You
You
Mr. Schope are you ready
Good evening.
It is 6.03.
I'm calling to order the regular board meeting of Tuesday, May 19th.
Mrs. Shope, may we get a roll call, please?
Yes.
Carol Fox, here.
Tom Hankins is not with us.
Bill Johnson.
Here.
Meghan Miller, present.
Joanne Ruh.
Here.
Dan Schuth.
Here.
Antia Johnson.
Here.
All members are present, except Tom Hankins.
Thank you.
I believe he will be with us shortly.
May I get an approval of the agenda?
So moved.
Motion by Carol Fox, second by Bill Johnson.
Any discussion?
Hearing none.
All in favor?
Aye.
Any opposed?
Motion carries unanimously.
Tonight, Dr. Anderson, who is back from his vacation, is going to lead us in the Pledge
of Allegiance.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for
which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Thank you, Dr. Anderson.
Good evening, and thank you for joining us tonight.
We appreciate your continued interest in and the support of the School District of
Bloyne.
Yesterday, May 18th, was Speech Pathologist Awareness Day.
On behalf of the Board of Education, I would like to extend our sincere gratitude to the
District's Speech Language Pathologists.
Their work is essential in public education as they support students with communication
disorders that directly affect access to learning.
By helping students strengthen their communication skills, they ensure students can fully participate
in the classroom, build relationships with peers, and achieve academic success.
We are deeply thankful for their expertise, compassion, and unwavering dedication to
our students.
Last week, board members Carol Fox, Bill Johnson, and I attended the Bloyne Memorial High School
Underclassman Awards night.
Several students in grades 9-3-11 were recognized for their outstanding academic achievements
and excellence across many variety of areas.
We are incredibly proud of their hard work, perseverance, and accomplishments.
Congratulations to all of the students recognized and keep up the excellent work.
Earlier today, members of the board had the opportunity to volunteer at the annual Elementary
Track Meet.
The Todd Timberwolves, Converse Cougars, and Robinson Cougars competed today, and tomorrow
we'll feature the Gaston Bandits, the Hackett Hawks, and the Merrill Tigers.
The event was filled with excitement, positive energy, and strong community spirit.
Most impressive was the level of sportsmanship, teamwork, and encouragement students showed
to one another.
Their behavior truly reflected the values we hope every individual connected to the school
district of Bloyne demonstrates each day.
During these challenging times when many of us are feeling the strain of financial
uncertainty, I believe we can learn something from our students.
Not everyone will finish first, not everyone will always agree or feel satisfied with the
outcome.
However, we continue to show up, work hard, and do our best for our students and our community.
Let us continue to support one another, appreciate each other's efforts, and remain united in
our shared commitment to improving the educational experience for every student we serve.
A special thank you to Vice President Foxx, who I'm told, volunteers at every elementary
track meet every single year.
Best of luck to all tomorrow's athletes, and thank you to staff and members and volunteers
who continue to dedicate their time and energy supporting our students.
This Tuesday the Board held a special meeting to discuss budget concerns and potential
options moving forward.
We will continue that discussion again tonight.
We are grateful to the Cabinet for presenting a staffing plan and for continuing to move
the district forward with transparency, honesty, and a clear understanding of the challenges
ahead.
It takes courage to share difficult truths, including those that may be hard to hear,
and it takes courage to make decisions that are necessary for the long-term stability
of the school district of Loyne.
I would like to recognize Assistant Superintendent Dr. Malott, Executive Director Almonderes, Executive
Director Beavers, and Interim Executive Director Elwood for the tremendous leadership and work
they provided during Dr. Anderson's absence.
Their dedication, professionalism, and service to the school district of Loyne are sincerely
appreciated.
Together, we remain committed to strengthening our district and improving outcomes for every
student.
This concludes my report.
Thank you.
Next we have upcoming events and announcements, Board Clerk Miller.
All right, good evening, everybody, so these are the announcements for Tuesday, May 19th.
Senior Awards Night is Wednesday, tomorrow, May 20th at 6 p.m. at Beloit Memorial High
School.
Congratulations to our seniors.
Friday, May 22nd, the BMJE slash BMJO is performing at music in the park in downtown Beloit
across from First National Bank.
Friday, May 29th is the annual Pilwifers Golf outing with dinner.
This fun, emphasized event is for all district staff, including retired and spouses, both
experienced and brand new golfers.
There will be a 4.30 p.m. shotgun start at the Kruger Haskell Golf Course in Beloit.
For more information or to sign up, contact James Hoei at JHoei at SDB.k.k12.wi.us or
over at Beloit Memorial High School.
The annual retirement party for district retirees will be Wednesday, June 3rd at 4.30
p.m. at the Rotary Center.
This is an open house event.
A short program will be held at 5.30 p.m. with cake, punch and water served.
Thursday, June 11th, please join Beloit Memorial High School Academies on the Greens of Glen
Erin.
To register your golfing for some order to sign up as a sponsor, please contact Ryan
Michaels at B. Michaels at SDB.k12.wi.us.
Summer school registration is open.
Register using Skyward Family Access.
Please register early as space is limited.
There will be no school on Monday, May 25th due to Memorial Day.
The last day of school is Friday, June 5th, with graduation for senior students on Saturday,
June 6th at 10 a.m. on Jacobson Field at the John Heineke Stadium.
Doors slash gates open at 8.30 a.m.
If there is inclement weather, the ceremony will be held in the bargain arena.
Please save the date for the 5th annual Stateline Multicultural Hispanic Heritage Month celebration,
which will be on Saturday, October 10th.
However, there is a district-wide t-shirt contest happening right now.
Please submit your design to your school family advocate for a chance to be the official
t-shirt, or to submit the official t-shirt, for our Hispanic Heritage celebration.
The deadline is May 22nd.
That is this Friday.
If you have questions, please contact your school family advocates.
The Department of Public Instruction's portrait of a graduate is a statewide effort to define
the knowledge, skills, and mindsets every Wisconsin student needs to succeed after
high school, no matter the path they choose.
DPI invites students, families, educators, and community members to stay connected and
engaged as this work continues.
There will be a virtual listening session on Wednesday, May 27th from noon until 1 p.m.
For specific information or to register, you may go to dpi.wi.gov or you may contact our
board secretary, Michelle Shope, who can provide you with the full DPI web address
to register.
Her telephone number is 608-361-4180.
Meetings coming up and being held at the Colac Education Center include Monday, June 1st,
there is a policy meeting at 4 p.m., Tuesday, June 2nd, begins the new meeting cadence
with business, operations, finance, and HR meeting at 5 p.m., and the Teaching Learning
Equity and Pupil Services Committee meeting at 6 p.m., or immediately following the 5 p.m.
meeting, whichever is later.
This concludes the announcements for tonight.
Thank you, Clerk Miller.
Next we have recognitions.
Tonight we are recognizing our student representative, McKenna Rounds.
Student Board representatives provide an invaluable service to the Board of Education by sharing
reports and updates through the lens of the student experience, helping to ensure
student voice remains at the center of our work.
Throughout her time serving in this role, student board representative McKenna Rounds
consistently delivered reports that were both informative and very entertaining, offering
thoughtful insight while engaging all of us in a meaningful way.
We are grateful for her leadership, professionalism, and commitment to representing the students
of the district.
McKenna, thank you for your year of service.
Good luck to everything you do, and we know you'll be wonderful.
Next we have public comment.
Board Secretary Shope, do we have any public comments tonight?
Yes, I have a couple in the room and a couple to read.
Members of the public are welcome to attend all public open meetings of the Board of Education.
Individuals attending board meetings are expected to conduct themselves in a respectful and
courteous manner that models appropriate behavior for our students.
Individuals wishing to comment are expected to comply with the norms found on the back
of your comment cards and in board policy 187, public participation at board meetings.
We ask that each of you contribute to maintaining a respectful and orderly meeting and prevent
discussing confidential matters in a public forum by following these norms for public
comments during board meetings.
Thank you for your participation and courtesy.
Mrs. Shope?
The first person I have is Julie.
The other person I have is Andrew.
So apparently Andrew is going first.
Wonderful.
Andrew, if you just hit the button so the red light comes on, thank you.
Oh, oh, I got it.
Not this light, that one, okay.
Good evening, Board President, members of the Board.
My name is Andrew Heary.
I'm a Professor of Bilingual Education and ESL at the University of Wisconsin White
Water.
Tonight I'm here on my own accord.
And I'm here to unequivocally voice my support for the dual language immersion program at
your district, okay.
I'm going to talk about two things that I hope that you'll consider.
And then my colleague Dr. Minokolakok is going to talk about some possibilities, right,
to move forward.
So I really appreciate the district's commitment to educating all students equitably.
And I'd like to remind the Board that Spanish English Bilingual Programs started in the
state nearly 60 years ago that emerged from Latino-Latina community organizing.
Folks were fed up with the remedial education that they were receiving prior to these programs
coming into existence, okay.
And then since then, there's been a plethora of research that has supported the multiple
benefits of these programs.
So these programs offer academic, social, cognitive, economic benefits to the students
who participate, all right.
So that's why the proposals to reduce Spanish language instruction at the elementary
grades or cut the program at the middle school level do not make sense.
They don't make academic sense.
They don't make economic sense, okay.
The proposal to reduce the program to the elementary grades and cut Spanish language
instruction would mean that you're implementing a transitional bilingual program model, which
basically looks to subtract students' home languages.
And they've been proven to offer poor academic results.
You'd also foreclose opportunities for all students to engage in rich academic learning
across languages.
And that's a requirement for them to obtain the Wisconsin Seal of Bilitaracy, okay.
So in effect, you would be hurting the academic possibilities by cutting these programs.
Also parents know this, families know that these programs offer multiple benefits.
So cutting the program at the middle school level would invite these parents to open and
roll out of your district, okay.
A lot of my research has focused on public bilingual education and how it can function
as a safeguard against school privatization, all right.
The opposite is also true when school districts refuse to recognize and respond to the dreams
aspirations and hopes of the community that opens the door to school privatization and
charter school proliferation, okay.
So I encourage you and ask respectfully to, let's deepen collaboration between university
and school district.
There are ways that we can move forward, right.
But let's not forget the legacy of bilingual education in the state and in your district.
No, she's going to ask you this.
Thank you, Professor Herring.
Mrs. Scho.
Next we have Julie.
Hi, good evening board president and board members.
Thank you.
It is nice to be here.
I'm also a professor of bilingual and ESL education at the University of Wisconsin Whitewater.
I am here of my own accord.
I'm a colleague of Dr. Herries.
I'm also here as a mom who has two children who went through a dual language immersion
program in Madison.
They're now in college and they were able to do, to receive the syllabi literacy through
their K through 12 dual language immersion program.
So I see it on a professional side and I've seen it on a personal side with my own two
children.
Like Dr. Herry, I implore you to reconsider the proposal and partner with us as much as
possible.
There's a lot of research out there as Dr. Herry mentioned.
There's research that supports DLA programs.
Should I keep talking without the mic?
It's back a little bit.
So can you all hear me?
Okay.
I thought someone was telling me to move away.
So please, we're happy to share research with you.
We're happy to interpret research, to work with you, to partner with you.
We have a really exciting new program here on our campus, University of Wisconsin Whitewater
that is designed specifically for practicing teachers who need their ESL and bilingual
licensure.
So it's an asynchronous, fully asynchronous program and it's accelerated.
So teachers can enroll in the program while they're teaching full time and what they've
finished with in less than a year and a half is a K12 ESL license and a K12 bilingual bicultural
license and a handful of your very talented and very enthusiastic and committed teachers
from your district are in our program right now.
So it's a new program and it's very popular.
It's tripled since we started in the fall of this academic year and it just continues
to grow.
So we're able to help teachers who need that bilingual bicultural and ESL license get it
in a very high quality way and a quick way as well.
So thank you.
Muchas gracias.
Thank you, Julie and I'm sorry Professor Heary for mispronouncing your name.
Ms. Scho.
Okay.
The first one I have to read is from treasure.
Instead of closing Merrill Elementary, why not just pull all kids back at the home based
school like where they live is the school they should go to?
Like what I was told before, why my kids could not go to other schools.
So just pull all the kids back at their homeschool.
It would solve the problem and get some of the good teachers back at Merrill Elementary.
In the past, we had great teachers and put some stuff for Merrill like you did with other
schools like swings, just maybe to lower the dialect on the money, maybe try to lower the
amount of what is wasted, try going back to paper and pencil.
The second one I have is from, I believe it's RE.
After working in one of your elementary schools as a paraprofessional student teacher on my
way to graduating with my BA in special education, I can no longer stay silent about the conditions
staff and students are expected to endure.
My plan was to graduate and work for your district supporting my community.
During my short time working in the district, I suffered a broken arm and a torn rotator
cuff due to violent behavioral incidents.
At the same time, the school was operating at approximately 18 fewer paraprofessionals
than were needed to meet IEP requirements.
Staff were placed in impossible situations daily and students were repeatedly subjected
to lockdowns multiple times a day because of ongoing behavioral crises.
I even watched second graders having to do their schoolwork in the hall on the floor
for an hour because their class had to evacuate due to behaviors.
What concerns me most is that the educational experience and safety of hundreds of students
are being sacrificed in order to keep severe behavioral situations, which should be in
ID or have one, one-on-one support with this general school environment without said adequate
support staffing or intervention.
The pairs are often the only people attempting to prevent escalation, yet they are overworked,
under supported and now facing cuts.
I also experienced serious disorganization from human resources.
I was mistakenly sent to work a full day early and then denied pay for eight hours I worked.
That experience alone reflected the level of dysfunction within the system.
As a parent, I spent 14 years believing things would improve.
I advocated for this district.
I supported the referendum.
I defended the schools because I genuinely wanted them to succeed.
After finally working inside the system myself, I've reached my limit.
I'm now withdrawing my four children from the district.
The district continues to question why enrollment is declining from my perspective.
Families are leaving because they are no longer.
They no longer feel their children are receiving a safe, stable, educational environment.
Teachers, parents, and students are burning out while serious behavioral issues continue to
overwhelm classrooms with inadequate support structures in place.
I hope the board truly listens to the staff and families who are speaking up before more
students, families, and employees decide to leave as well and
make cuts that are appropriate to deal with what in my opinion is the number one issue of your entire district.
Behavior advocacy, behavior professionals, pair of support should be the last thing that you cut,
or you're going to lose even more students and receive less funding.
That's all I have.
Thank you, Mrs. Scholl.
Next on tonight's agenda, we have the student board rep with Student Board Representative McKenna Rounds.
First of all, I would like to say thank you to the board for being so kind to me throughout this year.
I'd like to say thank you to Ms. Pells for being so supportive whenever she sees me in the hallway.
And thank you, a special, very special thank you to Mr. Hoey for teaching me government and how this board works.
I love the school district.
I have been in the school district since I was probably like four years old.
Never been out of it.
I'm kind of scared to leave it because I'm graduating.
But with how the school district has been trending, I know we can be better.
And I want it to be better for future generations and for future classes of students.
So this is going to lead me to bring up some constructive criticism.
Again, this is nothing personal.
I love all of you here.
I just know we can be better and I want to help us be better.
First of all, I've noticed that there's a lack of communication among the school and school officials.
It's just kind of confusing for students and teachers.
And I've noticed administrators are also a little confused with lack of communication flowing between everyone.
I just think maybe we should all try to communicate a little bit better.
And I know that can be hard, but if we truly want our schools to succeed, we have to at least try.
Next is a gripe I've had this entire year.
The AB day schedules.
It has made it a lot harder for students to have consistency, to study for tests, to do homework, to not be as burnt out.
Just generally, I've noticed everything is harder.
As much as we like to say that you can do A day homework on B day and do B day homework on A day to prepare yourself for the next day,
that's a little hard when you're getting double the amount of homework and double the amount of stress from each class.
And a lot of the days, we don't even have consistency in the classes.
Most of the days that I've been canceled this year have been A days.
And if students are on field trips or if they miss a school day for any reason or if they have to miss a couple,
they're behind almost a week's worth of work if they miss, let's say, B days.
They're like gone a week of that class.
It's really hard for us to learn when we don't have consistency.
Another thing I'd like to bring up is the bathrooms.
I know that the custodial staff is woefully underfunded and understaffed, and I respect them so, so, so much.
They do so much hard work.
But I think we need to give them a little bit more support.
We have gone many times without multiple of the toilets working in each of the floor bathrooms, because we only have one on each floor.
Many of the stalls aren't working. Many of the stores don't close.
Many of the stalls are lacking toilet paper and the trash cans don't get cleaned out.
The pad containers don't get cleaned out.
There's no paper towels. Many of the times we've gone weeks without paper towels on the second floor.
And we try to help and ask, but they are so underfunded.
And I get that we have funding issues, but custodial staff is one of the areas that we need it the most to keep our school clean and not as disgusting and have people not hating it at all times.
Yeah, you're going to hate it anyway, but having it be clean is something that you need.
And another issue that I like to bring up that teacher brought to my attention that I should mention is that many of the resources that we need for projects,
like research projects, especially at the higher grade levels, those websites have been blocked just by widespread blocking of the websites.
For example, I did a project on abortion for Mr. Yanki's current events class.
And I found a, it was either .org or .gov website that had really good information that I could see from the overview that it gives for each of the websites.
And I try to click on it. It was completely blocked. Again, it was either a .org or .gov. It wasn't a .com.
It wasn't telling me where I can get an abortion, how I can get an abortion.
It was just giving me information. And I get that administration and that tech didn't directly block that.
But I think we need a little bit more control on what we block, especially because, especially at the high school level, we're getting older, we can handle these rougher topics.
I get it for the middle school and the elementary schools, but it's hard for us to do research when we aren't allowed to do research on the hard-hitting topics.
Again, I love the school. I just want us to be better. And the teachers are so great.
I really hope all of you try to fix the system that we have and support our teachers more because they are really stressed.
And students are noticing it. Thank you.
Thank you, McKenna.
Next, we've got the superintendent's report. Dr. Anderson?
Thank you. First, it's nice to be back. It's nice to be back last week, just in time for our budget hearing.
And we're going to talk about budgeting again tonight because that is one of the key issues that we need to find some resolution on.
But on another note, one of the other things I wanted to give an update on is that we are meeting this week to hopefully finalize the agreement with the Hendricks Foundation
to present Skyrock and Open Literacy at two of our schools, Gaston and Converse.
So hopefully at the next meeting, we will have an agreement to bring to both the boards for that project going forward.
So we're working on it. We are working on it again this week. Hopefully we'll have some of the next meeting.
I want to thank McKenna for giving us a student perspective. It's always good to hear different perspectives and it's good to have a student voice.
So we'll be talking about some of my topics in much more detail later on.
Thank you, Dr. Anderson. Next, we've got the policy and human resources committee report, Chairperson Fox.
Thank you, President Johnson.
Well, I got the mic. McKenna, thank you very much for being my buddy here there for a while while I first got on the board.
And if you want to know anything about Ronald Reagan, she's your person.
The policy and HR committee met last night and we first discussed the use of the agency NIO to help us with our policies.
NIO is used by many school districts in Wisconsin.
Dr. Anderson fell at this time we can proceed without using or paying for this service.
He plans to review all of the policies by section and will let us know what policies might need additional work.
Furthermore, we have other resources such as the WASB policy resource guide that we can use.
And we can always revisit the idea of NIO in the future if we feel we need that assistance.
Our first policy discussion was on the use of mobile phones and electronic devices.
We discussed the current active policy and an edited version that was tabled last year.
The edited policy was tabled at the time because the Beloitte Memorial High School staff had spent time working on their own plan for curtailing cell phone use.
The committee has asked for an update from the high school staff about their plan,
how well it is working, any changes they are considering, and if there are any policy adjustments that would be the assistance to them.
We also discussed the requirement in the state statute 118.07 with a 5 in parentheses,
which requires by September 1st adoption of a policy on appropriate communication between an employee or volunteer for the district and students.
We already have policies 528 on professional boundaries and 522.71 on social media guidelines that address many of the key issues that are in this statute.
The committee will be studying whether these policies cover all the requirements in the new law or adjustments and changes need to be made.
We also approved Exhibit A to move forward to this evening's board meeting.
Our next meeting, as policy only, because we're changing the structure,
we'll be on June 1st. We did change the time. It will be 3 p.m.
And the policy committees will continue to meet twice a month on Mondays before the board meeting or the committee meetings.
And Dr. Anderson thinks we'll have a lot to keep us busy.
Thank you, Mrs. Fox. Next, we have teaching, learning, equity, and pupil services committee report, Chairperson Ruh.
Thank you, President Johnson. The TLE committee has approved forming an ad hoc advisory committee to review and update our human growth and development curriculum.
And we also provided providing some financial support for students to compete for the first time at the Skills USA National Conference.
And then because of our new way of structuring our meetings, our next meeting will be on June 2nd.
Thank you, Mrs. Ruh. Next, we've got business operations and finance committee report, Chairperson Hankens.
Thank you, Board President.
Yes, we're met tonight and our biggest, our only one on the agenda was
purchase approval of the student transportation, which is
a huge cost to the district and many, all the districts of busing students around.
So we put it out for RFP. I think two came back and
we're going to recommend to the full board that we use Durham.
There are some questions that I think Stephanie will answer on some of the
questions that I had about usage.
But anyways, we're going to move to a full approval, the use of Durham for our next
unfortunately five years.
Thank you, Mr. Hankens.
And next, we have the legislative update, legislative liaison.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I want to take a few minutes to update the board and what happened at the state level last week, because it directly affects our
how we think about the budget funding now and in the future.
Governor Evers, Assembly Speaker Voss, and Senate Majority Leader LaMejo announced a special session.
The day we were meeting last week to vote on a $1.8 billion spending package.
It was billed as a big win for schools and for tax relief.
Ultimately later in the week, the state Senate voted it down 15 to 18.
And one of the explain what I've learned in my digging on why that may have happened.
Here's why it matters to us.
There was $1.8 billion of state spending, but only 315 million of that would directly could be spent by schools for special
education funding for this year and for next.
That's real money.
It would have come in handy to our discussions tonight, for sure.
But ultimately there was a rare left-right coalition in the state capital that agreed that the fiscal math didn't add up.
Senator Spritzer voted no, as did every Senate Democrat.
Three Republicans, including our neighboring state senator Steve Nast joined them.
Senator Nast put it simply, I can't support a bad deal cut by leaders that will never face the voters again as the three leaders are.
All three of them are not running for reelection this year.
There's a nonpartisan legislative fiscal bureau that analyzes any piece of legislation for its fiscal impact.
And it said it would create a nearly $3 billion structural deficit for the state.
Senator Spritzer, in a public comment, echoed that concern.
He noted that much of the projected surplus only exists on paper, and that $3 billion deficit, even that was based on rosy economic scenarios.
There is another reason this context matters for this district.
Most political observers believe that the state senate will switch sides.
The chamber will be a majority Democrat next session.
One reason that's important to belowiters is that Senator Spritzer is in line to be the number two position in the state senate if that occurs.
That would put our state senator one that looks out for our district at the table when the next state budget gets written, and then with school funding reform finally happens, we hope.
The other thing is legislators now, you know, what you would expect for the rest of the summer.
Legislators are out now collecting signatures to get on the fall ballot, so essentially the legislative session is done and the campaign season has begun.
As that plays out, we as a board and as a district will need to weigh in on school funding proposals through the organizations we belong to and individually.
And of course, we're a party to the important lawsuit moving forward.
Most of that begins really in earnest once November election happens, and we know sort of who will be the players in the state capital.
For our district, in my opinion, as legislative liaison, the bottom line is this.
The structural underfunding of public education, well documented by the nonpartisan Wisconsin policy forum did not get fixed last week, didn't get worse either.
There's a real fight.
This district is part of that for sustainable long term school funding.
This continues into the next legislative session.
I'll keep monitoring that and reporting back as things develop.
So thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Schuf.
Next on the agenda, we have board representative and alternate for BEA negotiations.
The Board of Education has a representative serve on the negotiation committee with administration while negotiating with the BEA executive officers.
The board will also have an alternate should the representative be unable to attend.
Policy 143 official board representatives lists an employee relations liaison as one of the board representatives appointed by the board president.
However, this has not been filled for several years.
It is my understanding that this title has morphed into BEA board representative.
I would appreciate if we could fill this position tonight.
The role of BEA board representative will represent the board of education during negotiations.
The alternate may attend these sessions but would stand in if the BEA representative is unavailable.
Are there any board members who would like to volunteer or nominate someone for this position?
If somebody else would like to do it, that's cool.
I did it last year.
I'd be more than happy to serve again.
Okay.
Anyone else?
How many meetings?
What does it entail?
Ms. Miller, you would probably be best to answer that one.
It was lovely.
It was a handful of meetings with wonderful people.
I don't think it was a giant time constraint.
It was reasonable.
I'd be willing to be the alternate if Megan wants to do the real thing.
Thank you.
Then I will appoint Megan Miller as our BEA rep and Carol Fox as our alternate.
Are there any questions or any other discussion?
I love it when things go that fast.
One here that's not going to go so fast.
Our next item is board budget proposal.
And the purpose of this is to share with board members the proposed budget reductions that administration has put together for the 4.5 needed for the 2627 school year.
The administration is looking for feedback from board members at this time.
Before I turn it over to Dr. Anderson, I will share some thoughts that I shared with the board and one of the news media.
The board understands these are challenging economic times for many families, staff members, and community members.
Like households across our community, school districts are also facing significant rising costs while working with limited financial resources.
Many school districts across the state and nation are also facing dwindling enrollment and financial difficulties.
Unfortunately, the reductions we must consider are greater than originally anticipated.
Initially, the district thought we were only going to have to make 4.5 million in reductions that number has now grown to about 5.7 million.
We continue to listen carefully to the perspectives and suggestions shared by our community, staff, and families and students.
Thank you, McKenna.
We consistently hear that people value strong academics safe and respectful learning environments and meaningful extracurricular opportunities for students.
In response, the administration has brought forward three recommended options for the board's consideration,
which it is also important to acknowledge that the state funding in Wisconsin has not kept pace with inflation or the increasing needs of students.
The realities facing schools today are very different from those even 10 years ago, 15 years ago.
In addition, the school district of Deloitte continues to experience declining enrollment, which has a substantial impact on district funding.
Despite these financial challenges, the school district of Deloitte remains deeply committed to our students and families.
We will continue to work diligently to find the correct balance and timing of right sizing the school district of Deloitte.
We value our partnership with the community and will continue to work together to provide the strongest educational experience possible for every student we serve.
Dr. Anderson.
We're going to have enough, what I'll call, challenging discussions tonight, so I thought I'd start with a little good news.
Is that for the 2526 school year, the budget we're currently in, when the board passed that budget, the board looked at,
having to use $1,937,000 of OPEB funds, which are retirement funds that we've already paid all of our retirement costs so that their money in the district has to spend.
They were going to use that to balance the budget.
As of today, it looks like we will not have to use those OPEB funds, which means they'll still be available.
The reason for that is one, we sold McNeil, so that brought in revenue that we had not anticipated.
Two, we had vacant and unfilled positions that were in the budget that we did not employ, so that was a cost savings, and then there was good fiscal management.
Three year, Ms. Elwood has done an excellent job of keeping a day-to-day sharp eye on all of our expenses so that the slightly under $2 million that we are going to use the OPEB to balance this budget will still be available in the future.
So that's the good news.
Now we have some things I just want to go through before we go through our scenarios, and these basically just give you some overall budgeting.
One, the first slide that you see is showing that in, well, the very first slide you just had up there showed that right now we need to cut $5.7 million.
We thought it was 4.5, it ends up being 5.7 because of insurance increases and transportation costs.
If we were to simply take care of that, saying we did not have a balanced budget, and we used fund equity, it would drain our fund equity from 12% to under 6%, it would take us from about $11 million in fund equities like our savings account.
For rainy day funds, it would take us down to a little over 5 million.
That's not fiscally responsible to do that because after two years, your savings account would be totally dry and you'd have nothing to fall back on.
We right now at 12% the Department of Public Instruction would recommend we have at least 15%, which unfortunately district has not been able to maintain for a few years.
See, I have this terrible problem is that I can't see anything close up with my glasses on and I can't see anything far away without my glasses.
So we have three budget scenarios, so that was the first one using fund equity, not a good plan.
Second one is, what if we do a combination of OPEB and budget reductions?
That will help us somewhat. One, it makes our cuts a little less severe.
However, in regards to the budget, we are going to have to make cuts.
There is no feasible way to come up with 5.7 million without cuts.
We also kept to take a look as we're using OPEB funds that is going to have a slight tax increase.
And we all know that from last year when parents, when community members saw a large tax increase, they were shocked and not happy.
I will use those words.
What we look this year is right now, if we come up with a balanced budget, we should have a slight tax decrease in the mill rate, but depending on how we do it depends on the rate.
If we do use some OPEB funds and all that for this year with budget reductions as a combination, what we'll have is we'll still have reduction over last year.
But as we continue to do that, it will reduce, but it won't be reduced by as much.
But right now, I do want the public to understand that if we balance this budget appropriately, your school tax portion of the bill should go slightly down from what it was last year.
All right, that's important.
Now, if your house value changes, that has an impact.
But if your house value stayed the same, we balanced the budget, your taxes should go down.
Now, the third option is what if we take a use of some OPEB funds, some staff reductions, and also look at a referendum.
If we do a referendum in November and that referendum were to pass, we can use those funds during the 26, 27 school year, which could then offset some of our costs.
But of course, if we go for referendum, that is asking the taxpayers for a tax increase.
I'm just presenting this to say there are different options for how we can go about balancing a budget, but in the end, we want to make sure our budgets balanced.
Three scenarios.
We brought up three scenarios last week, and we'll bring to go back over them again.
Each one of them will help us balance the budget.
Each one of them have different things going on.
We have A, B, and C. Now, I know that the writing is small up there, so I'm going to basically give you a synopsis of what each of these options are.
Option A looks at going through all of our staffing throughout every portion of our building and taking a look at if we tried to right size our district for not only next year, but for future years.
Because it's no secret that the Lincoln Academy right across the street is constructing its second half.
Now, in my discussions, I have found out that once it is finished for the 27, 28 school year, they are not going to take all of their students at one time.
They are going to phase it in over a couple of years.
So it means that any student decline won't happen immediately, but it'll be phased out, but it's still declining enrollment.
And as we lose students, we lose revenue.
So the first option takes a look at all of those.
And at the end, we're going to cut 45 individuals, 44.7, is what we would have less working in the district next year than we would have this year.
That would save us 4.877,216 dollars, which means we still have to go under OPEB for another 822,784 dollars
to balance our budget.
Option B is a little more aggressive.
In option B, we're going to cut slightly over 48 students, and we're going to start looking at, can we move programs?
In other words, can we take the Beloit Learning Academy and take that from its present location in Cunningham and move those programs to other buildings?
So some of those programs would go to the high school.
We'd have to work out how that exactly would be, but we'd be looking at utilizing the space of the high school.
One of the proposals also is to take Merrill and to make that an early childhood, early learning center, where we'd take the students, other students, move them to the other five elementaries, and use that building as a district center.
Basically would allow us to empty out the Cunningham, so we could then look if we could sell that in the same way we sold McNeil.
That option would net us 5,367,418 dollars, which still means we'd have to take $332,582 out of OPEB.
The third option is the least aggressive.
What it does is it cuts 35.2 staff, and those staff are basically vacancies that happen throughout the district, or contracted staff, but it would basically mean that the staff members who currently are working for us this year would have jobs next year.
It may not be in the same building, or at the same grade level, but if they were employed this year, they would be employed next year.
However, that would save us $3,678,216, which means we still have a shortfall of OPEB of $1,841,784.
Each one of these proposals are going to restore staff cuts.
What we have to take a look at is how aggressive do we want to have the cuts in staff for next year, because depending on the aggressiveness of the cuts will depend on how much money we have to use from OPEB to balance it.
Now, we can't have the board could decide that it does not want to use OPEB funds, and if that would be the case, then what I would be tasked with my cabinet and with staff is to come back and determine how many more additional cuts, depending on the solution that was in favor to make sure it's balanced.
Irregardless, the district is going to look different next year than it does this year.
There is no way around that.
I can't come up with additional funds.
Had we hoped last week that there has been some offsetting costs, that would have been great.
However, that is not the case.
So what we need to discuss is, what do we think is the best option going forward?
How aggressively should we cut going forward?
Once we know that, then it's up to us to try to implement those plans.
If none of these proposals are beneficial, or I should say if none of these proposals are accepted, then I think what the best step is to determine, is there a level of acceptability of use of OPEB funds so that we know, yes, as a board, we feel that we'd be willing to use it.
We'd be willing to use X amount of OPEB for next year, and then whatever the difference is, we'd have to take a look at these options and determine if we needed to cut as severely as option B or cut more aggressively than option C.
And that really is the discussion in front of us tonight.
Once we have that, then we can look at, you know, who is going to be displaced?
The one thing as we cut things, we have to realize is that when we cut individuals, it means that certain things that are being done this year, probably are not going to get done to just assume that we're going to find somebody else to take that on.
I don't know that that's realistic.
I think what it is is some duties could be taken on, but we have to realize some duties can't.
So that's kind of what the, what I'll call the initial discussion is tonight, is to see if we can come to some agreement on how aggressively we should look at next year.
And once we do that, then we will be able to make some fine-tuning on the determinations.
How are we going to get that number?
Now, I do think it's important to also note is that the board had certain things that it wanted us to take a look at that are preserved in all of these options.
One is staff get a raise.
2.6% is built in.
So, in regards to the option, there is a CPI raise for staff.
Also, there is no cuts or changes to longevity pay.
I know that those had been discussions forward.
All of these options preserve that.
So, those are things that take place irregardless.
All these options require us to take a look at one athletics.
Now, right now, athletics, we're taking a look at recommending moving middle school athletics into fund 80.
That means the program still exists.
We funded out of fund 80 rather than fund 10.
It does mean that those middle school programs are then open to all individuals in the city, not just those that go to frozen or Aldrich.
But it is a mechanism to keep that sports, but yet give some flexibility to fund 10.
We're also looking at reducing our legal costs.
In fact, I have a meeting coming up with our legal providers.
They think they can help us reduce the expenditures that we have had so far.
One of the things that I will tell you is that costs us a great deal of legal fees and time are open record requests.
I've been doing this.
This is my 30th year as a superintendent.
I will tell you that we receive a multi-development record request on a regular basis.
That takes a fair amount of legal help to sort through all of the things we cannot provide.
Also, we have one individual that works almost entirely on fulfilling our open record request.
It's just something to take a think of is that these are things we will respond to.
These are things we need to respond to, but they are things that do take up time and resources.
And so we're working with our attorneys to find out where can we pare down our legal costs.
For high school, it's been no secret that for the last two years, our budget has won over by $100,000.
So basically we're taking a look at, do we either increase by $100,000 or do we look at making changes to be in line with our budget?
I would say right now what we are looking at for our scenarios is to look at each one of our programs in detail
and determine if there are cuts that can be made that still preserve programs.
In other words, we're not going to eliminate high school athletics when we're not eliminating middle school athletics,
but we are going to take a look to determine how many coaches are in each of our sporting events,
how many students do we have, and is there a way that we can make reductions so that we can stand in line with our budget or demands?
Those are just some things that in general that we are taking a look at as we go about trying to solve this process.
Once we finish this budget, then the next discussions are right away are referendum.
Do we go to referendum? If so, do we go to referendum in November or do we go to referendum in April?
If we go to referendum in November, we need to have a question designed and ready to put forth by the end of August,
so we would have between now and the end of August to determine what are the things that we would want to ask the public to financially support.
If we do pass, we could use those monies during the 26-27 school year, so we would be allowed to use some of those funds.
So if we had to make some initial cuts now, and we put those into referendum, and the referendum were to pass,
and those are things we asked to be added back, we could add those back during the same school year.
Do we go to April? That way we would have a longer amount of time to determine what should be in this question.
These are just other things that we're going to need to discuss.
Right after this item is done, there's in about committees, because I am asking the board, I want to form two committees.
One, I'll just jump ahead, so you won't have to listen as closely next time.
One of the committees is what I call a student enrollment committee, and that committee is basically to find out we are draining students each year.
In fact, we just got a new report of where we are currently with our student count, and it is we have lost more students than from our last count.
So we are right now on track to lose over 200 students for this school year from when it started.
Remember, as we lose enrollment, that's less money for us to spend.
So what we need to do is find out why are students leaving our district?
What is it that we can do to stabilize that?
Because we can stabilize our enrollment so that it basically knows that from one year to the next, it's moderately stable with just minor fluctuations.
We can create a three or five year plan for how we want to deal and where we want to go.
But when we continually lose 200 or more students a year, and as I mentioned earlier, the Lincoln Academy will be opening in 2728 for some grade levels.
It is very difficult to continually create a sustainable budget when you have lost students.
The other one I'm looking at is that because of the opening of the Lincoln Academy in 2728, we are going to have to take a look at, as we lose students, what is the best way that we can use our resources?
That means our staff and also our buildings.
There gets a point when it does not make financial sense to keep all of our buildings open, so we will want to take time to take a look at each of our buildings, what it costs to run them.
If we move students, where would we move those two?
In fact, I had a discussion with the staff member today, and I learned something I did not know before.
I learned something new every day, but the thing I learned today was, when Frouza was constructed, that it was originally designed to be an elementary school, and I had never heard that.
This was the first time.
The goal is to invite staff and the public so we can have some very fruitful discussions and bring recommendations to the board on one.
What is that we need to do to stabilize our enrollment?
Two, if we continue to have decline in enrollment, how are we going to best use our facilities and our staff to make things work consistently over a period of time?
Those are the large issues that we are looking at.
Tonight, if we can determine the direction for setting the budget for the 26-27 school year, we can make the final changes that we need to bring that in front of the board at the upcoming meeting.
My goal is always to have a budget before July 1st, which is going to be challenging because we only have one meeting in June.
But at least as close to that, so when we're starting a new school year, people know what resources we're working with.
If we can do that, then we can also start determining if we need to make certain cuts.
Are there certain positions that we would cut that we would want to think about putting back in in an upcoming referendum?
So, each three of these scenarios, and it lays out basically where we would cut in each one of our buildings, and every one of our buildings is going to be reduced in staff.
It's going to be which one of these do we think is the most, which one would we like to adopt for the next year?
And if none of these meet that, what are the parameters that we need to go to tweak any of these to work?
So, that's a lot more talking than I had originally planned to do, but I think it's important to set the stage.
So, right now, it's basically a discussion.
A, B, and C are up there.
The board members have that, is trying to make a discussion of where would you like us to go from here?
Because if I know where you'd like us to go, I will do my best to work with staff to accomplish that goal.
Dr. Anderson, before we begin the discussion, I had specifically requested the administrators walk us through the proposed budget reductions 2026, 2027, May 12 presentation.
I understand it doesn't include option C, but I think there's a lot of good details in here that board members and the public should hear before we begin.
Yep, that's fine, we have that.
Thank you.
Madam Chair, just one point of clarification real quick.
If I may, I know Dr. Anderson, you spoke about the committee structure, which is our next agenda item.
But informally, when we understood this was coming up, there's two committees.
One with like enrollment, the marketing, how do we reverse enrollment?
And then I understood the second one was going to be referendum and use of buildings.
But when you just described it to us here, you didn't say it was referendum and buildings, you talked about, you talked about just about buildings.
So, the second committee is one that would help figure out if we needed to referendum, right?
Well, I think both committees are going to end up tackling part of the referendum question because I don't think there's any way they're all intertwined.
So for enrollment, what is it that with enrollment that we may need to do to stabilize our students and as we look at the buildings and staff.
So I think that referendum discussions are going to happen in both of those committees.
Thank you.
Thank you, board member, and that's an excellent question.
Let's keep on the agenda item at hand because there are a lot of questions.
There's a lot of information and a lot of important things we need to cover.
Dr. Anderson, do you have the presentation?
It's up there.
Hello.
I'm going to tell you that's a different sheath and I started with.
No, we can do it.
We can do it.
I just need to look over from here.
All right.
So this basically goes into our, I'll talk loud so you should be able to hear me.
These go with our shortfalls.
All right.
So why are we this the situation we're in?
We're in because we're declining students.
We expect that for the 26-27 school year, our enrollment is going to be 200 students the last year.
The student's less than it was this school year and the bottom line is it probably could be slightly more than that because right now we're on track to be slightly over 200 students fewer than we were last year.
We were also estimated in 27-28 with the Lincoln Academy that could hold another 750 students and we had the possibility of losing 600.
I think we can modify that number, saw knowing that they're not going to open all seats at one time.
However, over a period of time they are going to fill that building so it'll be phased in so we are still looking at, because the building's opening, the most likely students to go there are going to be students from bullish because it's in or down.
Our revenue increase, this is what the state says, here's what you need to figure out.
And there's here so much money we're going to give you for students as I already mentioned.
If we have less students, we have less revenue to spend.
These are what we're hoping.
Now, special ed is what we had hoped last week was going to be increased to 50 or 60 percent.
That did not happen.
So these are the numbers that we currently have, which we've used in our projections.
We did build in the salary increase.
Our health insurance increase, as I said, really went from 4.5 to 5.7 is that our health increase went to 18 percent.
We had budgeted 10.
We were also budgeting a 10 percent increase from 27-28.
We pay a significant amount of our money that comes into us to the charter schools because that's how the funding system works.
So money comes to us and then it goes to, in this case, like the Lincoln Academy or Rock County Christian.
Utility costs, just normal things are going up because inflation goes up.
So our costs, and we have the same cost of your household costs.
So this is why we're in part of the shape line.
These are some of the things that are just realities.
But the realities are, as long as we have less students than our costs increase, we have to make budget cuts to balance them.
These are the forecast models I had mentioned originally, some of this forecast.
If we were to take the 5.7 and we basically were to fund that out of fund equity,
this line, which is hard for you to see, is our mill rate.
And basically if we use fund equity, it shows it because we have less.
Now this is not what you want to do because you can only do it for two years.
But basically it shows the mill rate going down.
All right?
We're rolling context by building.
What you'll see is, I said, we lose an average of 200 students per year or at least we have that.
The district total in 2024, we had 5200 kids.
25, we had 5,000. Right now, 4,000, 706.
That's why it's not sustainable.
As we keep losing students, we keep losing revenue because our revenue is based on our student count.
So every time we continue to lose students, the reason I said we need the committee,
the amount of revenue we can spend goes down.
Our elementary school was 2,484, then 2,455, then 2,356.
Elementary school goes down.
Middle school was 1,015, then 987, 921.
High school, 1,339, dropped to 1,219, dropped to 1,132.
The other one of our schools that are increasing in enrollment is our virtual school,
which we had 85, 24, 86, and 25 in 1,042, or 142 in 26, which was 1,000 that would have been better.
But it's only one that's increasing.
Our alternative programs, we had 205, and we dropped 182, 118.
The bottom line is that we are losing student enrollment.
Now, as you lose enrollment, and one of us here three years ago, I gave a similar presentation to the Board at the time.
What I told them at that time is they had lost at that time about 25% of their student body,
but they hadn't decreased the staff.
They said that was unsustainable.
What it is, we're continuing to lose student enrollment,
over the last several years.
They have been cutting positions.
So now, I mean, it's just reality is that if you have less students, we need to have less staff.
Just another enrollment chart basically shows you in each of the schools how much we have.
We are going down into enrollment.
A lot of the slides picked that up.
But the reason we keep emphasizing that is not only I want to real home,
we have less students, we have less revenue, but it also means when we take a look at our students,
if we have less students, where are we going to make staffing changes?
Because obviously, we need less staff if we need less students.
The trouble is, they don't all fall in one spot.
They fall in different spots, so it makes it harder to say, well, we can just cut up the elementary because that's when you lose the students.
Now, we lose students throughout the district, but we still have less students, so then we have to take a look at our offerings,
and where can we reduce teachers because we don't have as many students in elementary classrooms?
Where can we reduce classes at the middle school high school level because our enrollment has dropped so that we don't have as many students in those classes?
That's what all these options took into consideration.
But if you can go back one more, I'll just quickly go through.
This basically shows how many students, especially in our buildings.
So if we look at conference, it has a bike grade level.
Conference has 439 students.
It goes, gassed the bike grade a little more, I can touch the street, and it shows, so we've looked at every one of the schools in the building.
We're taking a look at how many students are in each one, and we're trying to take a look at where do we need to make modifications.
But, here regardless, the student counts are going down.
The student counts are going down.
I think the next one is homelessness.
One thing is also that
we have about 13% of our students in this district are homeless.
That is a large number.
Homeless students have the right to go to any school in the district.
We don't prevent that.
We just have a larger number than most.
We have a larger number of certain types of students.
It just takes more resources to help with those students because of the situation they're in.
13% is much higher than the average district.
It's just one of those things that we deal with.
That's why sometimes we take a look at where do we make cuts.
You can't make them equally across the board in all areas.
You can't just say we're going to cut staff by 10%.
High school is 10% middle school because the types of students we have and where they're located, it doesn't fall.
So, neatly.
Special education.
Special education students also.
So when you take a look, special education students have what's called an individualized education.
I always forget it's a program or plan, which is an IEP.
And each of the IEPs help dictate what these students are going to receive for additional support
because they can live up to their potential.
It sometimes requires additional support in instructional aids.
It requires staff providing them minutes.
So it's not that, well, if our population goes up, sometimes the instructional services tell us that we need to provide more resources.
There was a question, I think it was one of the public comments that were read about hair professionals in the special education program.
We have to take a look at not only how many students do we have in special ed,
but we need to take a look at what are the requirements of their IEPs.
How many minutes do we have to meet in different types of instruction?
So, again, it's not just an easy
confidence as well because actually our special education population is expanding in not decreasing.
Excuse me, we can go to the next one.
After taking a look at all of the things, what we did is we tried to take a look at where, what positions could we cut in each of buildings and each of the departments.
In other words, take a look at what our student needs, what our staffing needs, what are the, basically the budgetary limitations we're living under.
And so we went place by place to take a look at what are going to be cut.
First we cut, as I said, like an option C, if there are vacant positions where people may have retired and people may have left for another position.
If it was a position, then we'd have in the books, but we couldn't fill it for a while.
We took a look at, you know, eliminating those right away and then trying to say, existing staff, where can we move them?
We also took a look at going farther than that with A and B and saying,
we're going to not only eliminate the vacant positions, we're also going to take a look at what are the positions do we have.
And if we're stand to worst, where would we do layoffs?
Where would we tell people that are currently working this year, they don't have a job next year?
So we went through each of them, keeps changing.
We went through each of the, we went through COAC and each of the buildings to make some determination.
So, like here, administrative assistance, so administration.
So we're taking a look at, you know, what are the cuts, where can we make cuts, where can we make cuts administrators building grounds.
One of the things in two of the plans, in sections A and B, is elementary schools, what do we have deans next year?
So we take A and B, one of the things that they used to have the system principles, that was reduced to a dean.
Under A and B, we would take away the dean position so the principal would be in charge of the elementary school.
We cut administrators at the COLAC, so we have some of our, we have basically three majors.
We looked at cutting, we looked at cutting the director of nursing services.
We looked at cutting the director of alternative programs, and we looked at cutting the coordinator of steam education.
Plus, a secretarial staff.
So, we, we didn't leave anybody out in any of the discussions.
So, there was no sacred building or sacred department.
They couldn't have reductions.
Like I said, the end result is going to be is, how deep do we want to go in this first year?
So, as I said, we own the deans, the biggest one is there wouldn't be no deans.
We went for instructional support, secretarial staff, security officers.
Every area we took a look at.
So, we keep going, but this is building capacity.
So, as we take a look especially with our second one, as we keep losing students, you know, all of our buildings did all more students.
What is it going to make sense for us to say?
We can close down building X and move the students to other buildings so that, you know, we can have reduction.
We can have a reduction in, you know, heating lights, you know, those types of things.
Give us a positive of a building to sell.
So, we took a look at where is the capacity.
All of our buildings have capacity.
All right.
They were, we had more students, they could hold them, we have less students.
So, each one of our buildings have access capacity that we could make changes.
So, there's one of the reasons that I have one of the committees to take a look because if we lose even more in the 2728,
it's not going to be feasible to keep all of our buildings open.
We're going to have to take a look at which building doesn't make the most sense to close.
And what would we do?
Do we sell that?
And then how do we rearrange those students or programs in different buildings?
There's a building, you can go to the next one.
All right.
She said the option C was an ear.
Option C is what I presented last week.
If you take a look, basically it takes our total reduction.
Option A, as I said, is aggressive.
We would cut 45 staff members from next year's budget.
B, we would cut.
94 out of the budget.
And we'd also be moving closing buildings.
Or at least using buildings.
We'd be closing, cutting and moving those programs into the high school and into Maryland.
We'd be moving Maryland making it a different.
We'd make it early learning center rather than in elementary school.
This goes through each one, so central office.
Currently we have 73.5.
We would take a look at the net reductions of losing eight positions.
In the elementary school, we currently have 316.
We'd be looking at almost 10 reductions.
Facilities, we'd be cutting two.
Facilities are like our maintenance teams.
High school or Journal of Education, we'd look at cutting 12.
Middle school, we'd be looking at 12 in here.
It just outlines each of the buildings.
So, all rich, five and a half.
What, what are the Academy 3?
Call it more, High School 9.
Converse 2.2.
When it has a point, it means we're sharing staff with other buildings.
I want to go through.
Converse 2.
District office.
Eight.
Facilities operations 2.
Fruits of six and a half.
Gaston, 2.2.
Hack at 1.2.
Meryl, 4.2.
Under eight.
Robinson, we'd actually add a 0.3 and shared staff.
In Todd, we'd be losing a 0.2.
These are all, basically to say,
we're going to have to have reductions in all of our buildings.
Each of our buildings are going to look different.
They're going to depend on, you know,
where's, like I said,
B, A is aggressive, B is more aggressive.
We didn't have C on this because that came one after the last Tuesday.
And as I said, C basically maintains all the building structures
and where they are, leaves the deans in the buildings,
but it uses the most old bed funds.
Just shy of $2 million and they'll have to balance.
Option B is that we had option A and B.
Again, I noticed this on repetitive.
Basically, option B would have the same cuts as option A,
a few more cuts than that,
and then we'd also be looking at how we're using our buildings.
This was basically a summary page.
For A and B, and I'll add C to it.
A, it maintains our current structures and we load buildings
stay in place with targeted reductions in staff.
B, it basically, we're redesigning the system.
We're going to use Maryland differently,
and we're going to basically empty out Cunningham,
and so we'd be using the high school differently.
We'd be using Maryland differently.
The reductions on option A, 44.7.
Option B, 48.2.
The instructions would change because Maryland came to an early learning center.
The other ones would absorb the K-5,
and it doesn't show up here,
but we'd also have to use BLA and move that into Poland Memorial High School.
The efficiencies, if we keep everything the same with the students,
it's some efficiencies, but basically the buildings are showing us
as the buildings. It's not a big change as far as what's to take to operate a building.
If we option B, where we start closing things, obviously we can close buildings down.
That means we're going to stay on some of those, what I'll call, facility costs.
Student support under A, since we keep all the buildings the same,
it's less disruptive because the buildings stay the same.
So, Maryland remains to be an elementary school,
Poland Learning Academy, Saze, and Cunningham.
It just, we're going to have them with less staff.
If we do B, again, we're going to make more changes in buildings.
Total savings.
This would give us, as you said, $4,697,260 in savings,
which means we still need to use OCAP.
B is more aggressive, that would say it was $5,187,418,
but still we use OCAP.
And so, they said C is not up here because C wasn't in that original document.
C is almost $2 million of OCAP.
It would keep the building structures the same.
It would basically minimize staffing cuts to the vacant positions, so about $36.
And it would keep the deans in the elementary schools.
Legal costs, as we're trying to look, we use for various reasons we are trying to reduce
our legal costs in 2324.
Our legal costs were about $475,025.
They were just shy of $500,000.
Right now, as of March, we are correcting $334,000.
So, we're trying to take a look at how can we reduce our legal costs,
so that we can use those dollars elsewhere.
One of the things I have suggested if we go back is looking at potentially in-house counsel.
Some other districts that are about our size have their own attorney on staff $8 a day,
and that might be an option to look at that might give us some cost savings.
All right, the next slide.
These are smaller ones, but every dollar we save is a dollar.
It's like cutting professional development travel.
In other words, can we basically limit when we're going to leave?
So, if it's not funded by a grant, basically, we would try to limit, so we didn't do it.
We do grant funds.
If I cut grant funds, it doesn't save any fund $10.
It doesn't have balance of budget.
But we can take a look at, other than spending dollars, professional development dollars,
or a fund 10, how can we minimize that as much as possible?
How do we keep things in district so that we don't have to travel with food hotel expenses?
They're not, it's on large numbers, as I said, every dollar we save,
we can relocate somewhere else.
Next.
The front maintenance is an issue.
There are projects that should be done this summer.
We've already booked them a hold and said, okay, we're not going to do them.
The project's one is the parking lot in Aldrich.
If you have driven there, you realize that it has issues.
However, to fix it, we were looking at between 300 and 400,000.
So, I said, we're going to scratch it when I can put that in, we can put it in a referendum.
Health maintenance, depending on how you use Cunningham, you can decide not to.
Boy, Memorial we're going to use.
But again, those are projects that would cost us a million dollars.
We said we're going to delay those and we can look at whether or not we put them a referendum.
But there are maintenance costs that go all.
One of the things that McKenna mentioned is restrooms and that you have to realize that some of the cuts that have already been made
is we hire contract cleaning out.
Cuts have been made in the past so that the amount of days and hours that we have custodial through in our buildings was reduced.
So, we don't have them as much as we used to have the past.
That's why there's some issues every once in a while that we work with house, they're doing a good job with the staff
and the hours that they have available.
But, there are things that we've had to let go.
We have other things we have to worry about.
We have to consider informational technology.
In 22-23 we spent just shy of 800,000.
We spent then 23-24 and 24-25.
We were projected to spend that this year.
We looked at earlier in the year, what about Chromebooks in replacement because they're getting older.
Right now we're seeing if we can basically do some things in-house to keep our, you know, so we don't have to go out and spend a lot more money on new Chromebooks.
One, we're not letting them go home in middle school.
We're going to keep them on site and we're determining how much we're going to eat them at the elementary school.
High school uses them on a databases that will, you know, they'll continue to take those home.
But if we keep them at the middle school, if we keep them in the house, there's not as much damage.
If there's not as much damage, we don't have to have as many repairs as we get to save some dollars.
As I mentioned, custodial, we've already been cutting back on that.
It's a cost saving measure.
In print services, we do print services in-house.
Just trying to cut back.
Again, the only reason we still here is to show that we are trying to look at every area.
Some areas have already been cut over the past.
So this church has had, I don't know in the last time, the board had a budget discussion that says,
we're going to add X amount of dollars to make the pot larger.
The discussions have been, for the last several years at least,
what do we have to do without the next year that we have this year because we didn't have less money?
That's where we're at.
We did, as I mentioned earlier, we were able to sell McNeil so that added some revenue back.
Take a look, we do have some lots for sale.
One of the things we mentioned is if we have excess property that were purchased by an orphan,
we thought we were going to grow.
Maybe we take a look at starting to sell those.
Clarification, those lots are not for sale yet.
We are discussing whether or not we're going to sell them.
So don't send us emails making us offers yet.
But one of the things we talked about is when we sold McNeil and Brian's revenue,
so we take a look at other pieces of property that we have
and see if that will also bring in at least some one time revenue.
I mean, we're taking a look at colic.
This is a nice building.
But with the staff that we currently have, could we reallocate ourselves
until I can build an operation center and disperse those into some of the buildings
and then put this building up for sale?
Okay.
There's no idea off the table that we're looking at.
Technology and staff, are they already covered in that?
Lots are covered in that?
Technology and we dress a little bit?
Alright, learning SSI students and staff.
This basically is curriculum materials.
In other words, when we take a look at the materials we're using in our classroom,
are there reductions that we can make?
Are there things that we are using that we don't think that the value we're getting for the product
isn't less than what we're paying for the product?
So we're trying to take a look.
Do we have duplications of some materials?
You know, some technology that we can say, this works better, we can reduce this.
So anyway, what we're taking a look at is, what types of things do we have in place
that we can either reduce or eliminate because we think we can cover it in some other way?
In Opap, I've mentioned it several times.
Opap is the dollars that were set aside originally for retirement.
We have now paid off the required costs.
The rest of it is money that can be reallocated and used.
I mean, the suggestion was, since our fund equity is low and we want to put it back in the fund equity,
to raise that up because right now we're at 12, they would like us to get 15.
But as of February 28th, we have $4.6 million available that could be used offset costs.
This is not for this budget, but it is going to have to be for the next one.
We are going to, we used to have auto shop over by the eclipse center.
That went away.
So we are looking at moving it over to the high school, take a look at the building in the archilat to expand that.
However, that is going to require at least a $500,000 investment the next year that I would have to build into that budget
or, but after the funding through a referendum, for the program we're going to offer would have to be greatly decreased when we are offering
because we just want to have the stations.
Fund 80 is a mention fund 81s before.
Fund 80 is our community fund.
I mentioned middle school athletics.
We opened it up to all students within the district.
So it would be open to the Lincoln Academy to be open to rock on Christian.
You can use fund 80.
Fund 80 are dollars that the whole community is taxed on, but you can take them out of fund 10.
So it would give you some savings in fund 10 because you're moving somewhere out there.
I think these are just for elections and taking a look at it when we would do potential referendums.
One, we could do a referendum in November.
If we do that our question is already in August, or we could look at a referendum in April 6.
Then we'd have more time, but those are the dates you're limiting to having a referendum.
Thank you, Dr. Anderson.
I really appreciate that.
Are there any administrators that want to add any information or thoughts to this presentation?
If not, I will open it up to the board and Tom, you had your hand up first.
Thank you, Board President.
I'll have to excuse myself a little early so that I'm happy you got me on.
Just in general overview on a bunch of proposals.
To me, it's a hybrid of the three.
I would not be in favor of choosing A, B, or C.
I think there's a hybrid mix of all of them that I would be in favor of doing different parts out of one, two, and three.
So that's just my first comment.
When you mentioned Mackenna Rounds mentioned Hess, and you kind of covered up for them,
I think that's extremely disrespectful.
They are paid to do a service to our district.
They are a service provider.
They're doing the job of doing the basics of cleaning up bathroom and providing towels and whatever necessities needed in a bathroom.
They should be called on the carpet for that.
That's not a reduction in our services.
We pay them to do a service that I'm sure it's in their contract.
I wouldn't pass that off.
I would get on it and get on Hess to make sure they're doing what they're supposed to be doing, and obviously they're not.
If Mackenna tells us that, that's why she's on the board to tell us those type of things that we don't know.
We do meet with Hess on a regular basis to review if there's complaints and all that and try to address those.
Is this the first time you've heard of that, Dr. Anderson?
Is this the complaint that Mackenna said tonight?
I think it's the first time I've heard that they didn't have toilet paper or things like that.
That's pretty basic.
Yes.
If you clean up a bathroom and I've been in the service industry all my life, and that's the first thing you do is make sure your bathrooms are clean.
I don't want to get into it, but I'm just saying that's disgusting and should not happen in our schools.
The fund 80 existing balance.
Stephanie, do you have what we have existing in our fund, or excuse me, fund 80?
And I know we've taken some money out of it.
Is she?
I'll have to get that number to you.
I'm not sure off the top of my head.
But I heard today that we took monies out to pay for the Fourth of July from last year.
We did, but it's very minimal.
Correct.
If I remember correctly back, correct me if I'm wrong, which you will, we had like $230,000, $40,000 existing in that fund.
Let us correct him.
We did not levy for fund 80 this fiscal year, but the expenses that have been happening are partly some community activities that have happened in 2526, and also the even start program.
I think the even start program.
Don't call me in this.
It's somewhere around 60 or 70,000.
It's not very much.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but even start is an expense to our district being at Cunningham, and they're also being a drain on our fund 80.
Is that then not correct?
We did move it into fund 80 because it is a community program because it isn't open to anyone in the community that wants to be a part of it.
But they don't provide any revenue to the district.
It's just a drain.
I'm not saying that the program's not good.
I'm not saying that.
I'm just saying revenue expenses.
Yes.
It is an expense to the district and there is no revenue attached to them.
Yes.
So normally would even start be a normal fund 80 tax taxing levy.
Is that part of it?
Normal?
I mean, since we have an existing balance, it just comes off of that.
But when we have zero balance, then we'll have it.
Yes.
That is correct.
If we didn't have a fund balance and fund 80, we would have to levy for those expenses in there.
That is correct.
Okay.
Thank you.
Dr. Anderson, you talk about moving things out of Cunningham and then selling it.
Have you looked at the sale ability of selling Cunningham or any of our buildings?
And I know this is a long road ahead of us and I certainly know that we're going to have
to sell some buildings and downsides.
To me, and I have toured less than a month ago, how well built and a solid building Cunningham is and to shut it down completely makes no sense to me.
And who's going to buy that building in the middle of a neighborhood?
My thought and I'm just saying this out loud right now and I've expressed it to you before.
Selling frozen, which is a marketable place on Milwaukee Road and moving those people around town.
And we've already broached that.
We've already moved students.
You know, let's go back to the West side and make sure that we do that and, you know, piece that side of it.
But more than that, a business sense would be to sell that marketing.
I mean, I'm not the expert on marketing, but I do know that Milwaukee Road is a much viable interest space than in townline would be.
And I think that makes more sense.
Cunningham was built to be an education center.
It is an education center, but it's not being utilized properly.
And we get no revenue from the people that are in there.
BLA is doing an excellent job and I compliment Dr. Schroeder.
And I think if we all put our minds together, we could find a good way where to put the programs that are at Cunningham and move forward.
I don't think that moving everything out and then selling Cunningham is a, I will not be in favor of anything like that, but I'm only one.
Colac, I think is an excellent suggestion.
I think we should go forward with that.
We have downsides impaired in the last three, four years.
Colac, we have a business ops center, which I think we should keep within our fold.
It's on our campus as this is, but that's more on our campus.
You know, how much of Colac we can put in the ops center, how much we can put in the high school or other avenues.
I think we could view the brain trust, could figure that out.
And Colac, I think is another, this, I mean, this property, not Colac per se, but this building is very marketable.
I'm, I'm, and I will, I'm just being very forward and I'm the only one and I know that.
But those are my thoughts on those things as we move forward.
But going back to the-
Can I just ask for a clarification?
Sure.
Just for my taking notes.
So if I heard you right, you would, one of your thoughts would be, I won't call it your recommendation, one of your thoughts would be for us to close frozen.
Move the students from frozen into Cunningham.
So we had a middle school on both sides in self-frozen, correct?
Well, that's kind of the dream overview, but I'm not sure how that all fits.
I'm just saying that's just a thought, I don't know if that's correct.
I mean, that's my thought.
I mean, a thought.
All right.
I'm not sure if it works.
I'm just saying, if you're proposing to close that, I'd say propose selling frozen and close that.
As I said, since it was mentioned me today, I never realized that frozen was maybe originally intended to be an elementary school.
Correct.
It might be better off doing if you did that would be to, if you went to middle school on both sides, move the students, but then use frozen as an elementary school and look at closing a couple of your elementary schools.
You could probably close multiple elementary and fit them in frozen.
Now, to do all this by September is going to take someone greater than me.
Before you go any further, I appreciate what you're saying, and I agree.
That's why I just want to open up everybody's minds into thinking, so don't get pigeonholed into anything.
Everything should be on the table, as you said earlier, and I just wanted to make sure I'm on that wavelength of opening our minds to all the buildings in our district and reconfiguring it because we are going to do that.
Thank you.
I want to remind everyone that we did get some unfortunate news today about the condition of our high school that was news to me from McKenna, the condition.
So, there are things that we don't know.
I doubt that Dr. Anderson has been in any female restroom and the high school, so he probably doesn't know the condition.
I have been in the male restrooms and all that.
I wonder, I try to go to all of the buildings.
My point ultimately is, again, we are here to work together, and I want to make certain that our tone is collaborative, and let's try to avoid using charged words, what may be a financial drain, which I understand that's what you meant, but somebody else may take it
as a drain on the system where it may be a financial drain, but it may be a lifesaver type of program to a family, and we really should try to keep the compassion and love in our hearts as we're moving through this very difficult time.
And just another thing for clarification.
In this proposal, selling Cunningham wasn't part of, it was just shuttering Cunningham at this time because the energy cost per student there is so great, and if those services of the staff members are redundant and can be moved to the high school, there's a cost savings there.
So, you know, could Cunningham be shuttered this year, and we reap those savings?
Yes, and then could it be repurposed next year as you're mentioning?
Yes, absolutely.
The idea is, a few years ago, for those who don't remember, the school district of Beloit, I'm very short notice, closed two west side middle schools.
I would hope that we would avoid that again, moving programs out of a building is much easier than saying, oh, the board's making a decision tonight and we're going to close schools.
I would really hope that we don't do that, but smaller programs that could save us money today to help us over the next fiscal cliff next year.
I think it's a good discussion to have.
Thank you, Mr. Hankins.
I just want to just follow up, and thank you for, I meant no disrespect to Dr. Anderson or anybody in this room about my comments and has, either, I'm just saying that I think Hess could do a better job. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Hankins. You know what? We all can do a better job.
We can, we can, all of it by myself first and foremost.
Ms. Miller.
Thank you so much.
Dr. Anderson, I appreciated how you started out with, with some good news.
So I would like to first offer some positive feedback and some things that I think make a lot of sense and I really appreciated that I heard this evening and that I've seen throughout.
Then I have a couple of points of feedback and some question slash request for going forward.
Good.
Okay.
I first want to start by saying, and I know I'm not alone on the board here in saying this.
The premise of this whole discussion, and I think we're on the same page about this, should be like, what do we want to provide our children? Like, what is the optimal and ideal education look like for them.
Given that, as you've explained really nicely, we're going to need to, you know, redefine our new normal, like our baseline for enrollment is going to be very different from what it was even last year right over the next several years.
So that's the context that I'm approaching this from.
So some positives that I really appreciate.
First, I thank you so much for bringing us.
And I'm mostly going to talk about option C, which I think is the one you were more recommending.
So in the context of option C, I love that we are building in the CPI and no cuts or changes to longevity.
So yes, please.
Let's keep that one of seven.
Another thing that I really appreciate was utilizing fund 80 for middle school sports.
I think that's a win for everybody.
And, you know, exploits often thought of it.
We're big and small.
I mean, the more kids, you know, relationships to make the better.
That's wonderful.
Thank you so much for that.
I absolutely love hearing that there's a few different options for us to reduce legal costs.
Tons of sense.
Thank you so much.
I know coached a new sent us an email earlier today, and I heard you allude also.
So thank you for raising that up.
About just, you know, making sure we're being efficient with our coaching staff and how we do sports and how we staff that so that we can continue to offer as many opportunities as possible to our kids.
Love that.
So thank you.
I was really, really, really excited to hear you describe your vision for the committees, particularly the student enrollment committee.
I think that's wonderful.
I know there's already people who are excited to, you know, roll up their sleeves and do this work with us out in the community.
So thank you for bringing this to us and for that opportunity.
And I also really appreciate that, you know, we're not being put.
And I think for President Johnson, just alluded to this a little bit with the comment about West Side Schools.
Like, thank you for not putting us under the gun and saying, like, we ought to do this right now.
I think, like, no decisions are made well-enhased.
So I think that this has been a good process.
And then the last, like, really good highlight.
I really wanted to share from my perspective was I really appreciate keeping the deans an option C.
You know, our kids and teachers really benefit when we have good administration and good administrative teams.
So thank you.
So those are my big positives.
Some concerns that I had.
I'm going to talk a little bit about DLI.
In a second, I'm going to skip ahead to the other ones.
First, I'm not at all in favor of cutting our library media specialist folks down to halftime.
I love that we're working in a scope of, you know, cutting through attrition.
But cutting somebody's full-time employment to .5 is essentially not really cutting.
I mean, if somebody's livelihood is depending on a full-time position, cutting to a .5 is not really cutting through attrition.
I also think the practicality.
And I am so, oh, I forgot to mention this in a positive, all in favor of reducing the one-to-one, especially the elementary school.
At the middle school, while we still have Chromebooks, it is a full-time job in and of itself just to deal with Chromebooks.
Like my office at work is situated in a library.
And it is like high traffic Chromebooks like day and night when we're there.
I don't think it's practical or reasonable to cut at least at the middle school those media specialists down to .5.
Or, and I'm not quite sure of the details of that.
Or, remember, we're sharing.
So, if a person had a full-time job this year, they would have it next year, but they might be in two buildings.
And I hear that, and I think that that's well thought, oh, there's something happening.
Sorry, it's well thought out.
I still think, you know, middle school, the more caring adults that we can consistently get with our kids the better.
So, in addition, just to the practicality of dealing with like the nightmare of that Chromebook, situations can be having a safe space for kids,
sometimes comes in the form of, you know, a custodian, a library media specialist.
It's the more adults we get consistently the better.
So, that's one piece that I didn't love in option C.
I know this wasn't in option C, but it just, since I've gotten a couple of emails and some feedback about it already,
I am in like absolutely no way interested in moving BLA into the Bull 8 Memorial High School.
I think that it presents a lot of issues.
And I do know that we're looking at option C this year potentially, but like you said, and you're very wise to say that,
like next year, we're going to still be doing a lot of like probably drastic reshaping.
And so, I just like on the record right now, I think that's, it's a bad idea for many reasons, and we don't need to get into it all today.
Because, you know, we're mostly talking about options anyway.
I want to talk a little bit about DLI.
I was a little shocked to see, in option C, and I just want to read off of your side.
I don't miss quoted.
It looks like the language has to do with, it's okay, no, I'm not going to find it now.
But changing the DLI positions to ESL.
And so, yeah, right.
And so, I think, you know, Miss Fox actually, you know, when we put together kind of those priorities from the board,
I know one of the things that we highlighted a couple times on there is wanting to preserve services to students
that we felt are, you know, needed and necessary, but also could potentially like stabilize, you know, even increase enrollment.
I feel very passionately that we need to maintain DLI.
And the reason that when in these previous discussions that we've had talked about like, okay, we need to take a moment
and reshape some things, right, to kind of figure out staffing.
That was all in the interest of preserving the DLI program.
So, I was a little startled to see language about cutting DLI or recategorizing it into an ESL position.
So, that's something that I really don't want to touch and it makes me, and I've asked a couple times already.
I'd really like for us to revisit our discussion at a different meeting about DLI and what that looks like.
Once we get to a point where we have a better understanding more clearly
about what our budget will look like this next year.
I mean, DLI, that was a decision made by the board earlier when the recommendation was that we needed to come up with a plan
that would, you know, be, that we could sustain for three years so that when we have that in there,
that was based on a decision the board had made at an earlier meeting.
I'm just going to interrupt this because we need to thank you so much, Mr. Johnson.
We need to take a motion to esteem the meeting.
Yes, and as Dr. Anderson pointed out last time, this is in policy, so at eight o'clock to keep the board
and everybody cognizant of the time and the time of our staff members who are here and this is their hours.
So this we are using their time and this could be considered inefficient work time that they're here.
That I do continue to ask that we keep this policy going.
If a board member would like, I would entertain a motion that we extend the meeting until ten o'clock.
So second.
Okay.
Yeah.
Object.
Motion.
Motion by Bill Johnson to extend the meeting until ten p.m.
Seconded by Joanne Roo.
Any discussion? Hearing none, all in favor?
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Any opposed?
Motion carries unanimously.
Thank you so much, everybody.
And then I thank you, Bill, for pointing that out.
So we don't need to, I understand that that was a board directed thing and it was in the interest of maintaining and sustaining a program.
That's the gist of it.
We don't need to, you know, get into it.
And I think, you know, for the record, I think you've done an outstanding job fighting for, you know, staff and changes.
I'm excited to hear at a later time how that's going.
It's been good.
I mean, we're in a bad situation, right?
I just, because we're talking about the budget and because it's an item C, or sorry, an option C,
I'm really not interested in messing further with DLI right now.
And if anything, I think, which segues actually into a couple of just points of feedback, if it's okay.
In the spirit of sort of what I think Tom was saying, we definitely want to open up our imaginations.
I think this is a fan.
I like option C a lot overall.
I think it's in the right spirit of where we want to go.
Like you said, we're going to, we'll kind of tweak and, you know, clean things up.
I have other word, but we're still have feedback to share.
So a couple things that I considered was to bring up is in order, you know, in the interest of preserving DLI,
have we considered, you know, looking at Cunningham, it is, it's a building that was sort of retrofitted to,
it was used as a four through eight and I don't, I'm not the facilities expert.
So this might be a really terrible idea.
I don't know.
But, you know, if we could do like a DLI magnet school situation where we have the continuous like elementary through eighth grade,
DLI offerings there, I don't know if that's in it, probably not for next year.
But if that's something that we could maybe put into orbit as a thought.
DLI is like a huge straw for the district.
Yeah, all three of my children are in DLI.
I am so thankful for the benefits that they've received and it's not, not just, you know, I mean, it's helped my child
who deeply struggles with reading is like two years in a row now reading and doing math at grade level
and in the DLI program.
It is just like we've heard in public comment, phenomenally benefit, a beneficial and it's something that I really want us to keep.
I also understand that we're in the situation that we're in.
So being creative about our buildings and kind of like, you know, what he was saying earlier about the configuration is something to think about.
Another piece of feedback I'd like to give in addition to being creative about how we preserve DLI, which would be our first one.
My second piece of feedback would be staff retention.
It includes teacher agency.
I think like the CPI increase is fantastic.
The launch of it increases fantastic.
You know, this whole situation again with DLI that we've been hearing about like with Hackett and not letting teachers like,
you know, hey, we've got a system that's working for us.
It's producing results.
You know, things are going well, but there's decisions being made that take away their voice and being able to do their jobs the way that data supports is going well.
I think that's something we need to consider when we think about staff retention.
I would much, much rather spend money on our teachers than on hiring new ones.
So, you know, there's a lot to be said for institutional knowledge and expertise.
A third piece of feedback that I have would be just for the, again, for the building reorganization at all costs.
And I know this might not be totally realistic, but at all costs I would like to preserve our neighborhood elementary schools.
I think that there's a lot more that elementary schools particularly in neighborhoods offer to our students and families than just the, and I shouldn't say just because it's its own thing.
Beyond just the K-12 public education that they offer.
I would like to also, again, bring back to kind of what time was saying, consider Cunningham's potential.
Whether it's some kind of like, you know, specialized, you know, K-84, K-8 program type piece.
Or, like, do we keep our, like, even start and, you know, keep even start there as well as, like, repurpose Cunningham back to being a middle school, like a sixth through weight.
And then, do we make frozen, like, the all debt across grade levels since we were considering doing an elementary school, all debt piece?
I mean, kids, I have no, I think, frozen's a grade school.
I've been really happy my daughter's about to graduate in one of the high school for math grade.
I got a sixth grader going in.
Nothing bad to say from my perspective about frozen as a parent.
I think, like, it's facility-wise makes the most sense.
If we're going to do alternative education, which includes, like, flexibility and schedules and transportation, all those things.
Localizing in one place that is already suited to be elementary up through higher grades makes sense to me.
It's just a suggestion, but, like, times like I didn't do, like, deep research on that.
So, in conclusion, in the spirit of, like, how do we build this around a vision for what we want to do best for kids, which, you know, we're all on the same page about wanting to do.
Going forward, I would love to see, again, the greatest extent possible, like, a five-year, three to five-year enrollment projection, just so we can kind of figure out what that new normal looks like.
You've already given us some really good numbers.
I think just refining that to, like, three, if we could do five years, that would be ideal, so that we can be a little bit more specific.
I'd like to see a referendum draft that sort of answers that question, like, what does optimal funding look like for that new normal enrollment number, which, like, what does it mean to get our facilities in a much more acceptable state?
What is it, what would a referendum question that fully funded that vision for that declined enrollment number, right?
What would that look like?
I'd love to hear a little bit more about other potential partnerships for Fund 80.
Like, I know community action comes to mind.
We already do a lot of partnerships with them, thinking about things like Fresh Start, other programs that have come and gone.
I'd love to see maybe an update on that one that makes sense.
And then, yeah, actually, that's, and I think I'd already mentioned the Chromebook piece.
I'm totally in favor of eliminating one-to-one for elementary school.
I mean, as soon as possible, if we're able to, and I don't know if we can sell some of those or something.
And I'd love to see that based on what building principals and teachers have to say, like, phased out with the middle schools and going back to classrooms, like carts or classroom sets.
Got my notes.
Thank you.
Oh, Jillian Ru.
Yes, thank you.
So, okay, looking at the three options, there's huge differences in the Colac cuts for each of them.
And a lot of these are brand new reductions, I believe.
I don't remember seeing a bunch of this.
So, like, what does it look like if we reduce the Director of Finance, Director of Careers, Director of Health, Executive Director, TLE, what does that look like?
Who's doing those things then?
Right, Director of Finance is that that was Stephanie's position.
She's been doing interim, she's been doing both roles.
So, in fact, in a few minutes, I hope, or at least later on tonight, whichever comes last, is that we are recommending Stephanie to be in that position.
We then eliminate her current position.
We are looking to hire someone in accounting to help with that.
If we lose, if you look at A and B, it does talk about losing one of the secretaries, one of my secretaries.
If that happens, I mean, one of my secretaries deals a lot with the open records requests.
I mean, it truly is a full-time job, and the bottom line is, I don't know who will do that.
I can't simply say that the one secretary can do both, but so that we would have to take a look at what's no longer going to be done.
If we take a look at Director of Alternative Education, there are simply things that are not going to be done.
I mean, that individual deals a lot with career and tech, which is one of our strong points at the high school.
There would mean certain grants that he works on right now that bring in money.
There may not be anybody to do that to bring in the money.
There are simply going to be things that are not going to be done.
We knew that every cut would be painful. That's why I have advocated for number C, where it keeps those individuals and gives us a chance to look at potential referendum.
But, I mean, he deals a lot to program, one that the most common with his CT, if we did, got away with the person who coordinates steam.
That's the person who goes in to help with the academic achievement, works with other coaches.
It just means that there's one less body that's going to be able to help direct that.
If we take away the Director of Nursing Services, that just means that the person who currently coordinates our Medicare and our nursing nurses and our health and resistance.
That position would be eliminated and we would have to find how could we maybe disperse those duties to nurses.
I don't have an easy answer for who's going to do the work.
I'm going to have to tell you that your regards to cuts, there are things that we will have to determine what will no longer be done because you're just not the manpower to do it.
Okay, and then the Executive Director of TLE, so that one is eliminated in all three of them.
That is because that position is now the assistant superintendent.
Okay, so it's not actually, it's just already gone.
Okay, thank you. I was really confused by that.
Okay, so then my second question is, so imagine math is listed under curriculum or things that we use in our schools.
So three that have been mentioned, the NGL school pace and seven mindsets have been mentioned by staff members.
How, well, one, I can't find anywhere where NGL, how much that costs, our district annually, is seven mindsets?
Is that an annual cost of $115,000?
And so, I mean, because we're looking at every dollar again.
So those are three other things that people mentioned where we could make reductions.
I have an answer from assistance from my cabinet.
Maybe can speak more succinctly to this.
Anyone?
So, like every other year or every three years.
So it's $115,000 for three years?
No, but I will get you that class.
Okay.
Okay, thanks.
The four end jail contract for next year is $29,000.
I think it's right around $30,000 mark.
There's a couple of different break down, but this past year was just under 25.
We took something off and we looked at adding some back.
So it's right around $30,000 for the year.
That is an annual contract.
And then is it possible for us to, again, this is, these are people
emailing and asking about these things.
I'm hearing a lot of people saying they don't understand what we are getting in return
for that investment.
And so if we could have information about what we're getting for the amount we're paying.
Yeah, we're going to say from here.
I don't care.
Yeah.
So what that does is we, it provides, we have monthly meetings with our support code
into it.
It provides some trainings, links to trainings that we can do.
We get resources from them.
We pay for extra professional development.
I pay for some of those out of my grants.
For us, we get our buy, our yearly visit and then reflection and feedback for us.
So, again, it's helpful to provide our structure as we get to the implementation stage.
Again, I ask, could we absolutely do it without our position where we're to the final stage
of academies and let Ms. Hells join in a little bit?
Yes, I would say we absolutely carefully had to.
I do believe that the services we get for that cost, we have brought it down.
It was in the $60,000 and $70,000 range.
And we brought this down to, again, roughly around $30,000.
Thank you.
Any other questions, Mrs. Ruben?
Carol Pucks.
Okay, I have a bunch of comments and questions on my own.
I am really not a fan of Plan C, not because it's not a good plan, but because it doesn't
do enough.
And I think if you asked us how much OPEP money do you think we should be using?
And I think given the fact that our fund balance is so low, we need to use as little as possible
at this point.
So I think we need to be more aggressive than Plan C.
And when I look at it, I do see some Title I positions in the AGR, not maybe AGR, but
Title I positions that doesn't really save us any money.
So the question is how are we using our grant money and all those kinds of things to help
us?
I have an option D because I do think we need to move BLA to the high school.
If you look at that capacity enrollment, we're under utilizing Cunningham by 794 students,
and we're under utilizing the high school by 1,300 some students.
So we're really under utilizing our buildings, and we need to do something different about
how we're going to use our buildings.
You know, we can leave Cunningham on occupied for a year until your committee decides how
we're going to, how we want to use our buildings, but we could at least save some costs on some
heating and air conditioning and some other kinds of things.
I think we can do that too because of their older kids.
Those kids don't need transportation, those kinds of things.
I really like the idea of an early childhood center.
I think we need to approach that, but I think at this time of year we haven't approached
transportation.
We don't know how that would work.
It would be moving lots of people around, which is something that we're going to be doing next year.
So I think moving BLA and getting that piece taken care of, because I think at some point
that's going to have to happen, right?
Whether we do it this year, we do it next year, it's going to have to happen.
You know, we're going to be needing to use Cunningham for other things, so we're going to need to sell it.
So we might as well bite the bullet, and if we're going to think about moving early childhood
to Merrill, even start can go to Merrill.
Now, I don't think there's a problem with doing that.
I think we need to re-look at what's going on at Colac seriously.
You know, we talk about combining positions and doing other kinds of things other places,
but we're not really talking about combining positions and doing things differently at Colac,
and I think we can.
And I think, you know, one of our goals was to have the services as close to the students as possible.
You know, having some of these directors is nice, but that doesn't get us to the students,
and some of that could be totally redone.
I mean, I look at, you know, one of the ideas was a combination of an assistant principal
and an athletic director.
How about a combination of a CTE person and an athletic director and put them at the high school?
So we don't totally lose the CTE, but they're at the high school where they belong,
and they can do some other things.
I mean, we need to start thinking more creatively about how we use our positions.
We are, you know, we're approaching a 4,000 school district, and if we lose more,
we're going to be less than that, and we have to think much smaller.
I looked up some other 4,000 student districts around, and, you know, they have three elementary schools,
a middle school and a high school and a very minimal central office.
And, you know, we got to start thinking that way, because that's kind of what we're going to look like.
We can look at increasing our enrollment, and we certainly need to look at increasing our enrollment
and keeping students, keeping with them as much as possible.
But it's going to be very hard to compete with what's up on the hill.
So we can pretty much guarantee we're going to lose quite a lot of students up there,
and we're going to work too hard to keep the ones we can,
but that competition is very difficult for us at the moment.
So we got to face some realities.
I heard you say last week, you know, we have to do pain now or pain later,
and if we don't do the pain now, the pain later is going to be harder.
And it's just like, you know, you were not in favor of using OPEB,
and some of those kinds of things.
I think we need to come to grips with that.
And I think we need to use a minimal amount of OPEB money.
So we're looking at either option D or option A, right?
We got to do something a little bit more aggressive than I don't think
that's aggressive enough at this point, especially given what we're facing in the future.
I'm taking those, but what was option D because I don't want them?
Option D is to kind of do half of B. It would be moving BLA to the high school.
But we would leave Merrill Elementary,
and Merrill would still be in elementary school, but even start would be at Merrill.
But I don't think we can do the early childhood piece,
much as I'd like to.
I don't think we can move 4K kids to Merrill and move all the Merrill kids out
between now and August.
I just don't think that's a doable piece.
I think we can do the BLA piece, and, you know, if it doesn't quite happen,
you know, I mean, you can move the kids, and if you don't have all the stuff moved
by August or September, we can continue to work on that.
I think that's a more doable piece.
It's not a lovely option.
Nobody likes it.
But, you know, we've got to start being a little bit more aggressive.
All right.
I just wanted to clarify.
Thank you, Terrell.
And none of these are lovely options.
Yeah.
But it is the reality.
Dan Shoe?
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Dr. Anderson.
I appreciate your recommendation for, and putting forward option C.
That's, you know, if we had to vote on something, that would be the one I would support.
I wouldn't support going farther.
As I mentioned last week, I really appreciate these committees that you're suggesting,
and I agree completely that they interact with each other.
We have to decide what the community wants our schools to be.
We have to have a conversation with more than the people at this table or in this room,
but deeper.
And so these committees that you get at the core issues.
We're going to then, once those committees help decide what this community wants for their
schools, what kind of schools do we want here in Valoit?
What will that cost?
And, you know, how do we fund it?
Is it something that can go to a referendum or some other means?
But the key thing for this table here and for the people in this room,
and all the people that work for us is when do we shift to a growth mode?
The work that has been done has been a lot of work, but my colleagues,
I just got here two weeks ago, but there's been a lot of work here to make pretty
dramatic changes in how we run the schools.
We're later today going to hire a search firm or get closer to hiring a search firm
to hire a permanent replacement, a really key decision.
But this may be the summer that we need to shift to the growth mode.
That's the toughest decision a big organization will ever face is when you move
from cutting expenses to shifting to growth.
And option C preserves the vast majority, nearly all of our staff.
Maybe not in perfect ways, but we'll have to tweak around the edges on that.
But I'm in favor of getting those questions answered as quickly as possible
to use the resources we have, including OPEB and other things,
and possible referendums to make this the summer that we shift to this future plan
and put together three and five year plans we've talked about to really deliver
that school district, that this wonderful community deserves.
So thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Shuf.
Bill Johnson.
Yes.
Being kind of a sports guy, I don't see what the drawback would be of putting,
opening up the district to fund 80 money for kids to come and play sports.
I mean, maybe we can get some of them to stay in school here and
I just think that's good.
And the other question I have is, is there a reason why we have so many open enrollment requests?
You mean, are you talking about open enrollment or open records requests?
Open records, I'm sorry.
Is there something we're doing wrong that they keep?
I mean, I don't know that I have a good answer.
I mean, I'll give you, I'll give you my thoughts, which doesn't make any more than that.
I think that there is, there's been maybe a lack of trust of what is transparency.
There's what people perceive as transparency in the district.
So they want to find records to, to find out is what we told someone, is that true or not true?
Now, that's just in reading all the records that come across, because I see every record request that comes.
I would, that is what my assumption is, but that, I don't know that that's factual,
but I think it's people have, people just want to question whatever is being told them.
And one way they can do that is by asking for records to, for us to prove, yes, that is truly what we told you that happened.
Here are the records that prove that what we told you is true.
Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, Bill.
I was really hoping that we would come up with some concrete actions for you tonight, Dr. Anderson.
I know we have staff members that are on pins and needles, and I would like to give them peace of mind to know whether or not they should be looking for another job right now,
because now is the time for educators to, to be in the market.
And it sounds like we're not there yet. We're kind of all over the place.
None of it doesn't sound like any of us really embrace any one of these options.
And there sounds like there's some more information that some members would like to have you come back with.
But ultimately, the question I have is how are we going to improve academics and behaviors while making these cuts?
Because if we're going to talk about a growth model or why people are leaving the district, it doesn't take, it doesn't take but a couple open records requests of our emails to see what we're hearing about.
Behaviors and academics, behaviors, behaviors, behaviors.
And I think we really need to take a different approach to what we are doing in our buildings, and nothing is different in any of these options.
It's just reduced.
What are we going to do differently to make these improvements?
And that's what I have been encouraging the departments.
Talk to your staff, find out what we can do better, find out what cuts we can make.
We need strategic ideas so that we can get to a growth model.
Unfortunately, I love the idea of a growth model budget, but the reality is it's going to be a few years before we get there.
It really is.
As long as we are losing students, it's going to be a while before we can start growing.
And I think we need to address the issues of behaviors.
In reference to that, I truly believe if you take the deans, I mean you had assistant principals at the elementary schools, you would reduce them the deans.
Do you take the deans out?
I think that's a mistake behavior.
Dr. Anderson, I agree with you, but there are some other positions here in option C that financially don't make sense to me.
And I want you and the cabinet to understand, before this board decides to go to referendum, there are seven people in this room that have to be confident that we will go to referendum and it will pass.
And if we are telling our constituents that we are going to preserve positions at Colac, but not positions elsewhere, that's a real hard sell.
It's a real hard sell to go to this constituency here in Beloit and say we are going to pass a deficit budget, please give us more money.
Until we have a solid budget that we can get behind and say this makes sense to us.
It's going to be hard for me personally to convince my husband on a fixed income and my son, a private business owner, that they should be contributing more money to the school district of Beloit if we're not changing anything.
And I think we need to make some changes.
I'd like to know what these plans reflect the changes that will bring about better improvement and better academics.
I think things that we haven't talked about that are kind of the white elephant in the room, our concept of self-contained classrooms and EBD classrooms.
In 2008, when I was a substitute teacher at Aldridge, we had an EBD self-contained classroom.
We had self-contained special ed classroom for sixth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade.
We had the CDS self-contained classroom.
Five self-contained classrooms for special services for our students.
I am all for inclusivity. Don't get me wrong. I love the idea of inclusivity. It's not working.
It's not working the way it was intended.
Our teachers are not trained to teach special ed.
Our teachers are not trained to deal with the behaviors of special ed and EBD students or 504 students.
It's not working for our district.
And I think that maybe we should also be looking at making some of those changes there.
Tonight we heard about the AB schedule.
This isn't the first time I've heard rumblings about an AB schedule.
How much loss productivity is there with an AB schedule?
How much loss learning time is there with an AB schedule?
Maybe we should consider going back to the old model.
I think we should also put in this budget more, actually more money for janitorial services.
When I was on the board in 2009, all of our janitorial services were in-house.
Maybe that's something we should return to.
I know some of our legal fees even had to do with janitorial services
and some hubbub that happened a year or two ago.
Maybe if we have employees in-house, we can retain them and keep them happier
because then they are reporting right to us and we can work through whatever issues they're having.
The websites being blocked by IT, I think the world of TC networks and their staff, but even tonight.
We're having problems with technology.
I don't know the last time I've been to a board meeting and we've not had issues with technology.
I hope that we can stop spinning our wheels because we really need to take a very different look at all of this.
Mr. Holy said at the last meeting, I can't wait until we have a year when we can actually look at academics.
Oh my goodness, me too.
Really?
I think that's what we need to be doing, but our budget is not being- none of these really jump out at me saying,
hey, I align with the academic goals of the school district of Illinois.
Right now, our academic goal is get out of the last place.
Last place.
I can't remember last time.
Well, actually I do, but it's been several years when we were not in the bottom 3% of the state.
The bottom 3%, we are so much better than that.
I know we are.
Public comment spoke of the obituary of the school district of Illinois.
First, not on my watch.
We're not here to write the obituary of the school district of Illinois.
None of us ran for that.
We are here to make the school district better as it gets smaller.
That's the reality we're at.
Dr. Anderson, I am looking to you for recommendations on how you want to proceed.
First thing is, I'm taking all of your notes to figure out how my- I mean, here's the difficulty I'm in.
We are seven board members who have- to your true divergence.
So I'm trying to figure out where do the- so I mean my thought is, what is the majority of board members going to support?
Because I don't know that I can bring anything to you that seven people are going to have.
So I'm trying to take a look at, here are the things you have told me.
How am I going to put that practice?
And the answer is, I'm going to make you all upset.
I mean, this is the bottom line because I- because you are so far apart.
I mean, I will tell you, it was not a secret.
I told you that last Thursday.
I would rather go with options C because of preserving the positions.
Is it optimal?
No.
But what it does is it at least gives employees that have a job, a job, and he gives some time to come up with a longer range solution.
If that's not acceptable, I have to come up with something that's going to be less than that because, you know, I'm saying you're not going to accept more than that.
But several of you have said I should look at adding more back to which is going to increase the amount of either cuts in other areas or it's going to increase the use of OPEB.
So I'm going to sit down with my cabinet and we're going to take a look and see what does this mean to all of us and what can we come up with?
I'm not going to wait until the next board meeting.
You know, probably as I get them, I'm going to send them out to you and say, all right, here's option D, not Carol's option D.
Here's my option D. Tell me, you know, until I can get something because eventually we have to make a decision.
I will implement whatever it is that you asked me to implement.
All right.
I am a strong advocate to retain as many people in district as possible to give me some time to come up with a longer range solution.
That means you use more OPEB dollars now than you will in the future.
It's going to lessen it.
I know that that's not popular with everyone, but the bottom line, it gives some time to determine.
And the big question with referendum.
First, a referendum has to be a 7-0 vote.
If you don't all agree, it doesn't make sense to go because you can't win.
We now, if we're going to go to referendum in November, we have to have a question done in August, which basically means I have June in July, so I have two and a half months to get the final document or to get a document to you.
Writing the question is easy.
I can write the question in 10 minutes.
What that will contain is what it takes all the time.
And then we have to make sure we tell people to have discussion.
If a referendum doesn't pass, what does that mean?
What are you not going to have in the future?
Because that is going to be key.
If a referendum doesn't pass to make sure we tell people, here is what you are not going to have.
The next item on the agenda, and we can probably commingle them, is the committees.
And I already have emails ready to go out to the staff to look for volunteers in all the buildings and in all different areas.
My biggest ask is one of the things you always ask me to get, what can I do for you?
One of the things I would ask for the board is, what are, give me names of people in the community that you think would be good individuals to put on either one of these committees.
Because they are not going to be on both because they are too much time.
But what can they be on so we can have those discussions?
Because as soon as we get this, one of the other things is I am going to start arranging meetings in every one of the buildings for both staff and parents.
So we can talk about all these things going forward, especially what will the district look like and how are we going to do.
So, I mean, the committees will give me input from other people's ideas that I can bring back to you.
But right now, I mean, where to go in the budget?
I will see if I can take all these ideas and put them into something.
And I will send it out to you as quick as I can.
And they are not secret.
So as soon as you say, Wayne, you can share this with people.
I will share it out so that by the time we meet next, we have come up with this close to something that will pass a majority of the board.
Because I do not think I can bring anything to you that is going to be a 7-0 vote.
I just don't think so.
So I am going to have to try to figure out what is the majority?
What can I do to bring it as close to possible?
But we do have to have a solution.
As you mentioned, if I have to cut people's jobs, I want to give them as much notice as possible so they can look somewhere else.
I am doing my best not to do that.
But if that is the case and that is what we decided to happen, I want to give them as much leave way going forward as feasible.
So I will take the information you have given.
I will sit down with my cabinet.
I will sit down with the principals.
They will sit down with their staff.
I am going to staff meeting already tomorrow anyway.
In fact, a couple.
I have two staff meetings tomorrow.
You know, to try to get illicit ideas from staff so that I can bring something to you by next week.
It will be, you know, we don't have a meeting and maybe we can have a special meeting just to talk about budget again.
Because it is something that we need to wrap up so that we can get started on next year and then, you know, start working on some of our other big issues.
So I appreciate all your comments.
Like I said, the difficulty that I see for us is we have widely divergent opinions and how am I going to put all that together.
And the answer is, I don't know yet, but I plan on praying a lot tonight.
Thank you, Dr. Anderson.
And just to wrap it up, I appreciate your care that you have for our staff and seeing them as individual people.
As board members, our perspective is a little different because we need to, we have the duty of care and loyalty to the district.
And so the way I approach it is not to look at it as the person, but as the position.
What is this position contributing to the district?
What's the history of this position looking at it and looking at it projecting forward?
If we keep this position, what's going to happen versus if we cut this position?
Not the person.
It's a little bit different than your approach.
We still care about all of our people.
We really do, but we have to care about keeping the school district up below a viable entity.
And how are we going to improve services for our students?
And lastly, the OPEB.
One of the reasons I am very reluctant to spend OPEB is because that is an interest bearing account.
And as you mentioned in March, we have a tale of two budgets.
This year is the easy year.
This is the easy year.
I would rather have OPEB earning interest this year so that next year, well, when the proverbial, okay, yeah.
When we have to make really, really deep cuts that we have that money to fall back on when it's really, really a rainy, rainy day.
In the end, we're going to work as a team.
Yeah, I know if you didn't care about all the people, you wouldn't be sitting up there.
Thank you.
Can I just jump on that?
I'm going to jump in because it's, I don't think we don't want to lose these people.
I think we need, because we need the work and we need the people.
But with the positions that they're in, probably need to be gone and they have to be transitioned to something else.
And we have to figure out where they can do the best work and where they can help us.
I don't know that anybody needs to lose a position, but we need to, or at least their job.
They may lose their position, but I don't think they need to lose a job.
And it might, you know, yeah, reality might be a little less pay, but we should be able to find things for them to do.
And that's one of the reasons why I keep harping on that, you know, what are we doing with things like Title I and some of these grant money?
You know, can we finagle some of that, move some of those positions in there?
Or, you know, re-title or do something different, combine things together, other kinds of jobs.
But I don't want anybody to lose their position either, okay, or a job.
But it might be a position, not a job.
Megan Miller?
Sorry, thanks.
So just in the spirit of, I really appreciate what you said, word President Johnson, about trying to, you know, get us closer to consensus so people, you know, right off the bat, I think you said, just get some concrete feedback, right?
So in the spirit of a little bit of consensus building, I guess, if I could ask my colleagues, is anybody opposed to whatever our next iteration looks like, can we maybe see that aligned to like sort of that academics
and behaviors piece like you said?
I mean, I agree with you.
That should be our goal.
I think it's a bit of a tall ask to say, we've been here for a really long time, and now next year we need a budget that's going to fit.
But building toward that, I think kind of satisfies what you were saying, Board President Johnson, and what I think Dan was talking about with the growth mentality.
So I think like capping off, like, here's the next iteration, you know, here's the feedback.
This is like what we, the moves that we believe will be in service of increasing academics and in service of better, you know, least putting us on track, right, to better address behaviors.
Is that, does that characterize where we're at?
I, yeah, I do agree.
And actually, I'm glad that you mentioned that because if my recollection is correct, did the board come to a consensus about the Dr. Anderson had asked about the hundred thousand.
An increase for athletics, and we were in unit, I believe a unanimous consensus that no, no, we're not going to increase the athletic departments budget by a hundred thousand.
They, we need to make reductions, you know, and, and I guess another question I have, which.
Maybe Miss, Mrs. Elwood could help, help me understand throughout this week.
If we can put middle school sports in fund 80, why can't we put high school sports in fund 80 that that would be a huge savings to, but just throwing that out there.
It's been widely accepted putting middle school because of the age of law.
Schools have tried to put in the high school portions or at least portions of it.
And it's always been told by the auditors and DPI you can't do that.
So just, okay, so like it sounds like we're all on the same page about, you know, to help us move forward to get, you know, get us across the line kind of characterizing like this is how we want to reshape or cut or, you know, whatever.
And this is kind of the vision. And I think that might help move us toward, you know, some, some consensus.
And then the other thing is, I just want to ask, I guess my colleagues, are we okay asking then for like that enrollment projection.
And I could catch your pitch three to five year. I don't want to create a burden, but whatever is reasonable.
And I know there's certain data out there, right, that like, you don't bear does those kinds of stuff.
Is that something that we all agree that would be helpful for how we can move forward or is anybody against that?
No, I think that's actually would be very beneficial.
And I believe Dr. Anderson even has some idea of how much how many numbers will be losing over the next few years to some of the other local schools.
No, yeah, I have no doubt these. Is there anything else you want us to respond, Megan? Well, yeah, and I guess that I'm done because I was just going to say like as we wrap up.
I mean, if there's anything else that people think that we can all kind of just that way, you at least have the.
Here's where we for sure are in agreement might be helpful to the process. That's all I was after.
Well, I we already gave Dr. Anderson the board guidance and I think just reading through that that says exactly what we what we want.
We want to keep class class sizes as close to what they are now and we do have a policy of at the high school.
It's 15 students. The I forget what the averages are for the other the other levels, but there are it is in policy and that's what we should be striving for.
Now, doesn't mean we'll actually get there. Maybe not, but I do want to make certain that we're doing our best to preserve the learning environment.
We did look at that with all the options on, you know, on classes at the high school loan Roman classes to the elimination of those.
You know, what do we have at our elementary school? So it's not that the options you have. We didn't already look at those. We have.
Thank you. So Mr. Shuf. Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. So.
I really have a lot of respect for the people the table with me tonight and Tom who's helping a family member.
So one way to be efficient was I agree with Megan that we these projections are going to be really helpful, but.
Maybe for Stephanie, say her name, so I don't. So here's this. So one way to be efficient would be the things the board is asking for on enrollment projections and things that Stephanie and people at Baird and stuff can help us project for referendums could be the start of briefing documents for those committees.
So, you know, like we quickly could get some help with our budget to have some projections or updated, you know, from that enrollment report and then some more how you might model.
How you might model different options for referendum. We're going to need to brief those committees anyway with those type of documents.
So maybe we could start on some drafts of those because we have these factors that might tell us this is the year to shift to a different mode.
OPEB, which could help inform shared costs in that formula. We have a referendum. We have an election that has three times as many voters as an April election and there's another one of those for two and a half years after this.
So there might be some reasons why we want to do exactly what Madam Chair said, which is focus on academic achievement and the culture and behaviors that are in our buildings.
All those could be part of that question. What do we want in our school district? And it might help us get to a consensus, a budget consensus and help.
You're going to need to staff those committees and provide documents to those committees.
So maybe those type of things could really help. They'd help me as a random board member understand what's possible and would help us with budgets.
And so that would be my suggestion.
Thank you, Dan. Any last comments?
Our next agenda item is committee formations. The purpose of this is to share what's that?
To share with board the board information regarding the two administrative committees, Dr. Anderson suggested forming for reviewing and working on the 2728 budget as well as a possible referendum and a second committee to look at ways to curtail
students from leaving the district and how to recruit students to or back to the district.
And this is policy 262, the administrative committees, the superintendent of schools may establish and appoint committees to study, gather data, research and advice on matters relevant to the district, its operations, goals and policies.
The creation of such committees and its respective charges shall be reported to the Board of Education.
The superintendent shall have the authority to recruit and select members of any committee or committees they may establish and to determine the duration of any such committee.
So Dr. Anderson is not here for board action, but just reporting to us.
And I think you've already talked about this a couple times, so this will be short, is that I'm looking at creating two committees.
One, as I said, to look at how can we stabilize our basically our student enrollment?
Why are people leaving? What is it that we can do so that we can start having a stable student population?
And the second one is what will we do in 27-28 when we need to take a look at how we can probably move around our staff and use our buildings.
Both of these are going to discuss about referendum, what people support, etc.
I will end up putting an email out to the staff looking for volunteers tomorrow.
One of the things I need from the Board is I have made people that I've already met during my time here that I think would be interested.
But if there are particular people that you think would be beneficial to serve on either of these committees,
if you would give me their contact information, I will contact them.
These committees are going to be open so that anybody who wants to attend can attend.
I'm not looking at any, they're all going to be open, they're all going to be posted.
I'm not looking at board members serving the committees, but they'll be posted so board members want to come and hear what's being said and discussed.
They're going to be welcome to that and then I'll try to give reports every month to the board because I'm looking at these committees.
The one to be done at least by probably the first semester and the second one to be done maybe a little bit into the second semester.
So we'll be meeting a regular basis, I'll give you updates.
But basically, this is a chance to start hearing from ideas from others that may help us in decision-making process.
Do board members have any questions for Dr. Anderson, Carol Fox?
I just think a short statement summary of the name of the committee, the purpose of the committee, what you expect to come out of the committee,
and maybe even a suggested of meetings might help before we reach out to people and say are you interested in serving,
it might make it easier for us to be able to say this committee would be great.
Here's a description of the committee, are you interested?
I can have that done and send to you if not tomorrow, Thursday.
Any other questions or comments for Dr. Anderson?
Go ahead.
Yeah, no, I love that we're doing this.
I think it's a fantastic idea and I'll be excited to hear more about, I guess, just like the different populations and like,
you know, what constituencies that are able to participate.
So thank you.
Any other?
Okay, our next agenda item is the superintendent search firm selection.
The purpose of this is to determine which of the search firms will be selected to conduct the superintendent search with the Board of Education.
Board members interviewed the Ford firms, WSB, WP and so,
WBWP and associates school exec connect and hazard young atia and associates on April 27th and May 26th.
The board then did a, the board secretary sent out a poll of the board members and the poll had the reading of hazard young atia and associates at 2.29.
School exec connect at 2.0 and BWP and associates at 1.17.
I will open Dan Shuf.
Yeah, so we talked a little bit about consensus earlier in the night and I think this is, the poll shows that there's a pretty strong consensus around hazard young and atia and associates.
I was actually one that rated them number two, but, you know, the vast majority, six of us have said that, you know, that's their one or two choice.
So I think it's, I'm going to move and I'll look for guidance exactly on what the motions to me, but to get the discussion going, I would move that we select hazard young atia and associates.
You know, there, I would certainly amend my motion to have any pending reference checks by either the board president, vice president or staff, you know, at the district, whatever is appropriate just to, if you, we wanted to do that.
So I'll, I'll make that motion.
So a motion that I might suggest would be move approval of moving forward with H Y A and associates to conduct the superintendent search with the board of education.
And the reason why I'm leaving it a little bit open ended.
There is in case, as we're finalizing a contract with them or something, there might be some.
I don't, I don't want to surprise an end surprise after we've already made a motion saying this absolutely is the one we're going to go with.
So just move, let's maybe a motion moving forward with this.
And then once the contract, if it, if the contract is over, what is it, 25,000, then it comes back to the board.
Yep.
So moved.
Second.
Any discussion?
Hearing none.
All in favor?
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Any opposed?
Motion carries unanimously.
Sorry.
Could I just clarify was, uh, Mr. the second?
Miller.
Thank you.
Our next agenda item is the consent agenda.
Typically there is no separate discussion of the items unless a board member so request in which event the item or items will be removed from the general order of business and considered in their normal sequence on the agenda.
Are there any board members that would like any of these items removed?
Mr. Schuf?
No, my.
Oh, thank you.
My hand is still up by accident.
Sorry.
Members.
The Medicaid billing stock.
The Medicaid.
Okay.
Any other?
Okay.
I will entertain a motion of approval of the consent agenda with removal of B.
So moved.
Second.
Motion by Joanne Roo.
Seconded by Carol Fox.
Any discussion?
Hearing none.
Mr. Johnson.
Good.
Okay.
All in favor?
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Any opposed?
Motion carries unanimously.
We are at item B Medicaid billing and software.
Joanne Roo.
I just with all of the discussion we had earlier about making budget cuts.
I'm just not comfortable with purchasing something that's more expensive.
The area, school districts, Jamesville included all use compass care.
So I'm comfortable with keeping them as our provider.
Any other discussion?
Mr. Schuf?
So in the budget, I'm sorry, in the business committee, the chair is not in attendance right now.
The discussion, we had a special meeting to talk about this issue.
And essentially, we got guidance from cabinet level folks that there was a change in law
in the fall last year that allowed us to bill for more things.
And they're very confident that the streamlining of the new program that they're recommending
will easily have us bill at least the difference, which is like $10,000, and really very likely
much more when they streamline the system.
So I started with the same place you were a member, Roo.
But we ended up, the committee was unanimous pushing it forward.
Of course, that doesn't presume board action, but this is why we did it was we were
the administration felt strongly that that brought efficiencies.
It was easier to use, especially with the expansion in Medicaid, there was a change in state law.
So that's why we went forward with that.
So we asked the same type of questions.
There had the same sort of preconceived with everything going on, all the moving parts.
But that's why we ultimately went with the administration, proving the administration's suggestion.
Just a clarifying question.
So I'm totally empathetic to where Mr. was coming from.
And just is this a can you remind me, is this a one year contract that we're doing with the new one?
It's a three.
Okay.
So I mean, I think like as we're, you know, as we're looking at the budget and things like that.
And I think this came up in that first committee too.
I mean, I think just like kind of maybe if it makes sense annually, just to kind of say like, hey, like here's our change.
You know, if any, and like billing and things like that, like I think, you know, that could help.
I appreciate like, you know, it's a bit, it doesn't sit well, right, to buy something while we're cutting things.
And I completely feel that.
But I think like knowing that, you know, community is going to know that we're going to be able to see like whatever returns are on that and just the efficiencies that will take with staff to better utilize.
I just, I'm comfortable moving forward with it, but I, I'm really glad that you brought that up.
I think it's important to consider and I appreciate the administration's willingness and sharing that out with us.
I think it's also important to note that part of those discussions, the committee was that our current providers known about the change in the law for the last several months.
And yet.
Has not made the motions to help us get.
Maybe some of the additional dollars we could have had we had a different system.
So I think the belief is that if we go with this new system, we will be able to recoup more revenue than the expenditures so that we can have more of a positive revenue stream.
Thank you, Dr Anderson Carol Fox.
Yeah, my understanding, this is the one that matches skyward, right?
It, it, it, it integrates with skyward. So it should take the staff a whole lot less time to input the information and do what they need to do.
So it would save a lot of money in that way on staff time and allow them to do other things for the, the students in the district.
Any other questions or discussion?
Hearing none, is there a motion?
So moved.
Second.
And I'm assuming Mr. Shuf, your motion is approval.
Yeah. Okay.
Yes.
Move approval.
Okay.
Okay. Just so we're on the same page.
And motion by Dan Shuf, seconded by Carol Fox. Any other discussion? Hearing none.
I.
I.
I.
I.
Any opposed?
Motion carries unanimously.
Our next item is human resources. Are there any open session questions on exhibit A?
Are there any closed session questions on exhibit A?
I have a closed session question.
Okay.
A motion may be made and a vote taken to convene the Board of Education into closed session pursuant to section 19.85 parent one parent C of the Wisconsin state statutes relative to considering specific personnel recommendations.
Is there a motion to go into closed session?
So moved.
Second.
Motion by Meghan Miller, seconded by Dan Shuf.
I mean, I'm sorry, Carol Fox.
I have to do a roll call.
Yes, we do have to do a roll call.
Mr. Shuf.
Dan Shuf.
Meghan Miller.
Aye.
Carol Fox.
Aye.
Joanne Roo.
Bill Johnson.
Aye.
And Tia Jensen.
Aye.
Motion carried unanimously.
Thank you.
The Board of Education will reconvene in public session in order to take any action on these items discussed in this closed session.
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Okay.
It is 927.
We are reconvening our open session portion of tonight's meeting.
Is there a motion for exhibit A?
I move approval of exhibit A.
Is there a second?
Motion by Carol Fox.
Second by Bill Johnson.
Any discussion?
Hearing none.
All in favor?
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Any opposed?
Nay.
Motion carries with one in opposition.
Our next item is executive session.
A motion may be made and a vote taken to convene the board of education and closed session pursuant to section 19.85 parent one parent F of the Wisconsin state statutes for the purpose of reviewing the expulsion orders of the independent hearing officer pursuant to section
120.13 parent one parent E4 dot H dot of the Wisconsin state statutes of the board of education shell upon review approve reverse or modify the orders and
we're missing something here.
What is the.
Okay.
And section 19.85 parent one parent C of the Wisconsin state statutes considering specific personnel recommendations.
Thank you.
Is there a motion to go in a closed session?
So moved.
Second.
Motion by Joanne.
Ru seconded by Carol Fox.
Mrs. Schop.
Carol Fox.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Motion carried unanimously.
Thank you.
The board of education may reconvene in public session in order to take any action if necessary on the items discussed in closed session.
Otherwise we will adjourn from closed session.
Thank you.
Good night.
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