over 30 years, the school has been
025a part of my life and now a part of my children's lives. I also have a friend of mine's daughter with me here tonight. She is also a student of Oak Elementary. [laughter] The relationships with teachers and students at the school is like no other. My children go to school every day happy to be there. They are ready to learn and interact. I am always aware of my kids' progress, daily progress. My daughter is excelling in her IEP and in a in a class setting. Just today, I got a note from the IEP teacher. She got 28 out of 36 words correct. So, this is a very good thing. We're celebrating. So, as well as my son who was asleep, who had a really rough time at drop offs in the mornings and is now
026excited to go to school. He feels safe in his classroom with his teacher, Mrs. Martin. My opinion, I think she's going to be a Golden Apple winner, just potentially. Um, she's a fantastic educator. She really does love the kids. And, uh, my kids are academically excelling. I have concerns regarding school closures and consolidation. Honestly, my kids have stated that they do not want to start over, that they do not want to start over in a different school. And uh my concerns are that students are going to have a hard time learning in a larger class setting, in a larger school. I am a former child. I was a child that fell through the cracks. It was obvious. It was something I was struggling on, but back then my parents didn't understand. That's something I do
027not want for my children or any other children or child. Um the relationships with friends and staff that is going to be is that going to be possible um in a school like ours that if it gets any bigger, are we going to have the interactions? Are the teachers going to be able to handle the workload? And that's that's another concern of of all families. Um, also after speaking with a few gentlemen that work in the schools, the USD259 maintenance guys, um, they have they've outright said there's not really much wrong with OK Elementary. Structurally, no. But HVAC issues, yeah, there's a little HVAC issues, but that just comes with what what it is. and some pre preventative maintenance. That's just how it goes. All we need to do is just invest in our schools
028and upkeep our schools and keep our neighborhood schools for our families. That's all I got to say. >> Thank you, Erin. >> Platona. Next speaker, Kendra Holly. Kenro, welcome. >> Wait a minute. [laughter] It's three minutes. Uh, thank you for allowing me to speak. Um, um, I want to thank the school board. Uh, this is school board appreciation month. Is it? Uh, thank you. Uh many of you know who I am, recognize me for trying to get aluterol in the schools and you know as of July of 2024 we did get that bill passed so that the state of Kansas public schools can stock emergency albuterol for their asthmatic students. Uh just a little bit of a refresher on who I am. My name is Kendra Holly. I am a registered respiratory therapist with the
029state of Kansas for over 16 years. I'm a certified asthma educator and I'm also a lifelong aszmthmatic myself as well as a product of USD259. So I want to thank you for your support with the uh bill getting the albuterol in the schools. My next step because I'll be back [laughter] is I want to know about how they are going to go about administering the albuterol. The two main ways they do it are a nebulized treatment or a meter dose inhaler. I did have some handouts at the last last meeting I was I attended and I'll bring some more. My recommendation is for the uh meter dose inhaler. It's a lot quicker than a nebulize treatment. But uh that's what I'll be uh focusing on on my next uh meeting here. Like I said, my
030tonight was just I wanted to say thank you for your support because it was a long time coming, but we did get it. And so, let's go on to the next step, which is okay, how are we going to give it to the kids? So, thank you very much. >> Thank you, Mr. Holly. We appreciate your support and we appreciate um your advocacy for this. >> Latona, next speaker, >> Walt Chapel. Walt, >> welcome. >> Thank you so much. [snorts] >> You can pass these out. >> Julie, it's always good to see your smile. My goodness, what a blessing. Many of you know I've been here a number of times to speak about the budget and setting priorities. And tonight I'd like to ask that you take a look at the handout I've provided. I've
031sent it to you by email. I don't know how many of you actually had a chance to read it before the meeting tonight as people from the community won't get to see the but or the agenda until a few days before you actually meet. So, it's hard to catch up with you, but I've spent over six hours now going through the agenda and I put it together in one page a listing of all the different items on your consent agenda. And it really concerns me that we haven't set priorities strong enough that staff understands that you're here to educate kids and not to pass out the money we receive for construction companies to make a lot of money off of doing projects that in my mind don't really have much to do with anything. Particularly
032don't help the kids develop employable skills. So I'm concerned about a $325,000 budget item here. supposed to be paying for design of a boiler and a chiller at Hadley. Hadley was closed in 2024. I think the building isn't being used now. I don't know for sure, but that's a hell of a lot of money to spend to design a boiler and a chiller. Then you have 330,000 for carpet replacement in six schools. What's that got to do with teaching kids employable skills or making them future ready? You have another one down here for $67,000 for a fence behind the the home plate for the junior varsity kids at East High. Now, that's all well and good, I guess, but they have a fence there now. Why do you have to spend 67,000? That's as much
033as a teacher salary. We've got a $700,000 for alternative transport. We have a lot of kids that don't see well, can't hear well. We need a specialist to teach them, but we don't have them in the classroom. When I was on the state board of education, I was always concerned about the fact we've got all these kids and only part-time people actually able to see and work with them maybe once or twice a week if if that. Then you have 350,000 for gym replacement and refurbishing for gym floors. Now, I know there's some folks who think, well, we got to grind them up and put down a new finish. But again, what's that got to do with educating kids? I want you to trust but verify. I'm asking you as a board to please set
034priorities for the staff. And then what you have hopefully is staff that will look at your priorities and say, "Okay, we can't put that on the consent agenda. That just won't pass." >> Tonight, I'd like to ask you to table the motion to >> Thank you, Dr. Chap. >> Pass the consent. Well, >> and bring it up at a later point. >> Thank you, Walt. >> Latona. Next speaker, >> Kathy Johnson. >> Welcome, Kathy. Um, good evening, board members. Um, first off, um, happy board appreciation month. Um, I appreciate you guys giving your time, um, and volunteering to do the hard work that a lot of people don't want to do. So, thank you. And, um, I am here as we approach um, negotiation time for our contracts. Um, I want to address the payout
035for unused leave days for retirees. Currently, retirees rece receive $30 per day, which after taxes is about $18. And for someone like myself who currently has 246 unused days, that will amount to about $7,386 before taxes. To put this in perspective, if the district had to cover those same days with substitutes, it would cost the district $34,468 at the current substitute rate of $140 a day and $190 for a long-term assignment. That's nearly five times what retirees would receive. Retirees save the district thousands of dollars by being present and committed throughout their careers and paying only $30 a day undervalues their contribution. Increasing this rate would show appreciation, encourage retention, and help address the ongoing substitute shortages. I'm asking that you consider raising the payout to a better to better reflect the true value veteran
036teachers provide. perhaps aligning closer to substitute rates or at least a meaningful increase. That is not just fair, but it's a strategic um step for our district's future. Thank you. Thank you, Kathy, [applause] Latona. Next speaker, >> Rebecca Armstrong. Welcome, Rebecca. >> And thank you guys. The service, your service is very commendable and definitely needed in our community. Thank you. Um, USD 259 began nearly three years ago. The quest to seek more money to fix their aging schools. The initial rollout spoke of the drop in enrollment, poor maintenance, and high costs for operations as well as aging infrastructure. They hired an engineering firm who completed a report that indicated for $450 million to build new schools, tear down old ones, and provide new technology learning centers. The problem for me and the problem I experience
037every day while part of USD 259 is their management structure. The district does not ask on a regular basis what the employees can do to help us meet our mission of providing a safe secure school that prepares the public students of our community with a good future and a clear place for them in as an integral part of our community. There is no real system of asking they tell. Numerous times I've been in meetings and mentioned this. The response from decision makers is to tell me how wrong I am and they list the ways and times they have asked the teachers, the classified and others. There was this survey here or that survey there. There was a listening session recently. They c went to all of the schools to listen, but before they arrived, they
038sent a list of the questions people could ask. That's not a listening session. Um, when it was done, they listed what people talked about. They left out things that didn't fit what they wanted. Managing organizations, businesses, or not for profofits has come a long way in 50 years. I graduated with a management degree and I've seen the change. Here, we're back 50 years ago. We don't ask, we tell. We can fix our problems if we include the people that work within the system on a regular integral basis. Thank you. >> Thank you, Rebecca Latona. Next speaker, Trish Hileman. >> Welcome, Trish. >> Thanks. It's a long way from the chief seat, so I was trying to hustle. Anyway, thank good evening, president uh of the board and members of the BOE and superintendent Belfeld. Uh,
039congratulations on your new seats and um, thank you very much for your service. You're volunteering your time to oversee the most in public work, the most important public work in our community and the largest public budget we steward together. What you do matters deeply to the leadership, functioning, and trust in our district. I want to acknowledge the real progress this board has made in transparency, public consent agenda workshops, public meetings, and the establishment of a financial oversight committee. These are meaningful steps and I want to name something that often goes unsaid. Transparency and public accountability are brave. It is far easier to govern without oversight or public input, not to look under the rocks and see the creepy crawies. Um, so thank you for choosing the harder, better path and for listening to community feedback.
040You have a capable and well-intentioned staff, but staff are making decisions with lifelong impacts on students, families, and neighborhoods. And sometimes the priorities and concerns of these communities are not sufficiently incorporated into those decisions. When communities feel heard but not responded to, trust is damaged. We have seen this before. Decisions around school placement closures, new construction have at times moved forward despite strong community concerns. The result has been unintended consequences, transportation costs, attendance challenges, rebuilding projects, ongoing expenses that could have been mitigated. These experiences matter because they shape public trust. This brings me to capital spending. Our district collects eight mills in property taxes. I think like $127 million for capital needs. I am asking this board to give clear direction to staff to prioritize that spending more tightly around true capital needs, maintaining and
041preserving the buildings we already have. Currently, significant capital dollars are allocated to instruction, support services, employee benefits, software, and technology. These are the line item things in the capital outlay budget. Um, I would urge you to reconsider that balance. Research and the experience of the past several years shows that excessive classroom technology, especially in elementary grades, does not improve educational outcomes. Many states are now moving to limit it, redirecting some of those funds toward roofs, foundations, HVAC, long-term maintenance, would better serve students and taxpayers alike. Um, similarly, we have spent over 70 million in 24 and 25 on outside contractors. Uh those expenditures may have been necessary at consent agenda. A lot of those are necessary. Um but only having 20 million for building maintenance, the sign Luke was holding. We can give him more
042than that from this capital budget. Um facilities master plan. I'm skipping down. Uh I understand how complex and timeconuming this work is, especially for a volunteer board. I ask you to keep edit educational outcomes, not just efficiency, as the driving force. Larger schools may be cheaper on paper, but they're not always better learning environments. Some of our highest growth schools academically. You saw this a reading. >> Thank you, Trish. >> Thank you, >> Latona. Next speaker, >> Martin Shocket. >> Welcome, Martin. Is he last? >> Thank you. Greetings, board of education and superintendent. My name is Martin Shocket and I teach English at Chester Lewis. Tonight, I wanted to express my gratitude towards several groups of people and update you on a couple of my experiences the last couple weeks. First, I'd like to congratulate
043our new and returning returning board members on their successful elections. Uh the many hours you spend up front campaigning just to do a voluntary job is not something that many people could endure. Uh I would also like to just thank the board in general uh for the immense amount of voluntary work as it does not go unnoticed at least for me uh even though it can be a thankless job uh to make this district one of the best. We need as many people as possible that uh care as much as you all do. So thank you again for your work. Um next uh I would be remiss if I didn't thank all the parties involved with the relatively smooth transition into the new Chester Lewis home at the former Cleveland Elementary building. Uh it has
044been a whirlwind of a week. It only has been one week uh since we've uh been in there with students. Uh but we've landed smoothly and we really seem to like our new accommodations. We fit really well. Uh our move wouldn't have gone as uh good as it did without the help of all the painting and cleaning and updating and moving and coordinating and all of that just uh uh proves that many hands make light work, right? Uh so shout out to the Chester Lewis staff for all the weekends and sore muscles as well. Please come by and visit us anytime. Uh, finally, I would like to provide some details about the facilities tour I participated in this weekend. This past Saturday, a bus full of district employees and community members traveled throughout Witchaw to
045visit specific sites that help illustrate the reality of facil the the facility spectrum we have in Witchaw public schools. Uh, the group also included the mayor and some city council members. Uh, so it was encouraging to see more people who care as much as we do uh about our school district. Uh, even though I learned way more uh than I cared to about district facilities through the last bond campaign, uh, I continued to learn some facts on this tour that lead me lead me to believe that our facilities need more vigorous and consistent oversight as Trish was saying. Uh, this included better insight into the structural studies that can take anywhere from three to nine months to complete depending on the size of the building. Uh it also included the costs of foundation repair and
046uh more insight into the 340,000 uh plus square foot Frankenstein that is Trudale Middle School, right? Um the disparities between the buildings uh in our facility spectrum is unfortunate of course, but it also highlights the real challenges associated with making decisions uh in a system u this large where we have some of those redundancies and inefficiencies. Uh while it may be a sensitive subject and a huge can of worms, it might be worth consider reconsidering plans where possible that might eliminate some confusion and gain us some advantage with the public for a more surefire bond campaign uh this year. Perhaps you could start with considering Chester's spot. Thank you. >> Uh was that the last speaker, Latona? Yes. >> Okay. Thank you to all of our public comment speakers. Latona, next item. >> Strategic plan
047goal one, graduation rate. Okay, Kelly, I guess I can >> I can do it. I think >> there's a little bit of feedback from my mic here, so I may be trying to move around. Dr. Hfield's here to talk about exciting updates to graduation rate. We thank everyone for their patience with our technology delays this evening. While we're waiting, I think you have a handout that looks like this. Yes. if you want to find that as [clears throat] well as your slides. Like I should like tell a joke or something while we're waiting. Hey, that's okay. There we go. >> It's on mine, so you'll have to tell me to advance. >> I'll have to tell you. Okay, >> I can I can just do this. >> There we go. >> A team effort tonight.
048>> Yeah. >> All right. Good evening. I'm excited to uh be here tonight to present to you the class of 2025 uh graduation data. [clears throat] All right. So, just a little bit of a backstory about uh where we're going, where we are now. Um when Kelly became the superintendent, um the board charged him with uh writing a new strategic plan. So, uh that strategic plan, which was written in 2024, included the 2023 graduation data because we're always about six months behind in graduation data. So that 2024 to 2029 strategic plan started with the class of 23. We're going to keep going and we're going to catch up once we find that. Is that okay? You guys have the slides in front of you. If anybody else needs hards copies, they are on that back
049table right back there. Um so we are currently on slide two there. That one right there. So um so the original goal number one uh in that strategic plan was to increase the graduation rate from 79.2% to 85% by 2029. that 79.2% is in reference to the class of 23 and then that 85 the goal being 85%. In order to do that by 2029 we would actually be talking about the class of 2028 because of how the data falls. So just a quick reminder on um where we've been and where we want to go again just thinking about it. Okay. All right. So the next slide has a whole bunch of uh dates on there and it kind of looks haphazard. Why is 2009, 2018, 2023 and 2024 all on this slide? Um while it
050might appear haphazard, it is not. So let's talk about those dates and everything that happened in between those dates that are on the screen. So it starts with 2009. The reason 2009 is on there is because that is when the calculation for graduation rate changed. So we have been using the same calculation for graduation rate since 2009. So when this calculation was first rolled out, our graduation rate as Witchaw public schools was 56.6%. when this calculation was first rolled out. Now, part of that is probably a lack of true um handle on how the formula worked and what data should and shouldn't be in there and how do we clean it up and it takes a while to kind of get control if you will of kind of a new formula and how that might
051work. So in 2010 and in 2011 uh they jumped into the 60s in the mid60s very quickly. 2010 2011 um and then from 2012 to 2018 they jumped into the low to mid70s. So very quickly right boom boom boom all right and that's part of an understanding that's using the data properly an understanding of how the formula works. All right. But I would say we uh hit a plateau 2012 2018 we oscillated as a district between a low of 73% and a high of 76.5% for those six years. We just kind of filtered in that low to mid70s range. Just flowed in that you know up a point down a point up a point down a point for a few years. The reason 2018 is the next year on the slide is um when Dr.
052Thompson became the superintendent. There was a strategic plan written and that's graduation rate was included in that strategic plan for Witchaw public schools. So that 74% was the baseline when graduation rate went into the strategic plan in 2018. So that's why 2018 is in there. So then what happens um in the inter room there um that infusion in 2018 we jumped just a little bit into 75s in 2019 and then between 2020 and 2022 we jumped a plateau but we kind of stayed in that same range again. So between 2020 and 2022 we oscillated our low was 79.2 and our high was 80.5. So, we stayed in that high 70s, peaked at 80 range. Okay. [snorts] Then boom, you see 2023 on the screen. Why is 2023 there? When Kelly Befeld became the superintendent, we
053write a new strategic plan. 79.2 is the baseline in the strategic plan that we write that goes from 24 to 29. So, that's why 2023 is there. And then you see 2024 there at 84.3 because that's where we were last year. So that you have a leadup from 2009 all the way to right now which is data. So [clears throat] okay. All right. So what was the class of 2025? Our [clears throat] federal graduation rate for the class of 2025 was 85.1%. It'll come eventually. That's what's going to be on there. There it is. Uh uh it was 85.1%. Um so I just want to take a moment to stop and recognize that there was a five-year strategic plan written and the work of students and staff in our schools and not just high schools.
054Um to hit that goal in just two years is incredible. Um, and this is lifech changing outcomes for our students, for our families, for the Witchaw community. In the last decade, so from 2015 to 2025, the state of Kansas, their graduation rate has risen by 7.3%. In the state of Kansas, Witchaw Public Schools graduation rate in the last decade has risen by 9.8%. So, our change is outpacing Kansas's change. And Kansas doesn't get 7.3 without us getting 9.8. [snorts] We are 10% of the kids in Kansas. Witchaw public schools. Kansas doesn't make gains without Witchah public schools making gains. So I I want to point out that those two things go hand in hand. Um and they go together. Um and that we need to lift up and celebrate this. I will be honest, I
055am not the best at um celebrating reaching a milestone. It's it's it's actually not one of my best skill sets. I would prefer hit the goal, make a new one, start working on that one. Um that is that is that is how I operate. Uh but we we are closing the gap um between Witchaw Public Schools and and the state of Kansas. Um and we are closing the gap between Kansas and other uh other states in the country. Um and a lot of that is because of the work that's happening um right here in in Witchaw Public Schools. um use a little bit of a a baseball analogy here since I played softball in in college and um my very first at bat in college I hit a home run. Very first one I still
056have the ball in my basement. Um that's great if you do that one time. But to be a good player, you've got to do that again and again. Not necessarily home run, but you gota your average has to be good, right? If you hit that one home run and that's all you do for the rest of your career, you weren't softball player. You weren't a very good baseball player. So for us, we can celebrate right that moment when you like round third and you come into home and your teammates are mom. That's like one of the greatest feelings in the world. But if you don't continue to get results, that feeling is very fleeting. And I think that's a lot of what we have to do with our academic data is we want to celebrate
057and that's one of the best feelings in the world. But then we have to lock back in because we're going to come up to the plate again and we've got to be ready again um to replicate those results over time. Are we going to perfectly replicate those results over time? No. Right. U but we can continue to make progress over time. And so I'm excited that you now are all going to have to charge us with rewriting the strategic plan because that goal is a big check mark and we don't want it to just stay a check mark for three years. we want to write the next goal and lock in so that we can start working on that one. So, let's talk about some subgroup data. Um, here on the screen, there are should
058be some colors there. See if uh if you if you click some stuff, they show up. Oh, okay. We're just going to keep going. We got, you know, exercise and flexibility. So, what you can't see there because it's white on white, which is not which is not good, is um male graduation rate and female graduation rate for the class of 2025. So, I want to talk to you a little bit about subgroups in general, and then we're going to talk about these subgroups specifically. There are 38 possible subgroups of data um that you can have from KSD. So that's um gender or race or free reduced lunch or students with disabilities or virtual or foster, right? Um so there's 38 of them. To be considered in that subgroup, you have to have at least 10
059kids to qualify in that subgroup. So there's some districts they don't have very many subgroups because they don't have very many kids to start with. Uh Witchaw Public Schools, we qualify. we have at least 10 kids in 34 out of the 38 subgroups that are available for the data. So, uh, so we have 34 subgroups for us. Um, male and female are kind of the first two that you come across. So, these are two. Um, the 82.7% male graduation rate is the highest male graduation rate Witchaw Public Schools has ever had. Let me back up. 85.1, I think it probably goes without saying, is also the highest graduation rate Witchaw Public Schools has ever had. So, 85.1 is the highest. 82.7 for males is the highest graduation rate we've ever had. 87.7 for females ties
060last year as the highest graduation rate um for females. So, it's exactly the same as last year. They stayed steady. Um some people would be like, "Oh, it didn't go up, but it also didn't go down." And you can luck your way into some good results every once in a while, but if you're going to repeat results over time, that's not luck. That's strategy. And that's skill and implementation and strategy. Um so wanted to wanted to call that forward. Um last year the gap between the male graduation rate and the female graduation rate was 6.7%. This year the gap between the male graduation rate and the female graduation rate is 5%. So we are closing the gap between males and females. Now we don't want to do that by just holding females where they are.
061Um that's that's not the goal. Hey, hold the females where they are and have the males catch up. The goal is that females would pro progress and that males would progress as well. Um, in case you're curious, sorry, I should have said this earlier, the four subgroups we don't have, if you're like just an inquiring mind. Um, Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander, we we don't have the big subgroup, we don't have male, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, and we don't have female. So, that's three subgroups that we don't have. And then we also don't have male, American Indian, Alaskan Native. We don't have enough kids in that subgroup to count. So if you're just curious what four we don't have, it's those four. So okay, so some more subgroup data. What you can see here are our
062five largest uh racial demographic subgroups that we have in Witchaw public schools. And then the dark blue is all the males and females added together. The red is the males and then the teal is the females. Um so you can see that there. Um, you all can can read what those numbers are and I don't need to tell them to you, but in case you're curious, Hispanic males at 80.3% is the highest um, graduation rate Hispanic males has ever had in Witchaw public schools. Um, for white, the all the males and the females are all the highest they've ever been. Um, green for our black African-American students, all males and females are the highest they've ever been. for our multi-racial students. I know multi-racial is on that end, but for us, multi-racial is actually our
063fourth largest um racial demographic subgroup. Um all and males for multi-racial are the highest uh graduation rates have ever been. And then for Asian, Asian male graduation rate is the highest that it's ever been. So each of the race demographic groups have at least one of the three that are the highest graduation rate they've ever been. So that's on. Okay. So now I just wanted to to throw you a few a few more highlights. So we click some pop. So free lunch um free lunch is broken down into free lunch overall, free lunch males, and free lunch females. All three of those are the highest. Um free lunch overall, free lunch males, and free lunch females are all the highest I've ever been. The overall free lunch category is 82.8%. Um, and when you think
064about what you have to have or what you have to not have to qualify for free lunch and the fact that 82.8% of our students that are on free lunch are graduating, that is an astronomical feat. Um, and this is a big reason why our graduation rate continues to rise um is this number. Um, so that's the highest ever been. Latona, we're ready for the next one. Thank you, ma'am. Reduced lunch. um our males, females, and the overall category at 90.6 are all the highest they've ever been um in reduced lunch. And again, think about over 80% of our entire student population falls in one of those two buckets. It's huge for us. Uh Latona, next one, please. Migrant, they don't separate migrant out into males and females. They're just one migrant category. um migrant
065at 87.5 is the highest um migrant has ever been. Military, they don't separate it out into males and females either. Um but 89.4 is the highest our military subgroup has ever been. Virtual, they don't separate it out. Just one one subgroup. Virtual um at 75.6 is the highest our graduation rate has ever been. And then students with disabilities, I saved this one for last. Yes, they do separate it out um into uh male and female students with disabilities, male, female, and the overall category at 83.7 is the highest it's ever been. Um and the the work that our student support services team is doing um around students with disabilities and graduation rate is is really second to none work. And and Kansas had the highest students with disabilities graduation rate in the United States last
066year. Um, Kansas doesn't have that honor without the Witchaw Public Schools work that they're doing for that number to be that number. And all three of them, males, females, and students with disabilities as all category is higher in 2025 than it was in 2024. Um, these are all substantial marks and achievements for our kids. Um, 24 of the 34 subgroups that we have have the highest graduation rate we've ever had. So just over 70% that's 70.5% of every subgroup we have had its highest graduation rate ever in 2025. Um which is really just incredible work and we can do a picture of kids instead of a picture of numbers. Uh because that's more fun as I tell you some more things. So, uh, last year I focused on individual student stories and and this year
067I thought I'd pull some information from that staff gave us um because none of those numbers that you see on the screen are those numbers without the hard work of kids but also the hard work of staff. And so in asking the question, how did this happen? Um, and it's not an accident. And so they were able to uh so here are some of the responses um when we asked for a narrative about the work that individual schools are doing to work on their graduation rate. So I'm going to read these off for you. Um we don't take a day off from looking at graduation numbers and planning how to provide opportunities for each student to earn their high school diploma. No days off. Um next one. Teams of people are creating individual plans of
068studies with kids. Our entire staff is focused on this. So there's no days off and there's nobody that's not involved. Those are coming from completely different schools. Next one. Our student mentors keep data, find kids, and make so many home visits I've lost count. Um we are using school improvement grant money and at risk money to fund high school student mentors at our high schools. Um so that there are other people there to mentor and help kids believe in themselves maybe before the kid even believes um in them themselves. Next one early identification of who needs support and then individual student conversations. It's not rocket science. Um, it it's hard work. The work is hard, but it's not hard to come up with what makes the work happen is really, I think, what they're trying
069to say. A few more. Um, we started a night program. It's made all the difference. Um, we started a night program at Chester Lewis. Chester Lewis is an individual school. Their graduation rate went up by over 25%. We went from just over 50% of our students in the alternative setting graduating to over 77% of the students in alternative setting. That's unheard of in the alternative programming that Chester Lewis provides. And the last one, um, which might be my favorite, uh, we're creating a space where students feel safe. Yes, physically safe, but I mean safe for students to be an active participant in their future. Um, and that's really what the the schools are trying to do and create. Um, there was a presentation I did in September, I believe, where we talked a little bit
070about the class of 2025 uh survey data. And I want to connect some of that survey data with um graduation rates because the numbers are so big that sometimes it's hard to conceptualize exactly what we're talking about. So um we give a survey to our seniors every year in the class of 2025 right at 20% of them said they are the first in their family to graduate from high school. So if you take our graduates that means 613 kids in Witchah 613 families had a high school graduate for the very first time in the class of 2025. That's a mind-boggling number. 613. Then we also asked them, how many of you were the first in your family to enroll in a four-year, a two-year, or a technical, or a trade school? And it's right about
07140%. If you translate that to actual kids and families, we have 1,225 students in school of post-secary school right now who were in the class of 2025. And they are the first person in their family to take that step in their life. 1,200 kids. It's a huge number. Um, a few more. Um, there's 2,135 kids from class of 2025 that are enrolled in a post-secary institution right now. There are 451 kids from the class of 2025 that are full-time employees right now. They took a full-time job um right out of right out of high school. There are 1,034 students that are enlisted and serving in our armed forces, the United States of America that were from the 20 class of 2025. Um, which is amazing. And then last but not least, um, they tell us
072whether they're walking out of high school with a plan or they're not walking out of high school with a plan or what does that look look like. 89% of them said, "I I'm walking out with something more than a diploma. I'm walking out with the next step I'm going to take." That's 2,726 kids in the Witchaw community that got a diploma and knew what they were going to do with that diploma when they were done. Um, so I think that helps translate what can be kind of ambivalent maybe numbers and really puts human beings behind them um and understanding the scope of how important it is for us to continue to work on helping kids earn um their high school diploma. Now u Stan, we got to talk about some things. We got to talk
073about why when we were talking on Friday uh Latona ready for the next one did I give you two different graduation rate numbers and well do we ever like to make anything easy? I don't think so. So now we have in the state of Kansas two graduation rate calculations. So let's talk about those. The first one is the federal graduation rate. That's the number that I gave you already. It is 85.1%. The federal graduation rate is what we've been using since 2009, what we will keep using. And so if you want to compare apples to apples, the calculation, how you actually do the calculation is the same. You want to use federal. So that's why I used federal and what I presented to you earlier to compare to all the other years. That's the calculation
074that we've been using for this entire time. Okay. Last spring, the Senate passed Senate Bill 45, which called for an additional graduation rate calculation, which will now be deemed the state graduation rate. Okay. What that state graduation rate allows us to do is take some kids out of the denominator from the federal graduation rate and recalculate. So there's three categories of kids that get to come out of the denominator in the state graduation rate that stay in the denominator in the federal graduation rate. So the first one are kids that go um they leave our system and they go to homeschool. So if Timmy Timmy's always the example Amy Amy you're going to learn this Timmy's always the example child always. Uh, so if Timmy um leaves West High and he goes to homeschool, Timmy
075stays in our federal graduation rate calculation and counts against our graduation rate in federal. In the new state calculation, Timmy gets to come out of that denominator. So he doesn't count against us anymore. So that's one category. The second category of kids that get to come out of the denominator in the state graduation rate are kids that transfer to nonacredited schools. So Timmy's with us. Timmy leaves and goes to collegiate. It doesn't matter if he graduates or doesn't graduate. Counts against us in federal. In the state graduation rate, Timmy will get removed from that denominator and not count against us. Okay. And the third category [snorts] is kids who are credit deficient when they enter you your system can be removed from the denominator with the definition of credit deficiency meaning they have less than
07675% of expected credits. So let me give you a good example right now in the federal graduation rate. Let's say Timmy was in the class of 2025. Timmy shows up at the beginning of his senior year and has two credits. Well, he hasn't he hasn't even been here. He's been somewhere else, but he counts against us even even though we only had him for this little bit of time because he didn't meet the gradu he didn't meet the criteria straight up and he he was with you. So he so Timmy would stay in the federal, but we get to take him out of the state graduation rate calculation. So, there's three categories of kids that can get to come out. The first two categories of kids are pretty easy for us to capture because we
077have exit codes that tell us that's where those kids went. We have we have an exit code in our system that says these kids went to home school. We have an exit code in our system that said these kids went to a nonacredited school. So that was pretty easy for us to just upload to the state in the dropout graduation summary report and say, "Hey, all of these kids need to come out of the state because they went to homeschool and all of these kids need to come out of the state calculation because they went to nonacredited public school." That part was easy. That part's simple. That that that's not complicated. That that's not complicated. The complicated is the credit deficient one because there are hundreds of kids that flow in and out of our
078system every year. Um, and so we need a mechanism to capture that. So for the credit deficient, it's really going to take us four years before we're really actually good at capturing all that data because we've developed a mechanism to start capturing that data. But starting capturing it today doesn't mean we caught it last year. We or the year before or the year before. So we really won't fully maximize the calc the state graduation rate calculation until four years from now. So just to understand what the differences are, our state graduation rate for the class of was 86.3%. So we get an additional over 1% if we take really we we had a few that we like they came in in the last year and we were able to say yeah they were credit deficient.
079book, we have these, but most of that was just from home school and nonacredited schools. Um 1% might not seem like a lot, you know, 1.2% but that's 3540 kids difference um in a calculation, right? So it does that oh it's only 1% but because we have so many kids that's actually a a pretty big number of actual human beings. Um, so just wanted to spend a little bit of time on on the two graduation rate calculations and um because I can already hear it, right? Which graduation rate are we talking about? U so we're going to keep using federal to kind of compare to previous years because it's really the only valid um comparison. But each year going forward, you will see a federal graduation rate number and a state graduation rate number um
080when we when we do our report. So um how do we continue to make progress? Um, one is we're going to rewrite a strategic plan with a new goal. Uh, that's one of them that's that's achieve that's not on the screen, but it's that's that's one of them that we have to have. Um, so a few things. One, the first one is an ontrack for graduation dashboard. Um, I'm a huge nerd, and I say that with love in my heart. That's a term of endearment for me, um, as a nerd. Um, we've developed, um, an ontrack for graduation dashboard that's been multiple years in the making. Um, and what that does, it helps with early warning and monitoring of who is and isn't on track. Um, sometimes it's difficult in the student information system to
081get all the pieces of data that you need um to track to figure out, oh, is this kid qualify for this program or this program or not? Um, because you get your transcript from one place and you get your current course schedule for one place and you get your grades in class from a different place. What this dashboard does is it pulls all of those pieces of information together in one place so that counselors and principles and assistant principles at any given moment in time they can they can pull up Timmy and they can they can see how Timmy's current class schedule, his current grades um and his transcript are indicating whether he is or isn't on track. So, for example, if Timmy has an F in a class he needs to graduate right now,
082it will code him as off track and it will show and it will tell you he's off track because he has an F in something he needs to graduate right now, but all the classes he needs in his schedule are there. He just needs to make sure he passes them. Things like that. Um that's a that is a um our high school principles gave a standing ovation to our research and intelligence department when we showed this to them because the um the manh hours that this saves um and hope is has to be part of your strategy but it can't be the have this allows us to not just hope that people are reviewing this important on a regular cadence um and allows us to be to to create process and procedure around that dashboard.
083So that's the first one. The second one is advocacy graduation tech check-in. I was reading some things um from the schools earlier and there's no substitute for the human being, the human connection. Um it's part of goal number two. Um so that helped, right? All of these things are woven together. Um but there is no substitute for a meaningful relationships with an impactful adult. Um I think all of us could probably stand up here and tell stories about who that was in our life. Um, and the advocacy graduation check-in is a way to systematize that um, in in a way that can go throughout all 13,000 high school kids we have at one time. So, and then last but not least, uh, we talked about this in a previous uh, presentation. I think it's worth
084bringing up. Um, every student future ready is part of building a future ready culture. Um, I I finished reading for the second time the the book Grit by Angela Duckworth. Um, it's one of my favorite books. Um, it's one of my favorite adjectives to describe somebody. Um, over the weekend and there's a part in there where they're talking about the best way to get better is to join a really good team. And at first you're like, well, duh. Like, you obviously just got better because you joined a good team. But then they start talking about, no, because you pick up the habits of the the really good habits of the other people who are on that team. And so like when you're around gritty people, you get grittier, right? When you're around a f when
085you're in a future ready culture, the whole culture gets more future. All the people in it get more future ready. And so again, just hearkening back to the September presentation that we did, our CAP scores are going up. Our AP enrollment is going up. Our AP test scores are going up. Our concurrent and dual credit enrollment is going up. Our concurrent dual credit hours earned going up. Our ACT scores going up. our ACT work key scores going up, our post-secondary assets going up. Tim's going to do a presentation in credentials in a minute. Sorry, Tim. Guess what? It's going up. So, he can he can maybe cut his presentation a little shorter. I'm not sure. But all of those things are going up in addition to graduation rate. That's part of building a future ready
086culture is to get all of those things uh moving in the right direction. So, um, thanks for letting me talk a little bit about the amazing work that our kids and staff are doing, and I'm happy to take any questions. >> Before [clears throat] we jump in, um, the federal and the state, who decided that change in the state? I I know you said it, but I just want to make sure everybody >> So, it was a Senate bill. >> Okay. Yeah, it was a Senate bill that was passed and then we weren't sure when it was going to become like, hey, there's going to be two until the dropout graduation summary report opened and we were like, whoa, there's two different screens here. This must mean there's two now. Um, so that was a
087surprise. Yeah. >> Okay. Just [clears throat] if we get questions about why why the difference and you know, we get things said about us that are are politicized. So I want to make sure the people in Topeka decided that. Not KSD, not K, not the state board of ed education, the legislature decided that. So my other thing that I wanted to to bring up and I think Lauren, you did a great job of um trying to quantify because that's hard. Um so my first administrative job was out in Kingman and class of 25 is bigger than Kingman. So we would there are class of 25 would be the 90th biggest town in Kansas if it was a town. And we're going to have another class of 26 coming up, another Kingman coming out, which is
088why we're so dedicated to this work and doing it well and doing it right because it's not only life-changing, it's trajectory changing. It is um it's vitally important for all of us who live in the community for those 3,000 kids to be ready for whatever it is the future, right? for if it's job, it's career, it's military, whatever it is. Um, and so great progress, continuing to work uh to in a great direction. Um, but this is a big darn deal that we get this right and that we have our kids ready. Um, so it's exciting to see that we achieved our goal. I remember 1985. You probably don't remember 1985, but 85 was a great year. I'm glad we made the goal and we're past 85. >> I won't tell you what I was
089in 1985. Okay. Uh I don't I don't think our mics are still working. So if they are not then I'll Oh, we do have some separate mics. Okay. Now >> testing. >> Yeah, >> it works. >> Yeah, you're good. >> Yeah. So, uh logistics wise and timeline wise, uh when are we thinking of revisiting the uh strategic plan specifically with goal one? >> This spring. Okay. Uh second question, um can you speak more to um at a board level, at a district level, um at a higher level in general? uh what are some of those factors uh that we have to be very cognizant of in terms of uh you know the possibility of backsliding when it comes to graduation rates? >> Yeah. So one I would say if we do have a backslide I
090wouldn't say let's throw let's throw everything out. Um I think you're right there's a kind of a natural eb and a flow. Um but are you within um kind of a reasonable range right? if if you're within a few percentage points of a of a percent in a year, right, that's that's healthy. Um, but I think it's part of the organization helping. You plateau when you don't give it the attention it needs anymore. And so I think the most dangerous thing we can do is say, uh, check that box. We're going to move on to something else. I don't think it's a box that can ever be checked. And as long as we're still putting our energy and our attention to this graduation rate, we can continue to affect it. Now, will we jump as
091far as fast year-over-year? No. At some point, that rate is going to slow, and it's going to be unreasonable to expect 1% growth year-over-year. Um, but I think what's excit like, think about the data. We kind of like did something, plateaued, and idled in a in a range for a little while. Jumped, plateaued, and idled in a range. Jumped, plateaued, and idled. I would love to say we're never going to plateau and idle again. I that's probably unrealistic. um despite what I would want to be true um but if we keep making that plateau higher and higher um and the time that we spend idling on that plateau shorter then I think we have a healthy organization. >> Yeah. And and just I would piggyback on that and just say for the for the OP
092for those kids that weren't part of the 86.3% for the 13.7 um the probability that those kids have poor health outcomes and life outcomes is high. And I think we all know that, which is part of why this is a moral imperative that we get as many kids as we can with a diploma. Like this is a it's it's a big deal, but u there's more to it than just being a big deal. It it really does change people's life in the long run. So um you know, we're we're proud of the progress we've made. 13.7 is still too much. We you know, we want every single sta student to to have what they need to be successful. But Lauren mentioned the subgroups. The same is true of you. You wouldn't know how the number
093of exit codes we have, but when we exit a student out of the system, we have to put a code in. And there's 70ome exit codes, and we use a lot of those exit codes. So, we have kids that exit us for all sorts of reasons, too. So, the 13.7% um needs to be smaller. Will it ever be zero? You know, we we have students who pass away. We have students who um you know uh are in foster care, run away, homeless, whatever. We have kids that just flat don't quite make it, but that number needs to be smaller and and we need to be stay committed to making it. So, >> thank you. Then the last question, um can you speak more to the work that um our district has done and ensuring the
094accuracy, the trustworthiness of our, you know, graduation rates and just, you know, moving forward, uh you know, what else uh we'll need to do? >> Yeah, absolutely. So um you all um asked for a new board policy to be written uh 6336 um that talks about audit. So that went into effect in December. Um we've actually completed the external audit. So it's outside folks um that come in and certify the work that we've done. Um it is not internal people that do that. um they have certified our results for the class of 2025 that 85.1 and 863 um is accurate and does match the student records that we have. Our work is really there on round data controls. Um, and where kind of the the final approval lies for that. Um, and taking it out
095of our individual buildings and putting it in a systematized uh kind of district review, which really comes through the secondary office for final approval for some of those pieces that have really rested in the building for a long, long time. Um, we'd like to pull those out of there. uh create a digital trail of um signatures and agreements of approval um around some of those data controls. We have so many humans involved in the process that if we can narrow that scope um it makes the control of that data just so much easier and cleaner. Yeah, >> thank you. Knock. Stan, >> I appreciate the uh [clears throat] I appreciate the uh clarification on the federal graduation rate in the state because I knew I heard that 86. I thought I was going crazy Friday.
096So I from the workshop. So I appreciate that clarification. >> Sorry we made you think you were crazy for three days. >> Yeah, [laughter] that's okay. Um, I wanted to kind of tie this graduation rate thing a little bit to the possibility of needing a bond election again uh and uh our budget. It's my under we had to and in this area of strategies for continued progress, we probably need another budget that another little button that says continual budget uh support because I was here in seven in 2018 when it was in the 70s and we had to make a significant change and significant budget change to start moving to approach and to get that goal accomplished. The superintendent did a good job of explaining why we made that a goal of changing the trajectory
097of a lot of people's lives. We transferred I forget the exact number but we transferred uh I forget how much money from the general fund this year into our budget for capital outlay which includes maintenance. Our buildings are we have when we say average buildings are 60 years old that means we have buildings that are 100red years old. uh this is going and then we also have buildings that it's almost cheaper or it is cheaper to uh consolidate or to tear down versus a more efficient uh building where we can keep this momentum going. We cannot keep transferring money from the general fund into I mean, excuse me, we cannot keep transferring money out of capital outlay budget into our general fund in order to keep this momentum going. And I think with if you
098want to keep the future ready culture going, then you're going to need innovative things in the budget. You're going to need more pilot programs to find out what's working, what's not working, and you're going to need the person. And this is people driven. This is people driven. The the thing that brings up things about uh uh the like the list we were just given tonight from one of the public speakers on our consent agenda. These are all public agenda. These are all public driven items that are needed to then create a classroom environment that then creates high graduation rates. So if we want to uh have this flexibility and innovate in the future because even by the time the strategic plan is done in five years, it's going to be a different world in five
099years and we're going to need flexibility in our budget in order to address those issues that we don't even know that are coming yet. So um this is not just numbers. This is not just about uh this is this is all tied together and I just hope the public uh will understand that you can cherrypick a number and you can cherrypick a project and you can say this and you say but it is all tied together and we go over this detail by detail plan by plan and if you want to look at the overall cost efficiency the Witchaw school district is the cheapest school district to live in in this surrounding area. Our mill levy is four to 15 points lower than our good neighbors. And that is not didn't happen just by accident.
100That was also a strategic effort by the board of education to become costefficient. And that's where and we do put in a great deal of effort into maintenance uh in our buildings. and it still leaps has allowed us to keep our mill levy level for the last 10 years. So, uh there is I know there's times when there's going to seem like this seems a little offkilter at times, but there is it is all tied together and the and the strategic plan is what is driving the budget process. >> Thank you, Stan. Amy Jensen, >> thank you for your work. Sorry, I sound like a frog. I've been sick. Um, what I heard when you were reading those narratives is our educators and our staff are building strong relationships with our students and that is
101so important and I want to thank them all for doing that hard work because sometimes it's hard to build a relationship with a kid and doing that has made a huge difference. So, thank you to all of your folks for doing that work. >> Thank you, Amy. Lauren, seeing no further questions, thank you very much for your presentation. We always appreciate the numbers and we know how hard you and your team work on the accuracy of those. Uh, so we appreciate your hard work. Thank you very much. Okay, Latona, next item. >> Student success through industry recognized credentials. Okay, we're going to welcome up Tim Hamlin and Holly Ingram. While Isaiah is doing that, I want to make three comments. First, since Lauren mentioned me in her presentation, I would like to say I am
102not Timmy. Okay. So, I'm not the but in every meeting I get [laughter] and then my uh my college athletic career certainly did not start out as uh as fabulous as hers did. I think a 6'9 guy blocked my first first shot and it was it was horrible. But uh and then as far as this evening, this is fantastic. Usually I'm responsible and to blame for technology. Not tonight. Here we go. So, no, Isaiah has been doing a fantastic job and he always does. So, I appreciate that. So, uh, Tim Hamlin, uh, executive director of College of Career Readiness. Happy to visit this evening, share a little bit about student success through the credentials that they earn in Witchaw public schools. Um, as I advance through here, prior to um, there we go. So, just
103before the winter break, I invited several to come and join me kind of tour East High School. I wanted you to be able to see the programs where these credentials these students earn where those actually take place. So the pictures here are just similar to that. Those are not actually at East High, but those are some folks in our construction pathway and at the bottom those are kiddos in the culinary arts. So all right. So I think it's important that we start or have a common definition of the term credential. So we use in our world simply the credential that the US Department of Labor the definition that uses and as you can see that there the real meat of it is the verification of an individual's qualification or competence issued by a third party.
104Now in the world of CTE you will often hear industry recognized credentials. So I thought it might be worth us taking a moment and just kind of look at the difference there. Basically, it's in that very first word. What the industry recognized credential recognizes, it's developed by the employer. Um, it's still a third party. It's typically a a assessment of their skills, but hopefully mastery and they are so careerfocused. So, with that credential, the industry recognized credential, you hope that the student or the individual is working their way towards some sort of an occupation or a uh a career. And these can be extremely change the trajectory of students lives big time. I do believe that you were given a handout and it's actually displayed there on this slide. All I would like to say
105about that but in Witchaw public schools we offer over 60 credentials. The document that you have it it's a living document. Um it is not all-incclusive. That can change from year to year but that is there for you to peruse and and have at your disposal. So, so rather than listening to me all night, uh I'm going to just share some statistics here and then I'm going to have some folks that I asked to join me. But last year we had within Witchaw public schools students earned 4,419 unique industry recognized credentials, which is great. Where we are at this year at this point is 167. When you first look at that, you might think mid year we should be right at half 50%. No, several of our credentials are not actually awarded until the spring
106semester, till the conclusion of the year-long course. So, that's that kind of explains the discrepancy there. So, that being said, I am, like I said, I invited a few folks if you want to come on up. I'm going to have all four come up at one time. um rather than listening to me go on and on and on, I thought it would be nice to hear the perspective from a teacher, from our students, and then ultimately from an industry partner, they in fact are ultimately who who hires our students on the other end. So, um to start, we're going to give the floor to Mrs. Shannon Zimmerman, who is an instructor at East High. So, Shana, have at it. >> Um good evening, President Albert, Superintendent Bilfeld, and members of the board. Uh thank you
107for having us today. I am really honored to be able to represent um the work that our uh coolest teachers ever uh and students put in uh regarding industry uh credentials and earning certifications uh in classes across the district. Industry recognized certifications are an integral part of CTE programs. They elevate the relevance and rigor of the skills that students are being taught in the classroom. Some certifications offered are required part of the course. Students must successfully complete the assessment to ensure that they're prepared to safely and confidently enter lab spaces. This is true for certifications like the serve safe food handlers certification for culinary students, the OSHA safety certification for construction students and the foundations for safe and healthy early care facilities for our early childhood students. Beyond ensuring safety in culinary skill trades and
108early child labs, students are able to carry those certifications with them directly into entry-level positions in their respective industries. Several of our courses also offer certifications that align with their curriculum and serve as a culminating assessment, allowing students to showcase their skills. Computer certifications include Microsoft Office Specialist in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook, as well as Adobe certifications in Photoshop, Illustrator, and Inesign. We have even more certifications, including ServeSafe Management for culinary students, and multiple NCCER certifications in construction. Students who earn these certificates gain tangible evidence of their learning and are better positioned to enter the workforce to find internships and to go on to college. Rather to give you information about individual exams, we want you to hear directly from some of the students in these programs. I have two students with me who
109have several certifications under their belts in multiple pathways. And we'll start with Kada and Jang followed by Gorish Shudar. Good evening, members of the board. My name is Kayen Yang. I greatly appreciate the chance to speak to you in front of the board of education about the certifications we get uh throughout our school. Uh I'm a senior at Witchaw East High School. The CTS CT courses that I'm a part of are carpentry, marketing, engineering, finance, and accounting. With my pathways, I want to pursue personal growth and learn successful skills later on in life or just general knowledge that I want to learn or skills that will be useful for my future career. In my carpentry class, we prepare with NCC learning vocabulary processes and encouraging hands-on activities. We work with various tools and materials. This
110allows us to participate, practice what we learn on paper, and apply it to real world experiences. For example, we learned basic safety, power tools, and building materials, which are things we use in the shop every single day. The skills I have gained help me gain confidence in my skills, knowing I have industry level credentials, and a capable of working on large scale hands-on projects, talking with industry professionals, learning how to get internships and use the skills on an actual job site. These skills translate into skills USA a student le organization that helps develop our leadership teamwork and technical skills for success in the our future career. We use these skills to participate in competitions to show what we know hands-on in a live competition. Uh next I would like to learn in my class within
111my class building systems and electrical. Later on this year, we will get the chance to learn building systems and the different types of framing and what they're used for, what different benefits they provide. Talking with my teacher, Mr. Hazlewood, over here, um, on the next steps to earning my electrical uh, modules in class to see how it lines up with NCCR certifications. By the end of this year, I should qualify for my general carpentry license with all the courses that we and credentials that I earned, including NCCR core and OSHA basic in safety. Now, I'll pass it on to my fellow peer Gish. >> Um, good evening members of the board. My name is Garish Shriar and I'm a senior at East High School and I just wanted to take this opportunity to sort of
112explain like the certifications that I've taken in my career at East. Um I've uh dabbled in a lot of different branches when it comes to certifications. The main ones that I have ended up focusing on have been computer science uh along the Microsoft Office Specialist certifications and also through the programming certifications. I've also earned the basic surf safe certification as well as a few engineering certifications especially with inventor. Um and these certifications have really come in very useful for me uh mainly through two main factors that they have directly impacted me through. One of them has been the Microsoft Office national competition as seen on the presentation. I was invited there this summer due to me being first in the state for Excel. It was a very interesting experience and um yeah, it was really
113only through these certifications that I got the opportunity to go out to Texas and sort of experience this for myself firsthand. Another thing that these um certifications have directly uh contributed to me have been an internship. One of the main reasons that I landed an internship over the summer was because of my Microsoft Excel certification that I took in the junior year. And this really sha shaped my career especially my future trajectory as it really helped me involve myself in the professional sphere and learn a lot about how I can apply my skills in the real world. Currently I'm trying to pursue future uh certifications through um artificial intelligence and cyber security that are also offered in the computer science branch and yeah it's a very um impactful experience and I found it very helpful.
114Thank you for your time. Thank you. >> And next we have joining us from Textron Industries, one of our industry partners, Michelle Gford. >> Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to be here. My name is Michelle Gford. I work in the human resources department at Textron Aviation. Textron Aviation is the world's leading general aviation manufacturer. Um, inspiring the journey of flight for nearly 100 years with our iconic Cessna and Beachcraft brands. uh we cannot do that and provide that journey of flight for our customers and that amazing customer experience without a talented workforce. K12 is an integral part of that workforce. Um we invest in K12 by providing experience and exposure that happens via classroom presentations, tours, shadowing opportunities, and our paid high school internships as well as a oneweek summer externship for educators.
115Um a little bit of data uh to follow on to some presentations from earlier. Um so we host nearly 160 interns in the summer uh from the high school programs. Um in 2024 38% of those came from USD 259. In 2025 that number was 48% and included 40 students from the future ready center. We hired 23 students and 78% of those students we hired um out of that intern class were USD 259 students as well. So USD259 is a very valuable partner and pipeline to the future of the aviation and advanced manufacturing workforce across the district and the future ready centers. USD259 provides key pathways that support important industries. These offer not only hands-on experience and exposure but credentiing opportunities. These students are both great examples of the wide variety of things that these students
116get the opportunity to experience throughout their high school careers. You heard engineering, you heard finance, you heard computer science. They get to do all of that within the safety and comfort of USD 259. Really helping them understand um and make that future career choice. Uh these are industry recognized career credentials, but beyond that, they provide work readiness and soft skills. Whether the students realize that or not, they are learning soft skills along the way um which are very important uh out in the work world as you all know. These credentials allow students to demonstrate their knowledge while also providing a bridge between education and employment, career exploration and align their career goals with in demand jobs. Textron Aviation will continue to partner with USD 259 and support a future ready workforce. Thank you. >> Thank
117you Michelle. So, as you can see, these are some outstanding young people, fabulous educator, and we so appreciate our industry partners. So, that being said, Kaden, you were in a red jacket in there. Why were you in a red jacket? >> That's for my >> Come to the mic. >> Go to the [laughter] mic. >> Uh, that was for my state officer position as Skills USA uh state president. >> Wow. >> Yeah. So, right here, WPS. There you go. So, so Tim, I I have a question for Michelle if you don't mind. I'll put you on the spot here. Um, Gerish, I know you you guys employ all sorts of types of workers, HR, accountants, healthcare, all sorts of things. So, Gerish comes and applies and he is certified in Microsoft Excel. Um, is that
118a bigger deal than a one, two, three or four on the state assessment to you or how do how do those weigh out? Yeah, I think um I mean so when we hire our summer interns, just for a little bit of context, we hire them as employees. So they're going to go through a drug screen, a background test, go through that whole application process because we feel like that part of the process is very very important for them to see this is what it's like to go get a job out in out in the big world. And so um we do look at those credentials because um they they are going through um they bring us a resume and they go through a basic interview process. So, it is a face-to-face on-site interview that we
119do. Um, and so part of that then is looking at what are those credentials? We're asking them um some basic questions, but again, we're looking for those communication skills and really that curiosity. And students that have achieved those credentials um typically um do score better um in those areas just because of again that knowledge and confidence where they've been through maybe a few extra steps um that other students haven't. >> And do you guys use Work Keys still? Do you use that? >> We do. Yeah, we do. Yeah, we will accept work keys in lie of high school diploma. Um but it is not a required test currently. It's not okay. >> Um for our position. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Okay. Very good. Knock. >> Thank you, Tim. Thank you, Shaya. Thank you, Michelle.
120Um and especially thank you to our two students. Uh Kaden and Gish. Uh I'm going to put you two guys uh on the spot here. I have two questions for you. Well, well, before that, uh, Kaden, uh, that picture is tough. Let me tell you, that picture is tough. And Gish, uh, when we were doing the visit at East High, like we like I we literally like saw so many of your certificates on the on on the hallway. So, it's nice to put, you know, a face to the name. Uh, so my two questions for you, uh, what comes after high school um, for you guys? Have you, you know, figured that out yet? It's completely okay if you haven't. And then the second question, uh, what advice would you have for our board and
121district leadership on, you know, how do we, uh, better support, if you will, uh, applied learning and experiential learning? >> Um, well, uh, for the first question, my future plans, uh, currently I'm planning to go to a 4-year university for computer science specifically and then maybe pursue a masters in the same subject. Uh after that, employment wise, I'm hoping to look at a few internships while at college and figure things out from there. Um and as for the support, especially with credentials, I think one of the things that I noticed as a student going through the system and at East High is credentials are sort of a niche topic that isn't as broadcastes as I think they should be. I think they're so important and vital to the post-secary asset and like post um like
122high school career uh that I think they should be sort of put out there more and sort of emphasize like what the benefits are and I think that would be a really huge help to most students in general. Yep. >> Uh my plans after high school are going to a 4-year university. Also, uh I hope to apply to be an engineer. I don't know what yet. I'm deciding between aerospace engineering and mechanical engineering right now. Um I believe for the pathways and how to support you guys just have to have the word out about the credentials and like how we apply to those classes and what classes give what credentials and how that can pursue or push you in your future careers. >> Very good. Not do you have any more questions? >> Okay. Very
123good. Amy Warren >> Knock actually took some of my questions and also the comment he said it better about your picture Kaden than I did but um that is a pretty awesome picture. Uh so I was wondering because for instance I've got boys that are coming up. What does it look like for a freshman going in to high school um trying to consider credentials and look for it? Can you walk us through how you guys actually got connected with it? And Gish, you had talked about getting the word out better. Do you have any specifics that you'd recommend for getting people engaged? >> They're so polite. I think um when it comes to like the word out and like looking for courses with credentials, there's already some like preliminary outreach, but I think the main
124concern is that it's at the teacher level. I think mostly it's teacher advocacy that's mainly supporting these certification programs. And I think that it should be more of a schoolwide like effort because I think that these certifications should be like like uh like more emphasized as post-secary assets and emphasized as things you can actually achieve rather than a part of the class. It should be like a whole separate like sort of advertisement that I just think isn't there yet. I don't know exactly how this would like occur. Probably something with the like class enrollment, but I'm not sure exactly how you would implement Uh for me, I stumbled upon like my credentials on accident. I didn't even know we had like CT courses that provided credentials. But once I joined my engineering class, I talked
125to the teachers of what classes I should take for the next year and next semester. They offered me some classes that would benefit me and what I would want in my career and how it would like benefit me. But when I was coming into high school, I didn't know like high school offered these credentials throughout these programs. So, I feel like we should just go out to reach out to middle schools talking about the programs and what it provided for us, especially as we went throughout the years because most of them start from when you're a freshman and not midyear as you grow. >> I appreciate that. Yeah. And they're they are the spokespeople, right? I mean, they are the ones to send out into the middle schools. So, thank you very much um for
126you guys stepping up and also great job speaking in front of the board. I have no doubt that what you guys have been done doing already is laying the groundwork for what you need after graduation. And thank you Michelle and Shauna so much. >> And yeah, I was going to I was going to throw it over to Tim. Um do you want to talk about uh the this focus on credentials is maybe relatively new um especially in the postsecary asset world. It's it's definitely new, but do you want to talk about some of that? >> Sure. For those that uh may recall, in Witchaw public schools two or three years ago, we had a program graduation plus where basically the whole premise there is just understanding there's more than just the lessons taught in the
127classroom that are going to transition and help students be career college ready. Um I love the fact that there are two young men here this evening. When you hear about career and technical education, for many, many, many years, you were thinking those were the students that had no intention of going on to a 4-year university. And we have two outstanding young people here that have clearly embraced and and immersed themselves in the career and technical education courses, and they see that those are going to transfer or translate into benefits in their university experience. So, um, yeah, the credentials, they are, um, they're outstanding and they're incredibly important and I appreciate your remarks that they're not necessarily that well known through the teaching staff and so that gives us a place to really start targeting who
128we can educate. So, >> very good. Thank you for the presentation tonight. I think one of the things that the public kind of things can get lost is the different opportunities that are offered here in the Witchaw public schools. And I just want to thank Kaden and Gurish to for coming for exploring the opportunities within your high school. Uh the board was able to give a be on a tour through East High. So, we were right there in your stomping grounds um in your classrooms uh seeing what's offered and seeing students explore these opportunities. Uh, I'm in the construction trades and so I've been to uh Aeron's classroom often to see uh sawdust being made, to see blueprints out and to see students learning electrical work, um to see students learning how to set tile,
129to see students learning how to do real world world things and to have students that are excellent at computer technology. Um, I think we all have to be pretty proficient and excel, but to be the best [laughter] is quite a marketable skill and to be at that level at high school is just really remarkable. And so, I just want to say thank you to all of our staff that have an imprint on students and an impact on them. And then also to our industry partners. So, Michelle, I Textron's near and dear to my heart. My husband's employed by you guys. Um, you guys are great partners for us. uh to not only give our high school students experience but also to partner with us at the manufacturing uh future ready center. Um it is we're
130able to do more with great industry partners like Textron Aviation and so thank you very much for everything that you guys do and and the students that you support. So thank you guys very much. >> I I should mention it was very East Blue Acesheavy tonight. So it was >> that that was by design. and that's where we took our tour and I figured that that would kind of help you those that were able to join us. So, but these programs are available districtwide and so it is not just something students at the east high boundaries get to experience or are exposed to. So, >> every high school has CTE programs. >> Absolutely. >> So, we and people can go on our website to see what programs are offered at which high schools, but all
131of the high schools have different CTE pathways that students can explore. So, thank you guys very much. Thank you for being here and thank you for all that you do and how you represent Witchaw Public Schools. [applause] >> Yeah. >> Okay, Latona. Next item, >> facilities master plan and listening tour presentation. >> All right. While we transition, I'll uh give give a little bit I'm not going to steal any thunder because Dr. Noble and Mr. Alvarez have some good things to share. Um, but we we've we've been out we've been out listening. We've been out talking to people. Um, we've been out gathering feedback and we have an update on that along with uh some of our next steps um as far as facilities go. So, I'll hand it off to to you guys. Take
132it away. Well, good evening, Superintendent Bill, President Albert, members of the board. I'm Gil Alvarez, deputy superintendent. Glad to be with you this evening. And my co-presenters with me. I have my colleague, Dr. Steve Noble. He is the chief operations officer. Uh, also that's going to come to the podium a little bit later is Luke Newman, division director of facilities, and Fabian Armander, division director of logistics. We will be sharing an update of our first semester school staff listening tour and our facility master plan. Uh to provide context to our current facilities master planning efforts and our listening tour. I'd like to start by reviewing how we arrived to this point and our ongoing community engagement efforts. Our community engagement efforts did not begin during bond outreach in February of 2025. It has been ongoing
133since we began our strategic planning process in 2023. During our bond process last school year, we were provided feedback that our two-way communication needed to improve, and we agreed. In response to this feedback, we established other ways to communicate and engage our internal and external community members through the development of our Hispanic and African-American advisory councils, our financial oversight committee, the community engagement survey participation, and our most recent building staff listening tour that you're going to hear more about today. So if on the slide just wanted to uh briefly touch on each one of those uh specific events that had occurred uh since 2023 starting with that strategic planning process and how we actually continue to engage in and our community had opportunities to participate in some of the listening sessions or surveys that had
134occurred. So the strategic planning as you know we had a like an advisory group a pretty big one actually back in 2023 when we were developing our mission vision shared beliefs and goals for our strategic plan. We also had some opportunities for other uh surveys and listening uh to see what were those goals going to be how do we want to update our strategic plan and and I do want to say this this circle that you see on the screen is not necessarily chronological. These are just major events that have occurred. So, but I'm going to kind of take it uh going down around the actual circle itself. Uh the next one was financial analysis. This was a detailed look on how we the use of ESRE funds, but really the discontinuation of our ESRE
135funds because when that occurred in particular, we had to decide what we're going to keep, what was working, and what we wanted to keep in our system. knowing that everything we put into it with our ESTRA funds, we did not have the ultimate funding to keep everything, but we wanted to make sure we were keeping the things that were making the biggest impact. Uh, and we did reach out to our internal uh faculty and staff and and heard that we they wanted to keep a lot of our support staff, child study teams, they needed behavior interventionists or or more social workers. And so we decided to keep a lot of those uh particular additions by using the extra funds. cut in return. We had to look at what are we going to cut then in
136order to be able to keep that. So the whole uh closing of that gap that budget gap that we had was something that we worked on as well. But that included some engagement with our internal staff members. The next one is the fac the facilities master plan process. Uh we used a lot when we're looking at our facilities master plan surveys and listening sessions in regards to what does this facilities master plan? what could it look like for our district as we were going for uh that bond issue in February of 2025. I'm going to go to the top right corner. The most challenging conversations that we had was the school closure process. Um, as you know, we closed six buildings uh that were identified as closing during the end of the 23 24 school
137year. Uh but having those open houses, having the conversations with the community, uh listening to their concerns in regards to uh those particular closings uh was another way that we engage the community. Uh the annual budget process that is a state statute, that's a state law that every year that our buildings and our building principles, they engage their staff, building leadership teams, site councils in order to look at what are the barriers to student success at their particular building. So they uh engage their staff to figure out ways um and what resources can we provide or they ask for to provide to break down those particular barriers. So it's it's a needs assessment for each of the buildings that they they do each each year. We start that it's due in March right before spring
138break. So that process will begin shortly, probably mid mid January as principles start to meet with their site councils, meet with their building leadership teams going into second semester so they can be prepared to submit that needs assessment in March right before spring break. And then of course the last one is the 2025 bond outreach process. uh the engagement that we pursued with our internal faculty and staff uh as well as our external but we did hear during that outreach that we could communicate better and we agreed is why we really decided to do the listening tour. So right in the middle of that circle it's as you are here uh we also wanted to share what our journey was for our staff when we went to our building leaders leadership or excuse me the
139building staff listening session. So this particular slide was also provided for the staff so they can also see the journey uh that we have taken. So the middle there is really our building staff listening session. So let's get into the actual building listening tour. Uh we have two really purpose statements. One was to understand our journey to provide context for our current facility planning efforts by reviewing how we arrived at this point which was the slide I just presented to you. But the other big one was gathering staff feedback to actively engage school staff and identifying facility needs and priorities that directly impact their ability to serve students effectively. We also want to ensure that their insights shape the development of building specific improvements and district-wide strategies. So, uh, we we felt that the information
140that we received from staff at these listening tours was was very valuable in how even our facilities department is going to look at their capital improvement plans uh in the future as well. So, the the first one of the overview, the comprehensive staff feedback, we had an ambitious goal of 85 schools in 85 days. So, we had three teams. Superintendent Beerfeld had a team, I had a team, and Dr. Noble also had a team. uh we we kind of looked at each other saying, "Are we going to be able to get to all 85 schools when we started in September?" Uh but I'm proud to say that we did uh get to all the schools and and I can't be um thankful to our administration, faculty, and staff because some of them had to actually
141maybe move their day of their staff meetings uh from their normal day to another day just to accommodate. So uh we're very thankful for our administrators, faculty, and staff during these sessions. We did visit all 85 schools, talk with nearly 4,000 staff members, and 2,000 surveys were completed as part of this tour. And I'll give you a little bit more specific data here on the next slide. This report synthesizes feedback from staff across all school levels, highlighting key challenges and opportunities. The facility and instructional challenges, these were issues identified or the issues that were identified include the HVAC problems. I'll get I'll get more in depth with these top challenges later on as well. HVAC problems, aging infrastructure, health, safety, and accessibility concerns affecting learning environments. The vision for ideal learning spaces, the third bullet
142point, uh the staff envisioned modern, flexible learning spaces with inclusive playgrounds, ADA compliance, and upgraded athletic and arts fine arts facilities to name a few. and in commitment to transparency. The listening tour emphasized transparency and collaboration, ensuring staff voices shape the future district master planning and improvements. So, let's start by looking at some data from the school staff listening tour specifically. So, once again, do want to say thank you to our administrative faculty and staff for these visits. Uh, I know hearing from Superintendent Beerfield as well as Dr. Noble uh how much we appreciated the participation and engagement of our faculty and staff was huge. Um to get this type of feedback uh to allow us to help shape the capital planning, but also hear some of the improvements that were needed in the buildings
143specifically. So on the slide, I'm I'm just going to focus on kind of the total, but you can see the breakdown from elementary, middle, K8, high schools. uh the in that light blue the attendees we had a total of 3,843 attendees. So we we counted heads when we were at each of the buildings. And then the survey participants we had 234 staff members, faculty and staff that participated in the survey out of the 3,843 that actually attended. So that was about a 53% uh survey participant rate uh that we had at our listing sessions. We also uh we realized after the first couple of sessions that even though we were receiving data and getting the well actually I do have to address the questions because one of our speakers earlier had talked about questions that
144were given ahead of time which they were given ahead of time but it wasn't given for that's the only questions that staff could ask. Those were questions to begin the thought process on what we were going to do or what we were going to ask them when we get there. It was prompting their thinking. We wanted them to have their prior knowledge, get their experiences of their own buildings. So some of those questions were just to prep them for what was to come, not that was the only questions that they were uh going to be asked in particular. So I wanted to make that clear. Um so the quick fix uh we realized that there were some things that staff were providing us as feedback. Uh they we did listen because we then create because
145of that we created a quick fix data document. It was an Excel spreadsheet. Uh, and I wanted to kind of share some of those quick fixes. Um, we realized that there were some requests for feedback that we felt that could be addressed sooner or later is why we created this. These we identified 42 quick fixes that either had been completed or are currently being looked into in particular. So, I want to provide just two examples of those quick fixes from Beach and Curtis. At the beginning of the year, we went to Beach Elementary, uh, and we heard that they needed to remove some excess clutter in their gym. So, and their gym is is also a space that they use to help with their cafeteria. So, if there's excess clutter from the summertime, meaning excess
146furniture, excess equipment, uh, they were not able to use their entire gym. Well, since they told us that, within that that week, at the end of that week, all that excess furniture was was taken away. That was an example of a response to what we heard specifically from the staff at Beach. Another example was Curtis. Uh they they shared at their facilities uh or their listening tour about some potholes that they have been requesting uh to be filled and we that has been completed as of December 3rd as well. So there's a lot of those kinds of stories. There's also ones that we need to get more information because they did there was a lot of them that were talking about specific classrooms, specific hallways. So, we need to get more specific information to be
147able to follow up. Also, some of those have been turned over to our facilities department uh to be able to be completed, but we're we're happy and excited to be able to accommodate some of those uh what we call quick fixes for our staff. So, what did we learn? Our top facilities challenges uh in particular. So, on this graph on the yaxis is the issue category. Uh the x-axis is the horizontal line is the percent of schools that reported uh that being a concern in particular. So I'm just I know it's kind of small up on the screen. So I'm just going to share uh what those graphs are. At the very top was HVAC systems issues. That was 78% of our staff reporting that there was some type of HVAC HVAC system issue. The
148next one is roof leaks at 65%. Plumbing problems 52%. Electrical issues 48%. flooring damage 43%, window repair 38%, and then paint and wall damage at 32%. Those were just our top specific challenges, but those weren't the only uh ones that we got. So, I'm going to share some additional general feedback as well, but just from this particular data, HVAC and climate control was the biggest concern, and we heard heard this across the district. facilities suffer from inconsistent heating and cooling. Uh noisy AC units and poor air quality, specifically mold that we heard uh from staff are major issues affecting comfort in schools and ability to teach and learn. Uh and then of course aging infrastructure, leaky roofs, plumbing problems, electrical issues, which includes insufficient electrical outlets, which wasn't as surprising because when our buildings are
149built in the 50s or older, uh they weren't built for a lot of technology use. So, uh, the need for extra outlets was something that our sta we heard from our faculty and staff. Outdated lighting, worn, aging flooring, and old carpet undermine school comfort and pride. So, some of the additional feedback that we heard, and these uh were not necessarily the top u challenges, however, we did hear these from specific levels of our system. So, whether some of these may have come from elementary, some could have came from K8s, high school, and vice versa. Uh but one of those was the small non-flexible classrooms. Many classrooms are designed for smaller groupings or desks and rows and now lack space for group activities, centers and collaboration which are 21st century learning skills. Uh we also heard
150about multi-use gymnasium and cafeteria issues and I you hear this as uh gym cafet where you you're sharing the space as a gym, you're sharing the space with a cafeteria, you're also sharing the space with auditorium. So that combined gym and cafeteria spaces limit scheduling flexibility. So a lot of uh grade levels cannot use the the gym during the lunch times. Sometimes when you when you're setting up for lunch or when you're tearing down and cleaning up for lunch causes times that students can't be in the gym either or makes them wait before they can actually use that facility. Traffic flow and common areas improve traffic flow at drop off and pick off pickup locations and expanded common areas. If you think of drop off and pickup, if you've ever driven down Oliver, uh during
151some of our elementary, specifically Adams, uh but you you talk about Crystal McAuliff Academy, if you've been there, uh can be difficult as well, as well as East and Griffith. Those are just to name a few that have some traffic flow uh concerns. And then in the high school, we heard from athletic facilities needs. These facilities, especially some practice fields, uh require some upgrades. It was what we heard from some high schools. And then health, safety, and accessibility concerns. Uh, everyone was thankful for the secure entrances uh that they have for the safety concerns, but there were some additional ones like nonADA compliance issues that hinder equitable access to learning and safety, including having accessible playgrounds. So, that was really uh heavily shared at our elementary sites. Also the poor air quality like mold on
152vents, carpet, furniture and walls posed health risk according to our our staff as well. So in summary, uh our facility challenges identified systemic issues include HVAC reliability, space adequacy, infrastructure integrity, technology readiness and safety compliance and reimagining learning spaces, flexible classrooms, inclusive and accessible play areas, and specialized STEM and fine arts space promote engaging education. And these were some of the things that we heard as we asked some futuristic or visionary type of questions uh from our faculty and staff as well. We also learned a few things that weren't facilities related that are important to highlight and we I think we heard this also from from some of our speakers including UTW. It's workload concerns uh staff supports and resources. This is why we need ongoing staff engagement. So, I know we also heard uh
153that we only go every once in a while when we need something. Uh but the ongoing staff is going to be something that we do as we continue our listening session going into second semester. >> Yeah. And I think this would be a good time for me to chime in too because I think it's pretty relevant to what Gil just said. Um we I think and you guys the three of us went to all the schools and talked to all the people. Um and it was really it was great. It was professional, it was collaborative. Um, I think it was time well spent, but we go I mean, we have goals as a district that we're trying to achieve. And so, we were going to get feedback about those goals. Uh, the building needs assessment
154that we do every year. We don't just ask them, you know, what color do you want the drapes? We aren't looking for whatever feedback they want to give us about anything. We're we have a goal about graduation rate. How do you what do we need to do to achieve that goal? That's the kind of questions we ask and we do listen. I don't think we'd be at 85.1% if we just sat around Lauren and I in a room and said, "What do you think we should do?" I don't know. Let's do this. We listen. When they say we need senior liaison, we need mentoring. We invested in that. You invested in that. That's moved the needle. When we said, "Hey, we've got this idea about night school." Y'all invested in that. We put money. We
155We've been strategic about the feedback from the principles. So it isn't just wide openen feedback about whatever. It's these are the goals. How do you what do we need to do to help achieve those goals? Now resources are limited. We can't say yes to everybody. Um but I would contend that um that if if you've been in a kindergarten classroom and the carpet is super gross and dirty, that does impact the learning and the outcomes and what we can do in the classroom. Um, if you don't have an area of the classroom that's waterproof, so to speak, with tile on it, uh, and we're losing instructional time because we don't have a sink or we're having to clean up spills or whatever that is. Um, those are relevant things. Uh, and just to be completely
156honest, we're behind. Our district is behind on the facilities. I think as you go into our buildings, um, and hearing our teachers talk, there's needs. There's genuine needs out there. So, yes, this was a targeted listening tour. It was about specific questions and about specific things so that we can achieve our goals. It wasn't open mic night for anybody to just say whatever. Now, we did hear feedback about workload because workload is tied to facilities. We heard feedback about behavior because if you don't have a spot for a kid to regulate that's safe, it's that that is disruptive to the classroom or can be at least if your hallway is not the right size. Um, if you don't have restrooms in every pre-K and every kindergarten classroom or sinks and you're sending kids out to
157wash their hands, like those things are legitimate concerns for achieving our ultimate goals. But that's what this is all about. This is about the strategic the meeting the strategic plan goals. We're making making great progress on that. And the way that we continue to do that is by talking to the people that know. Uh, we could do a community survey about leaky roofs, but we don't know what you know. The teachers are there, right? They're the ones that put the the trash can under the leak. They're the ones that have to deal with it. They know better than we do. So, I think it's imperative that we really take this feedback to heart and and use it to move forward and really motivate us to to make good decisions about it. So I know I
158know we're not done but I wanted to I think this is a good time to tie a bow on the feedback part and then we can move on to the next part. So thank you for sharing that uh because one of the things also we heard uh from our staff was when we shared our projects that we had listed for them we wanted to know are these the right projects? Is it the right priority of projects? And we did hear a lot of them were after their listening and after they're giving us feedback the projects actually aligned with what they said some of the concerns were. But some schools also said, "Hey, we rather you spend it on this roof issue or this HVAC issue than than painting or flooring." So, we we heard that
159uh those differences. And I know Luke and his team are looking at th that feedback as well too when they create and finalize a uh the capital improvement plan that those types of changes will be there because we want to make sure that we are meeting the needs of what they actually need and want. So, that was really good. Um, so much of our additional feedback though was was personnel related. Uh, so our chief human resource officer, Steven Christian, is engaging his team on a second semester feedback tour with staff around staff supports. This will look similar to our listening sessions we conducted first semester. Uh, however, the topics we're going to close the loop on our facilities needs part, meaning share what we've learned. We we've also sent back to the staff. They are
160themes that came about from the feedback. So each of them, each school has received an email from their listening session that that tells them this is what you said and then we're going to close that loop on the second semester listening session to that and then move on to the next topic. So that's kind of the cadence uh that we're wanting to do. So we're we're excited and looking forward to ongoing engagement with our staff in 2026. Uh we were also asked what the district is doing to combat the drop in enrollment. While this is a nationwide trend due to a decline in birth rates across the country, including here in Kansas and Witchah, we would like to discuss further with the board and possibly the community at a later date. We're not asking you
161to have this conversation today where we want where we want to be as a district. Are we okay with projections that Witchaw public schools will will have approximately 40,000 students by 2033 to 34 school year and reinvision our district on how to best serve those particular students or do we want to discuss ways to combat this decline? So those that's just uh a thought that I wanted to put out there as some future conversations that that we probably need to have conversations around because that will determine where the where the finances or budget goes into and then what strategies we need to deploy in order to to help our district continue to move forward with the momentum that we currently have. So I'm going to stop there for for questions uh because I know that
162was a lot of information. So I just wanted to see before we get into some of the facilities needs part or the facilities master plan. So, I'll just pause there to see if there's any specific questions around the staff listening to war. >> Amy Warren, >> I was listening so intently I didn't raise my hand on the computer. Um, so with the listening tour part and now you're going into the personnel issues and and addressing staff workload, what what are you guys doing then so that becomes like a sustained sustainable practice and it's something that yeartoear just continues. >> I think what we learned was how valuable the feedback that we received. So I think that's the reason why we we want to do another one second semester and just use this model as we
163continue where even if we talk about the staff workload that then the semester after that we would close that loop and then start another topic. So we feel that we um did a good job of of doing the feedback and listening. We want to make sure we maintain that particular cadence um as we move through each each year possibly even each semester really on what what that topic will look like. Now, one thing I forgot to say is we're going to do more than just the three teams because the three teams was uh very challenging to make sure we met. Uh but but we had a lot more time. Second semester, we're not going to start till February. So, it'll be February, March, and April. So, we've we've added 13 teams that will be going
164out providing some of the listening sessions to get the feedback from staff. >> Yeah, I appreciate that. And um I think listening to how you guys tried to pay attention to incorporating their goals and align and use that as a heavier weight to align what our goals are cuz that way we get informed and know that we're going in the right direction. I appreciate you guys starting that over again and creating some more feedback loops. Thanks. >> Okay, seeing no further questions. >> All right, >> continue. >> All right, well I'll turn it over now to Luke who will share about our district facility needs. Luke. >> All right. Good evening. My name is Luke Newman. I'm the director of facilities and my portion of this presentation will be short but hopefully sweet. [snorts] Um,
165so I'd like to start by simply saying that our facilities needs are not going away. Um, the average age of our buildings is 61 years old across the district which is reflected in our large-scale maintenance needs and FCI data. As this board is well aware, we use a measurement called facility condition index, FCI for short, to evaluate the large-scale maintenance needs that exist in our schools, which positions us to project future budget needs and long-term viability of our buildings. Generally speaking, you want to keep your FCI below 045 as a best practice. And that's because the closer the value gets to one, the more it negatively impacts building occupant experience and the more your return your return on investment diminishes. Um, so I want to use exterior exterior enclosures and as an example of what
166I mean by that. Um, if [snorts] you think about exterior facade, brick block work of a building. Um, at year 15 in a in a newer building, you want to seal that exterior uh blocker brick in order to preserve that, you know, the exterior uh enclosure. You're going to seal it up to prevent prevent water from getting in and uh you might have to do a little bit of mortar repair here and there, but um it's going to be pretty minimal. Um it's really just going to be um strictly to that to that ceiling that you're going to take care of at year 30 40 in that same building. as it starts to get older, you're going to start to run into more systemic issues. So, you still need to do that sealing to keep
167the water from continuing to get into that into that block. Um, but you're also going to run into probably a lot of mortar that's started to to deteriorate over time. So, you're going to have to saw cut some of those joints. You're going to have to tuck point and reorder those joints. You might have to pull out sections of of brick and block and then put in new brick and block in order to to to maintain and preserve uh the exterior facade. and then you'll still need to go back and reseal that whole exterior enclosure. So, gets more expensive to maintain something like that. That's just one example. Another great example would be um a roof. You have a a roof at year 20 um that you replace. A lot of times you can just
168get away with replacing the membrane of the roof and you can leave the insulation, you can leave the roof decking, but at year, you know, 40 of that same roof, your roof decking is probably starting to rust. you probably have saturated insulation beneath the membrane. And so again, that roof is going to cost you a lot more in an older building than it will in in a newer building. Um, older buildings just get more expensive to take care of. Um, so as of January of this year, our average building FCI for the district is up to 0.59. So when looking through the lens of how that translates to student experience, 68% of our Witchah public schools students are attending schools with an FCI value over the 0.45 maximum best practice value for FCI. So simply
169put, our buildings are becoming more and more costly to maintain. But more importantly, the these compounding facilities needs are presenting compounding challenges to our learning environments, which our students and staff are experiencing as a result. The recent structural challenges at Chester Lewis present a great example of of the kind of things that that our students and staff have to deal with because of these these aging facilities that present those challenges. Um, I take great pride in the tremendous effort we have made to maintain our facilities, but it can't be sustained forever. So, in closing, at least from my part, um there there is a need to take swift and bold action before it's too late regarding our facilities. So, I don't know if you want me to pause and take any questions before I move
170on, but Okay. Thank Thank you. >> I'm sorry. >> Thank you, Luke. [laughter] >> Welcome, Fabian. Good evening um all um I apologize I am apparently becoming my parents and I couldn't I when it comes to technology so I couldn't get things printed out so that's why you see all this >> [laughter] >> uh they're in Mexico so they're good they're not going to find out um as we talk about enrollment I think the first piece that we really wanted to talk about is really our enrollment declines um as you all see in the chart in front of you and this is a chart that we presented to you after official enrollment this year um we are experiencing seeing enrollment declines um really starting back to the mid uh 2010s. Um so just to just
171some numbers in 2018 um and and as you see the two charts that you see in front of you or the chart that you see in front of you, the red number represents the published number that is all of the students enrolled that are in our rosters in the system. The green number represents our K12 enrollment. So it doesn't include prek and it doesn't include some of our like learning center students and some of the students that don't necessarily attend our schools in a traditional fashion. Uh so often they don't they don't impact some of our boundary decisions and all of that. And so because of that again I wanted to give you two clear numbers. Our projections that we've done by our consultants are based on the green number because those are the kids
172that are impacted by the decisions that we make day in and day out. Uh from boundaries to all of those pieces. Um so in 2018 which is the the the first year that we have included in this chart uh we were over 50,000 students total that's your red number uh about 47,000 um K12 students. Fast forward to 2025 and that number is 45,75 which you've all seen and about 42,49 is the green number. Now we took the projections that some of our consultants had given us over the last couple of years. we added an error factor and we projected all the way out to 2032 just to give you an idea of where we anticipate being. Um, and if the projections that we were given and all the factors were to hold, we would be
173looking at just over 41,000 students for the red line and about 39,000 students for the green number K12 uh by 2032. Um so again those are significant declines that are expected. Couple things that I want to clarify as a part of that is enrollment declines are not unique to the Witchaw public schools. Um when you talk to any colleagues across the country and across the state, [snorts] every single large urban school district and a lot of districts in the state are dealing with enrollment declines. And those enrollment declines deal with a variety of factors. Uh but the primary one that I will that I would point to um is birth rates. And when you look at birth rates, families just aren't having as many kids as they were having uh a few years ago. I
174I look back at uh information provided by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. This is a chart that I shared with you earlier um in the year, but um the birth rate between 2007 and 2009 uh was 17.1 uh which was sort of the peak, the high period. Fast forward that to 2021 to 2023 and we are looking at 12.5 uh birth rates per thousand people. That's a decline of 27% uh in the birth rates for Cedric County um that we're exper experiencing in this community. So again, our enrollment trends in many ways trend along uh with that birth rate uh factor um that we're seeing. Next slide, please. Oh, sorry. [snorts] Um, so again, reasons or considerations for building closures, and these are uh the primary factors, but it's not an all-inclusive list.
175There are other factors are that are also uh not included in this list. The first one is a high FCI score. Again, our building conditions and the investment in our buildings um is an important part of that. Um and again, Luke just mentioned the number of students, what is it? 68% of our students um that are attending schools with high FCI scores. Um the second piece is a low utilization rate. Um and the utilization rate basically is factored by taking the the overall school enrollment and divided by the capacity. And that capacity number is based on average uh a 22 to 24 student per classroom number. So again, it's not taking a whole bunch of students and packing them into large classrooms. it's it's 22 to 24 is the average factor or the average classroom
176that we're looking at depending on the grade level and the class size. Um so again, so we're that's that's what we're talking about utilization factor is that particular piece. Now it's no secret to many of you that we have a lot of buildings that have empty classrooms or classrooms that are being used for purposes other than learning because of the enrollment declines that we've experienced. Uh and so again, so when you see that utilization rate, uh a low a low utilization rate means that again, we're we're seeing um empty classrooms or class sizes that could potentially be lower than that 22 to 22 uh 22 to 24 target range um that we're looking at. Um enrollment declines uh or low enrollment. And again, we we look at trends by by building by area and looking
177at sort of what the enrollment is doing in each one of our areas. Um when it comes to magnet schools and and this was a decision that we made last time, pure magnets don't have boundaries. So in the closure of those buildings, those kids can be absorbed by those the their neighborhood schools oftentimes or like magnet magnet themed programs that can also support the kids in that type of learning uh or that type of an academic se setting that parents choose. Um proximity to or capacity to nearby schools. Again, we want to minimize impact to students. So oftent times and and again when you look at a lot of our schools and and Superintendent Bill speaks to this often, there are areas of our city that have several schools that are within a mile to
178two and a half miles of each other. And so can we consolidate can we consolidate knowing that there's less kids in those neighborhoods so that we're able to um still serve students but we're not busting them across town. uh which which we know is an impact of of sort of shrinking [snorts] ability to staff schools at appropriate levels. And this one's become a a bigger deal in recent years when we're seeing less people going into education. If I had some anecdotal feedback from our our last round of closures has been from those principles that have received uh staff members from those closing buildings. Many of them had vacant positions um that had in students that had been served by long-term subs for for in in some instances years. And through those closures, they were able
179to hire highly qualified teachers that were then able to serve those students. Um impact on students, neighborhoods, and the district. And again, we want to mitigate impact to the students. We look at all of that as we're doing closures um including sort of the grandfathering options and also again making sure that the walk path to school and all of those pieces are within uh uh policies and and what we feel is acceptable as far as neighborhood goes. Um really we want to look at at the neighborhoods and the school and and the facilities and some of that really has to deal with um closing buildings. Do we have plans for those for those closing buildings in those neighborhoods? um you know do we close can we convert them into something else? Is the is a
180surrounding community interested in those facilities for another purpose or another reason uh and and largely again overall the district uh and really balance and consistency in resources um is the last one. As you looked at the charts, you saw that the enrollment declines obviously impact every element. And if we continue to operate the same number of schools when we if you look the difference between 2018 and now, we're serving 5,000 less kids. So that means that we're stretching every single resource from staff um to you know some of our financial resources and splitting them up amongst everybody else when we know that what's coming in when in our enrollment is and bringing in the FTE uh funding uh to support everything. Um again the other pieces when we talk about that balance and consistency in
181resources uh deals with human capital even child study teams for a lot of a lot of our smaller schools they don't have full child study teams because again we don't have a lot of kids in in those buildings to serve. And so having being able to um rightsize our buildings to the point where we every building has an an assistant principal and every building would have a full-time child study team uh would certainly create uh consistency in in the resources that we offer um and and that we provide our schools. Last slide. So again the last piece that I want to mention is the Witchaw Public Schools is the largest school district in the state. We all know that we when you look at the charts in terms of enrollment, we're at the height. But
182a chart that was provided by by cooperative strategies through the last round was really that that even though we are the largest in the state, our our school sizes are small. And so our kids aren't getting a big uh district big large school experience. Um because again a lot of our school enrollment numbers are so low that we rank amongst the lowest 10% when it comes to school enrollment. And obviously that shows with the number of of 200 300 kids schools that we have in some instances. But again that impedes our ability to be able to sort of be able to to put the resources out there um that a lot of our schools need um that that equity piece. And finally, again, our our utilization rate as an entire system is sitting at 69.15%
183as as of um this year. And so again, so that tells you that we have a lot of a lot of empty space um in a lot of our facilities in a lot of our buildings. And when you look at industry, regardless of what industry you're in, when you've lost 10% of of of whatever services you provide, obviously you need to start strategizing and looking at what we need to do um in order for us to be able for for those customers, those students that we continue to support to make sure that we're we have the right resources to be able um to properly serve them. And that's really sort of where we're at in this moment in time is really again and when you look even from last year to this year um the
184decline that we had just traditional elementary level we lost 545 elementary students 331 middle school students and 313 high school students. Again those numbers are significant in the grand scheme of it all. When when our average elementary school as of this year is about 390 students that's an entire school that we lost just at the elementary level alone. So just another consideration. >> Any questions as you look at this data? >> Stan. >> Thank you. >> Amy Warren. >> It takes a minute and the techn >> I'm just not I'm not quick with I mean I'm quick with this hand. I'm not quick with this hand. >> Old school. >> Yeah. Um I really appreciate Fabian um the questions that you answered because some of those are ones that have been bouncing around in my
185head and um so can you go back to and talk about when we uh think through the impact on students and neighborhoods and districts? One of the things that um comes to mind is impact on neighborhoods. How are we determining what an impact on a neighborhood is? who's saying this is how an a neighborhood's impacted and then through the cycle of things, neighborhoods turn over. Um how do we address the fact that how a neighborhood is right now as how many kids are there could be very different from even 5 10 um years down the road. Granted, I I definitely understand the the metrics and what comes along with birth rate decline and that is a real concern. Um, but can you can kind of speak to who is dictating and what those terms are
186for impact on the neighborhood? >> Um, as far as impact on neighborhood, I I think we're sort of assessing as we we look at our schools in terms of where we believe sort of growth is occurring and also looking at what is around those neighborhoods. So, those are discussions that we have often again as as we look at even uh potential closures. We look at um sort of what what where those buildings are and and and what we're looking at what other what other options or what could could be you uses could be for that particular building. Are there some nonprofits that could potentially go in there? Um are is there interest in some of those facilities? And in some instances and and we started some of this is is also having discussions with with
187some of the um the community uh to talk about sort of where we would go with some of that. Um, as far as um your question about neighborhoods turn, um, when when when contractors or or when when our consultants do these uh, projections, they look at a variety of of pieces including again birth rates as it as they go in that building, the number of school age childrens that they are, the average size of household, even the average size of the house, the houses that are located within that neighborhood to see if they could potentially give uh, or there could be more families. that could move into the neighborhood. So, those are pieces that we sort of look at um as as we analyze sort of those projections. So, there's there's a lot of factors
188that go in that that sort of help look at that. As we looked at the map, they provided some heat maps in terms of where they expect the growth to happen. And that's data that we looked at when we were when we were looking at closures was this is a neighborhood that may have low enrollment but but that's where the growth is expected to occur. Then in a lot of instances um we have to really look elsewhere in some instances. >> Yeah. And I would throw out um there's the controllable factors and the uncontrollable factors, right? Um immigration policy over the past six years has been all over the place, completely outside of our control. uh and that impacts our enrollment quite a bit from refugee families to immigrants to migrants um etc. um you
189know the the larger Witchaw economy is a factor of an industry coming an industry going those sorts of things. Um and then I think what you know what Gil was talking about was the the controllables. what are the things that we might be able to do as a as a district to be strategic to appeal to uh parents to be able appeal to community and industry um to make sure we're meeting the community's needs. So I think that's that's a part of the conversation too. Um I think that neighborhood question is specifically challenging. Um we we recently were reviewing a document that um uh recorded all of the schools in the district in 1950 and then an update every year since. Um so of the 42 elementary schools that existed in the in Witchaw schools
190in 1950 um only 16 of those are still schools today. So and and four of those buildings we've repurposed. Um Chisum and Emerson is now Gateway. So, we've used some of them, but only 20 of those buildings do we still do we still own. Um, there was a point in time in 1970 where we had 92 elementary schools in Witchaw public schools. Um, you know, and you can see the ba the baby boom. Uh, we built we built four high schools in eight years in our district, which is bananas. I mean, that is just a a wild thing to think about. So community evolves, community changes, and I think um I think we do the best we can. Even you know the those demographic heat maps were probably from 23 24 if I'm remembering right.
191Now we're heading into 26 27. Um so they're they're probably a little bit dated. We're going to try to have the best information we can to make the best decisions uh that we can. Um but it isn't it isn't a perfect science. And I mean, of of the eight factors um that you listed, there's probably even a few more that we take into consideration when uh we make these hard decisions. So, >> I still have another question. Um, I appreciated that you uh clarified the utilization rate and the student class size because that's something too that comes up with if we're moving students around, are we going to then be pushing to the 30 um student class size, which we know is not great for education? So, it' be, you know, back uh backpedaling as
192far as what we want for student achievement. um the let's see when we're looking at the second bullet point that's up there and that we rank in the lowest 10% of districts where do we where do we want to be educate me on that I don't know where is there where do we want to be >> and I think that's [laughter] I look at the superintendent I think that's >> that is my last question >> that that is really I mean from my perspective for for us really to decide again I I it to me again knowing that we're the largest our kids aren't getting a large large school experience um and creating a system where we can create um redistribute our resources accordingly. So every school has a child study team. I think again
193from from my perspective is where we want to be is for every kid to be able to have those opportunities to be able to properly serve in the building that they're in. >> Yeah, I think that's that's the the board visionary type type question, you know, that we need answered from you all. um resources are are fixed to some extent. And so, you know, could we have schools of 200 with class sizes of 12 um you know, with a full child study team? >> Sure, maybe maybe we could, but then we would have to not do a whole gamut of other things. And so, that that's the challenge that I think that we're faced with is balancing all of this. I do think this is critically important. Um, and and it hasn't been misaid tonight,
194but I just want to make sure we're clear that a larger school size does not mean larger class size. Those are two different things. Um, currently we have classes uh, you know, a kindergarten class with 10 students and we have kindergarten class with 25 students. And one of the questions for you all is are you okay with that? Do do we want to do we want to fix that and rightsize that? um because we know that there's equity issues when it comes to that. And so that that's some of the balance and and it's that's never a perfect science in our district. I mean, there's always our students are so mobile and there's kids in and out all the time. So, it's never quite perfect, but we believe it it probably should be more equitable
195than what it is, but um a bigger school like a three or four section school, when we talk about sections, that's three or four first grade teachers, three or four second grade teachers. um that does not mean um that class size is bigger. Um it actually means there's probably a more of a chance to spread those students out to create an equitable class size um and absorb some of that in and out that comes with uh uh transient students um than it is in a small school. I know some of our smaller schools that that get right on that cusp of a 32, you know, or a 30 and a grade level, it's really hard to to make a decision. It's too big for one teacher, but fairly small for another for two teachers. And
196we just have to make those those decisions. And again, it's never a perfect science, but we we try to make it as consistent of an educational experience as we as we want or as we we hope to have because we feel like every every parent in the district deserves that. Uh regardless of your zip code, regardless of which quadrant you're in, um you deserve to have a highly qualified teacher with a decent class size that's um well ventilated and well lit, has natural light and all of that. that really should be universal for every every kid uh and every parent. So, I don't know if that answered your question, but yeah. >> Okay. Thank you, Amy. Uh Amy Jensen, >> this week we heard from uh some of our school nurses concerns about um traveling,
197not being in a one school. You know, there are days where there's not a school nurse in the building. And I think right sizing the buildings would help that situation. School nurse needs to be in every building and the faster we can move in that direction, I feel like that's our best plan. >> Thank you, Amy. I I I do want to make one slight adjustment um because I think when Fabian you say our our students don't get that large district feel. I think I probably felt some people in this room bristle a little bit um because they're thinking cramming a bunch of kids into one classroom and they're thinking larger classrooms. So I just want to clarify. I know what you're saying but you're not saying put more kids in the classroom necessarily. you
198we want to keep the classrooms fair across the district. Um and and we're trying to figure that out and it's it's kind of a messy and sticky process. So, I just want to make that clarification for people that are are listening to this right now that it's not it's not to have this massive amount of kids in one classroom. That's not what we're talking about. >> No. And again, even the capacity figures were not were not made again with with that, you know, 30 beyond class sizes. So again, just because a building has a higher utilization rate, it doesn't mean that um that those kids are sitting in in 35 student classrooms. That that is not the case at all. Again, that that utilization rate was built uh with with that 22 to 24 target.
199Doesn't mean that it's always that way. will never sort of be that way. But that is um that is where where we're where we're at. Again, we really the reality is we just we have quite a few schools with empty classrooms. Filling those up would would create would increase enrollment without increasing your your your studenttoteer ratio. >> Right. I think when you were saying a large district feel, you're talking about the child study teams, you're talking about the nurses, the buildings, you're talking about >> each school having those types of pieces. So, I just wanted to make that clarify >> and thank you for highlighting that. >> Okay. >> One one I I'm wondering if I should even put you on the spot by asking this, but I think I know the answer. Um, primarily
200we're talking about elementaryaries. I mean, that's really what this discussion has been about. Um, not necessarily middles and high schools. Is that fair? >> That that is fair. >> Okay. Those are the examples I've been using. So I just wanted to also clarify that that um you know the 10% and the the capacity is a district utilization rate so that is K12 but um really this last you know five minutes of discussion was mostly about elementaryaries. Okay, Stan, >> I just [clears throat] wanted to ask >> I just wanted to clarify too, there's some confusion about the school closing consideration equals facility master plan. This presentation I think makes it clear that the school closure process is just a portion of the facility master plan. Is that correct? Because I mean the other parts is
201utilization, [clears throat] neighborhood considerations, uh uh demographics for now and the future. The closure process is just a portion of the facility master plan. Is that correct? >> That is correct. >> Okay. See no further questions, gentlemen. >> Thank you. So, circling back, we were intentional about presenting this in the way that we did by bringing several of us together because when things come to the board level like this, this is clearly an adaptive challenge that we're facing. This is not a technical challenge because of the very factors, Stan, you just brought up and others and the great questions the board has had and all the things we must consider before we go forward. Addie even had a role to play, but we kicked her out of the club for tonight because she showed you
202guys last Friday at the workshop sort of the budgetary considerations that are behind all of this as well. And so it's finance, it's Stephen with HR, it's Gil with his community outreach and the programs deputy superintendent does. It's our ability to communicate this effectively with Rachel's group and communications. It's operations and facilities and and logistics. It's all of this that has to come together. And and and oh, by the way, the most important factor of all of that is what Lauren talked about before. It's about our academic performance for our kids that graduate and go forward with their lives. And to get there, there are two hemispheres in education. Generally speaking, there's an operational side of this business we're all in, and there's an academic or a teaching and learning side of this business that
203we're in. And in order to feed the side that matters, we have to be lean and mean and operate efficiently on the operations side to funnel more money into the teaching and learning side, which is what we're all trying to get to. To do that, we've got to make really practical and strategic decisions that are adaptable because it is going to force us to think about things differently and how we approach things. So, we did this intentionally to bring a bunch of us together. Um but I want to be clear as we go into the next slide here as we go through the the school closure um uh um ident the identities of the schools that are still on the list um none nothing has changed with the schools that were identified in the 2024
204facilities master plan. We have thought about this more holistically since then in terms of bringing in um thinking about programming decisions, thinking about quadrants of the city differently than we have before. Just like we don't want food deserts, we don't want school deserts. Yeah, students matter, but also windshield time matters. And so how long our kids are on buses to get to schools matters to us. And so we need schools in all quadrants of the city. We need special programs in all quadrants of the city for equity purposes. We need options for K8s perhaps in all for in all portions of the city. So as we think about this holistically, this changed a little bit of the timeline plus the expectations and the feedback we got from staff on the listening tours frankly also um
205fed this timeline in a little different way. So running down through this, let me be clear. There is no recommendation for this board to close any schools after this year. There's just not. We don't think that's entirely fair right now. We want to make sure that a we're clear about what our plan is and this lets you get ahead of that by another year to be clear about what the plan is and when we expect to close. This new plan, we lost the feed. This new plan um also allows the board some level of flexibility based on what your next steps are going to be with a bond or whatever you decide to do at a later date. And so, um we'll get that slide back up here as I work through this. So, just
206to recap, as Isaiah is doing his brilliant work here, my friend, um there's no school closures recommended this year. Um as our community changes over time, like we talked about, which public schools must evolve with it and adapt to ensure that every school, every student and every school is a place for high quality learning. We are committed to balancing the number, the size, and the location of our schools by just what we talked about to serve families effectively and equitably across this district. Positioning Witchah schools to thrive in the future. School closures, as we now have learned through the presentations we've seen tonight, are not driven by a single factor. There are several factors, adaptive challenges that must be considered by the board. These difficult decisions are made through thoughtful consideration and and looking at
207enrollment trends, facility conditions, staffing realities, and resource efficiency. Our decisions center on creating consistent, enriching environments for our students, supported by strong teachers, and staffed by fully staffed child study teams. They must be well-resourced programs and must be held in modern Thank you, Isaiah. modern learning environments. Additionally, we must be mindful and and this is critical. We must be mindful of what this closure process, if the board decides to take it on, what it means to their neighborhoods, what it means to those folks that that are passionate about their schools. A building is never just a building. It's memories. It's a lifetime of memories. It's generations of families and kids. We have to be mindful of that. And then the second part of that is what will that space become once we vacate it and
208how can we assist that process to make sure that that neighborhood has a viable alternative for something to enter that building that that helps the neighborhood improves the neighborhood or at least becomes a part of the neighborhood. So those those considerations I think we play a role in that at some level. And then we will continue to engage our community openly as we make intentional decisions about facilities and programming needs with our academics based upon relevant data. Bottom line is we know all of these these decisions are incredibly difficult and challenging for this board and and for the staff that brings them to you. Um, thank you for listening to um, all of us gathering before you today and uh, we'll all stand for any questions. We're still in the room so anybody you want
209to bring up. >> Yeah, we'll get the slide back on there. But um, tonight we just are sharing this for information, not asking for any action. So that's correct. Okay, just making sure. >> Okay, knock. >> Thank you for this uh, very in-depth uh, conversation. And a heads up, I'm going to be all over the place and perhaps uh scatter uhrained. Uh so, regarding the uh capital uh improvement uh plan, correct me if I'm wrong, but the uh the adequacy of the capital improvement plan very much so hinges upon a bond issue passing. in terms of our ability to meet um our facility needs and our facility improvements. Uh whether you're talking about the capital improvement plan, a lot of it depends on a bond issue passing. >> That's a question. >> Okay. Sorry, I
210was getting ready to write that. Okay. Um it is as you can see the the reason we posted it this way for the board this time around. Last time we leaned almost entirely into a bond issue successfully passing that guided our closure decisions. This gives the board some flexibility. Without a bond, we see these buildings closing in those years. With a bond, we see a little bit of a possibility of extending, not a little bit, we do see a possibility of extending these buildings life because we don't want to move students more than once. And so while we're building these new facilities, these students particularly uh these students in Woodland and OK would remain for an extra year while we build their new building. So that's part of the reason it does change depending on
211what happens with your next steps. >> Yeah. Yeah. And I would um I think one of the I think what you're getting at to some extent is you know we we'll have a capital plan um April May I think is our is our goal for that. Um that plan um will will in you know if we don't pass a bond issue that will have to include these schools that were going to be rebuilt like Trudale that aren't going to be rebuilt until we get a bond passed. So that will spread that money that capital money even further. Um we've had some some comments and discussion about capital outlay tonight. Um and that is that is a you know a strain on the system the total capital budget. Um that budget will continue with a bond
212or without a bond but with a bond it would really accelerate the projects. It would we would be able to move much more quickly uh to get the roofs fixed to get the carpet put in and all that kind of stuff. So I don't know. >> You're you're you're correct. We're building the capital improvement plan to show you in April um regardless of a bond. So, we're going to show you outward years of all of our existing 85 facilities and what we plan to do at each of those over the next five years. And it'll be a rolling five-year plan if there's an influx of bond money, much like we did with letters training when we got the, you know, the the the >> co money. Thanks money. Yes, we don't say that other word.
213the yeser money uh we can do that with facilities I think knock to maybe get to your question and that would simply okay now we can hit these priorities instead of in year four we're going to move those up to year two because we can get to those sooner and then begin to address more outward years sooner as well >> as a result of the uh building listening tours um uh when you're talking about some of like those top facility uh challenges uh from your perspective uh to what extent Will there be changes to the facility master plan and bond issue? >> There already has been. Some of the listening uh that we've done has already been fed into the capital improvement plan. You may have heard and remembered Luke saying we came in with
214here was the list of things we identified in 2023 for your building. What's still pertinent on this list for you folks here in this building? And what would you change? What would you remove or rep prioritize? Most of what we learned was, hey, instead of it was mentioned, paint or carpet, we really need a new playground. We really need something for our kids. So, their priorities were a little bit different and so we've already started to modify that plan according to that feedback. Yes. >> Uh, regarding facility needs, so average FCI is 0.59. Can you guys remind me what the uh learning environment index score is? Escape flag if you don't because I don't remember it either. It's a very soft uh it's a it's a soft score. It's a subjective score. It is done
215uh largely the formula was handed us uh to us by DLR group who does these facility tours all over the country and help with with master planning with boards and district leaders. We got that initial uh work from them and then we tailored it for Witchaw public schools. A learning environment consists of all the things that aren't just a piece of equipment. It's space. It's it's the feel of the air. It's the traffic patterns within the the hallways in the school itself. Um it's flexible learning spaces. It's the ability to have lunch without the PE being interrupted because you're in the same space. It's those all I don't know Luke, there's you saidund and some line pieces of 125 line items of information that feed that score. And so um we do we need to
216do some education on that. frankly and and need to need to maybe even just provide the 125 line items to the board for starters and let you all see what's feeding that score if we haven't already. But yeah, that's largely what makes that up. >> Okay. Um this was a question that uh Julie brought up early on, but admittedly it's been something like lingering in my mind right now. Um so when it comes to like the facility condition index um uh I wonder you know when you're talking about different school buildings to what extent it would change when you account for you know quite frankly again like like our Frankenstein buildings you know we have a lot of buildings that um the developments were across decades and I'm curious like uh if like you know
217would the FCI scores actually change if you accounted for that you know I certainly understand like the complexities on you know how do you even calculate um that but admittedly it is something question like kind of like lingering in my mind right now. Again, it's okay if you don't have an answer because I certainly don't have one. >> No, that's a fine. It's a great it's a good question and it is one that's a challenge for us to really quantify when we have several decades of building improvements for our our 100-year-old buildings. Um, right now because of just comparing a building's age to another building's age, we're going with the oldest portion of that building just for comparison's sake, knowing that there are newer portions of buildings in many of our spaces, but that's what
218we base that score on. >> I think that's right. Luke, >> is the question about the FCI and how we account for the different sections of the buildings and h and how we capture like certain ages because obviously a newer section of the building is going to have newer equipment. Is that the question? So when we went through and we did the the assessments that was all taken into account. So the older older parts of the buildings had you know we we had we have that section of the building covered for HVAC as as kind of the older section and there's another section. So the condition and the age of the equipment in each section of building is all captured in the software that we use and then that's all rolled into the overall score
219for each building that then funnels up into our overall score for the whole district. Yep. >> Does that answer the question? I'll stay here just in case. And then regarding the uh WPS enrollment history uh and projections uh when we talk about controllables and I'm very cognizant that this is uh certainly not a silver bullet certainly not a m you know um uh a magic solution but I am curious uh you know you know the possibility or just you know thinking uh bigger you know what could a partnership between our school district our city um our county uh our nonprofit community and our our business community in terms of uh you know how do we develop a more uh comprehensive housing strategy um like I said uh you know certainly so many factors that you
220know affect uh enrollment history you know that affect our enrollment projections but I I guess it's something that's been on my mind um a lot as well uh in terms of question uh well not a question I guess something to elevate to uh with the closing school considerations uh something I would add to the uh would be what are the academic and behavioral effects uh of closing schools? Uh one both for the students that move uh you know from the closing schools to the welcoming schools but then also for the students that are uh at the welcoming schools. Um uh and then lastly uh I guess a question I have would be uh for Woodland, for Lovaturure, for Okay, and for Pleasant Valley uh when you guys had those uh uh listening sessions uh you
221know what was that feedback um you know what were those recommendations from you know from those staff uh you know at those four particular uh schools that are proposed for closure? >> I can speak for okay in Woodland. I was in uh each of those I think if that's okay. Superintendent Beerfeld. Um they there's there's constrnation with the staff moving moving is um you can ask Chester Lewis folks that same thing. There's the unknown is is concerning. The thing they wanted us to remember is they wanted us to think about their culture and whatever happens make sure that culture follows them to the next space because they feel like they have a good culture. And I think that was most important to them was was carrying that culture along of caring and teaching and supporting
222and um that that that was elevated in my visits. Anybody else? I think they also shared uh wanting obviously they built a close-knit group with with their teams. So they were talking about moving together as a team. Uh we heard that as well. uh at PVE I it started because of the timeline uh discrepancy that we had shared saying that there could be some changes. So I think ultimately for PVE it was around uh you had shared a specific timeline which is the one that's up here where it says original timeline. That's the one that they were that they had been presented. Uh so they were they were making it known that that's the that's where it should be that that change should be. But same same thing with PVE as well. uh the concern
223about not only the timeline but how how great their culture is as well as wanting to be together. If they were to move they they would want to move together. So sorry and I guess uh one final question um so u with the first set of school closures uh you know those six uh school closures uh there were a lot of staffing vacancies. Um uh if these four school closures uh Woodland Okay. Uh Loverure and Pleasant Valley uh goes into goes into effect or will will there also be staffing vacancies um as well? Are we looking at you know st uh uh potential cuts to staff? >> I I I [clears throat] think I can speak on this. Um we would not be laying off any staff in in any of these scenarios. Uh we
224wouldn't be we wouldn't need to lay off staff. we have enough um long-term subs or unfilled vacancies or open I'm sorry open vacancies um that that the staff would have a home somewhere in the district uh we would honor the bonus structure that we talked about with them last year uh through the HR process um help them move pay addendum days in the summer for moving etc so um that wouldn't be that that would be a benefit to the system not you know the school level it's really hard uh but as a system it would help um alleviate some of the the pain points for some of the staffing challenges we currently face. >> Thank you. Knock >> Julie. Um on on this chart, the one that we're looking at right now on your columns
225without a bond and with a bond that is that with a bond column with the passing of the bond as it was presented earlier. >> That's that's generally correct, Julie. um [laughter] we haven't we haven't finalized the language to present to you all for a possible resolution but um it would it would be generally that is correct. So successful passage of a bond would kick us kicks us into the far right column. >> And um and again I guess that question is reflective of is there any consideration of modifying the bond proposal or is the bond proposal basically the same as what it was previously? Well, I think this assumes that MLAN and Black Elementary rebuilds are part of the bond proposal. So, that answer would be yes. The rest of it, I mean, we're
226going to bring to you some options and based on the feedback of what we've heard um with some other parts of it, but this really that's the whole point with with the bond that column the it would be contingent on having newer buildings to to send students to. we wouldn't want to move, you know, an okay student down to Dodge for a year or two and then over to black. We wouldn't want to move kids twice. So, that's that's what extends the the uh the timeline. And and this assumes a November of 26 bond to um if the board decides that isn't the plan, then that would change that would change some of this. Um, and and I would say I kind of joked with the team that the the little sentence at the bottom
227that's like 10point font probably should be like 36 point font. Um, because of what just we discovered with Chester Lewis. Um, and we we can't promise anything. You know, we've had emergencies and catastrophes over the years. Um, and so we want to make sure that people understand that if if something major comes up, um, we would bring it to you guys. We would have a public discussion, but, um, if one of these on the list needed a $15 million fix, um, that would be a decision we'd have to make. So, >> okay. My second question is we've got our FCI score and then what is the initials for that other score that knock was talking about >> the learning environment index LEI. Okay. So is are those scores for all of district facilities published anywhere?
228>> Not yet. We're going to bring back the dashboard for you all to see again in February. And then we are making some final adjustments to what that dashboard needs to contain to be relevant information for the board. And so we'll bring that back to you all in a month from now and well a little less than a month from now. I guess three weeks from now because we're late this month. But um for for you to have one more view at it, make sure it's kind of giving you the information you need. And then uh we need to decide frankly if we're going to be putting that out for every person in the public sector to see it worldwide or are we going to put it out to you know uh decision makers or
229others that need to really dive into that data. So either way I think we need to have discussions around that in the coming months. >> Okay. But at this time there's nothing that shows the board or anybody else what those scores are for every site. >> Yes. with some modifications but not it's not available to you all yet live. No, it's not. >> Okay. May maybe the ones who are working on it have the list. [laughter] >> Um okay, those were my questions. >> Thank you, Julie. Amy Warren, >> I am aware of the time and so I'm but I still want to ask another question. Um, with the four schools that are slated for closure, you had mentioned, Steve, that having ideas on how we utilize those spaces and take care of those buildings
230and those sites after closure, um, that that would be something we'd need to take into consideration before voting on a timeline. Is there any work being done on what those options might possibly be? Because I think sometimes when we talk about how we can rebuild trust with the community, having a plan instead of just saying it's going to be closed as a school, we'll get to that, which is not the heart of what we would do. I like that's not how our district operates. We But like what can we do to start figuring out what needs to be done with those spaces or has some of that dreaming already been done? I'll start with a practical solution I can identify and then I'm going to turn it over to Superintendent Bilfell to sort of talk
231about the vision we have for that. But the practical plan is we've put in place a building closure committee that now meets whenever considerations like this are are made. And that committee is made up of some community members. It's made up specifically of folks from the particular community that's in discussion about closure. So they we have their ideas at the table what they would accept what they don't think they would accept and that I've experienced that work with um is it pain and um >> Clark >> yeah the last Clark thank you and we engaged that community or that committee to do that work and look at the offers that we received the backgrounds of what they were going to what programs or services they're going to provide. Um and and we had some really
232good feedback from the local community reps on that committee where we thought was a great idea to go with option A. They said that's not going to go really well in our community and we switched to option B because of that feedback. So that's a practical example of a committee that we're engaging with on these decisions and discussions. I'll turn it over for visionary sort of thoughts. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean I I don't think I mean to answer your question, yes, for some of these locations there's been community engagement already that Gil Gil could speak to. um not for all of them and in looking we're you know 18 months away from from anything um at the soonest so we we have some time I do think um we're strategizing around use and creative
233use um you know mentions housing um you know that that that's what some of our old schools Kellogg and Sunnyside and Field and some of those they've been used for housing but we think you know Stephen brought an idea to me last week about a another creative idea that we might explore. Um so I think that's that's for further input from from us. Um we need the the right number of schools for the district based on our enrollment um that are the right size in the right parts of town. And so that doesn't mean some of these buildings couldn't have use. Look at what we did with Cleveland Elementary. Um we we didn't need it as a school, but we did need it as a backup school. Um and so we will strategize around that
234making sure you guys have uh input on overall portfolio of buildings and land. Um there's there you know we don't make you know tons of money you know maybe mostly six digits maybe seven digits but it's not like this is a big windfall of money that we would get off any of these properties. And so u there's not a big urgency to act or to to move on on a lot of them um anytime soon. But I feel like we have some runway to to help engage community with this as we get uh headed down that path. Um but not every one of these I mean I wouldn't promise this but I envisioning I I don't believe every one of these properties we would sell. I mean I think some of them we would strategically
235hold on to for for what we may use in the in the future. >> Okay. Um, can you explain? I I think there's some people in our community that have a hard time driving past some of our buildings and they're brick building on the outside and think, why would why would the district close this this brick building and then why would the district close down these buildings to tear them down to build a new one? Um, and the the option of the bond issue has been brought up. And so could could staff explain and and help the community understand why we would tear down a building to build a new one? >> I'll [clears throat] start and then you guys fix me. Um, I think there's a couple things. I think the the car analogy
236is a really good one with FCI score. Um, I drive a a car that um is almost 290,000 miles. Um, it's an older car and I just p around town with it. I don't leave town. Um, if it needed an engine, I would really have to weigh out the value of the car versus the cost of fixing it and decide what I wanted to do. If it had a flat tire, I'd probably just fix the flat tire. So, when we think about and and I think what Luke was describing with FCI is a really good example of this. Um, this car that I'm talking about, we put a transmission in a couple years ago. So, I feel like I want to drive it a while because there's some sunk cost there because that FCI part
237of my car is now dropped. I'm not going to need a transmission anytime anytime soon. So, our schools are the same way. Chester Lewis that we just got out of was a 0 n5 FCI which means that if we were to remodel it and bring it up to all you know current everything HVAC flooring roofing all of that um the cost of rebuilding it was almost as equal to remodeling it. So when you get to one FCI that means it's um if you get above one you're upside down essentially in the in the property. So then we look at things like the classroom size. Um we took a Martin was talking about the community trip we took to Trudale this week. Uh we saw a sixth grade classroom with 30 desks in the room and
238you could hardly walk around in the room. The it was maybe 650 square feet uh that we're teaching social studies to six sixth graders in. Um so is that do we want to remodel that and keep that or does it make more sense for our current environment to rebuild it? Um, another good example is that, you know, a lot of these buildings that were built in the 50s and 60s, their staff when when the school was staffed, it was principal, secretary, teachers, maybe a custodian. That was it. There was no assistant principal. There was no psychologist, social worker, counselor, da da da da on an ESOL, um, QPI, I'll give you all the letters. Um, none of that existed. So now we can we could come back and retrofit that school that we're driving by.
239Oh, that looks brick. It looks nice. Um, but it isn't designed for 75 years later, education looks a little bit different. So, those are just some of the factors. Uh, Chester Lewis, they did a great job moving in there. Uh, and, you know, making it fit for what they need. Those high the the hallways there are maybe 8t wide. Um, there's no way we could fit a locker in there. you know, I mean, there there's handicap accessibility issues there. There there's all those things that come into play um that are other factors. When you drive by, you don't know that there's a gym at Caftorium unless you live it. And so, that's part of why we wanted to go to the staff to hear from them. What is it like to live this every day?
240What does it feel like? Um because that feedback, you know, is is vitally important for those compared to the people like me that just drive by and and look at, you know, see see if the flag, you know, whatever. So I don't know is did I hit that? >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> Thank you. >> Okay, Julie. >> Question. The question was asked earlier about the feedback from the staff, the teachers in the facilities and you guys gave us answers, you know, of culture. We want to keep our culture. We want to keep our team. But you didn't answer the question relative to what they said about the buildings. So, did did th did the staff in those buildings say, "Oh, yeah, this building is really old. It's no good. We if if we could
241have our same staff in our same culture, we'd get rid of this building in a minute." >> So, I I would say both. We We heard We definitely heard that. Um my classroom has two outlets and I can't charge my iPad cart. Um, we also heard our building is fine. Leave us, you know, we love what we have. You know, we have a great culture. We'll deal with any building issues. Just leave us open. I mean, we heard some of that, too. So, I I don't know if that was your what you guys heard, too, but it was really both. Um, I think at a logical level, we, you know, we can understand declining enrollment. We can understand changing in dynamics within a community. at an emotional level, it's really it's really hard to to
242think of the loss that we'd have. Um, so yeah, and I did uh Do you want me to go ahead or you want to? >> Yeah, I was just going to ask um because we have a consent agenda item about uh investing in a school that we've closed and we've talked about repurposing. I was going to give you an opportunity to state why we're repurposing and investing money into a school. >> Yeah, I'm I'm glad you did. And I I believe um one of the things that we've been operating off of, but we haven't said publicly much is that we should have at least two schools that are what we call swing schools. That would be spaces that we could move into in a case of emergency. Um that that we've kept Hadley and Cleveland
243for those reasons. Haven't listed them, haven't had any plans to. Well, now we're down to one. Um and so we feel it's appropriate to to get it up to speed. So I don't know if you want to say anything more about that, Steve. Um and maybe talk a little bit about the structural inspections that we're doing too. That's on the agenda, too. >> Yes, we're we're um the short answer is yes to the swing space. Um and and with the structural um exams, investigations we're doing as a result of what we found at North High and East High, that has triggered really an effort above and beyond what is normally asked of school districts to do. We do fire inspections and we have the fire marshall in regularly, but these underground structural inspections are something
244that we are volunteering to do because of what we found at North and East High. We have we have learned that there are other facilities in our district that will require shoring up or some sort of remediation. It's going to happen. Um and so the idea again is to look at this long term. How much money do we want to invest in a particular building that might be looking at getting phased out versus going ahead? No, this building is iconic. We need this building. It's a North High type structure. Whatever it is, we want to keep this and preserve that. Those are decisions that this board will have to also make with recommendations from us. But that is ongoing and is continued. I believe we identified 14 or 17 schools. We've completed 14, I think,
245Luke, and we have to go on those inspections. Or is that close? Yeah. >> Okay. Not quite 14. We have I think we only have three left to go that aren't completed yet, but we've completed several of those. We have identified some needs. Um they're not imminent. They're not like it has to be done today or tomorrow or even this year, but that's got to be placed on our long-term five-year capital improvement plan radar. And we've got to spend money on things that once again won't be seen by really anybody. and it won't impact that classroom at Trudale necessarily to enlarge that. So, it's it's putting money to just keep buildings upright and that's that will be ongoing until we have some sort of a different plan. >> See no further comments. Um, I think
246one of the one of the things that we're feeling and dealing with here is historically the district has probably been very reactionary and now we're trying to shift into being very proactive and we're kind of in that middle phase right now where I I think there were plans before on how to address things but like the the foundation um investigating all the foundations of older buildings is a very proactive measure to take. And the analogy was used at our agenda review recently that when we lift up rocks and we find things underneath the rock, the creepy crawlies as we referred to them, we're going to deal with it. And so we're lifting rocks right now and we're going to find more things to deal with, but we're trying to take a very proactive approach much
247more so than in the past. So, I don't want to accuse the district of not taking a proactive approach, but but this is very intentional and we're we're in the middle of that shift right now. And I think that's what's causing some people to kind of have a little bit of angst right now because we're we're finding more things and we're trying to deal with it in a proactive way. So, um seeing no further questions from the board, uh Latona, next item. And thank you, gentlemen. Uh thank you for everybody's uh efforts on this. This is a lot of work. Um, so we thank you and appreciate your efforts and we thank you for the proactive approach on reaching out to staff and continuing that proactive approach with a with an HR tour. >> 2026
248legislative agenda. >> All right. Well, Addy and Susan get settled. Um this is our annual January time where we uh discuss the legislative session uh talk about our specific uh Witchaw public schools agenda and and things that we're uh promoting and advocating for. Um we are part of KSB. So we're part of that um process of advoc advocacy. Um we have um Melody was on the legislative affairs committee for KSB. So, we have one of our board members that's a part of that, too. Um, so I did appreciate I didn't tell you this before I saw the slide, but the supporting students, supporting educators, protecting taxpayer investment, that could be like our tagline for all of our slides and everything we do because that's a really good summary of what we're what we're all about
249and really what we talked about all night tonight. So, uh, the dynamic duo can take it away. >> We'll take votes on a new slogan later. >> I approve. [laughter] Good evening, BOE Superintendent Beielfeld. My name is Addy Law. I'm the chief financial officer. I actually have the privilege of turning this over to my um wonderful colleague Susan Willis for a majority of the presentation. Um I will be here to help answer questions about funding formula concerns. Otherwise, I'm gonna turn it over to Susan. >> Good evening. Uh so tonight my um my job um I shift hats frequently these days and tonight I am your legislative liaison um giving you an update on the 2026 legislative agenda. We're going to start tonight uh we're going to discuss maybe get to the next slide. Um
250I'm gonna let you drive a little bit as soon as you figure out how to drive. There you go. Uh we're going to discuss first uh as Kelly mentioned the KSB 2026 resolution on state issues. That's essentially um the Kansas Association of School Board's legislative priorities for the 26th session. Um and then we're going to discuss how we somewhat narrowed in on a recommended um top three uh for USD 259. Not that we don't support all five of KSBs, we do, but to really focus in on what we want legislative action to look like specifically for USD 259. And then some key message takeaways for the legislature. And then we have at the very end a little sneak peek of what's uh going on so far on day one of this legislative session. So as
251far as the KSB pieces, what what is this resolution? It is adopted annually by KA KASB member delegates. Uh it reflects the priorities for rural, suburban, and urban districts. It gives a set of common um priorities that are are good for all Kansas schools and it gives us common language and it serves as a guide to legislative advocacy across the state. This matters because educational consistency across the state and predictability in educational policy means um a significant um uh statewide approach that we all can get behind as far as what's important to educate Kansas kids. What do we want our priorities to look like? What do we need our outcomes to look like as a state? And we talked a little bit earlier about sustainability long term. That's what the KASB legislative platform focuses on.
252long long-term sustainability for initiatives. And so those five priorities, these aren't really new. Um you can go and advance and you've seen these before. The first one is fully funding special education um services in order to benefit all students. As we know, when special education is not fully funded, the dollars to make up the difference are coming from general funds. So KSB has looked at this and they are advocating full statutory funding at the 92% of excess cost level. Then um they also are supporting schools in recruiting and retention efforts through improving capers strengthening capers um specifically tier three. Um but then also looking at those working after retirement penalties and eliminating those where possible. Um and we certainly fully support both of those initiatives. um and priorities uh particularly the working after retirement. Well,
253tier I think we actually support both probably pretty equally. Uh the third is sustaining um the investment in public education funding the funding formula both in terms of kind of renewing it because as we know this formula is due to sunset on July 30th of 27. So we need a new formula otherwise we have no ability to conduct school business um as of July 1st of next year. and then refresh it. Uh so we we we absolutely support a funding formula and sooner is better for for school districts. Uh we have challenges in planning now uh because we have to estimate enrollment. So when we have a an absence of a formula in a year and a half that's going to cause us some some problems even just planning negotiations, contracts and those type of
254things. And then fourth, we ensure taxpayer dollars for education are directly and exclusively um meant for public schools. So that schools that are accountable to parents um students and their communities. We that's basically um the the the voucher um conversation. We want public dollars supporting public education. And then finally, um KSB wants to protect and respect local control by empowering local school boards to lead without curricular [clears throat] or funding mandates. Um and we talk a lot about unfunded mandates or additional policy that we have to try to figure out how to comply. So we support all five of these platform these platform priorities. However, three specifically, we are asking the legislature to proactively do something as opposed to being kind of against a voucher or against um e efforts to erode local control. So,
255our focus for which talk, we can go ahead and move ahead are specifically focused on the three um special education funding, strengthening capers, and sustaining and refreshing the school finance formula. So we want to talk about a little bit in more in depth about those three areas and why those are a focus for Witchah. The focus area number one again those special education services are federally and statemandated. We don't have a choice but to commit dollars to meet the needs of special education students through whatever their IEPs are requiring. So if an IEP is requiring speech services, we don't have the option to cut speech services in order to make a budget balance. We have to come up with other funding reductions in order to fund the special ed needs, which means we are then
256transferring funds out of our general fund, out of our supplemental general fund, or making other reductions in order to fund those shortfalls. That's why special education funding is so important. That the 92% is the ideal. That's the that's the statutory amount. That's what they should be covering. Our goal is to get closer anything closer closer alignment whether it's a phased in approach or whatever that looks like. We just need that gap to close. In 2008, schools were funded at 92% of excess costs. In 2025, that number was under >> 70 64 to 67% funded and we continue to erode because special education costs are exceeding the amount of new funding coming in um through the formula. So that's our goal related to special education is close the gap in whatever fashion we can get there.
257Close the gap. Focus area number two is strengthening capers. If we think about teacher salary packages, I mean this is for all staff but specifically teachers. Historically the teachers have accepted salaries based on the fact that they knew they had a strong pension plan and that you can go back to the 60s7s 80s. That's why people got into teaching and accepted a lower than than private sector salary is they knew they would get those dollars back in retirement. Fast forward to current capers tier three which is a more of a 401kish looking thing you they're not getting that that level of compensation in retirement that their pred that their previous um counterparts were receiving. It has become less of a recruitment and certainly less of a retention benefit that tier three. We definitely need the
258legislature to continue to look at ways to improve capers particularly tier three. The other piece for capers is the working after retirement retirement penalties as it the we continue to struggle to fill positions. We are looking at our retired workforce to help fill those gaps. We're paying 11.68% 68% penalties on the first 40,000 and after that we're paying 30% after the first 40,000. It becomes a very expensive proposition to hire a capers retiree into a capers covered position. It it can be done, but you're taking then what might have otherwise cost you $60,000 and you're paying 80 or $90,000 for it. So, we really would like them to look at our situation across the state, teacher shortages, specialty shortages. We talked a little bit about the the the professionals like this, your speech therapist, visually
259impaired, hearing impaired, hard to fill spots. We need we need to be able to tap into the resources because we don't have enough coverage today. So, our goal again sustain and strengthen capers as a workforce tool for recruitment and retention. Finally, our focus area three is school finance formula stability. We need predictability and budgeting. No one wants to see the ups and downs of a mill levy. No one wants to be guessing what's going to happen with funding in a year, year, two years, three years. Makes negotiating very difficult. Makes negotiating contracts very difficult with outside vendors. This is a problem for all districts in Kansas. if we don't get a school finance formula relatively quickly. Um, now I I don't know that we envision it happening this session. That would be an ideal. I
260don't think that's going to happen, but we we re and and whatever they end up doing, most likely they will then give us a year under the old formula to get to the new formula. That's the guess. But we need that predictability in budget that supports equity ac across districts in Kansas. Um, that is also recognized as constitutional. We know the current formula is adequate and equitable according to the state legislate or to to the Supreme Court. Any change is that it gets made potentially has to be revetted. So we really wouldn't we don't really want major tweaks to this formula that could be considered unconstitutional. Um we we we have areas of the formula we don't like very well. I would think special ed is probably one of them. We don't get special ed
261funding based on the student. We get special ed funding based on the number of teachers and paras and we don't get it in a timely fashion. We get it spread over the course of a year and we're not even sure what the final number is until June. That's that is a problem. We'd love to see that fixed, but what we're hearing through the task force that that is working on this school finance formula is that no one is talking about putting new funding into the formula. They're talking about making changes so that there are some winners and there are some losers. Well, we're 10% of the state. Who do you think is going to be the source of funds if other districts get additional funding? It's probably us. So, I think our position on school
262finance is tweak tweak small. Tweak where we're not basically funding the rest of the state because you feel the need to make a change. The formula is working. We're we're able to build a budget. We she um is able to build a budget based on on the current formula. It is constitutional. We're we are needing to hit that with our with our legislators, particularly our local delegation. Don't tweak a lot. It'll be otherwise we're going to drag everything out and we don't know if it will be considered constitutional or not. So small tweaks if any. Um so so if we kind of summarize these key messages for our policy makers any mandate special ed in particular fund at realistic levels where we can meet the needs of all students support a competitive education workforce maintain
263stability in school finance public education is a long-term investment we heard Dr. Hatfield talking about that it wasn't just high schools that were responsible for the graduation rate. We make investments in students prek and up. For 13 plus years, we're putting money so that they can go out into the community and support their communities. It's a long-term game. That's what we need to focus on. Stable policy leads to better outcomes so we're not chasing after the latest and greatest and lower costs over time. Those are our messages to policy makers. Finally, um a little bit of um early action in this session. I will tell you we are hearing from um our uh legislative support team that this could be the fastest session in recent um in really modern history. Uh they anticipate potentially adjourning
264for the first time as early as March 23rd with a very small veto session April 9th. if they if they adjourn siny die which means they're done done um on April 9th it will be the fastest session on record so or at least in in recent in in the last 40 50 years um that you can tell the action is going to be fast and furious. There is already a bill um that was pre-filed that is impacting potentially has impact to schools. We wanted to talk a little bit about that tonight and give the board an opportunity to provide us some feedback. That's Senate Bill 302. Um, it's companion bill, House Bill 2421. It's a belltobell cell phone ban. Um, both bills have similar language. Both bills require phones to be inaccessible from the start
265of the school day to the end of the school day, including all periods in between. Um, they both include exceptions for IEPs, 504 requirements, uh, or if a student has a medical issue. um both require um a prohibition on staff communicating directly with students through social media platforms. The House bill requires some additional tracking of screen time for grades one through four. Right now our plan and this is kind of a gift. We don't typically bills are coming at us fast and furious and we don't have time to actually kind of pull the board as a whole um about um responses. But in this one, we have um test uh there's hearings scheduled for Thursday and Friday this week on these two bills. Um right now, we're um conditionally supportive as our as our opening
266position. Uh our concern primarily is around the open lunch period at the high school level. um we'd like to at least add some language to address the fact that if students are leaving for open lunch that they can get their phones to leave and then they can return and and and put them back wherever they're going to be. Um obviously there's options for that as far as having the phone be inaccessible. I think right now our thought is using our locker system which we haven't used in some number of years. We would need to make sure we have enough. So there might be some costs involved. Um, we haven't done a rekeying of lockers in I don't even know how long. So, that would be a summer project to re key lockers for use. So,
267there'd be some work and some dollars being expended. Um, not to mention kind of training on expectations and all that. Um but we are we'd like to then open this for discussion on this particular bill and if the board is supportive of our approach on the legislative agenda specifically the top three for WPs fast. [laughter] >> Are you ready for questions? Okay, >> question. [laughter] >> All eyes went over here. Um, on the initial the top three initiatives that you guys had listed, I am supportive of those and I'm glad that you guys are taking those up. Um, the state bill on the on phones, yes, I am very supportive and looking over the details. So, I think the open lunch consideration is really important. The bills have uh language which is on school premises
268which is modeled off North Dakota's bill. Um, and that is meant to imply that if students leave for lunch or if they're going to a future ready center or if they're going to a doctor's appointment that they would be able to retrieve their phone. And that way also that seems like a very realistic um thing to allow that if the student is not under our direct care that we are not under care of their phone. Um on the storage options, especially for middle schools and um even for high schools, we have a lot of storage options that are low cost um even, you know, less than that are a couple hundred dollars for a lot of the schools that we have, 500, 600 students. Um there are if you we want to look at models
269for larger schools. Um I can help get some of those. A lot of times we might consider doing like a hybrid model where the students who are going to be available for maybe I'm getting too wordy um but available for junior and senior lunch that we could look at different options for storage and then the uh younger classmen would have options for like lockers and something that is more um permanent. But I am very supportive of this. Talking about Angela Duckworth, she's done national um studies on phones in schools and the additional benefits of a bell-to-bell policy instead of just a restrictive one. Um it takes care of a lot of the things that are happening in hallways and in between classes that do directly affect academic achievement, safety, and belonging um and and a
270litany of other things. And so I I really would um I would encourage you guys to if you need to get more clarification, I would hope that as the largest district, we can try to move on this and um if it doesn't pass that we still show support by trying to address some of these benefits that come from a build policy in our district. >> Thank you, Stan. Um my if [clears throat] you go to the section about local control again. [clears throat] Yes. Protect and respect local control by empowering elected school boards to lead without curricular or funding mand mandates. And I think um uh the election commissioner said it well tonight. Not very many people are uh uh willing to put their name and their time into a campaign such as Amy Jensen
271just went through and Amy Warren just went through and Diane and Julie went through on reelection. Um there's there should be only one local school board and the now if you go to the bill that's mentioned at Belltobell the problem with this is once you this is a bill that is taking out of hand control of a local school board to address that problem. I think we do need to start moving toward a bell-to-bell cell phone ban. I think we're treading some dangerous ground if we support this as a school district because [clears throat] once the legislature gets us to agree to um do a ban uh on cell phones the next time the ban the next bill that comes up and it's a ban on something that we want to keep um then they're
272going to say, "Well, you agreed to a cell phone ban." Uh and you didn't complain about local control then. Uh I think we have the ability as us seven members and with the support of our staff to work out the logistics. I know our staff has already been thinking about some of the logistics of if we if this needs to happen. Um, and so I think we're running into a kind of a dangerous ground, uh, if we come out officially in support of this, if we want to testify that we're looking at bell-to-bell and that we're moving in that direction, but to have a state law that requires it is opening a door that this school board and other school boards throughout the state would not be able to close on other issues. That's just
273my initial thoughts. >> Thank you, Stan. Julie, >> um I agree with your three um legislative positions. I think they're they're very good. Um, I am supportive of a bell-to-bell um cell phone ban um for this district, but I agree with Stan that that ought to be a local control decision that um all of the school districts throughout the state ought to make that decision for their school districts as opposed to the legislature forcing it on us. So, um, again, I don't know how in your discussions how you want to communicate that, but I I'm I'm totally with Amy Warren that we need to go that direction. Um, and I'm also with her of that there's other potential ways for storage other than maybe the locker solution. Um but um but but I do think
274that local control of school districts is very important um in the state. Um if for no other reason because the school districts across the state of Kansas are all very different. We have Witchaw public schools. It's a very large district. Um and then we have um school districts that are very very small. There are our our school districts are very different and they and so I'm a very strong believer in local control. >> Thank you, Julie. >> Uh one of the first items that we talked about was special education funding and there are discrepancies as to how that is funded. Can you explain some of the discrepancies and why one entity might say it's fully funded and another entity might say it's not? >> So, the way that we get special education funding, um, a
275lot of it is based on staff. So, um, depending on how many teachers, a mix of teachers and paras you hire, you may get, uh, refunded a flat amount. So, it doesn't matter if you're paying your special education teacher a $40,000 salary or a $65,000 salary. You'll get the same amount in each of those uh corresponding districts. So, working in Witchah public schools, we have one of the highest compensation packages in the state. It may cost us a little bit more to hire a special education teacher than somewhere else in the state. So, that salary difference we're left to then cover with other funds. We also get some reimbursement for transportation expenditures. That's reimbursed at about 80% um for qualifying transportation and fuel. And so again, depending on how many special education buses you have
276to run, what your fuel expenditures are, um our transportation budget is getting close to $35 million. And each year that's anticipated to go up. And so every year as we're only getting reimbured for 80% of those costs, we're left to fund millions and millions more of transportation out of other funding sources. Um there's other bits and pieces in that sped funding formula for extraordinary costs. So if you have a super expensive kiddo that requires a lot of equipment or um you know 3 to one care essentially for for personnel, that's taken into consideration. there's a little bit of some Medicaid reimbursement that essentially schools that have more students that qualify for Medicaid similar to the free lunch waiting um you get a little bit more out of that pot. So there are waitings within sped
277that we do qualify for. Um there's disparities between districts and how much each of those items may cost you and what's left over because we have a flat pot. It's not like the rest of our waitings where whatever you have is what you get. with special education, it's spread across the state. They have $83 million, right, to to spend in um special education state aid, and that's what you're going to get. And um and and so just just depending on what your costs are, what other districts costs are. That's why we don't get to find out until June what that reimbursement rate is. Everybody's filing what their estimated expenditures are, what their salaries are going to be. Um they they weigh those out and they say, "Okay, this is what's left over to pay for
278staff. we think we're going to be able to reimburse you at $30,000. That number has gone significantly down year-over-year in terms of that reimbursement because they fund those things like transportation off the top first and then they calculate what's left over for staff reimbursement. Um at the the 92% really they take into account again statewide are we funding special education statewide at 92%. You may have a district that's funded at 110% of their sped services based on how they qualify for funding through that formula. Um Witchaw Public Schools has sat below 70% I want to say for at least three years if not more. Um and we're estimated to be about 64 to 67% this year. So did I understand it accurately that if you look at the whole state all of the districts they
279are at 92% but when you break it down per district that is where it the difference >> the mandate is for statewide excess cost to be 92% and and the state is not there. Okay. >> As as a state, we're not there, >> right? >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> Because it's a fixed >> dollar amount that they're giving to sped across the state, >> right? >> And what they're that they're only adding about $7.5 million a year into special education services. And when you think about CPI increases to your budgets, just simple salary increases, increases to transportation, increases to fuel prices, that 7.5 million really is a cut. It's not keeping up with the um inflationary factor on special education costs, which is why you see that um that excess cost percentage dropping every year.
280And while we're on the topic, if if I might, um, since we're we're kind of in the history the history books here a little bit, 2008, is that what you said? Was that when it was 92% funded? Um, so it begs the question, well, why if if they used to fund it, what has happened? Well, part of what happened is special ed was not part of the Ganon decision for the funding formula. And so when you know when you all held up your hands and said you're going to follow the Kansas Constitution, the Kansas Constitution says we have to fund schools uh sufficiently and effectively. Um because that wasn't part of the Ganon decision, they've they being the legislature, not the current group, but over the years it's just been an area where the court
281hasn't required them to fund it at 92%. So they haven't they've just not not done it. Is that did I was that fair? what I Okay, I think it's important context is we have what was settled during Ganon the CPI increases for the most part that has been funded uh high density at risk um bilingual some of those things the Ganon decisions been followed but special ed since it wasn't really part of the Ganon decision predates that a little bit and then that 92% we've just gotten further and further over the years from that number so >> so sped is not part of the school finance formula that is being looked at right now. >> No, >> they they are evaluating the formula in which we receive special education funding and there is that appetite
282to put a stamp on something in the total finance formula. Um the sped piece of the formula was not what was re-evaluated during the Ganon case, but it is part of the total funding formula picture that the legislator legislature is evaluating currently. Okay. Uh, Julie, did you raise your hand again? Okay. Amy Jensen. Um, I have a couple of concerns about the capers um, bill, House Bill 2194. Um, one of my concerns is that we don't want to build our education workforce on retired teachers. Um, I I don't want us to lean in that direction. Um, as someone who is a retired educator, um, I don't particularly want to go back into the classroom after being out. Now, there are some people that do. I think there's something like 3,000 positions have been filled by
283retired educators because we don't have the workforce that we've had before. Um, the other concern I have is that um, [clears throat] the caper's bills don't include any type of a COLA increase. There hasn't been a COLA increase for capers since 1997. So, if you retired in the early 2000s, that amount of money you get for your pension is the same amount that you're getting today. And to me, that's wrong. So, I think there should be a cola increase as well. And there are lots of old people groups that I'm in that go to Topeka and advocate for that cola increase um every year and it never happens. So if we could add that on that would be great. Um, so one of the other concerns I I think Addie and I have talked about
284this, but one of the concerns I also have about that bill is when a state law doesn't allow a retired teacher to work under the negotiated agreement. And so what would happen is we'll have all these retired people coming in that potentially could negotiate their own deal with the district. Now, you know, currently that's not the the way that we do things. We just say, "Okay, here's the salary schedule. This is where we're going to put you." You know, the district has that leeway. I just know how things work. And if there's a large group of people that are coming into the workforce that are retired and don't work under the guidelines set by the negotiated agreement, there's a good possibility they will band together and now we will be negotiating separate salaries and separate
285benefits for a whole new workforce. Um, old people are clever and we'll do that. And so I just think those are some things that we need to take into consideration with this bill because It it's we need young folks to be taking these jobs and we need to encourage younger folks to be in the teaching profession and not rely on retired people to come back into the classroom who have been out for a while maybe didn't teach during COVID and don't know what it's like to be in the classroom now. So those are just my two cents. >> Thank you Amy. Uh a few more questions for you guys. [clears throat] When you say strengthening capers, what does that look like exactly? >> You know, we um last our last leg legislative agenda, we kind
286of came with some details about um some legislative post audit reviews that were happening between the Kansas um capers 3 pension program and their comparisons to other state entities. So surrounding districts, they kind of picked a really good mix of states that look like us, states that don't, and just evaluated the benefits of of um really focusing on that capers tier three um bit. And so, you know, there's no one-sizefits-all solution. There's no um we can overnight get our pension plan to be wellunded um and all of a sudden match in other states. Um, I think that the the difference between what a caper's tier one retiree receives in retirement once you get your 85 points, that's a very clear path. You know what you're going to get. Um, being a caper tier three retiree
287myself. Um, it's very complex, very confusing. It's based on a service credit model. Um, and the disparity between those payments. Um, again going back to kind of our policy with special education, we just want to see the gap closed. We want to see incoming teachers receive high quality pension benefits so we can compete with other states now for resources. We're not just competing with the state of Kansas. We are competing nationally for teaching resources. Um, so we want to be competitive in every job market and just closing that gap. It may take a while. Um, it's not going to be fixed overnight. So closing that gap is our goal. >> Okay. And um I did want to address Stan brought up the local control topic and I think on something like the cell phone policy
288uh there's a lot of things that are handed down to school districts that it just they just say do it. and I'm a big local control person, but at the same point in time when there's something that I think is good universally, um I I'm fine with the state having a little bit more say on that. And so, uh I am fine with the state weighing in on this. Um, I hope they are lenient and flexible on the implementation of it because I think implementing something like a bell-to-bell cell phone uh is different in Witchaw than it is out in western Kansas. So, I'm fine with the with the concept and the theory. Um, but where my concern is is on the implementation. So with that, Amy Jensen, oh, sorry, Amy Jensen. I knew I
289was going to do it and I >> It's after my bedtime. I'm sorry. [laughter] Oh, did you want to weigh in? Okay. Okay. Sorry. It really is after my bedtime. So, um, that's my two cents on it. So, there we go. Any further questions from the board? [snorts] Okay. Seeing none, um it is recommended that the board authorize the district to advocate for identified issues and to educate legislators regarding issues impacting the district. Latona, are you wanting to vote on that or is the feedback that we've gotten is that sufficient for you guys to go? Okay, very good. Thank you ladies for your time and effort. And with that, Latona, next item. Consent. >> Okay. [sighs] For consent for the public's information, the purpose of the consent agenda is to help the board handle routine
290matters efficiently so that the board can spend more time reviewing, monitoring, and discussing the educational issues of the Witchaw public schools. Students academic success is the top priority for the board of education. Board members review these items in detail during the agenda review workshops held at 10:30 a.m. on the Fridays prior to each regular board meeting here at the AAC building. These workshops are open to the public, but no action is taken. The workshop is for discussion and questions only and your presence is always welcome there. So when we have a list of consent agenda items, these items are all gone through by the board of education in a public open meeting. So, if there are any questions that the public might have, you are welcome to reach out to your board members before that
291uh consent agenda review and we use that meeting to ask our questions and have conversations with staff about these very items. So, with that, is there a motion to approve consent? >> Oh, >> and that's [clears throat] why I had my hand up. >> Okay. Um, I move that we approve the consent agenda except for E2, the renewal with destination innovation because of Knox's conflict of interest. >> Okay, >> I'll second. >> Motion made by Stan, seconded by Knock. >> And you can cast your vote. We'll see if the technology works. brush your >> I know. So motion passes 5 Z and Okay. Well, we'll just we'll add it to the list of technology errors. So >> Okay. So six 6. >> Okay. So >> Okay. The motion passes 6. Wow. Um, >> Stan, you
292want to make a motion to pass E2? [sighs] >> Knocks out of the room. >> I move we adopt a consent item E2, the renewal with destination innovation. >> I'll second it. Motion made by Stan, seconded by Diane. Uh, we can cast our vote. Maybe Okay, we're going to go old school. All in favor, raise your hand. Amy, raise your motion passes. 5. Moving on. Latona. Next item. Wow. We have um reports and requests. >> Superintendent. >> Yeah, I think I'm up first. So, I'll keep it pretty brief. Um just wanted to bring up um we sent a response letter to the attorney general in January. Um I think most of you saw that. Um and then a couple things on the cell phone bill that I do think um I wanted to articulate. Um
293Susan um downplayed it a little bit, but this will cost us something. So I just want to make sure you all are clear. There is no free road to doing this. Um whether it's more lockers, whether it's pouches, whether it's whatever. Um somebody's going to have to monitor and watch. Um which means they aren't doing other things. If we reset all the lockers over the summer, that's hours of work. So, um, not saying we shouldn't do it by any means, but I do I I want to make sure that was said. Um, and the other thing, and I've articulated this to some of the legislators, I do think there is an opportunity here um for a broader community conversation about student well-being and health and uh screen addiction and all of that. And I think
294we're missing it. I think unfortunately this is all about schools. Um, we're not even attempting to engage parents and educate parents. we're not even attempting to have a broader community conversation. Um, which is disappointing to me because I really think um there's there's multiple whack-a-oles that are up right now and we're whacking one of the 10. Um, that a student at 3 in the morning in their bed scrolling on their phone. We're not fixing that issue. Um, parents pro provide these phones to kids. um kids use the phones and so um and even the way the bill's written um we're really um you know I don't hear from teachers that this is a big challenge um so um you know who is it that we're who is it that we're deciding based on um we
295hear all this stuff about feedback and listening and all of these things and so um you know students parents teachers are those the people that have been listened to I I just wonder about that and I I believe in the or I believe in the concept of bellto bell but I believe in it with education with trying I mean you don't you don't fix smoking by banning smoking you fix smoking by public health awareness um and I think there's an opportunity to really talk about the detriment that cell phones can have for kids and their mental health and their anxiety and everything um and I think in instead of that we're fasttracking a bill that's going to get sent through and then schools have to have to fix a societal again um which is what
296we usually are are based asked to do. So um not saying it's not the right thing to do. I just um I think there's more to the conversation. Last thing I wanted to mention um as I try to fact check throughout the course of the not fact check but gather facts. Um I think Stan had mentioned the need to uh backfill capital outlay money at the end of last year. It was $17.4 4 million that we transferred at the end of the year for capital projects um to keep us up, you know. Um and so we all know those $17.4 million could go, it's onetime money, but those could go to a lot of other things that would help with credentials, that would help with graduation rate, that would help with the literacy, that would
297help with um really our other objectives. U it was the right decision. We, you know, we we were right smart to do it. Um but that's a bit of how you know you have to connect a few dots to say how does a bond issue support kids directly with their learning and that's how it that's how it does it that that if those funds are available for us to put towards kids and outcomes then uh if we have a bond issue we don't have to do that uh in in that direct way. So um yeah I think that's all I have. Thanks Lona. >> Very good Latona. Next item, >> new business and board of education requests. >> Is there any new business? Okay. Knock. So, I could be wrong on this. I am perhaps
298one of the only researchers in the entire state of Kansas that's um looking at the uh effects of uh personal electronic device uh policies. uh what I will say for you know whether you're talking about proponents or opponents um at least in uh in the literature at least in academia uh one of the overarching agreements and I guess clearly to Kelly's point is uh that it should not be the school's role u alone it should not be the public education systems role uh alone in addressing uh problematic technology uh usage um at the same time you know my personal uh take is that you know especially over the past uh decade or so. U we do see big tech companies, we do see so social media companies, we do see um edtech companies having amassed
299a lot of power uh if you will over um teaching, over learning, over uh education uh in general. And so for me like you know you know because I I very much so envision this being my life's work right like you know how do we promote you know healthy relationships uh with digital technology recognizing that you know uh we should not be pathizing uh digital behaviors uh there's like so many of the uh measures so many of the surveys uh so many of the uh uh indicators of uh problematic technology usage if you will are is quite frankly uh wrong. You know, there's a lot uh that could be improved with it when it comes to, you know, a psychometric perspective. Um anyways, I I guess just uh you know u I I certainly would
300support a a more uh communitywide community level grassroots effort on you know how do we promote um not just through the schools but especially when you're talking about the role of healthcare organizations when you're talking about the role um of nonprofits when you're talking about the role of families especially uh you know how do we have these healthier relationships these healthier uses more pro-social more effective uses um of digital technology. Um however, while we are on this subject, um I do have a board request uh for a policy uh specifically um a board policy on guardrails and guide rails uh to address excessive screen time and overuse uh slashmisuse of schoolissued uh one onetoone devices. So um and I already filled it out, so I'll send it to Latona after. >> All right. Thank you,
301Knock. Any others? Amy Warren? >> Um, I also submitted a a board request earlier today to begin the process of revisiting our cell phone policy and um acceptable use of personal electronic devices. And um to Knox's point, I think that thinking about the importance of collective action and and I didn't like work really hard for running for this board so that we had no local control options. That was so I understand the tension and and both saying that yes, I think that at the state level acting is important and I also want to maintain local control. um sometimes those are mutually exclusive and sometimes I think um to Dian's point that when we're looking about collective action across the whole state that when not just our district but other districts and all the districts around
302the state address um cell phone policies in a very consistent manner then as opposed to it being punitive um for for one or the other and one district's missing out on the benefits and the other one's getting the benefits it's it almost puts the pressure back up at the industry level back to the designers of the platforms and the designers of the devices that are okay with um with having our kids lose out during the day and with uh causing mental health harms and causing academic harms. So Kansas is one of the five remaining states that have not done anything on cell phones in their schools at the state level. I I also feel comfortable in the fact that we are not like blazing the trail on that and um to do nothing says quite
303a bit sometimes. Um and so I want us then as the since our goal is to be the premier district of choice to whether we are big and can't necessarily compare sizewise with some of the smaller districts in um you know western Kansas. I want us to be one of the first who figures out how to do this well so that we can lead the way and bring others along on it. >> Thank you, Amy. Stan, >> I [clears throat] would just remind the board, I mean, we've got two board requests now. The ball is now going to start rolling on this project. I just want to warn the board that if you accept the so you can't we can't use the argument that we're not doing anything because we're obviously going to do something.
304But once you give up local control on an issue that's even as important as this to each of us, um you're going to give up local control on other things in the future that you are not going to want to give up control of. And I think the superintendent's point is and that's one thing I would like with your request uh Amy Warren and with your request knock really gets the ball rolling. It gives us the chance for the board to really discuss uh among ourselves on where we can got where we have common ground. Um because I do also think that has and I think knock tended to agree with the superintendent as well is that this has this is a bigger discussion than just a school and I don't know if you're going
305to want to give up local control to say you will support a bill that you're supportive of but a month later when there's a bill that you do not support that takes your local control they will use that as um their way of saying you've you've done this before. I just wanted to warn the board. >> Very good. Thank you, Stan. Um we have two Oh, sorry, Lona. Next item. >> Executive session. >> Okay, we have two executive items tonight. Uh for the executive session one, I move that the board go into executive session for the purpose of discussing matters relating to actions adversely or favorably affecting a student for 15 minutes. The executive session will include all board members present and the general counsel Dan Lawrence, Superintendent Kelly Beerfeld, and board clerk Latona Hoy.
306The opening open meeting will resume here in the boardroom at 10:40. Do I have a second? Second. >> Motion made by Diane, seconded by Julie. All in favor, raise your hand. Motion passes. 6. We are in executive session. We'll just go right over here. >> No, it's first time. [clears throat] Just make Yeah, I have I have all of mine. Yep. I have a cappuccino and a regular. >> Laton, I'm just going to do hand raising for the night. >> That works faster. Thank you. >> Okay. The board is back from executive session. Stan, >> I move I move >> that for the student appeal hearing held on December 9th, 2025. I move the board uphold the finding of the hearing officer. >> I'll second. Motion made by Stan, seconded by Diane. All in favor,
307raise your hand. >> Motion passes. 6. >> And for the uh appeal hearing held on January 7th, 2026. I move that the board uphold the hearing uh the findings of the hearing officer. I second. >> Motion made by Stan, seconded by Julie. All in favor, raise your hand. Motion passes 6. We have one more executive session this evening. I move that the board go into executive session for the purpose of discussing matters relating to actions adversely or favorably affecting student. >> Oh no, that's the first one. The second one. >> That's what it says for the second one. >> Sorry. Attorney client say attorney claim. >> Uh I >> sorry >> relating to attorney client privilege. The executive session will last 10 minutes. The board uh will return back in this room at 10:52. I
308have a second. >> Second. >> Motion made by Diane, seconded by Stan. All in favor, raise your hand. Motion passes 6. We are in executive session. Okay. >> It's going to take me a while just to pack up my bags. >> I know it. I [laughter] know it. Got lots of things. This >> Okay. Bring up your uh election of officers. add anymore >> document that Latona sent. >> Yes. So, are we ready? >> Board members, bring up the word document that Latona sent for board officers. >> Everybody have that up. >> Okay. The board is back from executive session. Latona, next item, >> election of officers, board of education. The first item being election of president. >> Okay. and the board has an electronic way of doing this. This is the first time and
309given the technical issues we've had tonight, uh I am optimistically hopeful that so while the board's bringing that up, um I do want to just take a a personal moment here real quickly. Uh because I've had a a great honor and privilege of serving as president this year. Um but this has probably been one of the most difficult and challenging years of my life. Um, especially after losing my dad, uh, almost cutting off my hand with a table saw and, uh, and running for reelection. It's been it's it's been an awful year for me. And so, I have, uh, spoken with my board members and made it clear that I am not running for president next year. Um, but still, uh, obviously excited to serve on the board, but, um, it's been a great honor
310and privilege to serve as president this year. So with that uh if the board members have uh your document up and ready, go ahead and type in your name and then uh who you are selecting as the next board president. >> [snorts] >> So, I have six responses in. >> Okay. >> And I'm going to read them out loud. >> Excellent. >> Julie Hedrickk selected Stan Recer. Amy Jensen selected Stan Reer. Knock Vong selected Stan Reer. Stan Reer selected Stan Reer. Diane Albert selected Stan Reer. Amy Warren selected Stan Reer. What is it? >> Okay, Stan, you are the next board of education president. Congratulations. [applause] >> Okay, and bring up that next sheet and we will vote on vice president next. I have six responses in. Amy Jensen selected Julie Hedrickk. Julie Hedrickk selected
311Julie Hedrickk. Diane Albert selected Julie Hedrickk. Knock Vong selected Julie Hedrickk. Stan Reer selected Julie Hedrickk. Amy Warren selected Julie Hedrickk and that's it. >> Okay, Julie, congratulations on being the next vice president of the Witchaw public schools. >> Latona, next item >> adjournment. >> Okay, I >> I'll second that. Stand motion seconded by Diane. All in favor, raise your hand. Motion passes 6. We are adjourned. Thank you for for this evening. >> Hello